How did negotiations proceed?

Robert Douglass: And so on Friday of the uprising, I thought we were making progress. I thought we had closure on all 25 items. And then unfortunately one of the prison guards died from injuries during the attack, the uprising. That changed the whole picture. Right then and there, the inmates were very smart and they knew that they were an accessory to the crimes committed during the riot, and every one of them probably could have been prosecuted.

And then we started a new tack, which was to negotiate with the district attorney and to assure the inmates there would be no wanton persecution, that whoever was guilty of killing the guard would be, certainly prosecuted, but there would be no just general prosecution of everyone.

And we worked out an agreement on it, and that was considered by the inmates. And then they came back and they added to their demands which we had agreed to on Friday, and the two additional demands were asylum to a non-imperialistic country and total amnesty for anything that had happened.

Well, one, we couldn't grant asylum to a non-imperialistic country. I had some second thoughts on that. Maybe if I had it to do over again I could come up with a country who would be happy to have given them asylum.

And the other was general amnesty, which the Governor had no power to grant. He could grant a pardon, but that's after a conviction.

So the answer was really no on both counts, and, and I had the clear feeling, as we all did, that these were really designed to be a break point; they wanted a confrontation.