Tag: San Quentin

On This Day in 1961; James ‘Rabbit’ Kendrick, friend of Merle Haggard.


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Born on April 6, 1937 in Oildale, California, Merle Haggard’s troubles started early. His father died  which in 1945 affected him greatly. From then until 1960, he was in and out of trouble. Mostly in it.

School truancy, theft, burglary, robbery, passing bad checks, escapes, attempted robbery and attempted escape saw him mired firmly in trouble of one sort or another. In February, 1958 he was in Bakersfield Jail charged with attempted robbery, from which he escaped. Recaptured, he went to California’s legendary San Quentin for a 3-15-year stretch.

San Quentin was (and still is) a terrifying, rough, brutal place. The bad news is that it offers little but misery and hard time. The good news? They never run short of it. Assault, murder and rape are seen as everyday events because, in San Quentin, they are. Haggard described his arrival bluntly:

“We pulled up in a bus late at night and the walls are like 70 feet high and there’s armed guards everywhere and, if you’re not scared, there’s something wrong with you. It’s a bad place to go.”

Nobody acquainted with the prison’s entirely grim history and reputation could argue with that. San Quentin was and still is the location of California’s infamous ‘Condemned Row.’

The Row in 1958 was on the top floor of North Block backing on to the solitary confinement cells. Seeing as the solitary unit (known as ‘The Shelf’) was one where inmates weren’t allowed to talk, they could always hear the condemned talking just the other side of an internal wall. Haggard recounted ‘Red Light Bandit’ Caryl Chessman (executed on May 2, 1960) laughing as he received the offer of a life insurance policy in the mail. He’d probably have preferred a stay of execution or a commutation instead.

While at San Quentin, Haggard was a trouble-maker, regularly being given prison jobs and equally regularly being fired from them. He was also running a gambling and beer-making operation until he was caught having dipped once too often (and possibly a little too deeply) into his own supply. As a result he spent his 21st birthday, when Americans are legally old enough to drink, in solitary for doing exactly that:

“They caught me drinking some of my own beer, and I fell in the restroom and they figured I was drunk, so they took me and locked me up in jail inside of San Quentin. And that was where I decided to change directions in my life.”

It was just as well that he did. He faced a lengthy sentence with the likelihood of spending his life in and out of California’s penal system, hearing the chatter of condemned inmates only feet away (and presumably noticing the somber silences and hearing their goodbyes as they were led away to the gas chamber). All things considered it was a good time to ask himself exactly where his life was headed and whether he could direct it somewhere he actually wanted to go.

Inspiration came from several sources. Johnny Cash (who Haggard came to know well) played his first gig concert at San Quentin on New Year’s Day, 1959. It was a rousing success, both for Cash and for the inmates who very seldom got to see outside performers. Haggard was known in the prison as a guitarist and singer and, with Cash’s recent visit in mind, soon found himself besieged by other inmates wanting to learn guitar. As Haggard described Cash’s visit:

“He had the right attitude. He chewed gum, looked arrogant and flipped the bird to the guards – He did everything the prisoners wanted to do.”

Darker and equally potent inspiration came from an unlikely source, fellow con James ‘Rabbit’ Kendrick. Kendrick had an escape plan and, inviting Haggard to come with him, also cautioned him against it. So did several other prisoners. According to Haggard, Kendrick told him that, if cornered, he’d fight rather than surrender. Impressed by Haggard’s musical ability Kendrick told him to stick with it and serve his time:

“You can sing and write songs and play guitar real good. You can be somebody someday.”

Kendrick was right about Haggard, both were right about Haggard’s decision not to escape. Kendrick duly escaped, shipping out of San Quentin in a packing crate. His period of liberty lasted only two weeks before he shot California Highway Patrolman Richard Duvall and was recaptured. In fact, Kendrick did what he’d sworn not to do. Cornered and with no hope of escape, he surrendered.

Quickly convicted and condemned Kendrick soon returned to San Quentin as a resident of ‘Condemned Row.’ Like all prisoners Haggard learned to spot condemned prisoners when he saw them. Confined within the Row as much as possible, he seldom saw them anyway. When he did, usually headed for a court appearance or a final visit, they were always escorted by two guards. Haggard later described Kendrick’s last walk through the prison:

“Even though the crime was brutal and the guy was an incorrigible criminal, it’s a feeling you never forget, when see someone you know make that last walk. They bring him through the yard, and there’s a guard in front and a guard behind – That’s how you spot a death prisoner.”

