The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1714 - Josh Dubin & Robert Jones

00:00:03.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.

00:00:14.000 What's up?

00:00:14.000 How are you?

00:00:15.000 Good to see you, man.

00:00:16.000 Good to see you, bro.

00:00:17.000 Always.

00:00:17.000 And Robert, very nice to meet you.

00:00:19.000 It's a pleasure as well. 0.99

00:00:20.000 Pull this sucker up right to your face. 1.00

00:00:21.000 It moves around. 0.99

00:00:22.000 Yeah, it's very...

00:00:23.000 That's cool?

00:00:24.000 Yeah, try to keep it like a fist from your face.

00:00:27.000 All right.

00:00:28.000 Before we...

00:00:29.000 Let's just get into it.

00:00:30.000 Let's explain Robert.

00:00:32.000 Why don't you get started with this?

00:00:34.000 Explain how you came to know Robert and what his circumstances were.

00:00:40.000 Yeah.

00:00:42.000 In 2016, 2016, right?

00:00:48.000 I was speaking in New Orleans.

00:00:51.000 I was asked to speak at this conference of like hundreds of criminal defense attorneys with Barry Sheck, who founded the Innocence Project.

00:00:59.000 And we were teaching a class essentially from the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and Barry and I were giving a presentation in front of hundreds of lawyers about Things that they could do to ensure that during jury selection and a trial that you can expose prosecutorial misconduct,

00:01:22.000 how you can make stronger legal pleas to get what we call exculpatory evidence or evidence that would tend to show someone's innocence.

00:01:34.000 So, it was an hour-long speech, and Barry and I were, like, going in 15-minute blocks, and at some point while we're on the stage, and I feel like we're killing it, you know?

00:01:43.000 I'm, like, feeling myself.

00:01:44.000 Like, they're really loving this stuff.

00:01:47.000 And at some point on stage, Barry goes to me, by the way, you know, we just had an exoneration here in New Orleans and this guy might show up.

00:01:59.000 And I said, when was the exoneration?

00:02:01.000 He said, just a couple of weeks ago.

00:02:03.000 And I said, it's kind of a tricky thing to put him in a position to come up and speak in front of hundreds of lawyers.

00:02:12.000 And I said, how long was he in for?

00:02:13.000 He said, almost 24 years.

00:02:15.000 23 years, 7 months.

00:02:18.000 For a vicious rape and murder that he didn't commit.

00:02:23.000 So we're wrapping up our speech.

00:02:25.000 And all of a sudden I see this man walk in the room and like a lot of heads turn around because it was like a big hotel, like ballroom.

00:02:35.000 And all the heads swung around because the door opened real loud.

00:02:39.000 Slam. 0.98

00:02:39.000 So everybody is looking at this guy, and I see this very well-dressed man. 0.98

00:02:44.000 And Barry, you know, says, oh, and, you know, we have a very special treat for you.

00:02:49.000 This man, just a few weeks ago, was walked out of Angola, one of the most violent penitentiaries in the country.

00:02:57.000 And I feel like, you know, something bad is about to happen because I know what that's like to, at least, I don't know what it's like, but I know what it's like to see somebody in the throes of just getting out, and they're usually shell-shocked in a way that is not conducive to public speaking.

00:03:18.000 So this guy just strides up on the stage, grabs the mic, And gives this galvanizing speech where, you know, like you could see the jaws dropping open about how important it is to fight while you're in court and to not back down from judges that aren't letting you,

00:03:40.000 you know, protect your client's constitutional rights.

00:03:43.000 And I'm sitting there watching him and I'm thinking to myself, I've never seen anything like this.

00:03:49.000 This is special.

00:03:52.000 So, Robert and I met right there on the stage, and we got to talking, and then we went across the street to a bar, and we had more than a few cocktails, and he told me his whole story about the crime,

00:04:11.000 about this awful, you know...

00:04:17.000 A set of prosecutors and detectives that covered up evidence and lied and were responsible for his incarceration.

00:04:26.000 And I've said this to you before, if you've never been in the presence of an exoneree, you don't really know the true strength and the triumph of the human spirit in a way that is very hard to describe. 1.00

00:04:42.000 25 minutes in, we're at a very crowded bar in the French Quarter, and I'm weeping.

00:04:51.000 So this woman is sitting at the bar, and Robert puts his arm on me, and he's like, it's alright, I'm gonna be alright.

00:04:57.000 And we had one of those conversations where it was like, we just connected in a way that was really extraordinary.

00:05:06.000 And then I went on to help represent him in his civil rights case, but that's how we met.

00:05:16.000 I don't want to give away too much of his story because I'd rather him tell it, but that's how we met and then have kept in close contact over the last five years or so.

00:05:30.000 I say this with full confidence that none of it is hyperbole.

00:05:34.000 You're in the presence of a miracle.

00:05:37.000 I mean, what this man was able to endure, overcome, and accomplish since he's been out is nothing short of mind-blowing.

00:05:49.000 I mean, he's a force of nature, and it's just such an honor to bring him here.

00:05:54.000 How long have you been out, Robert?

00:05:57.000 About five years or so.

00:06:01.000 What has the transition been like from the first day you're out to now?

00:06:07.000 Have you gradually become accustomed to this idea that they're not going to drag you back in?

00:06:15.000 Has freedom changed the way it feels?

00:06:18.000 Is it normal now?

00:06:22.000 Maybe after my charges were dismissed, I was released in 2015, but maybe two years after that, being threatened for a retry.

00:06:37.000 After that was over, the charges were actually dismissed on my 44th birthday, right?

00:06:45.000 Which I'll never forget.

00:06:49.000 I started feeling freedom from there, in a sense, because I wasn't tied into anything no more, in the sense of...

00:06:56.000 You didn't have it hovering.

00:06:57.000 Right.

00:06:58.000 So, yes, there have been a transition from the first day I got out until...

00:07:02.000 Even until now, a lot of things I'm getting accustomed to.

00:07:07.000 And just the way the world is, right?

00:07:09.000 You know, inside of prison, you live under...

00:07:16.000 A set of rules and guidelines, administratively and as a prisoner, right?

00:07:22.000 They got their own set of rules, you know?

00:07:25.000 And one of the things is about respect.

00:07:29.000 Respect is huge and just having that empathy for other people that's in the situation that you are in, right?

00:07:40.000 Immediately when I got out, maybe by the first week I was out.

00:07:44.000 I'm going to tell you, one of the transitional phases.

00:07:48.000 I was out with a friend in a river walk near the French Guards in New Orleans.

00:07:57.000 And man, I was talking and...

00:07:59.000 I seen an old lady crossing the streets, an old white lady on one of those canes, like the full stand canes. 1.00

00:08:09.000 Yeah, like a walker.

00:08:11.000 Yeah, like a walker, right?

00:08:13.000 And it's like she's crossing the streets, but these cars kind of like moving kind of fast and a lot of traffic, you know, and people blowing homes and different things of that nature.

00:08:22.000 And I'm looking at everybody like, ain't nobody going to help this old lady?

00:08:27.000 Like, she might get hit.

00:08:30.000 You know, a car might hit her, right?

00:08:32.000 So I'm talking to my friend, but I'm constantly paying attention to what's going on, right?

00:08:36.000 Paying attention to my surroundings.

00:08:37.000 So I said, man, what the hell?

00:08:39.000 I went and helped her, made sure that she crossed the street safely.

00:08:42.000 And when I got back to the other side, people were, like, clapping and patting me on my back. 0.99

00:08:46.000 I'm like, this is a fucked up world. 0.98

00:08:52.000 Like, you're giving me accolades. 0.99

00:08:54.000 For doing a normal human thing.

00:08:55.000 Right.

00:08:56.000 Yeah, that you're supposed to do.

00:08:57.000 Yeah, absolutely.

00:08:58.000 So I knew that I was in for a hell of a transition.

00:09:02.000 Just to see that people didn't have respect for one another.

00:09:08.000 I mean, just passing my people into saying, excuse me, right?

00:09:11.000 Open the door for women and older people and children. 1.00

00:09:15.000 Shit like that. 1.00

00:09:16.000 So are you saying that there's more of that in prison? 1.00

00:09:19.000 Yeah.

00:09:19.000 Well, in prison, it's just like, it's a lot of respect.

00:09:24.000 Because when you don't respect nobody, I mean, that's consequences for it, right?

00:09:28.000 Right.

00:09:29.000 Maybe not those particular instances, but just that level and that mindset of having that level of respect, you know?

00:09:37.000 If you're in your own space, a guy's not going to invade your space, and if you invade your space, that's consequences for that, right?

00:09:43.000 So it's just having that level of respect.

00:09:45.000 So, you know, what I said is, Coming into society and making that transition, it was difficult in that aspect, amongst a lot of other things.

00:09:56.000 So you were 20 years old when they arrested you?

00:10:02.000 19. 19. And could you explain the circumstances, like what happened, how you found out about it?

00:10:13.000 How did you find out you were being accused of something that you didn't do?

00:10:17.000 Well, actually, they came to my mom's house, knocking on the door, banging on the door.

00:10:28.000 The police raided the house, pulled out guns, and said they were looking for me for some crimes.

00:10:36.000 I mean, knowing I committed no crimes, right?

00:10:41.000 You had never been in trouble before that? 1.00

00:10:45.000 Little shit? 1.00

00:10:46.000 Yeah, just normal things that people growing up in poverty get in trouble for. 1.00

00:10:53.000 Selling drugs and just being, basically being a product of your environment and the things that you see and participate in. 0.91

00:11:01.000 But not no shit like they was trying to say I was involved in, like murder, robberies, rape. 0.99

00:11:12.000 I'm like, what the hell? 0.99

00:11:14.000 And so I was thinking in more terms of, okay, well, I'm just going to go to the station.

00:11:20.000 And I told my mom, I can stay with me.

00:11:23.000 I remember this.

00:11:25.000 I said, I'll be back.

00:11:26.000 I'll be right back. 0.95

00:11:27.000 I said, no, I ain't do shit. 0.97

00:11:28.000 Right? 0.98

00:11:29.000 Right. 0.89

00:11:29.000 So I left out the house and went down to the station when they went to telling me about this murder I was told with, these armed robbers and raping. 0.89

00:11:38.000 I'm like, man, y'all people have lost y'all mind.

00:11:41.000 So me...

00:11:44.000 Understanding the system as from what I was—I mean, from what was known, innocent people wasn't—it wasn't prevalent during that time.

00:11:54.000 In 1992, it wasn't a huge thing where innocent people would get arrested for crimes and get convicted, right?

00:12:01.000 So I'm thinking that when people commit crime, they get arrested, they go to jail.

00:12:06.000 That's— The standard norm, right? 0.93

00:12:09.000 So I was under that presumption of assuming that, well, eventually they'll get their shit right once they go to talking to folks and different things of that nature. 0.80

00:12:19.000 And so, yeah, it was mind-blowing just to be known I was charged with aggravated rape, first-degree murder at the time, and a whole slew of armed robberies, you know? 0.89

00:12:31.000 And what did they try to say they had on you as far as evidence?

00:12:42.000 Well, a lot of that stuff kind of came out in the proceedings thereafter.

00:12:48.000 I mean, initially during the arrest, they don't really tell you all that.

00:12:52.000 You don't find these things out until eventually you're arrested and... 0.97

00:12:58.000 I mean, because it was a British tourist that was involved in the—I mean, that was a part of the crime, so shit made national news. 0.93

00:13:07.000 So I was on television, like, internationally. 0.97

00:13:11.000 This case was, like, really huge because of publicity.

00:13:16.000 So, I mean, half of the stuff, technically— I didn't even understand as to what was the evidence and what they had against me or what have you until I started going through the court proceedings.

00:13:32.000 They say they had eyewitnesses and then they say they didn't have eyewitnesses.

00:13:40.000 So in the Orleans Parish Jail, I stayed in the Orleans Parish Jail four years Four years before I was actually convicted.

00:13:52.000 And that because the The state's case had a lot of difficulties as it relates to the identification procedures that happened.

00:14:05.000 And eventually, I ended up convicted because a lot of things was withheld that showed that someone else actually committed a crime.

00:14:20.000 And they knew about this evidence that would have exonerated you.

00:14:22.000 They knew about it. 1.00

00:14:23.000 These motherfuckers. 1.00

00:14:25.000 That, to me, is the craziest thing when I hear about that over and over and over again. 1.00

00:14:30.000 Josh has brought this up, I don't know, to me, more than a dozen times.

00:14:35.000 Horrific cases where the prosecutors absolutely knew that they were convicting an innocent person.

00:14:42.000 They knew that there was evidence.

00:14:43.000 They withheld that evidence. 0.99

00:14:45.000 How the fuck do those people not wind up going to jail? 0.99

00:14:48.000 That, to me... 0.99

00:14:49.000 Wanting to put someone in jail for a crime that they're innocent of is almost as horrific as the crime you're charging the person with because you're ruining a life and you know better.

00:15:01.000 You know better.

00:15:03.000 Willfully holding back innocent people's evidence that would exonerate them.

00:15:09.000 That's insanity.

00:15:11.000 You know, Robert and I probably have different perspectives on this.

00:15:16.000 I went into this thinking, and when I say this, I mean this work.

00:15:20.000 I went into this thinking these were just a bunch of malicious people that were out to frame young people of color.

00:15:31.000 I don't think that that's always the case.

00:15:33.000 I think subconsciously it's there.

00:15:35.000 I think that they've become so focused on winning and believing their own hunches And that's what happened in Robert's case, that they go down a path.

