The Culture War - Tim Pool - The Culture War #3 - Damien Echols Of The West Memphis 3, Paradise Lost

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00:00:57.060 We are hanging out today with Damian Eccles of the West Memphis Three.

00:01:02.200 You may have seen the story in the documentary series Paradise Lost.

00:01:05.720 I think the simplest way that I can describe this is the state tried to kill a person,

00:01:10.640 basically to placate angry individuals.

00:01:13.640 I'm very much against the death penalty.

00:01:15.220 And so, you know, a story about the government wanting to kill someone and imprison several,

00:01:21.000 a couple others because it made their jobs easier is it's a crazy story and it's captivated

00:01:27.100 people for decades. So, Damian, thanks for hanging out with us.

00:01:30.980 Thanks for having me.

00:01:31.880 Yeah, this will be I think this will be fascinating. We also have Cassandra Fairbanks

00:01:35.160 because admittedly, this is a subject I am, you know, I can talk about politics,

00:01:40.340 philosophy and my views on the case.

00:01:41.740 But Cassandra seems to know everything, you know, probably the second most maybe next to

00:01:46.460 you, Damian, about what actually happened.

00:01:48.380 I wouldn't say that.

00:01:50.240 I'm exaggerating. I'm being hyperbolic.

00:01:51.660 I, you know, I've followed for years because I was, you know, a little goth kid who was,

00:01:58.720 you know, when it came out, I was like 12 years old and I watched it and I was like,

00:02:02.160 how could this be?

00:02:03.100 And I think I've read almost everything I could find since then. And I'm, I'm old now. So it's

00:02:11.180 been a while. So I'm very happy that you're here and you're free and we're speaking to you.

00:02:16.860 Thank you. I've actually seen you a few times online, like defending us. And that was what

00:02:21.100 made me say, like, whenever you guys asked it, I want to come on. I was like, yeah, because I

00:02:25.240 honestly, I don't enjoy like, you know, talking about this stuff. Like it's in a lot of ways,

00:02:30.080 it's, it's incredibly traumatic. So it just helps knowing you're going into a situation

00:02:34.180 with somebody that actually knows the details of things and, and that has shown support through

00:02:39.020 the year. So I appreciate that.

00:02:40.700 I think we'll have a mix of people who are deeply invested and know the story going back

00:02:44.860 decades and some people who are rather new to it. So, you know, how do you, how would you guys

00:02:49.020 propose starting off what, what this, what this story is? I mean, you were on death row.

00:02:52.940 You were accused falsely of taking the lives of, I think it was three children.

00:02:57.200 Yes. Yes. I was in, I was arrested in 1993. I ended up spending 18 years and 76 days on

00:03:04.080 death row. And I was accused of killing three eight-year-old children as part of a human

00:03:10.520 sacrifice in West Memphis, Arkansas.

00:03:13.440 Wow. 18 years, man.

00:03:15.820 Yeah.

00:03:16.320 That's, that's insane. How did, I mean, where do we begin? How does, how does something like

00:03:20.240 this happen? How did, how did it come to be? It was, it was you and two of your friends,

00:03:23.140 I believe, correct?

00:03:23.560 Exactly. Yeah. One, one of the guys was really mentally challenged. They said he had an IQ

00:03:28.500 that hovered somewhere around the, like the range of 70 to 72. So he was, I mean, if you look into a

00:03:35.300 lot of these like false conviction cases, one of the things you find is that a lot of them involve

00:03:40.840 false confessions. If you take someone with a really low IQ and put an incredible amount of

00:03:46.080 pressure on them, they're really susceptible to finally just saying, okay, I'll admit to whatever you

00:03:51.140 want me to say, just stop what you're doing. And that was pretty much what happened in this case.

00:03:56.080 They, they picked up a mentally handicapped guy. I think he was 17 at the time and did what

00:04:03.900 amounted to psychological torture for, for many hours. I can't even remember how many hours it

00:04:09.180 was now. It was, you know, this was like 30 years ago. But he finally confessed to the crime

00:04:15.060 and implicated me and someone else. So all three of us, I ended up getting, I was sentenced to death

00:04:20.480 three times. Uh, one of the other guys was sentenced to life without parole and the mentally

00:04:27.600 handicapped guy was sentenced to, uh, life plus 40 years. How did you, so we'll, uh, I want to jump

00:04:35.780 to the end just so people can understand how you end up here out of jail. And then we'll go back and

00:04:40.860 start going through the story. But, uh, how did, how did you end up not on death row? I mean, if

00:04:44.220 they convict, if they send you to death three times, how do you end up sitting here? So what

00:04:49.340 happened was I was arrested in 93 convicted in 94. I got out in 2011 and a huge part of what made

00:04:56.640 that possible is, uh, the way DNA testing has progressed over time. You know, back when we were

00:05:02.140 arrested in 1993, they could not do some of the testing that they can do. Well, they can even do more

00:05:08.000 advanced stuff now, which is what we're fighting for in court. We're trying to get even more DNA

00:05:11.660 testing done. But in 2011, they had finally progressed enough where they were able to test

00:05:17.240 things in such small amounts, uh, small amounts that they couldn't necessarily get results from in

00:05:22.840 93. So they test the DNA found at the crime scene and it, it ended up not only not matching me or the

00:05:30.220 other two guys, but it ended up being a match for, uh, one of the victim's stepfathers and the guy who

00:05:37.380 was providing the stepfather with an alibi. So it ended up, the DNA ended up matching them. We go

00:05:43.800 through this thing with the state, you know, you know, this, this is why I say, I always say the state

00:05:49.080 tried to murder me is because they knew what they were doing. They knew even after they did the DNA

00:05:54.140 testing and found that it didn't match us. I sat on death row for another two years while they fought

00:05:59.140 to still kill me. They were saying, this doesn't matter. You got a fair trial. That's all that matters.

00:06:03.620 The state still kept trying to push this through even after the DNA testing. And I forgot where I

00:06:09.080 was going with that. I had a point, but that's one of the other things also is, um, I did spend a lot

00:06:14.500 of time in solitary confinement over like over a decade. And it, it caused a lot of, uh, brain trauma

00:06:21.660 that we didn't even know I had until I got out. You know, I lost a lot of stuff like facial recognition

00:06:26.880 and voice recognition. It messed up my eyesight really bad, but sometimes I forget what I'm talking

00:06:32.160 about right in the middle of a sentence. 10 years. They say, uh, doesn't the UN consider anything

00:06:38.200 more than two weeks of solitary confinement torture? I wouldn't doubt it. Uh, I had a, I think it might

00:06:43.420 be less than that. I think that, yeah, maybe, but I feel like I read something like two weeks in the

00:06:49.120 Julian Assange case they were arguing. Wow. Um, so what ends up happening is I guess, uh, you guys,

00:06:55.280 uh, took an Alfred plea. That's exactly what, yeah, that's where I was going with that. Yeah. So in

00:06:59.800 2011, uh, due to the DNA testing, the state still would not give up. So my attorneys got together with

00:07:07.160 the state and they all agreed on a compromise. This compromise was something called an Alfred plea.

00:07:12.340 I had never heard of this before. Uh, you knew nothing about it whatsoever, but what it comes down to

00:07:17.220 is you get to still legally maintain your innocence while accepting a guilty plea. And the whole

00:07:25.060 point of it is so that the state cannot be held responsible for what they've done. That was the

00:07:29.500 only reason that they didn't kill me was because so many people in the outside world were paying

00:07:33.920 attention to the case and they wanted that to go away. So this, uh, this, this mentally handicapped

00:07:38.480 guy you mentioned, was he your friend? I knew who he was, but you know, he wasn't like a close friend

00:07:43.480 or anything. You know, there was like no intellectual bonding or like we shared anything in common, but

00:07:48.340 you know, I grew up in pretty much absolute poverty and so did he. So when you're living at the

00:07:54.280 bottom of the barrel in a small place, you pretty much know who everybody is. So I was familiar with

00:07:59.720 he was interrogated. He implicated you and the other guy was your friend as well, right? Exactly.

00:08:03.860 Yeah. The other guy I was really good friends with, we lived in the same trailer park together.

00:08:07.680 You know, people make jokes about that, like trailer trash, white trash, whatever. But honestly,

00:08:13.000 by the time we moved into a trailer park to us, it felt like we were moving up in the world.

00:08:17.280 Oh, wow. So he ends up implicating, uh, this, this mentally handicapped guy implicates the both of you.

00:08:22.700 Cool. And then what was the name of your friend? Is it Jason Baldwin? Jason, I didn't know if I want

00:08:27.860 to like bring up other names or whatever, but I saw, uh, I was watching the documentaries,

00:08:31.820 a documentary series. I think it was like IDF or something or whatever the ID, I think the channel

00:08:36.080 was. And they played a clip where he said he didn't want to take the Alfred plea. Yes. He didn't want to

00:08:41.680 let the state say that he was guilty, but he said they're trying to kill Damien. So I have to do this.

00:08:46.840 And I'm like, I, I, it's, it's no surprise to me. This story has captivated so many people because

00:08:52.160 it's, it's shocking how even, even, even if I, I, I just, the amount of, of fault error in,

00:09:02.960 in the story, the, the amount of evidence that's come out, the story itself, like almost, I guess

00:09:08.180 what, almost immediately or, or very quickly after the trial, people were like, Hey, wait a minute,

00:09:12.560 something's wrong with this. This doesn't make sense. And how did it get this far that the state

00:09:17.900 was just hell bent on killing a person? It, it feel, it feels like as I was saying this before

00:09:23.960 the show, I was like, I want to make sure I get this right. It sounds like you get a bunch of

00:09:27.020 really angry people. They hear this story. I mean, it's a horrible story. You know, these,

00:09:30.400 these three kids getting murdered and they say, do something, but they don't care what. And the state

00:09:35.000 just says, give them whatever. Yes. And so they're like, if we, if we, it's, it's almost like the state

00:09:39.720 would be more content with killing an innocent man, as long as it makes them look like they did

00:09:43.360 something. That, and it also makes the community feel like they have a sense of closure. Like

00:09:48.300 someone was arrested, something was done. So it's like the, I mean, there really is in situations

00:09:54.480 like that, like a kind of psychic pressure. Like when, whenever these crimes happened in West

00:09:58.660 Memphis, you could feel, it was almost like it changed the air. Like you could, it was, it was all

00:10:04.560 everyone was thinking about. It was all everyone was talking about. Like it changed that community

00:10:10.920 to its foundation in a, in a not pleasant way. And all people want is for life to go back to normal,

00:10:19.420 to, to get this pressure out of the air. And we were the scapegoats. We sacrificed these kids. Like

00:10:25.140 I said, we were white trash. Nobody's ever going to miss these guys. They were never going to amount

00:10:29.260 to anything anyway. We kill them, chalk this up to case closed and everybody gets to go on with life

00:10:35.060 as usual. Do you think they knew who actually committed the crime? I do. I do. I didn't at

00:10:40.420 first, you know, keep in mind, I was only 18 years old whenever all this stuff happened. So, you know,

00:10:46.040 teenagers aren't exactly the smartest people in the world. Um, and, and back then, like the attorneys

00:10:51.440 that I had, they told me that it was someone who's now dead. It was another one of the stepfathers of,

00:11:01.140 of one of the victims. They told me, this is the guy that we believe did it. So I took that at face

00:11:06.260 value. I thought, okay, they know they're older than me, they're lawyers, whatever. So they must know

00:11:10.700 what they're talking about. So in the beginning, I thought it was another guy. Um, you know, it's,

00:11:15.940 it's one of those things. This is really, uh, very difficult to, to talk about in a lot of ways,

00:11:23.320 but I, I think it was someone who was, and I don't want to say too much yet, but this is one

00:11:28.360 of the reasons we're pushing so hard for this DNA testing is I think it was someone connected to the

00:11:33.480 police department. Do you have like, you don't have to say who, but do you have an idea of the person

00:11:40.020 or just that it's somebody connected? I do. I have an idea of the person. I mean,

00:11:45.740 keep in mind, this is, you know, this is the, this story in a lot of ways is there's so much more to

00:11:50.940 it and it's so much deeper than, than people think. Um, you know, for example, everybody knows about

00:11:56.600 the guy, Jerry driver that, you know, he was this juvenile cop that had harassed me for years,

00:12:02.740 but he was part of like a, a very small juvenile task force that was made up of three people.

00:12:11.080 These three guys used to come through our neighborhood. You know, like I said, once

00:12:15.200 again, poor white trash, nobody cares about these kids. Uh, they used to come through our neighborhood

00:12:20.440 and, um, you know, I don't know like what all you can say on here, like what, like ratings or

00:12:26.600 outwides or whatever, but they would basically come through the neighborhood, pick up young boys and

00:12:30.640 say, either you give me a blow job or you're going to jail. There were three of these guys,

00:12:34.660 two of them were, they were cops that were using the power of the police department to rape young

00:12:40.300 boys. Yes. Two of them are now dead. One of them was forced to resign after he was caught molesting

00:12:46.220 a boy in a public bathroom. I'm sorry for laughing, but like, it sounds like that should be the lead

00:12:52.620 in the investigation in your case, right there. People, someone who's targeting children and the link,

00:12:58.340 like the DNA, um, the DNA that was found whenever we did the testing, it matched, uh, one of the

00:13:04.840 stepfathers who we also now know was an informant for the police department who was working with them

00:13:09.900 on a lot of drug cases. I've actually spoke to him, um, several years ago. I, I was on a tear and I was

00:13:18.660 just like, you know, this guy did it. What the hell? And so I went on Facebook and I found him and I was

00:13:24.160 like, why have you never given the police department dental imprints? And then I just

00:13:28.380 started pounding him. And I was like, I was really aggressive, admittedly, like really aggressive.

00:13:33.960 And he was like, you know, please read my book. I didn't do it. They had the right people. And he

00:13:39.980 was like very adamant. And so I was like, you know what, I'm not going to accuse this guy anymore

00:13:44.380 until I read his book. So I read his book and I was like, you know, there's a huge part of me that

00:13:51.360 still thinks, you know, there's so much evidence against him. But at the same time, I didn't want

00:13:56.520 to do to him what everybody had done to you. Exactly. So I was, it was a really weird situation

00:14:03.000 because he was so nice and you could tell that it has affected him for so long. Like it ruined his

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00:15:33.620 Did I mention that we care?

00:15:34.620 I mean, if he didn't do it, you know, that sucks. And so I kind of laid off and he's been

00:15:43.460 very friendly to me since. He comments on my Facebook and all kinds of stuff. But it was

00:15:48.920 weird because I originally thought it was John.

00:15:51.580 Yep.

00:15:52.680 So did I.

00:15:53.600 Who is John?

00:15:54.640 One of the fathers.

00:15:56.100 Stepfathers?

00:15:56.660 John Mark Byers.

00:15:57.600 In this documentary series I watched, there's a guy, one of the parents of the children.

00:16:03.000 Is that who he accuses? He says, these young boys didn't do this. It was.

00:16:07.640 Yeah. So the guy who accuses the other guy at first, he's the one that everyone thought

00:16:12.740 did it. Like he's the one my attorneys told me did it. And so I go on TV and this is why

00:16:17.820 I'm really hesitant to like say names or accuse people now is because back then I believed

00:16:22.340 100% that this guy did it. And I went on TV and accused him on TV.

00:16:26.540 Turns out like after they do the DNA testing and everything, it's not him either. So, you

00:16:32.080 know, I ended up, we ended up mending fences and we started like going out to dinner. He

00:16:37.000 ended up like going on like a promotional tour to talk about the case with us, try to get,

00:16:41.980 you know, more investigation done, all of that. But that's one of the reasons that I'm so

00:16:45.920 hesitant to like point the finger at, you know, I don't want to destroy someone's life

00:16:52.500 if they weren't responsible.

00:16:54.540 Right. And there's so many different people too. Cause you know, there's the person who

00:16:58.900 is at Bojangles and then there's, you know.

00:17:01.540 So, so what's that, what's that about? What's the Bojangles thing? So just to, to, before

00:17:06.680 we get into this, before we get into Bojangles, the, the, the crime is three young children

00:17:11.080 were found, not just dead, but I believe they were exsanguinated that their blood had been

00:17:15.800 removed from their bodies.

00:17:16.580 That's what, that was one of the things that they never could figure out just because when

00:17:20.340 they found the bodies, they were found in like running water. So they don't know if like

00:17:24.600 the blood washed away or like what the hell happened. You know, even it was hard to even

00:17:29.640 tell because they were found in a wooded area. So it was hard to even tell like what were

00:17:34.420 actually wounds that were put there by the person who did the killings versus like animal

00:17:40.800 predation because they were found in a wooded area, bit by turtles, stuff like that.