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James ‘Rabbit’ Kendrick walked his last mile at 10am on November 3, 1961, one of eight prisoners executed that year. But he hadn’t just inspired Haggard to try turning his life around. Unwittingly, Kendrick provided creative inspiration as well. Haggard wrote a moving ballad about seeing a condemned prisoner led to their death. One of several songs he wrote about prison life, it became a hallmark of his;

‘Sing Me Back Home.’

Haggard took to redeeming himself. He earned his high school equivalency at San Quentin, playing in a prison band. On November 3, 1960, exactly a year before Kendrick died, he was paroled having been offered a job by his brother. $80 a week digging ditches wasn’t ideal, but he played bars and clubs as he had before San Quentin. Provided he kept on the right side of the law and his parole officer (he did he was free to attempt the music career that ‘Rabbit’ had urged him to pursue.

He pursued it with immense success, though not always without controversy. Haggard was unafraid to speak his mind even when his words weren’t always popular. He pioneered the ‘Bakersfield sound,’ a rougher, tougher, harder-edged antidote to more commercial country peddled in and around Nashville.

The less mainstream country artists banded together into a movement of which Haggard was an integral part, ‘outlaw country.’ In 1972 then-California Governor and future President Ronald Reagan granted Haggard a full pardon, sealing his place as a redeemed member of society and proving that Haggard had survived and thrived far beyond everybody’s expectations possibly including his own.

Always an outsider, often controversial, immensely influential, never afraid to speak his mind even when it cost him and now an icon of country music, Haggard’s career went from strength to strength. His health, however, declined in his later years. After years of suffering various illnesses he passed away on April 6, 2016, his 79th birthday.

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Executed executioners; the biters bit.


Executioners are seen as a strange breed. Usually tolerated, sometimes celebrated, frequently feared and often despised, the man (for it usually is) who drops the blade, swings the axe, pushes the lever or throws the switch remains a breed apart. With their particular profession you might think that, death being touted as a deterrent, they’d be most deterred by the thought of facing their own particular brand of punishment.

They haven’t, not by a long shot.

A surprising number, having dispensed the ultimate penalty, have later suffered it themselves. It’s said that it’s better to give than to receive but, despite their experienced eye for such matters, some of them didn’t get the memo.

We’ll start with Brazil, now a non-death penalty country. Brazilian executioners were often slaves. They were given no choice of whether they wielded the axe or rope. Three of them didn’t get to choose whether to receive the axe or rope, either. In 1828 Joao Pablo de Sousa faced his own form of justice, he wasn’t alone. Ten years later ‘Francisco’ met the same end. In 1850 it was the turn of ‘Ananias.’

The trend wasn’t confined to Brazil and neither started nor ended there. Sweden saw two executioners feel the kiss of their own axe. Jorg Volmar went to the block in 1541 while the appropriately-named ‘Styf’ became exactly that in 1854. Ireland’s Dick Bauf, a hangman of considerable experience, found himself ‘scragged’ for theft in Dublin in 1702.

Germany too lost at least one executioner, Frederick Stigler in 1590. Stigler, an assistant executioner himself, found himself facing his boss Franz Schmidt. This particular job saw Stigler, one of Schmidt’s more prominent assistants, taking far too prominent a role for his liking. One mighty swing of Schmidt’s sword solved the problem. Stigler became less prominent by about twelve inches.

The United States adopted hanging, shooting, lethal gas, electrocution and lethal injection, a veritable smorgasbord of slaughter. In 1905, Ohio State Penitentiary inmate, the appropriately-named Charles Justice, helped his captirs refine their new electric chair. Noticing that the leather straps originally used caused additional burning and that a prisoner’s skin often came away when the straps were removed, Justice proposed replacing them with metal clamps (think of the chair used in ‘The Green Mile’).

Ohio continued using the metal clamps until its last electrocution, that of Donald Reinbolt in 1963. Justice, however, wasn’t around to see his creations in action. Paroled for his assistance (other inmates might have killed him otherwise), he returned to prison in 1911 convicted of murder. His clamps worked as effectively on their inventor as on some 300 other inmates.

Montana’s Henry Plummer also came to the end of his own rope. Plummer, a lawman in the Montana town of Bannick, was also its principal criminal. While carrying a gun and wearing a badge, Plummer also ran the local villains. The ‘Innocents,’ a motley crew of killers and thieves terrorising the area, hid in plain sight behind his tin star. He even installed a town gallows, such was his outward devotion to upholding the laws he so conspicuously ignored.