00:15:44.000 And you'll never really know what their motivation is unless you could climb into their mind and they tell you.

00:15:50.000 But I know in Robert's case, because I know the case really well, that they took the...

00:15:58.000 I mean, I want you to explain it, but they took the word of people that claimed they could identify him.

00:16:04.000 They knew and had...

00:16:11.000 We're good to go. 0.99

00:16:26.000 It's infuriating, and I think that the only answer—we could talk about this probably later about the reform work that Robert's doing, that we're doing—the only answer is that we need to change laws to make people more accountable as law enforcement officers and prosecutors to make sure that— They can't just do this shit with impunity. 0.98

00:16:45.000 Well, this should be a crime. 0.98

00:16:46.000 It should be a crime of the highest order.

00:16:48.000 If you want to imprison someone for something that you absolutely know they didn't commit, if you have the evidence that shows that that person's innocent and you withhold that evidence and still prosecute and convict them, that should be a horrific crime.

00:17:00.000 You should never work in the criminal justice system again and you should lose your freedom.

00:17:05.000 If anything will motivate you Motivate your listeners to believe what you're saying and to feel the same way.

00:17:13.000 I can think of no other way than to take you through this man's journey.

00:17:17.000 Because even over dinner last night, I had to turn away and not get emotional because I don't know how he did it.

00:17:28.000 I don't know how these people can have the mental stability and find the wherewithal To not only survive in prison, but to play such an instrumental role in their own release.

00:17:45.000 He's the smartest lawyer in the room.

00:17:48.000 So, you know, why don't you tell Joe about how you even became a suspect and what some of the initial problems were with the case.

00:18:00.000 Yes.

00:18:02.000 How I became an initial suspect is they had a...

00:18:07.000 Well, allegedly, they had a false tip.

00:18:12.000 It was a false tip that led the police to arrest me for these particular crimes, saying that they knew that I was involved in these crimes or what have you.

00:18:25.000 Who gave them the false tip?

00:18:28.000 It was anonymous.

00:18:29.000 Anonymous.

00:18:30.000 Was it someone that had a grudge against you, do you think?

00:18:32.000 Was it someone that was trying to throw themselves off the case?

00:18:38.000 I really don't know that.

00:18:39.000 You don't know?

00:18:40.000 I really don't know.

00:18:41.000 I don't know how that happened.

00:18:44.000 But someone...

00:18:45.000 Someone actually did it, right?

00:18:47.000 Yeah.

00:18:47.000 And that is how easy someone's life can get thrown away and going to show you how things can take a different turn.

00:18:55.000 So...

00:18:57.000 You know, and a lot of these things, it didn't, and one way you look at it a lot of times that, I mean, growing up in distressed neighborhoods and growing up in poor neighborhoods, you're young, you're black, a crime happened to a tourist,

00:19:15.000 white tourist, the A lot of people is looking at the city because tourism, as I learned, I didn't know these things now, but as I learned while I was incarcerated, you know, tourism is a big attraction for the city of New Orleans.

00:19:30.000 There was a British tourist and a lot of news covering nationally. 0.99

00:19:34.000 Like, this shit got to get done. 0.99

00:19:37.000 Somebody got to go to jail for this. 1.00

00:19:38.000 Right.

00:19:39.000 Right?

00:19:40.000 Something has to happen.

00:19:41.000 And so, you know, when you take all those things into account, And somebody allegedly called and said that I had something to do with a crime, I get arrested.

00:19:54.000 I mean, when I got arrested, as I said, you know, I grew up, and I can go off into this, you know, I grew up in poor neighbors and poor environments.

00:20:07.000 I come from a single parent household.

00:20:09.000 I was the elder of five other siblings, which is one is deceased now.

00:20:17.000 Because I essentially became a product of my environment in the sense of maybe, you know, killing drugs and doing things that normal teens do in those kind of environments.

00:20:29.000 Eventually, I dropped out of school.

00:20:34.000 And maybe a few years after that, I ended up getting arrested for these crimes, right?

00:20:40.000 So when I went to prison, went to the jail first, and then eventually going to prison, only then I was equipped with a lot of courage.

00:20:50.000 Screak common sense, and that's it.

00:20:53.000 That's it.

00:20:54.000 I mean, I can read to the extent to get myself by, but I wasn't an external reader, right?

00:21:00.000 I just had a lot of common sense and a lot of courage.

00:21:04.000 So, I mean, going through that process was horrible.

00:21:10.000 It was horrific.

00:21:15.000 It was really horrific in a sense because in more terms of I went through that system and I tell folks all the time it's like standing before a system And they speak in a whole other language to me.

00:21:32.000 Legalese.

00:21:33.000 Jogging.

00:21:34.000 Yeah.

00:21:34.000 It's a legal jargon and terminologies that totally didn't understand.

00:21:38.000 Didn't understand that word, period, right?

00:21:41.000 So, going from that and being in a parish prison, have to use my courage and my strength from growing up in poor environments to survive inside this institution or jail to It was horrific.

00:21:59.000 Did you still have hope that they were going to figure out that you were innocent because you were innocent?

00:22:04.000 Right.

00:22:05.000 I still had a lot of hope because I didn't know, as I said, Innocent people wasn't, to my knowledge, until the world's knowledge, in 1992, it wasn't really nothing prevalent that innocent people get found guilty,

00:22:21.000 right? 0.95

00:22:22.000 So I still had a smidgen of hope, even in the parish, like, they're going to eventually get this shit right. 0.98

00:22:29.000 Or if I go to trial, nobody's going to find me guilty because I know I'm innocent. 0.96

00:22:33.000 Just living off, just holding on to that, right?

00:22:36.000 But as the time went on, me being in the parish, I started seeing guys that was getting convicted, and they actually were saying that it was innocent. 0.98

00:22:45.000 I'm like, he lying, because that shit don't happen. 0.98

00:22:49.000 He must be lying, right? 1.00

00:22:51.000 That shit don't happen. 1.00

00:22:52.000 I'm like, and God was more convincing. 0.99

00:22:56.000 I'm like, okay, maybe that can happen, but ain't gonna happen to me, right? 0.94

00:22:59.000 So when the shit happened to me, I'm like, so it was like mind-blogging to a sense. 0.98

00:23:06.000 Like, man, it was crazy. 0.99

00:23:09.000 Robert, they assigned a defense attorney for you, right?

00:23:14.000 A public defender?

00:23:17.000 No, I had...

00:23:18.000 Yes and no, because what happened was I hired a guy, but my family was poor.

00:23:26.000 They couldn't really afford him, and I think he was appointed at some level of the case, right?

00:23:33.000 And...

00:23:35.000 Yeah, and that was the gist of that.

00:23:39.000 But, man, it was so much stacks against me, though, to the extent of, man, I need a dream team.

00:23:49.000 Yeah.

00:23:50.000 You needed a serious group of actual excellent defenders who could go through all this information with a lot of work to find out that you were innocent.

00:24:01.000 But did you get a public defender eventually?

00:24:05.000 No, he was a private attorney.

00:24:06.000 So you had this private attorney.

00:24:07.000 When you had conversations with him initially and you were trying to explain that you had nothing to do with this, what was his initial reaction and what was his plan?

00:24:20.000 Did he try to reassure you?

00:24:22.000 What was his conversations with you like?

00:24:25.000 A lot of his conversation was that I think we can beat this.

00:24:34.000 I think we can beat this.

00:24:37.000 Predicated on if I get this information.

00:24:40.000 If I get this.

00:24:41.000 If I get this.

00:24:43.000 And I was like, okay.

00:24:44.000 If you can get this, then, you know.

00:24:47.000 What was the information they wanted to get?

00:24:48.000 You know, different reports, supplement reports and different things that he kept on fighting for that the coach were rejecting him on.

00:24:59.000 He was like, man, I need that supplement report.

00:25:01.000 I need to get this report.

00:25:03.000 And it's weird because a lot of the things that he was requesting for him, Eventually, years later, a lot of years later after I was found guilty, me litigating my own case and working with the Innocent Project of New Orleans,

00:25:22.000 where I was able to provide the resources to the investigators, some of these same documents that this guy was looking for were some of the documents that has exculpatory evidence withheld inside these documents.

00:25:40.000 And other documents as well, but for the most part.

00:25:43.000 So I understood why he was looking for those things.

00:25:46.000 But he's always telling me, like, man, we can do this and we maybe can do this if this happened and this happened.

00:25:53.000 But a lot of things never happened.

00:25:54.000 Did you learn law when you were in prison?

00:25:59.000 Yeah.

00:26:00.000 And I can tell you about that.

00:26:03.000 That was a long journey.

00:26:04.000 And it was a long and it was a fast journey because I was left with no other options.

00:26:10.000 As I said, after being convicted, I'm maybe about 22 years old, and I went to Angola.

00:26:20.000 When I first went there, I look at a lot of the guys who was already there.

00:26:29.000 When I got there, they had guys who was down like 25, 30 years.

00:26:33.000 25, 40 years.

00:26:35.000 You know, I'm like, what?

00:26:37.000 You been locked up that long?

00:26:39.000 And I'm a person that I observe a lot and, you know, I think a lot, right?

00:26:45.000 Right.

00:26:47.000 And I strategize a lot.

00:26:49.000 So when I actually just look at a lot of these guys, I was talking to a lot of them.

00:26:53.000 I noticed that these guys was uneducated.

00:26:58.000 They didn't know the law.

00:27:01.000 And they didn't have a lot of outside resources and connection with their families and other people, you know?

00:27:08.000 So I kind of like picked those three things out.

00:27:10.000 I was like, what the hell?

00:27:13.000 And they explained to me why those things happened.

00:27:15.000 They've been there so long, they lose, you know, they get out of touch with a lot of their family members and different things of that nature.

00:27:21.000 And they don't worry about educating themselves because they're worried about how they had to defend themselves all those years.

00:27:27.000 So all those things kind of like put them in that situation.

00:27:29.000 And a lot of them, not all of them, but most of them was always angry guys.

00:27:34.000 They was bitter.

00:27:35.000 They was extremely dangerous.

00:27:38.000 And I kind of like used those guys as a mirror, like, I'm not going to be like that, right?

00:27:43.000 So I kind of like took the opposite direction.

00:27:46.000 But what happened was, very interesting, that actually changed my life.

00:27:55.000 Me getting found guilty was one of the most horrific, traumatizing things in my entire life, right?

00:28:03.000 That was at that time.

00:28:05.000 But within that same year, I lost a brother, my younger brother.

00:28:16.000 He was killed in the form of street violence and what have you, right?

00:28:23.000 And I sort of like felt...

00:28:27.000 And I can laugh about it now, but I used to cry all the time when I talk about it.

00:28:30.000 I can laugh about it now because I sort of understand it and I'm able to accept it, right?

00:28:36.000 But I felt kind of responsible for his debt, in a sense, even though I was incarcerated and he was free.

00:28:46.000 But the reason why he was killed, because he was selling drugs, not to justify his means, because that's all he knew because the environment he grew up in, He was selling drugs to raise money, the higher it turned to get me out of prison.

00:29:04.000 And I felt really horrible and bad about that, man, you know?

00:29:09.000 So, you know, through months and weeks or what have you, I felt so depressed.

00:29:17.000 I actually wanted to kill myself because I couldn't even go to the funeral.

00:29:22.000 You know, so all these things I was really, I was thinking about committing suicide and everything.

00:29:29.000 But what happened was, interestingly, what happened was, a guy who I met when I first got there, one of the guys who I got very close with, in the sense of, because me and them had a subject matter that we can relate to.

00:29:49.000 When I was seven years old, I lost my father.

00:29:51.000 My father was killed.

00:29:54.000 Yeah, my father was killed, but my father was a boxer, right?

00:30:01.000 And so after my father was killed, like for maybe a couple of years after his trainers, they wanted to like, man, your daddy was so good.

00:30:09.000 We want to keep this bloodline going.

00:30:11.000 Like, you got to go and try to be a boxer.

00:30:13.000 So they kind of like ushered me in that mood.

00:30:16.000 And I started training.

00:30:17.000 I started to understand dynamics and the concept of the basics of boxing.

00:30:22.000 How old were you?

00:30:24.000 How old I was during that time?

00:30:25.000 When they started training you?

00:30:28.000 Maybe eight.

00:30:30.000 Eight to me, about 11 or 12, something to that.

00:30:34.000 It was a couple of years I stayed and gone back and forward.

00:30:38.000 Was this something you wanted to do?

00:30:40.000 Is this something that you felt like they were just trying to push you into doing?

00:30:43.000 I think they was pushing me towards it.

00:30:44.000 It's nothing that I actually didn't want to do, but that's why I stopped doing it, right?

00:30:49.000 Eventually I stopped doing it and did something else.

00:30:52.000 But...

00:30:53.000 So me and this guy who I'm speaking of had this kind of relationship as it relates to, because he was a boxing trainer inside the institution.

00:31:02.000 And me and them had a discussion about certain things, about how you train guys.

00:31:07.000 It's like, you know, if you train a guy to be aggressive, in a sense...

00:31:14.000 Don't hit him too much with the mid gloves because you're going to make him a defensive.

00:31:19.000 Just different things like that, right?

00:31:21.000 So we had to have these kind of discussions.

00:31:23.000 And so he was the one that kind of came to my aid when I was going through the dramatic process with my brother being killed.

00:31:37.000 I was walking to y'all, I was crying one day, and he just walked up to me like, man, what's going on?

00:31:41.000 I'm like, man, I don't really want to talk about it.

00:31:44.000 I'm like, man, just get in my space.

