The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #2096 - Josh Dubin & Sheldon Johnson

00:00:01.000 Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!

00:00:04.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.

00:00:06.000 Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

00:00:12.000 Okay.

00:00:13.000 Mr. Dubin, good to see you again, sir.

00:00:16.000 Mr. Rogan.

00:00:16.000 Always, always a pleasure.

00:00:18.000 Introduce your friend.

00:00:20.000 This is my friend, my client, my brother, Sheldon Johnson.

00:00:27.000 I figured we'd do something a little bit different.

00:00:31.000 Typically, the person sitting to my right is someone that was wrongfully convicted.

00:00:37.000 So I don't want to bury the headline.

00:00:40.000 Sheldon is guilty.

00:00:44.000 And I thought it would be...

00:00:47.000 A real interesting conversation to learn his background, learn about his upbringing, learn about the crime that he committed, and hear the sentence he got,

00:01:03.000 which...

00:01:05.000 I don't want to shade it and inject my opinion.

00:01:09.000 I have a strong one, but it's pretty astounding how he was treated by the system.

00:01:18.000 I think that there's a real interesting twist that happens at his sentencing.

00:01:24.000 And I know I've said this before, and it probably sounds repetitive, but another miracle sitting to my right, just like a I'm going to throw your life away.

00:01:52.000 And on a second offense, his first offense being a gun possession charge.

00:01:59.000 So I will say this, that he receives a sentence that far eclipses a sentence that would be commonly doled out for murder or manslaughter.

00:02:11.000 So with that, here's Sheldon.

00:02:16.000 Sheldon, how long have you been out for?

00:02:18.000 Going on nine months.

00:02:20.000 I got out May 4th.

00:02:22.000 And you were in for 25?

00:02:24.000 25 years and five months.

00:02:28.000 For two stitches.

00:02:30.000 Two stitches.

00:02:32.000 Jesus.

00:02:33.000 But one of the things that always struck me about Sheldon was I didn't know him.

00:02:41.000 And I got a call from these two remarkable attorneys at an organization called the Center for Appellate Litigation, Barbara Zolot and Allison Haupt, who had been working on this case for a long time.

00:02:55.000 And they called me and Derek Hamilton and said, you know, we know you're working on some stuff with the Manhattan District Attorney's Office.

00:03:03.000 We have this case that has sort of hit a snag.

00:03:07.000 I want you to take a look at it and see if you could help us.

00:03:13.000 And I called Barbara back and said, I think that there's a mistake here because it says that he was sentenced to 50 years. 0.62

00:03:23.000 I mean, that's no bullshit. 0.64

00:03:24.000 I could not believe what I was reading. 0.60

00:03:26.000 And then I read about what Sheldon had accomplished while in prison.

00:03:31.000 And then his earliest date of release was, I think, 20...

00:03:35.000 2049. And he had already served 25 years.

00:03:40.000 So I was just blown away by the level of accomplishment and the mental wherewithal that he possessed to accomplish what he did while incarcerated.

00:03:57.000 And then the path he's taken in the eight months since he's been out.

00:04:03.000 We talk about on these episodes, how do you make change happen?

00:04:07.000 He's living it and making it happen.

00:04:10.000 So I thought it would be just fascinating to go through, like I said, his life, how he got to where he was, what his thoughts are and our thoughts are on the sentence he received, why that happens too often to people of color.

00:04:28.000 And I know there's one thing I want to say, and then I'm going to shut up and really let Sheldon talk and you talk.

00:04:35.000 I get this a lot.

00:04:37.000 Why are you always bringing up race when you talk about the system?

00:04:42.000 And my response to that is...

00:04:46.000 If you don't talk about how it impacts the system, even for people that have been found guilty, it's like having a conversation about President Biden and ignoring the very obvious apparent cognitive deficiencies he has. 0.99

00:05:06.000 It would be like talking about Donald Trump and not recognizing that he seems like an unhinged lunatic.

00:05:15.000 It would be like talking about Kamala Harris and ignoring that she didn't do much to advance criminal justice reform. 0.89

00:05:23.000 You have to confront it.

00:05:24.000 It's there.

00:05:26.000 Is it that all people that get wrongfully convicted are people of color?

00:05:31.000 No, but most of them.

00:05:33.000 Is it that all people of color get disparate sentences?

00:05:36.000 Oh, absolutely.

00:05:39.000 So that's why I thought that this is an important conversation to have.

00:05:44.000 And getting to know Sheldon, just thought he has a remarkable story to tell and a perspective on On his circumstances, the system, and he's someone that's taken responsibility for what he did and I think is a living example of what can happen if we think long and hard about if someone's life is worth just throwing away and putting behind bars so that they can rot in a dank cell because he would have been 70 years old when

00:06:14.000 he got out way past his life expectancy.

00:06:18.000 You know, one of the things that's happened through all of our conversations that we've had on the show Is it highlights how insanely broken the criminal justice system is and How little oversight there is and how few people are looking at these individual cases and that you can have one judge who does what they did to you and No one's looking.

00:06:43.000 No one cares.

00:06:44.000 No one pays attention and until someone like you goes in and starts combing over this and then Coming up with a strategy to actually apply real justice or at least get someone out. 0.97

00:07:00.000 I mean, the only way to apply real justice is to have a fucking time machine, right? 0.95

00:07:04.000 But it's broken. 0.97

00:07:07.000 I mean, it's so broken and it seems so overwhelmed and the root cause of it is never addressed.

00:07:16.000 The root cause of, I mean, I've said it ad nauseum, but I'll say it again. 0.93

00:07:22.000 Where the fuck did we come up with a hundred and whatever billion dollars to send to Ukraine, and we don't have any money to try to do something about these insanely impoverished, crime-ridden, 0.98

00:07:37.000 gang-ridden, drug-ridden communities? 0.99

00:07:40.000 We don't do anything?

00:07:42.000 We have nothing?

00:07:44.000 I mean, this is my take on this whole make America great again thing.

00:07:48.000 You want to make America great again?

00:07:50.000 Make it so there's less losers. 0.99

00:07:52.000 Make it so that more people have a fucking chance. 0.98

00:07:55.000 The idea that everyone starts on the same line. 0.94

00:07:58.000 I mean, I'm not talking about equality of outcome.

00:08:03.000 That's not possible.

00:08:04.000 But equality of opportunity is possible.

00:08:08.000 That's a possible goal.

00:08:10.000 And at least we could advance that.

00:08:12.000 At least we could do something to just change the course of who knows how many people's lives. 0.98

00:08:21.000 And we don't do a fucking thing about it. 0.92

00:08:23.000 I mean, we're looking at each other because we just had lunch before we came. 0.98

00:08:27.000 It's like the precise conversation that we had. 1.00

00:08:31.000 I told you this is a motherfucker that gets it. 1.00

00:08:34.000 Oh, I don't. 1.00

00:08:35.000 It just makes no sense to me.

00:08:37.000 It makes no sense to me, and it's not a subject of any presidential debates.

00:08:41.000 It's not a subject of anybody who's running for Congress or running for Senate.

00:08:45.000 We have to fix this.

00:08:46.000 This is a problem that's been going on for decades and decades, back through Jim Crow, back all the way to slavery, the same communities, and we don't do anything? 0.67

00:08:56.000 Pull that a little closer.

00:08:57.000 Redlining, everything.

00:08:59.000 Pull that mic up a little bit.

00:09:01.000 Yeah, that's good.

00:09:02.000 That's good?

00:09:02.000 Yeah, that's good.

00:09:04.000 I mean, it's wild.

00:09:05.000 It really is wild.

00:09:07.000 And, you know, the race part of it is a major factor.

00:09:14.000 It's a major factor.

00:09:16.000 And it's a fact that it gets ignored when people start talking about racism, systemic racism in the country.

00:09:21.000 Talk about sentencing.

00:09:22.000 How come that's not talked about?

00:09:23.000 Yeah, well, that's a vestige of slavery, segregation.

00:09:30.000 Jim Crow, redlining, everything.

00:09:33.000 Exercising your right to a jury trial and being punished twice.

00:09:37.000 Yeah, it's hard to know where to pick up because we just had this conversation.

00:09:42.000 But you're, you know, look.

00:09:45.000 Well, let's preface the episode by saying this.

00:09:50.000 We are doing something about it.

00:09:52.000 I keep telling you that this forum keeps paying dividends.

00:09:56.000 We are making progress.

00:09:59.000 We are opening people's minds.

00:10:01.000 I'm getting letters from prosecutors.

00:10:03.000 I'm getting letters from sheriffs.

00:10:05.000 I got a letter from a sheriff in Oregon last week, and he sent me a badge and said, I want to show you how committed I am to trying to make change happen.

00:10:17.000 And it was from this show.

00:10:19.000 So we're doing it.

00:10:20.000 We're addressing it.

00:10:21.000 We're making it happen.

00:10:22.000 Why politicians don't...

00:10:24.000 What drives someone to want to get into politics these days is for a different psychiatrist.

00:10:36.000 I have no clue what the allure is, but there's such a swirl of...

00:10:42.000 Ego and power struggle and divided loyalties.

00:10:45.000 I can't even wrap my head around it.

00:10:47.000 But, you know, we're doing it.

00:10:49.000 We're helping.

00:10:50.000 We got to do it grain of sand by grain of sand until we have a sandcastle.

00:10:55.000 So that's what we're doing.

00:10:56.000 So I do think we're making a difference.

00:10:59.000 But, you know, it's crazy because Sheldon and I are the same exact age.

00:11:05.000 And we didn't know that until we were on our way down here.

00:11:07.000 Four days apart.

00:11:08.000 Yep.

00:11:08.000 And when we flew down, it was the first time he'd ever been on an airplane.

00:11:17.000 What was that like? 0.96

00:11:18.000 Fucking weird, right? 0.97

00:11:19.000 Nah, it was... 0.96

00:11:21.000 I actually loved it.

00:11:22.000 I was very excited.

00:11:25.000 I'm kind of like an adrenaline...

00:11:26.000 I like the adrenaline rush.

00:11:29.000 Just the speed of it and just the whole idea of just...

00:11:33.000 You know, I had this analogy in my head when I was up in the clouds and I'm looking down and I said to myself, I said, I just came from the bowels of hell.

00:11:44.000 Spending 25 years in prison and now I'm in the sky above the clouds in the heavens headed to a destination to talk about change and to talk about all of the things that brought me to this place today.

00:12:02.000 And, you know, the conditions in which I grew up and, you know, how social conditions play a role in the decisions that we make.

00:12:10.000 Or the lack of achievements or opportunities, like Joe just said a couple of minutes ago, you know, those opportunities are very important.

00:12:17.000 And being able to start that line where everybody is not necessarily equitable, but, you know, everybody has that same opportunity.

00:12:27.000 You have a chance.

00:12:28.000 You have a chance.

00:12:29.000 Yeah.

00:12:30.000 A real chance.

00:12:31.000 Well, so tell us about your upbringing.

00:12:35.000 So...

00:12:36.000 I'm a CODA. My mother's deaf.

00:12:38.000 My father's deaf.

00:12:39.000 My sister's deaf. 0.97

00:12:40.000 My aunt is deaf.

00:12:41.000 I grew up in a deaf household.

00:12:43.000 What's a CODA? A CODA is a child of deaf adults. 0.99

00:12:46.000 That's crazy.

00:12:46.000 This is the second podcast in a row I'm doing with someone who's like that.

00:12:50.000 Moshe Kasher, who was on yesterday, his parents are deaf.

00:12:53.000 He signs, and he had to translate for his mother his whole life.

00:12:58.000 Same with me.

00:12:59.000 So as a child growing up, my mother's also white.

00:13:02.000 My grandmother came to America in 1918 from a boat from Sicily.

00:13:06.000 My father is Nigerian.

00:13:08.000 He's African. 0.59

00:13:09.000 So there was always this contrast where...

00:13:12.000 I wasn't really sure where I belonged at.

00:13:15.000 Kids are cruel.

00:13:17.000 So growing up, kids would say, oh, you're a mulatto, you're a half-breed, and oh, you're adopted.

00:13:24.000 And for a long time, I kind of suffered as a child with an identity crisis, not really knowing where I fell at on either side, what my identity was, who I was supposed to be.

00:13:34.000 And my father, I'm also a product of intergenerational incarceration.

00:13:39.000 My father was incarcerated when I was young at an early age.

00:13:43.000 He did about 15 years.

00:13:45.000 I was incarcerated.

00:13:47.000 My grandfather was incarcerated.

00:13:49.000 My great-grandfather was a slave.

00:13:51.000 And my son killed somebody when he was 12 years old.

00:13:57.000 So there's this cycle of incarceration based on the conditions, the social conditions, and where I come from.

00:14:03.000 I grew up in New York City, Harlem, on the borderline between the east side and the west side on Fifth Avenue.

00:14:09.000 You hit Fifth Avenue, you're like, oh, wow, you live in a nice place.

00:14:13.000 Okay.

00:14:15.000 Crack era Harlem, 80s, 90s.

00:14:18.000 You know, and I grew up, you know, protecting my mother, interpreting for my mother.

00:14:22.000 My mother could hardly ever keep a job because of her handicap. 1.00

00:14:26.000 There was always somebody that would replace her.

00:14:29.000 A lot of people saw my mother as a victim.

00:14:31.000 She was a white woman on 112th Street in Lenox Avenue, an all-black community.

00:14:38.000 So as a child, I grew up protecting my mother.

00:14:42.000 So I never really...

00:14:43.000 I feel like, in hindsight, I didn't really have an opportunity to be a child.

00:14:48.000 I had to grow up and be a man early in my life in order to be able to protect my mother.

00:14:53.000 And a lot of people didn't even know that I could hear.

00:14:57.000 So there were times where I would be standing there with my mother and people would just be making all type of random comments and just disrespectful, you know, just hateful stuff.

00:15:07.000 And I would sit there as a kid just kind of like looking up like, like, dude, I can like hear you.

00:15:14.000 So, you know, I think my life took a significant turn when I was in the fifth grade.

00:15:22.000 I was always pretty smart, but, you know, as being smart and growing up in these neighborhoods, you know, the school systems are not really equipped to handle the number of children that's coming through.

00:15:34.000 So you have one teacher and like 30 kids.

00:15:37.000 And me just being who I was, I was always pretty smart.

00:15:40.000 And when I was finished with my work, I would kind of just clown around.

00:15:43.000 I had this teacher...

00:15:45.000 In the fifth grade, my math teacher, and what he would do was he, when you acted out in the classroom, he would call you to the front of the classroom.

00:15:52.000 He had a stack of rulers.

00:15:53.000 Today he would be arrested.

00:15:55.000 Back then, but back then it was permissible.

00:15:58.000 It was considered as, you know, just punishing kids.

00:16:01.000 And he would call you to the front of the classroom.

00:16:03.000 He would make you stick out your hand.

00:16:05.000 And he would put salt.

00:16:06.000 He had a big salt shaker that he kept on his desk.

00:16:09.000 And he would sprinkle salt in your palm.

00:16:11.000 And he would smack the ruler into your hand.

00:16:13.000 And the salt would kind of embed itself into your palm.

00:16:16.000 It would kind of have like a little burning sensation.

00:16:19.000 So...

00:16:22.000 One day I decided that I was tired of it.

00:16:24.000 And he called me to the front of the classroom, and I put my hand out, and when he swung, I moved my hand.

00:16:30.000 And he almost fell over.

00:16:31.000 He chased me around the classroom.

00:16:32.000 I ran out into the hallway.

00:16:34.000 He chased me into the hallway.

00:16:36.000 I grabbed a fire extinguisher off the wall, and I sprayed him until he fell.

00:16:40.000 That was my reaction, too.

00:16:42.000 I was like, he sounded like he deserved it.

00:16:43.000 And he was cursing.

00:16:44.000 Oh, man.

00:16:47.000 But long story short, I sat in the back of the police car for three hours as they determined my fate as a 10-year-old.

00:16:54.000 Put me in handcuffs and everything.

00:16:56.000 And I had a counselor at that time.

00:16:59.000 And I guess she convinced them to send me to a hospital.

00:17:03.000 So they sent me to Mount Sinai Hospital, psychiatric unit.

00:17:08.000 And I remember them sticking me with a needle, thoracene.

00:17:11.000 Ten-year-old kid, man.

00:17:12.000 Just, you know, just...

00:17:14.000 Jesus Christ.

00:17:15.000 In a straitjacket, being escorted to a hospital, and they stick me with a needle.

00:17:19.000 And so for months, from Mount Sinai, I went to Metropolitan, and I attempted to escape from Metropolitan, and they sent me to a more secure area.

00:17:30.000 What's Metropolitan?

00:17:31.000 Metropolitan Hospital.

00:17:32.000 It's also a psych ward.

00:17:33.000 So why did they send you to a psych ward for that?

00:17:37.000 I guess they, you know, I was considered as a young black kid who's out of control with behavioral issues.

00:17:44.000 And, you know, I'm not sure exactly the gist of the conversation that took place.

00:17:48.000 But from what I've gathered now in the future is that my mother felt that she would rather see me in a hospital than to see me in a jail.

00:17:58.000 Because it was either that or they told her that they were going to send me to Sparford.

00:18:03.000 So I went through that, just being subject to just a whole bunch of different medications.

00:18:10.000 Meloril, Haldor, Lithium, Cojitin.

00:18:13.000 And then they transferred me to Pleasantville.

00:18:16.000 From Pleasantville, I went to Hawthorne.

00:18:18.000 And I'm going to be honest, this is where I learned how to become a criminal, because prior to that, I was just a kid.

00:18:24.000 They put me in this place where, you know, I was around older kids and these kids were really, like, about their life.

00:18:31.000 There was stuff, there was really bad stuff happening.

00:18:34.000 If you look up Hawthorne Cedar Knolls to this day, it's been closed for allegations of sex trafficking and child abuse.

00:18:41.000 Just so, because we know it because we're from New York, but those are juvenile detention facilities.

00:18:46.000 They're like group homes.

