In this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, the comedian and podcaster joins us to talk about his new book, "Revenge or the Tipping Point," and why he thinks cops should admit they were wrong about something.
00:00:30.000No, I was just thinking that the more you do this work, the more routine the stories would get, and you would start to see fact patterns and situations repeat.
00:00:49.000But I'm starting to think the more you do it, the more nutty and bizarre it gets.
00:00:55.000And you find yourself in these situations where you're like, that can't be.
00:01:25.000The world of wrongfully accused and wrongfully convicted people is one of the darkest worlds in the world because you're taking away a person's freedom.
00:02:04.000And the way he starts it out is about, I think, he's going to come back to it at the end, but I think it's the opioid scandal.
00:02:15.000He's leaving it blank until the end of the book about how when they testified, the executives of the company testified before Congress that they couldn't bring themselves to apologize or admit that they were wrong.
00:02:27.000And they keep on using the words, our drug has been associated with, associated with addiction.
00:02:37.000So I'm starting to think that this inability to admit fault, that you're wrong, that you're sorry, it transcends the legal system.
00:02:54.000And, you know, I'm starting to believe that the cases where these cops are out to frame someone are far more, well,
00:03:09.000maybe not far more, but they're less common than the cases where law enforcement's trying to do the right thing and a detective has a hunch and they just get to where they think they need to be on the evidence by following the hunch, which is often wrong.
00:03:27.000So, yeah, it's a mix of all that shit.
00:03:31.000Yeah, and people don't like to admit they're wrong ever, especially when it comes to something as crazy as a pharmaceutical drug company releasing some opioid that's going to kill a million people.
00:04:15.000Revisionist history because he's a curious dude, this Malcolm Gladwell.
00:04:20.000And, you know, some of his stuff I agree with, some I don't.
00:04:26.000But I like that he looks beneath the surface and tries to figure out what is motivating people or what they're tricking themselves into believing.
00:04:37.000And I just was watching this man Escalco bit the other day, and he was like, Can't you just say I'm sorry?
00:05:12.000And people that don't recognize that, they just believe that they're never wrong or that they want people to know they're never wrong or think they're never wrong.
00:05:19.000So they just don't admit it and they just bury it deep inside.
00:05:22.000But you find yourself apologizing all the fucking time sometimes when you're conscious of it.
00:06:27.000And but I had an expert, a so-called expert on the stand.
00:06:36.000And there was an email where they it was an unaccredited DNA lab.
00:06:47.000And someone that worked for him gets the results of DNA testing, one round of the results.
00:06:56.000And she says, the good news is we have a full profile.
00:07:00.000The bad news is it's not associated with the Pearl Mutters.
00:07:03.000And I said to him in words or substance, why would it ever be bad news for a scientist if one particular person was implicated in a crime or not?
00:07:16.000Aren't they supposed to just give the facts?
00:07:19.000And in a moment of candor, I think it's one of the few times this has happened in all my years doing this.
00:07:26.000The guy said, you know, I wouldn't have used those words.
00:07:40.000And I mean, the case is, I think it's an important one for forensic science because their DNA was stolen at a deposition over some petty shit.
00:07:52.000It was about a tennis dispute in their community.
00:07:55.000And they're lured to this deposition and their neighbor takes their DNA without their consent.
00:08:08.000He had a former crime scene analyst and some retired deputy chief of police from Toronto, because this guy's from Canada, come down and the former crime scene analyst sits at the deposition.
00:08:30.000And they planned it all beforehand and they made sure that they did not handle paper that Ike Perlmutter would handle and they made sure that no one touched this water bottle that Lori Perlmutter was going to handle and they hand him this phony exhibit and they had it worked out before that they would only touch the bottom corner of it.
00:08:58.000They have a water bottle sitting in front of Lori Perlmutter and they ask questions about this dispute over the tennis center and you know, when they leave, it was treated like a crime scene and it was like some vigilante justice type of shit where they send all this stuff to an unaccredited lab,
00:09:24.000who then sends it to an accredited lab and instead of waiting for the results to come in from this accredited lab, the unaccredited lab starts interpreting it and they're having pressure put on them by this man that ultimately accused Ike and Lori of being involved in this awful crime.
00:10:04.000He and Lori don't have children and they live a very quiet life in Palm Beach.
00:10:12.000He was an avid tennis player this is about 14 years ago avid tennis player and he became very friendly with the woman that was the tennis pro.
00:10:25.000She would set him up with tennis games and he became friends with her so she sold real estate on the side.
00:10:37.000I mean, this is like a fucking episode of like Seinfeld or curb your enthusiasm at the beginning, then it like goes off the rails and descends into the depths of hell.
00:10:51.000So a man moves into, or a man had been living at, or moves into their neighborhood and he um becomes friends with this other couple who also sell real estate.
00:11:03.000The wife sells real estate and apparently they approach the tennis pro and they're like we should team up on real estate and she's like, no, it's just my side hustle, i'm gonna do it alone.
00:11:12.000So this guy from Canada writes this memo and in the memo there's all these accusations about this woman that she could go to federal prison and she's committing.
00:12:47.000So because he's so convinced that they did it and or that they were involved and he, you know, initially suspected that other people might be involved, this guy's going around and swabbing DNA off of with a q-tip, off of cars.
00:13:06.000He's digging through trash in the condo community and he's like on this mission to collect people's DNA.
00:13:13.000So he calls them to a deposition about the tennis center case and that's where this all went down.
00:13:19.000So once they collect their DNA, this unaccredited lab claims that DNA taken off of the hate mail matches Lori Perlmutter's DNA from the water bottle at the deposition.
00:13:35.000The problem was that this unaccredited lab didn't wait for the report from the accredited lab.
00:13:42.000And that run of the DNA that this woman was relying on, the accredited lab discarded it because the man that actually did the testing contaminated the machine.
00:13:55.000And he knew it, so he didn't rely on it.
00:13:59.000So years and years and years go by and well after they knew that Lori had nothing to do with this.
00:14:07.000In fact, in 2017, a man got arrested in Canada and he got arrested because a package got intercepted at Homeland at the border by Homeland Security and it had samples of the hate mail, latex gloves, you know, in the package.
00:14:26.000And it was a former business associate of this Canadian guy and their relationship went sour.
00:14:37.000You know, in 2019, I believe the guy gets arrested again and there's a detailed affidavit.
00:14:42.000So it's clear that this man is responsible for it.
00:14:46.000So in any event, in 2016, I believe it was 2016, there's an article in the fucking deal book in the New York Times saying that Lori Perlmutter DNA is on that hate mail.
00:15:00.000And then there's another one in the Globe and Mail, which is a big Canadian paper.
00:15:06.000So it was a defamation case against this guy and against this lawyer for a chub because Chubb helped this Chubb lawyer, federal insurance, also known as Chubb, helps him draw up the blueprints for collecting their DNA at the deposition.
00:15:29.000We won a $50 million verdict and he was found liable for defamation, abusive process, which is abuse of the legal process.
00:15:40.000And it's taken Ike and Lori all of these years to have their name restored in court.
00:15:46.000And they'd kill me if I admitted it and it would be a violation of their confidence and my professional obligation, but they've spent an untold fortune.
00:15:57.000And, you know, the case is important for forensic science because DNA is supposed to be the holy grail.
00:16:04.000And you can't have private citizens running around trying to collect people's DNA without knowing what they're doing.
00:16:13.000You could be leaning on someone and have good intentions to get results.
00:16:22.000But if I told you or if I said to Jamie, here's my suspect, take a look at these fingerprints and tell me if they match him or her.
00:16:55.000And they will say, yeah, I know that that happens.
00:16:59.000And if someone tells me who the suspect is and only who the suspect is, and I'm comparing it, I think the error rate goes up, but not with me.