00:31:46.000 He was like, man, no, man, you my friend.

00:31:49.000 I won't, I'm going to help you.

00:31:52.000 He said, let me tell you this, and you might understand this.

00:31:55.000 He said that life is like boxing, right?

00:32:02.000 He said, every time life throw a punch at you, you got to throw a counter punch.

00:32:07.000 And he said, if you don't throw a counter punch, life will just knock you out just like you get knocked out in the ring.

00:32:12.000 And I'm like, it ain't dawned on me when he told me.

00:32:15.000 When I went back to my cell, I'm like, you know what? 0.95

00:32:18.000 This guy's fucking right. 0.97

00:32:20.000 You know, I got to fight back. 0.99

00:32:23.000 I can't just, you know, just sit back and continue on to blame the system.

00:32:29.000 Oh, dude, the system is at fault.

00:32:31.000 And blame other people for what they ain't doing.

00:32:33.000 I got to fight.

00:32:35.000 And that conversation sparked something to me.

00:32:38.000 It actually changed my life.

00:32:40.000 So from there, I enrolled myself in a literacy program inside the institution.

00:32:51.000 And it's funny now when I think about it because they started me out in the third grade.

00:32:56.000 I dropped out in the eighth grade, but they started me out in the third grade in the literacy program, in which I excelled.

00:33:02.000 Those programs are extremely fast because I'm like, what the hell, third grade?

00:33:06.000 But I was glad I had to take that route, right?

00:33:09.000 Because I wanted to relearn all those things and freshen myself up.

00:33:12.000 And eventually I got that to GED school.

00:33:17.000 And at the same time, I was studying the law.

00:33:22.000 Because I knew, I said, man, my brother was gone.

00:33:28.000 He technically was my only financial resource that I had or a chance that I ever had of getting an attorney.

00:33:35.000 My family couldn't afford it.

00:33:37.000 So that led him to what he was doing to try to help me. 0.99

00:33:42.000 So I was like, I got to do this shit myself. 0.98

00:33:46.000 Ain't no way I'm going to get experience in the Lord if I don't know how to If I don't have no academical skills, right? 1.00

00:33:53.000 So I gotta master this shit. 0.98

00:33:54.000 And they came back to these different things. 1.00

00:33:56.000 I'm like, all these guys that been there all this time, they were uneducated, that mean I gotta get educated. 0.99

00:34:02.000 They didn't know the Lord, that mean I gotta master this shit, right? 0.99

00:34:06.000 And they didn't have no resources, I gotta get resources. 0.99

00:34:11.000 So that's all I ever focus on.

00:34:13.000 So inside the institution after, you know, I studied the law for years and I went in from the Constitution all the way up to, man, I studied everything about the law to the point is I started taking corresponding courses.

00:34:33.000 In various aspects of laws on different branches, criminal, civil.

00:34:39.000 And I started studying politics.

00:34:42.000 Started studying all this stuff. 0.91

00:34:44.000 And one of the reasons why I didn't want to be the smartest person inside Angola Prison, but I didn't want to be that same 19-year-old kid that stood before the courtroom and didn't understand shit that was going on in front of me, right?

00:34:57.000 And I wanted to be educated enough to help myself Get out of prison and stay out of prison and change the system.

00:35:08.000 So that's what brought on that level of education.

00:35:15.000 So for many years, and one of the things I maintained a lot of my resources, I got a lot of resources is A lot of people used to spend a lot of their money in the commissary, in which I used to spend money in the commissary as well.

00:35:31.000 But a lot of my money I used to sacrifice.

00:35:33.000 I told you I'm a very strategic person.

00:35:36.000 I used to invest in 100 stamps a month.

00:35:43.000 And I said if I, and I think stamp was maybe 25 cents, 29 cents during the time.

00:35:52.000 So it was less than $30 a month, right, for to get me 100 stamps.

00:35:57.000 So if I can write 100 people in a month, and if three people respond from the 100 people I wrote and bring me help, that's a $30 investment,

00:36:13.000 right?

00:36:14.000 For me to actually get the help that I need and to get my freedom.

00:36:18.000 And who are you writing to?

00:36:20.000 Everybody.

00:36:21.000 I wrote the President of the United States.

00:36:23.000 I wrote the federal government.

00:36:24.000 I wrote everybody.

00:36:26.000 Then I started talking.

00:36:27.000 Over the period of years, I started talking to certain people, investigators, lawyers.

00:36:35.000 Then when I started hearing about the innocent projects, That was surfacing around the country.

00:36:41.000 I started writing them, and eventually it worked out, all right?

00:36:48.000 But prior to those folks coming on and bringing the resources to help me, I was litigating my own cases.

00:36:56.000 I was litigating cases for other guys.

00:37:00.000 I got so good at litigating to the extent that I was winning cases in the high state court, the circuit courts.

00:37:08.000 I was getting guys like hearings.

00:37:11.000 I had an impeccable prison record for as rehabilitating myself.

00:37:15.000 I had completed all the self-help programs.

00:37:18.000 I was in charge of Three of the organizations there that was creating programs for guys.

00:37:26.000 I mean, it was a whole lot of things I was doing.

00:37:30.000 I didn't have like ruling fractions for like Expand from like 10 to 15 years, which is hard to do.

00:37:39.000 What do you mean by that?

00:37:39.000 Rule infractions, 10 to 15 years?

00:37:41.000 By getting a write-up.

00:37:42.000 What do you mean?

00:37:44.000 Inside, when you're in prison, it's like a rule infraction is like they got a set of rules, realistic rules.

00:37:50.000 And if you violate in any kind of way, they call that a write-up or a rule infraction.

00:37:55.000 Okay.

00:37:56.000 And it's hard to get that inside the institution, I mean, not to get write-ups, right?

00:38:02.000 Right.

00:38:03.000 Because some guards just got animosity towards you, they don't like you, or whatever, they might get you to do something that you don't want to do.

00:38:12.000 So it's hard to balance those things.

00:38:15.000 But I managed to do that, right?

00:38:17.000 And I was getting all these help for these guys, getting reversible for guys, and Some guys was getting lesser sentencing and getting out of prison.

00:38:26.000 I'm like, I can't help myself. 0.99

00:38:28.000 I can't win shit for myself. 0.98

00:38:30.000 And I had all the right things. 0.99

00:38:33.000 As a matter of fact, some of the very same issues that I eventually got out on when I had the resources, some of the very same issues that I was litigating myself years before I got out.

00:38:49.000 Why I couldn't get out then?

00:38:50.000 Well, I just didn't have the resources.

00:38:52.000 So, yeah, that's all I explained, you know, my level of educating myself to the extent of learning all these things, man, you know?

00:39:06.000 You know, I was, Joe, last night, you know, I know Robert now for five years and I told him last night, I was like, I almost feel ashamed to ask you this.

00:39:24.000 Because I got this reputation as this real aggressive, hard-charging attorney when it comes to these innocence cases, and that I'll say things that other people may be a little bit more reluctant to say to a judge, and I'm not the traditional attorney.

00:39:42.000 And I said to Robert last night, you know, but...

00:39:48.000 I don't kid myself that when it comes to toughness, I can't even wrap my head around trying to get it in your mind space where you have a ninth grade education, you're put in prison for something you didn't do,

00:40:05.000 and I know myself and know that I would have been a puddle And I don't know how I would have survived, let alone had the wherewithal to overcome what he overcame.

00:40:19.000 So he was telling me a story last night about how, because I said, I know Angola is one of the most dangerous penitentiaries in the country.

00:40:28.000 It's a very violent place, full of very violent people.

00:40:32.000 It has a long, sordid past of not having oversight.

00:40:39.000 There's murders.

00:40:41.000 There's everything that you think about when you think of nightmares in a penitentiary happens there, maybe twofold.

00:40:47.000 That's a guess, but it's a very violent place, suffice to say.

00:40:51.000 So I said, well, how did you navigate that?

00:40:57.000 And, you know, I'm not going to put you on the spot to explain it. 0.97

00:41:01.000 I mean, I love to hear that shit because, you know, he very early on, he said, I got that out of the way right away so that I could focus on... 0.98

00:41:10.000 I identified these three things and wanted to do the opposite of what people lacked. 0.99

00:41:17.000 In other words, he said the people that weren't getting out of there had no education, didn't know the law, and had no support.

00:41:24.000 He said...

00:41:25.000 I was gonna get those three things and I made that decision early and I realized if I don't get respect to be able to focus on those three things then I'm gonna have to worry about violence the whole time and protecting myself.

00:41:38.000 So just The contours, you could hear these words about people getting out, and that's why I think this is so important, that people understand the contours of the suffering and the practical considerations of survival that he had to go through.

00:41:58.000 I mean, if you feel comfortable telling some of those stories, you should, because I think it helps people understand, like, what you have to deal with just to stay alive.

00:42:08.000 Right.

00:42:09.000 Just to fend off assaults.

00:42:11.000 Right.

00:42:12.000 Right.

00:42:13.000 And, uh...

00:42:15.000 Yeah, it's...

00:42:17.000 So you had to get that out of the way.

00:42:19.000 You had to make that a non-issue.

00:42:21.000 Right.

00:42:22.000 You had to concentrate on all the things that you needed to concentrate on to get you out of jail.

00:42:27.000 So how did you manage to avoid all that violence?

00:42:33.000 By...

00:42:36.000 Addressing it head on.

00:42:42.000 That's because of who I am as a person.

00:42:44.000 I'm just a very courageous type person.

00:42:47.000 But the environment I was raised in, it groomed you to be tough.

00:42:54.000 Groomed you to be tough.

00:42:56.000 As one thing, when I got there, I was saying, okay...

00:43:02.000 I'm going to leave out just like I came in. 0.99

00:43:05.000 I came in a man, and I'm going to leave out there like that. 1.00

00:43:11.000 If it's for me to get out of prison, I say I'm going to leave out.

00:43:15.000 So I'm going to keep my dignity and my pride, and I'm going to stand up.

00:43:18.000 So once I seen how that was, then any situation that confronted me, In other words,

00:43:35.000 it's like you bring me ignorance, I'm going to bring you ignorance like you've never seen before.

00:43:39.000 Right? 1.00

00:43:40.000 No matter how small I am, how big you are, how many of you are, if you bring me bullshit, I'm going to give you a cesspool. 1.00

00:43:50.000 I'm going to always go higher than your ignorance, right? 1.00

00:43:54.000 And having that mindset.

00:43:56.000 So, you know, I had some instances where, and like I said, I was a good boxer.

00:44:02.000 I was a good fighter.

00:44:05.000 And, you know, I had a mindset because I understood boxing.

00:44:09.000 It's like, you know, when I'm boxing, you know, if I'm in the rank, I can't hit below the belt, right?

00:44:14.000 But if I'm fighting you on the street, I'm trying to win. 1.00

00:44:17.000 I mean, I'm going to bite your ass. 1.00

00:44:19.000 I'm going to poke your eyes out. 1.00

00:44:21.000 I'm going to wrestle you. 1.00

00:44:23.000 They ain't got no damn rules. 0.96

00:44:24.000 I'm trying to win. 0.81

00:44:25.000 And me having that mindset of defending myself, what years later came to I had to use weapons. 0.98

00:44:38.000 So I had a mindset, and I had incident after incident until guys realized that This guy here ain't to be fucked with, right? 0.96

00:44:50.000 And he's not afraid, because most guys are afraid. 1.00

00:44:59.000 In other words, if me and you exchange words, and I'm gonna give you a primary example, like, fuck you. 1.00

00:45:08.000 My fuck you is a physical confrontation. 1.00

00:45:12.000 Yo, fuck you is a verbal mind-physical competition. 1.00

00:45:15.000 I'm always going higher than your ignorance, right? 1.00

00:45:18.000 And me having that mindset, I protected myself to the extent of A lot of bullshit stayed from Raman. 0.99

00:45:25.000 Not that guys fear me, but it's like... 0.98

00:45:28.000 You were too much danger. 1.00

00:45:29.000 You weren't worth fucking with. 1.00

00:45:31.000 Yeah, if you cross his path, he gonna bring you the best. 1.00

00:45:35.000 He told me about the second day he was in the parish jail.

00:45:42.000 Yeah.

00:45:44.000 Well, you tell it.

00:45:45.000 Because I said, how quickly did you have to establish that?

00:45:48.000 You know, well...

00:45:50.000 You don't have to tell all the gritty details.

00:45:52.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:45:54.000 Or you can.

00:45:56.000 Being in...

00:45:57.000 You know, the second day is being arrested for crimes and charges.

00:46:04.000 I had to...

00:46:07.000 I went in a situation of like, okay, I'm going to be here.

00:46:12.000 So I had to kind of like see how things was moving around.

00:46:15.000 So it was a situation where the stronger guys would get more food and the weaker guys would kind of get lesser food.

00:46:26.000 And there's certain things that was happening, right?

00:46:29.000 The stronger guys eat first and the weaker guys eat less. 0.96

00:46:32.000 And I'm like, I ain't either one of these kind of guys, so I'm going to get my shit straight now. 0.72

00:46:39.000 You know, so incident occurred. 0.67

00:46:44.000 I was able to manage to take care of my business in the sense of challenging one of the guys.

00:46:55.000 And Eventually, it got to a level where guys had respected me from doing that because I was a newcomer that was coming into that, and I took it upon myself to actually challenge these guys and confront one of these guys and dominate the situation to the extent where everybody started giving me a level of respect,

00:47:17.000 you know, to the extent, like, you know, he's a newcomer, but he ain't not the...