00:17:44.580 So they also didn't do luminol testing for, what was it? Six hours after they found the

00:17:50.140 bodies. So they were out in the running water and the elements for six hours before they

00:17:55.320 even like check to see if there's blood anywhere.

00:17:57.600 Right. Oh, wow.

00:17:58.520 Well, so just, I brought that up because you mentioned Bojangles and you explain what that

00:18:03.720 was about.

00:18:04.880 Do you want to explain?

00:18:06.400 So a lot of this stuff, keep in mind this was 30 years ago for me, but from, from what I

00:18:11.980 remember the Bojangles thing was, uh, someone that ran, you know, I don't know if they have

00:18:18.180 these everywhere or not. These Bojangles, um, chicken and biscuit places, whatever. So

00:18:23.120 the manager at one of these places calls the police and he says, there's a guy in the bathroom

00:18:28.280 covered in blood and he's like getting blood all over the stall everywhere. The police come

00:18:33.940 out. The first one does not even go inside. She just went through the drive-in window and

00:18:39.700 ordered chicken and biscuits. Oh my God. Whenever the others show up, they take the blood, blood

00:18:47.040 samples like off of the walls and everything. He left a pair of sunglasses there that had

00:18:50.580 blood on them. He smeared blood all over the walls of the stall. They took scrapings, took

00:18:54.960 the blood samples and lost them. They were never sent off to be tested.

00:18:58.520 I don't believe they lost them.

00:18:59.700 I don't either.

00:19:00.400 So it was in a separate district. So it wasn't the same police district, but it was like five

00:19:06.240 minutes away from where the boys were. And so they all knew that this was happening. And

00:19:12.520 for some reason, a guy covered in blood did not raise enough red flags for them to like

00:19:17.340 urgently like haul ass over there and question this guy.

00:19:20.740 And this, it sounds like a lot of blood. It doesn't sound like, you know, you could get

00:19:24.420 a nosebleed or a cut and put some blood somewhere, but this sounds like this guy was really smearing

00:19:29.140 a lot.

00:19:29.520 Yeah, the witnesses said that he was like covered in blood.

00:19:31.400 But part of it, one of the reasons for that, like that, that they didn't care about that

00:19:36.080 stuff, that they didn't pursue it. Like they said in court that they didn't consider me

00:19:41.580 a suspect for, I can't remember exactly how long it was, but it was a period of like weeks

00:19:46.140 after the murders. They said, you know, we started doing this big investigation and our

00:19:49.780 investigation slowly pointed us towards him, all this sort of stuff. The person that I

00:19:55.280 believe that was involved with this, that is connected to the police department, he said,

00:20:00.300 and he admitted this out of his own mouth. He said, the minute that they pulled the bodies

00:20:04.760 out of the creek where they were found, he said, the first thing he said was Damien Echols

00:20:09.600 finally did it. He went and hurt someone. My name was the first thing out of his mouth.

00:20:14.600 He admitted that. I was the person that they zoomed in on from, from minute one.

00:20:21.080 I'm going to go full conspiracy theorist on this because this sounds just

00:20:25.140 welcome to everybody for the last few decades.

00:20:29.060 And that's probably why so many people are like this story. So you have a guy walk into

00:20:33.480 a fast food restaurant covered in blood and that's, that's, that's relatively close to

00:20:37.880 the area where the kids are found.

00:20:39.400 But keep in mind, there's a lot of other people who also have very suspicious things. I mean,

00:20:44.440 Terry Hobbs, his hair was in the shoelace and, and you know, um, fires, got his teeth removed.

00:20:50.740 Like there were everybody did. There were a lot of people who looked suspicious, but the,

00:20:55.960 the, the hair and the shoelace, that was one of the stepfathers, right? Right. I mean,

00:20:59.480 your hair is going to be all over the place. That's, that's a tough one, but, but it wasn't

00:21:03.900 on his stepson. It wasn't, it wasn't, yeah, it was another one of the victims. Okay. Now we're

00:21:08.640 getting weird. I mean, but the kid, they probably did play together. There is a plausible explanation

00:21:13.980 for that. Like transfer. Yeah. I do this analogy about, you know, placing bets all the time. If you're

00:21:19.800 at a roulette table, where do you put your money? If you think you're going to win. And if someone

00:21:23.280 asked me to put my money down on a bet, it's someone, as you stated, someone probably close

00:21:27.940 with the police in some way said, cover this up. We need a scapegoat. And all these pieces sort of

00:21:35.740 come together. And I feel like Cassandra, you probably felt this way for a long time. They target

00:21:41.940 a mentally handicapped individual to get him to confess, to target the people they're going to use

00:21:47.120 as a scapegoat to cover up something they knew more about. A guy shows up covered in blood and

00:21:52.140 then all of a sudden they lose the samples. Now it sounds like someone made a phone call.

00:21:56.020 Keep in mind also at the time that we were arrested, at the time these murders happened,

00:22:00.320 the entire police department was under investigation by the FBI. Yeah. So there was a lot of really shady

00:22:06.640 stuff going on around that area. And didn't they claim that they lost the evidence in your case

00:22:12.340 also like later? And then it turned out that they hadn't lost it at all. So what we're trying to do

00:22:17.000 right now, like the DNA testing that we want to do, it's come far enough where, you know, like I said,

00:22:22.540 they can do things that they couldn't even do in 2011. One of the things they can do now is they

00:22:26.820 still have the ligatures that they removed from the children, the shoestrings. Whenever they removed

00:22:32.900 them, they didn't untie them. They just cut them so that the knots are preserved. They could do DNA

00:22:38.280 testing. Now what we're asking them to do is untie those knots and DNA test the inside of those knots.

00:22:44.580 And you would find the skin cells of whoever tied those knots. Wow. They can do that now.

00:22:50.100 That's what we're asking them to do. And I forgot the question. What were we just talking about?

00:22:55.620 I can't remember. That was too fascinating. Yeah. I just got all into it. They can untie a shoelace

00:23:01.600 and get skin cells from the inside of the shoelace. It's unvac testing. Yes. And they can also tell

00:23:06.820 you, like, if it's more than one person's DNA, they have the technology now where they can separate

00:23:12.980 that and show you, okay, it was this person and this person. It's a combination of two people's DNA.

00:23:17.700 And there's also a good chance that whoever did it had that in their mouth at some point. Because

00:23:22.100 if you're trying to hold somebody down and you're trying to tie, you know, there's probably, you know,

00:23:27.340 I bite things all the time when I'm like tying it or opening a package or whatever. And they've

00:23:33.040 gotten tons of DNA from like duct tape and things like that because people just, you know,

00:23:38.000 bite it to rip it off and don't think about it.

00:23:40.360 Are there, I assume there are, but are there still people who think you did it?

00:23:44.220 Oh, I'm sure there are. I mean, I've seen, you would, you know, like you said a minute

00:23:47.580 ago, going full conspiracy theory. I saw a video one time on YouTube and I can't remember who

00:23:52.200 this guy was or the name or anything else, but somebody put up a video proving that I was

00:23:57.660 a reptilian. They do the thing where they slow it down frame by frame. And they're like, you know,

00:24:04.460 in this frame, you see for a split second, he loses control of his human form and his teeth get

00:24:09.920 jagged and all this kind of stuff. So there are people who say that like the reason that I was

00:24:16.380 freed was because I was connected to this, you know, Illuminati reptile conspiracy or whatever.

00:24:23.840 And they were looking out for their own and I was released because of that.

00:24:26.980 Why would you be arrested in the first place if that was, if the reptilians are controlling

00:24:30.600 everything?

00:24:30.960 You're talking sense now.

00:24:33.040 Well, then here's talking sense. Why would someone who is guilty be consistently pursuing

00:24:38.160 more investigation, more DNA testing? That to me, I mean, proof is proof and evidence is

00:24:44.760 evidence. But for me, you know, you're sitting here saying, please keep investigating, please

00:24:49.680 do more because I'm innocent. And that says a lot. The state could just do it.

00:24:54.180 We have the opportunity right now. Like they could to do this testing would only take something

00:25:00.660 like three days. We have the ability right now. If they were to do this testing today,

00:25:06.240 within three days, we could show definitively who committed these murders. This could be put

00:25:12.540 to rest once and for all. But the state is doing everything they can to prevent that from happening.

00:25:18.000 We've even told them, you don't have to pay for it. We will pay for it. We'll raise the money.

00:25:23.200 However, we have to raise the money to pay for this testing ourselves. And still, they will not

00:25:28.360 do it.

00:25:29.200 I have one question. I mean, I kind of know the answer to this, but I'm assuming that other people

00:25:34.080 might not. Is there anyone from the families who are still alive that still think you did it other

00:25:41.780 than Terry?

00:25:42.940 There are. There's one of the children's family members. I think they're probably still in West

00:25:50.480 Memphis. I haven't heard from them in years and years. They kind of went underground.

00:25:53.640 The reason why they're claiming that they won't do the DNA testing is that you don't have

00:25:58.680 jurisdiction because you're no longer in prison, right?

00:26:00.920 Right.

00:26:01.360 So even the family members who think that you did it, but especially the ones who don't,

00:26:08.480 because they know a lot of them don't now, couldn't they request the DNA be tested?

00:26:13.660 They could, but the state still wouldn't do it.

00:26:18.100 You would think that they would want to, even if you were guilty as all get out, you would

00:26:24.160 think that they would want to just put the rumors to rest, just once and for all figure

00:26:29.220 it out. If not for you, then for the families and for the community there, because they might

00:26:36.880 still have a killer living among them.

00:26:38.400 Almost every single thing about this case defies common sense, logic, and reason.

00:26:44.840 Sort of, except for the common sense that, well, the state is implicated in this.

00:26:49.540 Yes.

00:26:50.100 That's, I mean, I often say, Occam's razor, in the absence of evidence, the solution that

00:26:55.980 makes the least amount of assumptions tends to be correct. If you've got party A saying,

00:27:01.500 do not investigate, stop, stop. And then you've got the accused being like, please,

00:27:06.060 please investigate. This can exonerate me and it can prove I really did it. And then the

00:27:10.140 other group says, nope, nope, nope. It's like, I'm kind of looking in your direction at who

00:27:14.120 the guilty party might be.

00:27:15.360 Yeah.

00:27:15.740 I think it might implicate something with the state. As you mentioned, the police may be

00:27:20.300 worse.

00:27:21.080 What they're used to doing though, is they've kind of through the years sort of realized

00:27:26.060 or seen that if we can just hold out long enough, something else will happen that will

00:27:30.140 draw people's attention away, distract them, a new shiny object appears, and maybe this fades

00:27:35.720 away and everybody forgets about it.

00:27:39.540 No, go ahead, go ahead.

00:27:40.880 So I know under the Alford plea, they did that entirely so that you can't sue them, right? But

00:27:49.240 if they did find the, like the real killer and they had DNA and it was proven beyond a reasonable

00:27:56.340 doubt that you did not do it and that they had the person who did.

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00:28:58.380 When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins

00:29:04.160 Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you.

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00:29:22.980 Did I mention that we care?

00:29:27.860 Could you, would it nullify the Alfred plea in that case? Would you be able to see them?

00:29:32.860 That's one of the things that nobody knows for sure just because there has never been a situation

00:29:38.620 like this before. You know, this is a first time, unique, unprecedented situation. So it's

00:29:45.300 almost impossible to say what could happen. I mean, in a just world, it would, you know, in a just world,

00:29:53.980 it would, this situation would be rectified in a lot of ways. You know, somebody else would be sent

00:29:58.960 to prison. The people who covered it up would be held accountable. We would be able to sue the state

00:30:02.800 of Arkansas. You know, a lot of things would be fixed. But the fact of the matter is nobody really

00:30:08.900 knows. They're sort of making it up as they go along.

00:30:11.720 Who would be able to make the call to get the test done? Is it only in the hands of like the state

00:30:17.800 Supreme Court now? Or could like the governor, is Sarah Sanders, is the governor now? Could she step in?

00:30:23.580 I don't know if she could or not. But I mean, she's the governor. So she could definitely,

00:30:28.600 you know, look into it or apply a little pressure or even because there's a bunch of ways that this

00:30:34.220 could happen. Like, for example, the prosecutor, the attorney general, any of these people, the judge,

00:30:40.740 any of these people have the ability to say at any point, do the DNA testing. All of them are trying

00:30:47.160 to prevent it from being done. So she could theoretically, like even ask the attorney general,

00:30:51.820 why are you fighting this case? And that would put a little pressure because that's the only thing

00:30:56.640 these people care about. That's the only reason I even talk about this stuff is because the only

00:31:01.260 thing they care about is a spotlight being shined on. Yep. If there's no scrutiny, then they say,

00:31:07.000 what's the point? Exactly. It's like the old cost-risk analysis thing businesses do.

00:31:12.800 You ever see Fight Club? When Edward Norton's character's on the plane and he's talking to the

00:31:18.200 guy and he says, if the cost of the lawsuits are less than the cost of the recall, we won't recall.

00:31:25.400 Yes. So they would rather the cars crash and people die because that would be cheaper than

00:31:30.860 actually recalling. So the state's looking at it like that. Yep. How much, how much, what's our

00:31:35.180 monetary damage? What's our political risk? Well, it's, it's easier for the state. You have to wonder

00:31:39.380 this. Why is it easier for the state to try and kill an innocent man? What, what are the repercussions

00:31:45.720 for the state that it's worse than killing an innocent person? There must be something really

00:31:51.360 dark, deep in there. And it may, must be someone very powerful that they're scared, you know, of,

00:31:55.960 of it coming out. That, and also keep in mind that a lot of these people built careers for

00:32:01.420 themselves off of this case. You know, you had the judge went on to run for Senate and become a

00:32:05.940 senator. The prosecutor runs for Arkansas Supreme Court. Like you had a lot of people who use this as

00:32:11.440 the foundation of showing like, we're, whatever it is, that the reason you should vote for us is

00:32:17.280 because we handled this case. Yeah. And this was the height of satanic panic too. Yeah. So they

00:32:22.120 were, you know, coming out looking like heroes who, you know, stopped the satanic cult that was

00:32:28.680 running rampant. And it's like some teenager who drew some goofy pictures and they're,

00:32:32.300 yep. Yeah. But it was all over the TV back then. I mean, you had like all the talk shows,

00:32:38.660 everybody, everybody was talking about the satanic panic, which I remember very vividly because I

00:32:43.600 had just discovered, you know, the misfits, Marilyn Manson, I'm like 12 and I'm just like,

00:32:48.600 oh great. There's Columbine and satanic panic and all this stuff. It was not a good time for me.

00:32:53.920 There were a lot of kids. There's a, you ever hear of magic, the gathering, the card game.

00:32:57.260 Mm-hmm. They had a, one of the cards in the early sets, this is like 94, was called Unholy

00:33:02.900 Strength. And it's a, the art is a man who's like, head tilted up and behind him is a burning

00:33:08.280 pentagram. And when they reissued the set, they had to remove the pentagram because I guess parents

00:33:13.400 were complaining about the satanic imagery of it or whatever. So like, this is a few years later

00:33:18.560 even, and people are still very much, no, it's offensive. We can't show kids this evil imagery and

00:33:23.700 you have to get it from the art and get it out of there. Eddie Munson's character on

00:33:27.000 Stranger Things is based on you, right? My daughter is obsessed with him. So I was telling

00:33:32.880 her that I was going to go meet the person that he was based on. She thought that was

00:33:37.000 very cool.

00:33:38.080 Have you ever seen the movie, The Life of David Gale?

00:33:40.840 I've heard the name, but it doesn't ring a bell.

