San Quentin: like Alcatraz and Riker's Island, the name manages to evoke images of awe and respect - no mean feat for a maximum-security prison. Maybe because of the Who's Who of criminals who have resided there, or because its name conjures up memories of country singer Johnny Cash's famous concert within its walls, San Quentin most definitely belongs to America's correctional services Hall of Fame.
But earlier this month, the prison, on the bay a few kilometres north of San Francisco, California, held few folkloric charms for one of its inmates.
It was about 7.30 on a Monday evening, and Jaturun Siripongs, the jail's only Thai prisoner, had just been brought a specially prepared meal of fruit, bitter watermelon soup, and a Pepsi. The soup was not up to much, he complained, with perhaps good reason - the meal was due to be his last.
The 43-year-old had travelled a long journey on his path towards being a condemned man. A troubled child and former petty thief who became a Buddhist monk in his native Thailand, Siripongs has spent most of his 17 years in the United States in prison, awaiting execution for a double murder in which he never denied being involved.
As the clock ticked towards the one-minute-past-midnight deadline, security was tighter than usual in San Quentin. Because of the tensions evoked by executions, the prisoners were confined to their cells, roads into the complex were blocked, guards stood outside the walls in riot gear, and about 200 of the usual anti-capital punishment suspects were holding a vigil by the gates.
Because she was barred by regulations from being with her client, Siripongs' lawyer, Linda Schilling, was holed up in a trailer in the yard, sipping bad coffee and working the phones. Even though she worked for a big Los Angeles law firm, this was far from the glitz and glamour of LA Law. She had been working for free on the Siripongs case for about a decade, through a dispiriting legal maze of appeals - a process which had seemed to reach the end of a cul-de-sac three days earlier, when California governor Pete Wilson declined a final plea for clemency.