00:47:21.000 So I kind of, like, mimicked that same...

00:47:26.000 We're good to go.

00:47:40.000 All around me, guys were getting killed.

00:47:43.000 I didn't see a lot of that stuff.

00:47:45.000 You know, guys, you know, it's horrible, you know.

00:47:51.000 But I just was there and not there.

00:47:54.000 Because I was focused, man.

00:47:56.000 I was trying to get out of prison.

00:47:57.000 I know I ain't blowing in there for number one.

00:48:00.000 And I know what I had to do in order to put myself in the position to win.

00:48:05.000 How difficult was it to stay on track?

00:48:08.000 You're in there for 24 years for something that you didn't do.

00:48:13.000 Was it hard not to lose hope?

00:48:23.000 And people can tell you this as much as, strongest as people say I am and other people are, that come from a wrongful conviction inside of an institution.

00:48:38.000 And I think that's like one of the most too feared things that they say, and I will agree with it, that scientists and other people say, man, it's too worst as fears of dying and being terminally ill.

00:48:55.000 Right?

00:48:56.000 That's too ill.

00:48:57.000 Yeah.

00:48:58.000 So, me having all the hope and saying, man, I'm going to get out of here.

00:49:03.000 I'm going to get out of here.

00:49:04.000 Didn't really know how, how that was going to happen, but it's a It's a level of faith that you gotta hold onto, right?

00:49:14.000 But somewhere in the back of your mind, because you're constantly seeing it every day.

00:49:19.000 In Angola, guys have been incarcerated for so long that they die almost every day.

00:49:25.000 A lot of people don't know that.

00:49:26.000 People die in that institution every day. 1.00

00:49:30.000 And you've seen this shit. 1.00

00:49:31.000 They're dying of old age. 1.00

00:49:32.000 They're dying for murder.

00:49:33.000 Old age.

00:49:34.000 Old age.

00:49:35.000 Old age.

00:49:36.000 You know, they've been there for so long.

00:49:37.000 How many people are in Angola locked up?

00:49:40.000 More than 5,000.

00:49:43.000 They have their own TV station.

00:49:45.000 Radio station.

00:49:47.000 Magazine.

00:49:48.000 It's like a world.

00:49:50.000 And, you know, what's...

00:49:55.000 Well, it's hard to, you know, and the reason why I think that this is so important is because you have to transport yourself and allow yourself to go.

00:50:03.000 You know, he gave the story short shrift.

00:50:06.000 What happens is the second day he's in there...

00:50:10.000 You know, the guys that are there for a long time, they call him a new Jack.

00:50:16.000 And he was first in line.

00:50:19.000 He got out of his cell first and he's ready to go get food.

00:50:23.000 And he said he saw on the first day that what happened is they come out with loaves of bread.

00:50:28.000 The guys that have been there for the longest take all the bread and leave the ends for the new Jacks.

00:50:35.000 So he was out of his cell and was the third in line. 0.98

00:50:38.000 And one of the guys was like, you need to get your ass to the back of the line. 0.98

00:50:44.000 And he was like, okay. 0.99

00:50:47.000 And he went to the back of the line.

00:50:49.000 And then...

00:50:52.000 When it came time to eat, the guy that put him to the back of the line didn't end up eating.

00:51:00.000 He ended up on the floor.

00:51:02.000 And to protect the details, you know, Robert put him on the floor.

00:51:11.000 As a way to say, okay, if you kick me to the back of the line, I'm not going to have words with you.

00:51:16.000 I'm going to make you feel it so that no one's sending me to the back of the line because I'm going to eat like everybody else.

00:51:22.000 And that takes a level of ballsiness, I think.

00:51:25.000 And to also interject into the story, yeah, and When he told me to get to the back of the line, actually I didn't go to the back of the line. 0.99

00:51:37.000 Another guy allowed me to get, like, maybe three spots behind him because he was like, that's bull crap. 1.00

00:51:44.000 But I already had in my mind, like, I'm going to kick his ass. 1.00

00:51:47.000 I'm going to kick his ass. 1.00

00:51:48.000 Thank God you knew how to fight. 1.00

00:51:49.000 Yeah, I'm going to kick his ass. 1.00

00:51:52.000 Dad will either pick up something and use it as a weapon on him. 1.00

00:51:58.000 And eventually I did. 0.99

00:52:00.000 To care of my business, I put his ass on the ground and pulled the blood. 1.00

00:52:04.000 And I let everybody know on both sides, the tears of tears, there was maybe 56 people. 0.99

00:52:12.000 I let everybody know on the pod that I ain't the one. 0.99

00:52:17.000 And if you think I'm just talking or I'm just verbally just saying these things, if you just give me a fair chance with each one of y'all that feel that way, and I kick everybody, I kick all y'all ass. 0.99

00:52:31.000 And I wasn't, I mean, I know I can't beat everybody in the world, but I damn try, right? 0.98

00:52:37.000 So me, doing that, that's what kind of like, hold up, man, this... 0.70

00:52:42.000 This little guy, you're something else, right?

00:52:45.000 So eventually, I started getting my little respect.

00:52:47.000 I ate just like everybody else ate, the ones who was doing what they was doing.

00:52:52.000 And eventually, over the period of time, a lot of that stuff I got upset with because it wasn't right.

00:53:00.000 I'm an unfair person, right?

00:53:02.000 So eventually, I ended up taking a guy's job.

00:53:09.000 And what they call like tier reps, right?

00:53:12.000 You're the rep for these guys.

00:53:16.000 And you know, so I ended up getting into the competition with the guy, took his position, and from that point on, I was in the parents.

00:53:24.000 I always maintained that kind of position, that's being a representative for a lot of these guys.

00:53:29.000 And guys wanted me with that position because not that I was, didn't know I wouldn't side with the administration, Right?

00:53:37.000 They know I'm going to play it fair across the board.

00:53:40.000 Like, the administration was to bring me a pan that I know that wasn't going to feed the 50 people. 1.00

00:53:47.000 I'm going to slide that shit back out the door. 0.99

00:53:51.000 We not eating. 1.00

00:53:52.000 Right?

00:53:53.000 We going on ban.

00:53:54.000 We going on ban.

00:53:56.000 We not going to eat.

00:53:57.000 Because I'm not going to take that and feed all these men.

00:53:59.000 It's not enough food.

00:54:01.000 And having that kind of, it just gave a lot of people a lot of respect for me while I was there. 0.96

00:54:07.000 Like I said, I still went through shit that everybody else was going through by being in jail. 0.83

00:54:12.000 So they gave you, like they would give you a plan for how much food everybody would get? 0.98

00:54:17.000 And then you would be able to negotiate with them?

00:54:20.000 No, in the parish jail what happened was, Robert, try to talk into the microphone.

00:54:28.000 Oh, I'm sorry.

00:54:29.000 Just pull it up towards you or move your seat.

00:54:31.000 It doesn't matter.

00:54:32.000 Yeah, so what happens is if they give you a pan of red beans, right, and a pan of rice, and it may not be—it's not enough.

00:54:44.000 They're supposed to have two pans. 0.98

00:54:48.000 And maybe two pans of rice or a pan and a half of rice in order to feed that, in order to give people an amount of food that's going to make them full.

00:54:58.000 Now, it might be enough for somebody else to serve and skim guys on the trade, not giving them a lot of food, but I'm not going to accept that to feed them guys.

00:55:10.000 I'm not going to do that.

00:55:12.000 You might do that with somebody else.

00:55:13.000 So you were able to negotiate?

00:55:15.000 You were able to get more food?

00:55:16.000 Yes.

00:55:17.000 Every time.

00:55:18.000 Every time.

00:55:20.000 And guys respected me for that because I was able to play fair across the board on those different levels there.

00:55:28.000 And that's who I am.

00:55:30.000 I'm just a fair person.

00:55:31.000 So how many years did it take you before you started to see the light at the end of the tunnel?

00:55:36.000 How many years did it take you before you were able to get people to review your case and recognize you had been wrongly convicted?

00:55:52.000 I never thought about that.

00:55:57.000 They had, you know, maybe after...

00:56:00.000 No, I can tell you this.

00:56:04.000 This is what happens.

00:56:06.000 And unbelievable.

00:56:11.000 I got convicted in 1996. I filed my first post-conviction as a, what they call, pro se litigant.

00:56:27.000 I did it myself.

00:56:30.000 And in the year 2000, I received the evidentiary hearing, which is a hearing without no attorney.

00:56:43.000 And my issue was mainly was about the DNA testing.

00:56:49.000 I was asking the courts to preserve the testing if there's any testing that's available to preserve the DNA testing so I can test it and prove my innocence.

00:57:08.000 And I got granted an evidential hearing from a motion I did.

00:57:15.000 Well, unbeknownst to me, years later, that was the first Ever of a motion that was granted on that capacity because they end up creating a law for the preserved DNA testing.

00:57:30.000 That's way after I did this in 2000, in the year 2000, right?

00:57:35.000 I was like so ahead of time with this filing.

00:57:40.000 And I didn't even know it.

00:57:44.000 So...

00:57:46.000 From there, I ended up getting denied in the courts.

00:57:51.000 And this is a whole chain of other things.

00:57:56.000 But I think in 2010, I love that the Innocent Project of New Orleans came on board to bring their resources to help me out.

00:58:11.000 And even after that, I still was getting denials with them, right?

00:58:18.000 We still was getting denials.

00:58:21.000 And I tell people all the time, it's like, you know, throughout the course of 23 years and 7 months, I had 16 denials from every court, from the lower courts to the middle courts to the highest courts.

00:58:38.000 And let's think about what's happening here, by the way.

00:58:40.000 What's happening here, just to put this into context, is that Robert is asking...

00:58:48.000 The court to order the prosecutors preserve the biological evidence from the crime scene.

00:58:54.000 This was a rape and a murder.

00:58:56.000 They had collected evidence and he is saying to them, please don't destroy the evidence.

00:59:04.000 Because I want to prove my innocence.

00:59:06.000 And I've talked to you about this before, about how prosecutors and state politicians fight this being made a law all over the country.

00:59:20.000 And they come up with excuses like, well, then we're going to have a rash of people that...

00:59:25.000 Want their evidence preserved and retested.

00:59:28.000 There'll be a run on the courts.

00:59:29.000 I mean, this seems to me to be a fundamental human right of somebody that's accused of a crime that on the strength of snitch testimony and hidden evidence, which we're going to get to what was hidden from him and his legal team in a minute.

00:59:46.000 That he is fighting a seven-year battle, excuse me, a 14-year battle just to try to get somebody to help him get an order from the court to preserve the DNA. I would like to say that this is an anomaly and that this only happened in Robert's case.

01:00:03.000 It happens in way too many cases that I've handled and that the Innocence Project handles and the criminal justice reform organizations handle all over the country.

01:00:13.000 So a lot of what I get as a result of speaking out is, how can I help?

01:00:20.000 One of the ways you can help You know, your voice matters when you are voting for elected officials.

01:00:28.000 Your voice matters when you are writing a letter to a governor.

01:00:33.000 Your voice matters if you show up at a town hall meeting.

01:00:35.000 It really does all matter.

01:00:37.000 And we have to keep on pounding, beating the drum to make sure that fundamental rights like this, laws to protect these rights, are enacted.

01:00:47.000 But I just wanted to make sure I mentioned that before I lost the thought.

01:00:51.000 Because by the time the Innocence Project of New Orleans comes along, And eventually, Barry Sheck and my dear friend Nina Morrison, who are, you know, Barry is, but Nina is one of the leaders at the Innocence Project in New York.

01:01:08.000 She just got, you know, put forth as a potential federal judge pick. 0.99

01:01:13.000 She'd be an amazing choice.

01:01:16.000 Really started to take his case on and expose all of this evidence that was hidden.

01:01:20.000 But prior to that, he was... 0.99

01:01:23.000 You know, a one-legged man in a shit-kicking contest, to say the least. 0.98

01:01:27.000 I mean, he's fighting this all on his own. 0.98

01:01:29.000 But go ahead, I don't wanna...

01:01:31.000 Yeah, and, well, not only did a lot of my pleadings was about preserving the evidence, it was also about all the withheld evidence.

01:01:42.000 And all the things that actually pertinent to my innocence.

01:01:45.000 So this one pleading, there was multiple pleadings that I was filing throughout the span of time.

01:01:54.000 So as I said, these 16 denials came over the course of the 23 years and 7 months.

01:01:59.000 And trust me, each one of them denials felt like a guilty verdict all over again.

01:02:07.000 Every one of them, right? 1.00

01:02:09.000 But Well, eventually, they became numb to, like, this shit, it's all the same, right? 0.99

01:02:21.000 Like, one denial feels like the same, you know, even though it hurt because you've been to build yourself up to the extent, like, all right, I'm doing all this amazing shit, I re-educated myself, I'm doing all this great shit, but what the hell? 0.99

01:02:33.000 Hell, I'm still not out of prison.

01:02:37.000 And so when the Innocent Project of New Orleans was able to bring all the resources, we still was getting denial, still getting denial. 0.99

01:02:45.000 I'm like, goddamn, I got the facts, I got the law on my side, like, what the hell? 0.96

01:02:50.000 You know, and, you know, you hold on to the hope. 0.99

01:02:56.000 But, you know, it's always in the back of your mind to get back to this piece.

01:03:00.000 It's always in the back of your mind, like, man, it's a possibility that I might die here.

01:03:04.000 Right?

01:03:05.000 And something that you dread, you know, that's one of the worst things for any person incarcerated, but especially, like, when you're innocent.