00:18:47.000 Yeah, they're like juvenile detention facilities.

00:18:50.000 So they consider me as a person.

00:18:53.000 They put what they call a pin on you, and it's a person of interest, a person in need of assistance.

00:18:59.000 And they put you in these places, and they just kind of just leave you there.

00:19:03.000 So I finally got out of there.

00:19:05.000 I went through a lot there.

00:19:06.000 I was molested by a counselor.

00:19:10.000 And I finally escaped from there.

00:19:14.000 And I just went back into the streets at 13 years old.

00:19:17.000 And I just was fending for myself.

00:19:20.000 I was out in the streets.

00:19:21.000 So it was three years of that?

00:19:22.000 Three years of that.

00:19:23.000 For one instance.

00:19:25.000 For one instance. 1.00

00:19:25.000 Where a guy's trying to hit you with a fucking roar. 1.00

00:19:28.000 Yes. 1.00

00:19:30.000 Wow.

00:19:32.000 And, you know, I always look back and I see that as a trajectory in my life that just changed everything.

00:19:38.000 I went from, you know, it changed me as a person.

00:19:41.000 I lost my innocence.

00:19:42.000 I felt like after I left that place, I was a darker person because of the things that I saw and the things that I went through.

00:19:51.000 So I come back and we're talking about this is 1988. Crack Arrow Harlem. 0.77

00:19:59.000 You know, you got kids 13, 14 years old making a thousand dollars every two, three days.

00:20:05.000 Selling drugs, looking out on the corners.

00:20:07.000 This was like real stuff.

00:20:09.000 You see New Jack City.

00:20:10.000 New Jack City was for real back then.

00:20:12.000 The people who grew up after that do not understand pre-crack and post-crack.

00:20:18.000 Oh yeah, big difference.

00:20:19.000 It was wild.

00:20:21.000 Devastated my community.

00:20:22.000 It was wild. 0.99

00:20:25.000 And how the fuck did that happen? 0.99

00:20:27.000 Like, how the fuck did that happen? 0.99

00:20:30.000 When you go through the whole story of it, and you go through the, like, I mean, come on, man. 0.99

00:20:34.000 Like, I had Freeway Ricky Ross on here twice.

00:20:37.000 Uh-oh.

00:20:38.000 I ain't gotta say it.

00:20:39.000 He said it.

00:20:39.000 So last night, we were talking about this, and we were talking about, like, What do we want to accomplish today?

00:20:48.000 And last night when we were talking, he's like, well, you know the CIA brought crack into...

00:20:57.000 I said, you might want to stay away from that, but here we are. 0.99

00:20:59.000 The fuck out of staying away from that, man. 0.97

00:21:01.000 My friend Michael Rupert, rest in peace, he was the guy who stood in front of the city council on television and exposed it. 0.99

00:21:09.000 He was a former Los Angeles narcotics officer.

00:21:12.000 And he said, I personally witnessed the CIA selling drugs in the inner cities of Los Angeles.

00:21:21.000 And that was the Freeway Ricky Ross situation where they were using that money to fund the Contras versus the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

00:21:29.000 It's really not as crazy because last night, Sheldon's telling me about it, and I spent a long night into the early morning hours reading some of what you told me to read.

00:21:43.000 It's really not in dispute that it happened.

00:21:46.000 Not in dispute at all.

00:21:48.000 Well, I'm going to let Sheldon tell.

00:21:51.000 What blew me away about it was that Not only was it known how addictive it was, it was also known how easy it was to reproduce the process.

00:22:02.000 And how much cheaper it became.

00:22:05.000 Yeah.

00:22:06.000 Not only that, the difference is in sentencing.

00:22:08.000 The difference is in sentencing.

00:22:09.000 That's the wildest thing.

00:22:11.000 One to five is like...

00:22:13.000 One to five ratio.

00:22:13.000 Yeah.

00:22:14.000 And then you had the Nelson, the Rockefeller drug laws that came into effect that required mandatory minimums and et cetera, et cetera.

00:22:23.000 So when we talk about social conditions and we talk about...

00:22:27.000 Situations that were created for the purpose of what?

00:22:32.000 You know, you separated families.

00:22:35.000 You had mothers and really grandmothers who had to take care of the children because the mothers were in the streets smoking crack and the fathers were either in the streets using drugs, selling drugs, or in prison with astronomical sentences and removed from the family structure in totality.

00:22:55.000 Because of these conditions.

00:22:57.000 So now you have the child just kind of left to fend for itself.

00:23:00.000 And we're not even talking about the children who were born that were subject to mothers who, you know, the crack baby, right? 0.96

00:23:09.000 Yeah.

00:23:10.000 And it's just, I mean, the list just goes on and on when we talk about social conditions and we talk about the long-term effects of These conditions and how it produces behavior.

00:23:21.000 Like Ivan Pavlov, one of my favorite psychologists, he talks about stimulus and a response, right?

00:23:27.000 A classical condition.

00:23:28.000 So you introduce the stimulus and then you have a response, which equals to the condition that we see.

00:23:37.000 And you're also talking about what we were talking about earlier.

00:23:40.000 You're still dealing with these communities that are still suffering from segregation, Jim Crow, and then they throw crack in it, like just gasoline on a fire.

00:23:50.000 It's crazy because we've had this conversation in the abstract We've had this conversation, you know, about this very subject, and then the more I got to know Sheldon and his story, I said, well, here was someone that not only lived it, and I want to make clear one thing that...

00:24:09.000 What has always struck me about Sheldon is his vulnerability but also his honesty.

00:24:16.000 He's like, he'll be the first to tell you out of the gate, I did it.

00:24:21.000 I could have made better choices.

00:24:23.000 He's not asking for a pass based on his conditions.

00:24:27.000 What he's always said to me was, I just want people to consider How it may have impacted me.

00:24:34.000 So, and to me, you just can't ignore it.

00:24:38.000 It doesn't say, well, poor Sheldon.

00:24:40.000 I think that because, I guess, you know, I know him, the human being.

00:24:47.000 So, I like...

00:24:50.000 I trip out when people are like, anybody that murders or robs or does it, lock them up and throw away the key.

00:24:58.000 I always feel like, well, look, why don't you...

00:25:02.000 Explain to me how you have gotten to know somebody that has been brought up in different conditions than you were.

00:25:12.000 How long have you sat and listened to them?

00:25:15.000 How long have you considered how that might have impacted them and compared it to the conditions you grew up in?

00:25:22.000 How many people like him have you gotten to know?

00:25:24.000 So again, I'm trying to walk a fine line between sounding preachy And just saying, let's just consider the circumstances in which he was born.

00:25:36.000 We're both 48. I don't want to get into, you know, my family, you know, struggled financially but had different opportunities.

00:25:47.000 My mom was a schoolteacher.

00:25:49.000 My dad was a knock-around Brooklyn guy that did what he could do to, you know, provide for his family and wasn't always great at it, but he was a wonderful man.

00:25:58.000 But I can't ignore that I had different opportunities than Sheldon did.

00:26:03.000 So when he gets out and then he arrives back on the street, you know, I don't think anyone's going to argue with the fact that you're impacted and molded from 10 to 13 and forward, 13 to 18,

00:26:18.000 by who are the people you're around, what are the conditions you're born in.

00:26:22.000 And I never even went back to school after that.

00:26:25.000 So I'm talking about after the fifth grade, I went back to school maybe for a week when I was 17 to Washington Irving High School.

00:26:33.000 I went to school for a week and I just dropped back out.

00:26:35.000 I just saw no purpose in going to school.

00:26:39.000 And I really didn't go back to school and really educate myself until I went to prison.

00:26:45.000 Today I'm pursuing a Master's in Human Services.

00:26:48.000 Before we get to your Master's, why don't you explain until you get back at 13?

00:26:53.000 So I get back into my community at 13 and I'm just kind of...

00:26:56.000 Not only am I trying to wean myself from all of the narcotics that have been pumped into me for these last three years.

00:27:08.000 I'm talking about I gained so much weight.

00:27:10.000 I went from a slim kid...

00:27:13.000 To being fat because of the medications that they were giving.

00:27:15.000 So what are they giving you?

00:27:16.000 They were giving me Haldor, Lithium, Thorazine, Melaril, and another medication called Cogentin.

00:27:25.000 Those are the ones that I'm aware of.

00:27:28.000 And I'm talking about I was just like heavily sedated.

00:27:31.000 And that's what they do to all the kids.

00:27:33.000 And that's what they did to most of the kids, yeah.

00:27:34.000 They just want to keep them calm and quiet.

00:27:36.000 Just keep them calm and quiet.

00:27:38.000 Keep them calm and quiet.

00:27:40.000 And are they giving you any counseling when you're in there?

00:27:44.000 Are they talking?

00:27:46.000 It's superficial.

00:27:48.000 It's not really...

00:27:49.000 You know, you got a bunch of kids who sit around in a group.

00:27:52.000 And, you know, they do a feelings check.

00:27:54.000 But the counselors really...

00:27:55.000 As far as I was concerned, the counselors didn't really care.

00:27:58.000 The check, though.

00:27:59.000 Yeah, there was so much going on.

00:28:01.000 The counselors were just there for a check. 1.00

00:28:02.000 There was so much going on that was above and beyond what the counselors could control. 0.97

00:28:08.000 It was just ridiculous. 0.99

00:28:10.000 You had the kids going down into White Plains, breaking into cars, stealing, getting high, going across the campus, having sex with the girls. 0.99

00:28:18.000 It was just insane what was going on.

00:28:21.000 And, you know, I learned.

00:28:24.000 How to become this person.

00:28:26.000 I learned how to survive there.

00:28:28.000 I learned, you know, what it meant to go and steal a Benzie box.

00:28:32.000 Remember the Benzie boxes? 0.83

00:28:33.000 Where you could snatch them right out the car.

00:28:35.000 People used to hide them.

00:28:36.000 I learned how to, you know, break into a car with the older guys and how to take a Benzie box and sell it.

00:28:41.000 So I learned how to survive there.

00:28:43.000 I mean, I've always known how to survive superficially, but from...

00:28:47.000 I just feel like at that point I was put into a place where instead of getting real therapy or real help, I was just kind of put into a place, and I was malleable.

00:29:00.000 I was young, I was impressionable, and this is what I was seeing.

00:29:04.000 These became my role models.

00:29:06.000 These were the guys that I respected, that I looked up to.

00:29:11.000 They were selling drugs.

00:29:13.000 They didn't have a care in the world.

00:29:15.000 They had all of the girls.

00:29:18.000 And ironically, prison in my community was almost like a rite of passage.

00:29:23.000 Right?

00:29:24.000 In my community, when you went to prison and you came back...

00:29:28.000 And you didn't tell on nobody and you were able to hold it down, you know, and word got back to the streets that you didn't get robbed or, you know, you didn't get pumped.

00:29:37.000 People looked at you differently.

00:29:39.000 They treated you differently.

00:29:40.000 I remember when I was 15 years old, I wanted to go to Rikers Island so bad that I lied to the officer.

00:29:47.000 I got arrested for smoking weed.

00:29:50.000 Weed is legal now.

00:29:51.000 But back then, like, weed was a thing.

00:29:54.000 Like, if they saw you smoking weed, that gave them justification to get out, stop you, Take you down to the precinct, run you for warrants and all kind of other stuff.

00:30:01.000 You sat in the bullpens for three, four days before you even got out.

00:30:05.000 And I remember lying to the officer.

00:30:07.000 He said, how old are you?

00:30:08.000 I said, I'm 16. Because I wanted to go to Rikers Island so that I could come back and be around the older guys and tell them, hey, listen, I went and I still got my sneakers, you know, and the girls and everybody just treated you different.

00:30:21.000 And it's really sad.

00:30:23.000 But that was a reality that I was faced with.

00:30:27.000 So I come back, I'm 13, and I'm going through this stuff.

00:30:30.000 My mother's still struggling.

00:30:32.000 She's on SSD, which is Social Security for Disability.

00:30:36.000 My father's in prison.

00:30:40.000 And it's just, I started selling drugs.

00:30:45.000 Guy offered me an opportunity to be a lookout.

00:30:47.000 He said, listen, kid, I just need you, I'm going to give you $75 a day.

00:30:50.000 I just need you to stand on that corner. 1.00

00:30:52.000 And when you see the police car, just yell, oh shit, oh shit. 1.00

00:30:55.000 That was like a little thing. 0.99

00:30:57.000 And I would just stand there and eventually I just slowly moved up the ranks and I became this person that I feel like I was never meant to be.

00:31:05.000 But because of the conditions and because of where I was at and because of what I saw, what I was exposed to, made me into someone else.

00:31:14.000 It turned me into this person that I was never meant to be.

00:31:20.000 When you're in this melting pot of just insanity, you lose sense of what's permissible and what's not and what's impermissible.

00:31:33.000 I'm committing crimes and it just doesn't even matter no more.

00:31:37.000 I was never the guy, you know, to hurt any old people.

00:31:40.000 My era, you know, when you see old people come through, you help them with their bags, and we have respect for our elders.

00:31:45.000 That was something that was always taught to us.

00:31:48.000 Now these kids, it's just, that's a whole other story. 0.74

00:31:52.000 But yeah, I'm just, and I'm committing, and I'm getting arrested for little stupid crimes, driving without a license, standing on a corner, little small petty drug cases, and And I'm just kind of just moving through my life with no purpose. 0.91

00:32:13.000 But I'm providing for my family. 0.85

00:32:17.000 My mother doesn't, you know, at the end of the month, we don't have to worry about just eating grits and cheese no more. 0.96

00:32:21.000 You know, we can eat chicken and Velveeta shells and cheese.

00:32:24.000 You know, and for some people, that's significant.

00:32:27.000 You know, I can buy a couch now.

00:32:29.000 I can buy a real couch that's comfortable.

00:32:31.000 I can buy a TV for my mother.

00:32:33.000 I can, you know, set up her cable the way she can watch HBO. All of these little small things that I wasn't able to do that she couldn't really do for herself after she paid the rent.

00:32:43.000 Was significant.

00:32:45.000 And it made me feel like...

00:32:48.000 I had a purpose.

00:32:49.000 It made me feel like a man, when in all actuality, you know, many of the values and the morals that I adopted growing up were just so warped and so misplaced.

00:32:57.000 Like Scarface, the movie, right?

00:32:58.000 You know, you have this, oh, I don't break my balls in my word for nobody, right?

00:33:03.000 You know, and I remember one time a friend of mine, he came to pick me up, and he was on a run from the cops.

00:33:08.000 He had a warrant out for his arrest.

00:33:09.000 He had a car full of drugs and a car full of guns.

00:33:12.000 And because I gave him my word, I felt like I couldn't back out of the situation.

00:33:17.000 Nothing bad happened, but it's just the idea of sometimes growing up and adopting these values and these morals And you begin to take them on as part of your characteristics.

00:33:30.000 And you end up making really, really bad decisions that can cost you for the rest of your life.

00:33:36.000 Like my son.

00:33:37.000 My son, when he got into a fight with an Asian guy, they called him the Columbia Law Student Killer, right? 0.99

00:33:45.000 He gets into a fight with this Chinese guy.

00:33:48.000 And this is not to take away anything from that man's family.

00:33:51.000 And as a man, as his father, I felt some type of way.

00:33:55.000 But the guy goes into the street and gets hit by a car and he dies.

00:33:59.000 But this is how fast your life can change from just one simple mistake.

00:34:05.000 From one mistake.

00:34:07.000 And I just feel like, you know, a lot of times these conditions are created and there's really no alternatives.

00:34:16.000 I had never been on a plane, like Josh said.

00:34:18.000 I never even thought about going on a plane.

00:34:22.000 So, I'm growing up in this community.

00:34:26.000 My father's gone.

00:34:27.000 My mother's, you know, she's deaf.

00:34:30.000 I ended up having a son.

00:34:32.000 My son was born in 1993. And that just made things, that just exacerbated the issue, right?

00:34:40.000 So now I'm really...

00:34:42.000 What am I going to do now?

00:34:44.000 I have a son.

00:34:45.000 I have someone to look at.

00:34:46.000 And despite how many times I said that I was never going to be who my father was, my actions were actually setting me up to be exactly who my father was and remove me from my son's life.

00:35:01.000 I caught the gun charge that triggered the felony that allowed them to be able to sentence me the way that they did in 1994. I also caught another case.

00:35:14.000 At that time, I was what you call giving out consignment on drugs.

00:35:20.000 Two people in particular I gave consignment to and I ended up getting arrested for a case.

00:35:27.000 And when I sent someone to go pick up the money from them, they kind of just was like, you know, whatever, I'm not paying them.

00:35:36.000 So when I came home, one guy in particular, I ran into him with his girlfriend.

00:35:42.000 Did you get that case got dismissed, right?

00:35:45.000 The gun charge?

00:35:45.000 No, the one that you were away for.

00:35:48.000 You got arrested for something.

00:35:49.000 You're in jail.

00:35:50.000 Yes. 1.00

00:35:51.000 These guys figure since you're in jail, fuck it, we're not gonna pay him. 1.00

00:35:56.000 Yeah, I'm not gonna pay him. 0.99

00:35:56.000 And then the case that you were arrested for got dismissed. 0.99

00:35:59.000 Got dismissed.

00:35:59.000 I gotta quit.

00:36:00.000 So then you come home.

00:36:01.000 So then I come home and, you know, I need my money.

00:36:07.000 I need my money.

00:36:08.000 It's just me being honest.

00:36:10.000 It's just being straight.

00:36:11.000 You know, I gave you something, and we had an understanding that you were going to pay me.

00:36:16.000 And when I came home, when I finally located this particular individual, he had his girlfriend with him.

00:36:23.000 And this guy owed me $5,000 for some drugs that I gave him on consignment.

00:36:28.000 I gave him an eighth of a kilo, which is 125 grams of cocaine.

00:36:36.000 And when I saw him, he had a bunch of jewelry on.

00:36:39.000 He was with his girlfriend.

