KC: To put this in a little bit different perspective, a clemency petition was first put into office when Arnold Schwarzenegger was the governor. Twice. The first time, in 2004, he straight-out denied me. But shortly before he left office, he said that the clemency petition that we put in had so much new information, and evidently concerns, that he didn't have enough time to deal with it with the little bit of time he had left in office. So he left it, my clemency petition, to Governor-Elect Brown to deal with. And Governor Brown, for eight years, he had done nothing. When we finally decided to put a clemency petition in to Brown with his name on it, because we asked him did he read what we left for Schwarzenegger and he said he could not find it, he did not know nothing about it. So we sent one into him then he left it in his office, or in the trunk of his car, or in the attic or in the drawer or wherever, for two and a half years and never did nothin'! Nothin'! For two and a half years! And the only reason why he did anything now as far as asking us questions, is because of that very powerful and truthful piece from the New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof, which came out last spring. So then he was forced to respond, because if Mr. Kristof had not written that piece, we still would not be hearing anything from Governor Brown. He may not say nothing, and yet I'm still on Death Row, still fighting for my life in a system that is not made to fix itself. A system that is made to uphold convictions regardless. Those men and women who have been exonerated just don't know how lucky they are. Because the majority of people in prison who have evidence of innocence do not get out. Because this system is broken, and it's working the way it was designed to work. And it was not designed to exonerate people. It was designed to incarcerate people, and to torture and murder people, via executions.
[Recorded voice on telephone] You have 30 seconds remaining.
RS: Kevin -- you'll call me back, OK.
KC: I'm here.
RS: So the very idea that a presumably enlightened governor, Jerry Brown -- let's really press this matter --
[Recorded voice on telephone] This call and your telephone number will be monitored and recorded.
RS: Yeah, so monitor this and tell the governor, you know, we're monitoring this, but he's got only a matter of weeks left in this job. And you know, we're doing this interview here in part to wake him up. You know, I don't know what he's doing, maybe he doesn't -- but I talked to him about this. I know my wife has had time interviewing him, as we respected the guy. I just don't get it. I don't get why he can't do what Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris tell him he should do. You know, retest, use your refined DNA testing, and look at the evidence, and give this guy his innocence hearing. And I just want people listening to understand what we're talking about here.
KC: You can't make people do what they don't want to do. And if he wanted to do it, he would have done it. He was, a long, long time ago, studying to be a Jesuit priest. Ain't no telling what happened to him between then and now. Anything could have changed him. He used to always say, there are no innocent people on Death Row in California. He actually believed that. And other people quoted him, mostly republicans who were supporting the death penalty, quoted him. Using his voice to put forward their agenda on speeding up the death penalty, and executing as many people as possible. So how would he now want to turn around and say, oh, I was wrong. There are innocent people on Death Row. He's not going to do it! He's not that type of man, at least in my opinion. His actions have not shown me he's that type of man.
RS: You know, I've been talking to people about your case, and out there and everything. And we just, you're right; the rest of us live in a world that we -- we can accommodate that. Some young students, they say well, you know, prison -- I ask them, I say, you ever even been in for an hour? Let alone a year, let alone 33 years? And so what do you see? Because you're a great artist, and you're a terrific writer. Tell me how you see this system that has been most of your life, you've been inside the bowels of this system.
KC: I see this system as a continuation of the systems that preceded it. This is why I call this place that I'm in a modern-day plantation. Because through reading the different books that I have read, I see the same type of situations. Everything about it is just like the plantations from yesteryear. The same type of people who were enslaved back then are the same type of people who are enslaved now. The same type of people who were doing the enslaving back then are the same type of people who are doing the mass incarcerations today. I mean, there is no difference. Things have changed, technology has changed, but the evilness that brought us our chattel slavery, back then, is the same evilness that's in the hearts and the minds of the people who are doing this death penalty thing today. You could not have had chattel slavery way back then without the death penalty, without all the torture and everything that went along with it. In order to scare a people into being submissive to you. Being uneducated and miseducated, as well as living under the threat of death, is what kept people enslaved. Here, today, we've got a lot of uneducated and miseducated people. And in both cases, all are people who are poor. So my point is, when I look and see how people back then -- some of them, not all of them -- struggled and made it, and I look today and see how some of us are struggling and are making it, I understand that I cannot give up. Because if I give up, then other people will give up. I must fight. I must fight just as hard today as some of my ancestors did back then.
[Recorded voice on telephone] This call and your telephone number will be monitored and recorded.
KC: It's something that I can't put into words. It's just something that's what's in me to do. But I didn't know that I had it within me until I started reading books. And I started understanding the connection between yesteryear and this year, between old-school plantations and modern day plantations. Between old-school oppression and new oppression. Between the haves and the have-nots back then and the haves and the have-nots now. It's the same. And again, you know, I say this because I don't understand it: I don't know why it's me. I mean, I didn't choose to do this stuff, to speak out against the death penalty, or to write or to paint. I didn't even know how to do none of this stuff when I first got here. I mean, I knew I could do some artwork, drawings and stuff, but I never knew that I could become what I became in this cage, as a self-taught man. If I had had somebody teaching me out there, I'd have become that out there, but I didn't. But it wasn't until I got these books, all different types of books, that this stuff started coming out of me.
RS: You know, I just want to remind people listening to this that what your lawyers are asking for is modern DNA testing of evidence. That judges and others have already said the old tests were distorted; blood samples had preservatives in them, meaning they were not real, from, in real time; tampering of evidence And all that's being asked for, legally, is a hearing to look at the new evidence, look at the Brady violations --
KC: Six Brady violations.
RS: Six cases. Can you do it right off the top of your head? The six? Where they just distorted or withheld evidence that would have exonerated you or helped in your exoneration?
KC: One is the bloody coveralls that were turned over by a woman who suspected her boyfriend was part of the murders. Two was a blue shirt that came up missing, that had blood on it, that was found and is connected to this murder case. Three is the police report, or the police log, about the coveralls. Four is the police log about the blue shirt, because without the log, we wouldn't have known about the shirt, and without the coveralls we wouldn't have known about the log where those coveralls were ordered destroyed. Because the cop who testified on the witness stand about those coveralls said he destroyed them on his own. But we found out later on, we found a police report, a police log where he in fact said those coveralls were ordered destroyed by his boss. Then when we were in court, we found a police log that talked to us about the blue shirt, but the blue shirt is missing. Five is the warden from that prison, Chino prison; he said that he called the San Bernardino County district attorney's office and sheriff's department and told them that those tennis shoes, which they kept saying were prison-issued tennis shoes, were not prison-issued tennis shoes. He told them that you could get those shoes damn near anywhere. And that was the truth. We got a catalog that shows where those tennis shoes could be bought in different parts of the country as well as ordered through a catalog. So that's five Brady violations. And then the sixth Brady violation --
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