00:33:43.340 I don't, I don't know if it, you know, you said you were on death row for 18 years. So

00:33:47.320 I don't know if there's something, something you want to watch, but it's the movie, it's a

00:33:49.940 Kevin Spacey film, which, you know, the context of that kind of changes now that Kevin Spacey

00:33:53.840 has been accused of all these things. But in the film, he is a philosophy professor

00:33:58.160 who goes to a party one night and there's this young woman who basically flunks out of

00:34:04.300 the college and no longer is a student and they have sex. She stages it as a rape, then

00:34:09.600 falsely accuses him and then flees and drops the charges. He loses everything. And then that's

00:34:17.440 the backstory. But the, the, the, the story starts with him on death row. He's giving

00:34:22.640 an interview. Another teacher he had worked with was raped and murdered. And so I don't

00:34:28.240 want to, I don't want to ruin the movie, but I guess I will. Cause it's like a 20 year

00:34:32.480 old movie. Basically what happens is he's an anti-death penalty activist, him and this

00:34:37.600 woman, his life is destroyed by this false rape accusation. Then one day this woman is found

00:34:43.000 with a bag over her head. Her hands are cuffed behind her back. She's got, you know, his fluids

00:34:48.760 in her, the key to the handcuffs, they're in her stomach and she's dead from asphyxiation

00:34:53.320 with the, you know, the bag taped to her neck. He gets accused of it. He gets sentenced to

00:34:57.180 death. And then in the end he gets put to death. And then after he dies, a video gets sent

00:35:03.100 anonymously or, or no, a reporter finds a video of her committing suicide, of her cuffing

00:35:09.460 herself, swallowing, you know, swallowing the key. She tapes the thing around her neck

00:35:13.040 and then she cuffs herself and lays down. And then he gets put to death falsely causing

00:35:17.240 this panic and everything. I just think it's, it's a, I don't know. I, I, I'm just reminded

00:35:22.140 of a, of that movie, I suppose, thinking about your case and, you know, being on death row

00:35:27.040 for so long, innocently. I guess there's no point to tell that story about the movie

00:35:31.400 other than I, I think it's a really great movie. And I'm just wondering, uh, you know,

00:35:35.780 what, what, what was going through your mind when they convict you, when, when you got convicted,

00:35:41.340 they immediately say that they were seeking the death penalty. Oh yeah. I, I believe they even

00:35:46.140 said it before, before the trial. I mean, we knew, I mean, they were charging me with capital

00:35:50.440 murder and there's all, there were only two penalties in Arkansas for capital murder. Either

00:35:55.320 you get life without parole or you get the death penalty. And I was the main one that they

00:36:00.600 were gunning for. So we knew going into that, into that courtroom that they were going to try

00:36:05.120 to give me the death penalty. When, um, so the jury deliberates and I think it was a relatively

00:36:11.940 short deliberation or was it? I can't remember. It wasn't very long. I can't remember exactly how

00:36:16.920 long it was, but I know it was, it was like less than 24 hours. Yeah. Uh, what, what was going through

00:36:22.820 your mind when, you know, they come back in and, you know, it's, it's weird, like talking about that

00:36:26.800 in, in, in a lot of ways is very, very difficult just because looking back on that time, it's almost

00:36:32.600 like trying to remember somebody else's memories. Like I'm not that person anymore. Like so much time

00:36:39.640 has passed and so many different experiences that it, it changes you. So what I remember from that time

00:36:47.320 period is part of you knows that you're screwed, but part of you also keeps thinking, surely at any

00:36:59.940 minute, somebody's going to fix this, you know, surely somebody's going to come to their senses

00:37:06.520 at any time. Surely an adult is going to come into the room and put an end to this. So there's part of

00:37:13.440 you that knows that you're screwed and part of you that still has this like clinging to hope

00:37:21.020 that somehow, some way this is going to turn out okay. And I think a lot of people keep doing that

00:37:27.080 all the way up until the point that they're executed. Wow. One thing I hear a lot is that

00:37:32.060 in so many, so many stories that I've heard, you'll get people either, you know, people who have watched

00:37:40.280 maybe televised court, televised trials or who were there and they'll say, oh, his, his attitude was,

00:37:47.920 was not of someone who was innocent. They, they, they know exactly how you're supposed to respond.

00:37:52.780 And that's what they said about, there were people saying the same thing about me.

00:37:56.900 No, it's exactly that, you know, you didn't react the way an innocent person should have reacted.

00:38:02.260 You know, I don't know. How do you feel? Or like, what do you think?

00:38:04.520 I mean, it's, it's, it always reminds me in, in like a kind of roundabout way of that quote by Mike

00:38:10.480 Tyson, that everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the face. It's like, it's easy to say

00:38:15.700 what you would do or what someone should do or any of that when you're not the one in that

00:38:21.380 situation, when you're not an 18 year old, you know, teenager, barely more than a child

00:38:26.320 yourself going through the most incredibly traumatic event that you can possibly imagine

00:38:34.000 outside of being murdered yourself. You know, it's easy for people to say what they would

00:38:39.200 have done in that situation, but you, you really do not know what you would have done in that

00:38:44.920 situation until you're in it. You are in shock. You are in trauma. You're doing everything

00:38:50.540 you can just to keep putting one foot in front of the other. And people deal with that in different

00:38:54.960 ways. You know, one of the guys like the, the, the mentally handicapped guy, that the entire trial,

00:39:01.460 he laid there with his head on the table pretty much the entire time. They said that means that

00:39:06.640 shows he was guilty because he behaved that way. I sat up, you know, I maintained eye contact with

00:39:12.340 anybody. Like I've got nothing to hide. You know, I'm an open book here. They said, well, that he's

00:39:17.580 arrogant. That proves he's guilty. There is nothing that any one of us could have done in

00:39:22.320 that situation that someone wouldn't have taken as saying, oh, you know, I'm reading their body

00:39:26.700 language or whatever it is. And, and I think they're guilty. There's nothing that we could

00:39:30.700 have done that someone wouldn't have said that. Jason looked like the most wholesome, like small

00:39:35.480 child ever. Like he, you know, you all had such different personalities that, yeah, it just,

00:39:44.360 it doesn't matter what you would have done. Exactly. All of you are so different and couldn't

00:39:48.700 be more different. And all of you were found guilty. Exactly. And I think, oh, no, no, no,

00:39:54.220 I don't know. You know, I did see, there were a lot of people who thought that you, you seemed

00:39:59.200 really smug, especially in the first one. But it, to me, it seemed like you just didn't believe

00:40:04.080 that you could actually be convicted for. It seemed to me like you were kind of making light

00:40:08.200 of it because you're like, this is ridiculous. Like, surely. Yes. That's how part of you feels.

00:40:13.620 Like, that's what I mean about, like, you keep thinking, surely at any time, somebody's going

00:40:18.420 to step in and fix this. You keep, you know, there's part of you, like I said, you go back

00:40:22.740 and forth. It's almost like you're on the seesaw or something where part of you, one day you get up

00:40:26.840 and you're like, I'm damned. These people are going to kill me. These people are, are in a fit of

00:40:31.880 bloodlust and are not going to stop until I'm six feet in the ground. And then the next day you get

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00:41:37.240 When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins

00:41:43.020 Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care

00:41:48.020 about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying

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00:42:03.040 Did I mention that we care?

00:42:06.560 And part of it, I think, honestly, is because we're raised on this diet of all these programs

00:42:11.520 like Matlock and Perry Mason and all these movies where the, you know, the truth always comes out

00:42:16.480 in time and it manages to save people and all this kind of stuff. Like we've almost been programmed

00:42:20.960 to believe that stuff from the time that we're watching, you know, TV as children. So that's

00:42:26.640 still in you. You keep thinking, you know, you go from like, these people are going to murder me to

00:42:31.060 these people can't do this to me because I didn't do this. And if I didn't do this, then it's impossible

00:42:36.560 for them to prove that I've done something that I haven't done.

00:42:39.640 An important lesson I've learned in my life and I'm sure most adults understand is that the world

00:42:44.880 is comprised of human perspectives.

00:42:48.100 It is not, it is not a world of mathematical fairness or unfairness.

00:42:53.320 You cannot calculate it. It's simply

00:42:54.960 there are people who believe, well, this is the law.

00:42:58.680 The law says you can't do it. So how could they do it?

00:43:01.320 Well, I got news for you. The law was made up by people.

00:43:04.360 Yes.

00:43:04.700 People can do anything they want.

00:43:06.160 Yes.

00:43:06.460 So there's so much of this world where you'll hear people just, they're confined by these rules

00:43:13.360 and structures. But then there are people who understand that the rules and structures

00:43:17.100 are just ideas that man has created. I guess what I'm trying to say is exactly in your situation.

00:43:22.840 So many people are probably believing the government wouldn't lie. They're here to protect us.

00:43:27.280 The police are trying to stop the criminals. They wouldn't lie.

00:43:29.860 And you have to explain to them, human beings could lie. And what if those cops are the criminals?

00:43:36.600 But so many people live below that understanding.

00:43:39.940 Yes.

00:43:40.220 It's a scary thought, especially when you look at the government in any context.

00:43:43.820 Yes.

00:43:44.280 Paradise Lost, I think, was the moment. It's probably why I'm a writer now. It was like the moment where

00:43:49.820 I was like, the justice system's corrupt. Our government is corrupt. Like it was,

00:43:54.480 I was like 11 or 12. And I had always seen, you know, cops are the good guys.

00:43:59.080 It was their officers at school, all that stuff. And so at that moment, it like flipped in me.

00:44:04.700 And I think that's why I was so into like the Julian stuff and all of that. Because I was like,

00:44:08.780 you know, our justice system's bad.

00:44:10.840 It's, you know, it is better in a lot of ways than a lot of places in the country.

00:44:15.500 But human beings are always the ones running it. And the justice system is only good

00:44:19.280 as the scruples of the culture. So if you've got, you know, you look at some of these other

00:44:25.460 countries and you can bribe cops left and right, you get pulled over, you give them a bribe.

00:44:30.360 United States, you offer a cop a bribe, you're probably going to get arrested. And he's going

00:44:33.000 to be like, I'm not going down because you offered me a bribe. I got it on camera. You're under

00:44:36.020 arrest. You can't do it. The issue, however, is that humans are still humans. And if it turns out,

00:44:40.920 the criminals are the cops. I mean, I don't want to get too political and get to too many current

00:44:44.540 events. But there's a big story right now about police officers who killed a man after a traffic stop.

00:44:49.920 And the insinuation is these cops may have been involved in some kind of criminal activity

00:44:55.520 themselves. The assumption can't be that just because you're wearing a uniform or a badge or

00:45:00.180 in government, you are somehow not human or different. When I was on death row, we had a

00:45:06.260 cop on death row, a cop in New Orleans. What had happened was a woman had filed some kind of complaint

00:45:11.380 against this cop. So he hired a hitman to kill her. Whoa. So this cop and the hitman that he had

00:45:17.280 kill this woman were both on death row. Wow. And, you know, like you're saying also about the law,

00:45:22.580 like people have this idea, like the law is cut and dry. The law says this. It says you can't do

00:45:26.760 this. It says you can't do this. And in reality, for just about any law that's on the books, you can

00:45:31.680 find two that contradict it. Yep. This is why so many lawyers, like before they go into law school,

00:45:38.280 they major in philosophy because what it comes down to is not what the law says. It's who can make the

00:45:44.160 more convincing argument. Yep. It's sales almost. Yes. I love this example. You can get pulled over

00:45:49.540 for going through a yellow light. You can get pulled over for stopping at a yellow light.

00:45:54.180 People, people, it depends on the jurisdiction for sure. But let's say you're, you're, you're driving

00:45:59.640 on the highway and the light turns yellow. So you hard break, cop pulls you over and says that was

00:46:03.660 reckless driving. Let's say the light is yellow. So you tap the gas. You're, you're not even,

00:46:08.900 you're only a couple of miles over at that step. Sorry, you were speeding. Yes. Or that was

00:46:12.380 reckless. If the cop wants to, he's going to make up that reason. And he's going to tell you,

00:46:16.540 tell it to a judge. Yes. And then you better hope. So actually that's a, that's a question I have for

00:46:21.060 you. I wonder, um, if you had a high powered attorney, you know, if you had a million dollar

00:46:25.760 law firm backing you guys, would, would, would this have happened or would they have just backed like?

00:46:32.420 It's hard to say. I mean, I think if we would have had that level of money and, and prestige or power

00:46:37.960 or whatever you want to call it, I don't think we would have ever been in that situation in the first

00:46:41.080 place. I think the reason we were in that situation is because they considered us throwaway. You know,

00:46:47.020 we were something that nobody was ever going to question. Nobody's ever going to miss these guys.

00:46:51.260 Like they're nobody, you know, these are people who live in poverty that have no kind of political

00:46:56.780 connections or anything else. So nobody's going to question this. So I got it. I just, it just feels

00:47:03.920 like a component of the degradation of American culture. The idea that I love about America is

00:47:10.580 that we are, there's classes in this country, of course, you know, there's rich people, there's poor

00:47:15.640 people, but you could come from the gutter and work your way up to the top. There's not supposed

00:47:20.560 to be a person in the society that can, is that no one in the United States is supposed to be

00:47:24.420 considered throwaway. Right. This is the, this is the country where you can be a white trash trailer

00:47:29.360 park kid. And then one day the president walks by and you say, F you, Mr. President. And they have

00:47:34.380 to respect that you have the right to do that because you are not throwaway that everyone in

00:47:37.860 this country does matter. And that's what makes America so much better than many other countries,

00:47:41.760 especially, you know, other countries that have overt class systems that you're not allowed to

00:47:45.960 move through. Right. But it's the craziest thing to me that there are stories like this. And then

00:47:51.560 there's also, there's that story of the affluenza. Have you heard of that one? You know,

00:47:56.340 what I'm talking about, right? Cassandra? Yeah. The rich kid gets into it. Brock, whatever.

00:48:00.720 The kid accused of rape. Yeah. He, he, he, what do you like? He's caught, I believe, right?

00:48:05.900 Yeah. I didn't follow it very closely. And then the judge says something like he's suffering,

00:48:09.200 did the judge say affluenza? Or I think. I think his lawyer argued it. I have no idea.

00:48:14.040 They said basically that he's been so pampered and so wealthy that he didn't understand what he

00:48:18.380 was doing was wrong. So he shouldn't be punished. And you get, they slap on the wrists. I mean,

00:48:23.540 right now in New York City, you have people rampaging through restaurants. You have this

00:48:30.940 viral video right now of a bunch of teenagers just ransacking a restaurant. These kids aren't

00:48:34.180 going to go to jail. They're not going to get punished. This is, I mean, your story takes place

00:48:40.020 30 odd years ago, but 30 years ago. And this is what we're seeing is an anarcho tyranny. Have you ever

00:48:47.240 heard, heard that phrase before? No. The idea being that there, there is chaos, but the state

00:48:53.980 will enforce against you. And the way I view it is kind of like what you said, you're, you were throw

00:48:58.260 away. So the state knows that there's low hanging fruit. There's easy targets to make it look like

00:49:03.160 they're doing their job. Law abiding citizens who otherwise make a wrong turn, you know, oh, well,

00:49:09.040 that was an improper lane change. Here's a ticket. Oh, you were five over the limit. I'm going to pull

00:49:13.000 you over. But you get some armed, you know, criminal in a big city and the cop says, well,

00:49:17.600 I'm not getting shot. I'm not going to stop that guy. So you end up with cops who don't enforce the

00:49:22.860 law where it needs to be enforced. You end up with cops who won't charge into the building to save the

00:49:27.700 lives of children in a security incident, security situation. And then you'll end up with, oh boy,

00:49:33.460 we got a very serious crime here, but it's too hard to solve and the public's mad. Let's murder some

00:49:37.700 innocent people to be done with it. Where, where do you stand on the death penalty now?

00:49:43.880 You know, that's one of those things we were, we had just started to talk about this and we stopped

00:49:47.620 a few minutes ago, but it's really hard for me to, to say one way or the other, just because I saw,

00:49:54.860 you know, like, for example, the law says that you're not allowed to execute people who are mentally

00:49:59.980 handicapped in any capacity, you know, whether it's a low IQ or a brain damage where they can't,

00:50:06.100 or, or mental illness, like extreme schizophrenia, where they don't even understand what, you know,

00:50:11.160 what's going on really, but they do, they still do all the time. Like I'll give you one example in

00:50:16.700 Arkansas. There was a guy who he was guilty. He killed his in-laws. He shot his mother-in-law and

00:50:22.280 father-in-law and then shot himself in the head and gave himself a lobotomy, but he survived.

00:50:27.540 Wow. But he was so mentally like tore up after that, that whenever they got ready to execute

00:50:33.400 him, they asked him what he wanted for his last meal. And he says, pecan pie, they give him a

00:50:37.400 pecan pie. He eats half of it, wraps the other half up and says, he's going to save that until

00:50:41.700 after the execution. So this is a guy who had no concept of what was being done to him. And

00:50:46.640 they're still killing people like that. But I mean, why shouldn't they? I'm, I'm, I'm opposed to death

00:50:52.360 penalty, but what is the argument that someone who is below a certain understanding of reality

00:50:56.740 is exempt from, from death? I think it would be, you know, just, just the only thing I can figure

00:51:02.400 is they think maybe this person is not put them in the right circumstances and they're no longer a

00:51:08.440 danger to other people anymore. I'm not saying like, let them back out on the street or whatever,

00:51:12.620 but say, this is a kind of person that needs to be in a mental institution, you know, that, that

00:51:16.900 they could be prevented from ever doing something like this again in some way. But I would also

00:51:22.300 say there are men on death row. And this is why I say that I'm so conflicted about all of this.

