My Life Began on Death Row

12 Fascinating Interviews with a California Death Row Inmate

My Life Began on Death Row - an invitation to understand the life and character of Pete....

• Pete attended one of the last of the one-room schools, where children of all grades received instruction from a single teacher.
  
• Pete learned to labor young, imbibing a deeply agrarian mind frame as daily life modernized.
  
• He played and grew up with Native American children, learned from their fathers, and experienced day-to-day living within a Native American community.
  
• Later, while on death row, Pete entered into the confidence and acceptance of a Native American family and became the blood brother of Clarence Ray Allen, aka Running Bear, the last man executed by the State of California some 14 years ago.
  
• For over 40 years as an incarcerated man, Pete has witnessed the California prison system's continual change and political nature.
  
• Pete knows the drug world having been introduced to narcotics in a war for Pete was an active soldier in the Vietnam conflict, even during the infamous 1968 Tet Offensive.
  
• Pete underwent extreme and perverse abuse at the hands of his parents and violent bullying as a youth.
  
• Finally, Pete received a death row sentence, death row, being where his life began.