00:36:40.000 She had a bunch of jewelry on.

00:36:41.000 I said, hey, man.

00:36:44.000 Where's my money at?

00:36:45.000 Oh, yo, I was going to pay you.

00:36:48.000 As far as I was concerned, his jewelry was...

00:36:52.000 We was even.

00:36:54.000 So I robbed him.

00:36:56.000 And I took his jury.

00:36:57.000 And his girlfriend happened to be there and unfortunately she got caught up in the situation.

00:37:04.000 I had a bunch of young guys with me and they robbed her as well. 0.71

00:37:08.000 And he got hit in the head with a gun right here on the side of his head and he got two stitches.

00:37:15.000 And they gave me 25 years for that case.

00:37:17.000 Did you hit him in the head?

00:37:19.000 No.

00:37:20.000 One of the guys that I was with hit him in the head.

00:37:25.000 And he identified me in a photo array, unbeknownst to me.

00:37:30.000 He identified me in a photo array.

00:37:32.000 This guy, you know, as far as I was concerned, he was in the streets just like I was.

00:37:37.000 I didn't really understand that, you know, like I said, we go back to morals and values and principles and how warped they can be, right?

00:37:44.000 In my mind at the time, this is a guy who I gave something to.

00:37:48.000 He's living an illegal life.

00:37:50.000 I'm living an illegal life.

00:37:52.000 So as far as I was concerned at that time, it was fair game.

00:37:56.000 In hindsight, as I moved on and I became more mature and I began to reevaluate myself, I realized how wrong that was.

00:38:03.000 But that was later on.

00:38:05.000 At this time, I committed the crime and I just kept moving.

00:38:10.000 Another guy that I ran into, he also owed me some money.

00:38:13.000 He owed me $7,000 and it kind of went along the same ways.

00:38:16.000 He was selling drugs out of an auto parts store.

00:38:20.000 He was a Spanish guy.

00:38:22.000 I got word that this is where he was at, and he was selling drugs, and I was going to get my money.

00:38:28.000 And the same circumstances kind of ensued.

00:38:31.000 Saw him, hey, what's going on?

00:38:33.000 You know, reading in between the lines and outside the margins without really going into all of the details, I robbed him because he owed me $7,000.

00:38:43.000 Did he get physically hurt?

00:38:45.000 No.

00:38:46.000 He didn't get touched.

00:38:48.000 Got roughed up a little bit, but there was no physical harm.

00:38:54.000 Nothing.

00:38:57.000 Going back to morals and values and principles, right?

00:39:00.000 In my mind, he was fair game.

00:39:02.000 He's selling drugs.

00:39:03.000 I'm selling drugs.

00:39:04.000 You owe me money.

00:39:05.000 I came to take what you have.

00:39:08.000 In that world, that was considered as permissible.

00:39:11.000 These are one of the rules of something that was permissible in that world.

00:39:17.000 Long story short, in December 1997, I get arrested for both cases, really for one of them, for the one with the guy and the girl.

00:39:28.000 And then the other case drops with the auto parts store, the guy that I said they were selling drugs out of the auto parts store.

00:39:37.000 I am in the process of going to court.

00:39:40.000 I'm going back and forth to court.

00:39:41.000 I'm on Rikers Island at the time.

00:39:42.000 It's just crazy on Rikers Island.

00:39:46.000 That's when the gangs was involved.

00:39:49.000 Prior to that, a year before that, I had got involved with the gangs.

00:39:52.000 I was blood.

00:39:54.000 I was a gang member.

00:39:55.000 This is where the cut comes from on my face.

00:39:57.000 I have a bunch of stab marks from just being in those environments and being on Rikers Island and just...

00:40:06.000 Warring with other rival gangs, mostly Latin Kings and Inietas.

00:40:14.000 My final offer before trial was 23 years, which kind of blew me away because my lawyer kept telling me that my maximum sentence was 25 years if I went to trial.

00:40:25.000 So on my mind, it just didn't make no sense to me.

00:40:29.000 Why would I forfeit my rights to an appeal if there's only a two-year difference?

00:40:34.000 I told the judge I would take 15 years right now.

00:40:39.000 I acknowledged that I had made some mistakes and I had done some things that were wrong.

00:40:44.000 And I said, I'll take 15 years right now.

00:40:48.000 He refused to accept my plea offer and I went to trial and I ended up getting 50 years.

00:40:56.000 5-0.

00:40:58.000 So they give you 25 for each case?

00:41:00.000 25 for each case.

00:41:03.000 Consecutive.

00:41:07.000 And I remember blowing trial and just not really understanding what was being there, but it was almost surreal.

00:41:20.000 And I remember when I went and got sentenced and the judge said 50 years now.

00:41:24.000 Mind you, I had a black lawyer, a black judge, and a white prosecutor.

00:41:31.000 And I remember when he said 50 years.

00:41:34.000 He said he went into all of these reasons why he was sentencing me the way that he was sentencing me.

00:41:43.000 There was never no post, there was never no...

00:41:48.000 They're supposed to do a report prior to your sentencing, and it's called a post-supervision interview.

00:41:56.000 Pre-sentencing investigation is called the PSI, pre-sentencing investigation.

00:42:01.000 There was never no pre-sentencing investigation.

00:42:03.000 There was never no mitigating evidence presented on my behalf to, you know, highlight why I may have made some of the decisions that I made.

00:42:12.000 And he just called me a menace to society, and he just gave me 50 years.

00:42:17.000 And I remember when I first got to Downstate, which is a processing facility, and they give you what they call a time computation sheet.

00:42:26.000 And on the time computation sheet, it gives you all of the numbers, like the beginning of your bid, how much jail time you have.

00:42:33.000 And I just remember 2049. That's all I kept looking at.

00:42:39.000 And I was like, 2049? 0.99

00:42:43.000 Are they fucking serious? 0.98

00:42:46.000 This is 1998, 1999. And I'm trying to do the math and I'm just like 2049. I'm like, that's 50 years from now. 0.99

00:42:57.000 And I remember going to the law library and I forget how I get the World Almanac.

00:43:05.000 And something just says, look up life expectancy.

00:43:08.000 And I look up my life expectancy.

00:43:10.000 And as an African-American man, my life expectancy at that time was 67 years old, and I did the math. 0.56

00:43:16.000 And I said, I'm going to die in prison, man.

00:43:21.000 I just really believed that I was going to die in prison.

00:43:28.000 One thing I learned really, really quickly when I got to prison was that prison does two things to you.

00:43:33.000 It brings out the best or it brings out the worst.

00:43:35.000 And what I saw was, I saw individuals who were at their worst and I saw guys who were at their best.

00:43:43.000 The guys who were at their best were guys who were involved in education, post-secondary education programs.

00:43:50.000 They were running the violence groups.

00:43:53.000 They were running the substance abuse groups.

00:43:56.000 And I remember saying to myself, I want that. 0.95

00:44:00.000 And I remember just being involved in so much bullshit because I was in a gang and I was top of the food chain. 0.97

00:44:09.000 I had my own nation. 0.98

00:44:10.000 I wasn't just like the random gang member.

00:44:15.000 I had a whole nation under me.

00:44:19.000 And I was just in and out the box, in and out the box, solitary confinement, which has been considered as unconstitutional now.

00:44:28.000 And I remember just having these moments of reflection and just asking myself, like, what are you going to do?

00:44:36.000 Can you spend the next 48 years living like this?

00:44:43.000 I said I couldn't do it.

00:44:45.000 And I, um...

00:44:47.000 I had lost all my privileges.

00:44:49.000 They took everything from me.

00:44:50.000 I was in Southport at the time, which is closed now.

00:44:54.000 It's a solitary confinement facility in New York State.

00:44:57.000 And I was on a loaf, which is also unconstitutional now.

00:45:01.000 So the loaf is a dietary restriction that they give you.

00:45:05.000 It's a chunk of bread.

00:45:06.000 And it has cabbage and carrots in it, and they give you like a quarter of a cabbage, and they give you a cup of milk.

00:45:12.000 When they can't take any more of your privileges, this is what they would give you.

00:45:15.000 Six days out the week, on the seventh day, you would get a hot meal, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and then they would go back for 21 days.

00:45:21.000 They would do this.

00:45:22.000 Six and one, six and one, six and one.

00:45:25.000 And it was at that moment where I really said, I have to change my life.

00:45:32.000 I have to change my life.

00:45:34.000 I just can't do this.

00:45:36.000 I had a wife.

00:45:38.000 I had family still.

00:45:39.000 My son was growing up.

00:45:42.000 He was hearing stories about my so-called notoriety.

00:45:49.000 I just didn't want to be that dad. 0.99

00:45:53.000 I really was looking at myself and really evaluating, asking myself, like, yo, what the fuck are you doing? 0.99

00:46:01.000 I was smoking a lot of weed at the time. 0.99

00:46:04.000 I was drinking jailhouse hooch.

00:46:07.000 And I was at my worst.

00:46:11.000 And I had to figure out how to get to my best.

00:46:14.000 So I decided to, when I got out of solitary confinement, I did 42 days on a loaf.

00:46:22.000 I went from being 210 pounds to like 168 in like a matter of seven months.

00:46:30.000 It deflated me.

00:46:32.000 And when I got out, I made a decision that I was going to walk away.

00:46:35.000 And I didn't care about what the consequences was.

00:46:37.000 And I said to myself, I've been doing bad for so long, I'm going to try to do something good.

00:46:44.000 If all else fails, I could always go back to doing bad.

00:46:48.000 But let me try.

00:46:49.000 Let me give it a shot.

00:46:51.000 And I ended up getting to school program.

00:46:54.000 I got my GED. I left the gangs alone, which was a benefit for them because, you know, I was what you call an authoritarian.

00:47:03.000 I was a rule guy.

00:47:04.000 I'm still a rule guy.

00:47:05.000 I like rules.

00:47:06.000 You know, I like rules.

00:47:07.000 I like structure.

00:47:08.000 I like things to be a certain way.

00:47:10.000 And it was to their advantage to get rid of me anyway.

00:47:13.000 Plus, I knew a lot of the guys who were at the top.

00:47:15.000 Why was it to their advantage to get rid of you?

00:47:17.000 Because I was the type of person who would say, you're doing that for what reason?

00:47:25.000 Nah, you can't do that.

00:47:26.000 The rule says that you can't do this, you can't do this.

00:47:29.000 This is what the rules say.

00:47:31.000 The rules of the prison or the rules of the streets?

00:47:34.000 The rules of the gang.

00:47:34.000 The rules of the street.

00:47:36.000 Yeah.

00:47:36.000 There was rules.

00:47:38.000 Give us a for instance.

00:47:40.000 Okay, so for instance...

00:47:44.000 I could be in a whole other facility.

00:47:45.000 Let's say I'm in Greenhaven and a guy's in Attica and they want to do something to him because they feel like he's not sharing his proceeds of drugs that he's bringing into the facility.

00:48:01.000 The rules say you can't do that.

00:48:05.000 That's his property.

00:48:06.000 That's his belongings.

00:48:07.000 So I was a rule guy and they just, you know, it was to their advantage to get me out of the way.

00:48:11.000 So when I decided to take a step back, they were like, yes!

00:48:16.000 And it was to my advantage as well.

00:48:20.000 And this was in 2005. So there was no resistance?

00:48:24.000 None.

00:48:25.000 And at that time, this is where a lot of what they call set tripping began.

00:48:31.000 The organization began to implode on itself.

00:48:35.000 The gang organization.

00:48:36.000 The gang organization.

00:48:37.000 There was a lot of infighting, sets against sets, and I was just always against that.

00:48:44.000 And it was time for me to go, and I didn't care whatever the consequences was.

00:48:48.000 I was fortunate that there weren't any consequences, but I didn't care what the consequences was.

00:48:55.000 I just walked away.

00:48:56.000 And then that begins your journey?

00:48:59.000 This begins my journey.

00:49:00.000 I got into school.

00:49:01.000 I got my GED. From there, I got involved in correspondence courses.

00:49:06.000 I started interacting with guys who were teaching ART, aggression replacement training, and I started to begin to understand how these concepts work, what positive visualization is.

00:49:18.000 Deep breathing.

00:49:19.000 How to remove yourself.

00:49:20.000 Conflict resolution.

00:49:22.000 All of these ideas of change began to take place with me.

00:49:29.000 Substance abuse.

00:49:29.000 I stopped smoking weed.

00:49:31.000 I stopped smoking cigarettes.

00:49:32.000 I was smoking like 30 cigarettes a day.

00:49:34.000 I'm literally having chest pains from smoking cigarettes.

00:49:39.000 And I realized that I wanted to live.

00:49:42.000 And the only way that I was going to be able to live and walk out of prison was to remove myself from these substances.

00:49:49.000 I've seen so many guys get carried out.

00:49:52.000 I've seen guys dying.

00:49:56.000 Not just from just being stabbed or with altercations from officers.

00:50:01.000 I've seen guys dying from...

00:50:03.000 One guy I knew, he used to drink so much hoop, his liver failed on him one night.

00:50:08.000 He died in the cell that night.

00:50:09.000 The morning when they came to do that count, he was frozen.

00:50:11.000 He was stiff as a log.

00:50:13.000 But these are the things that I was seeing, and I was really in a situation where I had to ask myself, do I want to go out like that?

00:50:24.000 And I didn't want to go out like that.

00:50:26.000 Tell me about Jailhouse Hooch.

00:50:28.000 How are they making that?

00:50:30.000 So there's a bunch of ways they can make it.

00:50:33.000 You can use fruit juice, but a lot of guys use tomato paste.

00:50:38.000 Tomato paste, water, and sugar.

00:50:40.000 You need a kicker, which is like what they call a mash. 0.67

00:50:46.000 You would call it a mash, they call it a kicker. 0.98

00:50:48.000 Get a plastic bag, you put it in a plastic bag.

00:50:52.000 You let it blow up.

00:50:53.000 It goes through the process, the carbon dioxide process.

00:50:56.000 I did a whole paper on ethanol when I was in Cornell so that I could learn how the process was.

00:51:05.000 And it's pretty good stuff, especially if you distill it.

00:51:09.000 But it's bad for you because it has a component in it called methane, and it goes straight to your brain.

00:51:16.000 But, like, you know, in the streets when distillation...

00:51:21.000 Places or facilities, they distill it, they remove that part of the alcohol, the methane.

00:51:27.000 But in prison, guys just drink it. 1.00

00:51:28.000 It's just like, you know, give a fuck. 1.00

00:51:32.000 Or you make the fruit juice. 1.00

00:51:34.000 Same thing, plastic bag, sugar, kicker, mash.

00:51:39.000 What is the kicker?

00:51:40.000 The kicker is to accelerate the process.

00:51:42.000 I know, I know, but what does it consist of?

00:51:43.000 Usually like spoiled fruit, some spoiled bread with mold on it because it begins the process of fermentation.

00:51:52.000 It's like a mash. 1.00

00:51:54.000 So this shit's got to be super toxic for you. 1.00

00:51:57.000 Oh, super fucking toxic. 1.00

00:51:59.000 Dude's just dropping like flies, man. 1.00

00:52:02.000 Like flies.

00:52:04.000 Here's the...

00:52:05.000 When you hear, like, going forward, what...

00:52:10.000 How Sheldon changed his life.

00:52:17.000 Not just the correspondence courses, but all of these various counseling programs, outreach programs, his connections to the outside world, which he'll talk about, is that the impossibly sick, 0.99

00:52:37.000 fucking twisted... 0.99

00:52:42.000 The horrifically sad irony to all of this is that it took prison to save him. 1.00

00:52:53.000 And...

00:52:56.000 Why couldn't he be saved as a kid?

00:53:00.000 That's what I am really trying to sort of put energy towards now.

00:53:08.000 When you asked him earlier, wasn't there counseling in the group home?

00:53:15.000 And you know, If you see what this counseling is like, obviously I can't cast aspersions on every counselor in a group home across America, but...

00:53:28.000 You know, I've had people on, you know, the podcast with me, and I'm listening to their anger management classes, right?

00:53:36.000 I won't mention who it is, but I'm listening to, like, the anger management class that they take. 0.98

00:53:41.000 And it's fucking... 0.99

00:53:44.000 It's on Zoom. 1.00

00:53:45.000 It's run by a guy that can't fucking turn his camera on. 0.99

00:53:50.000 And it's like... 0.99

00:53:52.000 It is...

00:53:54.000 It's bedlam.

00:53:57.000 There's just people screaming, hey man, I can't hear you! 1.00

00:54:01.000 What the fuck did you just say? 0.99

00:54:02.000 You hear not just the anger and the frustration, but the guy's inability to control the situation, to control the technology, let alone giving out, you know, Real advice. 0.99

00:54:17.000 Real advice and constructive feedback on how different people are.

00:54:21.000 He's checking a box, this guy, to do a job.

00:54:24.000 Is that happening with everyone?

00:54:26.000 It's not happening with everyone.

00:54:27.000 But again, just the paradox here is that this insane, inhumane sentence...

00:54:38.000 Actually saved Shelton.

00:54:42.000 But why weren't there those programs, that thought, that implementation in his community to save him as a kid?

00:54:53.000 Right.

00:54:54.000 Right?

00:54:56.000 I don't just take cases.

00:54:59.000 You know, at the Perlmutter Center, where I'm the executive director, the Perlmutter Senator for Legal Justice at Cardozo Law School, we get a massive amount of mail.

00:55:11.000 And we get a lot of people calling us to help out on cases.

00:55:14.000 I want to help as many people as we can, but people that I think can succeed, or that we can help succeed when they get out.

00:55:22.000 And, you know, on paper, you can see pretty quickly what somebody has done with their time.

00:55:31.000 You know, I've sat with people in institutions all over the country where I said, what programs are you in? 1.00

00:55:39.000 And I feel like an idiot asking, because I'd be a fucking puddle on the floor. 0.99

00:55:44.000 I asked him many times, how often did you cry? 1.00

00:55:52.000 How did you extract yourself from the gang?

00:55:55.000 How did you sleep at night with the noise?

