I was convicted. I said, this deserve twenty eight years in prison and seventeen years old turn in eighteen supposed to be started in college. Instead, I will start in twenty eight years sentence in a super maximum security prison on in deep and west concert. I didn't become real until I heard them say guilty, because I just know for fact, people who did not do anything wrong no go to prison. And that's not what happened.
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good man. Sten.
I have been reading your background, an incredible story, which i'm sure you're gona tell me parts about, but thank you. In terms of numbers, what is the size of the problem? How big of the problem is wrong for all convictions?
I mean, look, the study say we're looking at like anywhere from two to five percent of convictions um and people who are are currently incarcerated um as a as a good you know gage as the issue that we have. And when you think about two or five percent IT doesn't sound like much into you hear you know the overall number and the overall number is where at two point something million people who are incarcerated so you know two to five percent know I am a layer not a mathematical that's a lot of time on people right um and when you think about that number, know you you try to pull back the layers to try to figure out, you know, what does that number exist and a circles back to other numbers.
And those numbers are the resources the person has to be able to to to get what I call a one justice as a polls to a the secondary ary b justice because I believe there are two separate justice systems. There are um for those who can afford h to let things play out and preserve their due process within. There are others who can afford nothing more but the safe arrested a time on our life.
And usually when they do that, they they're pleading guilty to stuff that they shouldn't do, or they are arresting their lives on corner point. attn. Ys, in those numbers are a result of IT.
What is the difference standard between a court to point to the turn and somebody has the resources to a point their own attorney?
One glad question, because when when he comes to me, I hope people understand what i'm saying. Court upon IT or public defenders IT isn't a knock on an entity. IT is to clarify just how hamstring and into two years so when someone is is you know appointed a court, appointed a turney, they usually come from the public defenders office and if they don't come from a public defenders s office because of some carefully there are there are appointed in a atterley by the court. What happens is when you are private attorney, you know I have my own office now we have three offices chicago and walking um also in new york. When a client retains me, I am able to focus and honey and put a specific team together on that case and look in on IT and spend a necessary time when you a quarter pointing atterley or you a public defenders, you juggling cases that make IT nearly impossible for you to do your job. And that is the difference between um the folks who get justice in the folks who don't because literally eighty, if not higher percentage of the people who encounter a criminal justice system rely on public defense.
What what happening in your case?
In my case, this is exactly what we talking about. You know I had an attorney that was appointed to me off of the panel list. My attorney y was A A few years remove you really from oslo and under qualify and overwhelmed to take on a case, I was accused of several counts of sexual will call so that that stem from uh a allegation at a party that was undermined literally hours after his allegation because the police received the uh uh you know a interview like note from a witness who basically said that the allegation was they would held that from us and we go to trial ended up being found guilty and as a result like the turney never hide an investigator right um he never got on a ground to go speak and talk to witnesses because if he would have done so he would have found that the statement was given about a witnessed they are basically undermine all of the allegations and I never would have been convicted but because he was a panel attorney overwhelm with a crazy case low there are no checks and baLances like there's no you know, making sure that the tourney is fit and qualified and has done this before is just if this a warm body, then IT meets the constitutional standard of effective council, and they're done with this.
And so you were convicted.
I was convicted.
Sense to, I was .
initially sentence to serve twenty years in prison, but I had a lot to say in my sentencing hearing. OK mean, as a result, the judge told me that I wasn't remove and he gave me an additional eight years in prison um on the pot right? So didn't have anything to do with the allegation you know, all my own conviction. I have more so to do with me definitely claiming my innocence, which was ultimately proven almost ten years later after ma release.
So going through that process you you arrested um you you go through the the uh process have been prosecuted in the back of your mind. We always think, well, i'm not going to a chair for this so this is going be convicted or was there like a moment, had like a moment of the reality, like a shit.
This will I say this all the time? You know, I come from a rough neighborhood in chicago, but like, we didn't go to prison and get arrested and shooting guns. And we just want, know, my grandmother was a strong lady, and he stayed on all of.
So my experience with the law was in law in order, right? You never saw episode where someone was intentionally wrong, fully convicted, and they went to prison. So this entire nightmare for me, going through IT, I didn't become real until I heard them say guilty because I just know for fact, people who did not do anything wrong no go to prison. And that's not what happened.
And so you are convicted.
I was convicted of this deserve twenty eight years in prison. I'm a seventeen years old turn in eighteen, supposed to be started college instead. Ed, I was started in twenty eight years sentence in a super maximum security prison in in deep in west concern.
Okay, how fast are from home .
is several hours away from home. So you know I wrote a book and in a book I detail more about the experience in the impact that the head of my family and as a chapter in a book what I talked about um you know my mom in her and how he would have to come and see me and get on the bus and because he was just so far await in the winter time you know she's racing and mister bus when you miss this buses is where is no know you've missed that data visit right um so she's race and rush russian is at his bus SHE slips on some black eyes breaks A I never forgave myself you know for for for that day and IT was part of a fuel that drove me to get to where I am because I felt like I needed to repay her back you know so badly right um in a mini moments like that throughout my almost ten years of being incarcerated, where they were were lightful type moments, you know where I realize this saying just a jerd atam staying.
You know this is a problem that exists with in our system because we haven't put for the energy efforts and resources to fix IT. And so IT was many I awaiting moments in the five, six hours I was away from um the home that I grew up in IT was not merely as far as a way I felt being isolated in a prison as nothing around you but other mean who are are incarcerated and some of which have been incarcerated for decades at the time. Before I got there, phone calls are literally twenty dollars at the first minute in five since the next minute not many people in my family and friends could afford that in made me realize how much of an emphasis prison places on breaking the spirit, as opposed to any correction abilities that they tag.
I thought I was cool. The development of correction yeah.
but I experience its the deployment ment of warehousing, like a lot of the men and increasingly women in the states.
But listen, we know we can get cheap phone calls these days. Of course twenty dollars for a phone call.
Somebody is making money off that.
I mean listen and goes to um you know why I was excited to really do this podcast because I know that most of the listeners come from my financial background but what I don't believe that the both the community which I come from as well as the community that listed that is part cast understands and this is all related to a bottom line you know prisons that exists in small rural areas are the financial backbone of that area in in a bunch of different other things that allow people to make this a business and not any safety and security for the public in all of all the tag lies, right? So the final calls are just one thing. They are canteen items, right?
You know ridiculous ly overPrice uh, items where there's a cognomens, so to speak, because you can order from amazon while you locked up. So you're ordering from that vendor. That vendor has negotiated to can attract with that prison. And so there two is a business within that, right? Um so there is money tied directly to the issues that are less in the states when he comes to our system.
Isn't there also in some prisons the essential workshops where they are producing items a sold commercially outside of the prisons? And though I am sure i've heard about this before, and the wages that you get paid in the prison is considerably below minimum wage you can pay.
Uh, so the prisoner I was in the jobs in inside of there that was considered the lucrative jobs right page you about twenty cents to a quarter, you know sometimes up to a dollar an hour and you were producing um license plates. You were producing um you know the the the the Marks and smarts that the the state uh employed uh hospital workers were so essentially uh, not only are you in prison and you cost in taxpayers for each day that you're in prison, you're also cheap labor that doesn't benefit the taxpayers you know I mean yeah .
I mean it's it's like slave labor.