01:03:12.000 Like, there's a reasonable probability that I might die here.

01:03:17.000 How many guys do you think you met in jail that were innocent that were probably going to die there?

01:03:26.000 I met a lot of innocent guys in there, but I also met a lot of guys who actually died, right?

01:03:36.000 In some instance, when I was in prison, I used to work for this hospice program.

01:03:42.000 We deal with a lot of the elderly, the terminally ill prisoners over there on the hospital wall, in the hospital wall.

01:03:53.000 You go over there and you care for them and you do these things for these guys.

01:03:58.000 And a lot of those guys who Right before they die, like, you know, because I shared my story and let them know I was innocent, you know?

01:04:07.000 And they're like, they was in their right mind.

01:04:10.000 It's like, Rob, I'm innocent, man.

01:04:13.000 I'm innocent.

01:04:14.000 And I'm like...

01:04:17.000 Not all of them, but I didn't have that conversation with a lot of them.

01:04:22.000 And I'm like, okay, he got no reason to lie.

01:04:26.000 He's about to die.

01:04:28.000 There's no reason for him to lie.

01:04:31.000 There's nothing that can happen.

01:04:33.000 So I believed him.

01:04:36.000 And there was quite a few of them that came into the junction of Expressing that they were innocent.

01:04:45.000 I'm glad you're wearing that t-shirt.

01:04:49.000 The death penalty kills innocent people because I think there's a lot of people that have this sort of hard-nosed idea that the death penalty is a good thing because it kills people who do bad things and it's very simplistic.

01:05:04.000 But the problem with that is the legal system is very, very, very flawed.

01:05:10.000 Very flawed.

01:05:11.000 So this idea that the death penalty kills innocent people is a very important idea and people need to understand that For your, in your case, your situation, it's not unusual.

01:05:26.000 This story that you're telling, it's unique and it's amazing that you went through it and that you figured out a way to educate yourself and to get yourself out.

01:05:36.000 But you're not an unusual case in that there's a lot of innocent people that get locked up.

01:05:41.000 That's right.

01:05:42.000 Look at the back of my shirt.

01:05:44.000 Those are all innocent people who were killed?

01:05:48.000 Those are all...

01:05:49.000 Those are all innocent people that were convicted and sentenced to death and have since been exonerated.

01:05:57.000 Right.

01:05:57.000 So, Clement Diagiri's on the back of this shirt.

01:05:59.000 You've heard his story before.

01:06:01.000 And, you know, we're going to talk a little bit later about some cases of people that are still on death row right now, that there are strong, strong cases for innocence for them.

01:06:17.000 And, you know, you touched on something really important, which is that when you hear about a horrific crime, I think it's human nature.

01:06:25.000 Eye for an eye.

01:06:26.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:06:27.000 And there's this really fascinating thing that happens during the death penalty case.

01:06:32.000 The first phase of jury selection is called death qualification.

01:06:36.000 It's a pretty shitty name for it.

01:06:40.000 And it's this phase where you are there to gauge people's feelings about the death penalty.

01:06:49.000 And having gone through jury selection and death penalty cases, it's a rather fascinating sort of human experiment, if you think about it, because what the Supreme Court of the United States, not of any particular state,

01:07:05.000 has said is that if a state is going to put someone to death...

01:07:10.000 You have to have this process by which you cannot have people on the jury.

01:07:15.000 This is a bit of an oversimplification, but you cannot have people on the jury that feel that if somebody is convicted of a capital case and a capital crime, that you will automatically vote for the death penalty.

01:07:29.000 And you also can't have people on the jury that are so against the death penalty that they'll never vote for it.

01:07:37.000 Now, during this process of gauging people's feelings about the death penalty, you get to have a conversation with them.

01:07:46.000 And you can see the conflict, the emotional tumult in their words, in their body language, in wrestling with, well, if somebody would, you know, 0.70

01:08:02.000 murder a child, or, you know, they deserve to die. 0.81

01:08:06.000 But then you also, you know, see, but how, but unless I know 100% they did it, I don't know if it makes sense to hold that. 0.99

01:08:16.000 And you see this wrestling, this existential wrestling going on.

01:08:20.000 Then there are some people that come in and say, that's right.

01:08:23.000 I'm definitely voting for death if I think they did it.

01:08:29.000 And you know, it's fraught with so many problems because of the finality of it, right?

01:08:36.000 And you know, people have different philosophical beliefs.

01:08:41.000 But if you knew the sheer number of people that, you know, Florida leads the nation in death row exonerations, it would have put 30 people to death that were actually innocent that have been exonerated from Florida's death row.

01:08:56.000 Over what period of time?

01:08:59.000 30 or so years.

01:09:01.000 So that would be, you know, one person a year Innocent person killed on the death.

01:09:11.000 So, yeah, we all, I think, a lot of criminal justice reform is about...

01:09:17.000 We live in a society that's so, if you're not this, you're that.

01:09:23.000 You're either on this team or that team.

01:09:25.000 It's a very binary...

01:09:25.000 Simplified.

01:09:26.000 Yeah, zero-sum game.

01:09:28.000 And, you know, I think human existence is far more complicated, and there are too many layers of gray areas that...

01:09:37.000 You know, everybody should really stop and pump the brakes in their thought process and not be so wedded to how they were brought up or what their parents believe or what they think their friends believe and really take stock of, you know, what am I really about and what do I stand for?

01:09:55.000 I say often that I stand in awe of these exonerees, and even as I'm listening to it today, I'm hearing it, and I know the story.

01:10:05.000 But to know what Robert had to endure, it's just hard to imagine how a human being could get past it. 0.99

01:10:14.000 I mean, he told me about the first time he saw people go for food in jail, and he said it was like a bunch of fucking savages. 0.99

01:10:38.000 I'm in a battle. 0.99

01:10:43.000 Yeah.

01:10:45.000 Robert, can you explain some of what you ended up finding out was hidden from you?

01:10:53.000 What was the exculpatory evidence?

01:11:01.000 They would have held that First of all, maybe I can explain the crimes, right?

01:11:14.000 There was a spree of crime that happened in the French Quarter in New Orleans.

01:11:22.000 I think three armed robbers, a rape and a kidnapping, and a murder was tied to that.

01:11:30.000 So they took all these crimes and said it was a part of a spree.

01:11:36.000 They had a car that was involved in the crime and They eventually, over a couple of weeks after the crime happened maybe,

01:11:53.000 they found out who the car that was involved and During the time when they was doing the investigation, my name came up as the anonymous tip came in, right?

01:12:06.000 So what they did was they eventually arrested me and connected me to the car that was actually used in all these sprees of crime, including the murder, the robbery, the kidnappings,

01:12:23.000 and the rape.

01:12:29.000 Years later, eventually found out that another guy got arrested for the murder and was connected.

01:12:43.000 In his possession, he had possessed a jury and articles of evidence from each crime spree.

01:12:53.000 From each of the victims.

01:12:54.000 He had jewelry from the woman that was robbed.

01:12:58.000 He had clothing from one of the other women, I think the woman that was raped.

01:13:03.000 And they never turned this over to him.

01:13:05.000 Right.

01:13:06.000 And so, yeah, they would have held that from me.

01:13:13.000 How did they connect you with the car?

01:13:15.000 That's what I'm about to explain.

01:13:19.000 How they connected me with the car, the prosecutor theory was that when they arrested this guy, they got him to say that me and him was friends and he allowed me to use the car.

01:13:40.000 Right?

01:13:41.000 At times, they commit the crime, but all the evidence suggests it differently.

01:13:49.000 And so at trial, what they did was they charged—he got convicted of the actual murder, right?

01:14:00.000 He got convicted of murder, and it separated him from the other crimes, and it charged me with the other crimes, right?

01:14:07.000 But unbeknownst to me, on a day of trial that I was for the rape, kidnapping, and the armed robberies, that...

01:14:22.000 He told the prosecutor that I had nothing to do with, none of the crimes, I never used a car, none of that, right?

01:14:31.000 But when I went to trial, the prosecutor said something totally opposite.

01:14:35.000 They prosecute me on the theory that me and this guy was best friends.

01:14:38.000 He allowed me to use his phone.

01:14:40.000 Did you know him?

01:14:40.000 I didn't know him at all.

01:14:42.000 Never seen him a day in my life.

01:14:44.000 And the short answer to your question, Joe, about what they had connecting him to the car, a driver's license.

01:14:51.000 You would think a driver's license, a registration, insurance, someone that had seen them in the car.

01:14:55.000 The answer is they had absolutely nothing.

01:14:58.000 They had the word of a guy that had been accused and tied to these murderers who was looking to put it on someone else.

01:15:05.000 How did he put it on you, though?

01:15:07.000 He found out that there was a tip implicating him.

01:15:11.000 Right.

01:15:13.000 Absolutely.

01:15:15.000 And so he tried to be a snitch to get the heat off of him and put it on you.

01:15:19.000 Absolutely.

01:15:20.000 And they let that happen.

01:15:22.000 Yep.

01:15:22.000 Even though they knew.

01:15:23.000 Right.

01:15:24.000 And it goes deeper than that.

01:15:27.000 So after I get convicted, I'm still charged with the murder of a British tourist, right?

01:15:35.000 I'm still actually charged with it, even though I haven't been going back and forth to court with it at this time.

01:15:41.000 After I get convicted, and I know I was going to get a life sentence for the rape, the kidnapping, the three armed robbers, I So the district attorney made an offer to my defense attorney and eventually brought it to me on the day of my sentence and said,

01:16:02.000 okay, we can give him 25 years, 21 years for the murder, give him a manslaughter, right? 0.95

01:16:12.000 And I don't know what type of stuff that happens out of my presence between my attorney and district attorney, but I was scared as shit. 0.96

01:16:20.000 I just received a life sentence. 0.92

01:16:23.000 I know I was about to give a sentence to life for the rape, and 25 or whatever, maybe 99 years for every own robbery.

01:16:33.000 I don't know. 0.98

01:16:33.000 I was scared as shit. 0.98

01:16:35.000 So I took the 21-year plea, but I never admitted to anything, right? 0.96

01:16:41.000 And a part of the evidence was That the guy who we're talking about that was initially trying to involve me, he was found guilty of the murder already.

01:16:57.000 He was already found guilty.

01:16:58.000 So they were trying you for a crime they already had convicted someone for?

01:17:03.000 Absolutely.

01:17:03.000 How is that possible?

01:17:04.000 It happened.

01:17:06.000 Because what they were trying to say is that if two people are in a car and you're both out committing crimes, right?

01:17:13.000 You're both responsible.

01:17:14.000 You're both responsible.

01:17:15.000 There's something called the felony murder rule.

01:17:17.000 And the felony murder rule is that if you're in the commission of a crime and somebody dies, so if you and I went and robbed the bank, And I go in and start, you know, shooting up the tellers and kill two tellers, you're responsible for the murder also.

01:17:32.000 So the theory of Robert's prosecution was that they were friends, they were on this crime spree together, and that even though he was convicted of the murder, you know, He was still responsible and guilty of murder.

01:17:47.000 It's no different than the James Daly case, which I've talked about before.

01:17:51.000 They convicted one guy, Jack Piercy, and then they betrayed my client after that.

01:17:56.000 One guy got sentenced to life, one guy got sentenced to death.

01:18:00.000 It's crazy that they don't have to have any evidence whatsoever that you're even friends with that guy.

01:18:04.000 Right, right.

01:18:05.000 They had his word.

01:18:06.000 Right.

01:18:06.000 Isn't his word enough?

01:18:08.000 And the piece of evidence, another article of evidence that was held is a report that...

01:18:16.000 That when he made a statement, like, demonic on my trial, as I said, that I didn't have anything to do with the murder, he never knew me, and different things of that nature.

01:18:28.000 And they withheld that.

01:18:30.000 And they withheld that.

01:18:32.000 And that was very important to change the outcome of my trial because...

01:18:36.000 They took me to trial on the theory that we were friends and that I knew him and that I had connection to him through the car.

01:18:42.000 But had I would have had that piece of information, the interject in my trial, I would have never probably got found guilty to that extent.

01:18:50.000 And they also would have held various different statements and evidence as it relates to the witnesses that was very inconsistent, that was very favorable to me.

01:19:04.000 And that could have actually printed back to the guy who was actually convicted of the murder and attached to all those other spree of crimes.

01:19:18.000 Yeah, so it just was a lot of stuff, man, that they would have held that almost made it impossible For me to unravel and to obtain my freedom.

01:19:33.000 And you know, I'd like to say that that's uncommon too, but it's not.

01:19:36.000 So in other words, when prosecutors are working on one theory, full steam ahead, right?

01:19:43.000 And they then are met with, you might be wrong, we might have been wrong all along.

01:19:51.000 The instinct, 99 times out of 100, is to plow ahead and rationalize why the true perpetrator in Robert's case, why did he all of a sudden say Robert had nothing to do with it?

01:20:06.000 Oh, well, maybe he is making this up because he feels guilty that he implicated his friend who really wasn't his friend.

01:20:15.000 In Clemente Aguirre's case, which we've talked about and your listeners know about, The true killer confessed.

01:20:22.000 She confessed over and over again to friends, to neighbors, drunk, not drunk, to police.

01:20:29.000 In denying him post-conviction relief, now this is a judge, the judge chalked it up as survivor's guilt.

01:20:37.000 So, in other words, whether it's a prosecutor's, judges, they'll make an excuse to protect the prosecution because it's all about winning or losing.

01:20:46.000 Let's talk about that.

