WE USUALLY THINK OF DEATH ROW
as this gritty yet ill-defined place. It's where Hollywood locates occasional stabs at weighty works like "Dead Man Walking," or activists pluck up causes like accused cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal. We don't normally associate Death Row with true spiritual transformation. Yet that is what is portrayed in "Finding Freedom: Writings from Death Row" (Padma Publishing), an absorbing collection of writings by an African-American Buddhist inmate.

The 36-year-old Masters wrote the book with the flimsy ink barrel of a pen since its plastic shell is considered weapons material. He serves up glimpses of day-to-day life in the shadow of state-sanctioned execution and the story of an against-the-odds awakening.

Masters landed on Death Row for his part in a conspiracy in the 1985 murder of a San Quentin correctional officer named Sergeant Burchfield. He was locked in his cell at the time, but was accused of sharpening a piece of metal for the "spear man" who stabbed the officer.

A jury sentenced Masters to the gas chamber because of his violent record. His lawyers asked the judge for leniency. Masters was 23 at the time, just two years older than the spear man who, because of his youth, was given a life sentence instead of death. She rejected the appeal. He has been on Death Row since 1990, his sentence still under appeal.

Masters arrived in prison with the same resume as a fractured generation of young black men warehoused across America. He came from a drug-wrecked family and saw and experienced harsh physical and mental traumas as a kid. He bounced among relatives, foster homes and institutions, turning street-smart and street-mean. At age 17, he went on a crime spree, sticking-up stores and restaurants, landing in San Quentin. He never shot anyone, a defense investigator writes in a foreward, "[but] as I told him, I'm glad I wasn't in Taco Bell when he came through." | To Page 2

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BOOKS:
1) Plowing Through Tibet

MOVIES:
1) "Kundun"