00:17:11.000I mean, again, it's that phenomenon where you just can't think that you would be biased.
00:17:17.000So, look, the case was super important because I think it reused, but beyond restoring their name, and, you know, it's the namesake of the center where we do this work.
00:17:28.000It also preserves the integrity of forensic science and especially DNA, which is really one of the few super reliable forms of forensic science.
00:17:42.000But even that, when put in the wrong hands, or if it's exposed to subjectivity and people's belief that they have the right person, it's vulnerable.
00:19:09.000How was it contaminated and how did that implicate her DNA?
00:19:12.000So what happens is when you're, I don't want to go too deep into DNA analysis, but it is actually interesting.
00:19:23.000When you're conducting DNA testing, the manufacturer of the machine I think it's called the PowerPlex Plus, they ask you to run what's called a positive control and a negative control to make sure that the machine is correctly calibrated.
00:19:44.000Because what it's doing through electrophoresis, it's shooting out what's called an electropharogram on the other end so that you're able to do what they what they what's referred to as calling alleles.
00:20:02.000So you're recalling a chromosome pairing at a specific genetic marker, right?
00:20:09.000So and they called them, there's various different loci or locations where there you either have two alleles or one.
00:20:20.000You get one from your mom, one from your father, one from your mom, one from your dad.
00:20:24.000And sometimes the one from your father might not show, but your mothers will show, but there'll be two alleles at most at a specific location.
00:20:32.000So they want to make sure that the machine is working properly.
00:20:35.000So the manufacturer has the lab analyst every time you do it run a positive control, meaning that you'll put a solution through the machine and it should on the other end give you very specific results.
00:20:51.000And he accidentally pipetted or took the solution from her DNA mixture instead of from the positive control mixture and put that through the machine.
00:21:05.000So when he was running the test, her DNA is already mixed in there.
00:21:14.000So when he issued his report, he didn't rely on that run.
00:21:18.000Because when I say run, it's another, you'll run the DNA on different occasions and sometimes on different dates because you want to make sure that your genetic profile will never change.
00:21:40.000So when you were looking at somebody's genetic profile, it should be consistent.
00:21:45.000So when he saw that, wait a second, the first run of this doesn't match the second and third or the fourth, he realized he made a mistake.
00:21:55.000But without having the lab analyst that's doing the interpretation, you know, weighing in on the results and you're antsy to get an answer and you're leaning on an unaccredited lab saying, interpret the results, interpret the results.
00:22:14.000You know, instead of waiting, she relies on this run of the DNA.
00:22:21.000And, you know, then what happens happen.
00:22:24.000But at some point, this Canadian guy came to learn what actually happened and kept on going and kept on going and kept on going.
00:22:35.000And there was evidence that he wanted hundreds of millions of dollars from my clients.
00:22:40.000You know, I think what turned out to be a shitty situation for him because no doubt getting hate mail like that has to be disturbing and upsetting to the family.
00:22:52.000Did it turn out that he had any sort of relationship with the Canadian man who was sending him the hate mail?
00:22:56.000That was his former, one of his former business colleagues who he had a vicious falling out with, and he kept it from everyone.
00:23:06.000So I think that the inference, in my opinion, the inference is that at some point, and in fact, there's an allegation in the hate mail where it says you were involved in the murder of these two people.
00:23:22.000He accuses this man in Canada months after the hate mail began to arrive of spreading that rumor.
00:23:28.000So I believe that he knew it was him the whole time.
00:23:31.000And at some point, I believe he was trying to shake the Perlmutters down.
00:23:37.000So he wanted money from them, otherwise he was going to go public?
00:24:06.000He was some embattled, in my opinion, an embattled businessman in Canada.
00:24:13.000He had like an executive recruiting company, but there was all sorts of public information out there that he worked on the Toronto Harbor Commission and then been involved in what the press called cloak and dagger campaigns where he was wasting public funds.
00:24:29.000So, you know, he bragged about all the lawsuits he's been involved in.
00:24:51.000But these are wonderful people, reclusive.
00:24:54.000They give most of their money away to charity.
00:24:58.000And to watch these people get dragged through the mud for over a decade.
00:25:03.000And, you know, there was evidence in the case that this is interesting because I initially fought this.
00:25:12.000On the day, the first day of jury selection, they had been invited to go to Mar-a-Lago and sit at the president's table for a Halloween party.
00:25:23.000It was just prospective jurors filling out questionnaires.
00:25:29.000So the defense, and it was really, I think, the attorneys for Chubb or for the lawyer that worked for Chubb wanted to introduce evidence.
00:25:38.000They got photos of the party and they wanted to introduce this evidence.
00:25:44.000And there was one day during the trial where they went to the White House because one of their close friends was appointed to be the ambassador for India.
00:25:56.000And they used that against them during the trial.
00:26:08.000And I knew that the jurors on their questionnaire filled out who they publicly admired most and least.
00:26:20.000Two of them wrote they admired the president the most.
00:26:24.000One of them said they admire him the least.
00:26:27.000So I really had to speak to that juror and say during my closing argument, you know, What they're doing here is they're trying to say that Lori Perlmutter's reputation doesn't matter, that she can't emote and suffer humiliation or public ridicule, and that you should disregard her because of who she's friends with, who she votes for,
00:26:54.000the fact that her husband came here and literally with $200 in his pocket and, you know, ascended.
00:27:03.000That's the weird paradox about success.
00:27:07.000You know, you get there and people are like, oh, these fucking rich people, but these are like, they represent the best in all of us.
00:27:15.000Lori Perlmutter, with her free time, started to work at the gift shop at NYU because she liked the feeling of selling flowers and little gifts to people that were going through terrible times.
00:27:29.000And she ends up becoming a board member at NYU and they give $50 million to start the Perlmutter Cancer Center.
00:27:36.000I mean, who among us wouldn't want to aspire to that?
00:27:40.000And they were trying to say, but she doesn't matter.
00:27:43.000At one point, she was asked the question, you know, because with defamation, your reputation is on the line, right?
00:27:50.000And you have to argue reputational damage.
00:27:53.000And they said, well, isn't your reputation bound up in your husband's?
00:27:57.000And they said this to a jury of like four or five women.
00:28:01.000And I thought, what a dumb fucking thing to say.
00:28:14.000So it's like these little victories help restore my faith in the system.
00:28:22.000Because if billionaires can get awarded $50 million, which is what they got awarded, I think that that's the jury saying her reputation mattered.
00:28:34.000And not only did her reputation matter, but it mattered to the point where you can't just tear somebody down when you know the facts.
00:28:48.000Which just seems so insane that he would pursue that.
00:28:50.000I mean, the guy literally owns the Ike Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice.
00:28:56.000And you're like, yeah, I'm going to test that.
00:29:10.000The center was born out of, at one point, I was offered this role to start a new post-conviction center.
00:29:18.000Up until four years ago, five years ago, I did work at the Innocence Project.
00:29:22.000And when I was offered this position at the same law school at Cardozo Law where the Innocence Project was born, they said, if you get that role, the Perlmutters, we're going to fund it for the first 10 years because we realize that if you're wrongfully accused in this country of a crime you didn't commit, if you don't have the resources to fight it like we did, that you're really in trouble.
00:29:50.000And for them to have that kind of insight while going through this, you know, it's remarkable.
00:34:19.000And, you know, you get documents as you're going through the discovery process during post-conviction.
00:34:28.000You get it from the prosecutor, from the police, and there's a radio call by a detective that says, perps in custody, contemporaneous with the arrest.
00:34:43.000They arrest two men, one guy standing next to him and the guy that Eduardo Rodriguez shot the gun.