Yeah if you look at IT and look at IT this way, look at the history of of of where you know prisons and jelling people came from and I came from um IT came from literally the thirteen you know a moment when you think about, okay, we now we can uh large people .
up yeah .
because the limit that discusses in volta server itou, essentially what that means is you cannot enslave anyone, enforce them to work. Except that that that if that person is incarcerated, then as a part of their punishment IT is an override to that thirteen, a mimic protection. Because you're incarcerated, you can work this job without us having to respect your constitutional rights. That are affordable .
is a compulsory. This work as an optional .
is definitely not optional in some places, right? Um there have been stories, a refight stories out of angola and lousianner where if you do not go to these jobs you will go to segregation um in some of these these you know institutions and so the because the law allows and the constitution allows for each state to have its own policing power you have a gandy. You know there are different issues that exist in different prisons, in different states in so you know there are prisons where you can say, no, I I don't feel like going to go and put together a license plates and outcome to your door what about three or four guards in save will do you feel like putting your hands to the traps so we could put these handcuffs you and take you down a segregate?
I interviewed a lady called in all brick a few years ago. Her son was convicted for running a website where you could buy it's like open free liberata market. Yeah he got a people find drugs on them. We don't need to get into the the complex of that. But he got charged with something called .
the kingpin n charge for good .
double life senses for plus forty years. He currently, he will not leave a jail without a pardon. You SHE told me two things that really, really stood out to make.
One thing you already mentioned, which he said that you can be put in a jail anywhere around the country. And what that does is that test family apart, but IT also adds an economic pressure to the families to go and visit their loved ones. Yeah, and if theyve got kids, it's highly drama tic, because sometimes the kids come and see maybe mother because it's so far away. And so there's that. But the bigger thing he told me about the really stuck with me, see you, i'm god. You mention these, uh, rural communities where the prison is the backbone, he said, because of these, the prison guards association I come from the name of IT has a strong lobbies and ARM which lobbies is for harsh sentences and and and is basically the ARM that stocks uh uh uh the removal of heart sentences for simple crimes like yeah cannabis and and it's because if you don't lock enough people up in these towns, this will call this could devastate the town because it's a big employer but the incentives screwed yes.
I mean is one of these things where um the the business side of this has allowed us to lose our sympathy and empathy for the mankind and mankind to be politically cracked in this time because women are being increasingly locked up as well because you know it's almost like they're run n at a mean you know to to lock up. So now they are turning their tricks and trades on the female population in that is exactly the truth.
Listen and i'm locked up in in a prison call walkon was concern and it's a max uh slash super max in some areas of IT when I tell you that almost every meal there was some form of potato right um and there was milk. All of IT came from the farms that surrounded the prison. So there is, there is a bunch business as time to win.
Now you're insynch zing people to vote a certain way, even though their moral compass is telling them this isn't right. They are working a certain way, because IT is the first law of nature, is self preservation. So you have people who are voting in this way because they believe, right because this is not the truth.
They believe that their existence is tied to a prison, right that pays them. There are other things that we can do um in terms of making sure the rule areas have jobs and stuff and that is far bo of my pay grade to even make so many suggestions. But one thing I can say is keeping businesses in in the states, you know not outsourcing is a way.
But when you talk about about the the building of prisons, you talk about no one in sight. When you think about IT, right? What what's the in game? right? Whenever you thinking about any business plan or something like that, and you do in the numbers, you thinking about the bottom line, what's the end game? There seems to be no end game in site besides continue to lot people up when he comes to our views and what we're doing in our system.
So is IT is essentially a prison industrial complex.
That's exactly what IT is without me saying that because I know that line is key, but that is exactly what IT is, an ester definition of what people are talking about. I give you, I give you a couple examples, right? And I wanted to, because I was gonna say this and almost forget.
But I want to, I want to make sure I make this point of the stark differences between both the beginning where right where a person is convicted, and in the x or prisons themselves, as opposed to what we see across the park. So i'm in my last year of law school. I went to law school at loyola law school down in chicago.
I'm working full time as as an investigator the photo of public defenders office in um I am going to school in a night program but IT will make me graduate in four years and that three years so I spoke you know what administration and trying to figure how I do this like, look, if you take this study abroad, you can make up credits in the summer time in your graduating three years so i'd took a trip to london for the credits and walk away with with something and I will never ever forget. In terms of an experience, part of our assignment was to go to the old bai, right? You know? So we stated the good enough club, just so i'm giving you a land Marks and stuff like that.
So we go to the old bail and we're going to the old bai for a matter of days throughout the time that we stay. We stay for about three weeks, four weeks. Um when I first get there i'm looking at this lady and SHE is a barra asser and SHE is prosecuting um a child sex case, right and he is handing this other guy his wig, so to speak, think I may see is given its home um I come back a couple days later and I see her she's now defending a child sex case SHE is doing IT just as vigorously and as smart as a whip as you can in our real life for the first time that the system is set up in england so that barristers represent both the state and defendants in certain cases.
And you know what that does? That forces the system to keep the sympathy and empathy and that become jaded. Not everyone looks like a nail.
That you need the hammer now, right? Because now you understand from different sides and you understand mitigating factors. IT gives you A A intimacy with issues that are social and economically. That calls a lot of these these crimes and people, you know committing crimes and IT makes you a Better person and you have a Better system. The second thing, you look at what they're doing in different countries in terms of how they lock people up.
They believe in what they say when they say we are a current rating you with the hopes that you pay your debt to society and come home a Better person um and know what you do, right? So they treat you differently. They don't lock you up on top of each other or you're locked up in some southern states.
If you look down in alabama and their prison systems, there are people where the capacity of a room is only supposed to be twenty. There are fifty cuts laying out on the floor. There are people who are in two men sales with three people in, in, in.
When you look at those those makeup PS, and you and you see to that, you say to yourself, we are on california right now. You couldn't keep animals locked up the same way that you keep human beings in the state locked up. And we do this to people, and essentially we treat them like animals and animals like conditions.
And we released them and we tell them, now you go be human, right? When what we should be doing is following the model that's going on in germany in different places where they're treating people like individuals, that will be released into the community. So instead of them being locked and Carried away to their sales and back and forth, they giving him keys the teeth in a responsibility that given them financial literacy.
They're making an emphasis on therapy while they're there before they get out because I know like a lot of other people will tell you, if you try to give me reentry services on my way out the door after ten years or years of looking at nothing but you know, a impactful things that damages a person's missile health care, well, that's just like you giving me a parachute t and i'm about the jump about the plane. Don't you think I need to have that parachute t on and and have practice how to jump before you give IT to me? So our system, just if you think about IT and knows those aspects, we don't have a system as designed to do anything. But what it's been doing because that's how has been designed to segregate, separate, separate and continue to keep a so cold on certain communities that look .
like minds of the the conspiracy there says they want you back.
I mean.
think about this will see you back soon.
let's say. So we're talking in numbers.
right? Let me ask you one question. You here in the U. S, uh, how many prisons are run privately by private private companies? And how many are runs away by the state?
So there's there a great if I had if I had to let you know throughout the wall of percent, I would say this there's roughly about maybe ten fifteen percent of privately own prisons amongst all of them, right? Um in there's a difference as well in the conditions. These privately and prisons are extremely violent in a depth compared to state and prisons.