00:51:26.240 And I can't really say one way or the other. There were men on new on death row that I knew

00:51:29.460 personally on death row that I knew if these men ever get a shred of a chance, they will kill

00:51:34.200 someone again. The same, the same argument for the mentally ill though, can be made for any

00:51:38.300 murderer that if a guy say, you know, kills his wife, he premeditates a murder. It's a cop,

00:51:45.380 right? The cop you described will lock them in a box and he's not going to kill anybody.

00:51:48.540 I don't even agree with that though. I know that even that honestly is, is kind of a horseshit

00:51:53.980 argument because what I saw is men like that, that they say that, you know, lock them in a box

00:51:58.500 and they're never going to do anything to everybody again. They're in a building with thousands of

00:52:02.300 people. So they're still victimizing people in there. You may have people that, you know,

00:52:06.440 are in there for whatever, whatever reasons it is. Maybe they got caught with like meth or something

00:52:11.160 like that. They weren't hurting anyone. They were just, you know, mething up, whatever the hell it is.

00:52:15.500 Uh, they end up in there. You take them and put them in the situation with a person that

00:52:20.300 victimizes them the entire time they're in there. And then by the time you put that person back out

00:52:24.800 on the street, the argument that I always make is, you know, the, the, the number of people

00:52:30.280 that will never get out of prison is a tiny, tiny amount. Almost every single person that is in

00:52:37.260 prison, almost all of them will one day be back out on the street. They're going to be in your

00:52:41.400 churches. They're going to be in your schools. They're going to be in your grocery stores. So it's

00:52:44.620 probably not the best idea to drive them insane with torture before reintroducing them into that

00:52:49.120 environment. So if you put them in a situation with people who are going to continually victimize

00:52:54.000 them, beat the hell out of them, maybe rape them, take everything they've got every day.

00:52:57.420 By the time they get released back out, they are going to be a worse person, not necessarily even

00:53:02.840 because of their own, you know, choices and actions, but they're going to be a worse person

00:53:06.720 just because they are in a deep state of shock and trauma.

00:53:09.380 That, that's actually a really good argument that, uh, has not been brought up, uh, that

00:53:14.580 much to me before, or I would say ever that these people who have committed these very serious

00:53:21.600 crimes are still surrounded by a bunch of other people. And, and, you know, what I'm hearing

00:53:26.440 is if you're a guy who did hard drugs, meaning victimless, but yourself, maybe they caught you

00:53:33.300 with cocaine or something. Right. You're now in prison with potential murderers. Yes. They could

00:53:39.140 murder you. Yes. They could abuse you. And so they've not been isolated from society. They're

00:53:43.220 still with people. Exactly. That's a, that, that's a very interesting point. Get ready for a Las Vegas

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00:54:25.120 T's and C's. 19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns

00:54:30.440 about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600

00:54:37.920 to speak to an advisor free of charge. Bet MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement

00:54:42.620 with iGaming Ontario. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops.

00:54:49.520 So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients

00:54:54.780 that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird,

00:55:02.680 I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big

00:55:08.960 on care. Did I mention that we care?

00:55:11.940 Because my attitude is, has been, the fear I have with the death penalty is that innocent people

00:55:19.380 will die. And they do. And they do. And in your case, for instance, I believe after everything I've

00:55:26.880 heard that this is clearly some kind of coverup and they attempted to murder an innocent person

00:55:30.800 because it made their jobs easier and I wouldn't put it past the state to do that. And so then I

00:55:34.820 think about stories like that and I say, I don't, I don't care if there are 10 guilty people.

00:55:41.440 The idea that a state would kill an innocent person, it, it destroys the whole system.

00:55:47.120 The, the argument, it goes back to Blackstone's formulation. Are you familiar with Blackstone's

00:55:53.740 formulation? No. He said, it is better that 10 guilty persons escape than one innocent person

00:55:58.600 suffer. And then Benjamin Franklin said, it's better that 100 guilty persons escape than one innocent

00:56:03.320 person suffer. And there's a, then there's the more authoritarian dictatorial people. Otto von

00:56:09.120 Bismarck said, it is better that 10 innocent people suffer than one guilty person escape. But that idea

00:56:15.160 doesn't work. And the, the philosophy behind it is if the people of your society believe that even if

00:56:22.340 they are good citizens, you will still try to kill them, then they have no reason to be good citizens.

00:56:27.420 In fact, they have every reason to try and subvert the system to protect themselves. The system has to

00:56:32.800 show people that if you are innocent, we will not let you die. We will not, we will do everything in

00:56:37.500 our power to try and save you. And that means there's going to be a lot of guilty people or who

00:56:42.040 we say, because there is a preponderance of evidence of innocence, we're going to try and pursue the route

00:56:47.320 of innocence. And that could get some guilty people let go. But then the incentive is to be a good person

00:56:53.360 because we will try to save you. This is why I don't like the death penalty at all, because there are

00:56:58.140 really nasty people, then I'll keep the politics out of it, who knowingly keep innocent people in

00:57:04.120 prison, whether it's the death penalty or otherwise, because it makes them look good. It makes them

00:57:09.160 look tough on crime. They can use it for their records, but then you end up with innocent people

00:57:14.460 staring down a death sentence. And, you know, I often say this, but you can speak to it way better

00:57:21.480 than I could. I tell people when I argue against the death penalty, I want you to imagine what it must be

00:57:26.020 like to have two men with guns, holding both of your arms as you're chained, walking you to die.

00:57:33.720 Imagine what, think to yourself in, in 10 minutes, I will be dead. They will kill me. And you know,

00:57:39.900 you didn't do anything wrong. What must that feel like? And then understand that, that even if it's

00:57:46.100 0.1%, the idea that you in support of the death penalty would put a person through that. I don't

00:57:53.040 have all the answers, you know, and I certainly, I think it's a really great point you make that

00:57:56.800 these people who commit these crimes, they're still with other people. And some of these people

00:58:00.060 are not violent offenders. Someone may have done heroin too much and they're a victim, but now

00:58:04.380 they're in this, this, this prison where they could be around someone who would, who would hurt them in

00:58:08.960 that way. And it's, that's a tough question, man. I don't have the answers for it.

00:58:12.040 But even, even if somebody did do a violent crime, there's a million reasons why people would fly off

00:58:17.320 the handle and do a violent crime and not actually be a danger to other people. But then there's people

00:58:23.800 who, you know, are categorically like damaged, who want to torture people, who want to hurt people, who

00:58:31.340 want to rape people. And so I think there's levels of these things. And I don't believe that, you know,

00:58:39.060 just anybody should be given the death penalty. I think that there has to be like an extremely high

00:58:43.540 burden of proof. I mean, I'm one of the few people I keep getting yelled at on Twitter because I keep

00:58:47.800 saying Alex Murdaugh. I didn't think there was enough evidence to convict him. But in some cases,

00:58:54.700 like the woman who killed Sandra Cantu, for example, the little girl in California, the fact that she

00:59:00.720 didn't get the death penalty, like blew my mind because she, you know, tortured her sexually and

00:59:05.940 stuffed her in a suitcase. And she was somebody that this little girl trusted. And, you know,

00:59:11.480 there's like a level, like, I think California, I think that's the one law that they have right,

00:59:17.740 is that they only give the death penalty if there's like an extreme circumstance on top of

00:59:23.220 the murder, like if there was torture, if it was sexual, if it was a serial killer, something like

00:59:27.280 that. In that case of the little girl, though, how is the evidence? It is solid. I mean, she confessed,

00:59:32.980 I believe, and then she swallowed razor blades and cords, the whole thing. I got really down that rabbit

00:59:37.040 hole. I could go on about that. Well, I would have to just ask

00:59:41.380 Damien. I mean, as someone with real experience dealing with this, your views?

00:59:46.700 I have one specific one, though. You've probably been asked this before. Would you support the

00:59:51.320 death penalty if you got the DNA evidence done, and they found out who it was? And, you know,

00:59:58.100 that led to finding more evidence and just absolutely proving who actually killed those

01:00:02.480 little boys? Would you support the death penalty for them?

01:00:05.360 Even in that situation, I can't say solidly yes or no. I think I would really have to look at it.

01:00:12.260 And, you know, maybe it was one of the victim's family members who was cracked out of their mind

01:00:19.740 at the time and didn't, that's not necessarily like a serial killer or something. Or maybe it's a cop.

01:00:26.860 Maybe it's someone that the public has entrusted, you know, put a huge amount of faith and trust in

01:00:34.300 to uphold society. And this person has used that position to murder someone and almost to murder

01:00:42.320 three children and then almost murder me on top of it. It would be really hard for me in that

01:00:47.720 situation to not want someone to seek the death penalty. But, you know, something you asked a while

01:00:53.340 ago, something you said, you said, what would it feel like, like if you know you didn't do this and

01:00:57.520 you've got people leading you to your execution? I'll tell you exactly what it feels like.

01:01:02.320 It makes you lose all faith and all hope in humanity. You look at everything. You look at the

01:01:08.500 system. You look at the media, you know, because the media in the very beginning, before the evidence

01:01:13.980 started to come out in our favor and all that, the media was cheering it on. Like you said, you had

01:01:19.460 like Oprah Winfrey and all these people doing it, all these episodes of shows on satanic panic,

01:01:24.060 making people howl for my blood. It makes you realize all of this stuff is flawed. It's either

01:01:32.960 it's flawed because it's, you know, humans are flawed or it's flawed because someone is making

01:01:37.680 money off of it and has a vested interest in promoting a certain image or whatever it is.

01:01:43.840 It makes you look at humanity as being absolutely lost and damned. And you just see every human

01:01:55.200 institution as dirty. It robs you of your faith in humanity. But I think it's, it's,

01:02:03.580 there are good people in this world and there are people who do fight for good,

01:02:07.720 but an angry mob is dangerous. And I think it's, it's not so much that it's, it's, it's exposing you

01:02:16.000 to the darkest element of humanity in, in, in how these machines, how they operate. I mean,

01:02:23.520 I was just talking about this the other day over something substantially less, uh, let's call it

01:02:31.340 weighted, a story that's particularly irrelevant to the average person, but really pissed me off.

01:02:36.400 Schemers, these, these, the, the, the, these, these people who, who seek personal gain

01:02:41.900 and they don't care what damage it will bring. And it can scale up from the simplest lying to the

01:02:49.560 press or, or lying to the public to get money all the way up to being willing to kill an innocent

01:02:54.520 person if it protects you. But, uh, just to, to use all of the pop culture references I can,

01:03:00.580 because I love to, it, it reminds me of, uh, the Joker in the dark night when he's, uh, have you

01:03:07.280 seen the dark night? Yeah. When he's sitting over Harvey Dent and he says, nobody cares, uh, when it

01:03:13.640 all goes according to plan, uh, as long as it all goes according to plan, even if that plan is

01:03:17.200 horrifying. Like if you tell someone that a truckload of soldiers will be blowing up or a gangbanger will

01:03:21.560 get shot, nobody cares. But if you say the mayor is going to die, then everyone goes insane.

01:03:25.040 And, and that's it. If the media is in on it, if the culture is all cheering for it,

01:03:31.420 if the people are marching out in the streets with pitchforks, then everyone is content to see

01:03:35.680 an innocent person be killed because that, that's what the, the, the, the, the human system has decided

01:03:41.480 and everybody profiting off of it. And so many of these people probably know it's not true.

01:03:45.720 Many of the people know that they're lying, but it doesn't matter because the angry mob's not

01:03:51.820 throwing the pitchforks at them. In fact, the angry mob has given them money.

01:03:54.240 And that money that gets them cheeseburgers that gets them a new car. And yes, you look at, uh,

01:03:59.280 the Covington kids story, which is again, substantially less, um, heavy. This, this,

01:04:06.300 this young kid is standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and a man walks up to him

01:04:11.180 banging a drum in his face. What does every media outlet do? They accuse the kid of being racist

01:04:16.800 because that's what makes them the money. They don't care if it's true. They're not going to check

01:04:20.240 the evidence. All they know is, Hey, Hey, look, we're going to side with the audience on this one.

01:04:23.520 This is what they said. So this is what we go for. Yep. And it gets scary when you realize it can

01:04:27.160 result in someone dying. Yeah. What's scary for HBO? Yes, absolutely. But what, what's scary also

01:04:33.160 is when you start to realize in that situation, like in the early days, I had the media do stuff

01:04:37.860 to me say stuff about me that wasn't like completely and absolutely an outright blatant lie, but was

01:04:45.700 close enough to it to pretty much qualify. I forgot where I was going with that. Um,

01:04:52.860 the media lies. Yeah. Oh, the, you know, going back to the thing about law and people think the law is

01:04:57.700 cut and dry and all this sort of stuff. There is not one single law anywhere that says the media has

01:05:01.900 to tell you the truth. Yeah. None. They can say anything they want to say. I mean, I don't even

01:05:08.380 necessarily know if HBO was trying to portray you guys as innocent in the first one. Um, I mean,

01:05:16.300 they let buyers go on there and talk about how they found the boy's, um, genitals in your house

01:05:24.480 in a jar, which was completely made up. Whoa. And they let him say that in the documentary. I mean,

01:05:29.780 they do like check him on it after, but it's like startling to hear him say it. Um, and so I'd always,

01:05:38.360 I always kind of wondered if they were actually on your side in the first one, or if the outpouring

01:05:42.920 of support from people after it was just so huge that they, they realized that they need to look

01:05:48.400 into it more. That's, that's actually kind of an interesting story. They heard about this case

01:05:52.360 because there was a very small mention of it in the New York times that said something about like

01:05:58.620 three teenagers going to trial in Arkansas for human sacrifice, something like that.

01:06:05.060 The, the guys from HBO said they flew down there thinking with a story like that, this is a cut

01:06:10.420 and dried case. These guys are guilty. We want to go down there and just film it to be like, you

01:06:14.720 know, why did they do this? How did something like this happen? That sort of thing. They went there

01:06:18.440 expecting us to be guilty. And they end the first one with you saying like the boogeyman comment.

01:06:25.340 So they, what they told us was about two thirds of the way through making the documentary. They

01:06:30.540 started to realize something's not adding up here. Wow. And that, uh, you had a public defender,

01:06:35.860 right? I think he said the same thing, didn't he? That at first he was like, okay,

01:06:39.680 you know, these kids did it. And then he goes in there and goes, wait a minute. This

01:06:42.060 doesn't make sense. I've never seen a documentary that had so much access either. And they show

01:06:47.560 everything is what makes it really startling. Like they show the boys bodies and mutilation,

01:06:53.000 everything. But the, the amount of access that they had to everyone in the town and the whole

01:06:58.280 court and everything, it was just crazy to watch. Get ready for Las Vegas style action at BetMGM,

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01:07:58.900 iGaming Ontario. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops.

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01:08:10.860 that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird,

01:08:18.620 I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's

01:08:24.300 really big on care. Did I mention that we care? And then it was amazing when they did the follow

01:08:33.100 up and they had, you know, more people on your side. And I thought that was really cool. What made

01:08:40.000 you trust them enough to be so open? It wasn't necessarily that I trusted them, to be honest. It was

01:08:45.700 that I knew I was telling the truth. I knew I didn't have anything to hide. So it's not like

01:08:50.580 there's going to be any gotcha moments or anything like that. So I went into it thinking, number one,

01:08:55.980 I don't have anything to hide. Number two, what do I have to lose? Let them film it. Let them see

01:09:00.720 what's going on. And that was it. The what do I have to lose resonates. The what do I have to hide?

01:09:07.680 Oh boy, I don't trust the media. You know, you could, they've got all sorts of tricks.

01:09:13.920 Well, now I feel the same, but keep in mind, I was an 18 year old kid with no experience with any of

01:09:18.340 that stuff. No knowledge of how the world works or, you know. Thank goodness though. Yeah, exactly.

01:09:23.820 But, you know, when I grew up, like when I was 18 years old, like I, I did not know what was going

01:09:29.940 on in the world. You know, we lived like, honestly, just like savages. I couldn't have told you who the

01:09:35.460 governor was or any of that. It was like, that was another world to us. That was rich people business.