01:20:47.000 What is that?

01:20:47.000 Is that human nature?

01:20:49.000 Is it, like, do people just want to confirm their initial suspicions and they rationalize all sorts of reasons why what they initially thought was right and this new evidence that shows that it's not right is wrong?

01:21:03.000 Like, what is it?

01:21:05.000 They just don't want to be...

01:21:07.000 They don't want to lose?

01:21:09.000 I think it's a fundamental flaw that we have as human beings that I share.

01:21:15.000 As a Taurus, I especially share it.

01:21:18.000 How dare you bring up astrology?

01:21:22.000 But I... I'm stubborn, but I think as I see this time and time again in watching juries deliberate because I do mock trials and focus groups or speaking to people post verdict, but you can apply it to politics.

01:21:36.000 To anything.

01:21:37.000 To anything.

01:21:38.000 I think one fundamental flaw we have as mammals is our inability to be flexible in our reasoning.

01:21:46.000 And I think that once we make a decision about something, it's very, very difficult to get people to reconsider.

01:21:54.000 I see that in really intelligent people, too, and it makes me sad.

01:21:58.000 It's maddening.

01:21:59.000 It drives me crazy.

01:22:01.000 Part of the problem, I think, with police, with prosecutors, with the whole legal system is that it becomes a game.

01:22:12.000 And I don't mean a game like it's a joke.

01:22:14.000 I mean a game like you're trying to win. 0.96

01:22:16.000 And whenever someone is involved in something where they're trying to win, They do whatever the fuck they can. 0.99

01:22:22.000 People cheat. 0.98

01:22:23.000 They move golf balls, right? 0.99

01:22:25.000 They do whatever the fuck they can. 1.00

01:22:26.000 Don't look at Jamie. 1.00

01:22:28.000 I watch people moving those fucking things. 1.00

01:22:30.000 Whenever I hear golf balls. 1.00

01:22:33.000 Well, people cheat, man.

01:22:35.000 They find ways to pretend that they didn't do something when they did it.

01:22:40.000 They find ways to justify the things they did do.

01:22:43.000 They find ways to...

01:22:45.000 Pass the buck and put it on.

01:22:47.000 If they can score that W, right?

01:22:50.000 And you see cops do it.

01:22:52.000 They plant evidence on someone they think was probably guilty, but they don't have enough evidence on them.

01:22:58.000 They find rationalizations.

01:23:00.000 And it's because there's a game going on.

01:23:04.000 It's a win or lose.

01:23:06.000 And it becomes a real problem.

01:23:07.000 And not only that, with a lot of cops...

01:23:10.000 There's quotas.

01:23:11.000 Like, you literally have to arrest a certain amount of people.

01:23:14.000 Right.

01:23:14.000 Which is insanity.

01:23:15.000 Like, what the fuck do they do if no one commits a crime? 0.97

01:23:18.000 What do they do if no one speeds? 0.99

01:23:20.000 If you have a quota where you have to arrest a hundred people for speeding, what the fuck do you do if everybody makes an agreement, we all get on Facebook and we say, hey... 0.93

01:23:28.000 Let's everybody drive the fucking speed limit for the next 60 days and let's crush the legal system because these cops have to make a certain amount of pullovers. 1.00

01:23:39.000 They have to pull a certain amount of people over and write a certain amount of tickets. 0.99

01:23:41.000 They have quotas.

01:23:42.000 If you don't meet those quotas, they get in trouble. 0.99

01:23:45.000 So what the fuck kind of game is that? 0.99

01:23:47.000 Right. 1.00

01:23:47.000 I would say... 1.00

01:23:50.000 A lot of that, a lot of, just like we have structural racism, right?

01:23:56.000 And when I say structural racism, I mean like institutional things that set up through regulation rules and policies.

01:24:05.000 Like redlining.

01:24:06.000 Right.

01:24:08.000 And you just have, like, a flawlessness in a variety of different systems.

01:24:14.000 They got people that work for companies, they got a lot of flawlessness, and they don't really understand that you're employed in a system that treats people unfair, calls people home, and you can't even see it.

01:24:29.000 And some people can be a part of a system, a part of a program, or a part of an organization that Have that win mentality, right?

01:24:40.000 That win, win, win by all cause mentality.

01:24:43.000 And they lose their empathy for people. 0.99

01:24:47.000 And when people lose their empathy, when we define those things, and a lot of people don't like to hear this type of shit. 0.99

01:24:56.000 But when you lose your empathy for people, you become technically a sociopath. 0.99

01:25:02.000 That's a real problem with corporations.

01:25:04.000 That's like a thing that they say about corporations, that corporations technically, if you look at the actions, behavior of corporations, particularly ones that cause harm to the environment or to people or sell products they know are dangerous and harmful and hide the evidence, that they're acting like sociopaths.

01:25:20.000 And there's a term called a diffusion of responsibility.

01:25:23.000 And diffusion of responsibility happens if you have a large group of people The term applies to if you're standing around, there's a hundred people in this group and you watch some guy beating the shit out of somebody, you don't step in because you feel like it's not my fault,

01:25:39.000 I'm not responsible, there's so many people here.

01:25:41.000 But if it's just you and one guy beating the shit out of someone, then you feel responsible because no one else is there to help.

01:25:48.000 But the large number of people you would think would stop someone from doing something, like a corporation.

01:25:54.000 There's so many people, how could this corporation, how could they act in such an unethical way that they know is harmful to a community, polluting rivers, or harmful to the people that they're selling these products to?

01:26:05.000 There's so many people, surely someone's going to tell.

01:26:08.000 But it's actually easier for them to get away with it.

01:26:11.000 Which is how pharmaceutical companies operate.

01:26:13.000 It's easier for them to get away with it if it's an enormous amount of people because there's a diffusion of responsibility and there's an overall commitment to keep the profits going for the greater good of the corporation.

01:26:24.000 And there's no accountability.

01:26:25.000 No accountability, exactly.

01:26:26.000 We've stumbled on something very magical here in this moment.

01:26:29.000 I'll tell you why.

01:26:31.000 It's no different with a corporation than it is with prosecutors and detectives.

01:26:36.000 And I'm going to tell you why.

01:26:38.000 My theory, at least.

01:26:40.000 My humble perspective on this is that when you're a prosecutor or a corporation, a case or a person, whether they're taking a drug or buying your product, is just a number on a sheet and a name on a spreadsheet or in a program.

01:26:58.000 And what they lack, and when talking about lack of empathy, is that they lack the ability Partly because of how they're positioned.

01:27:09.000 To be positioned practically, in other words, to be able to sit down with the person accused and hear from them.

01:27:18.000 They're in a position where they are told they have to win or, in the case of a corporation, make money and increase profitability.

01:27:27.000 But I think it's the same flavor, which is that the lack of human interaction and being able to understand with prosecutors the human toll that is left in the wake of these prosecutions.

01:27:41.000 I cannot tell you, Joe, how many...

01:27:44.000 Former state prosecutors, federal prosecutors, federal judges who are now criminal defense attorneys have moments where they break down emotionally and go through years of regret about how callous they were and how much they lack sensitivity,

01:28:08.000 and some of them And realize sort of, I don't know if it's so much the error of their ways, but, you know, I know, and he doesn't fall into any of those categories.

01:28:18.000 I know a former federal judge, I don't even want to name him, who is doing, who is a former federal judge, who is a former prosecutor.

01:28:26.000 I've become very, very close with him in New York.

01:28:29.000 And he is doing unbelievable things now through a project where he is trying to get clemency for people that were disproportionately sentenced.

01:28:40.000 And he is moving mountains to do it.

01:28:43.000 And I think some of it is because he feels a sense of obligation.

01:28:47.000 Because in some instances, he was forced to sentence people because of sentencing guidelines disproportionately.

01:28:53.000 I think some of it is a change in perspective.

01:28:57.000 And if we could figure out a way, like I have a theory that it's lack of training.

01:29:01.000 It's the lack of, you know, a system whereby prosecutors can really sit down with a criminal defendant, the accused, and their attorneys and get to know them and understand how damaging this all is.

01:29:14.000 Because just getting accused of a crime, even if you get acquitted, It's life-ruining.

01:29:21.000 I've seen it happen in white-collar crimes, certainly in crimes where you're accused of some violent offense.

01:29:28.000 So I think you've put your finger on something remarkably relevant, and if we could somehow get across to people in law enforcement, prosecutors, I have someone that's an expert in a civil rights case right now who was a former warden at a prison in Florida and at a place where they used to execute people.

01:29:51.000 And he's come to the other side and cannot believe that he was ever, you know, in a position where he was taking lives and realizes how many mistakes are made.

01:30:02.000 So oftentimes it takes them sort of coming to the other side Having interaction with someone like Robert and seeing the empathy because what he's been able to accomplish in the five short years since he's been out and reforming the system is nothing short of remarkable.

01:30:16.000 To me, it's both a happy ending and it's terribly depressing because look what they wasted.

01:30:27.000 On taking him through this.

01:30:28.000 And we were talking about on the way over here whether or not he ever would have become the force that he's become in criminal justice reform if this all didn't happen to him.

01:30:37.000 So maybe that's the silver lining.

01:30:40.000 Easy for me to say because I wasn't the one, you know, toiling in a terrible penitentiary for 23-plus years.

01:30:51.000 It's a horrible thing that people get a thought in their head and then try to confirm it, right?

01:30:56.000 Like, this guy's guilty, and then you do your best to try to confirm it instead of looking at it objectively and trying to figure out if you're right or wrong.

01:31:03.000 Right.

01:31:03.000 Well, that's called confirmation bias.

01:31:05.000 Yeah.

01:31:05.000 It's a very real thing.

01:31:06.000 It's a very real thing.

01:31:10.000 They're not held accountable for bad mistakes.

01:31:13.000 That's what's crazy.

01:31:15.000 Not just mistakes, but holding back evidence that would exonerate someone.

01:31:20.000 Right.

01:31:20.000 I can tell you another ticker in this thing, another thing that they kind of would have, and this was very important, the detective that, the detective, Detective Stewart, and I can say that he's an honorable person,

01:31:41.000 and I have a lot of respect for him.

01:31:43.000 Because what ended up happening is Detective Stewart was the detective on the homicide.

01:31:52.000 And his job when he did his investigation was for the murder.

01:31:59.000 And he determined from his own investigation and investigation of teams that he worked with that The spree of crimes as well as the homicides were all tied into one person who committed the crime.

01:32:15.000 And that was the person who was convicted of the murder.

01:32:21.000 So in other words, he did that and he told the prosecutor that he had the wrong man.

01:32:26.000 That was the first time he ever did it in over 20-something years of him being a police.

01:32:31.000 He told the prosecutor that, because he was the one that made the arrest on me, and he felt so bad, When the Instant Project of New Orleans reached out to him and said, hey, do you remember the Robert Jones case?

01:32:46.000 He said, yes, I do remember the Robert Jones case.

01:32:49.000 He was saying, hey, how you doing?

01:32:51.000 He's out, huh?

01:32:52.000 He said, hell no, he's not out.

01:32:54.000 He's in prison.

01:32:55.000 Well, how he was in prison, I told the discreterian that we had the wrong guy.

01:33:00.000 And his mind was blown.

01:33:04.000 When I met him at court, going through my hearing process, he brought his wife, he met me in court, because he went from New Orleans, detective in New Orleans, to working for the FBI, to working in various high-level places.

01:33:20.000 And this man was blown away.

01:33:22.000 He was like, I thought that cleared that case for this guy years ago.

01:33:28.000 He felt so bad and he felt so relieved when I got out of prison.

01:33:34.000 It was crazy.

01:33:38.000 For the prosecutor to have all this kind of information in their pocket and to withhold that information.

01:33:44.000 Now, knowing what we know now, now that you are exonerated, that you are out, what are the repercussions?

01:33:51.000 Did they have to compensate you?

01:33:53.000 Does anything happen to them?

01:33:55.000 The people that withheld that evidence, did they continue to work?

01:33:59.000 Are they punished?

01:34:01.000 That's a timely question, huh?

01:34:05.000 What's going on?

01:34:06.000 I think you might ask that.

01:34:08.000 Well, no, you should answer it.

01:34:09.000 I mean, Robert just agreed.

01:34:11.000 He filed a federal civil rights claim, which is for monetary damages.

01:34:18.000 Let me answer the first part of it first.

01:34:22.000 The people that did this to Robert were not held accountable.

01:34:25.000 Criminally, they were not held accountable in any way, and that's a huge problem.

01:34:30.000 Robert just made headlines in our world quite a bit.

01:34:36.000 He was compensated It wasn't nearly enough.

01:34:41.000 In fact, it was an amount that I find tragic relative to his experience, but it took a lot of—it took a change in leadership in New Orleans.

01:34:53.000 The new district attorney there is a gentleman by the name of— Jason Williams, who's a remarkable guy, former defense lawyer, who just became district attorney and knew that Robert needed to be compensated.

01:35:06.000 But he wasn't compensated nearly enough.

01:35:09.000 He did 24 years.

01:35:10.000 And how do you put a number on that, on 24 years of lost life?

01:35:14.000 Robert's 48 today, right?

01:35:16.000 He spent half his life in prison for a crime he didn't commit.

01:35:21.000 You know, and he got...

01:35:22.000 I mean, it was public, right, the amount?

01:35:24.000 Yeah.

01:35:25.000 Two million dollars?

01:35:26.000 Right.

01:35:27.000 Now, I know intimately well, you know, what Robert has been through.

01:35:34.000 I can't empathize.

01:35:35.000 I can sympathize.