00:34:56.000And he's delivered into the arms of no other than one of the most corrupt, sadistic detectives to ever work homicide in Brooklyn, in my opinion, Louis Garcella.
00:35:14.000No, why should that name sound familiar to you or to others?
00:35:19.000Because Louis Garcella is the guy that framed Derek Hamilton, who's the deputy director of the Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice at Cardozo.
00:35:30.000Louis Scarcella and his partner, I think his name is Schimmel or Chimmel, Kimmel, C-H-M-I-L.
00:35:43.000These guys were so notorious for framing people for murders they didn't commit that there have been 21 cases where people's convictions were vacated where they were the lead detectives.
00:36:07.000So Eduardo Rodriguez is delivered to the precinct, smoking gun in his hand, and a couple of hours later, he's brought to the home of Nelson Cruz, who was 17 years old at the time, 16, turning 17.
00:36:27.000And it's the story of these cops that while he was in the precinct, that he was yelling and screaming and tearing the place up.
00:37:16.000There's another guy that shows up at the precinct named Andre Bellinger.
00:37:21.000And Andre Bellinger says, yeah, I saw Nelson Cruz do it too.
00:37:29.000And he shows up at the precinct and he's told what kind of gun was used.
00:37:36.000He's told that Nelson Cruz is the suspect.
00:37:39.000And then he picks him out of a lineup after being told we're going to put Nelson Cruz in a lineup.
00:37:46.000All three of those things are gross violations of investigatory practices, and this has been established for decades.
00:37:57.000So this guy ends up put on trial and they somehow claim that they don't have they can't locate this guy that is saying that he witnessed the crime.
00:38:30.000So the person who had the gun in his hand that is shooting the gun, who they believe who says Nelson Cruz did it, at Nelson Cruz's trial, he's nowhere to be found.
00:38:47.000Wouldn't you think that the prosecutors would put that man, Eduardo Rodriguez, on the stand so he could explain how he picked up the gun?
00:40:11.000He was outed as a liar on so many different occasions, it becomes like it would become laughable if it wasn't so serious.
00:40:20.000After these post-conviction proceedings, during which 20 some odd witnesses were called, the courtroom is packed on the day of the decision because the expectation amongst the press and in the legal community is Nelson Cruz is about to get exonerated.
00:40:35.000This judge had exonerated people that had been investigated by Lewis Garsella.
00:40:43.000And she's acting kind of weird and erratic.
00:40:48.000And she rules against Nelson Cruz and contradicts herself on multiple occasions.
00:42:22.000He's got terrible anxiety and paranoid, wonderful guy, and he's so stone-cold innocent, and you just wonder how and why this shit can happen to someone.
00:42:34.000And, you know, it's like the perfect constellation of like, you got these crooked detectives who have already been found to have ruined a bunch of people's lives.
00:42:45.000You have the smoking gun found in the hand of the murderer who mysteriously disappears.
00:42:53.000And if you're wondering, so why do they believe this guy?
00:42:56.000How does he go to the precinct and he raises hell and says Nelson Cruz did and I picked up the gun, even though there's no evidence of that?
00:44:46.000If a municipality admits we did something horrible and it was a mistake and we did the wrong thing, there's going to be a civil rights lawsuit.
00:45:02.000I mean, look, to Brooklyn's credit with this DA, they have done that and done the right thing.
00:45:09.000But in terms of then going after the person that they think did it, you know, it's 2000 almost 26 and this crime happened in 1998.
00:45:17.000It's 30 years later to be able to reassemble the witnesses and some of whom are probably dead or hard to find.
00:45:27.000But it's very rare that once there's an exoneration and you're able to point to who the true killer is, very rare that law enforcement will go after the person that defense counsel has established actually did it.
00:45:49.000Because if the defense counsel has ruled that this other guy is innocent and that the police officer did see the guy execute that person, how do you not try that person with murder?
00:46:04.000Now you're stumbling into the how could that the how could that be of our legal justice system?
00:46:15.000I mean, Clementia Geary, who I've talked about before, who was exonerated from death row, you know, if there's any doubt about this phenomenon of children killing their parents, I think that that was laid to rest a few days ago.
00:46:34.000It happens a lot more than was recently publicized.
00:46:38.000You know, the real killer was the daughter of her mother and her grandmother.
00:46:44.000Clementia Geary gets, you know, charged, put on death row, and in the middle of his retrial, you know, she all but confessed on the stand to me.
00:46:54.000They have her blood mixed with her mother's blood at the crime scene and in a trail leading to the bathroom where the killer cleaned up, she confessed on six or seven different occasions, not under duress, not to law enforcement, to various people around town.
00:48:46.000I mean, but it's, this is like, I'm past tears at this point.
00:48:53.000I'm more like, we just got to keep going and keep fighting.
00:48:59.000And when you get these little victories here and there, like we've had a few releases recently that were super encouraging, where you're able to get people a second chance, where you're able to, you know, get it to the point where they could, even though they didn't do it, plead guilty.
00:49:32.000He had done 24 years and he'd had enough.
00:49:35.000But for her to get it to the place where he could even plead guilty after serving all that time, you know, innocent people plead guilty all the time.
00:49:46.000Yeah, they do just to get a lighter sentence.
00:50:02.000Because if you're doing post-conviction work, it's not just the wrongfully accused and convicted.
00:50:14.000It's also, you know, we do clemency work, commutations and pardons.
00:50:22.000You start to wade into the human mess and you see that like people have made mistakes and are worth a second chance.
00:50:35.000What they do with it is up to them, but some of the stuff you can't explain.
00:50:41.000Some of these prosecutions are political.
00:50:45.000Look, I'm dealing with a case right now that's like at the intersection of wrongful conviction and what the fuck are we doing with our immigration policy in this country.
00:51:00.000And I don't even want to mention his name because I don't want to, you know, or the state because I don't want to sacrifice the good work that we're doing to get him a public hearing.
00:51:16.000This is a guy from Albania that came to this country in the early 70s and had to sit in a refugee camp in Italy for damn near a month under horrid conditions just to come here to try to live a life.
00:54:00.000He had become an accomplished boxer in prison.
00:54:06.000He's lived the last 51 years of his life without so much as a traffic ticket.
00:54:15.000He goes to New York, joins the union as a super for buildings.
00:54:22.000He pays taxes, social security, pays into his pension, builds a life for himself, has five kids, eight grandchildren, and he's living in upstate New York.
00:54:37.000Leaves the country a couple of years ago to go to Albania to see family, comes back and gets stopped at the border.
00:54:49.000Somehow is not detained at the border, but they start removal proceedings on him.
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00:56:54.000You know, isn't that the type of person we want who has contributed to this society for 51 years and built a family?
00:57:03.000What happened with the brother and the attendant?
00:57:06.000They got into an argument, and he called, the attendant called him some slur against Albanians, and they started to argue, and he just shot him in the stomach.
00:57:18.000This isn't even, it's not in dispute at all what happened.
00:57:23.000And there's a law that if you committed a violent crime, you're removable.
00:57:30.000But for 51 years, he was not removed from this country.
00:57:35.000And he lived here as a green card holder, and he paid taxes, and he built a family and a life.
00:57:45.000So this removal was all during the Biden administration?
00:57:53.000It was when he was first asked at the airport and they flagged him.
00:58:05.000I believe it was during the Biden administration, but no enforcement action was taken.
00:58:10.000It was during the current, and this isn't an indictment of the president.
00:58:13.000This is just during the current administration that they started removal proceedings against him to try to have him removed from the country.
00:58:21.000So did they just go through all the old cases and find out anybody that had any sort of a violent offense?
00:58:46.000There's two boys and three girls, and they're literally like some of the most wonderful people I've ever met.
00:58:54.000I wish I didn't like them as much as I did.
