At the age of seventeen Masters was released from the California Youth Authority and immediately carried out a succession of armed robberies until, at age nineteen, he was sent to San Quentin in 1981, where he fell in with a prison gang. In 1985, a prison guard named Sergeant Howell D. Burchfield was stabbed and killed on the second tier of a cellblock while Masters was locked in his cell on the fourth tier. Three men were tried for the murder. Andre Johnson was accused of killing Burchfield, Lawrence Woodard of planning the murder with other gang members and ordering the killing, while Masters was accused of planning the murder with Woodard and Johnson and of sharpening and passing along the weapon used in the killing.
All three were convicted. The jury recommended that Johnson receive the death penalty but the trial judge reduced the sentence to life without parole because of Johnson's youth (he was twenty-one), and because of his minor criminal record. Woodard was also given life without parole after the jury were unable to reach a verdict. Masters, because of his criminal history and violent background, and although he was just two years older than Johnson, was sentenced to die in the gas chamber, and he was sent to Death Row, where he remains.
