From Death Row to Clemency

Edgar Garcia writes about 17 years on death row, the clemency that granted him a second chance at life, and the struggle to escape the mental prison he built during that time.

The first time I daydreamed about leaving death row, my entire mental movie was replete with potential. Now that my dream is reality—and clemency has given me another chance at life—I fight to cling to my plan, even as the mental fog that dwells in this place tries to distort it. How can someone enjoy a second chance at life while still forced to wait in death’s pool?

Clemency Granted: A New Chance Outside the Shadow of Execution

On December 23, 2024, I received clemency and felt a drastic change—I could breathe again. The time I had invested in programming and preparing a plan for life outside this place suddenly became the answer to the question everyone, including myself, had wrestled with for the last 17 years I faced death.

At times, I had allowed doubt to seep into my internal dialogue. I would hear: “Why improve if nothing changes here but the weather? Death is all that awaits!” But I would immediately replace those poisonous thoughts with a better one: “I’m doing this for me—not for any other reason!”

Now that clemency has finally arrived, and the opportunity to return to general population exists, I know all my time and growth on death row wasn’t wasted.

As an artist, I’m always seeking to improve my work—to expand my creative horizon and, in turn, myself. The two seem to align: when the person or the artist improves, the other follows.

My pieces have always been rooted in loneliness, isolation, and the desire to get more out of life. I learned to create while surrounded by chaos—a guy yelling on the floor below me, another banging on a metal door in frustration, and many nights without sleep due to the relentless noise that swaddled me every moment inside these modern gallows.

This is a place where the world and time shift around me. But in those rare moments when I’m in my creative state, my mind roams free.

I’ve felt trapped—floating like driftwood in a pool of death—but art is where I feel free from everything that binds me.

From Terre Haute’s Death Row to Florence ADX: The Long Awaited Transfer

As of May 8, 2025, I’ve completed the transfer process and am designated to Florence Colorado ADMAX. I drew hope and strength from the stream of possibilities that come with this clemency-driven change in my life. All the moments I felt I was drowning under the weight of everything only made me stronger. The great artist Pablo Picasso had his famous blue period (The Old Guitarist) and rose period, and I had my own self-destructive period, self-realization period, maturation period, and preparation period. It all makes sense now. Decades of drawing my way through challenges inside the federal system is what kept me holding on. Art, in all of its forms, is what guides me like a star in the pitch dark night to places within this pool of death that few have explored.

When I reflect on my journey, I’m left to wonder how I managed to grow under the bacteria that festers in this stagnant water. In the process, I proved the naysayers wrong. My time in uncertainty has been the wreckage debris drowning out hope, and forcing everything around me to remain the same. I’m still fighting the chaos to avoid being pulled under, while every scene from my mental movie slowly fades in the reflections of the dim starlight that flickers through the thick fog on the surface like a candle in the wind above the murkiness of death’s pool.

Decades of Prison Growth: From Self-Destruction to Redemption

I see the fear in my peers’ faces—fear born from a lack of exposure to anything outside this place. They can’t see my clemency-driven change as a bridge from this stagnant pool to something better. How could they, when every past change in their lives has only brought more restrictions and raised the water level, making this pool deeper?

How do you trust change when your view is distorted—by the fog above the surface or the murkiness of the water we’re forced to float in? Either way, it leads to death.

This prison—U.S.P. Terre Haute—is a twisted version of what it once was, now filled with the most dysfunctional prisoners in the federal system. It’s a faded, watered-down distortion of the change that awaits us. The Special Confinement Unit is designed to be the last place we see before death. It’s stagnant water—poisonous to growth and humanity itself.

So, my peers cling tightly to the evil they know. They fight change with lawsuits, feeding their illusion that they can control its outcome. In doing so, they force the rest of us into uncertainty—leaving us to wait for their fears to subside and for clarity to return. They don’t see how this place has distorted their perception of life.

But the strength we’ve built just to survive inside this pool of death should be more than enough to face anything life throws at us on the outside.

---

Isolation With a Path Toward General Population

ADX is the channel where different currents merge, creating rapids that test our ability to move, shift, and survive. Yes, it’s more isolation—but with clemency behind me and a view ahead, I know the current is flowing toward something we all long for: general population.

There, we find contact visits. The freedom to walk out of your cell for most of the day. The structure of a prison life beyond isolation—a job, responsibilities, human interaction. The things that make us feel human. Even access to email and phone accounts from within the unit.

Whatever challenges await us there, none could compare to what we’ve endured while trapped in death’s pool.

General population—or even ADX—is where the water is clearer, and the possibilities are endless for those willing to look. The isolation in ADX is only temporary. Like every environment, it will have both perils and treasures—but it’s up to us to decide, through our conduct and choices, which of the two we’ll pursue—and, more importantly, which we’ll find.

Enjoy this story? Read What It’s Like When You’re Never Getting Out Of Prison

The post From Death Row to Clemency first appeared on Prison Writers.