Dear friend,
If you are visiting this website, then you may already know a bit about me. Perhaps you have heard my story from a student of mine, or from reading my poetry collection I Am Who I Am, or maybe you’ve seen the dance show An Approximation of Resilience, which paints a beautiful portrait of my life. I first want to express deep gratitude for your curiosity, care, and support. It is a joy and pleasure to be able to connect with you in this moment through my writing and this website. Please allow me to introduce myself to you, properly.
I was born on December 15th, 1953 in Los Angeles, California as William Clinton Clark. Although my birth name is William, most people call me Bill or Billy, depending on how long they've known me. I was named after my two grandfathers William McPherson and Clinton Hall — two good men who I loved and admired. In fact, my second son is also named William Clinton Clark (the second), but I call him Dewy. Why? Because that's how he pronounced Billy when I last saw him in person in 1991 when he was three years old.
Growing up, I had a pretty typical childhood in the 50’s and 60’s. I played board games, built model cars and planes, raced slot cars, raised pigeons and played sports at the playground across the street from my childhood home. In school, I was disruptive at times. I liked making my classmates laugh, so I clowned around — often enough that my parents were called to meet with my teachers and the principal a few times. I was smart for my age, so smart, they moved me up one grade. They wanted to move me up again, but my mom didn't allow it because she didn’t want me in the same grade as my older brother.
When I was ten years old, my parents got divorced. They were two strong-willed, passionate people who struggled to get along. They never had any physical altercations, but they argued constantly. This experience impacted me deeply and shaped me into a person who refuses to argue. I carry these memories with me today, and I pride myself on being warm, authentic and effusive — a person others want to connect with.
In my late teens, I attended college at UCLA and Fresno State University. I studied sociology and psychology. But my academic passion was advertising and marketing. I loved these fields because they both involve art, design, sociology and psychology. The idea of creating art that can motivate people to buy was enchanting. In my senior year, I dropped out of school to pursue my entrepreneurial dreams. I was starting a furniture business and though I’m having more fun making furniture than going to school, why don’t I just do that? In the end, I didn't graduate but just needed 24 more units. I’m considering completing these units upon regaining my freedom.
In 1974, when I was in my early twenties, I met a wonderful young woman. She was a math major and graduate of the University of Southern California, the most thoughtful, kind and caring women I had ever known. She supported me in every way imaginable. We got married and seven years later, we had our first child, a daughter. A year later, we had a second child, a son. I was so delighted to be a husband and dad. Unfortunately, a few years later, my son died of pneumonia. I was crushed, as was my wife and family.
My children are now 51, 43, 38 and 37 years old. The last time I saw them, they were 18, 10, 5, and 4 years old. I have three daughters and a son who is the youngest. My oldest daughter is an attorney, my second daughter is a professor of economics, and my third daughter works at TikTok. My son is a retired professional basketball player and now sells real estate.
I was 39 years old when everything in my life was turned on its head. I felt like I was in the twilight zone. I was a successful business owner and living with my second wife and our two lovely children in a nice home and neighborhood in Los Angeles. I had an active social and recreational life and made promotional merchandise for companies and entertainers. One day, the police came to my home — guns drawn with riot gear and everything. They were screaming, blaring bullhorns in my quiet neighborhood like I was public enemy number one. They took me to a jail in orange county that day. There was nothing I could do. I didn’t know what was going on. A few days later, a lawyer came to see me. I don’t even know him, and he says he is my lawyer. I ask him: what am I doing here, what have I been arrested for? He told me: robbery, burglary and murder. I asked him: where did this occur? In Fountain Valley, California, he said. I’d never been to Fountain Valley, never even heard of Fountain Valley. I asked: how did they connect me to this crime? He pulled out a letter and after looking at it, I realized the letter was a fraud written by the police. At the time, there was nothing I could do but sit and wait for my trial. I waited for 3 years, then one day, the prosecutor brought me into court, and he told the judge that if he didn’t isolate Mr. Clark (in jail) from general population, more people are going to die. He did that to get the judge to prevent me from using the phone. Then I was isolated from other people in jail and couldn’t make phone calls to my family or anything. Fortunately, some officers were very humane, and they would let me use their phones despite the judge’s order. After 2-3 more years of waiting, I finally went to court. They had a jury and got rid of every Black, every Asian, every non-white person. It was like a nightmare. When I was a young man, I would read stories about how unfairly people of color were treated back in the 1800s and it reminded me of that. I just couldn’t believe it. There were 3 Asian people on the jury. The prosecutor got rid of them. There was one black person, and he got rid of them too. In the end, it was an all white jury, and I was the only black man in the photo lineup they showed. They gave me the death penalty and within the next week, I was on death row at San Quentin prison. This all took place between 1992-98. But that’s enough of my case. You can read more details in the case section of this website.