00:56:00.000 Sheldon told me about this thing called a human harpoon that people make out of magazines and a sharpened toothbrush. 1.00

00:56:08.000 Can you fucking... 0.99

00:56:11.000 The mindfuck on this, they stiffen the pages of a magazine with toothpaste, soap, water, let it dry, let it dry, so that they could basically work it into a rod. 1.00

00:56:26.000 You keep on working the paper between your hands, and then you attach with soap, newspaper, A sharpened toothbrush handle at the end of it. 0.99

00:56:40.000 Or a bone.

00:56:41.000 Or what?

00:56:41.000 Or a bone.

00:56:42.000 Or a bone from something that they ate in the mess hall.

00:56:46.000 From something that you ate in the mess hall.

00:56:47.000 And then you're walking past their cell and you're...

00:56:54.000 Yeah.

00:57:09.000 And come out...

00:57:10.000 To this heaven.

00:57:12.000 Halfway sane.

00:57:14.000 And I'm just...

00:57:15.000 I'm so... 0.99

00:57:17.000 It hurts me deep in my fucking guts to hear that... 0.99

00:57:23.000 I'm hearing you talk and then I'm thinking... 1.00

00:57:25.000 This is what it took to save you.

00:57:29.000 When I think about, you know, he was 10 years old.

00:57:34.000 My son's 11. And that it's hard to listen to.

00:57:40.000 And, yeah, it's hard to process that you were able to have that wherewithal to sit a day in solitary confinement, let alone 42 days.

00:57:51.000 And so your process...

00:57:54.000 When you decide that you're going to try to do good, how difficult was the process of trying to establish an education?

00:58:06.000 It was lonely. 0.99

00:58:07.000 On one side I had the guys who I used to run with saying, what the fuck is he doing? 0.98

00:58:15.000 And then I had the guys who were actually doing good just watching me to see if I was going to Crumble or fail or, you know, you had a handful of guys that come in to me and say, yo, I applaud you, you know, I got you, man. 0.98

00:58:30.000 If you need some help, I can help you do this or I can help you do that.

00:58:33.000 But, you know, I just felt like everybody in the world was watching, including my family.

00:58:39.000 Because they didn't believe it.

00:58:41.000 Up until the point to where I graduated from Cornell, my cousin told me, she said, you know, when you called me and invited me to the graduation, she said, I didn't believe it.

00:58:52.000 I didn't believe nothing you had told me prior for the last 10 years or anything that you said you did until I saw you at that graduation.

00:59:00.000 So, you know, I had family.

00:59:01.000 I had everybody just kind of just waiting for me to fail.

00:59:08.000 But I just felt like I was just determined to succeed.

00:59:11.000 I just had this...

00:59:12.000 I just had this energy in my spirit.

00:59:15.000 And I just...

00:59:16.000 And it was the will to live.

00:59:20.000 As far as I'm concerned, it was the will to live.

00:59:22.000 I had read, when I was in solitary confinement, I read Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning.

00:59:28.000 And one of the things that struck me as being so powerful, he says, if you have a why, then you have a reason to live.

00:59:37.000 And this is a guy who was in a concentration camp during the Holocaust.

00:59:41.000 And he found a reason to live.

00:59:45.000 He found a reason. 0.99

00:59:46.000 And I'm sitting there in the cell and I'm asking myself, Do you have a fucking reason to live? 0.98

00:59:56.000 And I think about my family and that was my reason. 0.99

01:00:02.000 And I wanted to beat the system.

01:00:07.000 And that was my way of beating the system. 1.00

01:00:10.000 I'm not gonna let you motherfuckers kill me. 1.00

01:00:15.000 And that was my spirit. 1.00

01:00:18.000 And I know it was only one way for me to accomplish that.

01:00:20.000 So like I said, I started going to school.

01:00:22.000 I did the correspondence courses.

01:00:24.000 I got involved in the Cornell Prison Education Program.

01:00:28.000 I obtained my associate's degree.

01:00:31.000 And then I went on to obtain my bachelor's in behavioral science for Mercy.

01:00:38.000 But in this process, I'm going through...

01:00:42.000 I'm mentoring other young men.

01:00:44.000 Now guys are looking at me and saying, Hold on, wait a minute, man.

01:00:49.000 This guy is on to something.

01:00:51.000 I got guys on both sides now saying, yo, can you help me?

01:00:56.000 I started working in the law library.

01:00:58.000 I discovered that I had a knack for complicated things, case law, and I was helping guys, and I was actually helping guys get out of prison.

01:01:08.000 And I started running the programs.

01:01:13.000 What programs did you do?

01:01:15.000 So I ran aggression replacement training.

01:01:17.000 And how many years in did you start doing this?

01:01:22.000 About nine years in.

01:01:25.000 Eight years in.

01:01:27.000 I got arrested in 1997 and about 2005, this is when I started to make my transitions.

01:01:35.000 About eight years in.

01:01:40.000 And it felt good.

01:01:42.000 It felt good.

01:01:44.000 It felt good to be able to call my family and send them pictures and invite them to these events where they can actually see me change.

01:01:52.000 They could see actual, tangible change.

01:01:58.000 It felt good for the guys that I knew that were coming to me and asking me for help.

01:02:04.000 I was helping guys with their GEDs.

01:02:06.000 I became a tutor in the program.

01:02:10.000 And the rewards that I felt, you know, it didn't even matter anymore about when I was going to get out, right?

01:02:18.000 It was just now about how can I help other people not go through what I went through and wait so long?

01:02:27.000 Because I feel like I wish I had somebody that would have came along at an earlier stage.

01:02:32.000 And like he said, don't wait till I fall.

01:02:35.000 Catch me before I fall.

01:02:38.000 And that's part of my motto now and some of the work that we do at the Queens Defenders, Alternatives to Incarceration.

01:02:44.000 And this is why I'm so passionate about a lot of the work that I do now.

01:02:49.000 I'm trying to catch these kids before they fall.

01:02:53.000 I don't want to wait till they're falling...

01:02:59.000 And I want to show them the way.

01:03:00.000 And I feel like I'm a credible messenger because when they see me, they know that I came from the same place they come from.

01:03:08.000 Like Josh was saying earlier, right?

01:03:10.000 There's a difference between being qualified and certified, right?

01:03:13.000 You could read a hundred books about drug abuse, but how...

01:03:19.000 How qualified are you to really tell somebody who's sick on heroin and they're ready to do anything that they can for a bag of dope of what you went through?

01:03:28.000 You can't.

01:03:29.000 And this experience is priceless.

01:03:35.000 You said it way better than I did.

01:03:37.000 Certified versus qualified.

01:03:40.000 And that's why, you know, I'm just sitting back watching the work that Sheldon is doing now.

01:03:49.000 What's your official title at the Queens Defenders?

01:03:52.000 Client advocate and we just created the Yelp.

01:03:57.000 We titled it Yelp.

01:03:59.000 Me and two other brothers that I was incarcerated with formerly, Bruce Bryant and Rashad Rouhani.

01:04:05.000 We're client advocates.

01:04:07.000 We run a youth emergent leadership program and we work directly with the district attorneys and the judges at the courts.

01:04:16.000 Dealing with the Alternative to Incarceration program.

01:04:18.000 A lot of the young kids that catch the gun charges, we bring them into our program.

01:04:23.000 We help them with job readiness, training, whether it's OSHA training.

01:04:28.000 We help them get their GEDs.

01:04:30.000 We direct them to different programs, like we got a program called Hood Coating.

01:04:35.000 And this is also a guy who's previously incarcerated, and he teaches coding to younger kids inside the inner cities in the projects.

01:04:44.000 Like coding as in computer coding?

01:04:46.000 Like computer coding.

01:04:47.000 He teaches coding.

01:04:48.000 And we get them into our program.

01:04:51.000 We help them with their resume.

01:04:52.000 Because one of the main things we realize is that outside of everything else, a lot of these kids, they're impoverished.

01:04:59.000 They don't have nothing, you know?

01:05:01.000 So we want to be able to try to help them with some type of employment, right?

01:05:05.000 That's number one.

01:05:06.000 And then we take them through our program.

01:05:08.000 We have a 36-week, 10-point program.

01:05:10.000 It deals with conflict resolution.

01:05:13.000 It deals with knowing your rights, how to have a conversation with an officer.

01:05:17.000 One of the things that I take pride in while I was incarcerated, I was also in a theater program.

01:05:24.000 I played Macbeth on a stage.

01:05:30.000 I also was on the debate team.

01:05:31.000 We debated against Stanford, Harvard, and Yale on the topic of the future of automation and we crushed them.

01:05:37.000 But one of the things I learned in those arenas is critical thinking and critical analysis, right?

01:05:44.000 How do you critically think about a situation?

01:05:47.000 And also looking back, I realized something about myself is that I did not have a term that I coined called situational cognizance, right?

01:05:57.000 As a kid, For some reason, I felt like I was not able to see the long-term consequences of my behavior.

01:06:07.000 It was like a wall there.

01:06:10.000 And I think a lot of these younger kids are also suffering from the same thing.

01:06:14.000 They don't.

01:06:15.000 And the system sets you up.

01:06:17.000 The system tricks you.

01:06:19.000 Because you catch these cases and what they do is they slap you on the wrist, right?

01:06:23.000 You catch this gun charge and they say, oh no, we're just going to give you six months.

01:06:27.000 Don't worry about it.

01:06:28.000 What they don't tell you is that gun charge is a pretext now to enhance your sentence when you catch another case.

01:06:37.000 So it's almost like a form of entrapment, right?

01:06:40.000 And a lot of these kids don't understand that.

01:06:43.000 They think that these cases that they're catching are just going to disappear.

01:06:46.000 They don't realize that there's a paper trail being established that's being created.

01:06:50.000 There's a profile being created against you. 1.00

01:06:53.000 And when you reach a certain threshold, there's a term that I like to say, they're going to knock your fucking head off. 0.99

01:07:01.000 And you're gonna find yourself, a lot of these kids find themselves in situations where they get 25 years for an assault. 0.99

01:07:07.000 You remember Scared Straight?

01:07:11.000 Yeah.

01:07:12.000 Alright.

01:07:14.000 I think the effectiveness of Scared Straight was because of The Messenger.

01:07:19.000 So you're seeing the change right now. 0.99

01:07:23.000 And this is not meant to blow sunshine up your ass because you get plenty of that and you deserve it. 0.98

01:07:31.000 But I was in a situation last time I was here where I felt a little bit hopeless. 0.99

01:07:37.000 And now I'm trending toward more hopeful.

01:07:42.000 Because Bruce Bryan, who was on the show...

01:07:45.000 Is a client advocate at the Queen's Defenders.

01:07:49.000 And I don't wear that as a feather in my cap.

01:07:53.000 That was just me.

01:07:56.000 It was validation that if I get behind this man and give him new life, do my part in it.

01:08:05.000 Lord knows there were others.

01:08:06.000 Steve Zeidman at CUNY Law School.

01:08:09.000 You know...

01:08:11.000 And if it wasn't for, in all honesty, I'm adamant about to this day, if it wasn't for Josh and Allison Hoppe actually going to, and Derek as well, Derek Hamilton, speaking to the district attorney, like we were at a plateau where they just didn't,

01:08:28.000 they just was like, nah.

01:08:30.000 But I don't want it to be about me at all.

01:08:32.000 Here's what I wanted to say, is that you now are seeing the connections.

01:08:37.000 And so, you know, Legal Aid was representing Bruce.

01:08:42.000 There was an army of people.

01:08:44.000 So...

01:08:46.000 We're good to go.

01:09:03.000 Don't let them be another me or Derek Hamilton.

01:09:06.000 They deserve counseling.

01:09:08.000 They deserve a second chance.

01:09:09.000 They deserve to help really be rehabilitated.

01:09:13.000 And then Sheldon comes over and starts working at the Queen's Defenders, which is like the appointed counsel for people that can't afford an attorney.

01:09:30.000 They're criminal defense lawyers.

01:09:32.000 So to watch them out there advocating and trying to change hearts and minds about the community, you have to be on the ground doing it and getting in front of people.

01:09:44.000 And I know I said it before.

01:09:48.000 I'm very thoughtful in who I bring with me.

01:09:51.000 Look at this beautiful mind and how he articulates himself and educated himself.

01:09:56.000 And you want to tell me That this couldn't have happened earlier.

01:10:03.000 He doesn't need anyone's sympathy and he's not asking for it.

01:10:07.000 It's something I admire quite a bit about him.

01:10:10.000 He doesn't want poor Sheldon.

01:10:13.000 How could you have gone through this?

01:10:17.000 I've seen him do it right in their tracks.

01:10:19.000 Listen, I just don't know that my life was worth throwing away.

01:10:24.000 But to watch them now on the other side of it The change that we talked about that I'm like, how do we change it?

01:10:30.000 How do we do it?

01:10:31.000 It's starting to happen.

01:10:33.000 Could we use Jeff Bezos to sit down and think through how we can build a community center in East New York?

01:10:45.000 In Harlem?

01:10:46.000 Yeah, we could.

01:10:48.000 The means are out there to do it.

01:10:51.000 All it takes is one person listening to this episode that tells someone, that knows someone, and then progress is starting to happen and we can just do it on the ground.

01:11:03.000 But the reason why I mentioned Scared Straight is because, sure, I could go in there and talk to these kids. 0.98

01:11:09.000 They're not going to fucking listen to me. 0.99

01:11:11.000 They're just not. 0.99

01:11:12.000 I might be certified, but I'm not qualified.

01:11:19.000 I can sympathize, but I can't empathize.

01:11:26.000 I go through that talking sometimes like...

01:11:31.000 You know, to fighters that I manage, right?

01:11:34.000 I do it with Shakur Stevenson.

01:11:35.000 You know, he's like a little brother to me.

01:11:39.000 I love him.

01:11:40.000 Sometimes I feel like, you know, the message might be better coming from Jay Prince than it is for me because he's more qualified.

01:11:50.000 Try to wrap my head around what Shakur went through as a kid and growing up in Newark and the circumstance But you know, I think that there is a disconnect and I have to be big enough to recognize that And say yeah, you know, maybe I'm not the right person, but you know Telling me he's not gonna inspire and they're doing it.

01:12:09.000 They're getting judges to change their mind They're getting prosecutors to think twice.

01:12:14.000 We just got one guy he um He shot at his brother without going into the details of his case.

01:12:23.000 He has attempted murder charge and we now have him in our program.

01:12:28.000 They originally were talking about giving him 15 years.

01:12:31.000 He's been in our program for a couple of months.

01:12:34.000 We set him up.

01:12:35.000 We help him get his resume.

01:12:36.000 He's working towards his GED and he's in the hood coding program.

01:12:40.000 We also have him in an aggression replacement training program.

01:12:44.000 And now the district attorney is considering giving him five years probation.

01:12:50.000 So they went from 15 years, and this kid is doing amazing.

01:12:55.000 Like, he's just picking up the coatings.

01:12:58.000 The guy that I spoke to, he said that this kid is just like a sponge.

01:13:03.000 He's just soaking it up so fast.

01:13:05.000 But this is just one example of...

01:13:08.000 How we kind of level the playing field and create opportunities.

01:13:12.000 I think that word you spoke about earlier is so crucial to the context of this conversation.

01:13:20.000 Opportunities, right?

01:13:21.000 How do we create the opportunities for these kids to be able to provide?

01:13:25.000 Living in New York City ain't no joke, man. 0.95

01:13:28.000 The cost of living is ridiculous.

01:13:32.000 So how do we create these opportunities?

01:13:34.000 So now also what we're doing is we're going to the schools.

01:13:37.000 We're talking to the teachers.

01:13:38.000 We're talking to the teachers and the principals and we're asking them.

01:13:42.000 We're not even going to wait until you get to the courtroom.

01:13:44.000 We're asking the teachers and the principals, who in your classroom do you think needs help?

01:13:52.000 Which kids in your classroom are giving you the most trouble?

01:13:55.000 And they give us the names, and we go and we talk to them, and we're getting them involved in our program.

01:14:01.000 But it's all about opportunity.

01:14:04.000 Well, kids sometimes need to see someone, not sometimes, always, need to see someone who's done something from a similar situation.

01:14:14.000 Yeah.

01:14:15.000 Where they realize, like, there's a path out of this.

01:14:18.000 Because if you don't see a path out of this, you just see a path towards doing what the other people in your environment are doing.

01:14:24.000 And that's how all human beings react.

01:14:26.000 If you're in a bad environment with a bad group of human beings, the chances of you going down that same path are extraordinary.

01:14:34.000 Learning behavior.

01:14:35.000 Yes.

01:14:37.000 And from someone like you, they can see this is not a given.

01:14:41.000 There's a way to do this.

01:14:43.000 There's a way to get out of this.

01:14:44.000 And there's a guy who's already gone the wrong way who could say, you know what?

01:14:48.000 I figured it out and I'm going to help you.

01:14:52.000 The difference between someone like you saying it versus some uninspired counselor.

01:14:58.000 It's massive.

01:14:59.000 It's massive.

01:15:00.000 It speaks to you and your character that you want to do this, that you've dedicated yourself to doing this.

01:15:06.000 That's where real change comes from.

01:15:08.000 That's where real help comes from.

01:15:10.000 Real help comes from someone, as you said, who's qualified to do it.

01:15:14.000 It comes from the same place that you came from and that you can identify because being able to identify is a critical component, like you said.

01:15:23.000 Is this someone who can identify, empathize with what I'm going through, where I'm at right now in my life?

01:15:33.000 Like a lot of the young kids, they're involved in the gangs.

01:15:38.000 And we have this reculturalization program, right?

01:15:43.000 Where we're trying to teach them, because in many of our communities, the gangs have become a part of the culture.

01:15:50.000 Like, you have parents who are gang members, you got the kids who are in communities and it's just saturated with gang culture.

01:16:04.000 Language, dress, music, food, everything else.

01:16:08.000 So we're trying to extract them out of these places and say, okay, This is something that you can do differently.

