Eddy Zheng - Imprisonment

Imprisonment

Zheng was later transferred to San Quentin State Prison, where he ended up serving as a model prisoner. He taught himself English through reading romance novels, and passed the GED in one attempt. In the 1990s, he entered into San Quentin's associate degree program, where he developed friendships with a number of the volunteers—mostly area university students—who acted as teachers in the program. He also held crime prevention workshops, giving lectures to at-risk immigrant youth who visited the prison in an effort to steer them away from a life of crime. His parents attempted to keep his imprisonment a secret; in an essay written some years later, Zheng recalled how his mother lied to relatives that he was busy with school when he failed to show up for his grandparents' funerals. For the first decade, he committed no major disciplinary infractions. He applied for parole for the first time in 1992. In 1998, at his fifth parole hearing, the parole board voted unanimously to recommend his release, making Zheng one of the fewer than one percent of those sentenced to life in California prisons to receive a positive recommendation for parole. However, then-governor of California Gray Davis returned the parole recommendation to the board for reconsideration, as he did with all but eight of the 340 parole recommendations he received during his tenure as governor.

Zheng met Shelly Smith, a volunteer English tutor, in 1999, and began to develop a friendship with her which would later blossom into a romantic relationship. However, prison officials began to view Zheng as a troublemaker, in contrast with his previously excellent disciplinary record. One major incident came in March 2002, when he and fellow inmates began efforts to set up courses in Asian American studies for prisoners; they even circulated a petition. This provoked prison officials to accuse Zheng and other signatories of organizing an escape attempt; their cells were searched, writings were confiscated, and Zheng was accused of having worked with his teachers in the prison education program to have writings smuggled out, allegedly contravening California Code of Regulations, Title 15, Section 3020, which states that "inmates may participate in the publication and distribution of an inmate publication only with the institution head’s specific approval". Zheng was placed in solitary confinement for eleven months as punishment.

The publicity surrounding Zheng's case, bolstered as a result of his solitary confinement, began to result in increasing sympathy from the Asian American community. A number of prominent Californians wrote letters in support of his parole, including then-California State Senators Mark Leno and John Burton, as well as activist Yuri Kochiyama. In July 2004, he also began to maintain a blog on Blogspot.com, by sending letters to a friend on the outside who would then post them online, garnering further publicity for his case. In November 2004, the parole board again recommended that Zheng be released; the new governor Arnold Schwarzenegger did not object, and Zheng was released from San Quentin on March 10, 2005.