All of the charts in the reason why is because of this. You you you're thinking about that bottom line. Again, when you have a private prison.
right? So I am not thinking about staff in this prison to make sure that everyone is safe and account for. I'm thinking about staff in this prison to get exactly that's IT.
So we have there is absolutely no need. The prison system is not. The school system is no need to have private prisons like you have private schools. They don't offer anything Better.
Conditions are worse. Has just looking here in the U. K. The U. K. Doesn't private prisons, their part of a mix system where both publicly and privately run institutions exist? They were first introducing U.
K, ninety, ninety parts of an effort to reform the prison system, reduced costs, reduce costs. Several private prison prisons Operated by circo g for us and sadec. The involvement of private companies in run prisons have been subject to debate. Supporters argue that least cost savings and innovation, while critics can make hanker incentives, cut corners, and that the profit motive is incompatible with the goals of the habitable justice, in incompatible.
Really talking about putting the dinner, this thing that is our system, we need to breathe, breathe the gap between social and mental health care and our criminal justice system in our system is you know you're dealing with with a lot of people who have a mental illness um on diagnose um what I like to call post traumatic stress or persistent traumatic stress because if the neighborhood that you live in in our ravage with gun violence, there's no way that doesn't affect you um in who you are as a person um and so those are mitigating factors that we just same to ignore. And we've been largely ignore in IT because of the criminal justice system, hammer has been felt t in a black and Brown community more than has been felt in any other community.
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jury in the south. Yes, in Terry Richardson and fran clay borne is a case that I am working on through my profit life of the justice life the justice is a now profit. We identify certain cases um to to argue um that what we learn from the wrongful conviction should be implemented on the onset to prevent them, along with our emphasis on mental health care as well as as just making sure that we are alone of people who detect if they need to reintegrate. So that case that we've been working on has been for ten years now.
And you know when I got the no terrance, Richard and his family alone with for our play born, you know I had to go down to the town of waverly, Virginia and I had to speak with the people down there as well to get to know him in the case and sure enough um they were faced with being wrong, fully convicted. But the difference was this, if they were wrong, fully convicted, then they would be puts to death. I had ten years to reverse my conviction, improve my innocence.
If they would have been convicted of the capital murder of a police officer, they would have been puts a death and there would be no appeals. So they had to decide, even though I know we didn't do this, the state is offered us some deals that you've never offered, black me and accused of killing a White officer. So they took these deals, think that the case would be over.
Little did they know that the federal government authorities were looking at them, building a case on them, on a false drug allegation. Just retry them for the murder again. But IT is they go to trial. They found not guilty.
still to life. How can you be found not guilty and sent to jail in?
So i'll try IT, it's not going to make sense when I try to explain this legal concept. So in a federal um practice and federal criminal law, the federal law gives the feds a different sovereignty, right? So you have state law, you have federal.
And so there is a case that needs to be taken down called U. S. VS. what. And he says that if a person is tried in federal court, even if they are found not guilty of most of what they charge with, if they are found guilty of one offence, which is they found terms t rea cay born, guilty of a draw count, one single drew count, that would have got them around ten years in prison.
So he says that if you're convicted of one, the prosecution can argue that you are sentence be enhanced to life despite the jury finding you not guilty under something car relevant in cana, IT then becomes the judges direction to decide whether or not the judge will enhance your sentence to life. And in the case of black and Brown men, they almost always enhance their sentence based on relevant conduct. And so what I said to you does not make sense, because IT shouldn't make sense, because IT is the robbing of due process. When a jury has then panelled, a jury has heard the evidence, and a jury has found the person not guilty yet they're still sentenced to life, which is why life at the justice has been behind this case. And we will not get off until there's .
a resolution how how much uh bias exist when in a jury where IT say it's a White jury and and uh and it's uh uh a black person that they are decide on and and every other than a black jury and a black person or White during a White person like yeah how much is A A flat bars .
across IT all so I think I think in this is the context step that know how frameless responds on。 When you look at the historical depiction of black and Brown, mean IT has always been dead of aggressive savage.
You know you name IT right? Um when you look at the news depiction, when you look at the historical connotations that are attributed to black and Brown, mean and just everything you know, uh you can think of, I should be scared of of this certain type of folk and how that looks right? That two spills into the jury pool because the jury pool is made up of full.
They made up of listeners, of watchers, of people who look at the news, people who read news articles. So historically, we've tainted jury pools in our society to the depiction of others that that come across the news and different publications. So when you look at that, you're now looking at a panel jury, right? This says a all I jury, my case involved in all the jury and they're looking at me and where they will give you the benefit of the doubt as a White man and is no you know what things to you I or need no attack on you at all.
They would give you have benefited to die because they have more relate this to you and how you grew up and put themselves in situations like you. Then they will, for a black, a Brown person, they would tend to want to say to themselves, well, I don't know how IT he is growing up over there. What is like over there? All they can relate to is what they know and what they've been raised on one. So that that is the answer, which drives a lot of the reason why you have to have diverse jury pools in order to have just result period.
So and is that achievable? yes. So what why is why doesn't IT happen .
you these two poles, these bats and chAllenges and stuff like um is a supreme core case which dealt with uh striking um jurors of color or or female jurors or any reason that someone would strike a jury for a reason that has nothing to do, uh been qualified to decide on the case so what ends up happening is this, let's say in my case right so they panel twenty yours right perspective jurors and you go through and you do for doors when you go to you ask questions about the jury and you make a selection each side against about two or three that they just just qualified a person just because they didn't like their answers right um but dan, you know you can uh move to disqualify someone based on on what time is that they say there are a lot of cases where the prosecution in in happened in my case so I use my case. The prosecution in my case removed every person of color or any.
Minority because they knew that would give a Better chance of conviction, I see is a weird one because IT sometimes feels like the goal is to win more than IT is to get a right for answer. IT goes back.
There were the point that I made about the barristers in in london in in our system here. There's a system set up in london where they preserve their sympathy and empathy. Prosecutors in the states are the queen on a chessboard.
They are, they are the most powerful piece that can float anywhere, take pieces. They can actually sacrifice themselves and become another queen if they want down a row. That is how powerful they are. And they are also, in my opinion, in need of a shut of sympathy and empathy at all times. Because you see some of the most horrific crimes and you prosecuting some of the most horrific crimes over and over and over again, that says you, that makes you believe that every person accused is just like the person who actually did IT that too prosecuted this time or that time. And so we have a system that is set up again, where the prosecution is the hammer and everyone looks like a nail.
IT feels like for, uh, jury's selection, IT should be blind.
Q N A S. IT should. And not only debt, not only should to be blind you and eyes, they shouldn't even know the race of the person, you know, being tried and who .
is being accused.
No names as well. IT has nothing to do with the at all, right? In in my my case specifically, I was referred to as the black man so many times in my case that I thought I was my name, but of IT, right? But literally seventeen years old, i'm being called boy in a police station. Suddenly I become a man in front of the jury because that man, black man, has that negative connotation that drags alone those historical depictions that I talked about.
IT makes me think of current you, you know you, your foobar more than I do. But i'm my understanding is, is that you historically hearing the U. S.