01:09:40.660 Like that didn't affect our struggling and trying to survive from day to day. I had no knowledge,

01:09:47.300 no understanding of how the world worked. All I knew was survival in poverty. That was it.

01:09:53.320 So I didn't understand yet, like what the media is actually like or any of that sort of stuff.

01:09:59.360 Yeah. They, they love the, they love these tricks. You could, you could tell them a direct quote that

01:10:03.660 is true and they know that if they quote you, it will make it, make you look innocent. So instead

01:10:09.660 they will contextualize and paraphrase. So a simple example would, would be you saying something like,

01:10:16.360 Hey, what's your favorite pizza topic? You can say, Oh, I, I love pepperoni pizza. And then instead

01:10:22.080 of quoting you, they'll say his tone was sarcasm. And he went on to describe his quote, love for pizza.

01:10:28.620 And then it presents it as though you actually don't like it. They can, they can manipulate what

01:10:32.080 you say and get away with it. Yes. I suppose, however, the scariest thing is there's probably

01:10:37.840 a lot of people in your position or have been throughout the years since who don't have HBO

01:10:44.000 coming and doing a documentary. They estimate right now, a lot of people who work in this industry,

01:10:49.100 like the legal industry, work on death penalty cases, all that. They estimate that as many as one

01:10:52.800 out of every 10 people executed are innocent. I, that's, I can't, that, that, that, that goes

01:10:57.760 right into Blackstone's formulation for me. It is better that 10 people escape than one innocent

01:11:02.700 person suffers. And we're, and we're saying how many more innocent people suffer from that person

01:11:06.800 escaping. But it depends how, how dangerous of a person we're talking about, in my opinion.

01:11:12.020 So the challenge I suppose is. What if he gets out and kills 10 more people?

01:11:17.620 Well, I think people should have guns. Yeah. I don't know, man. I can't argue with that.

01:11:23.480 Right. So that's the challenge. It's, it's the, the safety of an individual is partly the

01:11:28.260 responsibility of the individual. And I agree with that argument to an extent, you know,

01:11:32.820 if you've got a murderer in there and you're like, well, we can't be sure there's enough evidence.

01:11:36.320 That's a preponderance of evidence, but we're not going to kill him. Well, then that, that could

01:11:39.620 still mean life in prison. The challenge then is like, we all pay for that. We often pay a lot of

01:11:44.260 money to keep people locked up. And then you still have the circumstance where an innocent

01:11:47.460 person gets life in prison, which is still bad. So I just, I, I wish this world had very easy

01:11:53.920 answers. It just doesn't. But my view is for me personally, I would rather have 10 serial killers

01:12:01.420 walking onto my property, wielding powerful weapons than to be sitting defenseless in a box

01:12:06.940 with a guard outside saying, we will kill you tomorrow. Cause at least with those 10 people,

01:12:11.740 I have a, I have an opportunity and the, the, the, the right to defend myself and the,

01:12:17.080 the, if you had children playing outside, what if your mom was outside gardening? Like, you know,

01:12:21.820 that having extremely dangerous people running around, it does put, create more victims eventually.

01:12:28.880 I mean, I don't know. But the question is then answer for it. Are we responsible back and

01:12:35.020 forth on the issue constantly? But it is, it is, it is difficult. I view it as, um, peaceful slavery

01:12:41.620 versus dangerous freedom and recognizing that I don't want to empower the state to, to kill innocent

01:12:48.840 people. But that also means I probably will be faced with a very dangerous circumstance from a

01:12:53.560 dangerous individual who probably should have been stopped and isn't and wasn't. But that

01:12:58.700 responsibility to a certain degree will be on me and not the state.

01:13:02.080 But you're also an adult. What about children who are walking to school? What about the, you know,

01:13:07.120 the kids in your case? I mean, I, if they found out somebody did it, say it was like the Bojangles

01:13:14.620 guy and he was, you know, some truck driver who was a serial killer and he gets linked to a whole

01:13:19.460 bunch of other murders across the country. I would want that person to be executed if they proved it.

01:13:24.700 Um, but again, I wouldn't trust them necessarily to prove it at this point because they've already shown

01:13:30.060 exactly how it's very complicated. Say that they come on the news and they tell you something that

01:13:36.220 seems to show with 100% proof that this person is guilty. Once again, you're back to, well, how do I

01:13:43.380 know they're telling me the truth? Right. Like to give an example, what you were saying about how they

01:13:47.760 take things out of context and all that. This is what I mean whenever I say that they did things to me

01:13:52.800 that came right up to the line of lying, but didn't, at one point I'm sitting in jail waiting

01:13:58.160 to go to trial and the news is on TV and I see this report come on saying that the police had went

01:14:03.200 back into the place where I lived because the people who had moved in there after we did had

01:14:08.500 told the police that they had found a stick in the closet that had something red on the end of it and

01:14:15.920 it had hair stuck to it. And the way the media is describing it, it sounds like they found like a club

01:14:21.240 or a baseball bat with hair and blood on the end of it. So I'm thinking like, what the hell? When I'm

01:14:28.260 watching this on the news, I'm like, I know there was nothing like that in my house. Did they set me

01:14:33.340 up? Did the cops go back and put something there? When I can make a phone call, I call home and ask

01:14:37.600 what's going on. My mom tells me it was a Sherwin-Williams paint stick that you use to mix paint with

01:14:44.020 and the hair, and it was paint, red paint, and the hair stuck to it. We had two Pomeranians.

01:14:48.900 The hair stuck to it was Pomeranian hair. Dog hair paint. And they said a stick with red

01:14:54.240 stuff on it. A red substance and hair stuck to it. And they never came on. There was never a mention

01:14:59.680 of it again that clarified what it was or anything else. Sweep, sweep, you know? Hey, we got to get

01:15:04.240 ratings. Let's do the story. That's the scary thing about, man, I wish there was an easy way to

01:15:15.020 solve the problems. I do. But when the media lies, gets a mob of people to call for blood,

01:15:21.400 then the state goes, well, look, it's easier to kill the guy than it is to argue with an angry

01:15:27.100 mob, so just do it. I've been telling people over the past few years, as we've seen increasing

01:15:31.220 political tensions in this country, when people come to protest at your house and they're screaming

01:15:36.280 and yelling, the cop's going to look at 100 people who are ready to throw bricks and say,

01:15:41.260 we can't deal with that. But we can arrest this one guy who's sitting on his couch watching,

01:15:45.300 you know, reruns of Murder, She Wrote. That's easy. And that's what they will do. And it's not

01:15:51.540 unique to this time. It's what governments have always looked at. It's the cost-to-risk analysis.

01:15:57.420 Try to stop a mob of 50 angry armed people, arrest one man, and then everyone shuts up.

01:16:02.540 That's the way they go over and over again.

01:16:05.140 Yeah. You got really lucky, though, with how that turned out and the way that they followed

01:16:11.240 up on it. And then, I mean, you met your wife through that.

01:16:15.400 I don't consider it luck at all. I consider it divine intervention.

01:16:18.220 It's incredible.

01:16:20.100 Well, are you religious?

01:16:24.140 That's a very difficult question for me to answer just because of the connotations and

01:16:31.360 preconceived ideas and stuff that people have whenever they, you know, think of the word

01:16:35.140 religion. But I believe one of, if not the most important thing in my life is deliberately

01:16:46.120 cultivating a connection to divinity. Yes.

01:16:51.560 Yeah. Maybe religious is the wrong word because I wouldn't describe myself as religious, but

01:16:56.320 I would say that I believe in something greater and I believe in some kind of universal order

01:17:00.440 or whatever you want to call it. I think there's something more to all this. And there's

01:17:06.460 this song. I love the pop culture references. You guys know that. There's a song called

01:17:09.580 Judith by the band of Perfect Circle. I don't know if you guys have ever heard it, but it's

01:17:13.640 just so good. And it's the singer, Maynard, is basically his mom had a stroke and became

01:17:19.460 paralyzed. So he writes this song about how even though he's the one who did this to

01:17:25.880 you, you keep praising his name and you never stopped to question why. And I look at that

01:17:31.920 and I'm almost like it's, it's, it's, he didn't understand, you know, when his mother

01:17:35.940 was very religious, has a stroke, but keeps praying and believing in something. And I think

01:17:40.300 that song is actually quite beautiful in the anger of a son who saw his mom hurt and doesn't

01:17:44.680 understand why she would still have faith in Jesus. I'm not saying people should have

01:17:48.840 faith in Jesus or anything like that. I just think the world is the way it is. It's this

01:17:53.940 machine that churns and calculates. But there is some, something divine that you

01:18:00.080 can, I don't know if pray is the right word or, you know, meditate to as some, you

01:18:06.000 know, more hippie type individuals, new age Ian types might, might, Ian's my friend, he's

01:18:10.820 very spiritual or whatever, or hippie might believe. But I think there's, there's a

01:18:15.340 potential for intervention of some sort to save you from the circumstances that, you

01:18:19.140 know.

01:18:19.240 I think he was a great example of good journalism, which doesn't really exist anymore.

01:18:23.940 And I wish I did.

01:18:25.680 Yeah. And, and the question I suppose is how do we find more people who are in a

01:18:30.080 similar, similar situation and then give them the level of, of media attention that

01:18:36.240 gets them, that saves them?

01:18:37.780 I don't think you could ever get access like they had back then.

01:18:41.960 I mean, in our case, it was a perfect storm.

01:18:44.220 Yeah.

01:18:44.620 You know, not only did you have the satanic panic stuff going on, which people were just

01:18:48.160 really like riveted to wanting to know more. They wanted all the, like they didn't tune

01:18:52.620 into my situation to see an innocent guy going through a trial. They tuned into my

01:18:57.580 situation because they wanted gory details. Wow.

01:19:00.700 That, you know, they were basically the public wanted to like rubberneck. And then it was

01:19:05.080 because of that rubbernecking that they realized, oh, this isn't what it was portrayed to be.

01:19:09.840 So it was just a perfect storm. I don't know how you would orchestrate that.

01:19:14.300 And it was wild. I mean, like buyers giving the knife to the HBO production crew with the

01:19:19.980 blood on it that he had supposedly never, like just all of the things. It was just so

01:19:24.640 like captivating. I mean, I, I know it's your life. So it's weird. It's weird for me to even say

01:19:31.600 that. Um, but the way that they did it, you couldn't look away from it. And I think that that

01:19:37.100 probably saved your life. They made, they made a movie about it. I think it's really cool that

01:19:40.820 they did that. Was it, who was it at Reese Witherspoon or something? Yeah. Yeah. Devil's

01:19:45.220 not. Yeah. But it's, you know, it's one of those things, like going back for just a second to what

01:19:49.800 you said about like religion or whatever, and going back to what Cassandra was just saying about,

01:19:55.280 you know, like it's, it's my life or whatever. I think a lot of people, whenever they think of me,

01:19:59.600 they think I am almost synonymous with this case. Like, like this case is me. This case is

01:20:05.140 like the, the apex or the, you know, the focal point or the crux or whatever it is of my life

01:20:10.500 situation. It was what formed me or, or whatever. And honestly, for me, it's not like that at all.

01:20:16.980 For me, this, this case was almost, this is something that I will never be able to make

01:20:22.000 people out here understand, but it was almost in a very real way insignificant to my development.

01:20:28.220 You know, this, this will sound crazy because so many people have played such a huge role

01:20:34.200 in, in the development of who I am and how I view the world and everybody else. But like,

01:20:39.760 when you're talking about like spirituality, like the reason I'm hesitant to say is because

01:20:43.860 it's another one of those things that most people have like preconceived ideas about or anything else,

01:20:48.100 but the practice that, that I, that allowed me to survive when I was in there and that shapes the

01:20:55.700 way that I understand divinity and all of this stuff is ceremonial magic, Western hermeticism.

01:21:01.320 And I always say that the two biggest people that I don't know in real life that played a huge role

01:21:08.720 in shaping who I am would be Alistair Crowley and Joel Osteen. Wow. I, you know, I credit Joel

01:21:16.220 Osteen. It's like ceremonial magic is, is one of the things that saved my life, but so is listening

01:21:21.420 to the messages of Joel Osteen. I went from one day when I was in there feeling like I can't do this.

01:21:26.500 I can't get up another day. They're going to come in the cell and find me dead tomorrow.

01:21:32.280 And it's a Sunday. You only get three, three TV channels in prison. I turn on all three of them

01:21:37.840 and they're all three televangelists. So I figured I may as well just watch one. So I just randomly

01:21:42.620 left it on the one that Joel Osteen was on within 30 minutes. I went from feeling like I can't get up

01:21:48.440 anymore to feeling like getting up and turning cartwheels. Wow. So I forgot where I was going

01:21:57.340 with this. I did have a point. Um, have you ever reached out to him or magic and get ready for Las

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01:23:28.220 I haven't reached out to him, but one time, you know, I live in New Orleans, so you have

01:23:36.620 hurricanes there all the time and you have to flee like crazy. And we, one of the times when we were

01:23:41.100 running from a hurricane, we evacuated to Houston and we thought, while we're here, why not go to his

01:23:45.740 church? So we went there. And for me, it was one of those incredibly surreal moments, you know,

01:23:50.480 seeing this guy that on a TV screen saved my life when I was in prison. Oh, that was my point.

01:23:56.200 Right. So the point of what I was, what I was getting to was like, one of the reasons that I

01:24:01.300 say that, that this isn't like the, the culmination of who I am, like I'm not synonymous with the case

01:24:06.680 is because when I was in prison, one of the things Joel Osteen says that I took away from his stuff

01:24:11.080 is he says, whatever you're going through, it's not happening to you. It's happening for you.

01:24:16.400 And when I look back in hindsight now, I see that everything I went through, don't get me wrong.

01:24:21.360 It wasn't pleasant. It wasn't easy. I wouldn't choose to do it, but I see how it made me the

01:24:27.460 person that I am now. And one of the things that it did was provided me with a kind of life

01:24:36.060 that I didn't have to think about getting up every day and going to a nine to five job. I was locked

01:24:41.520 in a cell for a decade in solitary confinement where the only thing that I had to focus on

01:24:47.380 was my spiritual practice, not belief, not faith, not hope, but an actual practice that forced me

01:24:54.480 to build a world to focus on other than those prison walls. Like I reached a point, if you're

01:25:01.460 familiar with Timothy Leary, when he was doing all the LSD experiments at one time, he ends up in

01:25:06.180 prison and Ram Dass goes to visit him. And Ram Dass tells him, we've come up with a plan to break you

01:25:11.240 out of here. And Timothy Leary says, you can't do that. I've got too much work to do. That's how I had

01:25:16.260 almost started to feel in prison by the very end. I had been so like 100% dedicated and focused on

01:25:23.300 these practices and like the way they were changing me and my experiences that I no longer

01:25:29.340 thought about the fact that I was even in prison anymore. That Joel Osteen statement, that's a good

01:25:36.080 one. It's happening for you. Yes. And I think, you know, my life was shaped by a lot of very difficult

01:25:42.940 circumstances, nowhere near as difficult as yours. But all of the bad things that I went through and

01:25:47.980 all the hardships made me stronger and more capable and able to do the work that I do.

01:25:53.040 So that is, that's a good one. You know, I wouldn't call it perfect. Some people go through

01:25:57.360 things and the end result is just bad in the long run. I agree. But I think it's about your state of

01:26:03.340 mind. And for you, it sounds like you're in this hell, but he was able to say something so simple

01:26:11.400 to you that made you try and focus on what you could build from it or what you could do to have

01:26:16.920 a better state of mind. That's powerful stuff. Or even just distract you from the misery. Like I,

01:26:23.440 you know, most of the men that were there when I was on death row, I think there were like,

01:26:27.560 give or take 30 people on death row total. And I would say almost every single one of those people

01:26:33.560 was in a living hell. And I wasn't. So that to me, that's kind of the like the testimony of what's

01:26:41.420 possible with, you know, the right mindset and being focused on what you're doing, knowing what

01:26:47.000 you came into this world to do and applying yourself to it will get you through so much hardship that

01:26:53.560 it's insane because you don't focus on the hardship. You focus on what it is that you're

01:26:58.360 passionate about, what it is that you're doing. Do you ever feel like, did you ever feel like you

01:27:03.620 were being punished for something divinely? I mean, you mentioned you felt like it was divine

01:27:07.540 intervention to get out, but I wonder if... I don't think I ever felt like I was being punished,

01:27:11.900 but I did. It was hard to get away from the feeling sometimes that this is happening for a reason,

01:27:18.020 that this isn't just... And maybe it wasn't. Maybe it was just me feeling that way or whatever it was.