00:58:58.000And I stay in close contact with one of the, I mean, I guess I could give first names with one of the sons, Anthony, and his sister, Joanna.
00:59:08.000And to see the love that they have for their father and the fear that they're living under that this man could get deported and sent to Montenegro.
00:59:35.000So, and to watch them, they went to one removal proceeding and the judge, I have the transcripts of the proceeding, and the judge is like saying to the prosecutors, at one point he said, what are you doing here?
00:59:49.000He starts speaking Albanian to my client.
00:59:53.000And look, I don't know immigration law that well.
00:59:56.000I'm not an immigration lawyer, but I spoke to the immigration lawyer and he's like, look, I'm afraid that they're going to take him.
01:00:02.000I mean, ICE is waiting outside courthouses.
01:00:06.000He's in his 70s, take him away from his family and his grandchildren.
01:00:12.000So again, you don't just see these wrongful conviction cases.
01:00:15.000You see cases that are like, this man has built a life.
01:00:18.000And if you start to get beneath the surface and you see the pain and agony and fear that people are living, they're living it day to day.
01:00:31.000We were able to get a delay into February for his removal proceedings.
01:00:36.000So I'm now trying to get him pardoned.
01:00:39.000Because if he gets pardoned, there's no basis upon which to remove him.
01:00:46.000And, you know, we have a team at my center that's working on it.
01:00:50.000And you want, these are the kind of people you want to fight for once you get to know them.
01:00:56.000So there's like, I don't want to just tell nightmare after nightmare, but the reason why it's important, I think, for people to hear this is it's not just what you're seeing on TV or what you're hearing about.
01:01:11.000I mean, what basis do we have to remove a grandfather who's lived here for 50 years and contributed to this society and paid his taxes and paid into Social Security and was part of a union and just like I'm looking for a flaw.
01:01:31.000I'm looking for like a reason for me not to like them and I just get drawn in more and more.
01:01:38.000They're just wonderful people and these are the kinds of things that are like worth fighting for.
01:01:43.000I think what's going on with ICE is one of the things that's going on with quotas for speeding tickets and things along those lines is that they have numbers that they want to achieve.
01:01:56.000And they've openly talked about this, that they want to remove a certain amount of people per week.
01:02:01.000And when they do that, I think everything's on the table.
01:02:03.000Then they start showing up at Home Depot.
01:02:05.000Instead of like looking for gangbangers, looking for criminals and cartel members, they go to whatever's easiest pickings so they can get numbers up.
01:02:21.000He worked, he was a Mexican military guy who now is an American citizen, but he reports extensively on the cartels and just was telling me some horror stories about ICE raids.
01:02:36.000And one of them was they took this guy who had been brought over here when he was a baby, but didn't have American citizenship.
01:03:20.000It's sort of a black box, immigration, in terms of what the policy exactly is, and why do you want to continue this narrative that seems to be, again, more of a human rights issue than a political issue.
01:03:56.000But do we want to be getting rid of 70-year-old men that really, I mean, I got to tell you, I have an older brother, and if someone had done something like that to him, I can't tell you I wouldn't have done the same fucking thing.
01:04:59.000And, you know, I try not to wear this for my own mental health.
01:05:08.000I'm trying to keep the empath in me in check a little bit more, because but sometimes it's difficult, like Nelson's case, this case that I'm talking about, and the only reason I'm not using names in that case is I don't want to alienate.
01:05:27.000There's great people in the state that this happened in, which wasn't New York, that I think actually care and have shown that yeah, this is doesn't seem right, and we want to make sure that you get a public hearing.
01:05:41.000I'm confident that we will before February and I like my chances if we do, because I think that the story he's worth pardoning, he's worth saving.
01:05:51.000But you know, I don't, I don't understand, I mean, that's what I meant by this human mess.
01:06:00.000It's like I wish there was a more transparent process of how and why people get pardons, certainly on the state and on the federal level.
01:09:13.000And she's gone on to become this amazing, not just human being, but advocate for people to get second chances.
01:09:23.000And he designated her the pardons are.
01:09:26.000Now, I think between her and getting to the president and making her case for pardons is difficult because there's layers of influence in between.
01:09:36.000But, you know, I have cases before them right now that have very prominent people backing them.
01:09:47.000And, you know, you would hope that they end up, you know, On his desk and seeing getting some relief.
01:10:00.000I have one client that I know Mike Tyson has backed him publicly, privately.
01:11:11.000I start to feel his hopelessness over the phone because he should have been granted relief in the courts and he's someone that just really, really deserves to be out.
01:11:24.000You know, and I have, there's a bunch of cases like that where we're trying so hard.
01:11:29.000And you have to at the same time, at the same time, you express, you know, confidence in the people that are responsible for this stuff.
01:11:40.000But you also want to make sure that you're not offending them by saying, look, I know you have a bunch of cases.
01:12:45.000And you speak to the right person and you get good news one day.
01:12:50.000But the odds are so the odds are so I don't want to say stacked against you, but yeah, it's who you know, who has influence at that particular time with the right person, the administration.
01:13:05.000What kind of punishments are there for people like the corrupt guy in Brooklyn that you were talking about?
01:13:18.000And look, that's the most, you know, the cop, Louis Garcella, he denies any, I mean, in the face of these 21 cases that have been vacated, he denies any wrongdoing.
01:13:36.000Yeah, and you know, you know, one of the things that I'm thinking might be a good idea, because we can all go on the internet and look this shit up.
01:13:43.000Like, if you look up Louis Garcella on the internet, I bet you there's a Wikipedia page that talks about his corruption and lists all the people.
01:13:55.000One of the things that I think has been underused and I think should be part of people's calculus rather than reading a headline or listening to me or you or anyone is read the trial transcripts.
01:14:17.000I mean, I don't know what better way there is if you want to say, well, what actually happened?
01:14:26.000What happened at this person's trial that you're and why do they deserve a second chance?
01:14:34.000Listen, there's a dear friend of mine who runs an amazing organization called the Reform Alliance.
01:14:42.000Her name is Jessica Jackson, fantastic lawyer.
01:14:46.000And I mean, is in the bowels of the system fighting for change.
01:14:53.000And right now, there's a bill that the president's own pollster, I forget the guy's name, has found that 80% of MAGA voters support this act.
01:15:37.000And it's heavily supported by Republicans, by Democrats, by everyone in between.
01:15:44.000And you would hope that something like that would get passed and get pushed through because the Saper Supervision Act is a way that we can reward people for doing the right thing and hold people accountable that aren't doing the right thing when they get out.
01:15:59.000But your question about what happens to the cops or the prosecutors that do this, they have immunity.
01:16:08.000It's one of the most frustrating things in the world is that most of the time, qualified immunity applies.
01:16:16.000I mean, I could see immunity for a mistake, perhaps.
01:16:21.000But if there's a pattern and it's clearly corruption and you have a person that is taking away people's freedom, how is there not a crime committed?
01:16:32.000How are they not convicted or at least charged with crimes?
01:16:38.000Well, listen, for those listeners that want to get involved in the process and actually make a difference, you got to get involved.
01:16:54.000The person that ends up in a position to actually exercise their executive authority, executive clemency, whether it's a governor or a president, you should be a little more invested.
01:18:34.000He has a firearm that he's licensed to carry.
01:18:37.000He actually went into a police station to get his carry license.
01:18:41.000Military guy, never been in trouble in his life.
01:18:45.000Goes up to Tallahassee and a massive fight breaks out in this club where they're at.
01:18:52.000Literally zero testimony that he has anything to do with this fight.
01:18:58.000Fight spills out into the parking lot and it's being instigated by one guy.
01:19:05.000And this guy that's instigating the fight was thrown out of the club and his own friends testified in the trial.