I started writing poems and children's books once I got to prison. I did so to pass time and to draw attention to my case and quest to regain my freedom. It’s strange to say, but there's so much “free time” for a person in prison, I couldn't just waste it doing nothing. As a child, my mother always encouraged my brother and I to indulge our creative energies. She was always coming up with fun ways for us to make art. One of these ways I remember most is collecting empty bottles and sand from the beach. We would spread glue on the bottles, then roll them in the sand, giving the bottles a different texture and appearance. Then we would paint the bottles and use them as flower vases and decorative pieces for the mantle.
In addition to poetry, I love writing children's books, movie scripts, stage plays and culturally significant essays. I love telling and retelling stories and writing was a wonderful outlet for me. I also enjoy creating "catch phrase" art for merch sales, cartoons and digital art, specifically NFTs. This is all related to the work I used to do related to branding and merchandise. Digital art is exciting to me because it's new and different, and I love creating cartoons because I get to make people smile and laugh. You can view some of my art on the “Bill’s Work” page of this website, and if you want to support my quest for freedom, purchasing it or donating to my legal defense fund would go a long way.
I miss the feeling of a home. My current cell at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville has three plastic mattresses sitting on a concrete block that’s about 14 inches tall. I have 3 mattresses since I’m old and one is not enough. Each one is 3 inches thick, so I have 9 inches in total. Next to the bed is a stainless-steel toilet. They don’t have toilet seats in prison, so I made one out of cardboard. The sink is next to the toilet, sort of in the doorway a little bit, and there’s a mirror above the sink. Across the bed is a towel rack and a shelf. There’s a bookshelf on the back wall where the window is. The window is above the bookshelf and there’s a light above the window. The bookshelf is about 5 feet by 3 feet, and it has 4 compartments. On top of the bookshelf is my TV. They let us buy a miniature flat screen TV and the screen is like 15 inches, sort of like the small ones you’ll see at the dentist’s office. I have 4 plastic containers, which store clothes, legal documents, some electronic gadgets, and food. I have a hotpot for cooking, headphones, and some bowls and food that I purchased from the canteen. The doorway is a regular door, with no cell bars and a small window in the middle. In total, my cell is around the size of a bathroom or a nice sized walk-in closet. I miss normal home things like having a normal bed, kitchen appliances, normal clothing, cars, bicycles, children, stores, women. Just everything you see and experience daily.
Every morning, I get up at 6:30. Once I’m awake, I turn on my television and I watch the morning news. I like to stay updated with what’s going on in the world. Then I get ready for breakfast and do my morning wash up. Monday-Friday we don’t walk to the cafeteria, they bring us breakfast. On Saturday and Sunday, we walk to the cafeteria. The food is edible. If you were in the free world, you could easily eat it, but you probably wouldn’t because you wouldn’t have to eat it. If you came to my house and I served you one of these trays, you would look at it and say no thank you, I appreciate the offer but no thank you. But if you were hungry, you would eat it and like it. So it’s fine. Every morning at breakfast, they give us a sack lunch, which is just two slices of bread and some peanut butter or something. In California, the prison system only has to give us two hot meals a day, not three. Then, after breakfast, I typically call my mother and my brother. We call every single day. I talk with them for an hour or so, sometimes longer, just to make sure they’re okay and let them know I’m okay. Then I go to the gym and play pickleball, basketball, and ping pong. I’m pretty good at all those sports. I’m tall and I have a lot of dexterity and can move around pretty well despite my age. After the gym, I come back and take a shower and might eat my sack lunch. And then I call people again. I check in with friends or people I’m working with. Then I’ll watch the news again. I might start to get hungry. I have a plastic tub and a laundry bag full of junk food — chips and donuts and Kool-Aid, tuna and burritos of various types that I can heat up. I might play chess or spades on the tablet to take a break from the monotony of prison life. These games just give me something to do to pass time. But probably most of my free time is spent writing or working. Then there’s dinner around 7. After dinner, I usually call people again. And then I watch the evening news and go to bed between 10 and 11 every night.
