Before the Aaron McKinney trial in Wyoming gets boxed away in the national memory, we should linger on some very disturbing features of the plea agreement, starting with the successful demand by Matthew Shepard's parents, Dennis and Judy, that neither McKinney nor any members of his defense team ever speak to the press about the trial. Indeed, the state of Wyoming effectively ceded to Shepard's parents the disposition of the penalty phase of the trial. Amid Dennis Shepard's remarks to the court (where he emphasized his belief in the death penalty) came these words addressed to McKinney. They are worth quoting at some length.

"Your agreement to life without parole has taken yourself out of the spotlight and out of the public eye. It means no drawn-out appeals process, chance of walking away free due to a technicality, no chance of a lighter sentence due to a 'merciful' jury. Best of all, you won't be a symbol. No years of publicity, no chance of a commutation, no nothing -- just a miserable future, and a more miserable end. It works for me ...

Welcome to Corcoran state prison, 170 miles northwest of Los Angeles in the San Joaquin valley; built at a cost of $288.9 million on what was once Tulare lake, home of the Tachi Indians; opened in 1988, designed for 3,000 prisoners, now holding 5,030. Kings County has dairies, cotton fields, Corcoran and two other state prisons besides. When they were selecting a jury for a recent trial of four prison guards in Hanford, 15 miles from Corcoran, 500 residents were called to be available for jury service, and more than a third said they either worked at one of the prisons or had a relative in the corrections sector.

Corcoran vividly incarnates the peculiar horrors of our national gulag. It was conceived in the eighties' prison boom as a new model of "absolute control," whose heart was the Secure Housing Unit, holding 1,500 of those deemed to be the most dangerous inmates in California's metastasizing prison population. In Corcoran's SHU, the guards -- many of them fresh out of the academy -- determinedly pursued a policy of forced integration of deadly rivals -- Aryan Nation with Mexican Mafia, gang with gang.

        With the start of 2000 less than two months away, I've been thinking about a beloved American writer who stuck his neck out the last time people went through a change of centuries.

        We revere Mark Twain as a superb storyteller who generates waves of laughter with powerful undertows of biting satire. One generation after another has grown up with the adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Some of Twain's essays were less palatable; his most scathing words about organized religion seemed so blasphemous that they remained unpublished for half a century after he died in 1910.

        The renowned author's fiery political statements are a very different matter. They reached many people in his lifetime -- but not in ours.

        Today, few Americans are aware of Twain's outspoken views on social justice and foreign policy. As his fame grew, so did his willingness to challenge the high and mighty.