01:19:12.000We were afraid he was going to hurt someone bad.
01:19:15.000My client, Michael Giles, ends up in a car with the people he came there with waiting for the person that had the keys to the car to come out and emerge from this melee.
01:19:29.000And this fight is going on all around him.
01:19:34.000And he takes his gun and puts it in his pocket.
01:19:38.000He's standing there, like on the outskirts of this fight after he gets out of the car and goes to look for his friend that has the keys to the car.
01:19:46.000The car was left unlocked, but they couldn't leave because there was no ignition key.
01:22:19.000Question, was it your intent to hurt this individual?
01:22:22.000Answer, yes, that's normally what you do when you punch someone.
01:22:27.000So on those facts, as my client is laying on the ground and there's a melee going on where people are getting punched and kicked, is he justified at that point to take his gun out and shoot in self-defense?
01:22:43.000He shoots this guy in the leg and fragments of the bullet hit two other people.
01:23:38.000So various powerful people that know the governor finally got him to listen.
01:23:46.000Now, before I got involved in the case, the family was told that the governor was prepared to grant him clemency and traveled to Tallahassee the day that they thought he was going to get released and were told on that day the governor changed his mind.
01:25:18.000And see if their governor has any problem with abiding by the terms of release?
01:25:26.000You want me to contact the governor of, okay, submit a supervised release plan that is exhaustive and runs all the way through the term that he would serve out his incarceration so that he should be on supervised release for another 10 years.
01:26:48.000A week before I was told we're going to grant him relief, they actually had me speaking to the prison to transport him up to the clemency hearing.
01:27:02.000We were down to whether he would be able to change into a suit because at the public hearing, Governor DeSantis said, I want to actually look at him eye to eye.
01:27:11.000And at the last second, for no fucking articulated reason, he said, you know what?
01:28:00.000The prosecutor that prosecuted him went through a DOJ investigation because something was found in his office targeting Hispanic residents for harsher punishment.
01:30:06.000Yeah, and so this whistleblower takes a picture of this and it leads to a DOJ investigation where he agrees, he apologizes publicly, and he agrees to go into some training program and have the prosecutors that work for him in a training program for racial sensitivity.
01:30:26.000So you think, you know, I deal with the facts and I deal with what I see every day.
01:30:32.000So should it beg the question, is Michael Giles getting charged with this crime under the facts as I just told you with the testimony that I just read to you?
01:30:45.000And they said, well, he ran initially.
01:30:48.000And when the police initially spoke to him, he didn't say he shot the gun.
01:31:12.000I mean, you read the letters from his kids who have now grown up without him.
01:31:17.000Your heart ends up in 50 million pieces.
01:31:20.000And, you know, so a guy like Governor DeSantis, I think it's like there's no humanity there.
01:31:29.000And, you know, the craziest part about it is that you never know who you'll meet and why this is all, to me, human rights issue.
01:31:38.000The only person that gave me a sympathetic ear when I would go to Florida before I lived there, when I was still living in New York, and talk about clemency cases was Nikki Freed.
01:31:50.000I think she was the commissioner of agriculture.
01:31:53.000And she ran against DeSantis in the last governatorial election.
01:31:58.000And she's like, the fascinating part about it is that this is like a woman that's dedicated herself to public service and she's a major marijuana advocate.
01:32:10.000Legalizing marijuana has been her mission for so many years.
01:32:15.000She'd be an awesome guest because she became super unpopular in Florida because of her stance on legalization of marijuana.
01:32:27.000And, you know, she was attacked over it about how weed is a gateway drug somehow in the minds of, you know, people that don't get it, that it's some like pathway to heroin addiction.
01:32:43.000And, you know, medicinal marijuana, you know, cannabis for healing, all of those things she's been a major advocate for.
01:32:50.000And she told me, you're being strung along.
01:32:55.000After she was out of office, she's now the head of the, I think she's the head of the Democratic Party for Florida.
01:33:53.000Even if you start out empathetic, you eventually develop a thick skin.
01:34:01.000Listen, I'm a crier, and I don't hide that.
01:34:04.000And that's why you're able to do the kind of work you do, because you still are sensitive to this, and you still are empathetic, despite all the shit you've seen.
01:34:15.000Well, I mean, look, I have to be, I don't think you're good.
01:34:20.000I used to think that it was something to shrink from.
01:34:23.000In other words, that because it becomes a heavy cross to bear when you start wearing other people's hurt and emotions.
01:34:36.000And, you know, I've found myself sometimes inferring that people feel a certain way when they don't.
01:34:45.000And I have to make sure that I'm careful about that.
01:34:49.000I mean, my son Carter is like, he's 13.
01:34:56.000And I sometimes feel like I have to be careful with the empathy because sometimes I'll be reliving some traumatic event from my childhood.
01:35:10.000And I'll think, oh, he must feel this way at this point in time at 13.
01:35:16.000And I'm imputing an emotion to him that isn't there.
01:35:21.000And sometimes I'll do that with a client or their family.
01:35:27.000And I've gotten better at it, but when you have to deliver hard news or bad news, because there's so many these exonerations, the commutations, the pardons, they're like each one of them is its own miracle.
01:35:49.000Each one of them is, it's so hard, so hard to get it done.
01:37:20.000I think that's important, that it isn't for everybody.
01:37:24.000There are people that have very particularly vulnerable psychological states, mental constitutions, whether they have a history of mental illness or whatever, especially like high-dose marijuana.
01:37:39.000You know, Alex Berenson wrote about this in a book called, I think it's called Tell Your Children.
01:37:47.000And he highlights the instances of people that have schizophrenic breaks from high doses of THC.
01:37:55.000And whether or not they would have had those schizophrenic breaks anyway, you know, we don't know.
01:38:00.000There's a certain percentage of the population that's just schizophrenic.
01:42:37.000You know, like I said, it's responsible for about 500 deaths a year.
01:42:41.000And I was telling you about the COVID story.
01:42:43.000This poor lady, she was hurting because she had COVID.
01:42:46.000She kept taking Tylenol and didn't understand that you just, you can't, there's an amount you can take, and you should never take more than that.
01:42:53.000And she had liver failure, and she fucking died, you know, of something that is, you know, it's horrible.
01:43:00.000So, but I think you should be able to take Tylenol.
01:43:02.000Just don't take enough to fucking kill you.
01:43:04.000I think that should be the case with alcohol.
01:43:19.000You know, this is the situation that we live in in this country in regards to heroin, regards to cocaine, regards to so many different things.
01:43:27.000They're being supplied, and they're being supplied, and you're propping up these illegal cartels, and these motherfuckers are killing people, and they make it ruthless.
01:44:08.000But, you know, the problem is when you all of a sudden make things legal that didn't used to be, that didn't used to be legal, you're going to have a bunch of people that abuse it.
01:44:17.000They're going to say, oh, it's legal now.
01:44:18.000And a bunch of people are going to do it that don't do it.
01:47:36.000I believe it's, is it the female that contains THC and the male doesn't?
01:47:42.000Anyway, point is, so he, they sponsor all the Reefer Madness films, you know, all those propaganda films of the 1930s.
01:47:52.000They start printing these stories about blacks and Mexicans that are raping white women after they take this new illegal drug.
01:48:02.000So they pass laws on this drug, not even really understanding that they're making the textile, they're making the commodity, hemp, illegal, or making it very difficult to regulate.
01:48:14.000And so William Randolph Hearst gets together with Harry Anslinger and they do this.
01:48:19.000They also take all their police officers and all the people that they had used to process prohibition of alcohol and go after alcohol, you know, illegal alcohol sales, and now they turn it to cannabis.
01:48:32.000And that's we've been stuck in that same horseshit since the 1930s.