There was a low number of a black coaches and they change the rules. So you had to interview black coaches along as I White. They didn't force them to let them. But just that change shifted the number of coaches that became black. I got rid. That kind of like maybe it's a subconscious bias or that IT feels like if you want a fair justice system, you have to be able to nudge in a similar direction.
absolutely. There is no doubt that there is truth to which is saying in and we always seen to take one step forward, two steps back. And I guess the best example is the war on drugs, right? So i'm incarcerated uh one thousand nine and ninety eight. I'm released in february of two thousand and seven right in what I am. Yes I been almost ten years wrongly ly convicted until the inner is project was able to work to give my conviction reverse and I came home um I saw I was a part of the prison boom that happened.
That boom didn't just happen, right? That boom was the result of the war on drugs and the war drugs was essentially the war on a black and Brown community who was the seized by the drugs, right? And so when you think about that, you think about that is that is the rise of the numbers that that became ridiculous, right? Whether you almost locked up almost a million black mean, and of the two point, something million locked up right now, black me, and predominate the number of people who are incarcerated.
And when you peel back the layers on that, a lot of IT has to do with drugs, right? So so to your point, they've now started to do different things in terms of passing laws that that that are supposed to right um provide a relief mechanism to those who were incarcerated to ridiculous sentences as a result of drugs. But again, it's taking baby steps and so the people who are supposed to get that relief are not necessarily give dit, but to your point, if we want IT to um change the numbers of of of the the choose the portion, this proportion that effect on black and Brown people, we would change the way we prosecute crimes in the areas in which we prosecute them. And that has that has to be encouraged by both the state in the pads, but that has to be done by the states.
right? Okay, talk to me about the work that you do. Then how? How are you different from the innocence project in nose to help you everywhere are on some incredible work? yes. How what we do and how .
we differ is this. First of all, we partner with with the innocence projects um all across the country, including the innocence network, right? So it's not like we're different, but we are doing things that are different, right? And what we do is this we specifically take one cases like terrain, fran, because we're trying to attack le the issues that we see, our low hanging fruit, for example, like in syn na vise witnesses.
For those who are listening and synthesize witnesses, this there is nothing else to the case besides the witness who say, hey, uh, Peter, he killed that guy and you know, he was in the sale and he told me everything, right? And what that guy is getting is he's getting time off of his prison sentence or he's getting moved in house in a cushy prison because he's there for the rest of his life. So at least he goes somewhere where he's could he? That is what you call in in sync avize witness.
And what we're doing in our states system is we're allowing evidence like that to go to a jury without educating the jury on just how in accurate that is. There have been a number of cases that i've just explained in in that one incentivize witness where DNA has come behind and definitively proven that a person had nothing to do with the crime. So the jail house person that you just put up in front three and he said that he told him everything and stuff like that, IT wasn't true.
So IT is a result of of these type texts, that is, that is obtaining wrongful convictions. And so we're taking cases like terrain, fran, and we are litigate the case well as well as doing a national survey to find out how many cases exist like terrain, fran. So we can use that data to support a national change.
Because what we found is this, if someone asks me how many murders were committed in los Angeles st. Last year, I can literally google and find IT if I ask you how many people were convicted falsely off of the witness who was promised something to get out. You can't find those numbers anywhere in a reason. Why is because we don't they don't want you to have the numbers to show sometimes wrong with this. So what we're doing at life, at the justice is we're taking data to drive what we are doing in our work.
And so we're taking smaller amounts of cases in order to prove that point and do what we need to do in terms of the data along with that, right, we are also increasing efforts to insynch vize everyone to play their part and providing mensa health care and reinsurance tion needs to people who suffer the car crash. That is our system, right? So we are placing a huge emphasis on that.
As in everything else, the third bucket is the policies that we plan to put in place as a result of the numbers in the data that we learn. But that's what IT is in the answer. I told you my excitement about this podcast was this we have more in common with what we're doing than you think numbers drive business. Numbers tell you whether not a business is going to be successful. The numbers that we are looking for will help us provide solutions, but the numbers that we already have tell us that we're doing this got off fully wrong.
Well, this is a time where the military industrial complex is a taking up a huge amount taxpayers money. Yes, the big farmer industrial complex, uh, is at a point where, and I see a complete .
parallel.
they should do, but there's a comparable there and that people want to prescribed a pill for something is wrong yes, rather than talk about preventative care and IT feels like overturn in wrong fall convictions is great, but if you could do preventative works, so the wrong fall conviction didn't happen in the first place. You're not gonna somebody through the system. You're not going to spend that cost in IT. You're not going to have the downstream effects of that person's family. Yeah, and it's going to have a net benefit to the taxpayers .
in the economy to everyone one. And that's the point that we're doing with with life of the justice. So that's the difference between us in innocence world and innocence network.
The preventive .
we we have to let the data drive us to the answers in a solution because look um we allow science in the study of numbers, in the study of cases to give us out of something at this entire world fed and that was the pandemic in a coron advice right um we need to be allowed as same type of research of effort to prevent wrong ful convictions as well as you know over sentencing and in a number of different issues that play our system. And so now that we pretty much know what we need, we have to ask ourselves, why isn't IT being and done?
Well, less of weather numbers, but I I think in my head I matchy seen its too wishes there is the wrongful all convictions. Uh, then there's the unnecessary sentencing. Yes, there's probably people who have been in sentenced and convicted in going prison who probably don't need to be incarcerated dependent on the crime um and and in doing that, you are creating a record that makes IT difficult for them to integrate into society. If we have more rounded thinking and pathetic system, the right fully doubt with the worst people in society really, but also had an empathetic, excited to voice that maybe some people for minor offenses and up in jail, we had to create a system yeah which has a less of a tax burden on society and also IT has less destructive to famous.
I mean, think about the example that you gave me, which, you know the lady who was on in our sun, right? So he didn't take a gun and shoot anyone, and he didn't burn the house down for the kids walking his life lesson be was sentencing you to a time in which you teach people legally how to do business and tell your story to all of the kids about the lessons that they can learn from where your life is right now. Why do we blew out the candle on his life instead of china, keep IT lit to ignite passion, motivation, business and creating things for a positive?
What would the costs be to keep in jail approximately per year?
I mean, you think about IT like this. We're spinning. We're spinning a day a bit, a bit amount, right? So IT varies, right? So calculated by the bed and a bed in a day, you should there is roughly around thirty dollars or something like that, right to taxpayers. So now you calculate that two point million people who are incarcerated, right? We're talking about astronomical millions right with billions is really what we're spending on our across .
ble system method. It's if we say it's two point four million times three and six, five days year times twenty, I think the brakes are calculated the beginning. But what is that that is seventeen and a half billion I think about you yeah .
and when you look at the pie chart is A D O J pie chart um that comes out every year and he talks about how much um we're spending in as a country on you know uh corrections that is what they call the corrections, right? Uh, we spent in billions and billions of dollars each year, and we spend in billions of billions of dollars with no bottom line and no end in sight.
And we're able to get this done by continuing to canada people's fears, which allowed them to have a blanket of of of I don't care um about IT as long as the government tells me i'm safe for something like that, right? I don't need to look under the hood. But this started in the spill over IT has been spilling over into our communities. You know, ninety six percent of people who are incarcerated, they will get out one day would mean you be a Better neigh's od in society of the people who we are getting out reintegrated were Better conditions to do that.
Yeah, says here, eighty billion a year. The U. S. system. I mean, come. yeah.
I don't have the details on me now, but I know the norwegian system has been very good at reducing real fending rates. Yes, now I don't. If you followed the .
do I was example, I have, you .
know.
listen, they are trying, but then that trying as hard as they're trying in terms of locking people up is what i'm saying.