01:16:14.000 We're taking them to different places.

01:16:16.000 We're taking them to HBCU so that they can see what people who look like them look like when they're going to college. 0.65

01:16:25.000 This can be you.

01:16:26.000 This is some of the...

01:16:27.000 Take them into classrooms to meet with the professors.

01:16:31.000 We have a financial literacy course where Chase Bank actually works with us, and we teach them how to establish credit, how to open up a checking account, how to open up a savings account.

01:16:41.000 And at the end of that particular five-week program, we actually take them to the bank and we give them $25 so that they can open up their own bank account, so that they can understand the difference between The money that you obtain from the streets and the money that you get working legitimately is two different kinds of money.

01:16:59.000 You can't appreciate the money that you get from the streets.

01:17:02.000 But that money that you've been working all week for, eight hours a day, 40 hours a week at the end of the weekend, you can see that direct deposit when it goes into your account.

01:17:11.000 You can take that card and you can actually utilize it to withdraw your money out the bank.

01:17:16.000 That's a big difference.

01:17:19.000 Civic engagement.

01:17:21.000 You know, how can some of these kids feel like they have a voice in their communities when they're not making no decisions in their communities?

01:17:29.000 We go into the rallies.

01:17:31.000 We take them to the rallies out of Albany.

01:17:32.000 Yesterday, they went to a rally.

01:17:34.000 Last week, we went to a rally about treatment, not jails.

01:17:37.000 How to set up what they call diversion courts for people who have substance abuse problems.

01:17:45.000 Instead of sending them to prison, they need treatment.

01:17:48.000 And the money that they save is clear.

01:17:51.000 It's clear.

01:17:52.000 When you do the math, the money that you save, it costs almost up to $70,000 to incarcerate one person.

01:18:01.000 But then there's the issue of privatized prisons, which is insane.

01:18:05.000 That's disturbing.

01:18:06.000 It's so disturbing.

01:18:07.000 They're using human beings as batteries to generate money. 0.62

01:18:11.000 That's what it's like.

01:18:12.000 Yeah, we're trying to take the charge out of their battery.

01:18:17.000 We're trying to pull the plug out of the wall because, you know, these aren't controversial statistics, and I'm not going to start spewing them, but we incarcerate at a rate that dwarfs any other Western country,

01:18:34.000 any other civilized...

01:18:37.000 Anywhere in the world, really.

01:18:39.000 In any event, I was doing a relative comparison.

01:18:43.000 How do we put those privatized prisons out of business? 0.98

01:18:47.000 We have to start on the ground.

01:18:52.000 It's almost like a rallying cry to myself because we get a lot of...

01:18:58.000 Not a rallying cry to myself, but...

01:19:03.000 The way I got from being a little less intimidated by the mountain to climb was taking a step back really after the last episode and saying, well, what have we done and how have we changed things?

01:19:18.000 Listen, I wasn't born a civil rights lawyer that was working on innocence cases.

01:19:24.000 I have a trial strategy company called DRC. We do focus groups, mock trials on big cases, right?

01:19:32.000 Try to unfold the thinking of jurors in a jurisdiction where the case is going to be tried.

01:19:38.000 And we make demonstrative aids and we are alleged experts in jury selection.

01:19:43.000 And that became a platform.

01:19:46.000 I said, how can we use...

01:19:48.000 This is a platform.

01:19:49.000 Now that I'm operating the Perlmutter Center as well.

01:19:54.000 So just being in the boxing industry, speaking to Jay-Z's team at Roc Nation and Jay-Z and his mom, how can we do this?

01:20:05.000 And he has something called the Sean Carter Foundation.

01:20:09.000 It's a remarkable.

01:20:10.000 It flies way under the radar.

01:20:12.000 Have you ever heard of it?

01:20:13.000 Yes.

01:20:13.000 All right.

01:20:15.000 Do you know what it does?

01:20:16.000 Not exactly.

01:20:17.000 All right.

01:20:17.000 So it's kind of remarkable that people know it because of his name and they've heard it, but no one really knows what it does.

01:20:27.000 They take children from all over the country.

01:20:32.000 A lot of them are in the tri-state area that have difficult circumstances.

01:20:37.000 A lot of them come from single family households.

01:20:40.000 And they're not just mentoring them from high school, but they are trying to do some of the things that Sheldon talked about.

01:20:53.000 They do a college tour.

01:20:55.000 It's run by a woman named Danya Diaz and really Gloria Carter and a woman named Miss Archer. 0.97

01:21:02.000 And I saw what they were doing.

01:21:05.000 And I said, if we took these kids and created a fellowship program where we pay their last year of college...

01:21:12.000 And five of them do it every summer and work on wrongful conviction cases at my consulting firm at DRC and also are a resource to my students who are taking an internship for the Perlmutter Center and are working on wrongful conviction cases and have them start a social media campaign.

01:21:35.000 They spearheaded the free Bruce Bryant social media campaign.

01:21:39.000 And watching this program These kids, if they're given the opportunity, three of them now work for me full-time.

01:21:50.000 One of them is the mail intake coordinator at the Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice.

01:21:54.000 So she is receiving mail from inmates and helping screen which cases we might want to investigate.

01:22:01.000 Her name is Samilia McFarland.

01:22:03.000 There's an old girl that works at my firm doing advertising and publicity.

01:22:10.000 Her name is Jayla Madry.

01:22:12.000 She made a presentation to me the other day. 0.87

01:22:15.000 I was fucking blown away that this girl was passionate about marketing, not advertising, marketing.

01:22:24.000 And she works at my consulting firm and she made a presentation to me You know, that had a level of detail and ideas about how we can become, you know, increase our awareness. 0.91

01:22:38.000 And I was just thinking to myself, you know, all right, so this is the change that we're making happen.

01:22:44.000 And it was just an idea that I had.

01:22:47.000 I didn't actually think that Jay-Z and his mom and Donya would go for it.

01:22:53.000 So I was reluctant to pitch them the idea.

01:22:57.000 And just being able to say, well, what do you have to lose by putting it out there?

01:23:02.000 And they have been remarkably supportive.

01:23:05.000 So I think that there's a lot of people that want to help.

01:23:09.000 Sheldon and I were talking about it before we came, and we often think, how can listeners help?

01:23:16.000 There is not, if you have an idea like I had, just try to put the next foot in front of the foot that's behind you.

01:23:23.000 And just keep walking forward and don't be afraid to ask.

01:23:27.000 There is not a public defender's office in this country.

01:23:31.000 There is not a civic engagement organization.

01:23:35.000 That if you call them and say, I want to volunteer, or I'm interested in helping, that will turn you away.

01:23:43.000 You just have to say, alright, I can sit here and talk about it, and, you know...

01:23:50.000 Until it happens to you, right?

01:23:53.000 You know, we talk about not to cut you off, right? 0.78

01:23:56.000 No, I need cutting off.

01:23:58.000 Remember the opioid crisis, right?

01:24:01.000 You know, it's been an opioid crisis in my community since I can remember.

01:24:05.000 People were dying off heroin.

01:24:07.000 And it didn't become an issue until it was affecting white America, right?

01:24:12.000 But my thing is, had you dealt with it from the beginning...

01:24:17.000 It would have never became a situation later on.

01:24:20.000 So it's this idea where people, we have a tendency to say, okay, I'm just going to turn away and I'm not going to pay attention to it.

01:24:27.000 I'm going to turn a blind eye.

01:24:28.000 I'm going to act like it doesn't exist until it hits home.

01:24:31.000 And then sometime when it hits home, it's too late.

01:24:35.000 Yeah, I think it takes something to happen to somebody for them to become an advocate, right?

01:24:44.000 Michael J. Fox wasn't a Parkinson's advocate until it happened for her, but that's great that he decided to do that.

01:24:50.000 Absolutely.

01:24:50.000 Remarkable.

01:24:51.000 But I think that Sheldon makes a great point, right?

01:24:57.000 We're a society of...

01:25:01.000 We're a society that likes to sit back and complain.

01:25:05.000 We want to react instead of responding.

01:25:08.000 Like one of my favorite things to do is I have severe anxiety about dying and But for whatever reason, maybe this balances me out at an airport when a flight gets canceled.

01:25:24.000 Even if it's hopefully my flight.

01:25:27.000 Not hopefully, but I get a better view of it if it's my flight. 0.99

01:25:32.000 To watch people stand up and get frustrated, berate, raise their voice at the fucking ticket attendant. 0.66

01:25:48.000 It's a remarkable exercise and it's a social experiment, I think, that if people really were able to hover over the room and watch themselves, they'd be like, why am I yelling at the ticket attendant? 0.88

01:26:00.000 There's only two real possibilities of why this plane is not going to fly on time.

01:26:06.000 There's either a mechanical problem or weather.

01:26:09.000 Do you want to fly in either of those situations?

01:26:13.000 You know, and to watch people just like, you know, complain and they get, I don't know what they're getting out of it, but I just find myself trying to A, have an awareness about myself not to do that,

01:26:29.000 and rather than get intimidated by the problem, try to just keep putting one foot in front of another.

01:26:36.000 And then when the flight gets canceled, maybe I could read something interesting and catch up.

01:26:42.000 It's inconvenient or come up with an idea.

01:26:44.000 I mean, trust me, I'm an average guy of average intelligence that just I think I have like more tenacity.

01:26:55.000 So I don't if I can help make some of this stuff happen, other people can make it happen.

01:27:01.000 And Sheldon asked me, should I go to law school?

01:27:06.000 I changed my mind, by the way.

01:27:08.000 I might have an opinion now.

01:27:10.000 But I told them, like, most of the lawyers that I find that are most effective aren't the smartest.

01:27:17.000 They're not the savviest.

01:27:22.000 They possess something that...

01:27:26.000 Most lawyers don't, which is common sense and street smarts.

01:27:31.000 And they marry that with what they learned in school.

01:27:35.000 And they're able to sort of, that perfect stew, I think is what leads to a successful advocate, counselor, attorney, whatever you are. 0.89

01:27:46.000 And oftentimes there's so much of an emphasis placed on your grades and what score did you get and How much of that really ends up fucking mattering at the end of the day? 0.56

01:27:56.000 It matters.

01:27:57.000 But does it matter to the degree we place an emphasis on it in our society?

01:28:03.000 I'm not sure.

01:28:04.000 But my whole thing is, rather than be intimidated by the problem, I think it's...

01:28:14.000 Recognizing that it exists.

01:28:16.000 Just decide one discreet thing you want to do to try to help make a change happen.

01:28:22.000 And then, you know, again, just try to get some forward momentum and you'd be surprised at the buy-in that you get.

01:28:30.000 I think that that's why this platform is so important because it allows people to start sharing ideas, reaching out to us, and we're taking them up on it.

01:28:41.000 I've told you before, we've been contacted by You know, a major law firm, Greenberg Traurig, and, you know, a really awesome attorney that's working on the case of Pierre Rushing, this guy Jordan Grotzinger, who's just thought he was a corporate attorney,

01:28:58.000 had nothing to do with this kind of work.

01:29:00.000 Listen to the podcast.

01:29:02.000 He's a passionate, passionate advocate.

01:29:06.000 And he's going to get justice one of these days for Peter Rushing.

01:29:10.000 We've tried to help apply pressure through this show by having people reach out to the DA and write letters on his behalf.

01:29:19.000 And it's, you know, has it worked yet?

01:29:22.000 It's working.

01:29:23.000 We're going to get there at some point.

01:29:26.000 So, you know, that's my objective, you know, with continuing to do these stories.

01:29:32.000 Because you're right.

01:29:36.000 The privatization of prisons and the industrial prison complex, is that a solvable problem?

01:29:43.000 I'm not sure.

01:29:45.000 I think that it's too much of a giant to slay unless we start pulling the electrodes, not the Neuralink electrodes, pulling the electrodes out of the sockets and taking energy out of it. 0.98

01:30:03.000 As much as we can until they're like, well, we don't have any fucking people. 0.60

01:30:07.000 Or you begin sabotaging pieces of the machine, right? 0.97

01:30:10.000 Because, you know, a lot of these corporations are what you call well-oiled machines, right?

01:30:17.000 And it's like a watch.

01:30:19.000 When you open up a watch, you see so many intricate pieces, right?

01:30:22.000 And sometimes if you break the right piece in the watch, the whole watch ceases to keep time.

01:30:33.000 And it's just, you know, it's just a poor excuse for, it's like putting a Band-Aid on a gunshot wound, you know, for the government to allow these corporations to privatize and say, okay, okay, it's not our problem anymore.

01:30:49.000 We're going to pass the buck.

01:30:52.000 And let somebody else deal with it.

01:30:54.000 Now you have these corporations who they really don't care about, you know, rights and humanity and cruel and unusual punishment and due process.

01:31:05.000 They don't care about none of this stuff.

01:31:06.000 Well, to allow it to exist in the first place, you have to ignore that people will be incentivized like every other industry, like the pharmaceutical industry, like the military industrial complex, like everything else.

01:31:19.000 Once they start Acting as a corporation, which all corporations, it is in their best interest to try to maximize the amount of profit they make always.

01:31:30.000 If they have shareholders, it's their responsibility to those shareholders to maximize profits with each quarter. 0.99

01:31:36.000 Now, when that happens with human beings in prisons, you can bet your fucking sweet ass they're gonna lock as many people up as they can. 0.99

01:31:44.000 That's a fact. 0.99

01:31:44.000 That's their commodity. 0.99

01:31:46.000 We know for a fact that happened.

01:31:47.000 We know for a fact that prison guard unions, they work hard to make sure that laws are not changed.

01:31:54.000 That will incarcerate people for petty drug offenses. 1.00

01:31:57.000 Big business.

01:31:58.000 Big business.

01:31:59.000 Like, for example, I was supposed to go testify at a congressional senate hearing on what they call slave wages, right?

01:32:07.000 So you have this corporation called Corcraft.

01:32:11.000 I don't know how familiar you are with Corcraft.

01:32:13.000 Is that when they use prisoners?

01:32:14.000 Yes.

01:32:15.000 They use prisoners.

01:32:16.000 In Auburn, they make license plates.

01:32:18.000 In Clinton Correctional Facility, they make mattresses and T-shirts and underwear.

01:32:23.000 I was just reading an article today about that.

01:32:26.000 I was just reading an article today about food manufacturers that use prisoners to sell commercial food.

01:32:34.000 Yeah.

01:32:34.000 And they essentially work as slaves.

01:32:37.000 That's quick chill.

01:32:38.000 So you have a whole bunch of different entities under this one large umbrella, right?

01:32:45.000 And I remember I was getting paid $0.17 an hour at one point in time.

01:32:50.000 $0.19 an hour.

01:32:52.000 And, you know, for operating these big machines and they were producing just like a mass amount of...

01:32:59.000 Core Craft is actually a Fortune 500 company.

01:33:03.000 A corporation.

01:33:04.000 And they function, they regulate out of the prison industrial complex.

01:33:10.000 There it is.

01:33:10.000 U.S. prison is part of a hidden workforce linked to hundreds of popular food brands.

01:33:14.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:33:15.000 Fuck. 1.00

01:33:16.000 Frosted Flakes. 1.00

01:33:18.000 So a lot of times we walk into the supermarket and we see these products and we don't realize what's going into making these products.

01:33:27.000 You hear about these slave shops in China and all of this stuff.

01:33:32.000 And, you know, people campaign to say, oh, well, we're not going to support that.

01:33:35.000 But what are you actually supporting here in your own country?

01:33:39.000 Right.

01:33:39.000 Right now.

01:33:40.000 Unbeknownst to you.

01:33:41.000 Unbeknownst to you, right?

01:33:42.000 Yeah.

01:33:42.000 And I mean, if you have a label on everything you buy, like this may contain harmful substances, this may be bad for your health.

01:33:51.000 GMOs. 0.99

01:33:52.000 Why the fuck don't you have a label? 1.00

01:33:53.000 This is made by prisoners. 1.00

01:33:55.000 This is made by people making 13 cents an hour or whatever it is.

01:33:58.000 How do you not have that?

01:34:01.000 Because wouldn't that change the way people would buy things?

01:34:03.000 Well, you know, the most important...

01:34:06.000 Look at this.

01:34:08.000 Including countries that...

01:34:09.000 Okay.

01:34:11.000 So the goods prisoners produced wind up in the supply chains of a dizzying array of products found in most American kitchens, from Frosted Flake cereals, ballpark hot dogs, to gold medal flour, Coca-Cola, and Rice Land rice.

01:34:23.000 They're on the shelves of virtually every supermarket in the country, including Kroger, Target, Aldi, and Whole Foods.

01:34:31.000 Some goods are exported, including to countries that have had products blocked from entering the U.S. for using forced or prison labor.

01:34:39.000 Wild!

01:34:40.000 13th Amendment.

01:34:42.000 Yep.

01:34:43.000 Exactly.

01:34:44.000 Slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime.

01:34:48.000 And we go back to Jim Crow. 0.62

01:34:49.000 That's what they did.

01:34:50.000 Yes.

01:34:50.000 Right after the Emancipation Proclamation, post antebellum, you know, they created these laws to convict The freed slaves so that they can continue to force them into free labor, right?

01:35:05.000 And it just continues today, like 13 cent hours, 17 cent hours, 19 cent hours.

01:35:10.000 During the pandemic, Great Meadows Correctional Facility had these guys working 24 hours a day making hand sanitizers and masks. 0.99

01:35:22.000 That place is the scariest fucking place. 0.99

01:35:24.000 That place traumatized me. 0.99

01:35:25.000 That place is like, it was one of the first prisons that I went to in New York State to visit with a potential client.

01:35:33.000 And I almost peed down my leg.

01:35:36.000 I mean, it looks like, feels like, is like what you saw in the Shawshank Redemption.

01:35:43.000 It's worse than Attica.

01:35:44.000 Hey, check this out.

01:35:46.000 What you're seeing on the screen is not some new thing.

01:35:50.000 You know, speaking of the Shawshank Redemption, Stephen King writes a lot that is rooted...

