The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1858 - Josh Dubin & Derrick Hamilton

00:00:12.000 All right, we're rolling.

00:00:13.000 Joshua, my brother.

00:00:14.000 What's up, man?

00:00:15.000 Good to see you, my friend.

00:00:16.000 It's great to see you always.

00:00:18.000 Please introduce your friend.

00:00:20.000 Man, it's hard to introduce the unintroducible.

00:00:24.000 So this is Derek Hamilton, who has been regarded by the New Yorker as the most prolific jailhouse lawyer that ever lived.

00:00:37.000 He is...

00:00:42.000 He's single-handedly responsible for freeing probably over a hundred people, including himself.

00:00:48.000 He spent three decades in jail for murders that he didn't commit.

00:00:56.000 He was framed by one of the most horrific Corrupt cops in the city of New York's history, sown by the name of Scarcella.

00:01:09.000 But more than that, he's become known as one of the biggest and most effective criminal justice reform advocates in the country.

00:01:20.000 And I'll tell you, get into it a little bit more later, but...

00:01:25.000 Derek is not a miracle. 0.99

00:01:27.000 He's a force of fucking nature. 0.99

00:01:29.000 And I'll tell you a little bit about how we met and how we got involved together. 0.99

00:01:35.000 So, probably about nine years ago, Jay-Z wanted to get into boxing.

00:01:44.000 And Roc Nation started a promotional company to promote boxers.

00:01:51.000 And Andre Ward was one of them.

00:01:53.000 So we were on the opposite sides of the negotiating table, and it might be less or more than nine years ago.

00:02:00.000 It was right on the heels of the Eric Garner murder when he was putting a chokehold on Staten Island.

00:02:10.000 And Jay-Z was coming to sign the contract, and I was there with Jay Prince. 0.99

00:02:14.000 And we started talking about, like, what the fuck is wrong with this country. 0.98

00:02:19.000 And figured out that we had, like, a common bond in that regard. 0.98

00:02:24.000 So fast forward to a few years later, we...

00:02:29.000 I find out through working with Roc Nation on just criminal justice reform initiatives that Jay-Z has this...

00:02:39.000 Foundation that flies under the radar that is just remarkable.

00:02:43.000 It's called the Sean Carter Foundation.

00:02:45.000 He and his mother started it.

00:02:47.000 And they take inner-city youth, mostly from Brooklyn, really the five boroughs, and help give them an opportunity to go to college.

00:02:57.000 But they start when they're in high school.

00:02:59.000 They take them on a bus tour.

00:03:00.000 They help them with the application process.

00:03:02.000 And they literally change the trajectory of these people's lives.

00:03:07.000 So I had this idea that I would have five of their scholars, we would do a scholarship program, come work on social justice cases with me.

00:03:18.000 And Jay-Z's mom loved it.

00:03:20.000 He loved it.

00:03:22.000 Rock Nation.

00:03:23.000 There's someone named Donya Diaz who runs their philanthropy arm and she's on the board of the Sean Carter Foundation.

00:03:28.000 We made it a reality.

00:03:30.000 It took a couple of years.

00:03:31.000 So this summer, I had five college students that were coming to work with me on innocence cases.

00:03:39.000 And I said, you know, I need somebody that can really connect with these people.

00:03:45.000 Because I have sympathy for the way they grew up, for the conditions that they were born into, for the opportunities that they didn't have.

00:03:54.000 But I can't empathize because I'm white.

00:03:56.000 It's just as simple as that.

00:03:58.000 So I thought of Derek, and I had met Derek about five years ago.

00:04:06.000 After he had been out for only six years and Derek was the first person on my mind that could mentor these students and I Asked him if he would join me in helping mentor them through this seven-week program working with me on a case and Over the past seven weeks were this close to freeing I think?

00:04:47.000 So when he picks up the phone and calls a district attorney of Queens, they take his call right away.

00:04:54.000 He calls the head of a conviction integrity unit that's involved in re-reviewing cases.

00:04:58.000 He's got such deep respect, and people in high places have such admiration for him because of what he was able to overcome in not only helping himself, but helping free others.

00:05:12.000 He had a settlement with the city.

00:05:16.000 And the state.

00:05:17.000 And instead of taking that settlement and resting on his laurels and doing whatever, which would have been understandable, he's dedicated his life to helping get people out of jail.

00:05:30.000 And not only that, to helping reform the criminal justice system.

00:05:33.000 But these are words like reform the criminal justice system.

00:05:37.000 We kick around. 0.97

00:05:37.000 This man is a human tornado of violence. 0.97

00:05:43.000 Of action that instead of leaving destruction in its wake, leaves hope.

00:05:48.000 And instead of, you know, devastation, leaves opportunity.

00:05:52.000 I mean, so maybe tornado was the wrong analogy, but I've just never witnessed anything like it.

00:05:58.000 So I'm on the verge of starting this new criminal justice reform center.

00:06:03.000 Which we're not at liberty to announce that is being funded by someone that I've talked about quite a bit on this show.

00:06:13.000 And they were asking me to find a deputy director, you know, a lawyer.

00:06:18.000 And I said...

00:06:20.000 I looked at resumes.

00:06:21.000 I interviewed people and I said, I found him.

00:06:23.000 I found my lawyer.

00:06:25.000 He may not have a law degree, but he knows more about criminal procedure.

00:06:29.000 He's more respected.

00:06:31.000 He's the best strategic thinker I've ever encountered.

00:06:34.000 And he knows human beings better than anyone.

00:06:37.000 And Derek's going to be my...

00:06:38.000 I'm the executive director.

00:06:40.000 Derek is going to be my deputy director.

00:06:43.000 And I mean, I'll let him tell his story.

00:06:46.000 But when you hear what he's been through and what he's overcome and what he has done since, he's not a force.

00:06:55.000 Words aren't adequate to describe who this man is and what he's overcome and what he's been through.

00:07:01.000 I was trying to suck an ounce of his mental energy on the ride over here from Houston.

00:07:09.000 Just trying to understand how he summons the strength, because I'm trying to use it and apply it in my own life.

00:07:15.000 So it's just, I'm not going to cry yet.

00:07:19.000 I usually wait till hour two, but it's just amazing to me the way the universe aligned for us to come together and for him to be next to me today and for your listeners and you to hear his story is just an honor.

00:07:33.000 Well, it's an honor to meet you, Derek, especially after such high praise.

00:07:37.000 So tell me your story.

00:07:39.000 What happened to you?

00:07:41.000 Well, thanks for having me, and Josh, thanks for the accolades.

00:07:44.000 I was a 17-year-old kid running around Brooklyn at a time when Brooklyn was terrible, and I was a product of my environment.

00:07:52.000 I was doing little We're good to go.

00:08:14.000 The police had an identification of their car.

00:08:17.000 They called the guy in and he somehow told them he rented me the car and that I was the one that bought the car back and told him that I had committed the crime and that I had shot the guy by accident.

00:08:30.000 And that was my first real experience with the criminal justice system because it was a murder.

00:08:35.000 I'm like, murder?

00:08:36.000 You know, I did a couple of robberies.

00:08:38.000 I did some petty stuff, but murder?

00:08:40.000 That's not me.

00:08:41.000 So, you know, what was amazing to me is, number one, nobody would have gave me their car at 17 years old.

00:08:48.000 Any cop would have known that this guy wouldn't have gave me his car.

00:08:52.000 But they arrested me, and they charged me with murder.

00:08:56.000 And I was convicted by a jury because they admitted grand jury testimony of a witness who came before the court and said, I've never seen this guy at all.

00:09:06.000 The police made me lie in the grand jury and say that I've seen this guy.

00:09:10.000 I'm not testifying.

00:09:11.000 I refuse to testify.

00:09:12.000 I'm not going to get up there and purge myself.

00:09:14.000 The judge told the prosecutor that day that they were dismissing the case, that if they don't get another witness, this case is going out of here.

00:09:22.000 The judge's name was Lombardo back then.

00:09:23.000 This was 1983. I went back to Rikers Island that day.

00:09:27.000 We came back the next day, and the judge said that he thought about this all night, and he felt that the only person would benefit from this witness not testifying would be me.

00:09:38.000 Therefore, he was going to allow the prosecutor to admit their grand jury testimony as evidence-in-chief at my trial, and I would forfeit my right to confront the witness and let the jury hear the truth that she never saw the crime.

00:09:50.000 So that was my first real experience.

00:09:52.000 I was a young knucklehead. 0.99

00:09:53.000 The lawyer that I had at the time, Candace Kurtz, said, look, young man, get your head out your ass, and you better read these cases, and you better see what's going on like they railroad you. 0.99

00:10:02.000 She took the stand and told the judge what the witness told her, and I was convicted. 0.91

00:10:07.000 I was sentenced to 25 years of life, and it was at that moment that I know that I had to study law, that I had to really dig deep in the books, and I did it.

00:10:16.000 New York State, thank God, had A law library.

00:10:20.000 They had all the books in the world.

00:10:21.000 All you had to do was apply yourself.

00:10:22.000 And I spent the next five and six years working on my case.

00:10:26.000 In 1987, the appellate division in that case found that the judge had no evidence whatsoever that me or anybody acting on my behalf had threatened this witness, did anything improper.

00:10:37.000 And that the judge was right.

00:10:38.000 There was no evidence that can prove that.

00:10:40.000 So they reversed the conviction, and I was able to get out of prison after six and a half years.

00:10:46.000 Unbeknownst to me, there was a rogue cop by the name of Louis Garcella.

00:10:51.000 Who felt that I didn't do enough time for this conviction.

00:10:53.000 He didn't like the appellate division decision.

00:10:55.000 Eight months later, I was in New Haven, Connecticut at a unisex salon that I had on at the time.

00:11:00.000 He came in that store and arrested me, told me I was going back to Brooklyn for a murder.

00:11:06.000 And I'm like, a murder?

00:11:08.000 Like, this can't be true.

00:11:09.000 Like, again?

00:11:09.000 How many times has this happened?

00:11:11.000 I went to New York.

00:11:13.000 I was processed.

00:11:15.000 About a year later, I went to trial.

00:11:18.000 I was convicted.

00:11:19.000 They brought a witness in by the name of Jew Smith, who said that she was present at the murder when her boyfriend was killed, that I was a gunman, had a gun in my hand, and I shot this individual several times with this gun.

00:11:31.000 But her original statement to the police said she wasn't there.

00:11:34.000 We're good to go.

00:11:55.000 After I was convicted was when I learned that she had first told the cops at the crime scene.

00:12:01.000 She never saw the crime, but she had told it to a different detective.

00:12:04.000 So I made a pro se motion to set aside the verdict.

00:12:07.000 And in the motion, I argued that this detective that never came in that she gave the statement to could prove my innocence.

00:12:14.000 And the judge ordered a hearing for a year.

00:12:16.000 He said, I can't give this guy a day in jail.

00:12:19.000 Let alone 15 years, which was the minimum.

00:12:22.000 I want this witness to come back.

00:12:23.000 The prosecutor said, I'm not calling her.

00:12:25.000 And the judge said, if you don't call her back, this case is going to a new trial, right?

00:12:30.000 They called her back.

00:12:31.000 And she admitted that she never saw the crime, that the detective Lewis Garcella told her what happened and told her that if she didn't get up here and say that I committed the crime, she was going to jail.

00:12:40.000 She was on parole.

00:12:41.000 Her boyfriend was a felon that just got out.

00:12:44.000 She had kids.

00:12:45.000 They said, you're going to jail.

00:12:46.000 She said, what was I supposed to do?

00:12:47.000 Here's the system telling me this, that if I don't come in and say this, I'm going to jail.

00:12:52.000 And I came in and said it.

00:12:54.000 The judge ruled a year later that, again, he felt that I was, he said there was a common thread of string that I manipulated this evidence.

00:13:04.000 Again, I called the detective.

00:13:06.000 The detective came in and said exactly what the witness said, that she told him she didn't see the crime, that she was beat up and took to the precinct and told she was going to jail.

00:13:15.000 And had that jury heard that, there'd have been different results.

00:13:18.000 At the trial, they told the jury that her first statement was the most important statement in this case, and that when the police arrived on the scene, she didn't hesitate.

00:13:25.000 She said, Derek Hamilton, somebody I know my entire life committed the crime, which wasn't true.

00:13:30.000 In fact, she said the truth, which she didn't see the crime, that she was somewhere else.

00:13:35.000 I was sentenced to 25 years of life.

00:13:37.000 I filed numerous post-conviction motions after post-conviction motions.

00:13:41.000 Every time the judge gave me a hearing, every time he said he can throw the case out, every time he said he was troubled by this conviction, the prosecutor would come in and tell him I'm a bad guy, that this is not somebody you want to release, that, you know, they put imagined harms and make a judge think that I was the most terrible person in the world.

00:13:56.000 And he would deny the motion every single time.

00:13:59.000 You know, I filed numerous motions, numerous post convictions.

00:14:02.000 I did everything you could imagine to prove my innocence, but to no avail.

00:14:07.000 I began going to parole board around 2009. It was a very traumatic experience for me because at that time, the parole board wanted me to admit guilt, and I wasn't going to do that.

00:14:17.000 I'm not going to come in and say I killed somebody I didn't kill.

00:14:19.000 I'm not doing that.

00:14:20.000 I don't care what you say.

00:14:21.000 And I had to challenge them and fight them for two years.

00:14:25.000 And then my family went out and protest, and we got a Daily News article put out that said that I would be free if the court would just basically give me justice.

00:14:33.000 If they just give this guy a fair shot, he'd be home.

00:14:35.000 So it changed the mentality of the parole board.

00:14:38.000 They look at all of my evidence, and they said, you know, based on the evidence that you presented here, we believe in your innocence.

00:14:44.000 Like, this evidence speaks for itself.

00:14:46.000 Even the judge said you was innocent.

00:14:47.000 I don't know what you're doing here all these years.

00:14:49.000 And they released me.

00:14:50.000 And at that point, I began a crusade.

00:14:53.000 Because when I was in prison, there were several guys.

00:14:55.000 We built something called an actual innocence team.

00:14:57.000 Guys who I was working in the law library.

00:14:59.000 So I would read a guy's case and check him out.

00:15:01.000 So what I had to do was...

00:15:03.000 Get families together.

00:15:05.000 Get people to come together and bring their families and say, look, let's send these people to City Hall.

00:15:09.000 Let them know there's a lot of us in here.

00:15:10.000 It's not just me.

00:15:11.000 There's white, there's black, there's a bunch of us in here that got the same issue.

00:15:14.000 That they're procedurally barring us.

00:15:16.000 They're not looking at our case. 0.85

00:15:17.000 They're just kicking it into the garbage.

00:15:18.000 We don't want to hear it. 0.79

00:15:19.000 Get out of here.

00:15:20.000 Right?

00:15:20.000 Because they can.

00:15:21.000 They have the power.

00:15:22.000 So when we start bringing attention to these cases, it changed the whole dynamic.

00:15:25.000 So when I got out, I joined that group, Family and Friends of the Raw Women's Convictions. 1.00

00:15:30.000 We had a PR guy by the name of Lonnie Suri who was helping us keep it together.

00:15:34.000 And we just began blasting the prosecutors.

00:15:37.000 We began protesting outside their offices and getting rid of them.

00:15:40.000 The first one we was able to get rid of was Charles Hines in Brooklyn, the prosecutor that sent me to prison.

00:15:44.000 We was able to remove him and put a progressive prosecutor in that agreed that he would look at these convictions if he was elected.

00:15:51.000 So he got in and in two years he has honorated 22 people.

00:15:55.000 And he found that there was a systemic racist problem in Brooklyn that was convicting the wrong people.

00:16:00.000 Fortunately for me, the New York Times reporter called me in, I believe it was 2012, and they said, why are people afraid of the police?

00:16:09.000 And I just thought, are you kidding me?

00:16:11.000 Why are they afraid of the police?

00:16:12.000 And I told them names of guys that I knew that was in prison that this cop set up.

00:16:18.000 And a lawyer had contacted me and said that he was working on a case which this cop framed, another guy, by the name of David Ranter.

00:16:24.000 And he said, in two weeks, there's going to be an article in New York Times that exposed this cop.

00:16:29.000 And I told the New York Times reporter that.

00:16:31.000 And I said, look, in two weeks, if it comes out, you come back to me and I take you to these guys.

00:16:36.000 And she came back, Frances Robins, she came back and I took her to these guys.

00:16:40.000 She got the prosecutor to agree to look at 50 of these cops' cases.

00:16:44.000 50 of them.

00:16:46.000 And, you know, 20 was exonerated so far, those guys.

00:16:49.000 And I was exonerated in 2015. In 2014, for the first time in New York history, the appellate division's second department ruled in my case that a free-standing actual innocence claim can be recognized under post-conviction motion.

00:17:04.000 And they said that anybody that's innocent, the courts could no longer procedurally bar you.

00:17:08.000 They got to reach the merits of your contentions.

00:17:10.000 They just can't say, well, you should have raised this before, or your lawyer failed to do this before, or you should have did—you got to reach the merits of it.

00:17:16.000 Get to the bottom line.

00:17:17.000 Is this guy innocent or not?

00:17:19.000 And when they gave me that opinion, it kind of like, in itself, exonerated me, because the prosecutor now had to hear my witnesses.

00:17:25.000 I had alibis.

00:17:26.000 I had police officers who said, look, this guy was in New Haven, Connecticut, not Brooklyn when this murder happened.

00:17:31.000 We know because we've seen him there.

00:17:32.000 We was at a party with him.

00:17:33.000 I had hotel receipts.

00:17:34.000 I had many witnesses that could verify where I was at on the day in the town of Newcastle was murdered.

00:17:38.000 The course was just throwing evidence in the garbage.

00:17:40.000 We, in fact, proved who committed the crime.

00:17:43.000 The real murderer was present when the cops arrived.

00:17:45.000 He was on parole for manslaughter.

00:17:47.000 They took his name down but never even investigated who he was.

00:17:50.000 So we had a lot of evidence.

00:17:52.000 We had a witness who was there who identified who was there, identified why the guy was shot.

00:17:56.000 There was a 911 caller that said three male blacks fleeing in the red car.

00:18:00.000 He admitted they was in the red car.

00:18:01.000 So it was just overwhelming evidence of my innocence.

00:18:03.000 But courts was just throwing it in the garbage because the prosecutor lied to them and said he's a bad guy.

00:18:09.000 So my experience has taught me that, you know, there's a lot of innocent people.

00:18:12.000 I was in prison, man.

00:18:13.000 Look, one thing about prison that I tell people, they say, hey, everybody says they're innocent.

00:18:18.000 That's not true, right?

00:18:19.000 They may tell a lawyer that, but they're not going to tell a guy in the neighborhood with them that.

00:18:23.000 I know you're guilty.

00:18:24.000 You know, I was with you.

00:18:24.000 I know what you did.

00:18:25.000 You told me.

00:18:26.000 Everybody tells me.

00:18:27.000 You from the same neighborhoods.

00:18:28.000 So it's a small minority of people that's in the law library every single day.

00:18:33.000 If you go to the yard, God's working out in the weight pile, right?

00:18:36.000 They're playing basketball.

00:18:37.000 But the innocent God is in that law library every single day trying to find a way out.

00:18:42.000 And that was me.

00:18:43.000 Every single day.

00:18:44.000 And I studied every book in there.

00:18:45.000 I taught law classes.

00:18:47.000 And I became very good at it.

00:18:49.000 I mean, I was surprised.

00:18:50.000 I mean, I know I'm in the college, right?

00:18:52.000 When the lawyer gave me the first two cases and I read them, I was surprised how well I knew the cases.

00:18:56.000 I was surprised how I comprehended them.

00:18:57.000 And it was because of that that I kept going.

00:19:00.000 And I found this civilian who liked me.

00:19:02.000 He was working in the law library.

00:19:03.000 And the first test I got was a 44. And he said, look, man, I'm not going to waste my time.

00:19:07.000 You got to explain what that is.

00:19:08.000 What's a 44?

00:19:10.000 A 44 was my grade on the test.

00:19:13.000 I took a test.

00:19:15.000 The first test he gave me was on the Constitution of the United States.

00:19:18.000 I had to learn the 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th, and 14th Amendment.

00:19:21.000 And I failed.

00:19:23.000 I was playing.

00:19:23.000 And he said, look, you're not going to waste my time.

00:19:25.000 You're smarter than that.

00:19:26.000 He challenged me.

00:19:27.000 Next time I came back, I got a 97. So from that point on, I just started studying.

00:19:32.000 I started gravitating to the older guys that knew more than me.

00:19:35.000 Because I was young, they were willing to teach me.

00:19:38.000 And I was like a young sponge.

00:19:39.000 And I just loved what I did.

00:19:40.000 I became passionate about it.

00:19:42.000 And that's why I'm here now.

00:19:43.000 Derek, what kind of repercussions are there for cops that do things like this?

00:19:48.000 None.

00:19:49.000 I mean, in our case, the statute of limitations has ran out on this cop.

00:19:54.000 And let me just tell you about this cop.

00:19:56.000 He didn't just do it in the police department.

00:19:58.000 He left the police department, went into the DOE, the Department of Education, and he did it there.

00:20:03.000 He framed the guy in the DOE. They later found out the guy did nothing wrong.

00:20:08.000 They had to reinstate him.

00:20:09.000 This is just his nature and his character.

00:20:11.000 And he just gets away with it?

00:20:13.000 He gets away.

00:20:14.000 What's his name?

00:20:14.000 Lewis Garcella.

00:20:15.000 And he's out there still?

00:20:16.000 He's out there.

00:20:17.000 He's still getting a pension.

00:20:19.000 The city is still paying this guy.

00:20:20.000 We still got cases today that we are fighting in court for him.

00:20:24.000 James Jenkins, Nelson Cruz.

00:20:26.000 They're still actual cases that we're litigating.

00:20:28.000 How many people do you think that guy wrongfully put in prison?

00:20:31.000 You know, I'll tell you something that I didn't even tell you, Josh, about this one.

00:20:36.000 This guy worked on over 200 cases.

00:20:39.000 My father was killed in 1988. He was the detective on that case.

00:20:44.000 And I'll tell you something about that.

00:20:47.000 He said that one of the guys snatched a confession out of his hand and ate it.

00:20:52.000 I didn't believe that.

00:20:54.000 I said, as much as I want people who may be responsible, I can't trust this guy.

00:21:00.000 I can't take nothing he say to be truth.

00:21:03.000 Right?

00:21:04.000 Just recently, that case was overturned.

00:21:07.000 Samuel Edmondson case because of his sloppy police work.

00:21:11.000 So he says 200 cases he work on.

00:21:14.000 I would like to believe at least half of those guys Well, a lot of them have been exonerated.

00:21:21.000 How many Scarcella exonerations have there been?

00:21:23.000 20 to date.

00:21:25.000 How does a guy not just get locked up immediately for that?

00:21:31.000 And when he testifies, he has two lawyers with him now.

00:21:34.000 Right?

00:21:35.000 I've never seen a witness come to court and have two lawyers standing with him.

00:21:39.000 We object to it all the time.

00:21:41.000 But, I mean, this is how much of a criminal he is.

00:21:43.000 He had two lawyers standing with him all the time trying to protect his rights.

00:21:47.000 And he don't remember anything now.

00:21:48.000 Like, he don't remember, you know, of course, he don't recall nothing.

00:21:51.000 You got to bring the police reports to him and say, that's your signature.

00:21:54.000 Did you do this?

00:21:55.000 But he don't remember anything, of course.

00:21:57.000 Selectively, he don't remember anything.

00:21:58.000 It just shows you, you know, he's been written about a lot.

00:22:03.000 Scarcella, there have been scores of articles out there about him because he was exposed.

00:22:08.000 And this is not an indictment of all police that are amazing cops.

00:22:12.000 But a couple of bad eggs that let the power get to their head, a couple of rogue cops, they don't just destroy a life.

