jail on a charge of murder at age 17. deputy daw remembers him from back then. he would fight with inmates. he would be insubordinate to staff. i was constantly getting into it with the sheriffs. maybe three, four times a week. he maintained being a consistent discipline problem while he was here until the day he left. it took three years for wallace s case to move through the courts before he was found guilty and sentenced to life without parole. then i went to prison with the same type of behavior. just responding with anger and violence to everything. he has spent the past 17 years in some of california s toughest prisons. i m pretty dumbfounded. he talk about the internet. starbucks. you don t realize, but i don t know nothing about any of that stuff. i don t know. especially i feel like, i don t feel like i really lived. i was 17. so i don t feel i really experienced very much. most of my experience basically
while the rest of california has been in the grip of a year s long drought, it seems to rain almost daily inside the downtown branch of the sacramento county jail. thanks to inmates who intentionally back up their toilet bowls. here in 7 west, 200 pod. fee mall pod. currently being flooded with water from upstairs. some of the inmates upstairs, they will get angry at the females downstairs for not responding to them when they knock on the toilet and try to talk to it. how often have you seen flooding? every freakinh day. make a string out of a torn blanket or towel and make a parachute with matting from the mattress. flush it down just so it s far enough past the toilet of the person they re trying to flood. push the button. flush, flush, flush, flush, all over. drains down on the floor, on the tables, everything. it takes 30 seconds to cause it and literally six hours to
clean it up every time. gregory gadlin admits he takes part in what inmates call toilet talk, but says he never floods his cell. either way, all of that seems trivial now that he s been sentenced to 967 years to life for a spree of 16 robberies and prior felony convictions under california s three strikes law. i just i just don t feel it s fair. how the hell can one live out that long being incarcerated? how does that seem fair? does that even sound fair? as gadlin awaits his transfer to prison he s just gone through another transition. he was placed into a new cell with a new cellmate. jiles wallace. yo! i got a good cellie. feel like i know him. a little history together. so it s not like i came over here with a straight jackass because he a cool dude. a little older. so it s like a perfect match, damn near. though the two men might be on opposite trajectories.
prison to begin his 967 year to life sentence under california s three strikes law. while wallace continues to wait through delay after delay for what he hopes will be his release under a different california law. one that gives sentence to life without parol as juveniles the chance to be resentenced. i mean, i always feel like i should have got a chance. now, that s my thing. i don t expect the doors to just open up. but my thing is, you know, i ve done a lot of things that i m not proud of doing. but most of the stuff that i did do, and the worst stuff that i ve done in my life, all occurred before i was 22. so to say that s just who you are, i don t believe that that s who i am. something very different.
followed my case for like 2 1/2 years. by the time i was sentenced i was 20, and a couple weeks after that i was in prison. i kind of thought maybe i would get 25 to life. i thought i would have a chance to get out eventually. one day. but when she said gave me the life without a possibility of parole sentence, you know, it s like it s over with. it s a death sentence. i m dead. what that did to me, i can t even put into words. it took away any hope that i had. i don t know. just a part of me felt like, you just threw me away. wallace has spent the past 17 years in some of california s most notorious maximum security prisons. when i got off the bus that first day i knew that this is my life, this is it right here.