01:27:25.060 But oftentimes I did have the feeling like, you know, this is for a reason that, you know,

01:27:33.940 maybe this isn't correct. Like you said, people go through horrible things all the time. A lot of

01:27:37.320 times people are destroyed by it. But I always had the feeling that whatever you want to call it,

01:27:42.140 God, the universe, the source that everything came from and to which everything will one day return,

01:27:47.300 whatever it is. I always had this feeling that it wouldn't be allowing this to happen

01:27:54.340 unless it were for a reason of some sort. And that got me through a lot too.

01:27:59.880 Yeah. It's hard to imagine the reason for some things. But, you know, I wouldn't... I think people

01:28:05.500 should... There are a lot of people who say that things happen for a reason, but then you also have

01:28:11.580 to consider that sometimes the reasons may be beyond our understanding. Exactly.

01:28:16.280 What was it like for you when you got out? I mean, you guys, you and Lori got married while

01:28:21.400 you're in prison. Did you guys move in together right away? Did like, what was it like coming

01:28:27.680 into a world with the internet and smartphones? It was absolutely devastating. You know, people

01:28:32.960 think that getting out of prison, getting off death row, that that's like the finish line

01:28:36.280 and you hit that and you live happily ever after. And we had not given one single second of thought

01:28:41.900 to what comes after this. Like the entirety of everything we're doing, we're focused on the

01:28:46.660 finish line of getting me off of death row. So when that happens, you realize it's not like the

01:28:52.000 credits roll. You know, it's not like this is the end of the story. When I walked off of death row,

01:28:57.400 I did not have a single penny to my name. I had nowhere to go. I didn't have so much as a suit of

01:29:01.740 clothes to change into. So we had to hit the ground running. I am in a state of shock and trauma.

01:29:07.080 I go from not only 20 years in prison, 10 of those, almost 10 of those being in solitary

01:29:12.000 confinement to literally overnight being on the streets of Manhattan. It completely and absolutely

01:29:16.880 destroyed me. I had a severe nervous breakdown. When people are thinking I'm supposed to be

01:29:21.740 celebrating and happy, I am breaking down and thinking life out here is harder than life in

01:29:28.380 prison was. It destroyed me to the point that I have almost no memory of the first two years that I

01:29:34.140 was out of prison. If you add up everything that I could remember altogether, it would equal a few

01:29:38.360 hours. I would, you know, a lot of it was like the brain trauma, stuff like that. But I would

01:29:43.140 reintroduce myself to the same person over and over and over again. You know, people that I had dinner

01:29:48.600 with the night before, I would reintroduce myself to them the next day, not even being able to remember

01:29:52.860 that. How are you doing now? Getting better. You know, I think I've come a long, long way in the

01:30:02.720 past, I've been out 11 years now. And, you know, a lot of it, I don't think there's any, anything

01:30:09.020 that's going to completely, you know, fix everything automatically, but a lot, a lot better,

01:30:16.460 you know, all in all. And, and once again, it's like that thing, you know, about it didn't happen

01:30:20.620 to me. It, it happened for me. It's like, yeah, I could look at that. Like, you know, even the memory

01:30:25.380 issues and the nervous breakdowns and all that as, as, you know, something horrific, but it led me to

01:30:32.380 where I am now, which is a relatively happy person. I think I'm probably happier than, you know,

01:30:39.460 honestly, this might sound weird or whatever, but I'm probably happier than 90% of the people that I

01:30:43.980 come in contact with. You know, I often say there's a lot of people who are born into this world with a

01:30:49.720 silver spoon. Everything's very, very good. They have access to the best food. They have a car whenever

01:30:54.260 they need it. And then when they become adults and now they're on their own, they lose all that

01:30:58.900 and it feels painful. But if you come from the bottom and then later on in life, you got a $600

01:31:04.740 car that can drive a little bit and you're getting a cheeseburger every day. You're like, wow, this is

01:31:08.660 great. Exactly. I can't believe how good life is. I never thought I'd be here. Exactly. So here's the

01:31:13.320 very, very cliche thing. Like, what was the first thing you ate after you got off death row and got out?

01:31:18.120 Everything. No, no, no, really. We, we went to, uh, we wanted to get out of Arkansas as

01:31:24.160 soon as possible. So the, the minute that I got out of prison, my very first stop, I had to go to

01:31:28.920 the DMV straight from prison to the DMV to get an ID, to even be able to fly. Uh, we stayed that

01:31:36.140 night in a hotel. We went out of Arkansas across the state line over into Memphis. And of course,

01:31:40.720 everybody who had supported us for years, you know, like a lot of people like Eddie Vedder

01:31:44.700 were, were there at this hotel, did like a rooftop party. One of the things he did before I got to the

01:31:50.680 hotel was called room service and had them bring everything on the menu to the room. So that

01:31:56.480 whenever I got there, everything that the hotel served was in the room. I mean, so what was that

01:32:02.120 like? I had to imagine the food wasn't too good. Well, you know, keep in mind, um, I was incredibly

01:32:10.220 nauseous. You know, that was one of the things about the brain trauma is like for the first, at least a

01:32:14.560 year that I was out, I was sick all the time. Like you're, you're nauseous, you have vertigo,

01:32:20.680 stuff like that. So it wasn't like I was starving. It's like, you know, I ate it, ate a little bit of

01:32:26.920 everything, but it was almost like just a robotic action. It's not like you're actually enjoying it

01:32:31.000 or anything because you're, you're being shattered. You know, you're going through trauma.

01:32:35.100 There's a, I think it's the green mile. I'm just all about movies. Uh, I don't know if you've seen

01:32:39.900 that one. Many times it's, that's the one where when the guy finally gets out, he hangs himself.

01:32:44.640 Yes. Right. Yeah. Yep. And that's that, that, I mean, it's a movie I know, but people need to

01:32:49.260 understand, and you can probably speak to this well, better than way better than I could as

01:32:52.160 someone who just sees it in movies, you build your entire body. You know, if you're, you were in for

01:32:58.200 18 years, every seven years, every cell in your body has been replaced. So you're, you're a new person.

01:33:03.480 That means everything that makes up who you are, your, your, your worldview, your, your consumption of

01:33:08.180 information and food, the people you interact with is incarceration. And then you come out to this

01:33:14.660 world, not only it's, it's being somewhere entirely different where everything's different. The

01:33:19.620 technology is different. I, I remember hearing, uh, um, one guy told me how he went to, he went to jail,

01:33:28.000 I think, or this was, this was a, there's a post online. This was a post online. Actually,

01:33:31.580 a guy goes to prison in the mid two thousands, only for a few years for, for some, you know,

01:33:37.240 low level felony. When he gets out, everyone's got cell phones connected to the internet.

01:33:41.260 And that, cause that jump happened from like 2007, 2008, all of a sudden, everybody had smartphones,

01:33:47.300 touchscreens that can go online. So he goes from this world where there's no internet.

01:33:51.680 When he gets out, everyone's got access to everything and it tripped him up.

01:33:56.220 Same for me.

01:33:56.880 Yeah.

01:33:57.220 Same. I went in, in 1993, I came out in 2011. That was one of the things like that I could not

01:34:04.780 understand about the world. You know, I used to have panic attacks for things like using a debit

01:34:10.760 card. You know how, when you go to the grocery store, the thing everybody takes for granted.

01:34:14.400 Now you put your card in the little machine, put your number in, and that pays for groceries.

01:34:18.220 To me, that was like alien spaceship level technology. I didn't know how to use that.

01:34:24.020 Didn't understand. Like I can remember going to the bank one time to try to deposit a check.

01:34:30.080 And when I get up to the window, you know, I wait in line when it's finally my turn,

01:34:33.800 I get up to the window and I have a panic attack and turn around and had to leave without doing it

01:34:37.300 just because all this stuff was completely an absolute, I had never used an ATM machine.

01:34:41.520 I had never used a cell phone. I had never seen the internet. You know, I had seen on TV,

01:34:46.860 like the development of things like computers. But like when I went in prison, a computer was a

01:34:51.120 glorified typewriter for rich people. Like you would put something into it and it would take 30

01:34:56.380 minutes for that printer to, you know, gradually print something out.

01:35:00.280 Oh yeah, dot matrix printers.

01:35:01.520 That's all I knew about computers.

01:35:03.560 I feel like they don't, I mean, that's got to be a key component of prison reform right there is

01:35:09.560 people need to be able to, when they leave, reenter society easily. Otherwise, I feel like

01:35:15.500 that's probably a component of recidivism.

01:35:17.160 Yes.

01:35:17.860 You get out, you're like, I don't know what to do. So what do you do? You take.

01:35:21.360 Well, keep in mind, like even talking about recidivism, I mean, there's so many rabbit holes

01:35:25.180 you could go down here, but like with recidivism, you know, politicians give lip service to doing

01:35:30.520 away with recidivism, decreasing rates of recidivism, all this sort of stuff. But keep in

01:35:34.980 mind, they make money off of every single person in prison. They do things that they know increases

01:35:42.140 your chance of recidivism. You know, for example, they know that the more contacts and connections

01:35:48.800 you have in the outside world with family, with friends, with community, the less likely that you

01:35:54.120 are to come back to prison. So they deliberately do everything they can to limit that because they

01:35:58.980 want you to come back to prison. They want to make money off of you. I was in there for 18 years and

01:36:03.900 76 days. And in that time, I did not see one single shred of anything that could be even remotely

01:36:10.160 considered rehabilitation.

01:36:12.460 Have you heard the story out of Michigan where this judge was selling kids to a private juvenile

01:36:18.800 facility?

01:36:19.400 No, but it doesn't surprise me.

01:36:20.700 Yep. This is the scary stuff about the system. I mean, look, we can, I can praise the founding

01:36:25.220 fathers, the constitution and all of these things. But if we don't have a, if we don't have scruples

01:36:30.320 and a strong moral foundation as a people in this country, these things are meaningless. It's just a

01:36:34.360 piece of paper. There was a judge who you'd get some 15 year old kid who pushed someone in their

01:36:40.640 school, no real harm, but he would say that's, that's assault. So you're, you're going to juvie for

01:36:46.040 four months. The kid would go to juvie. Once in the juvenile facility would try to keep him there

01:36:51.760 and say, Oh, Oh, you committed a crime. Now some kid would pick a fight. Oh, another assault.

01:36:56.620 That's another three months. And the judge was getting kickbacks. I think it was more than one

01:37:00.160 judge actually. Yeah. That's kind of stuff that freaks me out. You know,

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01:38:31.140 Have you ever looked into, done any research on like the private prison industry? A little bit.

01:38:35.440 It is not a fan. It is horrifying. You had people, they had to shut the private prison in Arkansas

01:38:40.480 down at one point because you had guys that had been in there for years and never even been issued

01:38:44.580 a pair of shoes because they didn't want to cut into the profit margins. Wow. And then you have

01:38:49.040 this industry lobbying to make more things illegal, to make it easier for them to get,

01:38:54.660 I don't know what you'd call it, but... Slave labor. Yeah. That's what it is. Right.

01:38:59.320 It's the craziest thing. I mean, for the private prisons, there's an argument about government

01:39:03.660 prisons being not so well run because there's no incentive to run it better. But with private

01:39:08.160 prisons, there's an incentive to maximize profit, which means the more people in prison,

01:39:12.640 the more prisons the government has to pay for. And now you've got the worst of both worlds.

01:39:16.040 It's a government that doesn't care with unlimited funding stolen from the public

01:39:19.860 to fund people being unjustly locked up. This scary reality. But you bring up a good point

01:39:26.480 about slave labor. I think it was Kanye West, yay. He tweeted something like repeal the 13th

01:39:33.020 amendment or whatever, which was what abolished slavery. But that's not what he meant. The 13th

01:39:38.780 amendment legalizes slavery in the context of the prison system. And he was saying we should

01:39:43.940 not have slavery at all. And he's right. He's completely right about it. Now, as for the things

01:39:47.880 he said later on in his life, we won't get into that. But I do think that people need to realize

01:39:52.600 we've seen these instances in California. This one shocks people. Prisoners are used to fight

01:39:59.720 wildfires. You have people who are in prison and they are told, do you want to go outside?

01:40:04.840 Go fight a wildfire. Their chance of seeing fresh air and freedom is to risk their lives

01:40:12.120 for like a dollar an hour. That's slave labor. I don't think it should be allowed. I think

01:40:16.380 if we're going to lock someone up, it is us taking the responsibility

01:40:20.280 to rehabilitate, which means our prisons should be focused on education, reform,

01:40:27.720 modern technology, like job training kind of things. And as you mentioned, connecting them

01:40:35.300 with with other people and family as much as possible. So I think we need a dramatic and

01:40:41.760 drastic overhaul of the entire prison system in this country. Well, what you're describing would

01:40:46.000 be a true department of correction. That's what we call it now. We call it the department of

01:40:50.600 correction, meaning to fix, to remedy, to fix something that's broken and send it back in a way

01:40:54.980 that's going to make society better. But what we actually have is more like a department of

01:40:58.660 punishment. Retribution. Yes, exactly. And I've talked to people and they, uh, many people who've

01:41:03.480 come on my, my, uh, show on Timcast IRL and I said that, but isn't retribution something that's,

01:41:08.220 it's not a bad thing, is it? And it's like, I don't, I don't, I think retribution is more emotional

01:41:13.280 satisfaction, which can be important if you have an angry mob who is justly angry, not unjustly angry.

01:41:19.700 And we want there to be a sense of justice so that, you know, bad people are punished.

01:41:24.980 And innocent people are, are saved. So that can be. The problem is if we're mechanizing it,

01:41:32.120 if it is just this logic system, a machine that just turns people in, turns people out,

01:41:37.240 I mean, that's not doing anything for anybody. Retribution in that instance is going to give

01:41:40.760 people emotional satisfaction, but then damage other people, increase the problem, only make it

01:41:45.400 worse. We got to figure out how we can make people feel like they're satisfied, but also

01:41:49.020 truly rehabilitate. Right. Yeah. Otherwise it just, the system doesn't work. It's a scary thought

01:41:55.300 right now that, uh, for those that have been on the, on the, on the receiving end of the,

01:42:01.200 of the unjust legal system, it's a scary thought that, uh, at any moment, and it's not like it's,

01:42:09.300 it happens to everybody. It is rare to a certain degree, but they could just lie and give you a

01:42:13.880 ticket. They could lie and enter your home. They can make up excuses. Not to talk about politics,

01:42:18.340 but I mean, there were people, there were grandmothers at, who were at the Capitol on

01:42:23.800 January 6th, who literally just walked onto the lawn and are, you know, have been arrested.

01:42:29.440 There's a, like, it's crazy. There was a woman who was not there and the police raided her home in

01:42:35.900 Alaska. Yeah. There's a, there's a story. I just saw this, uh, two weeks ago. I'm sitting in my bed,

01:42:39.880 I wake up and I get sent a funny video from, uh, Seamus Coghlan, our friend who runs his show

01:42:44.800 Freedom Tunes. After I watched this funny little cartoon, I get recommended a video. 19 year old,

01:42:52.220 college football player, driving home from a friend's house, gets pulled over. The first thing

01:42:56.920 the cop does is say, what, how many drinks have you had? And he's like, none. And he was like,

01:43:02.760 okay, get out of the car. And he's like, okay. He gives this kid a field sobriety test, kid passes.

01:43:07.480 But no matter what the kid does, the cop says, why are you failing? Why are you failing?

01:43:11.360 He says something like, take, take 10 steps and count them out. And he goes, okay. So then the

01:43:16.520 kid starts doing the steps and he goes, why aren't you counting? And he goes, huh? It's like, why,

01:43:20.540 why are you acting so weird? He's like, I don't understand what you want me to do.