00:22:22.000 They destroy, you know, it's a ripple.

00:22:25.000 One, you know, if you, like, Derek and I were at Sing Sing visiting one of our clients, this guy Bruce Bryant, and, you know, it's the brothers, the sisters, the family, and then you start to multiply that out and the ripple effect of how it affects these families.

00:22:44.000 There's been 20 exonerations.

00:22:45.000 There's been 22, actually, but there's been 20, 22 exonerations connected to this one cop.

00:22:51.000 It only takes, you know, some rogue cops and people to look the other way.

00:22:57.000 And, I mean, look at this beautiful man.

00:22:59.000 How articulate and bright.

00:23:02.000 And he's prolific in what he does.

00:23:05.000 And he snatched his life from him.

00:23:09.000 We were talking last night about how this is like a second chance to live for him.

00:23:13.000 Some of the best years of his life, he'll never get back.

00:23:17.000 You're never the same.

00:23:19.000 But he's easily the exception to the rule because he's out there and a force of nature and working toward helping to solve this problem.

00:23:29.000 But Scarcella, we were just asked the same question on the way here.

00:23:36.000 Because, let's show you how small the world can get.

00:23:39.000 I haven't talked to Paulie Malignaggi in years.

00:23:43.000 And he said to me something interesting.

00:23:45.000 Called me the other day to check up, how you doing?

00:23:49.000 You know, what's been going on?

00:23:51.000 He said, you know, I've been following the work you're doing.

00:23:54.000 And for those that don't know, Paulie was a world champion fighter that liked to talk a lot that I managed years ago.

00:24:01.000 But he's a good soul.

00:24:03.000 He's got a good heart.

00:24:05.000 And he said, you know, there's this case you got to look into for me.

00:24:08.000 A guy named Louie Fama.

00:24:10.000 F-A-M-A. Joey.

00:24:12.000 Joey.

00:24:12.000 Joey Fama.

00:24:13.000 Joey Fama.

00:24:15.000 And he's like, this guy was railroaded by this cop's Garcella.

00:24:20.000 And he's like, will you look into this case for me?

00:24:23.000 I write to him every month.

00:24:26.000 So I asked Derek on the drive over here, you hear about this guy, Joey Fama?

00:24:30.000 He goes, yeah, I'm working on his case right now.

00:24:32.000 We just filed post-conviction motions on his behalf.

00:24:35.000 So we called Pauly in the car, and Pauly was like, oh my God, there's a reason why I called you.

00:24:41.000 And he said, you know, he asked the same question you did. 0.99

00:24:44.000 How in the fuck is this guy still out there? 0.99

00:24:47.000 Because whatever crimes he committed, the statute of limitations have run on, number one. 0.99

00:24:52.000 Number two, nobody's got the balls to prosecute him. 0.93

00:24:56.000 Because that would be an admission, wouldn't it? 0.99

00:25:00.000 Absolutely.

00:25:00.000 And let me tell you how crazy it was, right?

00:25:03.000 Again, the prosecutor was down with him.

00:25:06.000 They was all a part of the same clique, right?

00:25:08.000 And he used a witness by the name of Teresa Gomez in six murders.

00:25:14.000 For six months in a row, each month she gave him a murder.

00:25:18.000 In one murder, she said she looked through the peephole and saw the guy shoot.

00:25:23.000 There was no peephole on the door.

00:25:26.000 Look, just think about it.

00:25:28.000 Six murders.

00:25:29.000 Who sees one murder but six in your lifetime and six months in a row?

00:25:34.000 To today, he swears she was the most credible witness ever, that she was the best witness in the world.

00:25:40.000 And they used her.

00:25:41.000 The Prosecutor Ross at that time is now a judge in Brooklyn. 1.00

00:25:45.000 On a cigar website, he said the first time he smoked a cigar was when that lying crackhead whore got a conviction. 0.99

00:25:54.000 He was talking about Teresa Gomez. 1.00

00:25:56.000 They knew she was a liar. 0.94

00:25:57.000 They knew that she would lie on people. 1.00

00:25:58.000 And that was in Robert Hill's case.

00:26:00.000 He was exonerated.

00:26:01.000 His brother, Alvina Jeanette, is exonerated.

00:26:04.000 And Darrell Austin, three brothers she put in jail.

00:26:07.000 All three of them is exonerated.

00:26:08.000 Darrell Austin died in jail.

00:26:10.000 There's no repercussions for that.

00:26:13.000 He just lives his life.

00:26:14.000 Runs unhappy.

00:26:15.000 And he's still, to the day, despite 20 convictions being overturned, saying he did nothing wrong.

00:26:21.000 It's bigger than him.

00:26:22.000 It was the system.

00:26:22.000 He said, I arrest.

00:26:23.000 The prosecutors convict.

00:26:25.000 You know, I give it to them.

00:26:26.000 They decide what to do.

00:26:27.000 It wasn't my decision.

00:26:29.000 And it's just crazy.

00:26:30.000 That's how the system works, though. 0.96

00:26:31.000 How is there no law that, first of all, eliminates the statute of limitations when someone puts someone in jail for the rest of their fucking life and also treats something like that as organized crime? 0.95

00:26:44.000 That's organized crime. 0.91

00:26:46.000 By any definition, isn't it?

00:26:48.000 Yeah, that's a great question.

00:26:50.000 Here's the thing that people have to start to understand and get through their heads and believe it.

00:26:57.000 We have to be careful about who we put in power.

00:27:02.000 This is not, are you a Democrat?

00:27:05.000 Are you a Republican?

00:27:07.000 Are you this?

00:27:07.000 We have to be careful because Power is worse than any drug.

00:27:14.000 I'm now convinced of that.

00:27:16.000 Fame, power, any form of it.

00:27:19.000 And if you don't start paying attention to the people that we are putting in positions of power, it is human nature that this will keep happening.

00:27:27.000 As the mammals that we are, we're hardwired to abuse power.

00:27:33.000 And you ask a great question.

00:27:36.000 Which is, how do we not suspend the statute of limitations?

00:27:40.000 It takes people that are willing to do the right thing.

00:27:44.000 I have been excoriated about, oh, you went on Rogan and said that Kamala Harris was this, but then you voted for her. 0.98

00:27:56.000 No, I fucking didn't. 0.96

00:27:57.000 I call it like I see it. 0.99

00:27:59.000 I'm not a Democrat.

00:28:00.000 I'm not a Republican.

00:28:01.000 We have to be careful about who we put into power.

00:28:04.000 And once you start putting people in power that will do just the right thing, not the popular thing, but the right thing, laws like that can get changed.

00:28:14.000 They can get change.

00:28:15.000 And, you know, you have said it before, and you're right.

00:28:19.000 Until we can get out of this tribal mentality of either us, them, those, we're going to keep on seeing this happen. 1.00

00:28:30.000 That shit is built into our DNA. We have to understand that we evolved as tribal groups. 1.00

00:28:36.000 And because of that, we had to fight off other tribal groups who wanted to steal our resources, who wanted to take our women.

00:28:42.000 That's always been the case with human beings.

00:28:44.000 And we have just moved that into Republicans versus Democrats.

00:28:48.000 That's what we're doing.

00:28:49.000 And it's dangerous.

00:28:52.000 I call it like I see it.

00:28:53.000 The reason I was critical of Kamala Harris is because I called it like I saw it.

00:28:58.000 And I'll tell you what.

00:28:59.000 It was not a popular thing to do.

00:29:01.000 Derek knows some of the fallout that I faced from the left, quote-unquote.

00:29:06.000 Because they wanted to protect her.

00:29:07.000 But it's accurate. 0.59

00:29:08.000 The problem is everything you said was accurate.

00:29:11.000 Everything you said is provable.

00:29:12.000 Everything you said is a 100% stone-cold, carved-in-steel fact.

00:29:17.000 Yeah, but it happens on both sides.

00:29:19.000 Let me give you an example.

00:29:20.000 Here's something that blows my mind.

00:29:23.000 And we just have to be willing to step out of this tribal mentality.

00:29:29.000 Look at a guy like Ron DeSantis.

00:29:32.000 Everyone has their back up already.

00:29:35.000 Ron DeSantis.

00:29:36.000 What he did in Orlando... 0.99

00:29:39.000 Was so fucking mind-blowing. 0.99

00:29:43.000 Was it in Orlando that he did this? 0.99

00:29:45.000 No, in Hillsborough County in Tampa.

00:29:48.000 He goes and removes...

00:29:51.000 This really terrific guy, right, who, whether you like him or not, let's not call him a terrific guy.

00:29:58.000 He goes and removes a prosecutor, an elected official, on the hypothetical that if a state law passes, that this guy won't enforce it.

00:30:10.000 Hypothetical?

00:30:10.000 Is this from a statement?

00:30:12.000 This is a hypothetical, because the guy signed a letter, along with a bunch of other state and district attorneys, saying if you pass an abortion law...

00:30:21.000 I don't think it's a good use of our resources to prosecute people that might be the victims of rape, you know, who are doctors who are trying to help the victims of rape.

00:30:33.000 I think it clogs up the system and they have their rationale for it.

00:30:37.000 But there had never been a case brought before him yet.

00:30:40.000 Now, why did Ron DeSantis do that, in my opinion?

00:30:43.000 He did that because he knows abortion is a hot-button issue.

00:30:46.000 And if he goes down there and removes this guy, he becomes a hero for it.

00:30:51.000 Here's the hypocrisy in that.

00:30:53.000 This has nothing to do with politics.

00:30:55.000 This has to do with the right thing.

00:30:58.000 Watch this. 0.98

00:31:00.000 This should fucking freak everybody out. 0.99

00:31:03.000 Imagine this. 0.99

00:31:05.000 In Florida...

00:31:08.000 Marijuana is still illegal.

00:31:10.000 It's...

00:31:11.000 I want to get it right so I don't...

00:31:13.000 I'll tell you what statute it's in.

00:31:15.000 In the Florida statute...

00:31:17.000 It's very illegal.

00:31:18.000 The statute of criminalizing weed in Florida is section 893.03.

00:31:24.000 It's a controlled substance in Florida.

00:31:26.000 There are a lot of states where it's still a controlled substance, but it's been decriminalized.

00:31:30.000 Florida's not one of them.

00:31:32.000 In Orlando...

00:31:35.000 Orlando said, you know what?

00:31:38.000 We're going to decriminalize it.

00:31:39.000 Here's how we're going to do it.

00:31:41.000 We're going to make it like a traffic ticket.

00:31:44.000 There's a sticky problem there, though, because there's a state law, Section 893.03, that makes it illegal.

00:31:53.000 So they passed a county ordinance.

00:31:56.000 They got the city council together, and they passed a county ordinance, and they said by a, what was it, a four to three vote?

00:32:03.000 Four to three.

00:32:04.000 We are not going to prosecute according to state law.

00:32:09.000 We're going to prosecute according to this county ordinance. 0.99

00:32:13.000 If Ron DeSantis gave a shit about state attorneys not prosecuting crimes, don't you think he would have been right there and said, what the fuck is this? 0.99

00:32:23.000 You're not prosecuting according to state law? 1.00

00:32:27.000 You're not fit to be a state attorney.

00:32:29.000 I'm pulling you out of office.

00:32:31.000 That's the first thing he would have done.

00:32:33.000 He didn't do that.

00:32:34.000 They actually created a way to circumvent state law and did it.

00:32:39.000 This is not a hypothetical.

00:32:41.000 Why did he do that?

00:32:42.000 Why didn't he do that? 0.99

00:32:43.000 Because he doesn't give a fuck about... 0.96

00:32:45.000 This is not about the issue. 0.98

00:32:47.000 Well, also probably because it's politically popular.

00:32:50.000 Abortion is politically popular, so he knows he's going to make himself... 0.95

00:32:54.000 So whether you're a quote-unquote Republican, a Democrat, a Libertarian, if you don't look at that fact and say...

00:33:03.000 There's something really wrong there.

00:33:06.000 Something wrong.

00:33:07.000 I don't care about anything else involving this man.

00:33:10.000 That in and of itself smacks of fascism.

00:33:14.000 When you go grab an elected official by the scruff of their neck and yank them out of an elected position, that doesn't horrify you?

00:33:22.000 I mean, but when it comes to weed, you know, it's illegal in the state of Florida.

00:33:27.000 You sort of did an end around here to get around the law.

00:33:32.000 But I'm going to leave that state attorney alone.

00:33:34.000 There's no answer to that.

00:33:36.000 I have met this man before.

00:33:38.000 He threw a tissy fit over the fact that I was wearing a mask at the height of the pandemic because my son has type 1 diabetes, and it wasn't known yet whether I could get it, pass it to him, and...

00:33:52.000 Instead of meeting with me, turned his back on me and walked out.

00:33:55.000 He cancels clemency routinely in Florida.

00:33:59.000 That should bother people.

00:34:01.000 That people like Derek, who just want a hearing, just hear me. 0.99

00:34:07.000 You cancel the fucking clemency? 0.89

00:34:09.000 You cancel the entire hearing so people's cases can't get heard. 0.98

00:34:13.000 And until we're willing to step out of this...

00:34:15.000 Why do you think he does that?

00:34:17.000 Because he's...

00:34:19.000 You would have to ask him.

00:34:21.000 But the question is, why are we tolerating it?

00:34:25.000 Why are we putting up with it?

00:34:26.000 Why are we saying that that's okay?

00:34:29.000 Because...

00:34:30.000 Why?

00:34:30.000 Because it's a tribal mentality.

00:34:31.000 And until people are willing to sort of step away and say, you know what?

00:34:34.000 I don't like what this individual does.

00:34:37.000 I'm not going to vote for him.

00:34:38.000 I'm not going to vote that person into power.

00:34:41.000 There are judges that get elected in the state of Florida, some that have ruined the lives of my clients.

00:34:47.000 You know, and they continually get elected because we vote along party lines instead of using our minds.

00:34:52.000 And, you know, Derek and I were talking about it on the way here.

00:34:55.000 Like, what is it that prevents people from saying, you know what, I'm going to do something.

00:35:02.000 Instead of talk about it on Instagram or post about it or bitch about it at a cocktail party, what prevents people from saying, you know what?

00:35:12.000 Maybe I'll run for office.

00:35:14.000 Or maybe I will write a letter.

00:35:16.000 Or maybe I will go protest.

00:35:18.000 And maybe I will take up this cause.

00:35:20.000 I don't know what it is.

00:35:21.000 It's something stops in people.

00:35:23.000 And they say that's just something for other people.

00:35:25.000 If you want to make change happen and be about the change, you can do it.

00:35:31.000 If you actually...

00:35:32.000 This guy is a...

00:35:34.000 The best example of the power of one and how the power of one can sort of light a fire under the power of others.

00:35:41.000 I'm inspired by him.

00:35:42.000 I feel like there's not enough time in the day to get things done.

00:35:46.000 And you start to see the fruits of your labor when you get the wind at your back and you start making change happen.

00:35:53.000 And I just think people feel like, well, politicians, that's for someone else.

00:35:57.000 Or being a leader, that's for someone else.

00:35:59.000 A lot of it is just sort of getting out there and making it happen or else we're just going to be in this It's amazing when some people get their back up against the wall,

00:36:14.000 they become like a different person.

00:36:16.000 You literally changed the course of your education.

00:36:20.000 You learned law.

00:36:22.000 That is so inspiring to me that someone who gets put in a terrible situation instead of woe is me and complaining, you went out and you changed the course of the history of your life.

00:36:35.000 You really did.

00:36:36.000 You did it yourself.

00:36:37.000 That's so incredible.

00:36:39.000 I mean, I've heard similar stories of people becoming jailhouse lawyers, but I'm always inspired by that, and I'm always inspired by the human spirit that someone can, despite the odds, despite the way it feels, despite the inclination to lean towards despair,

00:36:56.000 that you figured it out, man.

00:36:58.000 I mean, it's really amazing.

00:37:00.000 Well, you know, for me, one of the most telling things, I could never understand how, you know, I'll give you an example.

00:37:06.000 In Rikers Island, you wake up 5 o'clock in the morning, You go to court.

00:37:11.000 So from 5 a.m.

00:37:13.000 to probably 10 o'clock at night, you're in the bullpen.

00:37:16.000 You're stressed out, and guys fighting each other, cutting each other.

00:37:19.000 It's a zoo house, right? 1.00

00:37:21.000 And I was to be cursing these guys out because you're tough with each other, but when you go before the judge, you're a pussy. 1.00

00:37:28.000 Excuse the vernacular. 1.00

00:37:29.000 I just couldn't understand that.

00:37:30.000 Like, the most important thing in your life, you don't stand up and fight.

00:37:34.000 And I know that didn't want to be me.

00:37:35.000 I wanted to be the smartest guy in that courtroom.

00:37:37.000 If they was going to railroad me, I was going to have objection.

00:37:40.000 I was going to say, Your Honor, may I address the court and I was going to state the law and why what you was doing was wrong.

00:37:45.000 So I thanks Candace Curse, that attorney that gave me the advice. 0.95

00:37:49.000 Study law, man.

00:37:50.000 You got to fight for your life.

00:37:51.000 Nobody's going to fight for it for you.

00:37:53.000 And I grew up a fighter.

00:37:54.000 I grew up in Bevis-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.

00:37:57.000 And I couldn't fight physically, so I know I had to arm myself mentally with enough intelligence to be able to take on a judge, to take on a prosecutor, to take on my defense attorney if they was wrong.

00:38:07.000 And that was my thing.

00:38:08.000 When I went in that courtroom, I wanted to make sure, even though you was railroading me, that wreck it, and that's what got me out of prison, the wreck it.

00:38:15.000 All of my objections got me out.

00:38:17.000 The judge had to admit that.

00:38:18.000 That there was evidence to prove I'm innocent because I wouldn't let them have it in any way.

00:38:22.000 I wasn't leaving that courtroom with him making a record like I was guilty.

00:38:25.000 Whenever the prosecutor said that I shot somebody and killed them, I objected.

00:38:29.000 I called them on the phone.

00:38:30.000 I wrote letters.

00:38:31.000 I used to call the Judge Chambers and act like I was somebody in the mayor's office and say, why are you doing this to me?

00:38:36.000 They would be like, yeah, tell your client, don't call me no more.

00:38:39.000 But to me, the most important thing I had was my life.

00:38:43.000 And if I didn't stand up and fight for it, nobody else would.

00:38:46.000 Nobody else could.

00:38:47.000 Nobody else knew I was innocent.

00:38:48.000 And they always believed that you're guilty because the prosecutor, lawyers, judges, a lot of them in the same, Democratic Party in New York City, they're all amongst party lines, they all hang out together.

00:39:01.000 They're friends.

00:39:02.000 I was the only outsider in that.

00:39:04.000 And I knew for a fact that if I didn't stand up and throw punches back the only way that I could, through the law, that I would have stayed in prison the rest of my life.

00:39:12.000 What was the process like of learning law?

00:39:15.000 Like, did someone guide you through it?

00:39:17.000 Did you just pick up books?

00:39:18.000 How did that work?

00:39:19.000 I'll tell you, it was different processes at a different time.

00:39:23.000 When I first began, you know, the fortunate thing for guys in New York, they would have something called unofficial reporters.

00:39:30.000 So they would give us books when we can cross-reference through something called Digest.

00:39:36.000 So let's say I got a criminal law topic.

00:39:38.000 I can take that topic and run it through a digest and get 20 cases the same way.

00:39:43.000 But for me, what I used to do was read a lot of briefs, read a lot of judges' decisions to try to get the concept.

00:39:51.000 And the more you read, the more you learn.

00:39:53.000 One of the things I did was I read the criminal procedure law from front to back.

00:39:58.000 From one all the way to the end.

00:39:59.000 And it gives you the procedures of what happened from the moment you're arrested to your convicted to your pill and everything else.

00:40:05.000 I had to master that.

00:40:06.000 There was a guy by the name of Joe Diaz.

00:40:08.000 They used to call him a colonel. 0.92

00:40:09.000 He was an old, miserable guy in prison, didn't like anybody. 0.53

00:40:12.000 But he took me up under his wing because he seemed that I was very adamant. 0.93

00:40:15.000 I wasn't going anywhere.

00:40:16.000 And he just told me, you got to know procedure, that prosecutors beat you on procedure, that they don't want to go to the merits of your claim.

00:40:24.000 If they can get the judge to get you out of here without hearing the merits, they're going to do that.

00:40:27.000 So I had to master procedure, and I only did that by reading.

00:40:30.000 I did 10 years in special housing unit.

00:40:33.000 And all I did was study in Special Housing Unit.

00:40:35.000 Amongst the banging and the craziness, I just read books every single day.

00:40:39.000 They would bring you two books from the law library, and I would read them from front to back.

00:40:44.000 Well, wait, can you explain for the listeners, and for, I think Joe knows now, but what that means to be in the Special Housing Unit?

00:40:52.000 A special housing unit is, some call it the whole, some call it punitive segregation.

00:40:57.000 But you are in a very small box of a cell for 23 and sometimes 24 hours a day. 0.98

00:41:04.000 You're around a bunch of mentally ill prisoners who throw feces and urine on you. 0.99

00:41:08.000 They just burn themselves. 1.00

00:41:10.000 It's a madhouse.

00:41:11.000 You know, they bang loud. 0.70

00:41:13.000 It sounds like bombs being dropped.

00:41:14.000 I mean, it's a very, very toxic environment for the prison guards and prisons alike.

00:41:21.000 And it's a punitive tool that they use against people that they feel have too much power in the prison or they don't like you.

00:41:31.000 For me, I was writing lawsuits.

00:41:34.000 I was litigating against the conditions in prison, so they targeted me.

00:41:38.000 And they always single you out and say, you know what, you think you're tough.

00:41:41.000 You think you're going to be in the box.

00:41:42.000 And I did 10 years in there.

00:41:44.000 I did 10 years in there, and it was the most horrific experience in the world, but I made it work.

00:41:49.000 I would roll my mattress up, and I would put all of the law stuff on the bed, and I would sit there, and I would work all day.

00:41:57.000 I would put earplugs in my ear, and I would just block the noise out and work and work and work.

00:42:01.000 And I did some of my best work in the specialized unit.

00:42:04.000 It's incredible that you had this determination and will and drive, and then it never let go.

00:42:11.000 Definitely.

00:42:12.000 I mean, I had no choice.

00:42:13.000 I mean, sometimes you put in positions that you don't even know your strength until you're in them.

00:42:19.000 And for me, I just didn't know that I had it in me.

00:42:22.000 But when I got out, when I left, I left with a group of guys that I pledged that I was coming back to get.

00:42:30.000 I mean, these are guys that were innocent.

00:42:32.000 I knew it.

00:42:33.000 There were some Scarcella victims.

00:42:34.000 And Shabaka Shakur was one that we got out.

00:42:37.000 Richard Rosario was a part of that team.

00:42:40.000 And there was many more, man, that I just knew that I just couldn't get out and walk away from these guys.

00:42:45.000 Nelson Cruz, we still fighting for this brother.

00:42:48.000 I mean, here's a case where Scarcella framed this guy.

00:42:51.000 There was a cop who witnessed the real murderer.

00:42:55.000 The cop caught this guy with a gun in his hand shooting, locked him up.

00:42:59.000 Throw him in jail.

00:43:00.000 Gave him to Scarcella. 0.98

00:43:02.000 Gun, the murder weapon.

00:43:04.000 Scarcella let this guy tell him he didn't do it, that the killer was Nelson Cruz.

00:43:08.000 But why would he do that?

00:43:10.000 You know, one of the things I learned is that informants, right?

00:43:15.000 Cops protect the informants.

00:43:16.000 They protect the informants that commit murder.

00:43:19.000 And then they have to blame it on somebody to close the case.

00:43:22.000 And that happens a lot, right?

00:43:24.000 In this case, this guy was an informant for them.

00:43:26.000 They didn't want to get him off the street.