01:48:37.000So self-interest plus profit incentive, add a dose of hysteria, and you have prehistoric lobbying that leads to the demonization of.
01:48:56.000Nylon was involved because, you know, they're using nylon for ropes because hemp was always used for ropes, and now they have this new product.
01:49:02.000So there was a lot of people that were involved in making sure that hemp was very difficult to acquire so that their commodity could thrive.
01:49:12.000And then how many people suffered because of that?
01:50:38.000That's like by the time that blunt was being passed around for people, when it came to me the second time, I was like, the room went sideways on me.
01:51:28.000And I had taken like one or two tokes.
01:51:33.000And I convinced myself that the guy at the other end of the craps table was an undercover officer that was going to frame me for something.
01:51:44.000Fucking the lady next to me was stealing my chips.
01:51:47.000This guy was going to have me fucking hatcheted.
01:51:50.000And I ended up in the corner of the casino for literally two hours trying to collect myself.
01:53:24.000Man, one time I was on the platform at Penn Station and I started to like, you know, you get to that point when you're thinking about dying and we could talk death, dying, and we could say it and talk about it.
01:53:37.000But I got to that point where that fifth dimensional wall crumbled and I was like, oh my God, I'm not going to exist one day.
01:53:47.000And I started to have a panic attack where I had to leave and go up onto 8th Avenue and get some fresh air.
01:53:55.000And I'm just like, at this stage, I can't, I would have to be like, so what kind of weed is this?
01:54:08.000If you don't get high a lot, and this is my message for everyone out there, if you go months and months and months without ever taking it, one hit, a small one.
01:54:42.000So it has all the resin, all the, you know, you have a grinder at the bottom of the grinder.
01:54:47.000There's a filter and you have all this THC crystals.
01:54:52.000They take those THC crystals and they put it inside with the marijuana and then they wrap the outside of the joint and they roll it in the THC crystal.
01:55:01.000It's like it's on the outside of it and it's just a pathway to paranoia.
01:55:07.000It's just a rocket ship to your inner monologue screaming in your ears.
01:55:22.000I like it because there's always some sort of a revelation that I get on the other end of it.
01:55:25.000Like if I'm paranoid, there's always like a reason that there's a thing that's bothering me.
01:55:30.000Like, what is that thing that fucked with you during that time?
01:55:33.000And maybe there's a thing in your head that you need to address.
01:55:36.000But generally, if I'm in a good place and I get high, I feel great.
01:55:39.000I must have been in a great place at like 15, 16 years old because getting high back then and listening to Zeppelin and Pink Floyd and hearing the lyrics for the first time, being like, oh my God, someone else had that thought that I'm afraid to say.
01:55:54.000And they put it down in lyrics and I'm not alone.
01:56:11.000When you're an adult and you have a family and you have business and you have things you have to do all the time and you have conflicts and all the stuff that's in your life, like it could fuck with you.
01:56:20.000But I think generally, like for a lot of people, not for everybody, but for a lot of people, those moments of paranoia of just dropping the veil, it's probably beneficial.
01:56:31.000Oh, I think that, I think that in the long run, it opened the third eye of my mind at a time when, and fostered creativity and I think changed my perspective on the world, smoking that much weed.
01:56:48.000I just got to a point where I was like, I can't parent on it.
01:59:58.000You know, when you peel the layer back, I had never known that one slipped through the cracks on me, the criminalization of weed and the backstory.
02:00:31.000It has the same composition as same give and composition as rubber when it came to handling, but it was a material that doesn't wear.
02:00:44.000And I just thought he was fucking crazy.
02:00:46.000And now I believe that that's probably true.
02:00:49.000It's probably locked in a vault somewhere because what would happen to Goodyear and Firestone and the rest of those tired.
02:00:54.000You're telling me we can put a man on the moon and hear conversations behind the walls of the Kremlin, but we can't make a fucking tire that doesn't wear?
02:01:05.000But the other one, the thing about tires is that a tire has to have a certain amount of softness to it in order for it to have traction.
02:01:13.000When you have softness and then you have a rigid surface like asphalt, you're going to have some of that tire is going to rub off on that rigid surface because one is hard and one is soft.
02:01:24.000Just like when you take a file and you rub wood, you're going to make sawdust.
02:01:29.000You know, you would know about fucking tires.
02:01:33.000Before I go giving an example of something that I think is so out there that there's no way this guy's going to, and you know about tire work.
02:01:41.000Because the softer the tire, the more traction you get on a racetrack.
02:01:46.000So with a really good tire, you know, you only have a certain amount of laps on a racetrack.
02:01:51.000So the science teacher was bullshitting me, basically.
02:01:54.000The scientist teacher probably was right directionally that there are things like that where they would hide patents to certain things and hide certain compounds if they found out these compounds would compromise.
02:02:08.000Like if you had something that people had to buy all the time, like light bulbs, here's a better example, light bulbs.
02:02:15.000So there are light bulbs that have been in continuous use, like on continuously for 50, 60 years, and they don't burn out because these are the original light bulbs.
02:02:27.000The original light bulbs, they made the filaments much more durable.
02:02:30.000Then they realized, like, why would we do this?
02:02:32.000Well, we could have these light bulbs just burn out, and then you have to get a new light bulb.
02:04:51.000So in other words, what is the moral inequivalency between someone that is selling cocaine, a lot of it, and someone that's selling a lot of weed?
02:05:04.000Now, I understand the common retort as, well, cocaine is a lot more addictive, destructive.
02:05:10.000There's a physical pathway to addiction.
02:05:12.000There's a physical pathway to addiction.
02:05:14.000Yeah, it's a different kind of addiction.
02:05:16.000I think there is an addictive quality to marijuana, but I have a feeling it's same or similar to the addictive quality of a lot of other behavioral addictions.
02:05:26.000But I guess my bigger question is, so with the advent of the quote-unquote super criminal, I think it was, who was it?
02:05:35.000Hillary Clinton or Bill Clinton that came up with this term or Biden.
02:05:40.000I know he's a big supporter of that bill as a senator.
02:05:43.000And, you know, without going down the rabbit hole of private prisons and the prison industrial complex, what bothers me about these old drug convictions that we were talking about earlier is it's just a perspective shift that somehow has in the psyche of America writ large that you hear cocaine or crack equals someone that should be locked away and forgotten about.
02:06:09.000That was why I mentioned Spencer, Bowen, and other folks that I've mentioned, because I just, I feel like there's no, what's the right way to explain it?
02:06:25.000There's no rhyme or reason to why we're leaving old people that have not much left locked up.
02:07:02.000He has renounced any affiliation with it.
02:07:05.000And then he was, his sentence is commuted and he's put in state custody on some old tenuous homicide charge where the person that actually pulled the trigger is out, has been out for like 30 years.
02:07:21.000So Larry Hoover is sitting there in Colorado because he was in the side of that Supermax facility, the side of that mountain in Chicago.
02:08:12.000Since he's been put in state custody, he's had three heart attacks doing prison work.
02:08:17.000And what is the utility in keeping someone like that in?
02:08:24.000Because Governor Pritzker could just say, you know what, enough's enough.
02:08:29.000There's interesting stuff out there about what they call C criminals.
02:08:35.000So it was like before February of 1978, I believe it was, 1998, where people would get indeterminate sentences in the state system in Illinois.
02:08:48.000You know, you'd hear these sentences of like 100 years, 200 years, where there's no hope.
02:08:53.000And there were like thousands and thousands of them.
02:08:57.000There's only 30 of them left, and he's one of them.
02:09:05.000So like that's another one of those cases that bothers me because, you know, If we're a society of reform, deterrence, rehabilitation, he's it.
02:09:19.000And what better message is there to say, you know what, you've done enough, and now let's see what positive you can do.
