• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1333 0

and if I'd get on the stand and sign a paper against Frank Ortiz they'd cut me loose. They'd drop the charges. My dad had gone through all this-I had told him it was useless-and then the lawyer presented us with this solution! My stepmother and my mother just wanted me to be safe. They didn't know anything so I didn't care, didn't even want to know, what they thought. Diane said, "Oh, man, those guys wouldn't do anything for you! They don't care about you! Turn over on them! Later for them!" She'd gotten out of this nuthouse, Norwalk, where she'd been. My dad didn't say a word. He was waiting to see what I'd do. I looked at this lawyer and I said, "Man, are you kidding? We're paying you all this fuckin' money for advice like that? I could have done that in the beginning if I'd wanted to! I'm not a rat!" I cussed him out and ranked him, and my dad was sitting there, and I glanced at him, and he was just beaming. He was so proud of me. The lawyer said, "Well, if that's the way you want to be, there's nothing I can do. Maybe I can get you on the N number program." (They had just started a special program for people who were convicted of using drugs or of possession. Rather than give them an A number, an adult prison number, and send them to a regular state prison, they'd give them an N number, a narcotics number, and send them to a special narcotics prison.)

David Arbedian and I had the same background, the same kind of record. We were in Fort Worth together. He'd gotten busted recently on possession, just like me, and he got out on bail, like I did. He got busted again on possession while he was out; I didn't. And David didn't have a work record. He worked for his dad occasionally. I had a good work record, for years, with my music, so I figured that if anybody would be acceptable to the N number program it would be me. I had no crimes on my record. David had been picked up for burglaries, suspicions of robberies, but he got on the program. He didn't turn over on anybody; he was just accepted as an N number. I wasn't because they said I was a hardened criminal. I was beyond rehabilitation. There was no hope for me, and the program was only for young people that could be saved. So I wound up doing four and a half years. David did eight months. That's justice.

I got sentenced to two to twenty years in a state prison, and I waited for the chain. You go back to the tank and you wait two, three, four weeks. Then they call out your name and take you to Chino, which is a guidance center in Chino, California. At Chino, they run you through all kinds of physical and mental tests. At that time they were checking your skull, the width of it, and the width of your eye slits and where they were placed and the width of the strands of your hair because they believed that criminals' noses went off to one side and they thought they could tell something by the formation of your facial features.

At the guidance center, they determine where to send you. They can leave you in Chino proper, where you get nice visits with picnic lunches. They can send you to a camp. They can send you to Soledad, which was a vocational type place. They can send you to CMC, California Men's Colony. They can send you to Vacaville, a medical type prison. Or else they can send you to San Quentin or Folsom. Folsom is for the real old guys that are hopeless, completely hopeless. Quentin is for the ones that are too violent to go to any other prison, people that have been busted several times for things like robbery with violence and murder. And where do you think they sent me? To San Quentin.

Your name comes out on a list. They post lists for all the different prisons. I saw my name under San Quentin, and I couldn't believe it. Everybody had told me, "Oh, man, they'll just take you across the street to Chino. You'll have visits with your family. You wear your own clothes on the weekend, nice shoes." And they sent me to San Quentin. Not only was I not eligible for the N number program, I was also not eligible for Chino or Soledad or Vacaville or camp! Probably if I'd