01:35:37.000 I can't empathize because I didn't go through it.

01:35:39.000 But I've seen how he's struggled financially since he's been out.

01:35:42.000 And how do you pick up the pieces of a lost life?

01:35:46.000 Yeah.

01:35:48.000 You know, I once heard a civil rights attorney ask for $36 million in a case where two guys both spent 18 years in prison for crimes they didn't commit.

01:36:02.000 And he said it, and it brought me to tears.

01:36:05.000 I was his co-counsel in the case, but I'll give him the credit because it was a remarkable line.

01:36:11.000 He said, $36 million, a lot of money, ladies and gentlemen.

01:36:15.000 That's not nearly enough.

01:36:19.000 So, he was compensated, but is it enough?

01:36:25.000 I don't know.

01:36:26.000 Unless you sit in a prison cell and know what it's like for a day, a week, a month, and your lifetime starts passing by, It's hard to put a dollar value on it.

01:36:38.000 Well, here's a good way to judge it.

01:36:40.000 Ask any of those people that wrongfully put him in prison if they'd be willing to go to prison for 24 years for $2 million.

01:36:48.000 I guarantee you none of them would say yes.

01:36:50.000 It's not nearly enough.

01:36:52.000 It's not nearly enough.

01:36:53.000 It's a lot of money for a regular person to consider.

01:36:56.000 Like, oh my god, $2 million.

01:36:57.000 It's not enough for 24 years in prison for a crime you didn't commit.

01:37:01.000 And a lot of your listeners have reached out to me asking, what can I do?

01:37:07.000 There's a lot of states in this country right now, and we can provide you with the information to put in the notes of the episode, that have limits or no compensation for people that were wrongfully incarcerated.

01:37:20.000 That's crazy.

01:37:22.000 And that's a big reform effort that not only the Innocence Project has undertaken, but people all over the country in criminal justice reform organizations that there should be minimum amounts set.

01:37:34.000 And they jump through trap doors all the time.

01:37:37.000 Watch what happens in Florida.

01:37:39.000 In Clemente Aguirre's case...

01:37:42.000 The state of Florida owes him a lot of money for his wrongful incarceration.

01:37:47.000 And there is a statute in the state of Florida to show you how fraught this is.

01:37:52.000 And so he applied for the compensation after his exoneration.

01:37:58.000 And what the state of Florida did was they said, you know what?

01:38:03.000 The statute of limitations has passed because when we overturned the verdict, when the state overturned the verdict in 2017, whatever it was, he went from being incarcerated to being in custody.

01:38:18.000 And what the statute says is that you have to file within whatever the time frame was, two years from being released from incarceration.

01:38:28.000 So the state's argument was that, well, when the Supreme Court threw out his conviction— The same day, the same day that the Supreme Court unanimously reversed his conviction, the state announced we are retrying him.

01:38:46.000 Nobody came to Clemente Aguirre's cell and said, by the way, you're no longer incarcerated.

01:38:50.000 You're just in custody now, just so you know.

01:38:53.000 All right.

01:38:54.000 So what they would have you think is that or have the court think is that at that moment when his conviction is thrown out and they say, we're going to try you again and try to put you to death.

01:39:04.000 That you should have filed the wrongful compensation claim when you're trying to save your own life and get out of this mess yet again.

01:39:12.000 So they jumped through this trap door.

01:39:14.000 And the judge, who is a magnificent man, his name is Judge John Galuzzo, who I credit with saving Clemente's life because in his retrial, he let the jury selection process play out like it should.

01:39:28.000 And he at one point said to the prosecutors, you know, what you think is the truth may not be the truth after all.

01:39:34.000 And he let me put the real killer on the stand because I was afraid she was going to leave town as a material witness to preserve her testimony. 0.99

01:39:40.000 And she all but confessed on the stand and the state dropped the case.

01:39:45.000 He wrote an opinion denying Clementi post-conviction relief and apologized essentially in the conviction.

01:39:52.000 And he said that basically the Florida legislator wrote this statute in a way that ties my hands because he wasn't incarcerated anymore.

01:40:01.000 He was in custody awaiting trial. 0.91

01:40:03.000 So even when you get these laws on the books, it's like, you know, your mind starts to spin like where does the fuckery end?

01:40:11.000 So that's why, you know, the way that Robert has not only—and he should tell the story of how he finally got out, but he, you know— Can you tell me what's happening with Clemente, though, before we do that?

01:40:26.000 Yeah.

01:40:26.000 So Clemente right now is—I'm in the process of representing him in his federal civil rights case.

01:40:34.000 I can't talk too much about it because there's a law or there's a rule about not speaking out.

01:40:40.000 But we are holding the people accountable civilly.

01:40:44.000 I've taken some of the depositions so far, and we're excited to be able to get him some measure of compensation.

01:40:53.000 But he is...

01:40:56.000 You know, he's in a tough place.

01:40:57.000 He's here.

01:40:59.000 He can't work.

01:41:01.000 He's in immigration limbo.

01:41:03.000 And he is doing the best he can, you know, to survive.

01:41:07.000 And hopefully the civil rights case works out.

01:41:10.000 I have a great team of people working, you know, on vacation.

01:41:15.000 Yeah.

01:41:15.000 I mean, the wheels of justice grind slow in getting both exonerated and compensated.

01:41:20.000 I mean, the case has been going on for a couple years or a year and a half.

01:41:23.000 It'll probably go on for a couple more.

01:41:24.000 And then, you know, there's more hoops to jump through to finally get them to write the check.

01:41:30.000 They can appeal.

01:41:31.000 And sometimes it can drag on for many, many years.

01:41:34.000 Absolutely.

01:41:36.000 Robert, what are you doing with your time these days?

01:41:39.000 That's a good question.

01:41:43.000 I'm doing a lot.

01:41:46.000 Right now, I'm currently the Director of Community Outreach and Lead Organizer and Client Advocate for Orleans Public Defender's Office.

01:42:02.000 Public Defenders, as you know, is attorneys who represent people who can't afford attorneys, generally poor people.

01:42:10.000 I work in that office and so I kind of like work in the same criminal justice system or the same court system that actually Sent me to prison.

01:42:26.000 Wow.

01:42:43.000 Anticipating getting out.

01:42:44.000 When I started seeing things was going to work, I was like, okay, it increased my hope I was going to get out.

01:42:49.000 I used to tell guys in prison, because I was an immigrant counselor when I was in prison, right?

01:42:54.000 I used to tell guys, I said, one day, You're going to see me come back inside the prison in suit and tie.

01:43:03.000 I'm not going to be a prisoner.

01:43:05.000 So I had that experience like several times.

01:43:08.000 I have more than like 50-something clients in Angola.

01:43:12.000 Wow.

01:43:14.000 So I actually walked back into the same prison that I was actually housing.

01:43:17.000 With a suit and tie.

01:43:19.000 It was a great feeling.

01:43:22.000 So, and I take that, I share that same level of inspiration and gratitude when I go back in the same courtrooms that I was actually prosecuted in, just a court building, and able to establish a working relationship,

01:43:41.000 a respectful relationship with a lot of the judges, And now that we have a new district attorney and their district attorney, so we have a beautiful working relationship and understanding both aspects of the criminal justice system from a prosecutor perspective,

01:44:02.000 from a defense perspective.

01:44:06.000 Which all surround fairness to me, right?

01:44:08.000 And justice.

01:44:10.000 So I see it.

01:44:11.000 So I do that.

01:44:14.000 I run a nonprofit organization that mentor the youth.

01:44:19.000 So I like to help them make a transition from childhood to adulthood, which is a huge thing for a lot of the youth.

01:44:27.000 I'm called Freedom Foundations and I'll give you information where people can actually go and check it out.

01:44:33.000 Me and another guy who was formerly incarcerated who also is a zoneree. 1.00

01:44:39.000 You know, I do some public speaking in different places and help change different laws and Because of the position I am, I have a lot of influence in the community, amongst a lot of our state representatives,

01:44:56.000 city councilmen, and I sit on a lot of boards and committees for the city of New Orleans.

01:45:04.000 So I have a lot of influence and a lot of respect in the city of New Orleans, not just because of my experience, but because of my skill set of bringing everybody on one accord Not being afraid to speak truth to power,

01:45:19.000 which a lot of people don't like me for it, but they respect me for it as well.

01:45:28.000 And, yeah, so that's what I'm doing, you know.

01:45:32.000 And we can get off into it later, but it's another book that I'm writing that's kind of tied.

01:45:37.000 Everything, you know.

01:45:39.000 And because of your platform and what you're doing to uplift the voice of people who have been in these type of situations and also to To effect change, and that's one of the reasons why I respect your podcast and what you do and people that's in your position,

01:45:59.000 like people like, because I can go on and on about this guy, Josh and Jason, how they use their position to help people.

01:46:08.000 And I'm going to be really asking for your help to push this book down that I'm about to do because I... I want to be on a platform, right?

01:46:18.000 I want to create my own platform of fairness and using the influence I have to expand these type of things and to change the concept, you know, change the mindset of a lot of people, man, because they need more people like yourself,

01:46:34.000 you know, using their platforms to change things, man, to break this system that we have that's destroying people.

01:46:46.000 I think there's a problem in that a lot of people have no idea how the system works until they're getting trapped by it.

01:46:52.000 Absolutely.

01:46:52.000 So there's a lot of people that until they hear a story like yours or some of the other stories that Josh and Jason have brought to us and explained until you see the horrific details of it, there's a lot of people that just don't know how these things work and they assume like you assumed when you got arrested that innocent people don't go to jail for crimes they didn't commit.

01:47:11.000 And then having a person like yourself who can explain what happened to you and all the horrific details, when we have a few of these conversations, then people realize like, oh, this system is fucked up.

01:47:23.000 And then when Josh can explain just this human nature that's involved in this confirmation bias and then trying to Confirm your initial suspicions and ignore all evidence to the contrary and all that this is some sort of a weird flaw in human nature We'll get these conversations going and people can sort of have a different perspective So when they hear about someone getting convicted or they hear about someone getting arrested instead of just immediately assuming that they're guilty Instead it's gonna bring up a conversation

01:47:53.000 like this is a flawed system a very flawed system in so many different ways And not only that, if I may interject, a lot of people look at the individual that have been impacted,

01:48:10.000 like myself, right, by the system.

01:48:13.000 But wrongful convictions of putting people through the system is beyond me.

01:48:20.000 This stuff impacts the lives of family members, your children.

01:48:24.000 Your mother, it changes a lot of things.

01:48:26.000 There's a lot of things that I experienced inside a prison of losing family members, losing relationships, losing connections with family members and have to be released out of prison to rebuild those relationships, right?

01:48:41.000 To rebuild those relationships.

01:48:43.000 Some relationships I had to cut off.

01:48:44.000 Some relationships that just got lost and don't know how.

01:48:49.000 And try to mend a lot of those things.

01:48:51.000 But in my state, the state of Louisiana, as you said, yes, I have been, you know how many years it took for me to actually get to this point of being compensated to an extent?

01:49:06.000 I had to fight for that, right?

01:49:08.000 In my state, the state of Louisiana, they have a compensation law.

01:49:12.000 It was $25,000 for a cap of 10 years.

01:49:18.000 So no matter how many years you stayed in prison, it was $25,000 per year that you stayed in.

01:49:23.000 That's crazy.

01:49:24.000 Yes. 1.00

01:49:25.000 That is fucking crazy. 0.99

01:49:26.000 Now they increase it to $40,000, right? 0.99

01:49:29.000 Whatever.

01:49:30.000 Still crazy.

01:49:31.000 With a 10-year cap.

01:49:33.000 Give someone a year in jail.

01:49:35.000 Tell them, like, for every year in jail, you get to keep $40,000. 0.99

01:49:38.000 Who the fuck is going to say yes to that? 0.99

01:49:40.000 Right. 0.99

01:49:40.000 So, and we have been, and that's a part of my refund, working with the Instant Project New Orleans and a variety of other organizations and working with state legislators to keep on fighting for that change, right? 0.99

01:49:52.000 That's some of the things that I also participate in.

01:49:57.000 The thing is, even in that conversation, you still got to fight for that.

01:50:02.000 It's not automatically given to them.

01:50:03.000 And I like to fully dispel the myth that when a lot of guys get out of prison and get exonerated...

01:50:13.000 That a big fact check is waiting on them and they're going to ride off into the sunset.

01:50:17.000 We need to dispel that.

01:50:18.000 People need to get that out of their mind.

01:50:19.000 That don't happen.

01:50:20.000 Because when I came home, I didn't have jacked nothing, right?

01:50:29.000 Outside of the Innocent Project of New Orleans and the Innocent Project in New York.

01:50:36.000 Helping me financially and this guy and Jason Flum.

01:50:42.000 Like, you know, and man, if I wouldn't have had that...

01:50:46.000 I don't know what type of situations that I will be in right now, you know?

01:50:51.000 Because I eventually got a job.

01:50:54.000 I wasn't paying much of nothing, but it was a job, right?

01:50:59.000 I worked there, and I got good at what I do.

01:51:01.000 I worked at a meal shop.

01:51:03.000 I respected the owner so much for giving me the opportunity because I learned a lot there.

01:51:10.000 And I was able to build myself into the capacity of where I'm working now.

01:51:18.000 But financially, Morally, to surround myself with guys like Josh and Jason Flum is huge.

01:51:28.000 Because, you know, these guys are a platform.

01:51:32.000 They're famous, right?

01:51:34.000 You don't like to call yourself that.