00:43:27.000 So what do they do?

00:43:28.000 They substitute him for Nelson Cruz, despite the fact that a fellow officer says, listen, I know who I saw shooting.

00:43:36.000 I witnessed this.

00:43:36.000 I saw it with my own eyes.

00:43:39.000 They let the guy go and locked up Nelson Cruz.

00:43:42.000 He's still in prison today.

00:43:44.000 His unfortunate is that we went through a hearing, we won, and you won't believe this.

00:43:48.000 The judge caught dementia.

00:43:50.000 What?

00:43:51.000 The judge caught dementia.

00:43:53.000 Sean Day is Simpson.

00:43:55.000 And she resigned on the dementia.

00:43:57.000 She had dementia when she was hearing this case.

00:43:59.000 And we're still fighting.

00:44:00.000 So, I mean, the criminal justice system is broken.

00:44:03.000 We've got to fix it, as you said, even to waive the statute of limitations to hold people accountable, to hold prosecutors accountable, to change the level of amendment.

00:44:12.000 I mean, everybody, look, if you can go after Donald Trump, Right?

00:44:15.000 Then you can go after prosecutors and cops.

00:44:17.000 You can't tell me that you can go after Trump today for things that you said he did as a president, but you can let Scarcella get away, you can let the prosecutors get away, and you want me to say that that's okay?

00:44:28.000 It's not okay.

00:44:31.000 It's just incredible to me that they would be willing, just because they want to keep this guy as a snitch, that they will go out and convict an innocent person.

00:44:40.000 How does a person get so jaded That they're willing and don't care about putting innocent people behind bars.

00:44:50.000 I mean, is their idea that everybody's guilty of something, so it's okay?

00:44:53.000 Like, what's the mindset that allows a cop to do something like that?

00:44:58.000 The way the system is designed, right?

00:45:01.000 Cops get accolades based on arrests.

00:45:04.000 Prosecutors based on convictions.

00:45:06.000 Judges on based on how fast the case moved to the system.

00:45:09.000 So if you're going to pat me on my back as a cop and say, good job done, and there's nobody investigating to see whether or not you did a great job, prosecutors are supposed to investigate any case that cops bring before them.

00:45:21.000 That's broken.

00:45:22.000 They just accept the case and move on.

00:45:23.000 So it's like a game, and they're just trying to score points.

00:45:26.000 And if they can cheat to score points, they'll score points by cheating.

00:45:30.000 Absolutely.

00:45:30.000 If there's political pressure, forget about it.

00:45:33.000 Forget about it.

00:45:35.000 This is like...

00:45:37.000 The questions that you ask are so...

00:45:45.000 They're rhetorical, but they're the same questions that I hear from people that hear these stories.

00:45:50.000 And it's almost like your defense mechanism as a human being doesn't want to let you believe that that could be.

00:45:57.000 Because you're taught as a kid, cops are here to serve and protect you.

00:46:03.000 Prosecutors are here to get the bad guys.

00:46:06.000 What's woven in here and that we're not really, we're addressing it without addressing it, is that the racism that runs rampant in our system is a very big part of this.

00:46:23.000 A lot of white cops, whether subconsciously or consciously, think the black guy or the brown guy, the Latin guy did it. 0.97

00:46:32.000 There is a huge, that's one, you know, it's a messy stew.

00:46:37.000 There's one part of it, a large part of it, I'm sure, is what you just said.

00:46:41.000 It's you do not see the human cost that a prosecution of a human being leaves in its wake.

00:46:51.000 And these prosecutors get accolades for convictions, and it is a game.

00:46:55.000 It's about wins and losses.

00:46:57.000 For cops, it's about arrests.

00:46:59.000 And yes, it taps into something primal that, you know, winning is good, losing is bad.

00:47:06.000 And it's a messy stew.

00:47:08.000 And I used to think that sometimes cops were out to frame people.

00:47:12.000 I don't think it's always that.

00:47:13.000 I think that they think that their hunch is better than evidence and they make the ends justify the means.

00:47:20.000 But you can't ignore any one of these factors.

00:47:23.000 Look...

00:47:24.000 You and I had a discussion, not on the podcast, about Brittany Griner, right?

00:47:32.000 And, you know, I think we all agree as human beings that she, it's insane. 0.99

00:47:42.000 It's not, the word doesn't give it justice.

00:47:45.000 It's horrific.

00:47:47.000 It's, you know, every adjective that you can pull, it's a nightmare for her.

00:47:53.000 And you asked me a question that I think you asked it, you articulated on the podcast and you and I were texting about it, which is that, you know, this happens here.

00:48:04.000 And yes, she's getting attention because she's in Russia.

00:48:07.000 It's a political thing.

00:48:08.000 It's in vogue.

00:48:09.000 And I want her to get out, of course, more than anyone.

00:48:13.000 But there are way worse situations here in this country.

00:48:17.000 I sent you some of these cases.

00:48:19.000 So I went down a bit of a rabbit hole.

00:48:23.000 And I said, you know, there's got to be some...

00:48:28.000 There has to be someone that has studied the disparity between the sentences that black men and women get for marijuana possession or marijuana convictions versus white people.

00:48:47.000 And Derek found a study that I have with me.

00:48:50.000 And when I read it, I kept on saying, this is unbelievable.

00:48:56.000 It was commissioned by the ACLU from 2010 to 2018. And they examined this from every angle.

00:49:05.000 They took the crystal ball and they turned it around, and then they turned it over, and then they looked at the inside of it.

00:49:13.000 They looked at it from every angle, okay?

00:49:15.000 Did the decriminalization of marijuana reduce the number of arrests overall?

00:49:21.000 Yes, slightly.

00:49:23.000 Did it reduce the number, the ratio We're good to go.

00:49:46.000 To A, get arrested, and B, get a disproportionate sentence.

00:49:50.000 And if anybody is interested in the report, it's called the ACLU Research Report, A Tale of Two Countries.

00:49:58.000 Racially targeted arrests in the era of marijuana reform. 0.99

00:50:01.000 It will blow your fucking mind. 0.99

00:50:05.000 It is, it went, they went down to a level of granularity that you would expect from a rigorous research study. 1.00

00:50:13.000 They said, okay, well, do white people possess weed more than black people?

00:50:18.000 Or do black people? 0.98

00:50:19.000 Because if you would think that if black folks possessed more marijuana, they would get arrested at a higher rate. 0.85

00:50:25.000 The answer is no. 0.97

00:50:26.000 White people do. 0.73

00:50:28.000 You know, and you cannot look at these statistics and not be outraged and say, okay, we have a problem here in this country. 0.60

00:50:37.000 Our criminal justicism is infected by racism.

00:50:42.000 It doesn't just stay in one segment of society.

00:50:45.000 They looked at the arrest rate, right?

00:50:48.000 The black-white ratio in table six of this report from 2010 to 2018. The arrest per 100,000 may go down, but black people get arrested in this country for marijuana possession in the same scenario,

00:51:06.000 3.6 times more than white people.

00:51:08.000 They broke it down state by state.

00:51:10.000 I brought it because I wanted to leave it with you, and they went down to states with the highest black arrest rates for marijuana possession.

00:51:19.000 States with the largest increases in racial disparities. 0.99

00:51:23.000 I mean, a lot of this shit is happening in the South. 1.00

00:51:26.000 It's happening to black people. 1.00

00:51:28.000 They're being brutalized by our criminal justice system. 0.93

00:51:31.000 And unless people are willing to wake up to that fact, I mean, we're in 2022. Yes.

00:51:39.000 Marijuana is legal in many states, decriminalized in many others.

00:51:43.000 And so getting back to DeSantis, I'm not beating up on him.

00:51:47.000 If you really cared about removing a state attorney and you want to, you know, do something right, you know, decriminalize it in the entire state.

00:51:56.000 How many people, you know, well, imagine this.

00:51:59.000 This is who this guy is.

00:52:01.000 And I'm just calling it like I see him.

00:52:02.000 I've met him.

00:52:03.000 I've met with him. 1.00

00:52:04.000 He is the jerk at work. 1.00

00:52:07.000 You know, everybody has that person that is just an asshole at work and is always telling on people and causing a fucking problem and looking to be difficult. 1.00

00:52:18.000 That's who this guy is. 1.00

00:52:20.000 He has a bad temperament.

00:52:23.000 He doesn't have patience.

00:52:25.000 I was there meeting with him as a favor from one of his biggest donors.

00:52:30.000 He had no patience with me.

00:52:32.000 And why was I there?

00:52:34.000 I was there because I wanted him to simply give me a clemency hearing.

00:52:38.000 I wasn't asking for anything.

00:52:40.000 I wasn't saying, please...

00:52:42.000 Commute the sentence of this innocent man, James Daly, who I know is innocent.

00:52:46.000 I was just there to say, just hold the hearing and let me show you, as Derek said, the merits.

00:52:51.000 Let me just show you the merits of the case.

00:52:54.000 The only person that would meet with me on the clemency board and hear me out is a woman that's running for governor in Florida named Nikki Fried. 1.00

00:53:01.000 She's the fucking commissioner of agriculture. 1.00

00:53:04.000 She didn't need to meet with me. 1.00

00:53:05.000 She met with me for three and a half hours.

00:53:12.000 I'm supporting her because I'm, you know, something that I'm interested in, she paid attention to.

00:53:19.000 And she said, there's a problem here.

00:53:21.000 We have to hear people out.

00:53:23.000 This is before she had intentions to run for governor.

00:53:27.000 And now, you know, she's neck and neck with Charlie Crist in Florida.

00:53:31.000 If people want to make change happen, you know, take a look at her.

00:53:34.000 She's an interesting alternative. 1.00

00:53:36.000 She was a public defender.

00:53:39.000 I think she then became a prosecutor.

00:53:41.000 She gets it from all angles.

00:53:42.000 She's a commissioner of agriculture and she's not a politician. 1.00

00:53:45.000 The thing that bothers me is that when you look at racial disparities In marijuana possession arrests, you know, what's happening in the South in this country, Pickens County, Georgia, the arrest rate for black people caught possessing marijuana,

00:54:04.000 you're 97 times more likely to get arrested if you're black possessing marijuana. 0.99

00:54:09.000 The face that you just made is what happened in my fucking heart when I read it. 1.00

00:54:14.000 You know, in Illinois, people wonder that, you know, like it's like a popular thing for white people to say is like when they're in social circles where they don't think anyone's listening, fucking black people are killing each other in Chicago, right? 0.99

00:54:29.000 Well, you know, in Tazewell County, Illinois, you're 43 times more likely to be arrested if you're black and caught with weed than if you're white. 0.99

00:54:43.000 I mean, we have a broken system.

00:54:45.000 And if people aren't willing to step up and recognize that, this report confirmed what I already thought and knew.

00:54:53.000 But if people aren't willing to recognize and say, okay, well, how do we go about fixing it?

00:54:57.000 You know, the legislatures pass laws that are made by people.

00:55:02.000 And are conjured up by people.

00:55:05.000 They get in a room and they sit there with a pen and paper and they come up with a law.

00:55:09.000 And then we try to get them passed.

00:55:11.000 You're absolutely right. 0.98

00:55:12.000 There should be no statute of limitations for a cop like Luis Scarcella who has fucking ruined the lives of a generation of people. 0.95

00:55:20.000 And I would like to just add that those stats just don't apply to marijuana. 0.99

00:55:25.000 If you go to the Almanac, those stats apply to all crimes around the board, that black people are being arrested. 0.99

00:55:31.000 In some instances, when you look at the Almanac, white people are being arrested more but convicted less. 0.55

00:55:37.000 Of the same crimes.

00:55:38.000 So it's just systemic.

00:55:40.000 It's systemic racism.

00:55:42.000 As you said, it's tribal, right?

00:55:44.000 People tend to go with their tribe more than others, right?

00:55:47.000 And then if you're poor, that plays another role.

00:55:50.000 Whether you're white or black, right? 0.62

00:55:51.000 If you're poor, you can't get the money to defend yourself.

00:55:55.000 So you're relying on who?

00:55:57.000 A public defender or somebody who a judge has to sign off on their They're money to get paid, right?

00:56:04.000 So you're still stuck.

00:56:05.000 I had an 18B lawyer, which is a county lawyer one time, come to me on a motion that I made, pro se, and say, the judge told me that he's going to deny your motion no matter what we do.

00:56:17.000 She was scared to death.

00:56:18.000 He was signing her voucher.

00:56:20.000 She was scared.

00:56:21.000 What did I do?

00:56:22.000 Went right in the court and said it.

00:56:24.000 Judge, this lawyer just told me that you're going to deny the motion no matter what we do.

00:56:29.000 And she says, I never said that, Judge. 0.98

00:56:31.000 And I says, well, she's a liar. 0.97

00:56:33.000 And that's the reason why I don't want her on my case. 0.95

00:56:35.000 I'm asking that she be removed. 0.99

00:56:36.000 There's a conflict.

00:56:37.000 But she was so afraid.

00:56:39.000 She was so scared that this judge had already told her what the disposition is.

00:56:45.000 She didn't know what to do.

00:56:45.000 And this happens every day.

00:56:47.000 And if you're poor, you don't have a chance.

00:56:49.000 And there's also racial disparity that's clearly written in the law when it comes to the difference between the way they recognize crack cocaine versus regular cocaine.

00:56:59.000 There's a far greater sentence for crack cocaine.

00:57:02.000 Yes.

00:57:02.000 But if you talk to an actual person who understands the effects of the drug, like Dr. Carl Hart, he will tell you it is exactly the same drug.

00:57:12.000 It's the same drug, but the conviction, what you get if you get convicted for crack cocaine, like you would probably know this better than I, it's far greater sentence, far more likely to be convicted, far greater sentence, and it directly impacts impoverished communities.

00:57:31.000 Thank you, Bill Clinton and Joe Biden and a whole score of other Democrats.

00:57:37.000 The 94 crime bill. 0.99

00:57:38.000 Yeah, the 94 crime bill was a fucking disaster. 0.99

00:57:42.000 So that's why it enrages me. 0.99

00:57:45.000 Well, it doesn't enrage me.

00:57:46.000 Let's say it frightens me.

00:57:47.000 It frustrates me.

00:57:48.000 It enrages me.

00:57:49.000 It enrages me.

00:57:50.000 You know, because...

00:57:50.000 You should be enraged.

00:57:51.000 You should be enraged.

00:57:53.000 We had this talk last night. 0.87

00:57:55.000 I said, if I was a black man in this country, I don't know how he holds it together.

00:57:58.000 But I was, you know, what ends up always blowing me away is what I think you touched on earlier.

00:58:08.000 Because it's like, how do you find a silver lining?

00:58:13.000 I don't think there's any silver lining to a life that has been damaged the way Derek's life has been damaged.

00:58:18.000 And as tough as he is, somewhere under there, he hurts in a way that we'll never understand.

00:58:24.000 But I was watching these students.

00:58:27.000 We got five college students who would never have got this opportunity Just wouldn't have got this opportunity to sit there if they weren't part of Jay Z's scholarship and his mom Gloria Carter was just a wonderful woman and this woman Donya Diaz and said let's see what happens when we give people an opportunity and I watched five college juniors that are going into their senior year of college some of them shy and timid some of them who were in intimidated

00:58:57.000 by the notion that they would be working on a legal case Start to realize, like, this guy Bruce Bryant, and if people that are interested should go to Free Bruce Bryant, there's a clemency petition for him.

00:59:11.000 I can't talk too much about his innocence case, but he has been called by the press the poster child for clemency in New York.

00:59:19.000 There's stunning evidence of his innocence.

00:59:23.000 They quickly got to the main facts of the case and were able to start solving it.

00:59:30.000 These are college juniors.

00:59:32.000 And they said, you know, who brings—he was accused of being a shooter and a murder— Right.

00:59:54.000 Right.

00:59:56.000 Right.

00:59:59.000 And they started to find inconsistencies in the testimony of people that claimed they saw him, didn't see him.

01:00:06.000 And, you know, really, it was like a stunning reminder to me that if we just give people the opportunity, Derek was forced into the opportunity.

01:00:15.000 I told him I did a day in jail. 0.99

01:00:17.000 I was a fucking puddle. 1.00

01:00:19.000 I was a mess. 1.00

01:00:21.000 And I don't know how he was able to summon the strength to survive, let alone have the discipline to plug.

01:00:31.000 He was telling me about when he was in the hole about how there was a guy in the cell next to him.

01:00:39.000 It was a fascinating analogy he gave me.

01:00:42.000 He said it's like social media. 1.00

01:00:44.000 It's that there's some voice in the darkness that you'll never meet them, you'll never see them, but they can criticize you and get under your skin and call you names and say nasty shit about you. 0.99

01:00:55.000 Looking for a reaction. 0.99

01:00:57.000 And they sometimes get it.

01:00:58.000 And that emboldens them more.

01:01:01.000 He said it was the same thing when I was in the hole. 1.00

01:01:04.000 You'd have someone next to me yelling terrible shit. 1.00

01:01:07.000 I'm gonna fuck your wife. 1.00

01:01:09.000 I'm gonna do this to your daughter. 1.00

01:01:11.000 You know. 0.99

01:01:12.000 And taunting you.

01:01:14.000 And being able to distinguish between anger and And the recognition or the realization, I'll never be able to confront this person.

01:01:25.000 It's just a voice out there that is sick in the head, obviously, and is trying to get a reaction out of me.

01:01:32.000 And Derek was telling me how it forced him into patience.

01:01:36.000 And it forced him to be able to develop the skill at drowning out the background noise.

01:01:44.000 Because to me, it must be annoying because I'm always asking him questions like, how did you do it?

01:01:52.000 It's the same thing you were getting at.

01:01:54.000 How do you summon the strength to be able to overcome?

01:01:57.000 And if people like him can overcome, people that were born into the worst circumstances, born into a poor background, a system built against him, you know, if we just start changing that paradigm...

01:02:12.000 Don't we want everyone around us to succeed and have the same chance that we have?

01:02:18.000 It's hard to not sound corny about it, but I always tell people that... 0.97

01:02:26.000 I've heard criticisms of you, Joe, before, and I say to people, you have no fucking clue who this man is. 0.81

01:02:33.000 You know how rare it is to come across a human being that wants other people to do well? 0.75

01:02:40.000 We're almost hardwired to want to tear each other down because of our insecurities.

01:02:45.000 You genuinely want to see people do well.

01:02:47.000 And it's like, I was telling Derek that about you.

01:02:50.000 It's like, he genuinely wants to see people do well.

01:02:54.000 And it comes from the heart.

01:02:55.000 And, you know, if he's not an inspiring example of what we can all aspire to and overcome and doesn't open some eyes to say, you know, if I just give someone a chance, they can do it.

01:03:10.000 You know, whatever the it is.

01:03:12.000 Well, people don't understand what that means.

01:03:14.000 They think that wanting someone to do well and somehow or another takes away from you, but it doesn't.

01:03:19.000 It boosts you.

01:03:20.000 It helps you.

01:03:21.000 The more people do well, the better you'll do.

01:03:23.000 But that's a competitor's understanding of the nature of the circle that you surround yourself in. 0.65

01:03:30.000 You should always be around people that are killing it, because then you want to kill it. 0.99

01:03:35.000 You should always be around people that are kind and people that are generous because you know that feeling you get when you go, God damn, what a fucking great guy. 0.99

01:03:42.000 I want to be a great guy. 0.98

01:03:43.000 It's good for you.

01:03:45.000 It's good for everybody.

01:03:46.000 That's right. 1.00

01:03:46.000 The person that only wants to be the man and wants everything for themselves and wants to be selfish and cut everybody down, that's a lonely, sad fucking person. 1.00

01:03:55.000 That's a terrible place to be. 1.00

01:03:57.000 It's terrible for yourself.

01:03:59.000 It's a selfish thing to be kind.

01:04:01.000 It's a selfish thing to be generous.

01:04:03.000 It's great for you.

01:04:04.000 It's great for everyone else too though.

01:04:07.000 It's like there's a selfishness in it because I genuinely love the feeling when I can help people.

01:04:14.000 I genuinely love the feeling of whether it's helping people express themselves on a podcast or elevate a comedian's career or just help someone out that I know needs some help.

01:04:26.000 That is a great feeling.

01:04:28.000 But why is it so rare then?

01:04:30.000 Because they don't understand what it is.

01:04:31.000 People have been taught that there's a scarcity.

01:04:34.000 They've been taught this famine mentality.

01:04:35.000 It's wrong.

01:04:37.000 We're a community.

01:04:38.000 We're a community as a country, and we're a community as a world.

01:04:41.000 And if we don't look at it that way, we're always going to be stuck in this lonely, sad position where you think of the world as your enemy.

01:04:49.000 The world's not your enemy.

01:04:50.000 The world's filled with potential best friends.

01:04:52.000 That's right.

01:04:52.000 The world is filled with your brothers and sisters.

01:04:54.000 The world is filled with people who, when they do great, it'll make you feel fantastic.

01:05:00.000 Yeah, and I don't...

01:05:01.000 Look, I have to say that I think that it comes with security, too.

01:05:07.000 Like, I know that times when I have fallen victim to, like, hoping someone doesn't do great, it's because of your...

01:05:13.000 My own insecurities would lead me there.

01:05:16.000 True.

01:05:16.000 And, like, Derek and I are like brothers.

01:05:18.000 And it wasn't like...

01:05:20.000 It hasn't been like a... 0.99

01:05:21.000 Like, when I first met Derek, I was like, this fucking guy seems angry. 0.99

01:05:25.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:05:25.000 He seems angry. 0.99

01:05:26.000 How could he not be?

01:05:27.000 How could I not be, right?

01:05:28.000 How could he not be? 1.00

01:05:28.000 30 fucking years in jail for shit he didn't do? 1.00

01:05:31.000 It's amazing how not angry he is. 1.00

01:05:34.000 That's the true testament to your character, is that you've been able to overcome that and become this person who you are now.

01:05:41.000 Absolutely.

01:05:42.000 That's a lesson for everyone.

01:05:44.000 And again, that's for all the people that if you can get a hold of this, if you're in prison and you're hearing this, you can be like Derek.

01:05:52.000 Everyone can figure there's a path that you can be a better person.

01:05:57.000 There's a path that you can be more educated, more understanding, more compassionate.

01:06:02.000 There's a path for everybody to be a better person.

01:06:04.000 How did you get over the anger though?

01:06:06.000 That's what I don't understand, like how you nod.

01:06:09.000 I never said I got over the anger.

01:06:10.000 What I did was challenge the anger somewhere else.

01:06:13.000 Fueled it.

01:06:13.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:06:14.000 I didn't get over the anger.

01:06:15.000 I mean, I do what I do.

01:06:16.000 My passion is a direct line of that anger.

01:06:21.000 You know, one of the things we know, and I'm going to say we, and I'm talking about it as black people, right?

01:06:25.000 We believe that the system was designed the way that it is.

01:06:28.000 That it didn't happen by happenstance, right?

01:06:30.000 So when you know that, you work to change the system.

01:06:33.000 I work to change the system so that my kids will get a better opportunity, their kids will get a better opportunity, and that we can together gel as human beings.

01:06:41.000 If I don't do the work, what good is to be criticizing it, right?

01:06:44.000 If I be angry and upset and grab a gun and become some animal, that doesn't help the society.

01:06:49.000 It doesn't help the criminal justice system. 0.90

01:06:51.000 So, again, I had to really, really think about it. 0.54

01:06:54.000 Let me tell you, I'm the first person to tell you that I had fantasies of killing the cop. 0.98

01:07:01.000 I had fantasies of killing the prosecutor.

01:07:03.000 I went and spoke to mental health people and said, listen, I can't sleep at night. 1.00

01:07:07.000 All I think about is killing these guys when I get out of here. 0.52

01:07:10.000 You know what the social worker told me? 1.00

01:07:14.000 I looked at your record.

01:07:16.000 And it's what guys like you do.