In 2024, I was moved from San Quentin to the California Medical Facility in Vacaville. Here, it’s much less tense. There’s a feeling of freedom here that did not exist at San Quentin. At San Quentin, we would be handcuffed whenever we left our cells. When they opened my door to let me out of my cell, I was hand cuffed behind my back, and I had one or two guards with me everywhere I went. Here, I have no guards and no handcuffs. Every hour, they unlock our cell doors, and we can come back in our cell or go out. Psychologically that affords one a sense of freedom. Here, theres a lot more to do. There was no gym at San Quentin; we just had the recreation yard. Here, we have grass; there was no grass and dirt to run or walk on at San Quentin. Everything was concrete or asphalt. Here, I have a window in my cell. I’m looking out the window right now. I can stick my hand out the window and feel the rain when it rains. At San Quentin, I had no window and the windows in the prison were so dirty light could barely shine through them. When someone gets to visit me here, I can walk over to the vending machine with a person; at San Quentin I had to stay in the meeting cage. When I go to the store here, I can buy ice cream. Another huge difference is I can take a shower whenever I want, any time of day. At San Quentin, you had to take a shower when they told you to. We can even have razors in our cell to shave our hair. The guards will give us the shavers. At San Quentin, if you got caught with a razor, you’re going straight to the hole. In prison, we call it the hole; in the free world, you call it solitary confinement. I once went to the hole for 3 years for having a pencil sharpener blade in my cell. We can iron our own clothes here; I never saw an iron at San Quentin. It’s little things like that that make life more bearable, give you a sense of freedom that I did not have at San Quentin. But I can be transferred to another prison whenever they want, so nothing is permanent. You can’t get psychologically or emotionally married to this place. You have to be flexible
One of the difficult things about being incarcerated is that there are a million hoops to jump through if you want to communicate with people in the free world. To visit me, you would have to mail in a visitation form, wait at least several weeks, then drive to prison and go through an extensive security process before being able to spend just a few hours with me. To call or text me, you would have to download a special app called GettingOut and pay 5 cents for each text. The texts might take a while to send, since many words are banned and would have to be reviewed. If we had a phone call, our conversation would be monitored and recorded and interrupted at regular intervals, in addition to being automatically cut off every 15 minutes. The tablet which I call from also cuts off after an hour of phone call to make me log back in. Of course, there are all sorts of technical issues. For example, the tablet will say “in 2 minutes, your hour is up,” and if the person I’m talking to doesn’t hang up, we have to wait 15 minutes before I can login and call you back. Little things like that. You get used to it over time. But because it's so difficult for my voice to reach the free world, it's a wonderful feeling to be able to share my words with you now.
In the past 25 years, I have only seen two of my family members in person. My sister and my cousin came to visit me a few years ago. But I have not seen my mom, any of my children or other siblings in person in over 32 years. My mom and older brother tell me it's too painful to see me in this predicament. Luckily, I get to see them on video calls. Despite the distance, my relationships with my mom and siblings are exactly what it was when I was free — strong, supportive and loving. On the other hand, my relationships with my children leave a lot to be desired from on my end. The best way I can describe it is DISTANT LOVE. The last time I saw them was decades ago, before I came to prison. Because I've been gone so long, there's emotional, psychological and geographic distance that can't be cured or bridged until I regain my freedom. So, my loved ones tend to forget me and love me from afar. I wish my children knew how much I regret not being there for them the past 33 years. It breaks my heart knowing they don't know that.
As a 72-year-old man on death row, I'm aware of my mortality and that death could call on me at any minute. Lots of people my age die every single day around the world, so this reality doesn't escape me. But I don’t dwell on it. Upon my return to the free world, I first want to take a nice hot bath, something I haven't done in 33 years. I want to metaphorically wash away the stench of prison life. Next, I imagine myself walking along the beach, feeling the warm sand between my toes as I watch the waves roll in and out. I’ll need some time to be alone and away from the all noise of the past. Then, I want to go shopping. I want to experience the feeling of trying on shoes and clothing I could not wear for all these years. Then, I want to go to the movies. I loved watching movies before I came to prison. After, I want to see and hang out with each and every friend, ally and family member who supported me throughout this arduous journey. Of course, I would love to spend time with my family, especially my 92-year-old mom, my brother Jonathan, my children and grandchildren. I hope to eventually publish some of the children's books I've written, sell some of the TV shows and movie scripts I've made and give back to others in a nonprofit organization I'm creating called the Freedom to Imagine Project. And of course, I want to dance, dance, dance and celebrate my life as a free man.
From,
Bill Clark