And everyone has to be doing IT together because again, for the most part, the issues with corrections is gonna start in in, in the states, right? That's why these individual states have so much power with IT and and you but IT again, our federal government can encourage Better practices from the states on how they're doing corrections, right? They can most certainly do that.
They can in synapse states with different grants and packages to study their issues in their systems to find anxious solutions. Part that's part of what we're doing, like we are literally going out to fund rates to help us with this national survey, right? And trust me, we will take coins, big coins, dollars or pennies, because we believe the answers lie with this data.
And so we go on around collecting this data approval point. But the federal government can initialize the states individually to do this research because, again, they have numbers on how many people are rate robed and killed every year, almost every quarter. Why aren't we keep in data on the numbers of wrongful convictions? And those calls is that are leading to them so we can implement the change to stop them from happening, which will then leaders to other ideas that can be driven by data to get us to a Better system.
I've look, i've been coming to the U. S. A lot for the last twenty years, probably a hundred times.
I come here. I love over here. yeah. But I see a lot of problems. And every time I see a problem like this, because I know the way the U. S.
Systems work on the lobby's, like who's making the money? Who's making the money is incentivised to not change this. Yeah, so somebody must be you .
look at the private prisons, but not only look into private prisons, look at the businesses that around that that investing them. You have some some towns, companies and all of that invest there for one case right into the the prison system, right? That's not.
And when you think about that, right, who do you think they're voting for or what policies do you think they're voting for? There is there is a bottom line that is that is tied to all of the barriers that we face when he comes to changes in our system and making a Better place there. There's this we know who isn't making the money, right? And is the people who are being hammered by the system.
So now you just have to look, start looking around, right? And actually is so how on earth do we ever approve a phone company that can tell someone twenty dollars a minute for the first minute and fast and said how what did they prove to come? How did we ever approve that there can only be one or two vendors for prison that houses thousands of inmates and they have to buy from this or they can't buy like they stop at one point at one point um when I was incarcerated, especially during the holidays, your family could sing you a package of, know, the sort of chase I was going to.
Okay, so right. So there was a time during the holidays where you can get these mets and cheese and stuff like that in the bigger est. What you in a places dark is that IT provided a glimmer of light and hope in a dark place like that when you got that boxing from your family with a cheeses and his musters and his bread um and they stopped IT right IT wasn't stopped because of a security concern because the the the the security issue that was newly fy was if your family can't send der from their house, IT has to be purchase onal online and IT comes in from the company.
So you know a company isn't put any contraband or anything like in that they want to do business. Yeah, they stop. IT did not provide a reason why, but let me tell you what the reason.
right? Because during .
that time, people start buying stuff from .
where from the windows IT.
And so the vindu started to save the same items that used to come in and from you know the companies like pett words farm and all that type of stuff in the boxes excluded. They started to sell those very items and keep all of the money used to be over to order shoes off of a company called right um and then they stop and what they say IT was all where people were fighting over shoes and some could not get him some good IT was cause issues and would you buy issues of canteen IT? IT makes no sense other than the since that we know it's making bottom line.
So you're in a twenty cents an hour to go and buy. Things are over Price .
that are over Price. I mean a bag chips um would literally be Priced at least forty percent more like we you know back in two thousand, really two thousand, you know they weren't a quarter anymore, but you could find a bag of tips for fifteen sense, right? I mean we pay a dollar for bags and chips that are there, right? And do you think when we got those air bags and chips, do you think IT was a an intended we can go to at the store to say, hi man, this bag is IT was defective I need A A now you get what you get um in in another points of that .
is not .
the known is really .
healthy. And it's crazy.
Like I said, I just you look at IT and if you go see your point that you were making, somebody is profiting very well off of this. Their profit is such that change is hard to come back.
Um when you were sentence twenty years a was there any chance of parole?
My parole was in february of twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty one. Or something like that, right? In a reason why is because .
how many years into the .
sentence has been that would have been twenty years into the sentence.
2, yeah.
I literally could have still been in there. I literally could be not where I am right now. Mary just had a six months old so you know i'm waking up every morning looking at her and in in this you know sometimes I do glare off and at a distance um and looking think about what my life could have been and I also think about this um if jerre t atoms is still serving the maximum security you know sentence up to twenty eight years, geered atoms isn't you know a graduate of law school he's not represent terrace or for he's not finding the organization life at the justice to help people reintegrate um my impact is being felt in a community right um and so IT goes to show you that the intense of that we should all have listeners the viewers society in general is that you never know when efforts being made are gonna ce someone to come into .
the community in here like so I am backing ing that I own a foobar team, right? And I love, I love the games on the saturday. I absolutely love IT when the saturday is over, think is another week to a game sucks, right? Yes, we can think about the game.
That's one week. yeah. How do you even process the idea of twenty eight years knowing that you, what? seventeen? So that would mean you would be coming out at what.
twenty? twenty? So you know, I had I had help you know, with with this in so so when I the one the most difficult things that I had to do was write this book, you know, the reason was because I had IT made me reflect on all of what I went through and how was I able to get through IT.
So when going back and forth in doing a book, a IT turned out that IT wasn't about a wrong for conviction. IT was about my family support, the impact of my family and also the community. And they talked about numbers, just like we're talking about of other, but I can Brown me and who are going to do IT in families? I get to a chapter in there where I talk about my my, everyone called a sugar um right IT goes because he this was so sweet man, he gave you the shirt off her back what he would do is he would send me um different publications.
I'm constantly having me read, whether you be the newspaper, uh, ebony jet magazine, essence magazine, just a point magazines I started to look at the Price air because now look, this is going from five years, six years, ten years is a lot of money right over the years so I told I said, look, you you not appreciate you, but you don't have to do this any more. St stuff is costing way to be much in, you know? No, you don't have to do IT SHE just so i'm not i'm not doing IT just to do IT.
I'm doing IT because we have acknowledged that you physically confine behind those bar. But we refused to let your mind ever be incarcerated. okay? And so as a result of IT, SHE was provided me with my own source of therapy.
In that SHE wanted to make sure that I live, eat every next day, that I live, eat and every day, prepare to come home the next day. And how could you do that if you weren't upon a relevant times? And what was going on in the world? So that was a strategy with me, right? I had another em and .
honey money and .
going to lab, but my mom named is pizzas, right? So yeah people from from the states and the south of chicago. My family came from a downtown th and dow south.
Thank you everybody. Nicknames and I was their nicknames. And so my oh honey would send me bible verses. Um you know every other the day and he would just pick out these different verses SHE would selling me about the story of job and how he was falsely incarcerated and how he you know maintained and continue to keep his string.
And what I really learned to that journey was this faith is not something you can grab, touch or a taste, but you gotto have IT right. You can get you through a wrongful conviction in ten years of of, of, of of, of, of a sentence that I should have. I can get you through a business opportunity that just didn't work out right.
And I think everybody can relate to that. When he comes to fate, um IT tested my faith. The max stet appear and tell you that I knew he was going to work out because when I first got there, I did.
I stop taking phone goals, I stop writing letters, because while i'm, you know, going out duck and knives and trying not to get stabbed and beat up. And in all the things that exists in prison, my friends were making their first semester a college. The college I was able to go to, they get in their first credit card, max, and out their first credit card like, right?