01:35:58.000 I'm not talking about Cujo.

01:35:59.000 I'm not talking about, you know, his horror writing.

01:36:03.000 His short stories, most of them are rooted in some sort of truth.

01:36:07.000 Rita Hayworth in the Shawshank Redemption was a short story that he wrote.

01:36:11.000 That ended up getting made.

01:36:12.000 I think it was part of Apt Pupil or one of his books of short stories.

01:36:16.000 And you remember in the Shawshank Redemption where they had this precise thing where it was they came up with this idea, you know, the warden came up with an idea for a work program where they were profiting.

01:36:28.000 That was true back then.

01:36:30.000 He was basing that on something that was happening in the Northeast back then.

01:36:34.000 So, you know, the notion that this is still happening shouldn't be that shocking.

01:36:41.000 It's just like, what is our news cycle pay attention to?

01:36:46.000 And how do you make sure that this kind of stuff doesn't keep happening?

01:36:51.000 My idea is you need people on the ground that are working on policy and reform.

01:37:00.000 So at the Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice at Cardozo, we have a policy advisor.

01:37:07.000 Her name is Sarah Chu, who knows forensics.

01:37:11.000 She's a scientist and, like, one of the more respected—in my mind, the most respected reform advocate about how we stop using junk science, like bite marks and— Blood spatter.

01:37:25.000 Well, blood spatter, ballistics, even fingerprints to some extent.

01:37:29.000 The conversation we were having earlier.

01:37:30.000 Yeah, and lobbying to make sure that laws get changed. 0.65

01:37:35.000 And, you know, it's like at the end of the day, the scariest part about all of this is that the politicians that we poke fun at, I poke fun at, everybody has a field day... 0.99

01:37:47.000 These are the fucking people. 1.00

01:37:50.000 These are the people that are sitting in some white fucking building at your state capitol. 1.00

01:37:56.000 And the prosecutors are the worst. 1.00

01:37:57.000 But before you get to the prosecutors, these are the people writing the laws.

01:38:01.000 These are the people writing the statutes.

01:38:04.000 They need to be influenced by people like Sarah Chu, other great people that work in policy and reform advocate.

01:38:12.000 There's a woman named Rebecca Brown. 0.86

01:38:14.000 Her and Sarah Chu both used to be at the Innocence Project.

01:38:17.000 Sarah came to work with me.

01:38:19.000 Rebecca Brown is a great one.

01:38:21.000 They're working boots on the ground and trying to change and educate, really.

01:38:26.000 I mean, how much does your local representative or a state senator Really know about how dangerous it could be to draw conclusions about the directionality of how blood hits drywall versus how it hits lucite.

01:38:46.000 How bite marks leave an indentation on someone's skin.

01:38:53.000 You could, I could, a qualified, certified actually, Strike qualified, a certified odontologist, total horseshit, could take one of these skulls and make the same case.

01:39:12.000 That the bite marks left on someone's leg came from this set of teeth, Sheldon's teeth, your teeth, or my teeth, and convince four juries four times 100% of the time...

01:39:25.000 That you're guilty.

01:39:26.000 That you're guilty.

01:39:27.000 A skilled odontologist could do that.

01:39:29.000 So when bite marks became subject of a report that everybody should read...

01:39:38.000 The National Academy of Sciences did a report in 2009 that should have changed our criminal justice system.

01:39:45.000 It had the most qualified, certified scientists from all over the world study all of these disciplines of forensic All of these disciplines of forensic science and come to the conclusions that none of them,

01:40:03.000 none of them were supported by a scientifically credible body of evidence.

01:40:11.000 There was no repeatability.

01:40:13.000 There was no reliability.

01:40:15.000 The scientific method that you learn in grade school, you could apply it to any of them and they would all fail the test.

01:40:21.000 Which are the standards for admissions at trial?

01:40:24.000 And it talks about the standards for emissions and trial, the Daubert standard, the Frye standard.

01:40:29.000 It's just, is it credible in the scientific community?

01:40:31.000 And they come to a resounding no on everything except for DNA. And DNA is still fraught right now because there are all these new technologies.

01:40:41.000 I shake your hand this morning.

01:40:44.000 And then I later pick up a knife and, you know, stab someone and your DNA ends up on the knife.

01:40:50.000 From the sweat on his hand.

01:40:52.000 Yeah, because there is such sensitive, what they call low copy or touch DNA that can now be detective.

01:41:00.000 That can now be detected.

01:41:02.000 And the mixture can be untangled.

01:41:05.000 And they can say, well, Joe Rogan's DNA is on the knife.

01:41:08.000 Where was he at this time?

01:41:10.000 There's a case of a guy named Emmanuel Fair in Seattle where he was implicated in a murder because he was at a party on Halloween when this girl got murdered.

01:41:18.000 He ended up getting, you know, sitting in prison for, I think, seven or eight years before he finally got acquitted. 0.98

01:41:26.000 So this report should have turned forensic science on its head and no one gives a fuck. 0.98

01:41:33.000 Bite mark evidence. 0.99

01:41:35.000 Until it hits home.

01:41:35.000 Well, bite mark evidence is still admissible in all 50 states.

01:41:41.000 So, I mean, you know, look, we could sit, I could sit and bang my head against the wall about it, or I could, you know, just keep on speaking up when you're in front of a judge.

01:41:51.000 How often, Sheldon, do you hear from an attorney, well, I don't want to piss off the judge?

01:41:55.000 All the time?

01:42:00.000 When you're defending someone, it's to piss off the judge if they're not doing their job.

01:42:06.000 To protect their rights, their constitutional rights.

01:42:10.000 That's what the Constitution was designed for.

01:42:12.000 And it's so interesting when you think about the Constitution, right?

01:42:16.000 And the Founding Fathers and the Bill of Rights and how it has just transferred over hundreds of years.

01:42:23.000 I think?

01:42:43.000 Ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

01:42:45.000 And you constantly keep hitting on the fact that, you know, why do you wait for a problem to end up at your doorstep before you decide to do something about it?

01:42:57.000 You know, you have, like he said, you have people at all of these different organizations.

01:43:03.000 Reach out.

01:43:04.000 Google is very effective.

01:43:06.000 I've only been home nine months, and I've pretty much learned how to navigate Google pretty good, better than most.

01:43:14.000 And, you know, it's actually pretty easy to be able to find different organizations.

01:43:19.000 Like he talks about the people at his organization, Sarah Chu.

01:43:23.000 And we have Gina Mitchell at Queens Defenders, who is our policy coordinator.

01:43:29.000 And we work on so many different subjects.

01:43:32.000 Reach out.

01:43:34.000 Reach out.

01:43:35.000 Change is real, but it has to begin somewhere.

01:43:39.000 You have to just be willing to take a step forward.

01:43:41.000 It doesn't matter where you're from, how old you are, Republican, Democrat, rich, poor, black, white. 0.67

01:43:49.000 It doesn't matter.

01:43:52.000 You know, I took a picture of a guy, a homeless guy, on a train station a couple of days ago, and I posted it on my Instagram page.

01:44:00.000 And it just blows me away how And I'm just going to be straight out.

01:44:07.000 I have an issue with the whole immigration thing because I feel like, like he said, like Joe said earlier, you have $70 million that you can give to a whole other country, yet you're not addressing the issues right here at home right now.

01:44:23.000 I work for the Department of Homeless Shelters.

01:44:27.000 Like, I've worked in there.

01:44:28.000 I've seen it with my own two eyes.

01:44:30.000 Like, and then you have citizens, you have veterans that come back from wars and can't even get the same services that people from other countries come here and get immediately.

01:44:39.000 They get housing vouchers, they get education vouchers, everything.

01:44:43.000 Like, you know, make America great again.

01:44:46.000 If you're gonna make America great again, focus on the people, the citizens, the people who put you in office.

01:44:57.000 It's just, I don't know.

01:44:59.000 It's like, you know...

01:45:00.000 What does that even mean?

01:45:01.000 Look, I've been reading this book called Thinking Fast and Slow.

01:45:06.000 Have you heard? 0.99

01:45:07.000 It's a fucking phenomenal... 0.99

01:45:09.000 I highly recommend it. 0.99

01:45:10.000 It's about how your brain works and why we believe what we believe and the two systems of our brain.

01:45:20.000 And one is the quick judgment and the other is the slow it down and critically think about it.

01:45:27.000 And there are all these puzzles in it where he makes the point by saying, like, consider the following.

01:45:35.000 And the studies that have been done on someone just repeating the same words over and over again, and how that translates into people feeling that it's A, credible, and B, that the person uttering the words has some credibility,

01:45:52.000 are astounding.

01:45:54.000 Just by keeping...

01:45:56.000 I mean... 1.00

01:45:58.000 Trump might be, in my opinion, a little nuts, but he's a little crazy. 1.00

01:46:04.000 He's crazy like a fox, though. 1.00

01:46:05.000 He knows if he keeps on saying those words, those words are going to stick. 0.99

01:46:09.000 If he keeps saying witch hunt, people are going to start repeating it, and they do. 0.98

01:46:14.000 So maybe think a little, like, I don't even know what it means.

01:46:20.000 I just know that we need to start, like, having some individual thought before we...

01:46:27.000 It's just like this group think about other people and, you know, how they're different and lock them up and throw away the key.

01:46:36.000 And, you know, I just think, like, we should all slow down and really think.

01:46:41.000 And what I hope to bring is these stories where you get to know the person.

01:46:48.000 Look, I'm deeply, deeply flawed. 0.97

01:46:52.000 Sheldon will be the first to tell you, like, I did some fucked up things. 0.80

01:46:56.000 But when you watch what he's doing, you know, why can't we make people in these communities...

01:47:09.000 Why can't we make them great again by giving them a better chance?

01:47:14.000 Like you said at the outset of the episode, let them hit the starting line.

01:47:21.000 Well, you know, what you were saying earlier about building a sandcastle, one grain of sand at a time, I think, from my perspective, the feedback that I get, it's these conversations we've had, we've had quite a few of them now, they have changed a lot of people's ideas on how the prison system is structured,

01:47:43.000 what the problems with it are, how many people are wrongfully incarcerated.

01:47:48.000 How incredible some of these people are, wasted potential, locked away forever, something never did, and they didn't break.

01:47:55.000 Instead, they got stronger and wiser and more intelligent and more educated and came out better.

01:48:01.000 And they're incredible human beings.

01:48:04.000 And how many of them are just being wasted?

01:48:07.000 How much potential?

01:48:09.000 This is what you want though, right?

01:48:11.000 You don't want somebody to go into the prison system and come out worse.

01:48:15.000 Which happens most of the time.

01:48:17.000 And then we hear about these horrific incidences or people getting pushed onto the train tracks because you have a guy who has a mental illness.

01:48:25.000 Instead of getting the services that he needs, you put him in prison.

01:48:28.000 You sedated him for three, four years, five years.

01:48:32.000 You sent him to a parole board.

01:48:33.000 The parole board let him out.

01:48:35.000 Two days later, he pushes somebody into the train tracks, right?

01:48:38.000 This is not what you want.

01:48:40.000 And how do you prevent these things from happening, right?

01:48:44.000 By being proactive.

01:48:46.000 By being responsive instead of being reactive.

01:48:49.000 Don't wait for something to happen.

01:48:50.000 But you said something that...

01:48:52.000 Joe said something that...

01:48:55.000 It's worth sticking on for a second.

01:48:57.000 These are, most of the time, these are the miracles that are coming out.

01:49:02.000 Right.

01:49:03.000 I mean, most of the time, you're right.

01:49:05.000 The cycle of from the street to prison back to the street to prison, most of the time— Recidivism.

01:49:12.000 Yeah, I mean, I'm just saying it in plain English.

01:49:15.000 Most of the time, it's churning out monsters, because what else would you expect, right?

01:49:23.000 I mean, there's a great book called In the Belly of the Beast about a guy that went to prison, and he describes what it did to him psychologically, what it did to him, to every cell in his body.

01:49:40.000 And then he goes out and he murders someone.

01:49:45.000 And he writes this book just explaining, I want you to understand what this did to me.

01:49:51.000 I read it when I was in college.

01:49:54.000 And I should read it again.

01:49:56.000 I probably have a different perspective on it now.

01:49:59.000 It might hit home even more.

01:50:00.000 Yeah, these are talk about grains of sand on a beach.

01:50:06.000 If you look at the population of people that keep getting churned out of correctional institutions, most of them are not getting corrected.

01:50:16.000 Why do I like to spend my time with these guys?

01:50:19.000 Because I hope some of their strength rubs off on me somehow.

01:50:24.000 When I came home, right?

01:50:26.000 In May.

01:50:28.000 It took me almost 30 days to get any type of benefits or help.

01:50:33.000 And I had to call this lady.

01:50:35.000 I called this lady.

01:50:35.000 I put in for the SNAP, the food stamps, the benefits, the little bit of benefits that I had, right, or that I could possibly acquire to help me navigate and kind of transition back and reintegrate back into society.

01:50:49.000 And I had a conversation with a lady on the phone, and she told me She said, you don't qualify for emergency services.

01:50:57.000 And I said, what?

01:50:58.000 I said, miss, I just spent 25 years and five months incarcerated.

01:51:06.000 If that is not a qualification, then what is?

01:51:09.000 Oh, sir, I'm just telling you you don't qualify for it.

01:51:11.000 I said, I need to speak to your supervisor.

01:51:13.000 It took me two days to get to her supervisor.

01:51:16.000 But when I finally got to her supervisor, her supervisor, oh, I'm going to look into it.

01:51:21.000 And they finally gave me my benefits.

01:51:22.000 But I'm saying all of that to say that there's these institutions in place that need to change.

01:51:31.000 And for the people who are listening to this and you're directly involved in these institutions, there has to be a conscientious response to what classifies as an emergency.

01:51:47.000 A person should not...

01:51:48.000 I should not have had to wait 30 days.

01:51:50.000 What if I didn't have family resources?

01:51:53.000 What if I didn't have anything?

01:51:54.000 And how much does that incentivize you to go right back to crime?

01:51:57.000 Right.

01:51:57.000 You know what I'm saying?

01:51:58.000 How much would that have incentivized me to go out and commit a robbery or steal a piece of pizza like a guy out in California where they have the three strikes laws and they end up giving this guy 20 years for stealing a slice of pizza because he's starving?

01:52:11.000 This is real stuff.

01:52:13.000 This is stuff that's really happening.

01:52:17.000 Nobody offered me anything.

01:52:19.000 I had to actually go out.

01:52:21.000 Do they give you any sort of guidelines of what you can do to reintegrate to society or do they just release you?

01:52:29.000 They just release you.

01:52:30.000 They gave me $40 and a bus ticket.

01:52:37.000 And I had a little J-Pay debit card because I had a couple of dollars in my account that they gave me with a little bit of extra money on it.

01:52:46.000 They have some programs that you're supposed to be entitled to prior to release, but it's a joke because the programs don't teach you any real skills.

01:52:59.000 One of the most significant hurdles I had upon my reintegration was technology.

01:53:07.000 I've never had a cell phone in my life.

01:53:11.000 I sent out my first email in 2019 from a tablet that they gave me in Auburn Correctional Facility.

01:53:19.000 I don't know what a PDF... I went online and they said I had to...

01:53:25.000 Convert my application into a PDF before I could submit it.

01:53:30.000 Excuse my language.

01:53:31.000 I didn't know what a PDF. What the fuck is that? 0.97

01:53:36.000 You know, so these are some of the things that when we talk about opportunities, right? 0.99

01:53:44.000 And leveling the playing field and recidivism, right?

01:53:47.000 Someone being able to get out and not have to...

01:53:51.000 Be in these situations where they feel like the whole world is against them and they really don't know what to do.

01:53:57.000 They can't get the services that they need.

01:53:58.000 They don't know how to navigate the basics of technology.

01:54:03.000 Microsoft, Excel, I was fortunate.

01:54:05.000 I was in the computer program while I was incarcerated.

01:54:08.000 And I was able to, you know, as my role in the Cornell Prison Education Program, I put myself into a position to where I was...

01:54:16.000 I knew what an Excel spreadsheet was.

01:54:18.000 I knew what a Word document was.

01:54:20.000 But a lot of these guys that's coming out, they don't know what that is.

01:54:23.000 But you skipped the PDF course?

01:54:26.000 Yeah, there's no PDF course.

01:54:29.000 I don't even know how to convert something to a PDF. Pretty simple.

01:54:34.000 I'm sure, but I don't know how to do it.

01:54:35.000 Yeah, I'm saying. 1.00

01:54:36.000 If I saw that in an email, I'd be like, fuck. 1.00

01:54:38.000 Fuck! 1.00

01:54:39.000 Well, you know what's crazy? 1.00

01:54:41.000 There's a great program in New York called Hudson Link.

01:54:46.000 I think it's a college program, and they do a lot of great reintegration programs.

01:54:52.000 They provide a lot of great reintegration services.

01:54:55.000 And they're right a few blocks from Sing Sing Prison.

01:54:59.000 And you were part of Hudson.

01:55:01.000 Shout out to Hudson Lake.

01:55:03.000 So I obtained my degree of mercy from Hudson Lake.

01:55:07.000 Sean Peaker runs the organization amongst many other formerly incarcerated individuals.

01:55:13.000 Sean Peaker is also formerly incarcerated.

01:55:15.000 They have a post-secondary education program.

01:55:19.000 On the inside, and they also have a post-secondary.

01:55:21.000 They're actually paying for my master's right now to go back to school.

01:55:25.000 They have a housing reentry program called New Beginnings.

01:55:29.000 Amazing.

01:55:30.000 That's where I went when I first got released.

01:55:32.000 But, you know, going back, had it not been for these formerly incarcerated individuals, I don't know where I would have been. 1.00

01:55:41.000 Had I had to depend on my elected representatives, my elected assembly and senators, I would probably be trying to steal a loaf of bread at the grocery store.

01:55:55.000 You know what's crazy?

