While in prison Sam Shockley was beaten by a fellow inmate, suffering brain damage and numerous scars on his head and neck.

In the early 1930s he was arrested several times for drunkenness and disorderly conduct, escaped from the jail in Birmingham, Alabama, and was beaten by a police officer, receiving further head trauma.

In June 1936, Shockley married Betty Moore (born 1923 in Shoshone, Idaho), but the marriage only lasted a year and a half.

According to the report, he suffered episodes of hallucinations and demonstrated serious emotional instability and was incapable of coping with the normal prison environment, presenting a risk to himself and others.

Rather than transferring him to the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners at Springfield, Missouri, officials at Leavenworth sent him to Alcatraz on September 23, 1938, where it was believed the strict routine would better manage him.

On May 21, 1941, Shockley was involved with Joe Cretzer, Arnold "Shorty" Kyle, and Lloyd Barkdoll (an Oregon bankrobber) in an attempted escape from one of the island's workshops.

After an hour of unsuccessful sawing, they surrendered and released their hostages unharmed after one, captain of the guards Paul Madigan, convinced them to give themselves up before more reinforcements arrived.

On May 2, 1946, during an attempted escape, inmates Bernard Coy, Joseph Cretzer, and Marvin Hubbard took custodial guard Cecil Corwin by surprise.

A 48-hour armed confrontation ensued, in which two custodial guards, Bill Miller and Harold Stites, and three inmates, Coy, Cretzer and Hubbard, were killed.

Other inmates such as Jack Pepper, James Quillen, Howard Butler, Edwin Sharp, and Louis Fleish made statements that Sam Shockley was running up and down the corridors carrying a wrench and wearing an officer's jacket several sizes too large for him, and repeatedly swore at the hostages.

He and other inmates who testified in court denied that they ever heard Sam Shockley urge Joseph Cretzer to shoot the guards.

Young, like Shockley, was mentally handicapped, had been confined for lengthy periods in isolation and had a long record of minor misbehavior for which he had been harshly punished, and had almost complete lack of recall of the events for which he was on trial.

Carnes, who was 19, was spared the death penalty after some custodial officers who had been taken hostage testified that he had refrained from following instructions from Cretzer to kill them, but also due to the strong defense of his lawyer, Archer Zamloch.