Trivia Question for Lawyers

February 8, 2023 7:34 AM

If Johnny Cash's character in Folsom Prison Blues shot a man in Reno, which is in Nevada, why was he serving time in Folsom Prison, which is in California?

I assume there are multiple legitimate answers why, but I don't mind even moderately outlandish ones, ie: he shot him in Reno, but the man actually died in California, which is right across the border.

Or there is a well-enough known place in California called Reno, ie: a neighborhood or something.

posted by The_Vegetables to Law & Government (16 answers total)

Because he was imprisoned for some other crime committed in California. The "shot a man in Reno" stuff is just where his life began to go wrong and he turned to crime.

When I was just a baby, my mama told me, "Son
Always be a good boy, don't ever play with guns"
But I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die

The shooting in Reno is juxtaposed with his mother's advice when he was a child - i.e., this part of the song all happened when he was a much younger man.
posted by Mid at 7:38 AM on February 8, 2023 [16 favorites]

Best answer: He's serving time in Folsom Prison for an unrelated crime. The song never explicitly states that he is in Folsom Prison on the shooting charges. Maybe he's just bragging about his exploits while actually serving time for worker safety violations at an unlicensed dairy or something.
posted by Hatashran at 7:39 AM on February 8, 2023 [37 favorites]

This is generally regarded as just artistic licence. But the song isn't clear that he is serving time in Folsom specifically for the Reno crime either.
posted by jacquilynne at 7:39 AM on February 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Johnny Cash song leaves some with a burning question

I mean, you didn’t even ask about an even crazier geographical anomaly: If he’s stuck in Folsom Prison in the middle of California, would he really be hearing a train “rollin’ on down to San Antone,” nearly 2,000 miles to the southeast? Sounds like one hopelessly lost engineer to me.

As to Cash’s choice of Graybar Hotels, theories are many, so consider these while you’re drinkin’ coffee and smokin’ your big cigar:

Perhaps Cash can simply plead ignorance. In 1953, he was a relatively uneducated 21-year-old from rural Arkansas who was serving an Air Force hitch. While stationed in West Germany, he started a band called the Landsberg Barbarians, which allowed him to improve his guitar skills while testing his songwriting talents.

“We were terrible,” he said later. “But that Lowenbrau beer will make you feel like you’re great. We’d take our instruments to these honky-tonks and play until they threw us out or a fight started.”

But one experience would leave its mark on country music forever: Cash’s commanding officer had his men watch Crane Wilbur’s film “Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison,” a lockup famous for its harsh conditions and dangerous prisoners. The documentary immediately inspired Cash to write one of his signature tunes, although his obvious lack of knowledge of the justice system has left many like you scratching their heads over his legal lingo.

Other explanations are much more imaginative. Perhaps while running from Nevada authorities, he crossed state lines and either wounded or killed a California lawman in a shootout. Since Nevada apparently had just one major prison at the time (in Carson City), the state might have been satisfied to let its neighbor deal with the heartless felon.

Or maybe the man had eluded capture for his murder and was serving time in Folsom for some nefarious deed committed in California. In the song, the man now is ruing the shooting that launched his life of crime. Or, if you want to go from the sublime to the ridiculous, there’s always the theory that “Reno” is short for “Reno Junction, Calif,” an unincorporated town on the Nevada border — and just 150 miles northeast of Folsom.

Don’t think so? Neither do I. For the real reason, you have to go back to the 1960s, when San Francisco photographer Jim Marshall asked Cash point-blank about the Reno-Folsom discrepancy. Marshall had been taking pictures of Cash since 1962, when they met in a New York City club. Seven years later, he would snap the famous shot of Cash flashing his middle finger in response to a question of how he felt about the prison officials at San Quentin. So if anybody felt comfortable questioning Cash about his lyrics, it was Marshall.