You know, all the stuff you do in life, learning lessons. I was robed of IT. And so part of my existence in the reason organization is called life at the justice is because I wanted each and every last breath, I guess, until the last one to be meant for my life. And .
what I did after I did.
But I kind of moved into into, you know um first of all, I was one of the Young is looking people when I got to the prison because at that time I told you a prison bomb happen. How did the bomb happen? How did they use the bomb? Wait, they use that we Young, black and Brown me and is how they increased the numbers of people who are incarcerated to the war on drugs. So when I got there, I was one of the Youngest people, so and only was at the Youngest, one of the Young as people. But, you know, they test you going into the prison.
So when I did a little no standard test, they call me down to the council office and I was like, you know, your jobs is going to be a tutor and I was, I want to be a touter and I was like, well know, do you want to go to segregation? Kind like what I told you're earlier, right, was like, you know, I kind of want to be a toter if you put IT that way, right? So i'm toter and mean.
And as a result of tolerant men who were required through the courts order to get their gds or high school equivalency degrees, i'm going to know, and i'm going to understand, this is an isolated incident. You, I, you know, started to go from being a tutor, that basically I created my own job security. You need IT me to not be beat up or attack, because how was you going to a get two or to pass the d in order to give pro, right? So we moved from that to becoming sorted of a jail house lawyer, where I started to help guys that I realize were pleading guilty to crimes that they didn't commit in order to get out of the canoe on parole in in, uh, getting a domestic violence.
Now I in prison for ten years over the case that they never should have play a guilty too. So I was helping them to give time back. And when I was doing that, I was given to know me, and I was given to understand that we have to get this survey done because there are voices in the community that provide us the answers to change the numbers that play our system. And so I, I, I just will never forgive. IT isn't an act of violence that I remember that affected me to most IT was the people that I realized were not the slogans in the headlines that they make us believe and that we should just turn out back and go away, folks.
to the system. Yeah, because they do human eyes, right?
I see if if we make you believe that the person walking across your screen is a bad guy, you know, eggs, what did they accuse him of? You ask, what did they do that? Yeah, that goes to science. That goes to everything we've learned and have to be the programmed from. The only way you do that is by allowing mitigating fact is to be introducing.
get a note. Person passed the .
headline in the slogan kenly man face. Kid finley was the director of the west concern innes's project, wrote him a letter in two thousand and three. They agree to take my case. They litigated my case all way up to the seven circle c quarter appeals, and the court unanimously reversed my conviction based on the statement from the witness that was with hail from the police and not found by my attorney. Um I get out how long do you .
find out by phone or you in the room?
I was just gona tell you too. I get out how I get out conventional. okay. So at the time that my case is making his way up through the courts, i'm in a place call basco bail with cousin IT. Is, is, is a super, super max.
Is what IT is they putting me in segregation? Because I went from the jail house lawyer helping people to give time back on his sentence to start in a school. The department of corrections for the handbook.
manuals and taking programs.
So yeah, they all of a certain they get in size .
because you were in them because they were taking .
programs out.
the programs they were taken out.
the ones that would help people get back and that come back these people you .
understand .
what i'm saying like like the programs that we were doing and was programs like this. What I started to notice was, and again, and this goes back, why do not profit is focus on surveys and numbers yeah because as i'm helping people with their gds in all at APP, i'm starting to take account, right, of how people are coming back on violations of paroles. Almost all of them were domestic phone calls, where some ideas in tool with their spouse.
So one of the programs that I love, that I was a part of, I was a part of teasing the curriculum was IT was a programme that was designed to help inmates deal with their spouses and interactions with children after years of being gone. Because, I mean, think about IT, right? Your child is being raised by mom and family.
You come back. The child is. Now you talked about having a fifteen year old. Imagine not being in a fourteen year old s life.
If you come back and try to implement rules, right? It's not going to work like that. But you got to understand you can't lash out, curse holland throat things like you would do in prison.
You needs to talk things out, have a conversation. And so that program was giving people um you know like a birds have you and to how to handle situations when they get home. That program in my opinion um helped people not have domestic situations, which calls violations, which calls them go back to prison.
They took IT out. So I started so in them through different mechanisms, through habis positions in all of that and where i'm in my sale doing these lawsuits, they have to like spend money of of the state um to defend them. So all of the i'm taking a out of my family like four years in the morning and a maxim one of being taken out and they said that they get a confidence to inform IT.
They say that I was a part of a group that I wanted to take over the prison, and i'm looking at them and i'm like the I see me with these glass talking, I gets to a prison and I litigate my way out. They reversed IT and they had to pay me all the backend from the job that I had right in order to do. But that, to your question, I found doubt that I was going, that my conviction was reversed in as supermax.
And what they do IT was they didn't allow me to go down to the arguments. And here, you know, like the arguments and stuff like that. So escorted me out of my sale.
I get on the phone, and I listen to the argument about ninety days, know, about ninety days after that, right and right after I had won my case to be sent out of the supermax back, general population, they bring me down to to, you know, the legal call in, man, man, they take me out, they bring me down to a room and I get on the phone and i'm hearing, keep finally, in the law, students talk and they don't know. I get on the phone and i'm standing of myself. Man, they sure are.
And I got jovial moment, you know, for me to be locked up and they give like giving me some bad new. So i'm like was going on so like how he's on and like, man, unanimously won in the court, said that the prison in the prosecutors have to either release or retry you within a one hundred and twenty days. So I learned that I was coming home in a super maximum prison that I shall have been in and I make my way down the general population I i'm offered right, is people always gotten for people offered me time served.
If I would admit to a misdeed offence, they would let me out. And literally what they were trying to do with duck liability and absorbs themselves. So many wrong doing and staying me for the rest of my life as a sex offender is what they were doing.
I had an outstanding public defenders. I wasn't a public defenders. He was a science in my case.
He was a guy who had retired to take care of his wife, who was battling cancer. He saw my case, saw that innocent ce gradient was involved, took my case. We became proactive.
We did a, we did a bunch of stuff. And he said, there is no way in a world we're pleading guilty. We make IT a court. They unanalysed sly dismissed the case. Record is explained and I turned around to his lady standing behind me and she's in tears with these wrinkles and these crisis of vanguard, these wrinkles, these deep wrinkles, increases of Angus, I never forget um and I told that we were done crying. We were going to our leg back and I was my mother and from that point on I came home place to focus on and therapy.
I graduates from the school I was supposed to be started when I was falsely accused and arrested when I was eighteen, graduated from community college um my four year degree after that because I didn't have any money when I got out, I was never compensated a dime for this. Why not? Because the court ruled that attorney was an effective so therefore IT was his negga gent. When I went after him, he didn't have any email practice insurance, and he was now doing mediations because of how bad day in my case. So I literally would have got a judgment on something that was unable to pay.
So when your mom was there, you can range your mom, are you released immediately? What do you have to go back?
And i'm literally released immediately, so fast, right, that I don't have clothes. So I live in this canteen purchase, you know, jog on to and and there was some state issued boots that they sent me down from the prison.
Downer account geo because they didn't know to them, especially as one guide that I won't describe because my daughter my listening is one day this one pleasant genuine told me on my way out um remember your number because you will be back right um so they sent me out and I had the state issue boots once the case was dismissed. And I had a couple of hours left on my cancer. Do you know they charged me for the damp state issued books so they charged .
me so surprised right?