02:09:26.000The proposed terms of his release are like the strictest supervision.
02:09:31.000He just wants to live out his life with his family.
02:09:34.000He's got a great lawyer backing him named Justin Moore.
02:09:38.000I helped, you know, advocate for his pardon to President Trump.
02:10:32.000And what's going on, I think, is that someone like Governor Pritzker is just, they don't want the political cost of taking a chance like this.
02:10:43.000And, you know, this is another one that keeps me up.
02:10:46.000You know, some people would say, well, I care about that guy because I know his wife.
02:11:20.000So as soon as he was released from federal custody, he was taken into state custody.
02:11:25.000And they didn't even take him from Colorado.
02:11:32.000His state sentence is in Chicago where he could be at least closer to his family.
02:11:38.000And Colorado state system said, we'll keep him here.
02:11:42.000So he was transferred from federal to state custody.
02:11:44.000So that's one that's just like, you know, there's one heartbreak to the next.
02:11:50.000And look, I'm super, super, super careful.
02:11:55.000You can help people with second chances.
02:11:58.000You can't help them with what they do with it.
02:11:59.000And I'm now at a point where I really want to think long and hard about what people do with their second chances.
02:12:05.000And, you know, I just wouldn't get behind someone that I didn't think was I just it's an indictment of society that we have these disparate sentences that are doled out.
02:12:17.000And a lot of it is driven by what is considered worse behavior.
02:12:22.000Is it worse behavior that you sold cocaine or marijuana?
02:12:28.000I guess the argument is that cocaine was more destructive, more addictive.
02:14:50.000And then so you'd have, instead of, you know, no one has a problem with Anheuser-Busch selling beer, right?
02:14:55.000But meanwhile, there's alcoholics and it's going to ruin their life.
02:14:59.000But if Anheuser-Busch all of a sudden started selling cocaine, the social stigma that's attached to it because of all the years of it being illegal would be a real problem.
02:15:10.000We would have, like I said, it would be like ripping the band-aid off.
02:15:13.000You're going to have a lot of problems initially for quite a while, I would imagine.
02:15:18.000There's going to be a lot of people that do cocaine that would never do it previously because it was illegal.
02:15:23.000But if they find out that there's, you can go to the cocaine store and buy a certain amount of cocaine and go do it.
02:15:28.000But you also would be getting pure cocaine.
02:15:31.000So you would be getting this experience that people have used way back to the fucking, you know, who knows what time.
02:15:38.000I mean, there's Egyptian mummies that have tested positive for cocaine.
02:15:44.000Yeah, I'm not advocating for it one way or another.
02:15:46.000It just seems like anything that I've looked into and read about in countries that have legalized or decriminalized it at least, and you could get it and not have to worry about it being adulterated in some way.
02:16:01.000It seems like the statistics are overwhelmingly pointing in one direction.
02:16:15.000And we are propping up the cartel by doing that.
02:16:18.000And, you know, if you want to go to war with the cartel, if you want to really stop the flood of illegal drugs in this country, unfortunately, one of the only ways to really do that accurately is to both stop them from bringing in illegal drugs and then give people access to legal, air quotes safer drugs seems like a it's a problem it's a you got Politically, it's a suicide.
02:16:45.000I was going to say, you got to swim uphill through or upstream through a river of shit.
02:16:56.000Yeah, and I just, this has struck me more lately in dealing with these old drug cases where these people have spent decades and decades in prison and, you know, You hear them on the other end of the phone.
02:17:50.000Where these guys did not need to assume the burden of being demonstrably innocent, but we were able to prove it.
02:17:57.000And, you know, J.D. Tomlinson agreed to vacate their convictions.
02:18:02.000And then when he left office, you know, a few weeks later, the new, the incoming, their equivalent of the district attorney overturned it, right?
02:18:12.000Since coming on this show, J.D. Tomlinson has been under attack for a previous exoneration that he granted by this same sitting Lorain County prosecutor who just filed a 300-page brief saying that he committed fraud on the court and all kinds of nonsense over a crime that never happened.
02:18:35.000And this is why he was so reluctant to ever speak to me in the first place because he knew he'd be targeted.
02:18:42.000And they're trying to undo an exoneration for this poor woman that's already been exonerated.
02:18:48.000And I thought, you know, I would talk about it publicly and say I trust him.
02:18:53.000I made a presentation to this new prosecutor.
02:18:56.000I got myself along with the Ohio Innocence Project public defenders.
02:19:03.000I got a bar complaint filed against me by the original prosecutor for standing up to exonerate someone.
02:19:12.000But, you know, and what, and the question becomes like, what can you do?
02:19:16.000So Derek Hamilton and I are trying to, do we go to the city council and raise awareness?
02:19:22.000Don't you care that you have a prosecutor that is seemingly more interested in settling personal scores and vendettas than he is about letting innocent people go free?
02:19:34.000And I have this guy, you know, John Edwards, who's one of the Ohio 4.
02:19:38.000And I feel like when I see him calling from prison, I'm running out of things to say to him.
02:20:15.000I mean, these guys are so demonstrably innocent where you have the person that claims he witnessed the whole thing, you know, came went to the FBI and said, I made the whole thing up.
02:20:33.000The problem is, I think if they do admit it, someone's going to start digging into their past and they're going to find out these motherfuckers have been wrong a bunch of times.
02:20:41.000One thing that's different about me and why I hang around Derek so much is I want his superpowers to rub off on me because I realize that if you don't get stay aggressive and keep the pressure on, the truth will eventually, what was the truth crushed to earth shall rise again?
02:21:16.000And whether it's old files of an old case and who you used to hang out with, and if you have photos sitting in a vault somewhere, whatever it is, it's going to come out.
02:21:28.000And it just seems like you're doing so much more damage to hold on to these old beliefs rather than, and because one thing is for sure, I'm stubborn.
02:21:39.000And I'm growing more stubborn as time goes by to, you have to have the resolve and the wherewithal that every time you get a no and every time you get rejected, you're like, all right, all right, I see you.
02:21:54.000I'm going to get my beast on now and keep coming back.
02:21:57.000And I'm going to bring people with me.
02:21:59.000And we're going to make as much noise.
02:22:01.000One thing that people don't like is to have the light on them.
02:22:07.000And, you know, we now have the ability to do that, not only through this platform, but, you know, I was talking to someone before I came here today that works at the center.
02:22:20.000And I said, you can't be afraid to speak to the press.
02:22:26.000And I said, as long as, you know, you have some control, some control over what you're saying.
02:22:34.000And then I like quickly stuffed the words back in my mouth.
02:22:44.000You know, I just, I did an article with the New York Times about something recently.
02:22:48.000Man, I told that reporter, lose my fucking phone number because you took one sentence of a throwaway quote and disregarded everything else.
02:23:00.000You know, and that's why I'm really careful about it.
02:23:14.000Yeah, and suffering sells and human tragedy sells.
02:23:19.000And I would really love to be able to tell the triumphant stories that a prosecutor did the right thing on the front end, right?
02:23:28.000On the front end rather than after 20, 30, 40, 50 years.
02:23:33.000So, you know, all of these cases that we talk about, we're going to do something a little bit different is I'm going to set up a repository where people can go in and look at the public records.
02:23:46.000This way you don't have to rely on my word, a headline, a clip from a video where, you know, there were people that started to consume the Ohio 4 case and are writing in and are saying, like, how are you letting this stand?
02:24:02.000Eventually, enough drips of water fills the bucket and the bucket overflows.
02:24:08.000And at some point, something's got to give, right?
02:24:36.000Well, you know, and I think there's a lot of people that have a lot of power that will keep good from winning because it would somehow or another derail their life or their career because they have done something evil.