The simple reply? “That’s called poetic license,” Cash told him. Like “San Antone,” Reno simply fit the song better than, say, Lodi or Chico, even if it is in a neighboring state.

posted by zamboni at 7:55 AM on February 8, 2023 [16 favorites]

Best answer: There's an article on this from 2018. The main text has no real information, but several comments are interesting.

One says "Cash said he took 'poetic license.' and links to something behind a paywall. And there are several citations to the CA criminal code, including "California has territorial jurisdiction over an offense if the defendant, with the requisite intent, does a preparatory act in California that is more than a de minimis act toward the eventual completion of the offense."
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 7:55 AM on February 8, 2023

Supporting @jacquilynne: Mark Twain (may have) said:
Never let the truth stand in the way of a good story
posted by falsedmitri at 7:59 AM on February 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

Johnny Cash's songs take place in a subtly different version of the United States known as the Cash-verse.
posted by grobstein at 8:19 AM on February 8, 2023 [19 favorites]

I always just assumed he was locked up for something else and was bragging about priors.
posted by kevinbelt at 8:21 AM on February 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: My first fun answer (though I'm not actually a lawyer):

He shot a man on federal property in Reno, thus making it a crime that was tried in federal court and for which he went to federal prison. Then, after causing trouble in his local prison, he was perhaps transferred within the federal system to Folsom, California.

However, some research reveals that Folsom prison was a state prison, though also one of the first maximum-security prisons. So another alternative is that he shot a man in Reno, then committed more violence in Nevada, and they were like 'this man needs more security than we can handle' and California was kinder.

Or, he was originally incarcerated in Reno and then escaped, and while on the run in California, also killed another man, and California kept him in prison while they fought extradition back to Nevada.
posted by corb at 8:28 AM on February 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Google Maps suggests that some tendrils of Reno extend to the California border. So perhaps, standing in California, he shot a man in Reno just across the border, thus committing an offense under both California and Nevada law.
posted by Jasper Fnorde at 8:50 AM on February 8, 2023 [13 favorites]

I thought about the possibility that NV shipped its prisoners to CA because of a lack of facilities in NV, but that seems wrong according to this sort of wild article about Nevada prisons, which includes the fact that there was a casino for inmates in the main NV prison for most of the 1900s.
posted by Mid at 8:58 AM on February 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

Is ...... Is it really considered an issue that he can hear a train??? The song seems absolutely explicit to me that the train is rolling towards San Antonio. Which, trains roll, that's how they move. There's a route that would indeed take a train from Sacramento to San Antonio. So he's hearing a train that he thinks is going to San Antonio, a perfectly reasonable guess, or maybe he's actually read the train schedule.
posted by Jacen at 10:56 AM on February 8, 2023 [10 favorites]

Best answer: If the shooting was part of a broader conspiracy that included activity in both Nevada and California, both states would potentially have jurisdiction to prosecute him.
posted by skewed at 11:58 AM on February 8, 2023 [3 favorites]

Seconding Jacen. Sacramento is one of the largest rail hubs in the United States and Folsom Prison is extremely close to Sacramento. There are trains going to San Antonio and also to everywhere else in the country that run through Sacramento. In fact, I have personally taken the train from San Antonio to Sacramento! And there is in fact a rail line that runs through Folsom specifically, not just "somewhere in the greater Sacramento area." So it is completely believable that he would hear such a train, especially 50+ years ago!

(Sorry, I know this is off topic. But I'm passionate about trains and that particular area of the country! Ha.)
posted by branca at 2:06 PM on February 8, 2023 [7 favorites]

As a man who's overthunk a lot of songs in the past 15 years, I can confidently say that the train's going to San Antone because Cash needed a town that rhymed with the previous line's "... keeps draggin' on".
posted by Paul Slade at 8:20 AM on February 9, 2023 [1 favorite]

He shot his picture. The man was dying of cancer.

His reason for incarceration? Unspeakable.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:54 AM on February 10, 2023