And so I come home and I got about, know, a forty seven dollars shake my mom's house. She's now a senior citizen with my stepfather in AManda. So that anger was used, this fuel to drive me through all of what I went through together, where I am today. IT was a major focus and emphasis placed on the mental health care piece of IT because I really you know I I like or like in you know mental health care to the race of life or any race in general. I mean you not run in a race without making sure that the most important piece of equipment um is is on your feet and those shoes in your tie. Um when you get back off of a room for conviction, especially a room for conviction because the pains are different, you run in the marathon to put your life back together in in order to run a marathon you have to have mental help care to take away um you know all of of of what you went to when you went to this prison system and so I was able to get through and go through um and eventually made my way all away to overturn in a conviction with the same guy who get me out ten years to the month that I got out and I was kid .
family to see much .
of them I do I see much of him but he's now um we are on the board of the center for integrity. Forensic science is is a uh organization that um again does data on wrongful science, on science that leads the wrongful conviction. So we're on the board.
We see other you know do zoom and talk. He's spending time now. I'm in retirement with his with his grandbaby and so um he share me on constancy because he just says this an example to him of what we're thrown away and he said at best when he said that I mean from the limit .
I know from research and we spoken the amount of things that need to be done some overwhelming yeah .
the volume .
of cases overwhelming. I mean, how do you even how do you even select cases?
yes. So that's what i'm saying. We select them with, again, we selecting terms of iran and realizing that the only thing that supported their conviction was this guy who ducked a ten year federal sentence.
We say, look, that's something that we wanted explore because we need to do something with that in our system. How many others are convicted based on in that nonsense, right? And so that's how we select our cases at the non profit.
We select and based on one, okay, if we take this case in in in results in a role for conviction, we refuse to stop at the pizza party or the or the clapping. And oh, it's over what he's out. We wanted take that on to make sure that we go all the way up as far as we can to implement law strategies and policies to make sure that, that doesn't happen again.
That doesn't happen without data in the world numbers in the without arguing points of cases. And that also doesn't happen if we take on a bunch cases at one time. And there is also this because we're in our emphasis of doing this work. I mean, we just don't have have as much resources as we meet.
We're getting there because but the more and more I talk and people hear me, even people who read my story, a like man, I just didn't know what to expect because again, what is negative connotations that i'd to tell you about because people often tell you, like me, i'm talking you. I have a something like you spend the day in prison. Well, how did the pictures of us in going to prison? How did they say I was supposed to? Eg, that was.
So is stuff like that. So I think that again, I think what we're doing is ground breaking. And I think that the further we go with IT and we're inviting all people to come and help us, whether, I mean, we are are doing a really spit and glue right now.
We've gotten funding from some folks. More people are starting here where we're going. So they are doing right like, again, I go on pocket. I talk in maybe surprise of every listener donated a dollar men s like what like you don't know, like you might get one hundred thousand dollars based off of people saying.
And you know what this this year, when I decide to give, i'm going to send my friends geared atoms s and them across upon a couple dollars until when they get friends over in the UK who are thinking about them in their struggles, we get people from that are listening, who come from the the therapy world, the mental health care world. We we get people that we're trying to recruit right now financially because that's another that we need to open up in life at the justice is this some of the people that we are working with have been compensated millions of dollars. I am my law firm have represented IT mean that we've been able to able to have obtain thousands and millions of dollars and judgments.
But man, how do you expect someone who's never been in charge of a pig bang, who's been incarcerated for the most impact for years of their life? How do you get them to understand and managing money in a short period of time. So as we're taking on this survey and we're learning the needs of this population were also partnering with people and welcoming people to come like teach us what business is so in the capture, so we can teach them are .
there are there risks sometimes that maybe an innocent ent project to yourselves will end up taking a case, and the person maybe appears to be wrong, fully convicted, but they did commit the crime.
I listen, I put them in a book because I want to people to earn this name in full transparency. This work is not easy.
yes. How do you select yes, judgment?
There's a vetting process, right? So know in a lot department, a lot department is being run by a fabulous legal director charlewood more so there's a process that we have, right? Or when someone says he, look, i'm growth fly convicted.
They see in in we review all the paper work. We do all of our due diligence. We talk to former atterley.
That's why I takes so long as well in so many resources are require. I've literally talking to everyone whose associated with terrence richest and fan's case, right? Because you need to have that sense of security and going out in placing your name on something.
So we have a high vetting process. And this is beyond st. right? If you can convince me, I can convince others.
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That is leger dot com, which is L E D G E R 点 com。 That is leger dot com. One of the things that was I couldn't help but think about through all of this was there is no moral case for the death penalty in the system that has a percentage of people which are likely wrongful ful .
convictions. no. And and we know, look, if the system has acknowledged that wrong ful convictions exist to the tone of there is now documented like almost three thousand of us. But I said that number is small because I don't know where they've document in this front because they not get in the right numbers. But if there's three thousand of us, you got to know we're couldn't some minutes and me and and women and death, you got to acknowledge that just by sheer numbers right and where we've got in their own um and we can't be OK as a society saying, well maybe the majority of deserved to be put the death know maybe I I was one or two or three or four hundred know all the cost of doing business there is there is no such staying. When you think about human beings in in human capital IT is no certain of the cost of doing business for the life of another yeah and .
then is IT states rights. The states choose, the states choose .
putting people to death, but the phase also have their own sorely to put people to death. They can put you to death.
but doesn't a the governor have a choice whether to in .
the states for state crimes, the governor is the person who is not federal crimes. You have the different services. The states again, the states are the teeth in this animal and I shouldn't depend on which political wind is blowing a to have um adjust outcome.
Same thing I didn't mention in terms for this case. Look, we worked with the returning general office uh, in that case early on. He was a guy by the name of mark Karen. He was a democrat. But I will say that to say that he's a democrats, so he's just giving people breaks.
He's took a whole year to go over everything that we had presented to him um and he wrote a seventy seven page brief saying a terrans richest and Frankly were innocent and they should be granted their certificate innocence with the leads to their released from federal prison he lost the election partly like three days after making this filing, a new administration came in by the name of jm mirs. This is a reality lan administration. I came in within thirty days having not deeply read anything.
They come in and and they say all with that idea was wrong and we're arguing that you should keep the guilty play because they play a guilty. Don't think about the evidence in what this guy say. And do you know the court dead? Just that.
And as the reason why we're still litigate this issue, we're hopeful now that president biden will will grant clemency partner to these guys what the the clock is ticking in. These guys were vouched for in terms of their innocence. So the same is geared atoms in history in his passion. Want you to believe IT, this is an official who was the attorney general of the highest lawyer in a state of vigano, who wrote seventy plus page. Page is going over all evidence and saying not only that that he believed that they were innocent, but he also said that they were doing minute policemen conduct that was going on in the case, and they still sit in prison going on at twenty fourth year, having been found not guilty of the crown in which their sentence was in hands to life. And we need this climactic, this part that happen we in in in the community in the family of terris an heron we've supported um the by administration, we continue to support that administration um in they are just acting I am acting on behalf of them that they may be shown Grace now given into the political uh muddy waters of this a this atter who involve who's going on in office, i'm just big and on behalf of them that they shows them some mercy and Grace and give them their life back all the .
significant differences between the two parties in the U S. And how they treat this good and bad on both sides because i'm not aware of much. But I I do remember don't trump one point coming out saying quite clearly it's uh, there is required reforms within the prison he to the economics of, he's a businessman, he says we as a country of waiting in taxpayers money here, yes, but is there differences between the parties?
