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Criminal

Dec. 15, 2000

The Meaning of Life in Prison

SAN FRANCISCO - Jim Esten's job is to talk juries out of sentencing killers to death. He likes to show them a photograph of a typical double-occupancy prison cell adorned with concrete walls and steel bunks where an inmate might spend the rest of his life.

By Peter Blumberg
Daily Journal Staff Writer
        "What comparison can there really be, in point of severity between consigning a man to the short pang of a rapid death, and immuring him in a living tomb, there to linger out what may be a long life in the hardest and most monotonous toil, without any of its alleviations or rewards -- debarred from ...

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