01:07:18.000 And this is why till today, I got a trauma about speaking to mental health people.

01:07:24.000 Because this is somebody I went to to say, Lord, I can't sleep at night.

01:07:28.000 I have fantasies about killing Scarcella.

01:07:30.000 You think I didn't? 0.98

01:07:31.000 Fantasies. 0.98

01:07:32.000 I had a whole list of people that I was going to kill. 0.51

01:07:35.000 But it was a program that I went to when I was in prison called Challenge to Change.

01:07:38.000 I went to the program solely for the purpose to see if they can change that in my mind.

01:07:43.000 And they did.

01:07:44.000 And you know how they did it?

01:07:46.000 They had me put the people that I love, my kids, up on the board.

01:07:50.000 They said, put down the people that you love up there and think about how it would affect them.

01:07:55.000 What would happen?

01:07:55.000 You already did these many years.

01:07:57.000 And I had a daughter that's 30 years old now.

01:08:00.000 And I was telling her for 21 years I was coming home.

01:08:04.000 Every year I'm thinking I'm coming home.

01:08:06.000 I'm following these motions.

01:08:07.000 They're great motions.

01:08:07.000 It's impossible for the judge to deny it, right?

01:08:10.000 And at some point she said, you's a liar.

01:08:13.000 You've been telling me for 21 years you're coming home. 1.00

01:08:17.000 That you are a liar. 0.99

01:08:20.000 How do you deal with that? 0.99

01:08:23.000 What was it like the day you got out?

01:08:27.000 You know, it was the most rewarding experience ever.

01:08:32.000 It was, you know...

01:08:34.000 What's the first thing you did?

01:08:36.000 You know, it was bells.

01:08:37.000 I tell you, psychologically, you know, it was bells ringing.

01:08:41.000 It was a church bells that used to ring in Auburn Correctional Facility.

01:08:45.000 And I used to say, well, you know what?

01:08:48.000 When the bells ring, I'm going to pray.

01:08:50.000 And hopefully, there's a God out there who'll hear my prayer.

01:08:55.000 Right?

01:08:55.000 That was my spiritual analysis.

01:08:58.000 And the first thing I did when I went out was found that church and went over there and said a prayer.

01:09:03.000 My wife picked me up.

01:09:05.000 We went down to see my kids in Albany on the way down to the city.

01:09:08.000 Had dinner with my son, who I haven't had dinner with in 21 years.

01:09:12.000 And my other son came to visit me.

01:09:15.000 And I just sat there and had the first...

01:09:17.000 We went to a seafood joint.

01:09:21.000 What's the name?

01:09:21.000 But I forget it.

01:09:22.000 It's a popular one.

01:09:23.000 We went there and had a seafood dinner.

01:09:25.000 And, you know, I tell you, there's a video of me getting out. 0.99

01:09:30.000 And I'm moving so fast, I almost got hit by a fucking car across the street. 0.98

01:09:34.000 But even that was a blessing, to be able to almost get hit by a car. 0.98

01:09:38.000 And just to spend time with my wife and my kids, I mean, it was the most rewarding experience ever.

01:09:45.000 And, you know, from that moment, like I said, I knew what I wanted to do.

01:09:50.000 Look, just the fact that I could stop in Albany, And rekindle with my son and just have a moment with my kids, man.

01:09:58.000 That was the most rewarding experience ever for me.

01:10:00.000 It was everything.

01:10:01.000 What's the bottleneck, Josh, in terms of resources to elevate this, to get more people out, to get more funds to do?

01:10:13.000 What can we do where we can amplify this?

01:10:18.000 Get more people involved.

01:10:19.000 Yeah, well, I think one big step is I always thank you, and I don't think that there should be a limit to my gratitude.

01:10:28.000 Being on this podcast is the best example because I don't think we would have got the two exonerations in Kansas without the attention, and I think we need to keep the drumbeat going.

01:10:40.000 So I'm forever and continually grateful to you for giving me a platform.

01:10:45.000 But I think that in addition to that, more people need to understand that they can help make the change happen.

01:10:52.000 So, again, we can't announce the name.

01:10:55.000 We have been sworn to secrecy.

01:10:57.000 But Derek and I are on the precipice of starting a very major legal justice center at a major law school together, where I'll be the executive director and he'll be the deputy director.

01:11:10.000 And it was funded by someone who had this experience where they were wrongfully accused of a crime and had the resources to fight it and has now funded it.

01:11:20.000 And we need, you know, donations always help because the more resources you have, the more attorneys you can hire.

01:11:28.000 But it needs the public awareness and then it needs to keep the drumbeat of pressure going because we know that works.

01:11:38.000 Derek mentioned The Daily News article that got the parole board's attention.

01:11:43.000 Getting these stories out there work.

01:11:46.000 There are guys that we have talked about, and we might as well do it because we're here, okay?

01:11:51.000 And we're here to try to get the word out.

01:11:53.000 There are stories of cases that are out there now.

01:11:57.000 You said this can't be true, and then I sent you the Joe Schilling case, right?

01:12:02.000 Where Joe Schilling is serving life in prison.

01:12:06.000 After being convicted of having an ounce and a half of weed and had his appeal denied.

01:12:12.000 And you wrote to me, is this true?

01:12:14.000 And then I sent you the opinion.

01:12:17.000 And, you know, Joe Schilling is like...

01:12:21.000 An example, this happened in Mississippi. 0.96

01:12:23.000 This is what happens to black men in the South. 0.98

01:12:26.000 And Joe Schilling is an example of a case where if enough people write to the clemency board, write to the governor, somebody will pay attention at some point.

01:12:38.000 And here's a guy where they look at, you know, things that he has done in the past, and they say, well, it wasn't just this marijuana conviction.

01:12:47.000 He was also involved in an armed robbery, right?

01:12:51.000 Well, he wasn't involved in an armed robbery.

01:12:53.000 When you say involved, you picture, stick him up!

01:12:56.000 Here's a gun or a knife.

01:12:58.000 You know, there are different levels of involvement, and people make mistakes.

01:13:01.000 So you don't use those past mistakes as a way to shoehorn them in To throwing their life away, right? 0.72

01:13:09.000 Especially for something so fucking innocuous.

01:13:12.000 It should be legal anyway. 0.94

01:13:14.000 Well think about it this way.

01:13:16.000 If you really want to do something to change the rate of deaths in this country, the rate of violence in this country, and you really are not a hypocrite, you'll ban alcohol.

01:13:33.000 Because alcohol causes a lot more accidental deaths because of drunk driving.

01:13:39.000 There's not a lot of people that are sitting there smoking weed, getting in their car, and blowing up another car in a family. 1.00

01:13:47.000 The biggest victims of marijuana smoking are fucking potato chips and chocolate. 1.00

01:13:55.000 I mean, it's like, what the fuck are we talking about here? 1.00

01:14:00.000 So here you're throwing away a life. 0.99

01:14:03.000 And saying, oh, well, this is because of what you did before.

01:14:07.000 Joe Schilling's case should be advertised.

01:14:11.000 There should be letters flowing in by the hundreds of thousands.

01:14:14.000 So the bottleneck is, I think, and maybe I sound a little bit arrogant in saying this, but you'll correct me and be my reality check, both of you. 0.99

01:14:28.000 The bottleneck is not having the fucking balls to To stand up and say, I am going to speak truth to power. 0.99

01:14:35.000 And I'm going to tell you, this is not okay. 0.99

01:14:39.000 And I've had my life threatened.

01:14:41.000 I have had my families threatened, because I will speak truth to power.

01:14:46.000 And I look, I wear it like a badge of honor.

01:14:49.000 And you know, Derek told these students, because they said, well, what if we get emotional?

01:14:54.000 He said, this business is not for the faint of heart.

01:14:58.000 You can get emotional, and you can be sympathetic, but it just takes more caring and more doing.

01:15:04.000 So the more people that can write to clemency boards, the more people that can say, I'm not going to vote in a tribal way, the more people that say, you know what, I can do better as a leader by running for office.

01:15:19.000 Do it!

01:15:20.000 We all feel like it's for someone else, you know, but like this happened to you, right?

01:15:29.000 Did you ever think you would reach this many people?

01:15:32.000 I don't know if you did or not.

01:15:34.000 No.

01:15:34.000 All right.

01:15:35.000 No.

01:15:36.000 This is accidental.

01:15:37.000 All right.

01:15:38.000 Well...

01:15:38.000 Purely.

01:15:39.000 Purely accidental, but there was a point in which you, me, Derek, we have all said to ourselves, how did this happen to me?

01:15:47.000 Right.

01:15:48.000 Right?

01:15:48.000 And I have come to the realization, well, if not me, then who?

01:15:53.000 If not now, then when?

01:15:55.000 It happened to me.

01:15:56.000 Now I'm going to use my voice to try to empower other people.

01:15:59.000 And, you know, I think that we get caught up in mediocrity.

01:16:03.000 And I think that we settle for mediocrity as human beings.

01:16:06.000 Right?

01:16:07.000 That's what sort of like keeps the classes in check.

01:16:10.000 You don't have to be great or powerful or omniscient to make change happen.

01:16:15.000 You just have to break from what's expected.

01:16:20.000 I broke from some of my parents' expectations.

01:16:25.000 And as a result of that, they evolved.

01:16:29.000 You know, sometimes you're afraid of the backlash.

01:16:32.000 You know, I remember, like, there were certain things about marrying within your religious faith.

01:16:38.000 And I remember the first time I dated a Cuban girl.

01:16:41.000 My mom had a reaction and said, you know, aren't you going to marry someone that's Jewish?

01:16:50.000 And I said...

01:16:52.000 I abandoned organized religion when I was 13. It's the most hypocritical thing imaginable to me. 0.95

01:17:00.000 And I remember going to her, to my girlfriend's house in college, and they were roasting a pig. 0.96

01:17:09.000 And I remember my mom, like this Jewish lady from Long Island. 0.53

01:17:14.000 Oh my god, there's a pig in the ground! 0.81

01:17:17.000 What kind of people do this?

01:17:19.000 And I said...

01:17:21.000 People want delicious food.

01:17:23.000 I said, let me ask you a question.

01:17:25.000 She's like, are you going to get married to someone?

01:17:27.000 I said, I'm more Catholic than I am Jewish at this point.

01:17:32.000 And my credit to my mom, because what she did was she evolved.

01:17:37.000 She said, you know, you're right.

01:17:40.000 I haven't been to temple.

01:17:42.000 In 30 years.

01:17:44.000 Wow.

01:17:45.000 I don't know even why I think this.

01:17:48.000 Other than that, this is how I was raised.

01:17:51.000 And I watched her evolve to the point where when I finally got married to my wife, the fact that she was Christian and that a judge married us in a non-denominational ceremony that was more human than it was religious, it wasn't even an issue.

01:18:05.000 So if we're willing to break from what's expected of us and the norm...

01:18:11.000 You know, and I had a dad, my dad recently passed, you know, that he was a complicated dude, but, you know, like, we...

01:18:23.000 Draw off of things that happen to us.

01:18:25.000 I remember in college, I was home for Thanksgiving, and my mom sent my dad off to Home Depot to get light bulbs because the light bulbs in the living room burned out.

01:18:38.000 And he comes back from Home Depot with these two young black guys that were selling these keyboards with a flip-up screen that could connect to the internet at the time. 0.95

01:18:53.000 It was like, he felt bad for them because he's like, these guys were out here in the fucking Florida heat in November. 0.92

01:19:01.000 And he's like, they had nowhere to go for Thanksgiving. 0.99

01:19:04.000 And it was like, my mom was like, what the fuck are you doing? 0.99

01:19:07.000 You just take home two strangers? 0.99

01:19:09.000 And he's like, they need food for Thanksgiving.

01:19:12.000 They need to be here.

01:19:13.000 It's human compassion.

01:19:15.000 This is part of who we are as human beings.

01:19:18.000 And it was like, it was nuts. 1.00

01:19:20.000 It was like a fucking Seinfeld episode. 1.00

01:19:24.000 But I was like, wow, this fucking guy. 1.00

01:19:27.000 Who does that? 1.00

01:19:28.000 I mean, what he does after is he goes and drives him home and comes back two hours later blazing high and he's like, I smoke something called the cryptos with them.

01:19:39.000 You had a nice time.

01:19:41.000 You could have got arrested.

01:19:42.000 Yeah, that's where my mom's like... 1.00

01:19:45.000 What kind of an asshole does that? 1.00

01:19:46.000 But it was like, you know, I think that we evolve and then we teach our parents and our parents evolve. 1.00

01:19:54.000 It's like you have to not be afraid to do things that are outside of what's expected or the norm and look outside of how you were raised.

01:20:03.000 Yeah.

01:20:05.000 Yeah.

01:20:06.000 There's moments in your life, right, where you realize that maybe the path that you're on is not the best path.

01:20:13.000 Maybe you should change a little bit of it.

01:20:15.000 Maybe you should recognize that there's some information that you're getting from other people.

01:20:21.000 Alter your case.

01:20:22.000 Alter your course.

01:20:23.000 And be open.

01:20:24.000 I mean, the main thing is to be open.

01:20:25.000 Don't have a closed mind where you can't be willing to accept the change.

01:20:30.000 And, you know, as Josh was saying, be involved.

01:20:32.000 There's so many of these cases running around in every state.

01:20:37.000 Some states don't have what they call actual innocence provisions, like St. Louis, right?

01:20:42.000 The judge in St. Louis found the guy, Christopher, done innocent.

01:20:45.000 But because St. Louis doesn't have an actual innocence statue, he left him in jail.

01:20:50.000 People should be outraged about stuff like that.

01:20:52.000 Explain that.

01:20:54.000 How does that work?

01:20:55.000 Name the case.

01:20:56.000 Christopher Dunn is his name.

01:20:58.000 It's in St. Louis.

01:21:00.000 And in this particular case, the judge heard the evidence, found the guy innocent, put it in his opinion, and said, this guy is innocent.

01:21:07.000 However, because St. Louis doesn't have a statue that permits me to let innocent people go, he stays in jail.

01:21:14.000 How is that possible?

01:21:16.000 And this is the problem, right?

01:21:18.000 This is the problem with our criminal justice system.

01:21:20.000 They have procedural bars.

01:21:22.000 They have laws.

01:21:23.000 And laws sometimes limit the power of judges.

01:21:27.000 This is why it's so important to have legislators, right, to enact laws that says innocence is the most fundamental to our criminal justice system.

01:21:34.000 Every state right now should pass laws that says no innocent person should stay in jail no matter what.

01:21:40.000 Right?

01:21:41.000 They don't have that.

01:21:41.000 The Supreme Court and Reed Troy Davis in 2008, 2009 made that decision.

01:21:48.000 That's how I was able to go to the Bell Division and get that decision in 2014. That said in New York, innocent people, case have to be heard.

01:21:55.000 Every state should have laws like this.

01:21:58.000 Right?

01:21:58.000 When they don't have laws like this, it gives an exception to judges.

01:22:02.000 Excuse to say, I'm not going to let them go because there's no statute that says that innocent people have to be let go.

01:22:07.000 Is it possible for the judge to let them go anyway, even without the statute?

01:22:11.000 I would say yes.

01:22:12.000 I would say that judges have discretion.

01:22:15.000 Right?

01:22:15.000 You have discretion.

01:22:17.000 Do it unless some court reverse you.

01:22:18.000 But have the courage to say, how would you say a guy is innocent?

01:22:22.000 Right.

01:22:23.000 As a human being, forget the judge factor.

01:22:25.000 Right.

01:22:25.000 Right?

01:22:26.000 And you leave him in jail.

01:22:27.000 Right?

01:22:27.000 And this doesn't just happen in St. Louis.

01:22:29.000 It happens everywhere.

01:22:30.000 It happened in the Supreme Court recently.

01:22:32.000 Yes.

01:22:33.000 Yes.

01:22:33.000 I mean, this is not a political thing.

01:22:35.000 Right.

01:22:35.000 I think Donald Trump, look, he granted clemency to a man that now works for me.

01:22:41.000 He's a beautiful guy.

01:22:42.000 Jawab Musa.

01:22:43.000 I think that Donald Trump had the courage that President Obama, President Clinton, nobody had to pass the First Step Act.

01:22:51.000 I agree.

01:22:52.000 A lot of our friends and clients have gotten out.

01:22:54.000 I agree. 0.98

01:22:54.000 But he also appointed a bunch of fucking nutjob Supreme Court justices who recently published an opinion that said innocence doesn't matter. 0.98

01:23:05.000 They literally wrote the words, innocence doesn't matter. 0.99

01:23:09.000 What Supreme Court judges did that? 0.95

01:23:12.000 Which ones?

01:23:13.000 I will give it to you in a minute.

01:23:15.000 All the ones that you would expect.

01:23:17.000 It was Kavanaugh.

01:23:19.000 He wrote the opinion.

01:23:20.000 Kavanaugh wrote the opinion.

01:23:22.000 Innocence does not matter.

01:23:23.000 How can someone say innocence doesn't matter if the whole idea behind the legal system is to find out who is guilty of a crime and convict them?

01:23:33.000 And I don't care, by the way, about that public circus about Kavanaugh's past.

01:23:38.000 That's not what I'm glomming onto.

01:23:39.000 I'm looking at this opinion.

01:23:41.000 He was basically saying that if you do...

01:23:44.000 The spirit of the opinion, and Derek will pull it up, was that if you cannot overcome the procedural bars...

01:23:52.000 So in other words, if you are time-barred...

01:23:55.000 To file your claim that we cannot let innocence get in the way of the rules of criminal procedure.

01:24:03.000 Can you explain time-barred?

01:24:04.000 So time-barred means it's the same thing as the statute of limitations.

01:24:08.000 So you have to raise claims of newly discovered evidence within a certain period of time in most states, okay?

01:24:18.000 And in most federal jurisdictions.

01:24:20.000 And if you don't If you are in possession or should have been in possession of this newly discovered evidence and you don't file it in a timely manner and raise it, it's deemed waived.

01:24:33.000 So what the opinion was basically saying was that we cannot let innocence or the fact that someone may be innocent trump these procedural hurdles.

01:24:44.000 So in other words, rules exist for a reason.

01:24:48.000 And if we don't follow those rules, just because somebody might be innocent and just because there's compelling evidence of their innocence does not mean that we are going to let that get in the way of these procedural rules.

01:25:01.000 This isn't made up.

01:25:03.000 People can go and look at the opinion.

01:25:05.000 Kavanaugh wrote the opinion.

01:25:07.000 It was split along party lines.

01:25:09.000 Yeah, Thomas and a few other judges was involved.

01:25:11.000 Shin versus Ramirez was the case.

01:25:13.000 It was a guy on Arizona death row.

01:25:16.000 And, you know, you got to look at 28 U.S.C. 2254 is the habeas corpus statue in the feds if you're a state prisoner coming to the feds asking for relief.

01:25:27.000 And they've been watering that down for years, basically saying that states should be the one to decide these things, that you shouldn't be able to come to the federal court to get relief.

01:25:36.000 And let's just explain for the listeners what habeas corpus relief is.

01:25:41.000 Habeas corpus means, I think the Latin translation is possession of the body.

01:25:46.000 Okay?

01:25:47.000 So that is your last ditch effort to try to get relief from a federal court saying that you are possessing my body.

01:25:57.000 In a way that violates my rights.

01:26:00.000 You have my corpus, right?

01:26:03.000 So when you raise a habeas or a habe, it's often referred to, petition, you're basically throwing everything against the wall and saying, please look at the merits of the case.

01:26:14.000 I may be time barred.

01:26:15.000 I may have violated a procedural deadline.

01:26:19.000 But if you just look at the evidence, I'm innocent.

01:26:22.000 And what the Supreme Court decision says is your innocence is not part of this equation. 0.98

01:26:27.000 Why the fuck not? 0.98

01:26:29.000 Think about everything we waste resources on. 0.99

01:26:32.000 Time, energy, money.

01:26:33.000 Do they have to make...

01:26:35.000 Do they have to give a reason for why innocence doesn't matter?

01:26:41.000 Like when they say something like innocence doesn't matter, don't they have to have a justification for that distinction?

01:26:48.000 No, and I just want to say that Clarence Thomas actually wrote the decision.

01:26:52.000 Kavanaugh was a part of it.

01:26:53.000 But what they basically...

01:26:55.000 Was ruling on this case.

01:26:56.000 The Ninth Circuit had reversed the case and they had gave a hearing on ineffective assistive counsel claim.

01:27:01.000 And they found that the lawyer was ineffective because he didn't present the evidence of innocence.

01:27:07.000 And so what they did was reverse it and said innocence doesn't matter.

01:27:12.000 Now in the feds they got something called a gateway claim.

01:27:15.000 Right?

01:27:16.000 So your innocence alone, they're saying, is not a freestanding actual innocence claim.

01:27:21.000 You have to have some other constitutional violation.

01:27:23.000 In that case, the lawyers chose ineffective assistance of counsel because they said this evidence always was available.

01:27:31.000 Always was available.

01:27:32.000 That the lawyer should have got it and presented it.

01:27:34.000 The courts reversed it and said, no, we don't care about his innocence, and you should stop holding hearings on ineffective assistance of counsel claims, whether it relates to innocence or not.

01:27:44.000 And I'll give you the citation.

01:27:46.000 But it's just...

01:27:48.000 And people should not take our word for it.

01:27:50.000 Read the decision.

01:27:52.000 If we...

01:27:54.000 Read the entire decision would be here to the end of the podcast because there's a lot of procedural nonsense built into it.

01:28:01.000 But they literally say the words that the innocence is not a consideration.

01:28:07.000 It's not something we should be considering because it should have been raised.

01:28:12.000 And innocence doesn't matter in this context.

01:28:15.000 I mean, they said it not just once in a bunch of different ways.

01:28:19.000 So the way people should fact check and vet is to read the Supreme Court decision.

01:28:24.000 And we'll give you the citation.

01:28:26.000 Just go read it.

01:28:27.000 And it's 20-1009.

01:28:30.000 It was decided 5-23-22.

01:28:34.000 It was a 6-3 opinion by Thomas, and Judges Sotomayor and Kagan filed the dissenting opinion that they would reverse the case and release this guy.

01:28:45.000 And the judges that was involved was Clarence Thomas, Roberts, Alito was a part, and Kavanaugh was a part of the majority.

01:28:55.000 And it's just, you know, these cases, look, it's not just innocence.

01:28:59.000 Clemency is going to be a big part of our clinic.

01:29:04.000 I don't know if you ever heard of the Pamela Smart case out of New Hampshire.

01:29:08.000 Yeah.

01:29:09.000 Right?

01:29:09.000 Pamela Smart has been in prison over 30 years.

01:29:13.000 A remarkable young woman, white woman, that taught a lot of people in Beffitt Hills Correctional Facility in New York how to get out and run organizations.

01:29:20.000 She has all kinds of degrees, PhD, kind of like Bruce Bryant, but a female version of it. 0.99

01:29:26.000 She got life from New Hampshire.

01:29:28.000 New Hampshire sent her to New York to do her time.

01:29:31.000 She's been in New York prisons over 30 years.

01:29:33.000 She can't get clemency and she see New York prisoners walking out every day that don't have her credentials. 0.86

01:29:39.000 Because she's in New York.

01:29:40.000 The New York governor doesn't have control of her. 0.56

01:29:43.000 New Hampshire's like DeSantis, the governor there.

01:29:46.000 He waives clemency off.

01:29:48.000 Don't hold no clemency hearings.

01:29:50.000 Her case was she had someone kill her husband? 0.94

01:29:53.000 That was the allegations.

01:29:54.000 And the guys that committed the murder are home.

01:29:57.000 Those guys been home now for years and years.

01:29:59.000 That's exactly the case.

01:30:00.000 She was working in a school. 0.99

01:30:01.000 She was having sex with a student. 1.00

01:30:03.000 The student becomes assessed and kills her husband. 0.95

01:30:06.000 And she swears she never told him to do it, but despite if she did or not, she'd been in prison over 30-some years.