Eventually, he ignored them a little too conspicuously and locals, finally fed up with his depredations, lynched him. Plummer was denied the dubious distinction of dying on his own gallows, his lynch mob preferring to simply put a rope round his neck and haul him off the ground until he died.

California’s Alfred Wells was an inmate at the notorious San Quentin in 1938 when he was assigned to help install California’s latest wrinkle in supposedly painless, humane execution. Ordered to help install the two-seater gas chamber known as the ‘little green room,’ ‘time machine,’ ‘Big Sleep’ and ‘coughing box,’ Wells finished his grim task. Once he’d finished he declared he hoped it was the closest he’d ever get.

It wasn’t. In 1942 Wells returned to San Quentin, this time to Death Row for a violent crime spree including a couple of murders. On December 3, 1942 he came closer to the gas chamber than he’d intended…

Returning from the gas chamber to the gallows, several of Britain’s executioners have faced the rope or the block. Whether top of the drops of top of the chops, at least six met their end on their own scaffolds. In 1538 the singularly unpleasant ‘Cratwell’ found himself wearing a hempen necktie. Amputee executioner ‘Stump Leg’ found himself entertaining the Tyburn crowd with a nifty ‘Paddington frisk’ in 1556. Scotland’s Alexander Cockburn faced his replacement, a man traditionally nicknamed the ‘Doomster’ by Scottish gallows fans, in 1681.

Perhaps England’s most notorious executioner was ‘Jack Ketch,’ so reviled for his barbaric incompetence that he was fired in 1585 and replaced by assistant Pascha Rose. At least he was until 1686 when Rose, convicted of sheep-stealing, became gallows fruit himself. In the absence of anyone else, the clumsy Ketch found himself back on one end of the rope while Rose danced merrily at the other.His name became synonymous with all British executioners and his infamy has long outlived him.

In 1718 John Price, once reprieved on condition he become a hangman, blotted his copybook with another capital crime and swung from the Triple Tree. In 1785 it was the turn of Thomas Woodham. His execution was the last time an English hangman performed the Tyburn jig.

From top of the drops to top of the chops, we’ll pay a brief visit to La Belle France by way of its dreaded Penal Administration in French Guiana. In 1418, executioner Capeluche was both a brute and a cleaver of heads. He was however, competent enough to have trained his own replacement. That same replacement graduated with honours when Capeluche’s own head had to roll.

A century later it was the turn of Florent Bazard. Having bungled one job too many, much to the disgust and fury of the crowd, they conveyed their displeasure by publicly lynching Bazard near his own scaffold. In 1625 Simon Grandjean met a similar fate, although he dangled beside his wife who was acting as his assistant. Last in France’s trail of terror came Jacques Joseph Durand. Remember the argument that capital punishment is a deterrent to potential murderers? it didn’t seem to deter Durand, guillotined in 1819 for murder.

The executioners in Guiana were volunteers. They were also convicts. Not surprisingly, they were the most hated men in the Penal Administration. Guards and inmates alike hated them for having turned on their fellow prisoners in return for extra privileges. Bad enough that they’d flouted society’s laws and rules, even worse that they then turned on their own kind as well. Being splashed repeatedly with the blood of fellow prisoners,however, doesn’t seem to have tempered their criminal instincts much.

Isidore Hespel (known as ‘the Jackal’) cared not for their scorn. He didn’t care much for the deterrent effect of his own guillotine, either. Sent to Guiana for murder and having killed twice there even before becoming ‘Monsieur de Guiane,’ Hespel’s assistant also graduated with honours when Hespel committed one extra-judicial killing too many in 1921.

Georges Bonfils didn’t fare any better. Having graduated to ‘Monsieur de Guiana’ in 1930 Bonfils too would be shaved by the ‘National Razor. He would be the last of Devil’s Island’s executioners to be executed, although at least two others were murdered by fellow prisoners.

Ironically Albert Pierrepoint, veteran of over 450 executions, was candid about what he called his ‘craft.’ Ending his 1974 memoir ‘Executioner; Pterrepoint’ with open opposition to capital punishment, Pierrepoint was explicit about its alleged deterrent effect:

‘All the men and women whom I have faced at that final moment convince me that, in what I have done, I have not prevented a single murder.’

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