Meet Jacob Oppenheimer, deemed at the turn of the Twentieth century as the “worst prisoner in California history.” His story is unique in several respects. Of the ninety-three men executed at Folsom, his confinement was the longest, spanning 21 years with the majority spent in solitary confinement. The forced solitude no doubt helped hone his panache for writing and he left behind hundreds of pages of letters, stories, and an autobiography aptly named, “Thoughts of a Condemned Man.” His story offers a rare glimpse into the life of an early Twentieth century prisoner, fraught with corporal punishment, corruption, and societal ignorance. He would even inspire the California Legislature to pass a dubious law in 1901 to ensure his execution.
He entered Folsom Prison in 1895, framed for a crime he didn’t commit. Three years later, in the act of defending himself, he killed the man who framed him. As one would expect, it went downhill from there.
Dehumanization is a cornerstone of our criminal justice system and when the press labeled him the “Human Tiger,” that’s all he would ever be known as. His case would go to the United States Supreme Court, fought tirelessly (and pro bono) by his young attorney who very quickly became his only friend. In 1913, Jacob Oppenheimer became Folsom’s 28th execution, the only one of the 93 not executed for first-degree murder, but rather, assault.
In June of 1908, in reply to his attorney’s inquiry into his birthdate, he wrote:
“Born September 19th 1872 refer you to almanac for day, hour unknown, as I never noticed the clock at the time. Excuse the joke never was inquisitive as to the hour, am convinced that whatever hour it was it couldn’t have been unluckier. Star ditto.”
Three days before his execution in 1913, he again lamented his unfortunate existence.
“All my life I have been unlucky. I am unluckiness personified for everything I have ever done or attempted to do has always met with one result – FAILURE so the sooner I cash I my chips the better as it will save me a lot of trouble and unhappiness.”
The sheer magnitude of material related to Jacob Oppenheimer is overwhelming, but it reveals a consistent theme, as one newspaper editor opined: “Good or bad, the state failed to protect him from himself; failed to give him security from other desperate felons and could not give the others security from his fury.”
Oppenheimer himself said, “The most difficult thing to do in prison is to perform a kindly deed, a humane act, toward one’s unfortunate fellows. The rules are against it. Instead of the comfort and stimulus of friendly, wholesome human relationships, which alone can keep him sane, they give us the helplessness, the error, the fury and the needless vacuity of the solitary cell. How do they expect to cast a man anew in such a mold?”