02:24:49.000But this is a sick, this is a sick trait that we possess as mammals, as humans.
02:24:57.000Whether you're a safety patrol as a fourth or fifth grader or a bouncer outside of a club or a TSA agent, there's something about that authority, something about that power that people get drunk on.
02:25:10.000Oh, and they get, they get, it's almost like it courses through their veins to the point where they're like, well, I like this.
02:25:19.000And it's like, I just, I understand it, but I don't understand how at some point your conscience doesn't kick in and say, all right, devil on this shoulder, let's do the right thing.
02:25:39.000Because I always feel like bound by some sort of social contract, right?
02:25:44.000Did it ever feel good to harm someone?
02:25:59.000No, no, I don't think that I really part of being a good person is when you do make a mistake or do something bad, you feel something.
02:26:08.000I don't actually, I appreciate that, but I don't actually think that's what it is.
02:26:12.000I think that we all know when we're saying something hurtful or harmful, at some point you know it or you're doing something harmful.
02:26:21.000And it's just, I don't understand, I guess, the disconnect between having that realization and just saying, fuck it, or actually taking like a pause.
02:26:35.000And I guess if I could solve that, I'd have the key to many of the world's problems, but I guess I'm just dealing with these in the meantime.
02:26:42.000Well, you would have to completely rewire the way people think.
02:26:55.000You know, it's one of the things I had a conversation with my friend Jesse Michaels the other day.
02:26:58.000And one of the things I said is one of the things that's really interesting about psychedelics is there's no criminal cartel that sells them, even though they're illegal.
02:28:43.000You know, my with First Nation people, right?
02:28:47.000Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because they were given reparations.
02:28:49.000And my experience with it up there is that there's a serious problem, especially in Western Canada with it.
02:28:57.000But the reason I ask about it with psychedelics is that at probably the lowest point in my life, I was with you, and I remember you recommending ketamine therapy or thinking that might be something I should look into.
02:29:17.000Yeah, this is something that I've never done, but I do know quite a few people.
02:29:21.000My friend Neil, Neil Brennan, he went to a doctor to get ketamine therapy.
02:29:27.000Yeah, so when I raised it with my therapist at the time, and she was like, the body of research on this is so overwhelming that I would be remiss if I told you, don't try it.
02:29:42.000Something we should talk about and think about.
02:29:45.000And, you know, it helped me tremendously in a way that very, very low dose, but it's like, you know, I mean, I thank you for even like suggesting it because it was something that I had always associated with like my roommate in college in the fetal position in his bed.
02:30:07.000And I was like, yo, what's wrong with him?
02:32:27.000So ayahuasca, so dimethyltryptamine, which is the active drug, the active compound, dimethyltryptamine exists in thousands of different plants.
02:32:40.000It's in a bunch of different grasses and plants.
02:32:43.000It's not orally active because your body produces something called monoamine oxidase.
02:32:48.000Monoamine oxidase breaks down dimethyltryptamine in the gut.
02:32:53.000So that if you consume things like these grasses or different plants that have high levels of dimethyltryptamine in it, your body breaks it down so it doesn't become active.
02:33:04.000What ayahuasca is, is the one plant that contains dimethyltryptamine and another plant that contains harmine harmine, which is a monoamine oxidase inhibitor.
02:33:19.000So you take the MAO inhibitor and then the dimethyltryptamine, they brew it all together and then you have a slow release orally active dimethyltramamine.
02:33:29.000That's that motherfucker with the ore.
02:33:45.000And, you know, when you're, you know, puking and shitting and all that stuff, it's like your body is like, whatever the fuck this is, it's not good.
02:33:55.000But the result of it, the end of it, is this extremely impactful experience that leads many people to quit alcohol.
02:34:10.000They release trauma and learn to get over things that have happened in their life and move on.
02:34:17.000You have these experiences where you are in contact with what seems like entities and incredibly wise, loving entities that connect you to nature and to the earth.
02:34:32.000And I'm sure people have bad experiences.
02:34:35.000I'm sure it's a very powerful psychedelic.
02:36:24.000But it is something that I mean, you have to go through a similar amount of suffering, and it's to deal with past traumas, eye movement, desensitization, and reprocessing.
02:36:58.000You hold on to these two paddles the way I did it, and they're hooked up to this little transistor, this little box, and it's like it buzzes your hand.
02:37:07.000You hold on to them and it'll buzz your hands no more than like the buzz of a cell phone in this rhythmic.
02:37:15.000And before you do it, you really set up what the trauma is.
02:37:20.000So I went through months of trying to identify like what were the things from my childhood that were haunting me.
02:37:28.000And once you do, you then relive those moments with this rhythmic buzzing.
02:37:35.000And you do it again and again and again.
02:37:39.000And after each session, which could last anywhere between a minute to 10 minutes, where your eyes are shut and you're getting this rhythmic pattern and you open your eyes and you explain what just happened.
02:39:10.000And it sounds to me, I just had this revelation as you're talking about, like, you know, it's almost like you have to purge the pain.
02:39:19.000You have to relive it almost in order to get rid of it.
02:39:23.000And the theory behind EMDR, as I understand it, is that you don't have the same physiological response at recalling the trauma.
02:39:31.000You know, you could think of something that happened to you 10 years ago and you can still get the heart palpitation and the adrenaline rush and the, you know, the other, whatever is being released in your body, whatever hormones get activated and it doesn't happen anymore.
02:39:49.000I mean, it's the way that it was introduced to me was that my therapist did it with combat veterans who could get triggered by a grain of sand on the beach because they were in Desert Storm and spiral.
02:40:05.000So I find it interesting because it seems like the same methodology is at play, but it's just a different way of getting there than such.
02:40:13.000Well, there's other ways that they do it without the psychedelic drug that induces psychedelic experience like holotropic breathing.
02:40:21.000Put that into perplexity, young Jamie.
02:40:26.000It's a particular style of breathing that allows you to achieve an altered state.
02:40:35.000I don't want to misspeak on exactly how to do it.
02:40:39.000It's an intense structured breathing technique designed to induce an altered, non-ordinary state of consciousness for emotional healing and self-exploration.
02:40:48.000Typically involves prolonged, deep, rapid breathing while lying down accompanied by evocative music and guidance from a trained facilitator.
02:40:57.000Developed in 1970 by psychiatrist Stanislav Groff and his wife Christina after LSD-assisted psychotherapy became restricted as a way to reach similar therapeutic states without drugs.
02:42:26.000If you have money to bet on it, you're betting on the Olympic gold medalist who's a multiple-time heavyweight world champion, who's one of the greatest knockout artists in the history of the heavyweight division.
02:43:15.000I mean, you're talking about a guy who fought Usuk twice and wasn't stopped by Usuk, who's one of the greatest heavyweights, if not the greatest of all time, one of the greatest boxers of all time.
02:43:25.000You're talking about a guy who beat Vladimir Klitschko again, fantastic, great.
02:43:43.000He's still one of the best of the best.
02:43:45.000And Jake Paul is a guy who's been fighting guys like Ben Askren and Tyron Woodley, who was a great MMA fighter, but, you know, fought Nate Diaz and had a tough fight with Nate Diaz.
02:43:56.000And now he's going to fight Anthony fucking Joshua.
02:44:00.000Yeah, I mean, I got to say, the reason I asked.
02:45:59.000I mean, and that would probably just show that Jake Paul is legitimate in his ability to take a very difficult fight.
02:46:06.000You know, that he's willing to not just fight guys that he could beat like Ben Askron, but fight guys that no experts picking him to beat Anthony Joshua.
02:46:40.000I mean, you got to, like, if you're betting, I mean, I don't know what the odds are, but the odds have to be heavily in Anthony Joshua's favor.