01:43:23.920 And so the kid passed the field sobriety test, but didn't do things like say the number out loud

01:43:28.640 of steps, which is nitpicking. He then says, the kid goes, dude, do you want to blow me? Like I'll blow right

01:43:35.340 now. And he meant breathalyzer, but it is kind of, you know, suggestive. And then the cop immediately

01:43:40.960 turns it into something dark. The kid blows the breathalyzer, zero, zero, zero. On the body camera

01:43:46.660 footage, you can see the cop showing all zeros. And then he goes, why are your eyes bloodshot? And he's

01:43:52.040 like, what dude? He's like, you accused me of drinking alcohol. And then when I blow zeros, because

01:43:56.400 I know I blew zeros. Now you're saying I'm smoking weed. He's like, I don't smoke. And then he's like,

01:44:00.940 when was the last time you smoked? And the kid thinks, and he goes, I don't know. And he goes,

01:44:05.800 why'd you hesitate? And he's like, dude, I'm on the college football team. I get drug tested every

01:44:09.440 Friday. If I smoke, they'll kick me off the team. And he goes, yeah, well, it's Saturday. So you

01:44:12.320 could have smoked today. And he was like, dude, it stays in your system. What is going on? And the

01:44:17.460 cop goes, you're under arrest for driving under the influence. And this kid was like, I didn't do

01:44:22.440 anything, man. Doesn't matter. Cop said it. Cop did it. Kid got lucky enough that his family had the

01:44:28.160 ability to fight back. But this stuff happens all the time. And I think for a lot of people,

01:44:33.260 you've got this protest movement, you know, defund the police and abolish the police and all that

01:44:37.680 stuff. A lot of people who are more conservative, they live in areas where they don't see this as

01:44:42.340 often because if you're in a sparsely populated area, your interaction with the cops probably way

01:44:46.840 less. And there's very few cops. You know, so when I, out here, we know the cops out here.

01:44:53.500 I know some of the ranking officers in our department because there's not that many of them.

01:44:58.160 I see them outside and they're like, hey, Tim, how's it going? Hey, how's it going? Well, of

01:45:01.240 course, the guy who knows you is much less likely to falsely accuse you. But you move to a big city

01:45:05.860 or a bigger city where you've got a thousand cops. They don't know you. They don't care. And they're

01:45:10.700 not going to deal with it. Some of these cops could be bad people. And then what happens is you

01:45:14.440 get a cop who says, I may have made a mistake arresting this guy. I don't want to lose my job.

01:45:18.480 Hey, get my back. And then his buddy cop says, you got it. And there you go. In your case.

01:45:23.460 Sometimes it's even more vindictive than that, though. Like whenever, like towards the end of

01:45:30.120 my case, I can't remember exactly how long it was before I got out. But the Arkansas Supreme Court

01:45:35.220 ruled that there was going to be another hearing and that finally we were going to be able to present

01:45:39.160 all the evidence that we had accumulated up until that point. Within 10 minutes of that being announced

01:45:45.080 on the news, there were like 30 guards in my prison cell destroying everything I owned,

01:45:50.460 looking for any possible way that they could to throw me in the hole.

01:45:54.860 Every sit like the one of the huge things that saved my life when I was in prison was doing

01:45:59.260 interviews, keeping the spotlight on on Arkansas, like talking about this case. And I was doing

01:46:04.160 them nonstop constantly. And every single time I did that, the way the prison looked at it,

01:46:11.460 which is like an arm of law enforcement, they looked at it as I'm not bringing attention to this

01:46:16.180 case. I'm bringing attention to them, to the system. Every single one that I did, I knew I was

01:46:22.040 going to get some sort of punishment for. They were going to do something to retaliate against me

01:46:27.200 in some sort of way. They come into my cell one day. This was earlier. You know, I'd been there

01:46:33.400 probably less than two years by this point. I do an interview with the local news. Next thing I know,

01:46:39.480 the guards are at my door and one of them goes into my cell. He pulls a knife out of his boot and

01:46:45.560 says, what are you doing with this? I was like, what could I say? It's like, I just watched you

01:46:50.860 pull that out of your boot. Good luck. They took me back to the part of the prison they called the

01:46:54.860 hole. And for the next 18 days, they beat the living hell out of me. They beat me to the point

01:46:59.580 that I thought I was going to die at one point. I was pissing blood. The only thing that saved my life

01:47:04.900 was a lot of times the sewage system would overflow and you'd find yourself like standing

01:47:10.780 an ankle deep raw sewage. Well, the guards aren't going to clean it up. What they do is bring in

01:47:14.220 inmates from the other part of the prison to clean it up. It was them. They bring those inmates in to

01:47:19.240 clean up the sewage water. They saw what was being done to me. They went to a deacon from the Catholic

01:47:24.240 church and said, they're killing this guy back there. The deacon goes to the warden and he says,

01:47:29.160 I know what you're doing to this guy. And if, if it doesn't stop, I'm going to start telling people.

01:47:33.740 That was the only reason they didn't beat me to death back in the hole is because they did not

01:47:39.120 want word of what was happening inside the system, inside those walls, inside that prison being

01:47:45.440 leaked out into the outside world. That was a long time ago. I imagined, right? Yeah. That was like

01:47:49.320 within the first two years I was there. How do we get accountability for the people who do stuff like

01:47:54.000 this? Like, like no way those guards should be in jail. Those guards should be locked up. I'm thinking

01:48:00.360 about, I, I, I wish there was a way to know all of the stories like, like yours that are happening

01:48:06.920 right now and make them stop. I just, how do you do it? You know, would, would you be able to sue

01:48:13.200 for that or is it too long or is it covered under the Alford plea? Like, I mean, if they told the

01:48:18.800 deacon and there's witnesses and stuff, couldn't you? Well, keep in mind that was almost 30 years ago.

01:48:23.800 The deacon at that point was like in his seventies. So he's dead now. It's like, you know, I don't even

01:48:29.200 know who the inmates were because they weren't on death row. They were like from other parts of the

01:48:33.540 prison that they brought out there. So it's, you know, stuff like that is all. And, and keep in

01:48:38.120 mind, this would have been back in like 96 before they had cameras in every part of the prison. They

01:48:44.120 still, to this day, they know like the blank spots on the cameras. They know, you know, where they can go

01:48:48.640 to get away with things. But back then there were no cameras in prisons. Like it was just the wild

01:48:53.380 West in there. Yeah. This kind of stuff, oh man, it's, it's kind of depressing. You know, I don't

01:49:01.600 want to be blackpilled as it were, but I definitely think it's, it's, we want to believe in the goodness

01:49:09.580 of humanity. We want to, we don't want to lose hope. Like you were saying, feel like everything's

01:49:13.980 rotten, but I do kind of feel like there's a yin yang of the universe of the world. There's the

01:49:18.620 light side and the dark side. So, so many of us are either stuck looking at one or the other.

01:49:25.300 I think for the people who live in this world and think everything's great, you know, we need

01:49:28.740 prisons and all this stuff need to realize they're deep problems and we need, we need to root them

01:49:32.340 out. We can't ignore it. But you get a lot of people saying things like abolish prisons or abolish

01:49:36.980 police and things like that. And it's like, well, we don't want to go extreme. We want bad people to be

01:49:40.920 held accountable. We want good people to be rewarded. I do think the system is broken. I think we need

01:49:46.880 ridiculous reforms that I don't know how we get because our political system is, is broken.

01:49:52.900 You know, no one's going to agree because everybody's pointing the finger at each other

01:49:57.020 as an ideological enemy. So how do you actually get the votes to make some, some change like this

01:50:01.560 happen? Perhaps the state level, state level thing. Maybe you said Sarah Huckabee Sanders is now

01:50:07.240 the governor. Maybe we can put some pressure on her and get you the DNA tests you want and say,

01:50:11.500 like, let's make the first step towards real justice and fixing these systems. I don't know,

01:50:16.720 man. I don't either. There's, I mean, we've been working on this for three decades and there's no

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01:51:20.460 iGaming Ontario. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops.

01:51:27.140 So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that

01:51:32.640 we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird. I don't

01:51:40.660 remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big

01:51:46.600 on care. Did I mention that we care? Well, what's your, what's, what's your plan outside

01:51:55.260 of that? I mean, what are you working on? Oh, a whole bunch of stuff. You know, I, I basically

01:52:01.960 what I do is write, I've written eight books since I've been out. And a great deal of it

01:52:07.780 is about, you know, like we were talking about earlier, the spiritual practices, the things

01:52:11.220 I focus on that, that changed my life, allowed me to survive in prison. I, I help people with

01:52:18.060 that, you know, write about that, talk about that. One of the things that I'm really, really

01:52:24.060 passionate about right now, uh, strangely enough is boxing, because it's one of the things that I've

01:52:31.000 discovered that helps me with like all of the mental stuff. You know, when, when people think

01:52:35.720 about boxing, like when, when people think of that, they, they just, they just see it as like

01:52:40.020 two people brutalizing each other. They don't, they don't realize like it forces you to form like

01:52:45.540 all these new neural pathways. You know, you have to like recognize all of these different

01:52:50.660 combinations and, and you have to have like, you know, split second reaction times and things like

01:52:55.380 that. So that's one of the things I've become really excited about because due to all the things

01:52:59.800 we're talking about, like the prison beatings, eating garbage for 18 years, the psychological and

01:53:03.940 emotional torture. I mean, it destroyed me in a lot of ways. It destroyed me physically, mentally.

01:53:08.000 And that's one of the things that's kind of helping stitch me back together, you know,

01:53:10.900 helping me to form these neural pathways, helping me regain physical health. So I'd spend,

01:53:15.540 uh, Lori and I both spend a lot of time doing that. Um, and honestly, I, I don't put a lot

01:53:22.500 of thought into the future. I think that's one of the things that also probably contributes to

01:53:28.120 happiness. I think if you put too much time thinking about the future and trying to plan for

01:53:33.120 things that you don't have any control over, you're going to be very, very anxious. Yeah. So

01:53:37.520 the only thing I do is put one foot in front of the other. And after all this time, I have the

01:53:43.780 belief and expectation that whatever I'm supposed to do next will come next.

01:53:48.740 I like that. I think here's a message for everybody listening. If you're in a dark place,

01:53:53.220 if you're anxious or depressed, just think about one good thing you have right now and enjoy it for

01:53:59.440 right now. You know, just take, take the time to recognize that. Cause I feel for a lot of people,

01:54:05.120 you know, I mentioned earlier that a young person might be born with a silver spoon. And then as they

01:54:09.380 get older and become an adult and become more responsible for their own income and everything,

01:54:12.740 they start going down in their access. They get upset. They start feeling, oh no, I'm losing

01:54:17.140 things. And it's like, just take time to recognize what you have, you know, take stock of that and

01:54:23.360 center yourself. Cause I think that also plays a role in what you were saying earlier about it's

01:54:27.480 not being done to you. It's being done for you. So maybe if you're in some dark place, maybe even if

01:54:32.120 you're in the happiest place you've ever been, if you're the happiest you've ever been, stop,

01:54:35.040 take a moment, pause, recognize, you know, I got these good things. How about that? And, uh,

01:54:39.840 and let the future be the future. I think you got, you got to balance worrying about the future and

01:54:44.200 planning for it, but also enjoying what you have. Yep. Find something you love and lose yourself in

01:54:48.820 it. Yeah. Yeah. If you, if you only ever worry about the future, I mean, what's it all for?

01:54:56.600 You know, at some point you got to stop and say, Hey, you know, I got to this, this, this point,

01:55:01.380 I'm at this point. What can I do right now for myself? That's, that's going to make me feel good.

01:55:06.660 Otherwise just always, you're never in the moment, you know, at the same time, I'd say avoid short

01:55:13.260 term gains that bring long-term losses. Yes. Find that, find that balance. One of the things also,

01:55:18.460 I think that really kind of helps me is, you know, we live in new Orleans and, and the entire culture

01:55:24.360 of new Orleans is about enjoying your life. I mean, that's what life there is built on. And it could be

01:55:31.080 in a bunch of different ways. It could be through, you know, enjoying the music or, you know, people

01:55:35.220 who come there to get obliterated or whatever, which I don't necessarily recommend, but every,

01:55:40.280 every aspect of life there. And it's one of the reasons I love it so much is because all of the

01:55:44.740 turmoil that's going on in the world doesn't saturate there as much because people are there

01:55:48.960 because they want to enjoy their lives. You know, it's funny. Uh, it is the fat Tuesday celebration,

01:55:55.920 you know, Mardi Gras. We don't really do that anywhere else. I, that was always funny because I,

01:56:00.360 cause I did not know, I knew what Mardi Gras was. I knew it was as big festival,

01:56:04.340 this big party, but I didn't know that it meant fat Tuesday. And then, uh, it was only later

01:56:10.300 because they have these buns in Sweden called semla that they, they eat on fat Tuesday. It's

01:56:15.100 a cardamom bun with whipped cream or whatever. And then someone mentioned, yeah, it's fat Tuesday.

01:56:19.240 That's why we do it. And I was like, Oh, fat Tuesday. Like, yeah. And then someone mentioned

01:56:23.520 like, that's what Mardi Gras is. And I was like, is that what they're doing? It's like you party

01:56:27.620 and you eat and dance. I'm like, Oh, now I get it. Yeah. I've never been though. That sounds pretty

01:56:33.080 fun. It's, it's, it's one of those things that it's kind of mind boggling. Like people know about

01:56:39.160 Mardi Gras, but they don't know like how massive and all pervasive it is in new Orleans. Like, like

01:56:47.220 it, it encompasses and saturates everything, like everything. People can't imagine the size of like

01:56:55.460 the parades and you know, the magnitude of this stuff down there. And when you're down there,

01:56:59.720 like it's, it's like completely mind blowing when you're seeing this stuff and you're realizing

01:57:04.660 to the rest of the world, it's just Tuesday. Yeah. Like when is it? Did it happen already?

01:57:10.120 Yeah. It was just, uh, when was it like last week or week before last?

01:57:13.500 Yeah. Oh man. I gotta, I gotta go check that out. I've never, never been, never been there.

01:57:17.680 And most people think it's like one day too, but it actually starts on January the 6th,

01:57:21.660 like the 12th day of Christmas. So it goes all the way up from January 6th to Mardi Gras day.

01:57:27.160 So you're talking about a period of roughly two months of nonstop celebration and partying.

01:57:32.520 Wow. That sounds pretty cool. I should definitely check that out. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so what made

01:57:37.600 you choose a new Orleans then? That very thing. Oh really? Let's go party, man. Well, not even

01:57:43.620 partying. It was just like the rest of the world. We lived in New York, you know, for almost the whole,

01:57:48.620 for, for the first 10 years that I was out. Oh, okay. But something happened there,

01:57:52.880 like during the lockdowns or whatever, it's like the, the energy of the place changed. It is not

01:57:59.220 the same place anymore. It, it just felt like all of the joy and everything else had been sucked out

01:58:06.360 of it. And everybody's walking around, you know, angry and frowned up or whatever it was. And we just

01:58:11.600 started to look across the world, looking for a place where life was more normal, where it was more

01:58:17.500 like what it was pre pandemic. When, when people were focused on things other than like politics

01:58:23.780 or whatever the latest thing is or whatever it was. And that's what new Orleans is. It's like,

01:58:29.720 it, it almost feels like the rest of the world does not saturate in there. It is a world unto itself.

01:58:36.140 What do you think you'd be doing if this never happened?

01:58:38.340 That's a very, very, I would say very hard question, but it's actually an impossible question,

01:58:46.500 you know, just because I have no idea whatsoever. I, you know, the same, they considered us throw away.

01:58:52.500 I was a kid with no prospects, you know, everybody in my family, I don't believe anyone has ever lived

01:58:58.500 over the age of like 65. And, and by that point they had already had multiple heart attacks,

01:59:03.560 limbs cut off, whatever it is, nobody ever escaped like a life of poverty. You know,

01:59:08.860 if we saw things on TV, like people going to college or whatever, that wasn't reality.

01:59:12.840 Yeah.

01:59:13.000 You know, that was as real to us as fairy tales. I would like to think that I would have found a

01:59:19.040 way out of that world. But, you know, the reality of it is, is I have no idea.

01:59:24.760 I wonder if you'd just be another, uh, middle-aged dude working at the local hardware store or

01:59:30.420 something and not another thought in the world. I mean, you came across very bright. Even when

01:59:35.080 you're a teenager though, you watch some of those documentaries and you're well-spoken. It didn't

01:59:40.380 seem like you fit there anyway, like even back then. Um, but I mean, that could have been what

01:59:45.760 you were going through. I don't know. It just didn't seem like you seemed kind of like different

01:59:51.900 than everybody else there. I don't know how else to put it.

01:59:54.680 In some ways it was like, I never cared about the world, to be honest. You know, I never went

01:59:59.740 through those things that people go through where they think, you know, I want to be a doctor or I

02:00:03.420 want to be a cop or whatever it is. Like I never thought about things like having a career or having

02:00:09.480 a family or any of that sort of stuff. It wasn't something that I focused on. And I don't know.