There is a difference between the party. But but I D just say, you know, again, without without swimmin his muddy war as much, right? Whether IT be the right or whether they be the left, the issues that play our system seem to always take the bag burner in A R tended to last.
I argue that if we tend to them first, we have a Better society, a Better a culture, a Better resort. And we also keep generations from following soup going into the prison system. And i'll use this analogy to help, you know, really reach folks.
If we had a car company that on an average, over fifty percent of people you know who purchase cars within two to three years, the cars are back on a production line because something is wrong with him, we would have a national debate on congress, you be love past, we would put their car company out of business or require that they get IT right? We have over fifty percent of people right now in prison where they've come back to prison. Why on't we looking at the prison is that are continuing to punish ed, the people who come in in a prison.
Well, I think it's think is everything we said so far as somebody y's making money from IT IT could be subconscious racism. They could be a lesson. This is probably combination .
of reasons absolute to try.
But but there's not enough incentive to do IT requires good people to do hard things where they're not necessarily going to .
benefit themselves and things.
But just this number of complex industrial complex is within the us, and they're all becoming more, more of I think I think it's been talked about more. Yes, people are understanding that the big companies and the government, a kind of fucking everyone.
I hey, here's what we'll tell you if you don't believe that. And there's no way you don't believe that there is a solution that could be tides of money and businesses and stuff like that.
I think you imagine most of the time when people are committing crimes, they do they do IT out of a sense of need of some form, right? Um and bill gates, you know, sit this best and I believe i'm called in bill gates that we're not gonna lock our way about a crime. We have this synthesize people right? And you a signified people by giving him jobs, work something to strive towards, goals and stuff like that to hit you know, again, when I go back to that warm drugs and the money that was used in, the money that was placed in there, IT, resulted in a displacement and disfranchisement of black and Brown communities because all of the father's uncles, and once were being being locked up, right? We ve seen the car is that is left.
So why do I take a fraction of that and have a war on revitalization of those communities? Why want to do a war on childcare for single mothers? So that way, when they go so work and concentrated on work in school and Better in their education, they don't have to worry about the key is common to accept or able to gun violence and being shot or joining gains.
Why don't we have a war on putting back infrastructure in our community? And why don't we have a damn war on getting the best of the best teachers in the worst of the worst school system? So that way we can have the best results from the keys that are growing up .
and who get next. I mean, like I agree with you will make sense. Isn't this a historical race issue though?
IT is a historical race issue, but is also a historical resource issue. Yeah right where where where again um we have to we have to continue to try is what we have to do safe thing right? Yeah but we also have to try new things, you know like we don't have to continue to donate to the same new organizations or ideas.
We can donate the new ones. We can get behind new ideas. And again, i'm tally, I believe research that we're doing as a new idea, and that's really what we have to do. We have as as a society, not only do we have a vote, but we can make choices, what our money that can be impactful, right? So if business owners, if if the the the e elite, you tackle the issue at a time, right, I believe we have far greater chance at an impact.
Yeah okay. So what is the plane ahead?
Here's the plan. I would first save this to keep more insight on his idea. Grab the book or deming justice, right? And I I will tell you it's the audio book is well too and grab the book because it's gone to tell you about numbers, about the issues that we have and also provide a solution um in terms of what we believe we need to do.
Follow us at life, at the justice dad or we are are you know we doing our websites to update the work that we've been doing um the research that we've been doing and going out to do. Um we've also uh been making progress with our mental health care program because it's not just the mental health care program, aren't to be exact, our mental health care program is this we are training mental heal care providers on how to specifically provide therapy to people who have been wonderfully convicted because again, we suffer different things. There are women examples that we have who've been found one found guilty wrong fully of killing their their child, right? That's a different type of impact.
That's a different type of need. So we are specifically training. There is on. And then again, we're going out with this survey. In order to go out with a survey, we need boots on the grounds. We need people in the courthouse and stuff like that to do that. So the future for us and for me and my continued steps of life at the justice is getting this work done, because I believe that the solutions that this worker produce will have a heart beat, even when mind stops. Are one last .
question is kind of a big question. But you ve got this mission now that you're on this life mission and the work you're doing office good in impact in people's lights, almost certain. Ly, if you hadn't have been incarcerated, you wouldn't be on this. So when you look back, are you, would you change things?
I just.
I don't have you .
ve been asked that i've been like something similar to that in August, say, is in time into a number, the Price for admission was way more expensive than I would have been well, in the pay to get to where I am right now and the sea because who knows maybe the mark zuker d from the south of chicago, right? Maybe accused created, you know, the apple phone, right? Oh, maybe I just could have lived, raise the family, enjoy my life, all the all of those things I deserved, right? So when I answered a question, I say this, I don't regret anything, because the regret would be too heavy to Carry. I live my life after justice, being thankful.
Well, man is amazing, incredible what you're doing. Thank you um and I wish you the best. If people want to help they want to abroad, you, what should they do?
Life after the justice data work is is supporting the mission, the data of numbers. And again, look, I know a lot of times people don't give because they feel like, what does this five hours going to do? Five hours and you gna get a personalize response.
Come back for us thanking you, keeping you in the email list of the things that we're doing. You'll ably get a email update of our of our VC. We returns from around because we are claim in IT, right? And keep in our faith on that.
Buy the book redeeming justice. And again, i'll tell you to buy the book because you probably notice, you know get rich for selling books, right that's not how I weren't right. Um I believe there is a vessel in a tool to pass on an understanding right and is almost like to behind the scenes of this pie cares.
So if people want to behind the scenes, buy the book or deming justice, but goal, visit life at the justice that buy a shirt to support. You know, you could donate five dollars, kill in the evening this. So that way we can tell you what we're doing, because we never know who sit at home watching football, the one that you kick right now will we tackle, right, but watching football instead themselves.
I used to run in this company. Who knows how to take data and convert IT into the numbers. That makes sense. Let me, let me throw something across upon and see if I can help these guys out. We are refusing any help at all, even if that helped support a sharing in a story and given behind us as we march towards the end of this year. And administration hoping that we get time and for freedom.
get you accept in .
bitcoin in so B, I, I listening. G, bitcoin is like real above my pay. Gray, I need to understand IT, right? I know the the the strength in the power. So I attracted IT to that, right, being able to have that that financial security and being able to be the decision maker in the wealth and how you how you share IT and and use IT, but is just like over my pay Grace. So I need to have a session and I need to listen more to your park, has to find out more about.
you know, what need to be done. Because this is like phrase that people say that bitcoin xs IT, yeah. They look at things like war, and they say the problem with the military industrial complex is the government of as much money as they want.
yes. And so you get these turn. Als, if you don't if you have a fixed money like like a hard money standard, you can't do that.
Yeah and i've talked about that with the food industry. There's so many different things. yeah. I just wonder how this relates to the the prison industrial complex is going to .
go away and never think about I mean, I M I would love for us continue to follow this versatile. I really do believe again, the answers they they start and stop with numbers, data. And i'm some of you you just made a great point, if they can have an unlimited amount of money that they can spin on corrections in our system. Um it's been proven that draw a money at the .
day fix IT. Yes, I listen the stand touch, get to london at some point and we will send this out. We will try get as many people who wears what you're doing and support your best we can.
Thank thank you for.