01:51:35.000 I mean, you know a lot of people.

01:51:37.000 You're in position.

01:51:40.000 And, I mean, to be real friends with these guys and allow me the opportunity And don't look at you like, you know, just because they may be at a certain level, that's what I respect about them,

01:51:55.000 because they're going to see you equal.

01:51:57.000 You know what I mean?

01:51:59.000 And I will not only assume, but just maybe doing my own research on y'all, I will presume you are the same way.

01:52:07.000 You know, to have that type of humility, For people that maybe have been in bad circumstances, a situation that you may have been in, but to still be able to look a person in the eye and extend the opportunity for that person is huge to me.

01:52:29.000 That's real humanity, you know what I mean?

01:52:31.000 Because it's like, he don't have to do what he have to do.

01:52:34.000 Jason Flum didn't have to do what he didn't do.

01:52:36.000 I mean, you don't have to do what you have to do.

01:52:38.000 You don't have to raise your voice about certain things, but to do that, it's huge to me.

01:52:44.000 You know what I mean?

01:52:46.000 That's really huge, and that's real, that's humankind, because most people, we're all human, but some people don't act like humans.

01:52:51.000 People, they think about their own problems, you know, and everybody's got their own problems.

01:52:56.000 It's easy to ignore other people's problems.

01:52:58.000 Absolutely.

01:52:59.000 Here's the point.

01:53:01.000 You know, when we and Robert and I have the opportunity to speak to lawmakers that have different political views, this type of conversation is extraordinarily rare.

01:53:14.000 I spoke to the governor of Florida about the James Daly case.

01:53:20.000 He literally has a snapshot view of it.

01:53:25.000 Gave me less than 35 seconds after having me wait for several hours to meet with him.

01:53:33.000 And there's a clemency mechanism in the state of Florida.

01:53:37.000 All that means is that you listen.

01:53:40.000 You just listen.

01:53:42.000 You can deny it.

01:53:43.000 You can say, sorry, not granting you it.

01:53:45.000 But what point is there in having it if you're not going to listen?

01:53:48.000 And the problem is that, you know, like Julius Jones is about to be executed in Oklahoma.

01:53:53.000 Richard Glossop is sitting on Oklahoma's death row, Stone Cold Innocent.

01:53:58.000 And it becomes a political thing with protecting the win.

01:54:05.000 We talked about this herd, this tribal mentality.

01:54:10.000 Now you got me on herd immunity.

01:54:13.000 Tribal mentality. 0.84

01:54:14.000 And it becomes, you know, rather than just sitting and having the conversation and listen and being able to break through and saying, okay, I've heard you now hear me hear what I have to say about the reasons why you might want to, you know, did you hesitate at all if you hesitated a little bit?

01:54:29.000 Are you sure you want to take a life?

01:54:31.000 In the case of Robert and so many others, it took an army of people.

01:54:37.000 It's really easy to throw someone in jail.

01:54:39.000 It took a literal army of people fighting and clawing and kicking and scratching to get him out.

01:54:45.000 And why I think he's such an extraordinary story is that to be able to get out and now basically create a position for himself at the Public Defender's Office It's a miracle to get out in the first place.

01:54:59.000 It's more of a miracle to find the emotional, physical fortitude to want to stay in the system that imprisoned you.

01:55:12.000 A lot of people that get exonerated Run.

01:55:16.000 And they have every reason to.

01:55:18.000 California, Florida, the Midwest. 0.99

01:55:21.000 Just get the fuck away. 1.00

01:55:22.000 They don't want to see their lawyers again, send them a postcard. 1.00

01:55:26.000 Robert, what you bring to this is you have a peace and composure about you that's very unusual.

01:55:33.000 You know, because of the horrific thing that you went through, And to have to educate yourself about law and to try to figure out your case while you're locked up in a jail dealing with all the other stresses of that environment,

01:55:49.000 you have a composure about you.

01:55:51.000 You have a character that's literally built under fire.

01:55:57.000 I mean, you were forged.

01:55:59.000 Under horrible conditions and because of that you are uniquely qualified to discuss this and to have these kind of conversations and to open people's eyes because of who you are and how you've gone through it and what kind of man you are now and the way you can describe it so calmly and serenely which is so,

01:56:20.000 it's very impressive.

01:56:22.000 Most people who would have gone through what you've gone through would be a broken husk of a person after all those years.

01:56:30.000 But you're not.

01:56:31.000 But you're not.

01:56:31.000 And the fact that you continue to help and work with the Innocence Project and try to help people and actually do what you said.

01:56:39.000 Go back to Angola with a suit on and help people. 0.98

01:56:42.000 Absolutely.

01:56:43.000 It's an amazing thing.

01:56:45.000 It's an amazing thing.

01:56:46.000 And you've literally turned, I mean, there's no way to completely turn that negative into a positive, but you've made the most out of it for sure.

01:56:55.000 Right.

01:56:56.000 That's sort of like my motto, you know, in the sense of turning all of my negatives.

01:57:01.000 Everything that happened bad in my life, I try to make it out of positive for the most part.

01:57:08.000 And working at the Public Defender's Office, I also was in charge along with two attorneys that I work with.

01:57:16.000 Like currently, right now, we created like a recent program about a new law that changed.

01:57:21.000 And currently, I was a part of a team that maybe 60?

01:57:30.000 60 guys that got out of prison.

01:57:32.000 Helped 60 guys that got out of prison.

01:57:37.000 And it's a joy to me in the sense of seeing those guys get out and be reunited with their family.

01:57:46.000 Guys who maybe would have thought they would never get out of prison.

01:57:49.000 To have that type of thing, I mean, it's a joy.

01:57:55.000 It's a thing.

01:57:57.000 And because of my experience and because of the education I have about the system, not just the criminal justice system, about the entire system, because that's what I studied, right?

01:58:09.000 Me understanding that it's hard to stay inside.

01:58:13.000 It's like, you know, it's like if you was a doctor that knew a cure or something that would bring someone relief from pain, and you see this person in pain, and you're just like, You know how to help them,

01:58:28.000 but you don't do it.

01:58:30.000 In a sense, that's what it is to me.

01:58:33.000 Me having educated myself and putting myself in position It's hard for me to stay inside.

01:58:40.000 There's no way I can have a knowledge of these things and not help someone.

01:58:44.000 I mean, I wouldn't be the person who I am.

01:58:48.000 That speaks to your character.

01:58:50.000 Absolutely.

01:58:50.000 It's very inspiring.

01:58:52.000 It's very inspiring, I'm sure, to other people that are listening to this, too.

01:58:55.000 Right.

01:58:55.000 Absolutely.

01:58:57.000 And it's sort of like bringing me to the permanent is one of the things that, outside the things that I do and the relationships I build inside the community.

01:59:10.000 Like I said, I'm working towards this book I'm working towards.

01:59:14.000 It's power of endurance.

01:59:15.000 Are you writing it right now?

01:59:16.000 It's almost complete, yes.

01:59:18.000 When do you think it'll be done?

01:59:20.000 Maybe two more weeks.

01:59:24.000 I should have it all edited out.

01:59:25.000 Do you have a publisher already?

01:59:28.000 You can help me with it.

01:59:29.000 We'll do what we can.

01:59:31.000 We'll do what we can to get it out there, for sure.

01:59:33.000 And we'll do what we can to promote it once it's actually for sale.

01:59:36.000 Absolutely, absolutely.

01:59:37.000 And it dealt with the power of endurance.

01:59:39.000 And the book came about...

01:59:41.000 Because I get this question all the time.

01:59:46.000 People always ask me, like, Robert, how the hell can you do it?

01:59:50.000 How you can keep your composing?

01:59:52.000 How you can do these things?

01:59:54.000 How you can be...

01:59:55.000 You grew up in distressed neighborhoods all your life, poor, come from a single parent household, uneducated, to all this.

02:00:04.000 How you do these things is still, now we're in the pandemic, you're not scared, you're not afraid.

02:00:10.000 You know, like, man, how you keep a smile on your face?

02:00:13.000 And I used to always joke, I'd say, one day I'm going to put it in the book, I'm going to show you how.

02:00:17.000 And I created, like, well, it's four easy steps, and I actually tell them, like, through my own experiences, how I was able to maintain or build a tough mentality.

02:00:30.000 And I mean, Josh was talking about it last night, and I think that what I want to do is sort of different from people that inspire people, like motivational speakers.

02:00:43.000 Got a million of them, right?

02:00:47.000 I'm not a motivational speaker, I'm a transformative speaker, right?

02:00:52.000 It's like, because anybody or anything can basically inspire you.

02:00:57.000 Like, I can inspire you right now, you can leave out of here, and soon you face adversity, it's like a deflated bloom.

02:01:06.000 That inspiration leaves.

02:01:08.000 But if you've got a tough mentality, I can maintain, I can teach you how to maintain your inspiration, right?

02:01:16.000 How, when you face difficulties that you're able to overcome, you can still keep your inspiration and keep on scribing.

02:01:25.000 Well, the difference is also you're coming from a place that you've actually had to overcome something absolutely horrific.

02:01:31.000 That's right.

02:01:32.000 Absolutely.

02:01:32.000 There's a lot of people that are what you would call motivational speakers, but if you try to find the actual adversity that they had to overcome, like where...

02:01:39.000 What are they doing?

02:01:40.000 Well, they're taking advantage of a thing that people desire.

02:01:42.000 They desire external motivation.

02:01:44.000 They desire people that say something to them that gets them fired up.

02:01:49.000 And there's benefit in that.

02:01:50.000 I'm not knocking it.

02:01:51.000 But there's a big difference between that kind of motivation and the kind of motivation that someone like you could bring.

02:01:57.000 Absolutely.

02:01:58.000 Absolutely.

02:02:00.000 Should we wrap this up?

02:02:01.000 Sure.

02:02:02.000 Alright.

02:02:03.000 Let us know when your book comes out.

02:02:05.000 We'll definitely let the world know.

02:02:07.000 And we'll try to get you in touch with publishers.

02:02:09.000 And I'm sure Josh can help with that too.

02:02:11.000 And anything else on your end?

02:02:14.000 No, I just...

02:02:15.000 I know that I do this as much as I can.

02:02:19.000 But I want to thank you for giving us this platform.

02:02:23.000 You know, I'm eternally grateful to you for your...

02:02:27.000 Humility, your empathy, your compassion, because if we don't get these stories told and make people realize that this is not a political thing, this is not anything but a human thing.

02:02:39.000 And, you know, all it really takes is being able to sit down and realize that you're dealing with a person of mind, body and flesh.

02:02:48.000 And that, you know, they're worthy of being listened to and certainly of redemption.

02:02:54.000 And I think Robert's just a living, breathing example of the miracles that can happen when people come together to try to help.

02:03:02.000 I think it's important to have as many of these people on as we can, whether it's as many cases that you could describe when you come on or have people like Robert come on and talk about this so people can get a more nuanced understanding of what's actually going on, 0.54

02:03:19.000 that this isn't some fucking thing that may or may not exist. 0.95

02:03:25.000 This is a real human being. 0.98

02:03:26.000 They're right in front of you right now, and they're telling you their story.

02:03:29.000 And it's real.

02:03:30.000 And there's DNA evidence, and there's evidence that the prosecutors withheld evidence, and there's evidence that you were innocent the entire time that they knew it.

02:03:39.000 This is important.

02:03:41.000 Yeah, I'll say this in closing.

02:03:43.000 That's why we're so grateful that we can't express it enough because we have seen the difference that it's already making.

02:03:52.000 Thousands of emails, Instagram messages of people that are writing to me and Jason, you know, you've changed my path in life.

02:04:02.000 I want to now become a criminal defense attorney.

02:04:04.000 I want to become a legislator and enact new laws.

02:04:07.000 You know, the amazing reach of this podcast has been transformative.

02:04:14.000 Talk about transformative speakers.

02:04:15.000 It's been transformative in our approach to this.

02:04:18.000 And if we didn't have this platform through you, it wouldn't be possible.

02:04:21.000 You have, you know, my eternal thanks.

02:04:25.000 Well, you have my eternal thanks for your hard work.

02:04:27.000 And what you've done is exceptional and extraordinary and selfless and humbling.

02:04:32.000 And I think, you know, as a friend, I'm honored to be your friend.

02:04:37.000 Well, I feel the same way.

02:04:38.000 I think what you do is amazing.

02:04:40.000 And thank you, Robert, for coming on here and telling your story.

02:04:42.000 And I think these stories make a difference.

02:04:45.000 I think, you know, having people on here to discuss these things, I think it can make a difference.

02:04:50.000 Thank you, brother.

02:04:51.000 Thank you.

02:04:51.000 Thank you all.

02:04:52.000 Thank you.

02:04:52.000 Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share my story and hopefully to build from it, you know, to build from it and continue on to reach out to folks.

02:05:05.000 And allow people to have that conversation and allow them to see different perspectives.

02:05:09.000 Sometimes that we can grow up whether it's an ideology or perception that's passed down from our family and friends or just our own experiences and to keep our mind closed, right, to the real perspectives of life.

02:05:23.000 So I just thank you for giving us this opportunity and I think that it's going to change some people's lives.

02:05:29.000 It's going to inspire some folks.

02:05:32.000 Start looking at things differently, you know.

02:05:34.000 I think so.

02:05:35.000 Thank you.

02:05:36.000 Thank you.

02:05:37.000 Thank you, everybody.

02:05:38.000 Bye-bye.

The Joe Rogan Experience - October 05, 2021

Joe Rogan Experience #1714 - Josh Dubin & Robert Jones

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