fighting to get the charges reduced for years now. if you re convicted of first-degree murder, you d be eligible for the death penalty. i ll get the death penalty, yes. where i carry guilt, i could have stopped it. i could have been more of a man. i could have stepped up and grabbed him. what the [ bleep ] you doing? stopped, grabbed him. i mean, i played the scenario over and over and over. i mean, even one word out of my mouth would have stopped him. and i didn t say [ bleep ]. i stood there and just let him continue to hit that man. gaines went on to tell us that he was no longer the skinhead that participated in that or any other heinous act. i was a hypocrite, a bigot, a hatemonger. that was just as evil as any one of the rest of the dumb asses around here so i wasn t always a good person. in 2004, while awaiting trial, he not only renounced his gang affiliation, but decided to tell all. i have pulled people covers who weren t known.
i have given up information on other crimes. i ve not held back. i renounced publicly through doing interviews like this. i have renounced with officers. i mean, to every extent, i ve ruined myself, i ve made it public knowledge. i made it to where everybody knows, i don t have a chance to go back to that lifestyle. i don t want to go back to that lifestyle. in fact, he even works with some organizations to combat racism. i m a source of information to the southern poverty law center, to one people s project, the anti-racist action. i ve done all i can to change myself as a person and not only to renounce and to become a hermit from that lifestyle but to actually take an opposition against it. but there was a price for coming clean. you re basically deemed a snitch, so that s why my custody is what it is. i mean, if i m ever put in general population, i m as good as dead. any prison gang would be happy to get their hands on shawn gaines.
they just open one of the interior sliding doors and they walk out and they have their 45 minutes of recreation each day, and then boom. right back into the cell without ever interacting with another inmate. so it has a very ominous feel when you walk through the special management unit. and this is the path that i took when i went to meet shawn gaines. 29-year-old shawn gaines had spent most of the last six years in the special management unit, awaiting trial on a first-degree murder charge that could land him on death row. i ve lived here longer than i ever lived in one spot in my entire life even growing up as a kid so it s just, you know i have yet to call it home, but it is what it is. gaines may not have wanted to call it home, but his security threat ranking dictated it.