01:55:56.000 This was a trippy moment, man. 0.99

01:55:59.000 Fucking trippy moment. 0.99

01:56:02.000 The warden at Sing Sing. 0.99

01:56:04.000 A guy named Mike Capra.

01:56:06.000 Alright?

01:56:08.000 And when you conjure up in your mind what a warden looks like, I mean, he's right out of central casting.

01:56:17.000 Big, burly dude.

01:56:20.000 You know, looking at him, you think, boy, watch out.

01:56:25.000 He's doling out punishment.

01:56:28.000 This guy...

01:56:30.000 Was so inspired by what he saw at Sing Sing with formerly incarcerated individuals that got out and started programs.

01:56:45.000 J.J. Velasquez's Voices from Within started this organization when he was incarcerated where they bring people in the community into the prison.

01:56:56.000 Just to talk to inmates and to establish that there's some humanity there.

01:57:03.000 Capra, the warden of Sing Sing Prison, they call him the superintendent in New York.

01:57:09.000 That's what they call wardens.

01:57:11.000 Now works for J.J. He retired and now he works for J.J. going around trying to He's like a missionary, but for the work we're doing.

01:57:26.000 The Frederick Douglass program.

01:57:27.000 We were at the UJC a couple of months ago, United Justice Coalition.

01:57:32.000 I don't know.

01:57:34.000 No, that was the Jacob Javits.

01:57:36.000 It was at the Javits Center.

01:57:37.000 Yeah, the Javits Center.

01:57:38.000 He was there.

01:57:39.000 He spoke.

01:57:39.000 Derek spoke.

01:57:40.000 Huge, huge event.

01:57:42.000 But Michael Capra was there.

01:57:44.000 That was what I was saying.

01:57:45.000 It was a trippy moment.

01:57:46.000 I see him there.

01:57:47.000 This guy was the warden of the prison.

01:57:49.000 And now he's there at a booth for JJ's organization.

01:57:53.000 Speaking on behalf of incarcerated individuals.

01:57:57.000 Did you talk to him?

01:57:58.000 How did he make that turn?

01:57:59.000 Oh, did I talk to him?

01:58:00.000 When I saw him, he told when Bruce got out.

01:58:04.000 He came to Hudson Link.

01:58:08.000 It looks like a thrift shop.

01:58:11.000 And it kind of is, but it's only for people getting out.

01:58:14.000 So you could go in and get some clothes.

01:58:17.000 That was Kiki Dunstan's.

01:58:19.000 That was her thrift shop. 0.99

01:58:21.000 She created that. 0.88

01:58:22.000 So when Bruce gets out, he needed clothes.

01:58:25.000 He said, we'll bring you some clothes.

01:58:26.000 He said, no, Hudson Link has this great little spot.

01:58:28.000 So while he was still the warden, he came.

01:58:33.000 Walt Bruce was picking out things to congratulate him and wish him well.

01:58:38.000 And so, yeah, I mean, not only did I talk to him, he told me when I retire, I'm going to come work with these guys.

01:58:45.000 So, yeah, when I saw him at this event called the United Justice Coalition, he's at a booth working for J.J. on the Frederick Douglass project.

01:58:55.000 Side by side with us.

01:58:56.000 And I saw him, and he looked at me, and he goes, I told you, Josh.

01:59:00.000 Yeah.

01:59:00.000 And I just walked up.

01:59:02.000 I gave him a big hug.

01:59:03.000 He like recoiled.

01:59:04.000 I was like, come on, baby, hug me.

01:59:07.000 And he came in.

01:59:09.000 He's like, man, it's like, he's like, it's life changing.

01:59:12.000 You know, it really is.

01:59:13.000 And we had a great talk about it.

01:59:15.000 He was telling me how, you know, just being on the outside with these guys that I saw in, you know, not only in prison uniforms, but in a construct that I was the head of.

01:59:28.000 And now they're the ones inspiring me.

01:59:30.000 We need more Mike Cappers in the world. 0.99

01:59:32.000 Speaking of Michael Capper, right, so prior to my release, me and Bruce, Bruce Bryant, were working.

01:59:41.000 So we created a number of programs.

01:59:43.000 One of them was a civic engagement in New York where we actually teach incarcerated individuals on their rights to vote, how they vote, how do you go to a booth, how do you register to vote, et cetera, et cetera.

01:59:55.000 And Michael Capra was pivotal in allowing us to be able to create these programs and have a platform in the school building.

02:00:04.000 One of them in particular that we are trying to work on now is dyslexia, right?

02:00:11.000 And this blew me away.

02:00:15.000 According to the Department of Correctional Education, 47% of the incarcerated population all across the United States have some type of dyslexia or reading disability, right?

02:00:28.000 That's almost half of the individuals that are in the Department of Corrections that have some type of reading disability, right?

02:00:37.000 So when you look at, and that's the tip of the iceberg, right, so when you look at the bottom of the iceberg, right, and you go and you delve even deeper into that, right, what are the key factors that played in this person actually, you know, what's the correlation between incarceration and illiteracy,

02:00:55.000 right?

02:00:56.000 And there are currently no programs in any Department of Corrections throughout the United States that's actually screening men For dyslexia or to determine who can read and who can't read.

02:01:10.000 So how do you...

02:01:12.000 Wow.

02:01:13.000 Oh my God.

02:01:14.000 However, a study of Texas prison inmates by the University of Texas Medical Branch estimated that approximately 80% of prisoners in a sample group struggled with their literacy skills and that half were likely to be dyslexic.

02:01:27.000 So half of them dyslexic.

02:01:29.000 80% of them struggle to read.

02:01:31.000 So when we talk about recidivism and we talk about preparing someone to be reintegrated back into society, the Department of Corrections has failed.

02:01:45.000 How can you say you're going to rehabilitate somebody?

02:01:48.000 Reading, for me, right, I believe that reading is a fundamental right.

02:01:51.000 My grandmother used to read to me when I was a kid.

02:01:53.000 I would lay in her lap and she would read to me.

02:01:55.000 And it wasn't even about what she read to me, but it was the connection that she and I had together and just being there with her.

02:02:01.000 And it made me respect her.

02:02:04.000 The idea of what it means to read, right?

02:02:06.000 But when we talk about going back to the PDF thing, right?

02:02:11.000 A guy comes home and he's supposed to go online and fill out an application, but he can't even read.

02:02:19.000 How is he supposed to follow basic instructions during transportation and trying to get onto the train and navigate through all of the basic instructions?

02:02:30.000 There are necessities in life and he can't even read.

02:02:35.000 There's an even more startling picture to that, right?

02:02:39.000 What about due process?

02:02:43.000 A guy's in a courtroom and a lawyer's giving him paperwork and he can't even read.

02:02:52.000 So there's no system in place.

02:02:56.000 And I think that that's something that needs to be addressed.

02:03:00.000 I want to get to what were the circumstances that got your sentence reduced?

02:03:05.000 And how did that come about?

02:03:06.000 Okay, so...

02:03:09.000 I can't even count how many motions I filed throughout my incarceration.

02:03:14.000 44010 is with a motion to vacate.

02:03:17.000 Ritter ericom nobis, which is an appeal to a judge, to the appellate division to overturn your appeal, your right to appeal.

02:03:31.000 I filed a motion called the Domestic Violence Justice Survivors Act.

02:03:38.000 And I knew that the motion was going to get denied because I didn't qualify for the motion.

02:03:44.000 But my spirit told me to do it.

02:03:47.000 My intuition told me to just file it.

02:03:50.000 And I filed it.

02:03:52.000 And in the process of filing that motion, that's when I met Allison Hart and Barbara Zoloff at the Center for Appellate Litigation.

02:04:01.000 And they have what they call is the YEARS program, Youth Emergent Assisted Resentencing Program.

02:04:08.000 And what they do is they look for individuals who meet a certain age bracket when they were sentenced, a crime, and then the sentence that's attached, usually disparaging sentences.

02:04:23.000 So the motion got denied, but in the process I connected with Allison and they reached out to me and they said, We think you qualify for the program.

02:04:34.000 We think you're the poster child for this program based on your circumstances.

02:04:41.000 And that began the process of my release.

02:04:46.000 I think what played a significant role was what I had done while I was in prison because that's one of the major things that the district attorney's office had looked at.

02:04:57.000 That's one of the major things that Josh and Allison and everybody had brought to the attention of these people.

02:05:03.000 Say, okay, you know, you have a guy who Has these set of circumstances, but look at what he has done while he was incarcerated.

02:05:11.000 Look what he has been able to accomplish.

02:05:13.000 And he did all of this under the pretenses that he was never going to get out.

02:05:21.000 So we were going back and forth.

02:05:23.000 We filed a bunch of paperwork.

02:05:25.000 We had to get a bunch of documents.

02:05:27.000 I sent out a whole bunch of documents, and they put together what they call a mitigation packet.

02:05:33.000 And a mitigation package just outlines everything, my circumstances, my sentence, my crime, accountability, and a whole bunch of other factors.

02:05:46.000 And they submitted it.

02:05:47.000 It was a 440-20 in New York State, which is a motion to resentence or a motion to vacate the sentence.

02:05:55.000 And initially, the ball was rolling.

02:05:58.000 The district attorney's office had initially conceded to the motion, saying we're not going to oppose the motion.

02:06:09.000 And then something happened.

02:06:10.000 I'm not exactly sure what happened, but maybe Josh, he has more of a background insight.

02:06:18.000 And at that time, me and Bruce were working.

02:06:21.000 I didn't know Josh.

02:06:22.000 And Bruce said, yo, listen, man.

02:06:25.000 I'm going to talk to my man, Josh Dubin.

02:06:28.000 He knows some people that know some people.

02:06:30.000 And I didn't know that he was working with Derrick Hamilton.

02:06:33.000 Derrick Hamilton and I had worked in a law library together.

02:06:35.000 So I think what he mentioned to Derrick, he said, you know, my nickname was superb.

02:06:39.000 That was my nickname in prison.

02:06:45.000 And he said, you know a guy named Superb?

02:06:46.000 He said, yeah, I know Superb.

02:06:48.000 So him and Derek got together, along with Allison, Hop, and Barbara Zoloff, and they went back to the district attorney's office in full force.

02:07:00.000 They had all kind of me.

02:07:01.000 Josh, you could probably...

02:07:02.000 No, I mean, I don't...

02:07:04.000 You know the details more than I do.

02:07:05.000 Well, I mean, listen, I don't want to get too much into the details, because...

02:07:10.000 I don't think they matter.

02:07:11.000 And I think I want to make sure that the credit is given where it belongs, which is probably to Sheldon first for transforming his life, and to Barbara and Allison, because these are two amazing attorneys that saw potential and the injustice in what was done to Sheldon and who he had become,

02:07:33.000 and they got to know him.

02:07:35.000 You know, and I'm on the phone with Bruce, and these prison calls, if they're not a legal call, these prison calls are like, sometimes they just end real abruptly. 1.00

02:07:44.000 You know, it's like, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, I gotta go by. 0.99

02:07:48.000 You know, or, oh, they're giving me a hard time, they're doing a count now, I gotta go by. 1.00

02:07:52.000 Or sometimes it'll just click off.

02:07:55.000 So, Bruce is, you know, about to get out.

02:07:59.000 He's got his clemency is granted, he had, he had, um, Gone to the parole board with a claim of innocence, which is so rare, and got granted the parole pending the reinvestigation of his case.

02:08:17.000 But he has clemency with no strings attached, other than being on probation until they make a final decision on his innocence.

02:08:31.000 He's on the phone with me going, yo, yo, I got this guy, Sheldon Johnson, right here.

02:08:36.000 And he wants to talk to you.

02:08:38.000 His lawyer knows your cousin. 1.00

02:08:40.000 And I was like, what the fuck is this guy talking about? 0.99

02:08:43.000 And I was like, Bruce, man, I got to worry about getting you out. 0.99

02:08:46.000 And this was going on for like a full month.

02:08:50.000 And, you know, he's right here.

02:08:52.000 He's right here.

02:08:52.000 He wants to talk to you.

02:08:53.000 I said, I'm not talking to anyone else.

02:08:55.000 I'm dealing with your case.

02:08:56.000 I got to get you out.

02:08:57.000 He's like, please talk to Allison.

02:08:59.000 She's been at your house before.

02:09:02.000 No, you got something, you got your lines crossed somewhere.

02:09:06.000 So I finally like paid attention to it.

02:09:12.000 I had a million other cases going on and Bruce was our first client at the Perlmutter Center and we were like, you know, really lining things up for his release.

02:09:21.000 And I speak to Sheldon's lawyer, and she said, you know, I'm actually friends with your cousin, and when she organized a baby shower for your first, for your daughter, who's my oldest, Lila, she said,

02:09:36.000 I was at your house for your baby shower.

02:09:38.000 I remember your wife, Jillian, real well.

02:09:41.000 She's like, tells me, I remember your house. 1.00

02:09:44.000 And I'm like, well, come on, you can't make this shit up. 1.00

02:09:47.000 The connections. 1.00

02:09:48.000 The connection.

02:09:50.000 I mean, in New York City, it was just too wild.

02:09:53.000 So I said, send me the mitigation submission.

02:09:59.000 And that was when I read about Sheldon.

02:10:02.000 And I went to Derek Hamilton, who is a one-man cyclone of justice.

02:10:09.000 You know, he's been on the show.

02:10:13.000 He just does so much for so many people.

02:10:15.000 He's like, I know him.

02:10:17.000 He's an amazing guy.

02:10:18.000 We're going to get him out.

02:10:20.000 So right in the middle of—there's so many Trump things where there's cameras all outside that I forget.

02:10:28.000 Yeah, Trump was supposed to show up in court.

02:10:29.000 I forget what it was.

02:10:31.000 And they kept pushing it back.

02:10:31.000 They said, oh, there's too much going on in the courtroom.

02:10:33.000 What was it, though?

02:10:35.000 It was him being indicted?

02:10:36.000 It was him being indicted, and then they were saying that it was too much police activity there, that they just kept pushing it back.

02:10:44.000 So what happened was we were at the district attorney's office on a different case that we're working on, and we asked to speak to the district attorney of New York and let him know that we were now representing Sheldon along with the Center for Appellate Litigation and made a passionate plea on Sheldon's behalf and I don't want to go too much into the details,

02:11:07.000 but we ended up...

02:11:08.000 You know, kudos to the Manhattan District Attorney's Office for actually paying attention and seeing that Sheldon was worthy of a second chance.

02:11:20.000 And really, the sentence did not fit the crime.

02:11:26.000 And the twist on Sheldon's story that...

02:11:29.000 It's like a head-scratcher to me that I asked him about...

02:11:34.000 Was the judge that sentenced him as a black man.

02:11:39.000 And, you know, I said to Sheldon, did that ever strike you as, I mean, here's an African American judge that looks at this young black kid and should understand his circumstances and have a better understanding of it and not want to throw away his life.

02:12:03.000 And I said, so what do you do with that fact?

02:12:07.000 And Sheldon said, well, I'll let you respond to it because he said something to me that I didn't really – I mean this judge now sits as a federal judge in the Southern District of New York.

02:12:21.000 I don't know what to make of that.

02:12:25.000 It just seems so strange to me that that is who said, this guy's not worthy of redemption.

02:12:36.000 One of the things that I expressed to Josh when we had this conversation was that Just in my experiences dealing with judges and prosecutors and correctional officers in particular who are black,

02:12:54.000 right?

02:12:54.000 They struggle with this idea that they feel that they have to be harder on their own people.

02:13:03.000 For one, to make an example, and so that their colleagues don't think that they're being weak or showing favoritism because, oh, this guy is black, so you're showing him favoritism.

02:13:14.000 But the idea of what Josh is saying, you would think that someone who's in this position as a judge, he's an arbitrator, right?

02:13:23.000 He is supposed to be someone who is in a position of power and authority, should be able to look down And I mean, maybe he saw something.

02:13:36.000 I don't know what his experiences was.

02:13:38.000 I can't speak to that.

02:13:42.000 You know, maybe he saw me as a menace, you know.

02:13:47.000 But I do honestly believe that.

02:13:52.000 We need these people to be able to look at things from an objective, right?

02:13:57.000 Because as a person of color and in a position of power, a lot of times it's a subjective reality.

02:14:06.000 It's a reality that's attached to personal feelings and experiences, and a person who's in that position should be in a position to be more objective, right?

02:14:20.000 When we talk about objectivity.

02:14:22.000 And I think that's what it boils down to, you know, subjectivity versus objectivity, right?

02:14:28.000 I think what you're talking about, too, is expressed by, I know a lot of guys that have been, that have had dealings with black cops.

02:14:36.000 Black guys having dealings with black cops, and they will tell you, man... 0.84

02:14:45.000 Yeah. 0.98

02:14:48.000 Yeah.

02:14:57.000 So, you know, just to speak to what he said, right?

02:15:02.000 Like when I was in upstate New York, Auburn and Clinton and Attica, you had a sprinkle of maybe one or two black cops. 0.99

02:15:15.000 And the black cops were always the worst. 1.00

02:15:17.000 Right. 0.98

02:15:18.000 Because, like he just said, you know, they are a minority and they don't want to be ostracized by their co-workers or made to seem as if they're showing favoritism towards the prisoners.

02:15:30.000 So they go out of their way to just be extra.

02:15:33.000 That's what we used to say.

02:15:34.000 He's just being extra.

02:15:36.000 He wants to enforce all of the rules.

02:15:38.000 What a white cop might say, this guy got a pot and an eye. 0.74

02:15:44.000 So, you know, in prison, you know, we have like, you know, you have pots, guys cook, and you have an eye.

02:15:50.000 It's usually like a coil that's detached from a hot pot, and you use it to make food.

02:15:57.000 There's been times when, you know, you'll have a white cop that'll come in the cell, and it's contraband.

02:16:02.000 You're not supposed to have it, but you'll have a white cop that'll come in the cell, and he'll see a pot, and he'll just be like, he's just using that to cook. 0.82

02:16:08.000 Then you'll have a black cop that'll come and be like, no, he can't have that. 0.99

02:16:12.000 You know, and it's...