02:00:17.640 I don't know what my point to that even is other than just that I didn't fit in for me. Like I was

02:00:24.580 always doing things like I dropped out of school when I was in ninth grade, never even went to high

02:00:28.100 school. But I'd even honestly quit caring a couple of years before that. I don't think I learned

02:00:33.360 anything from school other than how to read and write. Once I could read and write, I pretty much

02:00:37.980 educated myself from that point on. I used to skip school and go spend all day at the library just

02:00:42.480 reading. Wow. I ask because I'm, I wonder if, you know, again, to go back to the, it's not being

02:00:48.980 done to you, it's being done for you. I wonder if after all of this, you are now more powerful in terms

02:00:55.720 of a positive influence to help the world than you would have been otherwise. And I'm not trying

02:01:00.840 to, I mean, maybe it sounds disrespectful or something. I'm not trying to make it seem like,

02:01:05.300 you know, it was better. It happened, but you know, maybe, maybe if this didn't happen,

02:01:09.960 you'd just be a local guy living your life and you know, I mean, but maybe now you can save some

02:01:15.580 people and make the world a better place. Well, when I look back at it, I see this as 100%. Like I said,

02:01:21.260 I wouldn't have necessarily wanted to go through this, but when I look back and see what it has

02:01:25.120 done to me and what it has given to me, I consider this entire situation to be 100% a blessing in my

02:01:32.480 life. You know, I would have never met Lori. Otherwise I wouldn't live where I do. I wouldn't

02:01:37.680 have the life that I have. I wouldn't be here sitting here talking to y'all right now. Like this

02:01:42.160 situation, yes, it took from me tremendously, but it's like that scripture that says, I'll give you

02:01:47.260 beauty for ashes. It doesn't say there won't be ashes. It says you will get ashes, but I will give

02:01:52.080 you beauty for those ashes. And what happened to me is I was given beauty for those ashes and more

02:01:56.580 beauty than, than I had ashes, man. It's like forged through fire and now a powerful tool for something

02:02:04.240 good. Hopefully you guys get the DNA test though. I think that'll be a huge milestone from your mouth

02:02:10.900 to God's ear in the legacy. And from that point on, I even think right now, you know, you know,

02:02:16.880 I'm just some dude who heard your story. I've had, you know, Cassandra and Taylor, of course,

02:02:20.900 being like, you've got to, you've got to talk to this guy. And even where we are right now, you have

02:02:26.600 everything you're saying, I think is so important for people to hear for one prison reform is so

02:02:30.560 important. The positivity, um, that, that Joel Osteen thing from, from, from his sermon on TV to you,

02:02:38.900 to everyone watching now, it's not being done to, it's being done for you. I know it's not so simple.

02:02:42.920 Some people might still, you know, be upset in their circumstances and they, they have a right

02:02:46.980 to be, but I just think that, uh, forged through fire and now more powerful and, and more beneficial

02:02:52.940 to humanity as a whole, maybe that is, is, it can be looked at as one way as although it was a dark

02:02:58.900 moment in your life or for any person to go through, it may have made you into an instrument of

02:03:03.340 something more powerful and good for, for humans as a whole, you know? Hopefully. I mean, I certainly

02:03:09.300 think so at the very least. I mean, I wouldn't obviously wish what happened to you on anybody,

02:03:13.380 but I can see if, if the message is going to save people or help people, then there is something

02:03:20.200 good coming from all of it. But even then, you know, honestly, like if, if it were just up to me

02:03:25.220 and, and I didn't have to keep pursuing this DNA testing and all this, like, I probably would have

02:03:31.000 just, you know, like, like I said, talking about this stuff, it's, it's not really a pleasant thing

02:03:36.660 for me, you know, like, like, like haven't, like, I don't think about this stuff on a daily basis.

02:03:40.740 You know, it's not like I spend a great deal of time thinking about the time that I was in prison

02:03:44.280 or thinking about what the cops did to me or like the, the prosecutor, the attorney general,

02:03:49.640 the judge, all that. I don't think about that stuff, honestly. So going back and revisiting this

02:03:54.600 stuff, it's not necessarily a pleasant thing for me. And I wouldn't be doing it if not for like

02:04:00.480 still needing to get this testing done, still wanting to get this testing done. So I see even now how

02:04:05.980 it's like this, this need for this keeps pushing me forward. And like you said, hopefully something

02:04:11.780 will happen. Maybe they'll pass some sort of new legislation saying if a person is asking for DNA

02:04:16.760 testing to be done and they're willing to pay for it, then there should be legislation in place saying,

02:04:21.120 okay, well, there's no reason not to do it then. Hopefully it will lead to helping other people.

02:04:25.260 But if it were just, you know, if it wasn't for all that, I would just probably fade away and try to

02:04:32.200 enjoy my life to the best of my ability. Are Jesse and Jason also asking for the DNA testing or are

02:04:38.600 they just like not caring and out of it? You know, it's, it's like Jesse, for example,

02:04:43.160 only had an IQ of 70 to 72 to begin with. So he, he went back to the exact same trailer park that he

02:04:49.680 came from before we were arrested. And the last I heard was he was taking care of his father who had

02:04:55.300 like Alzheimer's, like they're living together in a trailer somewhere in the middle of nowhere. So

02:04:59.080 you're not really talking about somebody that's, you know, mentally or emotionally or any other way

02:05:04.140 equipped to go into a, you know, a fight like this. Jason, he's doing his own thing. He, he works

02:05:11.960 for an organization with some other people that that's what they do full time is like, look at

02:05:16.740 other, uh, proclaim innocence, proclaim innocence or proclaim justice or something like that. I mean,

02:05:22.620 it's not like we're, you know, all in contact with each other or any of that. Um, you know,

02:05:27.900 it's like who, who really stays in contact with people they knew when they were 16 years old.

02:05:32.400 Yeah. Yeah. I might message someone once a year, Merry Christmas. Yeah. And only like three people.

02:05:38.540 Yeah. Good friends. Other than, um, Lori, obviously, have you stayed close to anybody else that you met

02:05:44.860 who, you know, were part of the free the West Memphis three campaign or anything like that?

02:05:49.440 Like, did you make any friends from it? I guess it's hard to say I'm maybe, and I might be

02:05:55.740 forgetting it right now. Um, but I would say the main one is probably the last attorney that I had,

02:06:01.080 you know, keep in mind, this is another thing people don't understand. Like everybody thinks

02:06:05.380 that the entire problem with my case was the state, the prosecutor, the attorney general,

02:06:10.420 all of these people. And it wasn't, we hired and fired a dozen attorneys in the time that I was in

02:06:16.780 prison. Some of them did things like at one point I had six months left to live before they were going

02:06:22.400 to execute me. I had to have my appeal filed. Lori had to go out and raise $200,000 to, to give this

02:06:30.260 attorney a retainer fee to get him to work on the case. He took that money and disappeared.

02:06:34.580 Wow. Took every penny we had when I had six months left to live. We had to start all over again from

02:06:39.960 scratch. So it's not just like a one side issue. Like it's, it's definitely in the defense too. Like

02:06:49.120 there is deep, deep corruption there just as much as there is in the other side. But towards the end,

02:06:55.420 we were fortunate enough to meet an attorney who actually did have a heart and a soul and like

02:07:01.420 really dedicated himself to, to bringing about justice in this case. And we're still, you know,

02:07:06.120 we still talk to him probably weekly, but honestly, there's not a lot of people from back then that I

02:07:11.900 stay in contact with. And for one reason, you know, for another reason, it's like I was saying

02:07:16.040 a while ago, I'm not the same person anymore. I'm not the person that they knew. Yeah. Do you ever

02:07:21.220 have issues with people like Googling you and then just assuming that you're guilty or do they see the

02:07:25.860 good stuff first? Or have you had any issues with like, I don't know, published or, well, I guess

02:07:31.620 publisher wouldn't be a good example, but you know, somebody that you meet in town, like your

02:07:36.220 local deli guy or a bartender or whatever. Nah, you know, you usually have like the, the weirdos

02:07:41.760 online, you know, that you're a lizard. Exactly. You know, stuff like that. Uh, people who would

02:07:47.480 attack you like not to your face or whatever, be just online, but in real life. No, the only thing I

02:07:52.660 can think of that comes close to that is for example, when West of Memphis, another one of the

02:07:56.680 documentaries about the case came out and we were going to have to promote it. I needed to get into

02:08:01.520 Canada to go to a screening, to promote it. And Canada was like, no, you're not coming in.

02:08:06.200 You have three counts of capital murder on your record. So you're not coming into Canada.

02:08:10.860 Yeah. So then it's like, it doesn't matter that, you know, what the situation is or anything else.

02:08:16.080 Have you been able to travel outside the United States?

02:08:18.000 Yeah. A lot of countries, uh, don't really care. Uh, Iceland, Sweden, you know, places like that,

02:08:24.440 uh, that are pretty awesome. Yeah. Iceland and Sweden, both, both of them were, uh, France,

02:08:31.080 you know, most of these countries have been, you know, like embraced, just welcomed us with open

02:08:36.480 arms and embraced us because they understand the story and everything else. When, when, when you

02:08:40.960 traveled there, did you have to warn them in advance or something or file paperwork or just show up?

02:08:44.860 To be honest, I can't remember. Well, I have no idea. I've traveled a lot for work and

02:08:51.000 depending on the size of the country, Lori's usually the one that has to do it. So she would,

02:08:57.340 yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes I've, I've been to places that are so small. There's,

02:09:02.740 there's no way you're getting through without them knowing exactly who you are, what you're doing.

02:09:07.420 And then, you know, I haven't really had any problems in that regard. I don't think I've

02:09:10.820 ever been denied entry to anywhere. Yeah. Yeah. What's next? I mean, the, the, the big thing you're

02:09:16.580 pushing for, and I suppose, uh, that I agree with should happen is the DNA testing. So undoing the

02:09:23.500 knots and pulling the DNA from inside. So right now we fought, when, when is our filing due? March.

02:09:30.860 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you want to come and talk on just cause I don't think

02:09:38.560 anyone will hear, but you said the state filed a motion to dismiss everything, of course,

02:09:42.580 to dismiss everything, of course. So then we have gone back, filed a really good brief. The lawyer,

02:09:47.820 Steve Braga, Damien is talking about, filed a motion, a great motion. We're waiting to hear

02:09:52.660 if the state is going to allow the dismissal or go on with the testing. So that's where we are.

02:09:58.060 So waiting to, to see if they'll, they'll take a dismissal or go on with testing just for those,

02:10:02.940 because I don't think anyone would be able to be able to hear what you were saying.

02:10:04.840 So if people wanted to help, if they're like, hear this and they're like, man, get that DNA testing,

02:10:10.700 who should they be tweeting at or emailing or writing to, to, you know, express support or what

02:10:17.680 can they do? I would say the governor, the attorney general of Arkansas, uh, the governor and attorney

02:10:24.460 general of Arkansas, just trying to relate. So Sarah Huckabee Sanders again. Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

02:10:28.340 And I'm sure we have people. Yeah. I can make a few phone calls and be like, can someone get me,

02:10:32.260 can we, can we move this forward? That'd be amazing. That would be, that would be great.

02:10:35.720 There's a new prosecutor. Her last name is Fonticella. Sonia Fonticella. Sonia Fonticella,

02:10:42.020 a new prosecutor. And she, she may be willing to be helpful. She may be willing to be helpful.

02:10:48.060 That would be great. Do you guys have like a fundraiser or a crowdfund for? Not yet. We're

02:10:52.400 waiting for them to actually, uh, say, okay, you can do the testing because we don't want to accept

02:10:58.420 money or anything from anyone. If that's not in place where we know it's going to happen. So once

02:11:03.480 we do have that in place, then we'll announce it and people can give to it, donate to it if they

02:11:08.800 want to. And if people wanted to support you, you do have your Patreon still, right? And all your

02:11:13.680 books are on Amazon. Yes. Um, so there is those things too. What's your Patreon? Uh, it's just my

02:11:19.960 name, just, uh, you know, Damien Echols. But what I do on there, once again, it ties back into

02:11:24.480 ceremonial magic, the things that I was doing that, you know, allowed me to survive when I was

02:11:28.300 in prison. Uh, you know, what it, what it really is, I don't know how much of the stuff you even

02:11:33.960 care about or interested in or anything, but, but essentially like what ceremonial magic is,

02:11:40.020 you know, most people hear those, those words, hear that phrase. And they think, you know,

02:11:44.040 they have all kinds of preconceived ideas and connotations and they think it's just another

02:11:47.480 weird ass religion or whatever it is. And actually what it is, is a, a system that allows

02:11:54.500 you to have direct experience of things as opposed to believing or have faith. So say for example,

02:11:59.880 like in religion, you know, most of the time in religion, you hear this phrase, God created the

02:12:03.900 world and you, the way it's said and the way it's looked at or understood is almost like you have

02:12:08.860 an artist creating an art piece, like a painter creating a painting or a sculptor creating a

02:12:13.900 sculpture. And at the end of that process, the artist is here and the piece they've created

02:12:17.280 is there and they're two separate things. And that's the way they look at this phrase,

02:12:20.840 God created the world. What it's looked at more in ceremonial magic is the word God. First off,

02:12:26.700 it would be shorthand for generate, order, and destroy, which are the three principles that the

02:12:32.020 source of creation does. It generates form, puts them in an order to achieve maximum evolution.

02:12:38.000 And then once it's done that, it destroys them in order to start over with, with new forms.

02:12:42.140 So when we say that God created the world in ceremonial magic, what we're, what we're saying is that

02:12:47.040 you have this infinite source of intelligence and energy that lies outside the boundaries of time

02:12:53.940 and space. Because the only way anything is infinite, eternal, unchanging is if it does not

02:12:58.620 exist within time and space. So when we say God created the world, what we're saying is this infinite

02:13:03.220 source of intelligence and energy pours itself into the dimensions of time and space and became us,

02:13:08.960 became the world. So we are literally God incarnate, just like Jesus was, but we don't experience reality

02:13:15.820 that way. We experience reality as if we're all these distinct individuals. I'm separate from you

02:13:20.820 and we're all separate from anything else. Part of the point of doing the ritual work consistently of

02:13:27.940 magic is that it allows you to over time experience the reality behind your persona of like what you

02:13:36.820 truly are, like this divine energy instead of what you think you are, which is this individual.

02:13:41.500 All right. Then one last question. Have you ever tried DMT?

02:13:44.760 I have not, but I've heard of it.

02:13:47.380 I just, I'm like, it's the cliche Joe Rogan podcast.

02:13:51.140 Yeah. Well, I mean, after everything you're saying and like so much of this actually overlaps

02:13:55.160 a lot of conversations I've had with people about DMT and stuff, I'm like, all right,

02:13:58.360 we're throwing it out there. But other than that, Damian, thanks for hanging out. It's been a blast.

02:14:02.520 Thank you so much for having me.

02:14:03.980 Absolutely.

02:14:04.500 And thank you for helping to get the word about, about this to a, you know, a whole new audience of

02:14:08.100 people and, and, you know, keeping it in the public eye, because like I said, that's the only reason

02:14:12.240 they didn't kill me.

02:14:13.520 Yeah. I mean, obviously that's a huge issue for us. We're very liberty minded individuals here.

02:14:18.120 The, the idea that the state would kill an innocent person is horrifying. And if you're saying,

02:14:22.700 look, we can get more evidence and put this to rest, it should happen. We should, we should,

02:14:26.900 we should, okay, let's do it. There should be no, there's no argument from anybody. What's,

02:14:30.980 what's, what's, what's the big deal? If, if they really think you did it and you're saying,

02:14:34.560 well, here's some more evidence, why don't you get it? Then let's, let's do it. Let's get it.

02:14:37.560 Exactly.

02:14:38.620 So thanks for hanging out.

02:14:39.680 Thank you for having me.

02:14:40.240 And Cassandra, thanks for, for assisting. I know you've been following this forever.

02:14:43.620 Yeah. Thank you so much for coming. It's an honor.

02:14:46.500 Thank you. Thank you for defending us through the years and for spreading the word about the

02:14:50.220 case and everything else. It is greatly appreciated.

02:14:53.200 I'm, I'm, I love your books. I think everybody should read them. I, I'm very happy that you're here.

02:14:58.140 Thank you.

02:14:58.720 Right on. Well, this has been a blast. So thank you all for, for being here and for everybody who's

02:15:02.000 listening. We do the show every Friday at 1 PM. So we'll have clips up throughout the week.

02:15:05.860 Thanks so much for supporting us. Go to timcast.com, become a member. We will,

02:15:10.520 we'll eventually have a members only component for these shows as well, but we're just getting

02:15:13.540 the ball rolling. So, uh, thanks to everybody who listened and thanks to, uh, you guys for coming

02:15:18.160 and we'll see you all next time.

The Culture War - Tim Pool - March 10, 2023

The Culture War #3 - Damien Echols Of The West Memphis 3, Paradise Lost

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