01:30:13.000 Remarkable young lady, has every degree you can think of. 0.99

01:30:16.000 Runs the prison.

01:30:17.000 The superintendent gave her letters saying that she should get out of clemency.

01:30:21.000 Why isn't she out?

01:30:22.000 Like, it's things like this that keep me up at night because, look, when you have redeemed yourself, whether you're guilty or not, when you can serve society best by being out and running programs and helping people, I think you should be here.

01:30:36.000 Well, we're supposed to be not just punishing people in prison.

01:30:40.000 We're supposed to be rehabilitating people.

01:30:42.000 This is the whole idea behind prison, right?

01:30:45.000 Absolutely.

01:30:45.000 I mean, if someone goes to jail for 10 years, it's not just a punishment for a crime.

01:30:49.000 It's supposed to be, let's figure out a way to make you a productive part of society.

01:30:55.000 Absolutely.

01:30:56.000 But the environments that you're describing and the environments that everybody that I've ever talked to that's been incarcerated describe are nothing like that.

01:31:04.000 And if you can't, Larry Hoover, 50 years in prison, right?

01:31:08.000 If you can't become a better person after 50 years, there's something terribly wrong with the system, right?

01:31:14.000 It's not the person.

01:31:15.000 But a lot of times it'd be hype.

01:31:17.000 It don't be truth.

01:31:18.000 In my case, they told a judge that I had a large-scale drug organization that terrorized my community.

01:31:24.000 The first thing I did when I sat down with the prosecutor, I said, if you can prove to me that I had this, I withdraw my claim.

01:31:31.000 I was home eight months.

01:31:32.000 I can tell you everything I did in those eight months.

01:31:34.000 We lied.

01:31:35.000 We lied.

01:31:36.000 You lied to judges.

01:31:37.000 Now you admit it.

01:31:39.000 But this is what kept me in jail for 21 years.

01:31:42.000 You telling a judge in ex parte conversations that this guy's a terrible guy, you can't let him out.

01:31:48.000 Imagine harms.

01:31:49.000 Judges believe the hype.

01:31:51.000 They don't believe the prosecutor's lying to them.

01:31:52.000 So that's another whole topic, how we need to hold prosecutors accountable.

01:31:56.000 Right?

01:31:57.000 They get away with everything.

01:31:58.000 They get away with, there's immunity for prosecutors and judges.

01:32:02.000 Yet and still you want to hold Donald Trump accountable.

01:32:05.000 Again, I'm back yet.

01:32:06.000 Why not hold prosecutors and judges accountable?

01:32:09.000 Yeah, they have something called qualified immunity.

01:32:12.000 And qualified immunity means that in most situations, they're not going to be held accountable.

01:32:19.000 And you've asked this question before, and it is probably the most important question to ask.

01:32:24.000 Because the way that we deter people from engaging in this type of behavior, I mean, the reason why people don't, you know, think twice about whether it's cheating on their taxes, selling cocaine, whatever is...

01:32:42.000 The fear of going to jail is a real fear.

01:32:49.000 It should be a real fear.

01:32:51.000 Derek and I were talking about it.

01:32:53.000 We were talking about different prisons in the state of New York. 1.00

01:32:55.000 It's an awful fucking place. 1.00

01:32:57.000 Who the fuck wants to be in jail? 1.00

01:32:59.000 It depresses us when we have to go. 1.00

01:33:01.000 It's awful.

01:33:05.000 If prosecutors know that they're not going to be prosecuted or subject to prosecution themselves, you know, it makes it a lot more difficult for accountability to follow.

01:33:18.000 And, you know, how do we change qualified immunity? 0.98

01:33:22.000 We get new people in the fucking legislature. 0.98

01:33:24.000 I'm not on some crusade against Ron DeSantis. 0.99

01:33:28.000 I'm not.

01:33:30.000 The reason why I always come back to him is because he very well could be... 0.99

01:33:36.000 Who the fuck knows what's going to happen with Donald Trump? 0.99

01:33:38.000 He very well could be the next choice for president. 0.99

01:33:40.000 He's very popular.

01:33:42.000 Here's a guy that vetoed a bill for contraception.

01:33:48.000 It was a bipartisan bill. 1.00

01:33:49.000 You can't get Democrats and Republicans in Florida to agree on the fucking weather. 0.99

01:33:54.000 So he vetoes a bill that would increase... 0.99

01:34:00.000 Contraception.

01:34:01.000 It would have provided $2 million to low-income women to gain IUDs, more access to contraception. 0.98

01:34:12.000 So you would think that the president of the Senate, who's a Republican, and championed this bill, I thought that would solve a lot of abortion issues,

01:34:32.000 probably eliminate thousands of abortions.

01:34:35.000 And then he goes on and he blames himself for not convincing DeSantis.

01:34:40.000 What was DeSantis' reasoning behind it?

01:34:42.000 His reasoning behind it is that he received a letter from, I think, the Catholic bishops.

01:34:50.000 And the Catholic bishops told him that if you—these IUDs prevent— They prevent a fetus from grabbing onto the uterine wall and that that was a form of abortion in and of itself.

01:35:17.000 So now he's become a doctor and he's against contraception.

01:35:22.000 So you're now invading the... 1.00

01:35:26.000 Personal decisions of a woman of how she wants to go about contraception, whether you are stymieing semen from entering a woman by putting a fucking raincoat on your dick, or you are putting a device in a woman to prevent sperm from getting into the uterine wall. 1.00

01:35:47.000 I say, what's the fucking difference? 1.00

01:35:50.000 None. 0.99

01:35:50.000 Maybe I've had too many whiskies. 0.99

01:35:52.000 Maybe I'll catch some shit for that. 0.99

01:35:53.000 No, that doesn't make any sense. 0.99

01:35:54.000 It doesn't make any sense.

01:35:55.000 It doesn't make any sense.

01:35:55.000 So I am not a Democrat or a...

01:35:57.000 It just doesn't make any sense.

01:35:58.000 So this is a political decision based on the support of the Catholic Church.

01:36:01.000 Yeah, it's basically...

01:36:02.000 Which is arguably if you want to go and talk about people that are guilty of something.

01:36:06.000 Yes.

01:36:07.000 I mean, that is a horrific history that the Catholic Church has. 1.00

01:36:11.000 Yeah, he got a letter.

01:36:12.000 I think it's called the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops.

01:36:17.000 That's who he got a letter from.

01:36:19.000 And they object to the use of long-acting contraception, particularly these what they call hormonal IUDs.

01:36:28.000 And they say that they can prevent an embryo from implanting into a woman's uterus.

01:36:32.000 So they deem them...

01:36:33.000 They're called abortifacients.

01:36:38.000 So, you know, it's like we have to have the... 0.98

01:36:47.000 I guess the the ability to step outside of this tribal primal box and say, you know what, I don't care if you're a Democrat, Republican, Libertarian and say, I'm not going for that shit, just like I'm not going for somebody that fought To keep DNA testing from seeing the light of day. 0.97

01:37:10.000 Why? 0.97

01:37:10.000 Why would Kamala Harris do that? 0.97

01:37:12.000 And you want to know something?

01:37:14.000 The campaign, you know, wanted to... 1.00

01:37:18.000 You know, I caught a lot of shit. 0.99

01:37:20.000 I think there was a senator that was promoting a clip of me being critical of her. 1.00

01:37:29.000 Senator...

01:37:30.000 I think it was Carpenter.

01:37:32.000 Um...

01:37:34.000 What is his name?

01:37:35.000 He has an eye patch.

01:37:37.000 He's a very honorable guy.

01:37:38.000 Dan Crenshaw.

01:37:39.000 Dan Crenshaw.

01:37:40.000 Yeah.

01:37:40.000 Was promoting a clip of me being critical of her.

01:37:44.000 And one, they wanted me to, you know- Walk it back.

01:37:46.000 Yeah, would you reconsider and walk it back?

01:37:48.000 And I said, why can't?

01:37:49.000 Yeah, we had a conversation.

01:37:51.000 And she won't walk anything back.

01:37:53.000 She won't say anything.

01:37:54.000 I mean, why can't you just say, look, I was trying to serve my community.

01:37:58.000 I realized with the benefit of hindsight that it's an $11 test, the DNA test.

01:38:04.000 Why not give access?

01:38:05.000 A lot of politicians, they're afraid of the political cost of admitting a mistake.

01:38:11.000 I'm so turned off by it, I almost want to run for office.

01:38:16.000 I was asked, would you ever run for governor of New York?

01:38:19.000 I said, I don't want my family ravaged and people looking into my past and making a mockery of me.

01:38:26.000 I understand why people don't want to run for office.

01:38:29.000 But at the same time, it kind of makes you feel like if the people that are in power are wielding power in a way that is so dangerous and so harmful to people, sometimes I think about it.

01:38:42.000 I also don't want to give up my privacy and I also don't want people judging me on every time I make, you know, a decision that they disagree with.

01:38:50.000 And, you know, I'm conflicted about it.

01:38:52.000 I almost, I'm like encouraging people to get involved in a way that I even wouldn't get involved. 1.00

01:38:57.000 You know, politics is a motherfucker. 1.00

01:38:59.000 It is. 1.00

01:38:59.000 It's a dirty business. 1.00

01:39:01.000 It is.

01:39:01.000 You gotta constantly be asking people for money.

01:39:04.000 Yeah.

01:39:04.000 And, you know, then you end up, you know, serving many masters.

01:39:10.000 Yeah, it's a dirty business.

01:39:12.000 And I just don't know, you know, this is like, it's a pretty simple equation to me when it comes to how problematic racism is in our criminal justice system.

01:39:26.000 I don't get why people don't understand this equation, the following equation. 0.76

01:39:30.000 You take an entire race of people, steal them from their homeland, Enslave them, savage them, brutalize them. 1.00

01:39:44.000 Tell them they're free. 0.99

01:39:46.000 They're really not free.

01:39:48.000 Build a system in which, in our lifetime, your parents, my parents, could not urinate in the same bathroom as people of color. 1.00

01:39:59.000 And then an entire system is built upon, you know, making, you know, why don't you pick your, we've talked about this before, pick yourself up by your bootstraps, I'm tired of the excuses, all that. 0.99

01:40:10.000 That blows my fucking mind. 1.00

01:40:12.000 It's nonsense. 1.00

01:40:12.000 It blows my mind. 1.00

01:40:13.000 It's nonsense. 0.86

01:40:28.000 And brutalized in this country.

01:40:29.000 And it just feels like the criminal justice system is going to be problematic because people are wielding power, you know, and abusing it in the first place.

01:40:38.000 And then you throw, you know, the racial injustice into it, and it complicates it even more because we're just not willing as a society to say...

01:40:48.000 You know, like I hear from friends of mine, look at the Jews.

01:40:52.000 The Jews picked them. 1.00

01:40:53.000 I said, it's not a fair analogy.

01:40:55.000 No, not at all.

01:40:55.000 People didn't look at me and say, oh, he must be a Jew.

01:40:59.000 People think I'm Italian, Latin.

01:41:01.000 They think that I'm from, you know, and didn't discriminate against me.

01:41:05.000 And they didn't create Jim Crow laws or vagrancy laws to stop you. 0.80

01:41:09.000 I mean, look, look how many black people are killed from misdemeanor stops. 0.96

01:41:13.000 Right? 0.71

01:41:14.000 I can get a ticket today for riding down the street and get a red light ticket sent to my house in New York City.

01:41:19.000 So if I don't put my blinker on, why can't you send me that same ticket?

01:41:24.000 Why you gotta pull me over, throw me out of the car, search me, look for a gun, or look for whatever?

01:41:28.000 It's designed that way.

01:41:29.000 Right? 1.00

01:41:30.000 It's designed to create an image that black people are animals. 1.00

01:41:34.000 Like you say, oh, they're killing each other. 1.00

01:41:35.000 They're doing this, they're doing that.

01:41:37.000 So police become afraid.

01:41:39.000 We spoke to the last commissioner of New York City, right?

01:41:43.000 And we had a conversation with them about how they was training cops in New York City.

01:41:48.000 And they was giving cops pop-ups.

01:41:50.000 They were showing videos of a cop going down the steps in the staircase and get shot.

01:41:54.000 These are young rookie cops.

01:41:56.000 What do you think they're going to do when they get into an exit?

01:41:59.000 They're going to pull their gun out.

01:41:59.000 They're afraid.

01:42:00.000 They've been indoctrinated to believe that this is what happens when you're walking down a staircase in a project.

01:42:06.000 Somebody's going to jump out and shoot you.

01:42:08.000 You've got to change the way that you train people. 0.99

01:42:12.000 Because if they believe that if I'm working in a certain neighborhood that I'm going to get killed, I'm going to shoot first.

01:42:17.000 That's just human nature.

01:42:19.000 We indoctrinate people by institutions.

01:42:21.000 And that's one of the biggest things that I always tell people.

01:42:24.000 I believe in self-taught more so than institutions because you become indoctrinated unless you've got a strong mind.

01:42:30.000 You've got a strong mind.

01:42:32.000 You're not so cut in how you think, right?

01:42:35.000 And people come at you because of that.

01:42:37.000 They don't like you.

01:42:38.000 Josh, you're going on Joe Rogan's show. 0.96

01:42:40.000 Are you crazy? 1.00

01:42:41.000 What is wrong with you? 1.00

01:42:42.000 You're supporting Republicans because you can think for yourself.

01:42:45.000 The institutions don't control you.

01:42:47.000 A lot of people are indoctrinated and controlled by institutions. 0.99

01:42:50.000 They don't have the balls to be their own men. 0.97

01:42:53.000 I don't always feel strong. 0.99

01:42:54.000 I don't because it's like...

01:42:57.000 You know, like, we try to get, like, as reform advocates, people try to censor us.

01:43:04.000 We were trying to...

01:43:05.000 We won't mention names, but on the way here, people were trying to censor us.

01:43:09.000 People that you wouldn't expect it from.

01:43:11.000 And, you know, yeah, I think...

01:43:13.000 Censor you in what way?

01:43:15.000 Like, you know, make sure that you are explaining that you were there in your individual capacity because they don't want...

01:43:27.000 People are so afraid of cancel culture.

01:43:31.000 They're afraid that you will be painted in a certain way because of who you associate with or who you speak to or who you try to sit across a table from.

01:43:51.000 It's like, let me say this.

01:43:53.000 I'll say it publicly.

01:43:55.000 This guy, Joe Rogan, is like a brother.

01:43:59.000 You know, we don't even know each other.

01:44:02.000 It's weird because our families don't know each other and we've talked about it.

01:44:06.000 You know, like when I see him get dragged through the mud in the media, I've shed tears.

01:44:12.000 Because he's a rare person.

01:44:14.000 He roots for me and wants to see me do good.

01:44:16.000 And we know each other in a way that is like...

01:44:18.000 It's weird because it's at a distance, but I feel like a closeness to him like a brotherhood, right?

01:44:24.000 And that's because I understand the guy's heart.

01:44:27.000 So I'm not going to be, you know, told what to do or censored or told what to think or what to say.

01:44:35.000 Because, you know, I don't think that that...

01:44:38.000 Derek, I honestly don't think it's strength.

01:44:40.000 I think that it's more out of anger and being pissed off that people think in a way that represents a herd mentality, right?

01:44:50.000 And it's like I feel it sometimes with you where sometimes people will judge him.

01:44:55.000 They see a black man with a gold tooth who's big and has been in prison for 30 years and they make assumptions.

01:45:02.000 And I won't even tell you, it's happened since we've been associated with each other.

01:45:07.000 You can't concern yourself with that.

01:45:08.000 I don't concern myself with that.

01:45:10.000 I know you don't much, but you bring it up.

01:45:12.000 It's the nature of the business.

01:45:15.000 It's part of what happens when you get a lot of attention.

01:45:17.000 There's no getting around it.

01:45:21.000 I appreciate it.

01:45:23.000 I appreciate what you are and who you are and what you're capable of doing and the love that you have for these people and the way that you put yourself out there.

01:45:33.000 It's very, very rare.

01:45:35.000 And that's why you and I are brothers.

01:45:37.000 Because I know you.

01:45:38.000 I know your heart.

01:45:39.000 I know what you're doing, you know, and Some people they just they think again, it goes along tribal lines and it's also the fear of Repercussions a feel fear of criticism they read too much. 0.91

01:45:52.000 They're paying attention to too many idiots on social media They're paying attention to too much nonsense the greater good of what you're doing outweighs everything by a gigantic margin and And the fact that they can't see that, it just shows that even on the right side of important issues, 0.99

01:46:08.000 you're gonna have people that are cowards. 1.00

01:46:10.000 True. 0.96

01:46:11.000 And that's the problem.

01:46:12.000 You're not a coward.

01:46:13.000 And that's what people don't like.

01:46:16.000 They don't like when someone displays character and a point of focus that's beyond what they're capable of.

01:46:24.000 It intimidates them, it bothers them, and they try to find weakness in it and they try to critique it and criticize it and shut it down.

01:46:32.000 And it's just a lack of understanding of just the true character of human beings and how important it is to have someone like yourself that dedicates a massive amount of their life to trying to help innocent people get out of jail,

01:46:48.000 which should be the focus of our entire culture.

01:46:50.000 Our entire culture should be, let's, first of all, make sure that no one is ever convicted of something that they're unjustly accused of.

01:47:00.000 No one.

01:47:01.000 Ever.

01:47:01.000 And if they are, we need to get them out.

01:47:03.000 Before we need to convict people of crimes, we need to get people out that are innocent.

01:47:07.000 That's more important than anything.

01:47:09.000 It's more important than anything.

01:47:11.000 If we have a culture that not only allows people to be imprisoned but creates law and signs decisions that keep people in prison that they know are innocent,

01:47:28.000 we have a terrible system.

01:47:30.000 That should be number one, because these are innocent people.

01:47:33.000 We're supposed to be protecting innocent people.

01:47:35.000 Those people, that should be our primary concern, and that's your primary concern, and that's an incredibly noble and brave and honorable and loving perspective.

01:47:45.000 And for people to not see that and try to connect it with nonsense, And try to just get you upset or just criticize you or try to tear you down.

01:47:56.000 It's because they don't have what you do.

01:47:59.000 They don't have what you are.

01:48:00.000 They're not you.

01:48:01.000 And that bothers people.

01:48:03.000 The purity of your intent bothers people.

01:48:06.000 Well, I appreciate you saying it.

01:48:07.000 I mean, maybe I don't give myself enough flowers, and I'm not looking for flowers.

01:48:11.000 I just feel like, you know, I'm not looking for anything but the feeling of, you know, I just know, I've said it before, that the feeling of restoring another human being, and when you walk someone out, there's just like...

01:48:28.000 You know, I've done plenty of drugs in my life, and I've tried it all, and there's just nothing that can match it.

01:48:34.000 There just isn't.

01:48:35.000 And it's like almost the feeling that you were describing of when you, like, surround yourself with good people and see them succeeding and you get a thrill off of it.

01:48:44.000 This is the ultimate thrill.

01:48:45.000 I remember one time where Emanuel Stewart, who trained Lennox Lewis and Tommy Hearns and so many other champions from the Cronk Gym, I mean,

01:49:01.000 I was like a baby at the time, now that I think about it.

01:49:04.000 You remember Walter Swift?

01:49:06.000 Yes.

01:49:06.000 He was in Detroit.

01:49:07.000 Yes.

01:49:08.000 I don't even think I've ever told you this story, have I? I don't think so.

01:49:12.000 All right, so Walter Swift served, I think, close to 40 years.

01:49:17.000 And I was with Barry Sheck at dinner, one of the founders of the Innocence Project, and he was telling me about this case in Detroit.

01:49:26.000 And it was a rape case, and this black guy was accused of it, and they had stunning evidence of his innocence, and he's like, if I could just get the DA to pay attention.

01:49:37.000 You know anyone in Detroit?

01:49:39.000 I said, I know Emanuel Stewart.

01:49:41.000 And I remember even as I flung the name out there, I was like, he's a boxing trainer.

01:49:47.000 But he was pretty famous in Detroit.

01:49:50.000 And Emanuel was like you.

01:49:56.000 He was...

01:50:06.000 And I walk in here every time.

01:50:09.000 No cry, no cry.

01:50:12.000 You're gonna cry.

01:50:13.000 Yes, he is.

01:50:14.000 That's him.

01:50:15.000 It's just part of the progress.

01:50:17.000 And Emmanuel, when I was like a young guy in Lenox Losers camp, he was the only guy that would...

01:50:27.000 I was a cop there.

01:50:30.000 I was there to look who was stealing from him.

01:50:33.000 So I was really rejected.

01:50:36.000 And Emmanuel, from the moment I met him, took me in.

01:50:41.000 I was up in the Poconos. 1.00

01:50:45.000 I feel like an idiot. 0.99

01:50:52.000 I was writing a story about Lennox. 1.00

01:50:57.000 And Emmanuel would take me to his cabin every night.

01:51:01.000 Oh, you're this young lawyer I heard about.

01:51:03.000 You got Lennox back his money and this and that.

01:51:07.000 And I told him I was just getting involved in the Innocence Project.

01:51:10.000 And I was helping, you know, with these cases.

01:51:14.000 And he wanted to hear about all the cases.

01:51:19.000 So I told him about Walter Swift.

01:51:21.000 And I remember I called him and I woke him up wherever he was.

01:51:28.000 And I said, just call me tomorrow.

01:51:30.000 He called me back like 20 minutes later.

01:51:32.000 He's like, I can't sleep.

01:51:34.000 He's like, tell me more about the case.

01:51:37.000 I ended up writing an article about this in Boxing Digest.

01:51:40.000 And Emanuel wrote a letter to the parole board.

01:51:45.000 And like two months later, Barry called me and said they're letting him out.

01:51:50.000 And Emanuel promised him a job.

01:51:58.000 And I flew in from California and he insisted that he go to the parole hearing.

01:52:04.000 I mean to the exoneration hearing.

01:52:07.000 They declared him actually innocent.

01:52:09.000 And I went with Emmanuel to the hearing.

01:52:15.000 We got into the courtroom and the court officers were all saying hello to him.

01:52:20.000 How you doing, Mr. Stewart?

01:52:21.000 Asking for pictures with him.

01:52:23.000 And the judge, before she started the hearing, she took the bench and she said, Is that Emanuel Stewart in my courtroom?

01:52:30.000 And he stood up and he said, Yeah, I'm here on behalf of Walter.

01:52:32.000 So she said, It's a pleasure to have you here.

01:52:34.000 I have the transcript in my office.

01:52:38.000 And Walter got out of jail.

01:52:46.000 Emmanuel came up and grabbed his garbage bag with all his stuff in it.

01:52:53.000 And we took him to his victory party and I remember thinking to myself, this guy was like looking around like shocked.

01:53:02.000 He was like, I didn't know if it was the sunlight that was bothering him.

01:53:07.000 He could not comprehend what was happening.

01:53:13.000 And I wrote this in the article that he struggled really bad, Walter.

01:53:20.000 I don't even know where he is now.

01:53:22.000 He had drug problems.

01:53:23.000 He had mental health issues. 0.99

01:53:26.000 And he would steal from Emanuel. 0.94

01:53:28.000 He would call Emanuel at all hours of the night.

01:53:31.000 Can you pick me up?

01:53:33.000 I'm stuck.

01:53:33.000 I don't know where I am.

01:53:34.000 And Emanuel would call me and say, I got Walter last night.

01:53:38.000 And I would say, you know, Emmanuel, you don't have to keep doing this.

01:53:41.000 He'd say, nah, don't worry about it.

01:53:44.000 He'd come over and smoke weed in his bathroom and smell up the house when there were amateur fighters there.

01:53:49.000 I would say, well, say something to him.

01:53:51.000 Nah, it's okay. 1.00

01:53:52.000 He just steals little shit from time to time. 1.00

01:53:56.000 And I'd say, well, say something to him. 1.00

01:53:58.000 And he would say, nah, it's okay.

01:53:59.000 Don't worry about it.

01:54:00.000 And, like, right up until right before Emmanuel died, he would ask, how's Walter doing?

01:54:07.000 You know, And he just understood and got it.

01:54:15.000 He said, you know, he's out and he's going to struggle, but we saved him.

01:54:20.000 Trauma.

01:54:21.000 Yeah.

01:54:22.000 And he understood the trauma.

01:54:23.000 The idea that you're supposed to get out and just be healed is crazy.

01:54:28.000 Without any help, without any assistance, without any counseling, without any whatever it is that you need to get over that experience.

01:54:39.000 The fact that you're just supposed to get over that when you were innocent and in prison for years and years is insane.

01:54:45.000 I don't understand how you do it without, you know, like my wife has this idea for equine therapy for people that get out.

01:54:51.000 She spoke to you, I think, a little bit about it or about dogs to help.

01:54:55.000 It'd probably help a little.

01:54:56.000 I think psychedelics would really help.

01:54:58.000 That's what Mike Tyson said.

01:55:00.000 Psychedelics.

01:55:01.000 Mike and I have talked about that many, many times, about how much that's helped him.

01:55:05.000 Because he knows I'm a proponent of it.

01:55:07.000 We've talked about it on the podcast, his experiences of it.

01:55:10.000 It changed his perspective.

01:55:11.000 It changed my perspective.

01:55:12.000 It changed me as a human being.

01:55:15.000 It's changed a lot of people.

01:55:16.000 It's like having a conversation with God.

01:55:19.000 How do you do it?

01:55:21.000 You know, there's no answer.

01:55:23.000 I mean, I couldn't, you know, I don't know.

01:55:24.000 I just do it.

01:55:26.000 I think if, you know, I think what it comes from is what kept me going in prison.

01:55:31.000 I'm doing the same thing.

01:55:33.000 So I haven't changed much.

01:55:35.000 I was representing guys in prison.

01:55:37.000 I think that's my therapy, right?

01:55:39.000 Knowing that I'm fighting back a system that did so much to me and continue to do it to others is my therapy. 0.99

01:55:45.000 I think when I'm reading the case and I'm like, I'm going to get these bastards. 0.98

01:55:48.000 I'm going to get this motion in. 0.98

01:55:50.000 I mean, we got a guy right here in Houston.

01:55:52.000 We didn't get a chance to see him.

01:55:54.000 44 years in Louisiana prison.

01:55:56.000 Vincent Simmons.

01:55:58.000 44 years.

01:55:59.000 Walking him out on Valentine's Day with Justin Bonas was remarkable.

01:56:03.000 44 years.

01:56:04.000 16 judges denied him.

01:56:06.000 16. The judge that granted it, Bennett's own father denied him.

01:56:11.000 Right?

01:56:12.000 I mean, these is the moments that we live for.

01:56:14.000 Right?

01:56:15.000 To walk that guy out after 44 years in Angola.

01:56:18.000 You know, like you said, it's therapeutic.

01:56:20.000 Right?

01:56:21.000 To know that you can go back and pull people out and you continue to fight against the powers that be.

01:56:27.000 I mean, to me, that's therapeutic.

01:56:29.000 To me, there's no better therapy for me than to be able to work on these cases and to free some slaves.

01:56:34.000 That's what they are.

01:56:36.000 You know, and to get them out of the prison industrial complex, to me, is therapeutic.

01:56:40.000 I gotta also imagine that that hard work that you did when you were in prison fortified your character and changed you as a person because you knew that you could do that now.

01:56:49.000 You knew you could become this incredibly knowledgeable lawyer now.

01:56:53.000 Absolutely.

01:56:54.000 It changes a person when they accomplish things.

01:56:57.000 It changes a person when they go through things.

01:56:59.000 It fortifies what it is, like your human potential.

01:57:02.000 It changes you.

01:57:04.000 And you get out of there and what do you do?

01:57:06.000 You keep doing the same thing.

01:57:07.000 Same thing.

01:57:07.000 And it fortifies you further, strengthens you further.

01:57:10.000 It's very admirable and it's very inspirational. 0.98

01:57:14.000 And for a lot of people listening to this that maybe have pity on themselves for nonsense, they're listening to your case right now and they're going, holy shit, what am I talking about? 0.98

01:57:25.000 Right. 0.96

01:57:26.000 Yeah, and you know, if you Google Derek Hamilton, it's like, I remember the dean of the law school where the center is being launched, and it's killing both of us if we can't.

01:57:35.000 We'll come back.

01:57:36.000 Hopefully, you'll have us back again, and we'll announce the launch.

01:57:40.000 100%.

01:57:40.000 Tell me when.

01:57:41.000 The dean of the law school...

01:57:44.000 I told her, I said, you know, there's this guy that got out and she said, you're going to have an exoneree be the deputy director of this big legal center?

01:57:54.000 I said, Google him.

01:57:55.000 It felt good to say that.

01:57:57.000 I had never said that.

01:57:58.000 I said, Google him.

01:58:00.000 And she called me and she said, I want to meet him.

01:58:06.000 So much has been written about Derek and how prolific he was.

01:58:11.000 And to be honest with you, I want to be around him as much as I can because I draw strength and knowledge and wisdom.

01:58:20.000 And I watch him navigate a room.

01:58:23.000 And whether it's street folks, people in education and higher education or on Wall Street, whatever it is...

01:58:31.000 He can navigate any room.

01:58:32.000 And he can do it with, what do the Ivy Leaguers say, with aplomb. 0.99

01:58:37.000 He knows what the fuck he's doing and how to say it. 0.96

01:58:41.000 And that is a skill set in and of itself, to be able to read a room and to know what is appropriate and what isn't. 0.99

01:58:51.000 A lot of guys that get out.

01:58:53.000 Have a real difficult time socially.

01:58:57.000 We have friends in common that are exonerees that they struggle to get things done because they're inappropriate sometimes.

01:59:07.000 They haven't been around women forever.

01:59:08.000 They haven't been around people forever.

01:59:11.000 And I just know we're on to...

01:59:15.000 We're going to free a lot of people.

01:59:18.000 And the clemency arm of our legal justice center, you know, you mentioned it earlier.

01:59:26.000 You've got to make a decision as a human being.

01:59:30.000 What do you believe in terms of the ability to forgive and give a second chance?

01:59:39.000 Are we all better than the worst thing we've done?

01:59:42.000 If you take a real look at yourself in the mirror, And I'll take a look at myself in the mirror and say, I hope I'm better than the worst things I've done.

01:59:52.000 And if the worst things I've done define me...

01:59:55.000 Then I should be, you know, condemned.

01:59:59.000 We're all fallible.

02:00:02.000 We've all made horrible mistakes that we wish other people didn't know about.

02:00:07.000 And if prison is really about rehabilitation, clemency should be a real option.

02:00:13.000 We still incarcerate at a rate that is six times what South Africa incarcerated during apartheid.

02:00:21.000 That says terrible things about who we are as a culture.

02:00:24.000 Are we trying to rehabilitate and send people back into society to be productive members of society?

02:00:30.000 Or do we want to lock people up and throw away the key and forget them?

02:00:34.000 That's a choice we have to make.

02:00:36.000 It seems like there's a problem in this country, too, in that there's an industry in incarcerating people.

02:00:41.000 Yes.

02:00:42.000 That it's a business.

02:00:43.000 Yes.

02:00:44.000 And to stop that business dead in its tracks, you're going to have a lot of people out of work, and they have a vested interest in continuing that industry.

02:00:52.000 It's not different than the pharmaceutical industry.

02:00:56.000 Not different.

02:00:57.000 Prison industrial complex.

02:00:58.000 I mean, who makes all the license plates on every car you see in the country?

02:01:01.000 Who makes them?

02:01:02.000 God's in prisons.

02:01:03.000 And when they get out, they can't even get a job from DMV. Right?

02:01:07.000 Let's look at the reality.

02:01:08.000 And that's in every state.

02:01:11.000 Explain to Joe and the listeners the private prisons and the inherent dangers that that presents our country.

02:01:21.000 Well, I mean, you talk about private or state rent, but private more so allows, you know, I mean, look, you get a private prison, it's not going to be regulated on the same way that state prisons are supposed to be regulated.

02:01:35.000 So the minimum standards go out the door, right?

02:01:38.000 Because it's strictly for profit, right?

02:01:40.000 There's no rehabilitative characters in it whatsoever.

02:01:43.000 But I think they both kind of marry each other because whether it's state-ran or private-ran, the deprivations are the same.

02:01:50.000 It's all about a dollar, right?

02:01:51.000 So whether you're in a state-ran prison, you're going to work for $0.14 an hour, right?

02:01:56.000 You're going to be in the industry because the industry might pay $1 a day or $2 a day.

02:02:01.000 14 cents an hour.

02:02:02.000 On average.

02:02:03.000 So if you go to industry where you make lockers or you make furniture, right?

02:02:07.000 They say, okay, we give you two hours a day.

02:02:10.000 Commissary is going to cost you money.

02:02:12.000 So you're just doing it to eat.

02:02:13.000 You're doing it to survive, right?

02:02:15.000 And then the 14 cents a day you get, it's not like the stakes paying it.

02:02:18.000 They're getting it from the interest of all of the money that your family sent in.

02:02:22.000 So they're taking interest from that money and they're paying you.

02:02:25.000 So it's all about a dollar, whether it's private or whether it's state rent.

02:02:29.000 It's industries in the prison that make money for corporations.

02:02:34.000 And the corporations get rich.

02:02:36.000 So it's about a dollar.

02:02:38.000 It's about whether it's private or state.

02:02:41.000 You can get a bid on a comb.

02:02:45.000 If you're a prison owner, you say, okay, I'm going to bid combs.

02:02:47.000 I'm going to pay 25 cents per comb.

02:02:49.000 If they're giving you $1,500 a day for an inmate, why would you want to let them go anywhere?

02:02:55.000 You're going to give them a ticket.

02:02:56.000 You're going to say, look, I have guards tell me, you know, you got a parole date.

02:02:59.000 You better be careful.

02:03:01.000 Because you may lose that any second, right?

02:03:04.000 Because you know, it's job security.

02:03:06.000 If I write this guy up and say he punched me in the face, who's going to disbelieve him?

02:03:10.000 Cuomo, when he ran for governor of New York, one of the first things he said in his stated address is that New York got to stop using prisons as an industry.

02:03:18.000 That we got to find another way to make some money.

02:03:20.000 He admitted it outright that New York was doing it.

02:03:24.000 So I think that the private, whether it's private or whether it's state-run, the goals are the same.

02:03:29.000 It's an industry.

02:03:30.000 It's a money-making machine.

02:03:32.000 And nobody want to give it up.

02:03:34.000 Nobody want to give it up.

02:03:35.000 I used to tell correction officers to get them mad.

02:03:37.000 This is an overpaid babysitting job.

02:03:40.000 I said I grew up, I never heard anybody say they want to be a correction officer.

02:03:43.000 I'm not disrespecting you.

02:03:45.000 It's a fallback job.

02:03:46.000 You know?

02:03:46.000 Everybody got to make a living.

02:03:48.000 But it's just, it's about money.

02:03:50.000 It's about money.

02:03:51.000 And nobody want to give it up.

02:03:52.000 I mean, it's modern day slavery.

02:03:54.000 Who else going to do those jobs? 0.98

02:03:56.000 Who else going to make license plates?

02:03:57.000 Tell me where you know that there's any industry out here in society making license plates.

02:04:02.000 There's none.

02:04:03.000 There's none.

02:04:05.000 There's not one.

02:04:07.000 So who else is gonna do it?

02:04:09.000 The guy that they stopped.

02:04:11.000 And charge him with a marijuana offense.

02:04:13.000 Right?

02:04:13.000 And find a gun in his car.

02:04:15.000 They're going to give him seven years.

02:04:16.000 What he's going to do?

02:04:17.000 He's poor from the beginning.

02:04:18.000 What goes back to the history when slavery was first absolved, abolished rather, one of the first things they did was go out and arrest people and force them to work for slave labor in prison.

02:04:30.000 Yes.

02:04:30.000 Vagrancy laws.

02:04:31.000 Yeah.

02:04:31.000 Yes.

02:04:32.000 I mean, and they did it specifically because they wanted to incarcerate people that used to be slaves.

02:04:39.000 Yes.

02:04:40.000 They didn't give them, there wasn't some sort of comprehensive plan to rehabilitate them and introduce them, and no reparations and no nothing, no punishment for the people that did it to them, and no assistance to those people.

02:04:54.000 And so they would just arrest them.

02:04:56.000 And that was the beginning of our prison industrial complex in this country.

02:05:00.000 It was literally founded off of slavery.

02:05:04.000 That's exactly what it was.

02:05:06.000 And they just kept modernizing it, kept building it.

02:05:09.000 I mean, look, we talk about truth and sentencing bill, right?

02:05:13.000 Clinton gave states.

02:05:14.000 He the one created, took good time away in every state.

02:05:18.000 85% mandatory prisons time to states who joined in this truth and sentencing bill.

02:05:24.000 He said, look, I'm going to give you the money to build prisons.

02:05:26.000 I'm going to put 100,000 more cops on the street. 0.88

02:05:28.000 Right?

02:05:29.000 So I don't believe in, you know, Democrat or Republican.

02:05:31.000 I believe that prison industrial complex is going to be built no matter who's in political office.

02:05:37.000 It serves a purpose in this society.

02:05:39.000 They're going to continue it.

02:05:42.000 Abolitionists kind of got it right. 1.00

02:05:43.000 I think you got to start over.

02:05:46.000 If you're going to change it, you have to start over.

02:05:48.000 You can't put a Band-Aid on a wound that needs a stitch.

02:05:53.000 It just doesn't work like that.

02:05:54.000 You got to get that stitch to close it up.

02:05:56.000 In this case, they're not trying to change the prison industrial complex.

02:06:02.000 It costs too much.

02:06:03.000 There's too much money being made in it.

02:06:06.000 The powers that be don't want to see it go away.

02:06:08.000 The only thing that makes sense to me is to make it financially viable to revitalize communities.

02:06:13.000 Absolutely.

02:06:14.000 That's the only thing that makes sense to me.

02:06:15.000 If you look at all the communities that were damaged by redline laws, all the communities that were apart, that's the number one problem in this country.

02:06:23.000 Yes. 0.93

02:06:23.000 Is that these people that grow up in this, the idea, this is where I have the biggest problem with this whole bullshit about pull yourself up by your bootstraps. 0.93

02:06:30.000 Yes. 0.80

02:06:31.000 You have people that are growing up in a neighborhood that you couldn't comprehend, filled with violence and crime and gangs, and to tell that person that they just have to be accountable when they have no examples around them.

02:06:45.000 We imitate our atmosphere.

02:06:47.000 You surround yourself with good people, more likely you're going to become a good person.

02:06:50.000 You have a much better chance.

02:06:52.000 You surround yourself with people that are criminals, that becomes the norm for you.

02:06:56.000 It becomes natural.

02:06:57.000 And if we don't concentrate on that, we spend $40 billion to Ukraine. 0.99

02:07:02.000 We spend billions of dollars for all sorts of military programs that many of us don't agree with, interventionist foreign policy that many people don't agree with, and there's a countless coffer that pays for that shit. 0.97

02:07:15.000 Where's the money to revitalize communities? 0.97

02:07:17.000 Well, I mean, you know, and that takes the... 0.99

02:07:38.000 I don't know Where the fuck did he go? 0.98

02:07:40.000 And before that, reform gave him money. 0.99

02:07:42.000 I don't like vengeance.

02:07:42.000 So I don't know where he went, but think about this.

02:07:46.000 Imagine this, okay?

02:07:48.000 And this is like, you know, Joe raised this with me before and it makes so much sense because you think about a guy like Jeff Bezos Or Elon Musk or any of these guys that are...

02:07:58.000 Elon Musk seems to me to be one of the most forward-thinking, progressive, dynamic, creative human beings I've ever laid eyes on or listened to.

02:08:08.000 And if anyone could reimagine a society...

02:08:12.000 There's a case in Alabama.

02:08:14.000 People should look up this case.

02:08:16.000 Willie Simmons. 0.99

02:08:17.000 Willie Simmons is serving a 40-year sentence for stealing nine fucking dollars. 0.99

02:08:20.000 That's not made up. 0.99

02:08:22.000 Go look it up.

02:08:23.000 Look at the Breonna Taylor case.

02:08:27.000 Just imagine this for a minute. 0.99

02:08:30.000 Imagine you walk into your fucking office and you think that someone is in your office and shouldn't be. 1.00

02:08:38.000 You shoot at them five fucking times. 1.00

02:08:40.000 Could you imagine going to your boss and saying, I want to raise... 1.00

02:08:46.000 In Louisville, they increased the budget for police and the way they did it was to cut it out from libraries.

02:08:54.000 In response to that.

02:08:57.000 So in other words, increase the budget for police for what?

02:09:00.000 For training?

02:09:02.000 For what exactly is it going to?

02:09:05.000 So we need to reimagine how we think about...

02:09:15.000 This is why it was...

02:09:17.000 It's so eye-opening for me to work with the Sean Carter Foundation and Jay-Z's mom and with these students because I was watching these students that I know were born into circumstances that I was not born into.

02:09:32.000 And they just didn't have the same opportunities that I had.

02:09:36.000 And to watch them flourish and they doubted themselves quite a bit.

02:09:42.000 And this man, Derek, would tell them, you can do this. 0.98

02:09:45.000 I don't want to hear any bullshit that you can't. 0.99

02:09:47.000 I don't care that you're not a law student, you're not a lawyer. 0.99

02:09:50.000 You're just solving a puzzle.

02:09:52.000 And they never said, these are, what, 20, 21-year-old kids?

02:09:58.000 Yeah, they're young.

02:09:58.000 And they were given an opportunity.

02:10:00.000 And when you watch human potential flourish, oh boy, is that an uplifting thing.

02:10:07.000 And it is like...

02:10:10.000 It is not only uplifting, it fills you with the type of hope that propels you forward and says, well, I have to do more, right?

02:10:19.000 You know, Jay-Z sits in the background, and so does his mom, and he has this pretty remarkable impact on society and culture that he does not really seek attention for.

02:10:41.000 Empower these kids.

02:10:42.000 They're not out there looking for a story about it.

02:10:47.000 But they trusted me and put confidence in me to basically take their children.

02:10:56.000 They call them their babies, right?

02:10:58.000 Because they know them since they're in high school.

02:11:00.000 And it was a moment of awakening for me this summer to see children that otherwise didn't have the confidence or didn't even know the potential in themselves realize that potential.

02:11:13.000 And they're not going to all go on to be lawyers.

02:11:15.000 You know, one of them is a dancer, one of them is a drama major, and one of them wants to help the incarcerated through dance and healing in that regard, right?

02:11:27.000 Yeah.

02:11:28.000 Jasmine.

02:11:30.000 Jalen wants to figure out a way to maybe go to law school. 1.00

02:11:33.000 Sam wants to maybe go to law school.

02:11:35.000 We had a computer programmer who he...

02:11:39.000 I don't know if he's going to figure out an app that will categorize bad cops.

02:11:46.000 Your namesake, Josh.

02:11:47.000 My namesake, Joshua.

02:11:49.000 And then there's Brittany.

02:11:51.000 And they all had something different that came together.

02:11:54.000 And they helped solve a case, basically.

02:11:58.000 And if that can happen, you know, we can make anything happen.

02:12:02.000 Sam.

02:12:02.000 Yeah, people have to...

02:12:04.000 And then, yeah, we have this girl, Sam, who, like, she whiteboarded the whole case and, you know, figured things out.

02:12:13.000 The people that have been working on the case for decades haven't figured it out.

02:12:17.000 So I just, you know, I feel like, you know, people listen to your podcast and it's a weird thing, Joe.

02:12:26.000 You know, it's like...

02:12:28.000 I was in an airport going to Greece a couple of weeks ago and I pulled down my mask to look at the board and some guy goes, Josh Dubbin!

02:12:37.000 He goes, thank you man for what you're doing for my people.

02:12:41.000 And my daughter was watching and he said, would you mind take a picture?

02:12:45.000 And she's like, I felt dumb.

02:12:48.000 I was like, known for being on a podcast.

02:12:52.000 And he's like, I said it to her.

02:12:55.000 And he goes, no, you're known for what you did in that case.

02:12:58.000 And I read about the case.

02:13:01.000 So it's like, I said, well, what are you going to do now?

02:13:04.000 He worked at the airport.

02:13:06.000 And he was telling me about how he's going to college.

02:13:08.000 And he's like, I don't really know.

02:13:10.000 My dad was a mechanic.

02:13:13.000 And I said, well, what do you want to do?

02:13:15.000 He said, I want to do things to change people.

02:13:18.000 And I said, well, you can do that.

02:13:20.000 He goes, well, how?

02:13:21.000 And I said, you tell me how.

02:13:23.000 So we got into this conversation.

02:13:25.000 I was with this guy for 25 minutes talking to him.

02:13:27.000 And I saw him realizing as we were speaking, I can actually do something.

02:13:34.000 You know, it's just like the self-belief that you can actually do it.

02:13:37.000 Right.

02:13:38.000 And that's why I like hanging around Derek.

02:13:41.000 That's why I like hanging around you because it just needs more encouragement for people to like realize their own potential.

02:13:48.000 You know, some other human being can do it.

02:13:51.000 You can do it.

02:13:51.000 You know, I marvel at everything.

02:13:54.000 I marvel at the lights I see.

02:13:56.000 I marvel at the person that made this table.

02:13:58.000 You realize what you're good at.

02:14:01.000 You know, and then you get out there and do it instead of figuring out reasons why you can't.

02:14:06.000 You can make this kind of change happen. 0.98

02:14:08.000 And that starts with like, if someone makes a stupid joke that's a racist joke that you don't think is going to propel the conversation forward, here's why that's harmful and won't advance the ball. 0.99

02:14:21.000 You know, and call them out on it. 1.00

02:14:23.000 If you see a law that you don't like or you think is stupid, you have the power to change it. 0.99

02:14:29.000 Absolutely. 0.99

02:14:30.000 You talked about legislators.

02:14:31.000 Legislators are just people that decided to run for office and write laws.

02:14:38.000 And it don't take money.

02:14:40.000 I mean, we talk about $100 million that Van got, but it doesn't take $100 million to help somebody that's innocent get out of prison.

02:14:47.000 You know, it doesn't.

02:14:48.000 It just takes action.

02:14:50.000 It takes work.

02:14:50.000 It takes dedication.

02:14:52.000 Last two years, we got three people out.

02:14:54.000 One lawyer.

02:14:55.000 It didn't take...

02:14:57.000 You know, a bunch pro bono.

02:14:59.000 You got to dedicate yourself to the cause.

02:15:01.000 Just yesterday in Jersey, family and friends of the room were convicted, protesting against Jersey because of so many innocent people and they're incarcerated.

02:15:08.000 Bad lawyering.

02:15:10.000 Terrible.

02:15:10.000 Jersey's terrible.

02:15:11.000 But you have to take action.

02:15:13.000 While I'm here, the organization is up there working, right?

02:15:16.000 They up there working, saying, free these guys in Jersey.

02:15:19.000 Family and friends.

02:15:20.000 You have to take action.

02:15:22.000 Right?

02:15:22.000 And there's more people that, you know, I was told something in Louisiana.

02:15:26.000 They got an organization called Vote There, all incarcerated, forming incarcerated people.

02:15:30.000 And what they do, and we should actually link with them, they do is they get involved in elections.

02:15:36.000 And that's how they got to New Orleans, Governor, and different people up there.

02:15:39.000 And one of the things the guy said to me up there, I'll never forget.

02:15:42.000 He says, our motto is that if it's 10 of us, and each of us bring one person, that's 20. And then each one person, bring one person that's 30 and 40 and 50. This is what we believe in.

02:15:53.000 Don't take a bunch of us.

02:15:54.000 We just take enough of us.

02:15:56.000 And that makes the difference.

02:15:58.000 I mean, if everybody brings somebody in, right, the numbers multiply.

02:16:03.000 These listeners are hearing us.

02:16:05.000 And they know that, to me, this is a real, real situation because we're all Americans.

02:16:11.000 At the end of the day, no matter how you want to say it, no matter how you want to believe it, we all are Americans.

02:16:15.000 We all believe in this system where we dislike what it does or not.

02:16:19.000 We're all a fabric of our environment.

02:16:21.000 So we all should hold our government accountable.

02:16:25.000 One of the things that kept me going was the Magna Carta.

02:16:28.000 I learned that in 1215 it was bold English barons that held King John at gunpoint and made him sign the Magna Carta.

02:16:35.000 You didn't give it to them, they made them give it to them.

02:16:37.000 And when people talk about, you know, I speak to people, they talk about What happened at the Capitol, right?

02:16:44.000 And what I teach people, the Second Amendment, if you read it, right, it says when the government becomes tyrant, the people can get a militia to revolt.

02:16:52.000 Well, will you agree with them, people, or not?

02:16:54.000 If they believe that the election was stolen, right, they had a right to revolt.

02:17:02.000 You don't have to believe that.

02:17:03.000 Read the Second Amendment. 0.83

02:17:04.000 This is why the right to bear arms existed.

02:17:06.000 I studied it, right?

02:17:08.000 And this is why you have three branches of government.

02:17:10.000 When there was a debate, when the Constitution was being put into effect, there was a great debate on what type of government we're going to have, right?

02:17:17.000 They knew that the government was corrupt, so they put all these checks and balances in place, right, so that we wouldn't be abused by the government.

02:17:25.000 Right?

02:17:26.000 So when we see government abuse as our responsibility, it's our obligation to stand up and do something about it.

02:17:32.000 If not, then you're a victim.

02:17:34.000 I don't want to be a victim.

02:17:35.000 I believe in fighting back.

02:17:36.000 So I believe that the call to action is that every American, every person that's on this shore should stand up and change something in your lifetime.

02:17:45.000 Change something to make it a better place.

02:17:47.000 And I just believe that from the core of my being.

02:17:49.000 And when you talk about the government being involved, I mean, what about the people that were involved in January 6th that were agent provocateurs that were encouraging people to go into the Capitol?

02:18:00.000 There's people that are on record that they 100% got that they know most likely were federal agents that did this that have faced no criminal consequences whatsoever.

02:18:12.000 They were actively encouraging people They know who these people are.

02:18:17.000 There's video of it.

02:18:18.000 You can watch it yourself.

02:18:19.000 That's like the format I told you.

02:18:21.000 They protect the format to lock up somebody else.

02:18:24.000 This is how our government works.

02:18:25.000 Yeah, they're trying to get people to commit crimes so that they could get them.

02:18:30.000 Explain that to me.

02:18:36.000 Is your point, Joe, that you should be going after, if you're going to go after the people that actually were revved up to do it, you should actually go after the people that revved them up?

02:18:47.000 Well, they are doing that.

02:18:48.000 They are going after some of the people that revved them up.

02:18:50.000 They're just not going after federal agents that revved them up.

02:18:53.000 There's people that encourage people to commit crimes that would not have necessarily done those crimes in the first place.

02:18:59.000 There's an example of a guy who the...

02:19:03.000 I don't even want to name the branch of government, but they convinced this guy.

02:19:07.000 They gave him a fake bomb.

02:19:10.000 They convinced him that he was an extremist, a religious extremist.

02:19:15.000 He was a 19-year-old kid, very impressionable, not very bright.

02:19:19.000 They convinced him to use this cellular phone to activate this device that didn't even work, and then they arrested him.

02:19:26.000 They gave him the bomb.

02:19:28.000 It wasn't a bomb.

02:19:29.000 They talked him into doing it.

02:19:30.000 They convinced him that he was a martyr.

02:19:33.000 And they convinced him that he was doing this for a righteous, holy cause, and then they arrested him.

02:19:38.000 Entrapment.

02:19:39.000 It was 100%, not just entrapment, but they built the whole organization around him.

02:19:46.000 They built this case around getting this guy to plant this bomb and ignite this bomb that doesn't even work.

02:19:53.000 It's not even really a bomb.

02:19:55.000 And then they arrested him.

02:19:57.000 I mean, what is that?

02:19:58.000 Is that protecting or serving?

02:20:00.000 What is that? 0.99

02:20:01.000 What the fuck is that? 0.99

02:20:03.000 And I think that speaks to what we were talking about earlier, that part of the problem is that this is a game. 0.99

02:20:08.000 These guys are trying to convict people. 0.99

02:20:10.000 And if you can arrest someone who was a religious extremist that wanted to blow up a bomb, and they wanted to become a martyr, and they wanted to do this because they felt like this was a righteous thing to do, because they were convinced by people, What the fuck kind of a government is this? 0.96

02:20:28.000 Well, I mean, you know, I never really looked at it that way. 0.95

02:20:31.000 There's a lot of those cases.

02:20:33.000 Yeah, I never really looked at it that way because a lot of the people that were involved in January 6th end up becoming fall guys, fall men and women.

02:20:42.000 But, you know, look, what kind of government is this?

02:20:48.000 You either believe it or you don't.

02:20:50.000 Is there a reason why there is a separation of powers?

02:20:53.000 Do we believe that fundamentally, that the executive branch should do their job and the judiciary should do theirs?

02:20:59.000 I do.

02:20:59.000 Since I got out of prison.

02:21:01.000 Alright, so if you believe that, what the fuck is a governor who is an executive going and removing someone from the judiciary? 0.98

02:21:12.000 How do we not get as human beings up in arms about that? 0.98

02:21:16.000 I don't understand it.

02:21:18.000 Then if we elect people to do a job and we think they might not do that job, you can remove them from power?

02:21:26.000 That law is unconstitutional.

02:21:27.000 We should remove the law that allows the governor to do that in every state.

02:21:30.000 And what's going to happen with this guy, Andrew Warren, who was the state attorney that was removed, what's going to happen is he's going to appeal this.

02:21:37.000 He's going to launch a fight.

02:21:38.000 Okay?

02:21:39.000 And the Senate, this is where the lines start to get blurred and we have to start thinking, what are we doing?

02:21:45.000 Do we believe in the dream of America?

02:21:50.000 The Senate in Florida is controlled by Republicans.

02:21:54.000 The law in Florida says if the Senate affirms the suspension, he's suspended.

02:21:59.000 It's a kangaroo court.

02:22:00.000 He's getting suspended.

02:22:01.000 They're going to affirm it.

02:22:02.000 That's going to happen.

02:22:03.000 So, you know, if you are a Democrat, Republican, libertarian, if you just believe in America, you should not get behind somebody that is willing to go move an elected official from office.

02:22:17.000 Right.

02:22:17.000 On something they might do, but allow and stand idle behind a county ordinance that circumvents state law.

02:22:24.000 I just don't get why people don't get more pissed off by this.

02:22:29.000 I'll tell you something that's more egregious to me than that.

02:22:32.000 Where's the presumption of innocence?

02:22:33.000 Right.

02:22:34.000 Right?

02:22:34.000 Where's the presumption of innocence?

02:22:36.000 Once he was removed, right, there is a presumption that he's guilty.

02:22:41.000 Right?

02:22:41.000 He's removed.

02:22:42.000 Then you give him a hearing after the fact.

02:22:44.000 That's not how due process work.

02:22:45.000 Right?

02:22:46.000 He's accused of doing something, but he was removed first.

02:22:50.000 Where does that happen at?

02:22:51.000 Yeah, I just don't understand it.

02:22:54.000 And I think that people are afraid of the consequences of abandoning who they think other people should think they support.

02:23:02.000 You know, I have a cousin. 0.95

02:23:05.000 Whose children have no fucking earthly idea why they stand for what they stand for. 0.98

02:23:11.000 But their parents are right-wing Republicans, so they think they should do that. 0.98

02:23:16.000 I have another cousin whose kids, and they're actually sisters.

02:23:22.000 Our kids are growing up in a quote-unquote progressive household, and they think that they should be everything that's on the left.

02:23:29.000 We are influenced by the people that rear us, right?

02:23:33.000 And I feel like what I'm trying to encourage my kids to do is we don't raise them—and I'm not saying this is the right way.

02:23:41.000 Maybe I'm fucking totally off on this— We don't raise them as Catholic, Buddhist, Jewish. 0.88

02:23:48.000 We raise them as human beings. 0.97

02:23:50.000 We try to teach them a little bit about everything and say, you make the decision.

02:23:56.000 My daughter talks to me about God.

02:23:58.000 Do you believe in God, Dad?

02:24:00.000 I say, I don't even know what that means.

02:24:01.000 I just don't.

02:24:02.000 I would rather be honest with you.

02:24:04.000 Is it a man with a white beard that sits in the sky?

02:24:07.000 Is it a feeling that you get?

02:24:11.000 I don't know.

02:24:12.000 And I don't know how you reinvent human beings, you know, other than what I know about what might change human beings.

02:24:21.000 And the only thing that I think that changes them is having the ability to let your guard down and say, maybe everything that I thought I knew is not true.

02:24:33.000 And maybe everything that I was taught by the people I held up as heroes, as idols, You know, we all have that moment where we stop viewing our parents as superheroes and as human beings.

02:24:49.000 It's a jagged pill to swallow, right?

02:24:52.000 That's the work.

02:24:52.000 That's the work that you're doing.

02:24:53.000 See, that's the work.

02:24:54.000 Going back and, you know, use precondition a certain way.

02:24:58.000 So as you get older, you go back and you look at those conditions and see if they still apply.

02:25:03.000 I'll give you a good example of what you just said.

02:25:05.000 This summer, In the family and friends organization, we had summer youth, right?

02:25:10.000 So all of them was from impoverished neighborhoods.

02:25:13.000 Had some from Brownsville and some from Red Hook.

02:25:16.000 So we gave them a case of a lady that was accused.

02:25:19.000 She wrote in and she was accused of killing a kid.

02:25:22.000 The first group of kids had it for two weeks.

02:25:24.000 And they said, well, we really just don't know.

02:25:27.000 We really just don't know.

02:25:28.000 We just can't tell.

02:25:29.000 We need a medical examiner to determine if the way the kid was hit could create those, you know, those injuries.

02:25:36.000 The second group came in from Brownsville, the worst part of Brooklyn, and they was there for one day I gave them the case.

02:25:43.000 And my wife called me the next day.

02:25:44.000 She says, yo, you got to hear what these kids got to say. 0.99

02:25:46.000 They said, Mr. Hamilton, this bitch is guilty, right? 1.00

02:25:49.000 I said, why are you coming to that conclusion? 0.99

02:25:51.000 They said, we went on Facebook, we went on Instagram, we seen statements she made, we this and that.

02:25:55.000 But two group of kids come to two different conclusions.

02:25:59.000 One come in one day, and I say to them, here, we objective.

02:26:03.000 Right?

02:26:03.000 We objective.

02:26:04.000 We don't know if she made that Facebook account.

02:26:06.000 We don't know if it's authentic.

02:26:07.000 We don't know none of that.

02:26:08.000 Right?

02:26:09.000 But to show the way that they think.

02:26:11.000 Right?

02:26:12.000 Conservative kids from Brownsville.

02:26:13.000 You would never think the kids in Brownsville would be conservative.

02:26:17.000 Right?

02:26:17.000 But they were.

02:26:19.000 Because they believed that the kid was killed.

02:26:24.000 Three years old.

02:26:25.000 The mother should have some answers. 0.98

02:26:27.000 You're in the house with her.

02:26:29.000 Right?

02:26:29.000 You should know what happened.

02:26:31.000 You should be...

02:26:31.000 So it's just, you know, like you said, it could be the way that you were raised.

02:26:35.000 It could be your conditions.

02:26:36.000 But, you know, I teach my daughter that's nine years old.

02:26:39.000 We have a debate in my house.

02:26:40.000 Right?

02:26:41.000 Since she was a kid, I told her she got freedom of speech.

02:26:44.000 You got freedom of speech in this house.

02:26:45.000 You tell me what you're thinking.

02:26:47.000 You tell me, I don't care what it is.

02:26:48.000 Her mother says, you don't got no freedom of speech with me.

02:26:51.000 That stops with your father.

02:26:54.000 You know?

02:26:55.000 But this is the debate.

02:26:56.000 You know, because I want her to feel free to tell me anything.

02:26:59.000 And we have it every day.

02:27:00.000 She's nine now.

02:27:01.000 You know, and she'll tell you, yes, you do.

02:27:03.000 All right, you better watch your mouth for me.

02:27:08.000 Well, I... You know, you said what the call to action is earlier.

02:27:14.000 Yeah, I agree with you.

02:27:15.000 I think the call to action is to believe that you can make change happen.

02:27:19.000 To believe that there are things that you can do that will move the needle.

02:27:25.000 And I feel like, you know, I've heard this before.

02:27:29.000 I would vote, but it's just one vote. 1.00

02:27:32.000 That's bullshit, man. 1.00

02:27:33.000 That's a cop-out. 1.00

02:27:35.000 I agree that maybe one vote in a big democratic state might not be the answer.

02:27:42.000 But you never know what it is that you're going to do that is going to change a mind, change someone's perspective on something.

02:27:53.000 You know, that's what I try to do.

02:27:55.000 I don't know any other way to do it because none of these are easily solvable problems.

02:28:02.000 How do you fix the criminal justice system?

02:28:04.000 Do you start from scratch?

02:28:06.000 You can't.

02:28:07.000 Well, I would say in Brooklyn, what we did with a voter block, we was able to remove the bad prosecutor and put one in that had the values and ideas of the people of Brooklyn.

02:28:19.000 Right?

02:28:20.000 So I do agree with you that, you know, when you talk about locally, right, we can create voters' blocks.

02:28:26.000 People talk about the Jews.

02:28:28.000 They vote in one block, most of them.

02:28:29.000 They're Orthodox, right?

02:28:30.000 They vote in one block, most of them, right, when you talk about Orthodox Jews. 0.92

02:28:34.000 So I believe that we can change the system by organizing people.

02:28:39.000 Right?

02:28:39.000 To understand and educating them.

02:28:41.000 Look, we talk about educating judges.

02:28:43.000 Not just human people. 0.91

02:28:45.000 Junk science. 0.93

02:28:46.000 We talk about it all the time.

02:28:47.000 Right?

02:28:48.000 This is going to be a part of our curricula.

02:28:49.000 Right?

02:28:50.000 What's junk science?

02:28:51.000 People believe in fingerprints. 0.97

02:28:53.000 They believe in blood splatter.

02:28:54.000 They believe in these sciences, bite marks.

02:28:57.000 They really believe that this is a science.

02:28:59.000 That it's reliable.

02:29:00.000 Right?

02:29:01.000 Our job is to educate them on how unreliable it is and how when people are sitting on jurors that they're being fooled.

02:29:07.000 Right?

02:29:07.000 They're being fooled.

02:29:09.000 Yeah, I mean, isn't that scary?

02:29:12.000 The case of Bruce Bryant that I've talked about before, a ballistics expert gets on the stand, and I'm not making this up.

02:29:21.000 The trial transcript is public.

02:29:23.000 People can read it.

02:29:24.000 The ballistics expert gets on the stand, and they're trying to prove that two guns were used in this crime.

02:29:30.000 So you're a man that knows something about ballistics, right?

02:29:35.000 You own guns and shoot guns.

02:29:39.000 He says that it was a 380, all right, that was used in this crime.

02:29:44.000 And the prosecutor, in this case, served 30 months in federal prison for bribing witnesses.

02:29:53.000 Not in the Bruce Bryan case, later on, all right?

02:29:56.000 The prosecutor in this case is a guy named John Scarpa.

02:30:02.000 John Scarpa.

02:30:03.000 John Scarpa has the ballistics expert on the stand, and he says, you found two shell casings.

02:30:11.000 And he says, yes.

02:30:11.000 And were you able to identify common characteristics in those shell casings such that you were able to determine whether or not they came from the same gun?

02:30:21.000 And he said, to a degree of scientific certainty, the markings on those shell casings lead me to believe that they came from the same gun.

02:30:30.000 And he came up with all the reasons why the striage...

02:30:33.000 Shell casings?

02:30:34.000 Shell casings.

02:30:35.000 And that's...

02:30:35.000 That's outrageous.

02:30:36.000 Okay.

02:30:37.000 Well, he then says...

02:30:40.000 Well, you also found two bullet fragments.

02:30:43.000 And he says, yes, I found them at the autopsy.

02:30:46.000 And he said, can you match the bullet fragments up to those shell casings?

02:30:51.000 He said no, to his credit, because they passed through different parts of the gun.

02:30:56.000 And he said, so how many guns were used in this crime?

02:31:02.000 He said, at least two.

02:31:05.000 And he's basing this on the same caliber weapon?

02:31:07.000 Same caliber weapon.

02:31:08.000 Same caliber weapon.

02:31:09.000 And what about the shell casings would indicate they're from different guns?

02:31:13.000 Nothing.

02:31:14.000 He said that they came from the same gun.

02:31:17.000 But how was that...

02:31:17.000 But the way they were ejected from a firearm?

02:31:20.000 Yeah, the way that they were ejected...

02:31:21.000 There are markings that are left...

02:31:24.000 That he can match up to the barrel of the gun and say that...

02:31:27.000 But the shell casings, that's a whole different thing.

02:31:30.000 It's a whole different thing.

02:31:31.000 They get ejected.

02:31:32.000 They get ejected.

02:31:33.000 And he's saying that upon ejection, that marks are left on the shell casings, that...

02:31:39.000 If the shell casings have the same common identifying characteristics, you can say to a degree of scientific certainty that they were ejected from the same gun.

02:31:50.000 Do you agree with that?

02:31:52.000 I don't.

02:31:55.000 I've never heard that being used before.

02:31:57.000 Is that a common thing?

02:31:59.000 It's a common science that's peddled in courts all over the country.

02:32:03.000 And do you agree that that's junk science like blood splattering and a lot of other things that you call out?

02:32:07.000 Yes. 0.97

02:32:08.000 And I'm going to tell you what's even junkier.

02:32:10.000 Okay?

02:32:11.000 Here's what makes it really hard to swallow.

02:32:14.000 They then find two bullet fragments.

02:32:17.000 Now the logic is that those fragments came from those two shell casings.

02:32:21.000 Because no other shell casings were found.

02:32:23.000 And he says, to his credit, a detective Hopkins.

02:32:29.000 Those bullet fragments could have come from another gun.

02:32:33.000 Could have come.

02:32:35.000 Okay?

02:32:35.000 So the prosecutor says to him, so how many guns maximum would you say were used in this crime?

02:32:41.000 He said at least two.

02:32:43.000 The prosecutor then, within the same two pages of transcripts, says, if I take a gun and shoot it into that file cabinet in front of this jury and you find two shell casings and two bullet fragments...

02:32:59.000 How many guns will you say were used in my shooting the file cabinet?

02:33:05.000 And without missing a beat, the ballistics expert says, two. 0.81

02:33:10.000 Crazy.

02:33:11.000 How? 0.88

02:33:11.000 He says, even though it was from one gun, the jury just saw me shoot the file cabinet. 0.88

02:33:17.000 He said, yeah, because I can't tell you whether or not those two bullet fragments match those two shell casings.

02:33:24.000 And I literally...

02:33:28.000 I had to read it five times.

02:33:29.000 I called Derek.

02:33:30.000 I said, this was...

02:33:32.000 So in other words, what he's saying is, in other words, what he's saying to introduce the possibility that two guns were used in a crime.

02:33:42.000 He is saying that if you find two shell casings and two bullet fragments, you cannot assume That those bullet fragments came from those shell casings.

02:33:52.000 He's introducing the possibility that two guns were used.

02:33:56.000 Right, but possibility versus deciding that there was two guns.

02:34:00.000 They convicted him.

02:34:02.000 What?

02:34:04.000 37 and a half years to life in prison.

02:34:07.000 Have they replicated this?

02:34:08.000 Have they shot different rounds through different pistols?

02:34:11.000 Never.

02:34:12.000 Never.

02:34:13.000 And what happens is that when jurors hear a detective and they hear ballistics expert, it's over.

02:34:19.000 It's game over.

02:34:20.000 Right, because they don't know.

02:34:22.000 Yeah, they don't know.

02:34:23.000 Listen, you know, bite mark evidence was born out of the Salem witch trials, and a judge just accepted it.

02:34:32.000 Bite mark evidence, odontology, is basically out of the criminal justice system now because it has been outed as a junk science.

02:34:41.000 But for decades and decades and decades, they could claim, it's pretty handy that I have a skull with some teeth here.

02:34:49.000 They would claim that you could make an indentation in someone's skin and match it up to the ridges in this tooth.

02:34:56.000 Okay?

02:34:58.000 And there was a guy by the name of West that would testify case after case after case that you could look at the indentation in the skin and you could match it up to teeth marks.

02:35:09.000 And it was proven to be such junk science that they set him up and they gave him the teeth impressions of a detective.

02:35:20.000 And they asked him if the detective's teeth, they told him that it was from the suspect, and he said it's a perfect match because he was told it was a suspect.

02:35:30.000 So odontology has basically worked its way out of the criminal justice system.

02:35:34.000 It was born out of the Salem witch trials.

02:35:36.000 How was it born out of the Salem witch trials?

02:35:38.000 So there was a case of a guy who They claimed was biting young children and killing them and sacrificing them and that he was a witch.

02:35:54.000 And it was in the 1600s of Salem Witch Trials.

02:35:58.000 And they paraded him around.

02:36:00.000 They pried his mouth open. 0.94

02:36:02.000 They put a stick in his teeth and they said to the jury, look, see that ridge?

02:36:08.000 You see that slope in his tooth?

02:36:10.000 That is what left the indentation in this child's skin.

02:36:13.000 Now, it was later proven that this man didn't commit these crimes.

02:36:17.000 He was hung in a public hanging.

02:36:19.000 If you want to listen to Wrongful Conviction Junk Science Season 1, I'd do the first episode on this.

02:36:29.000 They ended up finding out that this man was not only innocent, he was in jail in another town when these crimes were committed.

02:36:35.000 It's the first case of a wrongful conviction and compensation because the Commonwealth of Massachusetts ended up compensating his family for executing him for a crime he didn't commit.

02:36:49.000 And that was the first known case of teeth marks, bite marks being used.

02:36:55.000 Since then, it's been outed as a junk science, but it's one of the few junk sciences that has been outed.

02:37:01.000 In 2009, the National Academy of Sciences did a study on forensic sciences, and the only one that they could find was even remotely credible was DNA. So everything that we knew about forensic science should have been turned on its head.

02:37:20.000 Fingerprints are completely subjective.

02:37:22.000 We're taught that they're the gold standard.

02:37:24.000 They're just not.

02:37:25.000 Subjective.

02:37:26.000 Brandon Mayfield case.

02:37:28.000 Yeah, that's a great example.

02:37:30.000 Yes, proved that.

02:37:31.000 He was a doctor who they locked up and accused him of blowing up something in Scotland, I believe it was.

02:37:37.000 And they found out that they wasn't his prince.

02:37:39.000 It was actually a terrorist prince.

02:37:42.000 And the FBI kept saying it was his and his.

02:37:44.000 Scotland Yard did their own fingerprint analysis and dishonorated Brandon Mayfield and got the real terrorists that committed the crime.

02:37:51.000 And fingerprints was used in that.

02:37:53.000 And what they never told people, the error rate of fingerprints.

02:37:57.000 They would tell you that it's 100% reliable.

02:38:00.000 And we find out now that the error rate in some cases is 50%.

02:38:03.000 So it's just terrible.

02:38:05.000 And these are the sciences that we indoctrinated to believe.

02:38:08.000 We believe that you couldn't tell a juror that fingerprints are not reliable.

02:38:12.000 Until today, they still believe that fingerprints are absolute.

02:38:16.000 Find your print, that's it.

02:38:17.000 You committed the crime.

02:38:18.000 The similarities of the witch trials and what happens today is that we're looking for We're looking to take evil people off the street, right?

02:38:30.000 That's what they were looking for back then.

02:38:31.000 They thought that they were gonna get rid of witches.

02:38:35.000 They thought they were gonna get rid of evil.

02:38:36.000 That's exactly right.

02:38:37.000 Yeah.

02:38:38.000 Do you know the source of the Salem Witch Trials?

02:38:40.000 You know what it all started from?

02:38:42.000 You mean the hysteria?

02:38:43.000 Yeah.

02:38:44.000 Around that?

02:38:44.000 Yeah.

02:38:45.000 No, I'm not.

02:38:46.000 Ergot.

02:38:47.000 Oh.

02:38:48.000 Hmm.

02:38:48.000 These people were eating bread that had gone through, the wheat had gone through a late frost, and it develops a fungus called ergot, and ergot is psychedelic.

02:38:58.000 Hmm.

02:38:58.000 So it's very similar to LSD. Hmm.

02:39:01.000 So these people were all tripping balls, eating bad wheat and all the other products that they made with the wheat bread and all these different things, and they were getting ergot poisoning, so they were all tripping.

02:39:12.000 And they were all conjuring up this notion that there were witches out there?

02:39:15.000 Exactly.

02:39:16.000 It was like this hysteria.

02:39:18.000 For a while, and then when the late frost was gone and all that wheat was consumed, they went back to normal.

02:39:24.000 And that's why there was a waning of...

02:39:28.000 There's some dispute about this, but there's no dispute about whether or not there was a late frost.

02:39:33.000 There's some dispute about the way they cooked the bread and whether or not ergot would still be available.

02:39:42.000 But there's no dispute that there was a late frost when they do core samples of the earth and they find out during that time period that this matches up to what is established science on you know on this and they have found residue of ergot and they know that in similar situations when people have consumed ergot they have these horrific unexpected psychedelic consequences.

02:40:07.000 Yeah, I mean, in doing the research for this wrongful conviction junk science, I went back to the—and this was a couple of years ago when we first met, many years ago, I guess three, four years ago.

02:40:20.000 I was doing the research into the origin stories of all these junk sciences, and I was just blown away that nobody said, wait a second— Why are we accepting this?

02:40:31.000 And the way things become legal precedent in our system is, you know, it's scary.

02:40:38.000 Because if one judge accepts it, then other people start citing it.

02:40:42.000 And if other people start saying, well, there is precedent here, then it just becomes ingrained in the system.

02:40:47.000 And it's happened with everything from fingerprints to blood spatter to bite mark impressions to tread marks.

02:40:56.000 Right?

02:40:57.000 And, you know, if you look at the origin story of each of these so-called forensic sciences, you would think that you were listening to some tale of like a religion that was cooked up. 0.94

02:41:12.000 I mean, you know, blood spatter evidence was born in the basement of some fucking crackpot in upstate New York that was taking college-age girls and having to dip their hair into the blood of cadaver dogs Yeah. 0.99

02:41:51.000 All of these, like, shit, horse shit forensic scientists infect a lot of the cases we work on. 0.99

02:42:01.000 Clemente Aguirre's case, we've talked about it on this. 1.00

02:42:03.000 I can't talk too much about it, because if you could believe it, the state of Florida is doubling down.

02:42:08.000 He's been exonerated.

02:42:09.000 He's now suing them for federal civil rights violations, failure to investigate.

02:42:15.000 I have to try the case in December where I'm trying to get him compensated.

02:42:21.000 And they're saying he still did it!

02:42:22.000 That's what they do.

02:42:24.000 They're saying he still did it.

02:42:46.000 Yeah.

02:43:09.000 A certified latent print examiner.

02:43:11.000 Well, I don't know.

02:43:13.000 Might you question them if you found out, as I found out during Clemente's case, during discovery, something I didn't even know when I exonerated him, that the detective in the case was going down to the lab and saying,

02:43:28.000 this is the suspect.

02:43:29.000 Did you match the prints yet?

02:43:32.000 You know, we're human, and we get influenced by people, and that shouldn't be happening.

02:43:38.000 It creates confirmation bias.

02:43:40.000 And, you know, I didn't even know it at the time.

02:43:45.000 And you end up finding out that there's no training manual, there are no training standards, there are no standard operating procedures, there's no one doing administrative review on their work.

02:43:54.000 You would think if we're going to be so quick to accuse someone of a crime and take their freedom away, We want to make damn sure we're getting it right.

02:44:02.000 Right.

02:44:03.000 I think it speaks to what we were talking about earlier that people, when you set up this thing, whether it's with cops or with prosecutors, where a conviction is good for their career and good for their record, that's a point.

02:44:14.000 They want to score that point.

02:44:15.000 They want to win.

02:44:16.000 When you take away that point, they want to go to a review.

02:44:19.000 And that's what's happening in Clemente's case, I'm sure.

02:44:22.000 They want to win.

02:44:23.000 Yeah.

02:44:24.000 They got their W taken away.

02:44:25.000 They want it back.

02:44:26.000 And they think they're going to be able to connive their way and weasel their way through it.

02:44:30.000 Even if they look at what you've said just on this podcast, where you reviewed it and brought me to tears, there's astounding evidence that he's innocent.

02:44:40.000 Well, it's not just astounding evidence that he's innocent.

02:44:43.000 I had my Perry Mason moment.

02:44:44.000 I got the real killer to essentially confess on the stand, essentially.

02:44:49.000 And yeah, I mean, look, we had a mediation in the case.

02:44:54.000 Right?

02:44:55.000 It's confidential.

02:44:57.000 So, I'm not allowed to say, but they insisted on him being there.

02:45:01.000 Now, why do you want the person there that has already lived this trauma to hear you re-accus him of the crime and, you know, it's like...

02:45:13.000 When he's been exonerated.

02:45:14.000 When he's been exonerated.

02:45:15.000 You didn't exonerate him for no reason.

02:45:17.000 Why can't you just pay him? 1.00

02:45:19.000 Admit that you fucked up and pay him. 1.00

02:45:21.000 Now I have to go. 1.00

02:45:22.000 He has to relive this whole experience again.

02:45:24.000 I'm happy to do it because it's a labor of love for me.

02:45:27.000 The guy that's trying the case with me is a guy named David Rudolph who has a bit of a cult following because he was the lawyer and then Netflix hit The Staircase where the guy Peterson was accused of pushing his wife down the stairs.

02:45:43.000 And he's just a tremendous civil rights lawyer who's seen it all.

02:45:47.000 David's in his 70s by now.

02:45:48.000 He's Mind blown.

02:45:50.000 Have you seen the most recent evidence about that?

02:45:53.000 That they think an owl attacked that lady?

02:45:55.000 I actually think there's something to it.

02:45:56.000 There's 100% something to it.

02:45:58.000 Yes.

02:45:58.000 Because they do that.

02:45:59.000 This lady has claw marks on her head. 1.00

02:46:01.000 She was bleeding blood outside of the house.

02:46:04.000 So she was attacked. 0.99

02:46:06.000 Look, people, when they see their own blood, when they get hit, they fucking faint all the time. 0.98

02:46:10.000 I watched a friend of mine faint the other day because he was getting an IV drip. 0.98

02:46:14.000 He saw blood squirt out of his arm and he started panicking and he fainted. 0.99

02:46:19.000 Imagine getting hit in the head by a fucking owl and then you walk inside the house moments later and you fall down a flight of stairs. 1.00

02:46:25.000 It's normal. 1.00

02:46:26.000 The beak marks?

02:46:27.000 Yes.

02:46:28.000 David told me about this years ago.

02:46:32.000 You know David.

02:46:33.000 Before the documentary came out.

02:46:35.000 Now, it was pretty ingenious what he did.

02:46:37.000 He had them following him for years.

02:46:40.000 And he said, you have to embargo the footage until his final appeal is exhausted.

02:46:46.000 David has gone on.

02:46:48.000 He would be an amazing guest.

02:46:49.000 Him and his wife, Sonia, have gone on to become tremendous criminal justice reform advocates, some of the finest civil rights attorneys.

02:46:58.000 He just wrote a tremendous book, David Rudolph.

02:47:02.000 You should check out his book.

02:47:03.000 He told me about the owl theory years before it ever got pressed. 0.99

02:47:06.000 He said, Josh, I actually think a fucking owl did this. 1.00

02:47:10.000 If you look at a woman's head and a full head of hair, Tell me that shit doesn't look like an animal. 1.00

02:47:15.000 And not only does it not look like an animal, but there are claw mark impressions and a beak impression in the same exact spot that an owl would do it. 0.99

02:47:23.000 And people say, come on, an owl?

02:47:25.000 Yeah. 0.99

02:47:25.000 It happens all the fucking time. 0.99

02:47:27.000 Why would a guy push his wife down the stairs for what fucking reason? 1.00

02:47:30.000 For what fucking reason? 1.00

02:47:31.000 And also, there's a history of that. 1.00

02:47:34.000 Owls attack people. 1.00

02:47:35.000 Yes.

02:47:36.000 It happens.

02:47:36.000 They're aggressive creatures.

02:47:37.000 They're fucking ruthless predators with a brain the size of your thumb. 1.00

02:47:42.000 They're not brilliant. 1.00

02:47:43.000 They're not fucking, give a hoot, don't pollute. 1.00

02:47:45.000 That's all horse shit. 1.00

02:47:46.000 We're out of our fucking minds with that shit. 1.00

02:47:48.000 How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll pop? 1.00

02:47:51.000 One, two... 1.00

02:47:52.000 It's not a fucking wise old animal. 1.00

02:47:54.000 It's a ruthless predator. 0.99

02:47:56.000 And he told me the whole theory, and then I said, man, what have you been smoking?

02:48:01.000 And he said to me, let me show you the photos.

02:48:05.000 I'm going to show you the crime scene photos, and then I'm going to show you the impression that an owl attack makes.

02:48:09.000 There's blood outside the house!

02:48:11.000 He showed it to me. 0.99

02:48:12.000 He said if he pushed her down the stairs, and that's where the murder took place, the so-called murder, how the fuck was she bleeding when they were out by the pool, walking in toward the pool? 0.96

02:48:26.000 Exactly. 0.98

02:48:26.000 I believe it wholeheartedly. 0.98

02:48:28.000 I don't believe that guy killed his wife.

02:48:30.000 It doesn't seem like he did.

02:48:31.000 It certainly seems like, at the very least, she was attacked by an owl before he killed her.

02:48:36.000 Can you imagine the luck?

02:48:38.000 The bad luck you have to have? 1.00

02:48:41.000 To get attacked by a fucking owl? 1.00

02:48:43.000 You know what, man? 1.00

02:48:44.000 If you're outside at night, it's not that bad luck.

02:48:47.000 Like, it can happen.

02:48:49.000 I mean, it's not the best luck in the world, but that's a possibility.

02:48:53.000 That's a possibility.

02:48:54.000 I'll tell you what.

02:48:55.000 That's more probable than somehow being a witness to six murders.

02:49:00.000 Right. 0.98

02:49:01.000 And also being on record calling that woman a lying crackhead. 0.99

02:49:04.000 Right. 0.99

02:49:05.000 Right.

02:49:06.000 Yeah, and then using her as a witness.

02:49:08.000 You know, this use of jailhouse informants, maybe we close on this.

02:49:14.000 Pamela Koloff is an investigative reporter that wrote an award-winning story about the most notorious jailhouse snitch in history named Paul Skelnick. 0.96

02:49:28.000 He was the informant that was used in, where do you think, Florida.

02:49:33.000 Wow.

02:49:34.000 He was used in over 20 cases.

02:49:37.000 And if you read the article in, I believe it's in Texas Monthly, that she wrote, she won a very prestigious award for investigative journalist of the year for this story about Paul Skalnik.

02:49:56.000 And then you tell me how you don't give James Daly a clemency hearing.

02:50:01.000 This guy claims that James Daly walked by his cell, a known informant, and said, hey, by the way, hey, you informant that are in isolation, hey, by the way, I killed this girl.

02:50:14.000 What do you think about that?

02:50:16.000 You read that story.

02:50:18.000 A call to action for your listeners would be go read the story that Pamela Koloff, C-O-L-O-F-F, wrote about Paul Skownick.

02:50:28.000 And watch the 2020. And if you're not enraged that this guy put somebody on death row on his word alone with no physical evidence, I don't know what else will inspire you to get involved.

02:50:40.000 Insane.

02:50:42.000 There's a feeling of helplessness that I get, and I'm sure a lot of people also get listening to this, that there's so many cases.

02:50:49.000 There's so many cases and for every Clemente, for every case like Derek, for every case that you get out, there's countless more that are still being locked up.

02:50:58.000 It's a terrible feeling.

02:51:00.000 It's a terrible feeling to know that there's people out there that didn't do anything wrong, or at least didn't do the crime that they've been accused of, and they're gonna be locked in jail for the rest of their life.

02:51:11.000 And that this is the system that we rely on.

02:51:13.000 And this is when you call the police, when you, you know, you see someone getting tried and convicted, and you sleep well knowing that, oh good, they got the good guy, they got the bad guy, they got the right person, that it's not right.

02:51:24.000 Well, listen, Another call to action would be, if you get called to jury duty, this notion that there is a presumption of innocence only exists if you breathe life into it.

02:51:36.000 Absolutely.

02:51:36.000 Do not believe the headline when you hear so-and-so committed the crime.

02:51:42.000 Someone was arrested.

02:51:45.000 Believe they're innocent.

02:51:47.000 Actually start there.

02:51:48.000 The question that I get the most traction from is I ask people during jury selection, You know, I just picked a jury in a case that is not so sensational but for the media.

02:52:03.000 It was one of the so-called Varsity Blues cases, alright?

02:52:08.000 You've heard of these cases where the parents were accused of...

02:52:14.000 Yeah, bribing the universities to get their students in.

02:52:17.000 Oh, that's like the California case?

02:52:20.000 Yeah, the Lori Loughlin case.

02:52:22.000 Well, this guy was accused in Boston of putting $180,000 in a brown paper bag and giving it to the tennis coach so that his daughter could get in, fake a shoulder injury, and not be on the tennis team.

02:52:35.000 Now, you have the tide of a tidal wave of media.

02:52:43.000 Lori Loughlin was accused of it.

02:52:46.000 You know, a bunch of famous people.

02:52:48.000 And those cases were all about their kids never played sports.

02:52:51.000 It was all like phony pictures.

02:52:54.000 And this guy's daughter actually played tennis.

02:52:56.000 She played at a prep school.

02:52:59.000 He had gone to school and played college tennis with the tennis coach of Georgetown.

02:53:07.000 They went to college together.

02:53:10.000 Now this guy's the coach of Georgetown.

02:53:12.000 They go out.

02:53:14.000 They are at an alumni event.

02:53:16.000 And he says, my daughter's actually a pretty good tennis player. 0.84

02:53:19.000 She tries her ass off. 1.00

02:53:21.000 Georgetown is a private school. 0.96

02:53:23.000 It's a private business.

02:53:24.000 One of their criteria for getting people into the school...

02:53:33.000 Right.

02:53:50.000 The tennis coach made something like $50,000 a year.

02:53:54.000 The basketball coach made millions of dollars a year.

02:53:56.000 They were allowed to get tips?

02:53:58.000 Gratuities, yes.

02:53:59.000 So someone could give them $180,000?

02:54:02.000 Yes.

02:54:02.000 That's legal?

02:54:03.000 So, it was legal. 0.99

02:54:04.000 That seems a little fucked. 0.99

02:54:05.000 Right. 1.00

02:54:06.000 Does that seem a little fucked? 0.99

02:54:07.000 Cash in a brown paper bag. 0.98

02:54:09.000 That's legal?

02:54:09.000 Yes.

02:54:10.000 You could give them a gratuity.

02:54:11.000 Sounds like...

02:54:12.000 It might have tax implications, but...

02:54:14.000 Alright, so my question during jury selection, Roy Black, one of the best criminal defense attorneys of our time.

02:54:21.000 He defended William Kennedy Smith.

02:54:24.000 He's from Florida too.

02:54:25.000 Yeah, he's from Florida.

02:54:26.000 He's a very famous criminal defense attorney.

02:54:29.000 He said, you pick the jury.

02:54:30.000 In federal court.

02:54:32.000 Here's somebody whose freedom is on the line, and I am forced to rush.

02:54:37.000 Can I ask a question?

02:54:39.000 Please let me ask. 0.99

02:54:40.000 The judge won't let me ask a single fucking question. 0.98

02:54:43.000 So finally, she asks them, how many of you read about the Varsity Blues or the college admissions scandal cases? 0.99

02:54:51.000 And 87 of the 92 jurors, I'm not making the numbers up, raised their hands.

02:54:57.000 And she said, do you have anything, any follow-up?

02:55:00.000 I said, yeah, I want to know what they read.

02:55:02.000 Go ahead, ask.

02:55:04.000 We're finishing today, though, this race to finish.

02:55:07.000 So my first question was, please tell me what you read.

02:55:11.000 All right, well, I read that, like, the woman from Full House brought, I said, okay.

02:55:17.000 Given that my client was charged with essentially the same thing, isn't it fair to say that he's probably starting off a little bit behind?

02:55:28.000 You think he probably did something.

02:55:31.000 Right after telling the judge they could be fair and impartial, she would turn it over to me.

02:55:37.000 And I would say, don't you think they could tell me what you read?

02:55:40.000 How did it make you feel?

02:55:41.000 And the very first perspective juror said, it made me feel like they're all a pack of criminals.

02:55:47.000 Who bribes their way in?

02:55:49.000 And she told me this story about how she tried out for her college volleyball team.

02:55:53.000 And she said, I had to work my ass off to get there.

02:55:56.000 And I said, isn't it fair then to say that this might not be the case for you?

02:55:59.000 She said, you know, now that you put it like that, I'm not quite sure that I could be fair.

02:56:06.000 This happened nine times in a row.

02:56:08.000 The judge was pissed at me.

02:56:10.000 I didn't care.

02:56:12.000 Because I'm showing that...

02:56:14.000 If you ask someone, can you be fair and impartial, 99 times out of 100 in a room full of strangers, they'll say yes.

02:56:21.000 No one wants to view themselves as unfair, especially in a room full of strangers.

02:56:26.000 They don't want to be viewed by others as unfair.

02:56:28.000 I'm giving you one little piece of the criminal.

02:56:32.000 And I was hailed in the legal community as some sort of hero for getting individual jury selection.

02:56:38.000 The guy got acquitted.

02:56:41.000 And it was the only Varsity Blues case where there was an acquittal.

02:56:44.000 I give Roy Black the credit for getting him acquitted.

02:56:47.000 All I did was my job.

02:56:48.000 I just helped get a jury that was the fairest possible.

02:56:52.000 But give that some thought as a closing thought.

02:56:56.000 You are charged with a crime in federal court in this country 999 times out of 1000. That jury will be picked in one day and the lawyers won't get to ask a single question.

02:57:11.000 Why?

02:57:12.000 Because federal judges just said, you know what?

02:57:15.000 That's the way we're going to do it.

02:57:16.000 There's no law.

02:57:18.000 There's no statute that says that.

02:57:20.000 And a lot of lawyers don't want to stand up to the judge and say, you're violating my client's right to a Sixth Amendment right to a fair and impartial jury.

02:57:32.000 Part of a fair trial subsumed within that right.

02:57:36.000 How do you get a fair trial if we don't know whether the jurors are fair?

02:57:40.000 If you don't know what their occupation is, if you don't know what their spouse's occupation, all these things that inform decision-making.

02:57:47.000 So I think it's also incumbent on lawyers to be able to not worry about pissing off judges so much and be more interested in protecting your client's rights and standing up for their rights.

02:57:58.000 The conviction rate should not be 99% in federal court, if we really have the presumption of innocence.

02:58:04.000 I didn't make that number up.

02:58:05.000 That's the conviction rate in federal court.

02:58:08.000 That sounds like Russia.

02:58:10.000 Isn't that wild?

02:58:11.000 Because that's one of the things they said about Brittany Griner. 1.00

02:58:13.000 They were saying, like, well, you know, it's really bad because 99% of the people that get convicted or that get accused become convicted.

02:58:21.000 And we're like, oh, what a bad court system they have over in Russia.

02:58:25.000 If that's exact same...

02:58:27.000 98, 99% in most federal jurisdictions. 0.99

02:58:29.000 That's fucking crazy. 0.99

02:58:29.000 Yep, it is. 0.99

02:58:30.000 Because we don't really presume people innocent.

02:58:33.000 We assume they're guilty.

02:58:36.000 Let's wrap this up.

02:58:38.000 Derek, you are an admirable and inspirational person.

02:58:40.000 And I really appreciate you being here.

02:58:42.000 And I really appreciate your story.

02:58:44.000 And I think it means a lot to people.

02:58:46.000 I think...

02:58:46.000 What you've done is incredible, and the impact, just the millions of people that are going to listen to us talk here, it's going to have a profound impact on people.

02:58:57.000 And people like you really do make a difference.

02:58:59.000 Really, really do make a difference. 1.00

02:59:01.000 And Josh, you're the fucking man. 0.99

02:59:04.000 I love you to death. 1.00

02:59:05.000 Yeah, I love you back.

02:59:06.000 And I'll second that emotion.

02:59:08.000 I'm inspired by you every day, brother.

02:59:10.000 I'm excited for the journey that lies ahead.

02:59:13.000 Free Bruce Bryant.

02:59:14.000 Sign the petition.

02:59:15.000 Yes.

02:59:16.000 And, you know, anything you could do to support these cases, it does make a difference.

02:59:20.000 Tell people where to go in terms of, like, where they can contribute.

02:59:23.000 What is a good place to start?

02:59:25.000 Is it InnocenceProject.org?

02:59:27.000 Is that the website?

02:59:28.000 No, I'm not here on behalf of the Innocence Project.

02:59:30.000 I think that what really needs, because I'm branching out on my own, I think that if you contact me on Instagram, dubin.josh, we can give you the details on our criminal justice reform organization,

02:59:49.000 but a great place to start would be the Midwest Innocence Project.

02:59:54.000 The Midwest Innocence Project, the executive director is someone by the name of Tricia Bushnell.

02:59:59.000 She does remarkable work.

03:00:01.000 That's a great place to start.

03:00:02.000 Do you have anyone to direct people to?

03:00:05.000 I would say family and friends of the wrongly convicted.

03:00:09.000 Brooklyn for private organization as well.

03:00:12.000 And we're going to announce something in the months to come, man.

03:00:15.000 We want y'all to know that you're going to be doing some good work.

03:00:17.000 And I want to thank you for having us, man.

03:00:19.000 I'm really inspired by the work that you do.

03:00:21.000 And Josh, of course, I want to thank you for giving me this opportunity, man, to do what I love to do, man.

03:00:26.000 Well, when you guys can announce, please come back.

03:00:27.000 We'll do this again.

03:00:28.000 We'll love it.

03:00:29.000 And we're committed to doing this on a regular basis, you and I. I love it, man.

03:00:32.000 I can't thank you enough.

03:00:33.000 I can't thank you enough for either.

03:00:35.000 Thank you.

03:00:35.000 Thank you, everybody.

03:00:36.000 All right.

03:00:37.000 Bye, everybody.

03:00:37.000 Bye.

The Joe Rogan Experience - August 17, 2022

Joe Rogan Experience #1858 - Josh Dubin & Derrick Hamilton

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