02:16:14.000 And it's just interesting.

02:16:18.000 And I think it goes back even farther than that, right? 0.83

02:16:22.000 When you go back all the way into slavery, you know, you had the house nigga and the field nigga. 1.00

02:16:30.000 Excuse my language for using those words, right?

02:16:32.000 You could use them, we can't.

02:16:33.000 Right, you know what I'm saying?

02:16:35.000 And the idea of the person, the guy who was in the house...

02:16:38.000 He was harder on his own people, his fellow slaves, than some of the overseers may have been or the slave masters.

02:16:47.000 So it's this transferred psychological state where, you know, a person feels like they have to just go above and beyond, like Joe just said, to show that, oh, I'm not showing favoritism.

02:17:01.000 Yeah.

02:17:02.000 Or I'm not speaking, you know, this whole talking white. 1.00

02:17:06.000 God, it's such a fucked up system. 1.00

02:17:08.000 It's crazy. 1.00

02:17:08.000 It's so fucked up. 1.00

02:17:10.000 And every time we have one of these conversations, I leave and I just drive and I think when I'm driving home. 1.00

02:17:16.000 I'm just like, what the fuck? 0.99

02:17:18.000 Like, just the sea of human beings that are entrapped in this system. 0.99

02:17:24.000 What is the number of incarcerated individuals in the United States right now?

02:17:27.000 Two million.

02:17:29.000 So that's more than the population of Austin.

02:17:32.000 It's actually 1.92.

02:17:34.000 Let me round it off as 2 million.

02:17:37.000 Roughly Austin and the surrounding areas.

02:17:40.000 So interestingly, I was looking at Austin, right?

02:17:43.000 Texas.

02:17:43.000 Texas taxpayers pay $3.5 million in taxes towards prisons.

02:17:52.000 $3.5 million.

02:17:54.000 How much of that could be saved if it's invested?

02:17:57.000 I mean, it would be a fascinating study if one state would implement what we're talking about, like community outreach programs starting at a grassroots level.

02:18:09.000 How much money would be saved by the state for investing that money?

02:18:12.000 So, for example, right, on the 17th of this month, we went to, I told you, we went to the rally.

02:18:19.000 Treatment, not jails, right?

02:18:20.000 So, the idea of the treatment, not jails, is to have a diversion court that deals with substance abuse and give the judges the discretion To send people who clearly have substance abuse issues into a program as opposed to incarceration,

02:18:35.000 right?

02:18:36.000 And for every dollar that is spent in this program, you save $2.21.

02:18:43.000 I mean, there are studies we could go through, you know, incarceration in the federal prisons and the state prisons.

02:18:51.000 And at the risk of sounding like stat machines, you obviously see Sheldon is very well versed.

02:18:57.000 I am as well.

02:18:58.000 But the point is, is the short answer is we would save a ton of money.

02:19:05.000 And be able to invest in people and things to make people happy, not sad.

02:19:12.000 To engage in enjoyment, not suffering.

02:19:17.000 Productivity, not dependence.

02:19:18.000 Wouldn't it just take one governor? 0.76

02:19:21.000 To implement something like this that would show that there's a benefit financially for the state?

02:19:26.000 But look who they're beholden to.

02:19:27.000 You mentioned it earlier.

02:19:29.000 Then they have to worry about how will that impact my electability, right?

02:19:34.000 Because are the corrections officers union, the police union, are they going to get behind me in the next election?

02:19:40.000 I think when you take a step back from a governor, Like, we have a guy who is the DA of Brooklyn.

02:19:47.000 His name is District Attorney Gonzalez.

02:19:50.000 And, you know, we have an amazing relationship with him.

02:19:55.000 The Perlmutter Center, Derek Hamilton especially, where we're able to go to him and the people that work with him and say, look, we have a client right now that's in prison for, I think, 30 years on a 30-year sentence for a $6 robbery at a drug house.

02:20:12.000 And the diversion programs, the drug diversion programs that are available now weren't available back then.

02:20:18.000 He's 69 years old.

02:20:21.000 So, you know, we're really hoping, I think we're very close to the finish line of getting him released.

02:20:28.000 So...

02:20:30.000 You know, I think that the short answer is, yeah, it would take a governor to implement a program to be able to point funds in the right direction.

02:20:44.000 You talked about, just one second, you talked about HBCUs.

02:20:48.000 FAMU in Florida, the only land grant HBCU in the state, is the disparity in funding Of that school versus other schools in the state is not a matter of—it's a matter of fact.

02:21:10.000 I was recently arguing on behalf of these students that just want to be— We're good to go.

02:21:38.000 And said, here are the statistics.

02:21:41.000 This is all traceable to what they call du jour segregation.

02:21:46.000 There was the, you know, and please fund the school appropriately.

02:21:52.000 Well, the judge just dismissed the case a few days ago.

02:21:55.000 And I would invite people to go online and read the decision.

02:22:00.000 Because we're going to appeal it to the 11th Circuit in Atlanta.

02:22:03.000 But it's not a matter of...

02:22:07.000 There's no controversy.

02:22:11.000 There's no argument that, no, we are funding it appropriately.

02:22:16.000 FAMU was founded on a slave plantation, a former slave plantation.

02:22:22.000 And when I brought that up at the oral argument, the judge went nuts on me.

02:22:27.000 What?

02:22:28.000 No, you're saying it's a slave plant?

02:22:29.000 No, I'm saying that's where it started.

02:22:31.000 And if you take a thread and pull it forward through time, the United States Office of Civil Rights in the 1970s, in the 1990s, Went to the state of Florida and said, you are not funding FAMU appropriately.

02:22:47.000 And they entered into these consent decrees with them, where they had to do what's called destroy vestiges of du jour segregation.

02:22:57.000 Because since Brown versus Board of Education, there was another Supreme Court decision called Fortis, which talked about how do you establish that a pattern or practice is traceable to segregation.

02:23:09.000 And the state of Florida just has ignored it.

02:23:14.000 So does Governor DeSantis have the ability to make sure that FAMU is funded appropriately?

02:23:21.000 Or is Governor DeSantis going to worry more about Florida State University being somehow shortchanged in the national championship and earmark funds to...

02:23:38.000 Challenge the college football folks to make sure... 0.98

02:23:42.000 I mean, are you fucking kidding me? 0.96

02:23:43.000 I went to Florida State. 0.99

02:23:45.000 I think it's fucking... 1.00

02:23:47.000 It's lunacy. 0.99

02:23:50.000 So the answer to your question is yes, but he's not going to do it for whatever political reasons he has.

02:23:58.000 Why not fund the school so that there is some, you know, a level playing field? 0.97

02:24:05.000 And it's a controversial subject amongst ignorant voters. 0.97

02:24:09.000 It's a controversial subject amongst ignorant voters because all Governor DeSantis has to say is he took a page out of Trump's book because he knows it works, is all he has to say is woke, [... 0.98

02:24:24.000 What does that mean? 0.94

02:24:26.000 What does it mean?

02:24:27.000 It means different things to different people.

02:24:29.000 All I'm saying is look at the statistics, and you cannot come to any conclusion but that FAMU, the only HBCU that is a land-grant institution in Florida, meaning that they were granted land, is funded disproportionate to any other college in the state.

02:24:47.000 And there is no reason for it.

02:24:50.000 Other than that it is a vestige of segregation.

02:24:54.000 And, you know, really the state has the burden to say no, there is a justified reason for it under the law.

02:25:02.000 I'm just giving it to you in plain English.

02:25:03.000 They don't put anything forth.

02:25:06.000 I mean, I had the judge asking me questions in the oral argument on the motion to dismiss, questions like this.

02:25:13.000 Well, couldn't it be that Florida State University had a better boosters club and that they were able to raise more money?

02:25:23.000 And I said, you're absolutely right.

02:25:25.000 You're making my argument for me.

02:25:27.000 When you are struggling to make sure that the microscopes work in your science labs, which one of my clients will tell you is the case, and you have dilapidated buildings, are you worrying about starting a fundraising organization and boosters?

02:25:44.000 Well, couldn't they have gone and lobbied the legislator?

02:25:46.000 Yeah, they could have.

02:25:47.000 Who was running the legislator in Florida?

02:25:51.000 You know, and so when you start to run into arguments like that, the writing's sort of on the wall, and we have to now take it up with the, you know, the 11th Circuit in Atlanta and try to get that decision overturned.

02:26:04.000 This was on a motion to dismiss where the standard is just, I have to take all of the facts that the plaintiffs are alleging as true and assume them to be true at this stage.

02:26:16.000 So it's, you know, the point is the problem would not exist if the governor just said, you know what, I just got these statistics from the Department of Education.

02:26:27.000 Let's just fund FAMU proportionate to how we fund every other school.

02:26:32.000 And they just don't.

02:26:33.000 And what they fall back on is, well...

02:26:36.000 You know, there's merit-based funding.

02:26:39.000 I mean, start peeling the layers of that.

02:26:42.000 So you look at the graduation rates.

02:26:45.000 You look at other metrics.

02:26:48.000 Quantifiable.

02:26:49.000 Yeah, I think you see the flaw there, right?

02:26:52.000 So, yeah, it can get frustrating at times and what, you know, like, I have a choice now.

02:26:59.000 Do I fold up the tent?

02:27:00.000 No, you go to the Court of Appeals and you make your case and you just keep on fighting and trying to get it right.

02:27:06.000 So to piggyback off of what you just said, right, you know, when you say, can the governor do these things, right?

02:27:15.000 Yes, they can.

02:27:16.000 A lot of times these...

02:27:19.000 These objectives are long-term and it takes time to quantify them.

02:27:24.000 So when we speak about quantifying like these examples of what are the circumstances surrounding the lacking of funding, a lot of times these governors are more concerned about whether or not this is going to come out during election year and people are going to,

02:27:42.000 you know, whether liberals Or conservatives are going to go against them and vote against them because they supported education of incarcerated individuals.

02:27:54.000 I remember when I was going to Auburn and I was in the Cornell Prison Education Program.

02:28:00.000 This was in 2014. You had correctional officers' families outside the facility protesting as the volunteers were coming into prison with With signs saying, does my kid have to get convicted in order to get a free education?

02:28:21.000 And the idea was that we were receiving a free education because we were incarcerated, which is not the case.

02:28:28.000 The idea is that education has been proven to prevent recidivism.

02:28:34.000 Individuals who have been shown to acquire associate's degrees and bachelor's degrees are like 91, 92% less likely to return back to prison.

02:28:46.000 So this is quantifiable evidence of how you take money...

02:28:53.000 And you allocate it into one project so over the long run you can save money.

02:28:59.000 So it can be done.

02:29:00.000 The response to that is not stop prisoners from being educated.

02:29:05.000 It's like make it easier for everybody.

02:29:07.000 Exactly.

02:29:07.000 That's the response.

02:29:09.000 I mean, I think the easy answer, though, to your question of why I don't focus my attention on governors is, like, am I leaving this in people like Bill Clinton's hands when he was the governor of Arkansas? 0.99

02:29:23.000 That fucking guy? 0.98

02:29:24.000 Am I leaving it in the hands of Andrew Cuomo? 1.00

02:29:26.000 Right. 1.00

02:29:27.000 That fucking guy? 1.00

02:29:27.000 I mean, that guy wouldn't answer a fucking letter, wouldn't return, you know, his clemency program was to not have a clemency program. 1.00

02:29:39.000 He was too busy hugging people. 1.00

02:29:40.000 He was too busy, yeah, rubbing shoulders or whatever the fuck he was. 0.99

02:29:43.000 Stealing feels. 0.99

02:29:47.000 Oh, my bad.

02:29:48.000 I would just...

02:29:49.000 That's just your opinion.

02:29:51.000 Yeah.

02:29:51.000 Yeah, so I think that the time, energy, and resources are better spent.

02:29:57.000 I think the private sector comes up with better solutions oftentimes at helping, like, watch how, what do they call it, the virtuous cycle?

02:30:08.000 The virtuous cycle works like this.

02:30:09.000 When I saw the work that Alison Haupt and Barbara Zoloft were doing at the Center for Appellate Litigation, I said, this is like, you know, God's work.

02:30:21.000 This is like beautiful stuff they're doing.

02:30:23.000 And they're on a shoestring budget.

02:30:25.000 So rather than be like, you know, the civil rights community can be interesting.

02:30:31.000 It brings out the best and the worst of people.

02:30:34.000 A lot of these civil rights organizations, you know, again, you throw human beings into any endeavor together, they're going to fuck it up.

02:30:40.000 They like to argue and get, like, um, I mean... 0.96

02:30:44.000 Egos. 0.96

02:30:45.000 Egos, and look what happened to me by coming on this show.

02:30:51.000 Some folks tried to censor me, and I just wouldn't have it.

02:30:55.000 So I saw the work that they were doing, and I said, you know what?

02:30:58.000 Do you need help?

02:31:00.000 And they said, we need help.

02:31:03.000 We have to do these mitigation reports, and we have to hire people, like in Sheldon's case, to assess him, a clinical psychologist, a social worker, whatever it is.

02:31:13.000 And we don't have the money to get the reports done.

02:31:16.000 And there's just two of us.

02:31:17.000 So the Perlmutter Center is providing them with the money to do those reports.

02:31:23.000 Steve Zeidman at CUNY, he's this guy that I think that he's responsible single-handedly.

02:31:30.000 For over 50 clemencies in the state of New York.

02:31:34.000 Amazing.

02:31:34.000 Phenomenal guy.

02:31:35.000 Actually, he's coming to Queens Defenders to do a...

02:31:38.000 We're getting ready to start a clemency initiative at Queens Defenders.

02:31:41.000 He's coming to train a bunch of guys.

02:31:43.000 He's just this guy...

02:31:45.000 Yeah, that doesn't surprise me.

02:31:46.000 He's a guy that just...

02:31:47.000 He's a letter-writing machine, and he keeps the pressure on, and he just doesn't give up on people.

02:31:53.000 And, you know, he needs help.

02:31:56.000 And we're looking for ways to collaborate.

02:31:58.000 So we said, what is it that moves the needle to these clemency units at governor's offices?

02:32:04.000 Because the governor's not paying attention.

02:32:06.000 They have a battery of people.

02:32:08.000 That listen to these cases and what they do are videos.

02:32:12.000 He does these really great videos that are like a day in the life and to sort of humanize the clients so they're not just on paper or in pictures and they go and interview them and have them talk about what it would mean to be free and how they've changed themselves.

02:32:29.000 So he needed a little bit of help to get these videos produced.

02:32:32.000 So we've agreed to donate some funds there.

02:32:36.000 And I think it just like...

02:32:38.000 Having this more synergistic approach rather than have it be about me or put my name on the door, let me get the credit.

02:32:48.000 We just all pitch in.

02:32:50.000 Yeah.

02:32:51.000 To wrap this up, if someone's listening to this and they want to reach out, they want to help, they want to contribute, maybe somebody does want to, some Jeff Bezos type character does want to get involved and see if there is something that they could do in terms of like some sort of a community outreach center or something that can help.

02:33:08.000 What can they do?

02:33:09.000 Who can they reach out to?

02:33:10.000 They can go to the Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice at Cardozo Law.

02:33:15.000 It's like Sheldon can Google.

02:33:18.000 Anyone can Google it.

02:33:20.000 There it is right there.

02:33:22.000 And I think Googling it would be faster.

02:33:26.000 If you scroll down to the bottom of it, you'll find the Donate button.

02:33:30.000 You know, there are ways, and there's some of my students, there's a Give Now button.

02:33:36.000 We put it all the way to the bottom.

02:33:38.000 But in any event, you can reach out to me at joshua.dubin at yu.edu.

02:33:48.000 That's my email for the Perlmutter Center.

02:33:54.000 You know, we're on the precipice of a major announcement with one of the most prestigious law firms in the country in a couple of weeks that has agreed to not donate just financial resources but woman and manpower to help litigate these cases.

02:34:15.000 That came as a result of the exposure that we're getting here.

02:34:31.000 Doing this quarterly and telling these stories, I'm very thoughtful in who I bring on.

02:34:37.000 I think this was one of the best ones yet.

02:34:41.000 They've all been amazing.

02:34:42.000 I just love the fact that Sheldon was able to tell his story, and this was a different version of, I think, an important element of the story that needs to be told.

02:34:52.000 So my deep respect and love for you.

02:34:56.000 And my same to you.

02:34:57.000 I think what you do is extraordinary.

02:34:59.000 It's so admirable.

02:35:01.000 It's so important.

02:35:03.000 It sets an example to so many people that there's great work that can be done and real good.

02:35:10.000 And Sheldon, thank you very much for being here, man.

02:35:12.000 Thank you.

02:35:12.000 Thank you for the example that you set and all you've done to educate people and just to set an example with your own life that there's a way out of this.

02:35:22.000 And you can also find us at queensdefenders.org.

02:35:30.000 There's also my email address.

02:35:33.000 It's sjohnson at queensdefenders.org.

02:35:36.000 You can reach out to us.

02:35:37.000 We're also on the precipice of an amazing announcement working with Columbia University, their Youth Justice Ambassador Program, and coordinating with professors and volunteers from Columbia to work with our Youth Emergent Leadership Program.

02:35:52.000 And, you know, we can use all of the help that we can get.

02:35:56.000 Well, I'm sure you're going to get some.

02:35:58.000 People are listening.

02:35:59.000 All right.

02:36:00.000 Thank you.

02:36:00.000 Thank you very much.

02:36:01.000 Appreciate you having me here, man.

02:36:02.000 It's an honor.

02:36:03.000 Appreciate you being here.

02:36:03.000 It's an honor to have you on.

02:36:04.000 Thank you.

02:36:05.000 Thanks, Josh.

02:36:06.000 Bye.

02:36:06.000 Bye, everybody.

The Joe Rogan Experience - February 01, 2024

Joe Rogan Experience #2096 - Josh Dubin & Sheldon Johnson

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript