00:00:46.420I'm a criminal defense attorney, former prosecutor, adjunct law professor, avid pickleball player, and an all-around fan of my co-host, Jonna.
00:01:41.340And later, I already know I'm going to love this guest.
00:01:45.480Ginny Burton is joining us to share her remarkable story of how she used incarceration as an intervention and how she is working to shape public policy.
00:01:56.780Talk about somebody who literally turned her life around.
00:02:00.580We're going to be speaking with Ginny later in the show.0.99
00:04:02.420Listen, this is why. I mean, it's just so bizarre. Number one, like I don't even know how that actually happened. Right. Number two, of course, it's somebody's going to pay. Not that that's going to help anything. But it really makes me wonder, like, I'm in the city all the time. You're going to be in the city next week. You never, ever think about something that I worry, you know, scaffolding all the time. Do I try to avoid it? Yes. Something going to fall on my head and take me out. Air conditioning. What? That's, you know, that's happened. I've had clients who've had their
00:04:32.220air conditioning units fall out of their windows. Right. You think about that. You never think
00:04:37.840about stepping outside your car into a hole so big that it literally sucks you up and you die
00:04:43.840instantly. I don't want to do the rest of the show. You've completely and thoroughly bummed me
00:04:47.380out. That's why to start my day with that kind of news. I just I couldn't do it. I mean, that's
00:04:53.080that's, you know, it's around the age of me and my wife. And now I got to picture her dying because
00:04:58.340I don't know what some city worker didn't cover it back up or or some homeless excuse me I was
00:05:04.960about to say homeless unhoused person I have to say that this root side entrepreneur is too much
00:05:11.720might have removed the the cover I don't know to sell for for recycling I don't know why that why
00:05:18.780that got off but but somebody died that's that's just tragic that'll be a problem if somebody
00:05:24.200removed just in terms of liability although i think the manhole was the the electric company
00:05:29.840con ed if somebody did remove it and con ed didn't have notice can you imagine they're fighting on
00:05:36.840whether they should pay out i don't think they'll do that but that could possibly happen but here's
00:05:41.120why you shouldn't be mad at me for telling you that story tell me you should not be mad at me
00:05:44.920because now that i've told you this bizarre story yeah what if it makes you think twice and saves you
00:05:50.540from falling into a manhole maybe i just shouldn't go to new york at the end of the week
00:05:55.620how about that right just just watch just watch or you should be watching where you're going anyway
00:06:00.320when you're in in the city don't be i hate those people who are like you know what they practice
00:06:05.000each other like this but they don't look in front of them yeah that's also annoying okay one other
00:06:11.020thing just one other thing before you go to new york city just because my pet peeve when you're
00:06:14.740walking on the sidewalk with your wife or your kids or wherever you're there with no you cannot
00:06:46.760think that his group of fans, first of all, no murderer should really have fans, but we know
00:06:55.180they do, could not be any more vile. We're going to talk about that in a second. But there was a
00:06:59.340big ruling in the Luigi Mangione case this week. I don't like it. I don't appreciate it. I sort of
00:07:08.320disagree with it, but I'm not surprised by it. You do. What part do you disagree? And just
00:07:13.060Like, fill everybody in and then you can tell us what what you disagree with.
00:07:17.360OK, so just just to recap for those who are like Mark and don't watch TV first thing in the morning.
00:07:23.880Not first thing. Eventually get around to it. I want to ruin my day.
00:07:27.260So Luigi Mangione, he is charged in both state and federal court, New York and federal court, for the caught on camera, undeniable, 100 percent murder that is on tape because he did it on a busy city street before a convention.
00:07:47.580He killed a man named Brian Thompson, who is CEO of, I guess it's the largest, if not one of the largest health care companies in the country.
00:07:56.180you know john i'm interrupting right away because i always get this question you know i i would have
00:08:00.940probably announced it the same way you did people would say oh you're a defense attorney don't you
00:08:07.000believe in the presumption of innocence it sounds like you're already convicting him
00:08:10.180wouldn't tell people when when they say that to you uh i say that the there is no such thing as
00:08:16.440the presumption of innocence i know that we talk a good game but in actuality mark come on you know
00:08:22.200when we're representing criminal defendants yeah we often have to prove their innocence it's not
00:08:28.800called that we don't say it out loud but that right essentially what needs to happen even before
00:08:34.160trial especially before trial when you're negotiating a case with a prosecutor who gets
00:08:38.760to decide whether or not there's going to be a deal in your case by the way the prosecutor is
00:08:43.840the one who does that so but i just want to tell you what i tell myself and what i tell others so
00:08:49.440I don't feel guilty. Right. Okay. The presumption of innocence applies to the six or 12 jurors
00:08:56.120assembled in that jury box. We want to make sure they can presume or believe the defendant is
00:09:00.580innocent before they hear the evidence. It doesn't apply to the court of public opinion.
00:09:05.280It doesn't apply to my office right now. It doesn't apply to this podcast. It doesn't apply
00:09:09.960to my house. It applies solely to court. So we can opine anytime we want that somebody is
00:09:18.300damn guilty, particularly when our own eyes are seeing a video that we don't think was manufactured
00:09:23.420by AI. And we can say, he's likely guilty. And if there's anything wrong with that,0.99
00:09:30.160what the hell with you? We're allowed to have an opinion, right?
00:09:32.820That's a good answer. And I will, I don't think, there's no question that the video is actually
00:09:37.620real. And the video shows him shooting this man in the back in cold blood on a busy Manhattan
00:09:42.420street. So we can talk about the presumption of innocence all day long. But, okay.
00:09:49.820So now he had a state court hearing because his defense attorneys who are doing a great job, that's what defense attorneys are supposed to do.
00:09:56.380They moved to suppress some of the evidence in the case.
00:09:58.900Because if you remember, when Luigi Mangione was, he wasn't in custody.
00:10:05.900When he was detained in a McDonald's, when police were, like, suspicious that he could be who we thought he was, they overstepped basically what you can do without a warrant in terms of searching somebody who you suspect of committing a crime.
00:10:59.060Their case really, to be honest, isn't overly affected by this, which, so sidebar, the defense attorneys who are very knowledgeable and very skilled know this, right?
00:11:11.860I don't think they were expecting all of the evidence to get suppressed, right?
00:11:16.660And you're not going to be able to suppress the video.
00:11:18.960So what kind of victory is it when just a little bit of it got suppressed, but the rest of it is still ample to support a murder conviction, assuming this case goes to trial or they decide to plead him to something?
00:11:32.360So it's a victory for due process because his lawyers needed to file this motion.
00:11:38.980If they didn't, you and I would say they've rendered ineffective assistance of counsel, which he deserves.
00:11:45.520So you filed a motion. They went through it. They challenged the evidence. And what remains is still, to me, proof beyond the exclusion of every reasonable doubt is still plenty. But, you know, before we go on, because I really want to get to his fan club, which has got my backup. Can we play? We do have a thought, I believe, of the judge rendering his decision in that motion. Can we play that one?
00:12:09.600They find that the search of the backpack at the McDonald's was improper, warrantless search, that the backpack was not within the immediate control or grabable area of the defendant, and further, the people failed to demonstrate exigent circumstances.
00:12:27.400Therefore, those items found in the backpack during the search at the McDonald's will be suppressed.
00:12:34.600However, the people have established that the subsequent search of the backpack at the station was a valid inventory search, and therefore, the items recovered at the station will not be suppressed.
00:12:48.240So as to the authority issue, I find that the defendant was not in custody until about 9.47 a.m. So any statements before that will not be suppressed.
00:13:02.400However, as Miranda warnings were not given until some seconds after 9.48 in the morning, those statements made shortly before that in response to improper custodial questions that were not merely a request for pedigree information will be suppressed.
00:13:31.140So look, this is a victory for our rights because for everybody's rights, right?
00:13:36.300Because even a murderer, they apply the Constitution and it is a presumptive improper search unless there's a warrant, unless you have some type of exception.
00:13:45.700In this case, okay, they found it at the police station.
00:13:49.800They were allowed to then search it at the police station.
00:13:52.780But on scene, the things that they found get suppressed.
00:15:14.000This should have happened decades, decades ago.0.96
00:15:18.000okay, I get it. You got an issue with the healthcare industry. You got an issue with
00:15:22.440this particular CEO. That's fine. That's what makes our country great. You can advocate all
00:15:27.640you want, but to suggest that murder is okay because of it, what type of person does that make
00:15:33.960you? Those three people are pieces of crap. And I can't understand why this man has such a fan1.00
00:15:42.760I don't even think it's really for what they think he stands for stands for if they think he stands for. Oh, we're going to effectuate change. The American health care industry sucks. Yeah, it does suck. Right. I got that. That's my health care company. It sucks. But I'm not going to go kill anybody for it. And the fact that his family has to has to hear this and see this. I think he's got such a fan club just because he's a good looking murderer.
00:16:38.740Here's what's uncontroverted. She drove her car that contained her 20-year-old boyfriend and 19-year-old friend, Davian Flanagan. Her boyfriend was Dominic Russo. She drove that car approximately 100 miles an hour into a brick building. That is uncontroverted. The question is-
00:17:20.080And so it's not something as sinister as murder.
00:17:26.040But after they analyzed everything, the car checked out.
00:17:29.920There was no faulty brakes, no bad equipment.
00:17:32.340They checked her toxicology. They did. They did that. They found nothing that influenced her driving. And ultimately, they found that she intentionally drove that car into a brick building, causing the death of her boyfriend and friend.
00:17:52.920without stepping on the brake but yes the no brakes no brakes which kind of begs the question
00:18:04.320does it not like if you're intending to kill everybody in that car that would include yourself
00:18:10.160right there's no eject button there but the the prosecutor really went after her with a vengeance
00:18:18.720And I'll tell you what, if you want, we don't want to really give away the entire show.
00:18:22.900If you watch the show, you're going to walk away.
00:18:25.440I did with a genuine disdain for Mackenzie Shirrilla for a number of reasons.1.00
00:21:08.600She was out. Oh, no, she was she was acting completely inappropriately, like completely tone deaf after the crash, whether she intentionally chose to drive into a building, which ultimately I'm giving it away.
00:21:23.420the judge found because this was a bench trial in front of the judge and not a jury or whether
00:21:28.620it was some type of accident that she was responsible for she was completely tone deaf
00:21:35.500and pissed off all the victims as you'll see in the documentary yeah i do need to split hairs1.00
00:21:41.040though for a second go ahead slice slice away my friend even though she is unlikable and even though
00:21:47.140ultimately she is where she belongs i just had a little bit of a twinge you know murder in most
00:21:55.220states including where this was which was ohio you know i'm not convinced that she was intending
00:22:01.940to kill herself and the other and that's why because she is so selfish marf honestly i i don't
00:22:07.940think she intended to kill herself and if she wasn't intending to kill herself then what she0.61
00:22:11.960was doing how would she how could she be deemed to be intending to kill the occupants if she wasn't
00:22:17.740intending to kill herself i know he was breaking up with her her longtime boyfriend wanted nothing
00:22:23.440to do with her i don't know what happened in the car that's what all the victims want to know like
00:22:27.820what exactly happened but we know he didn't want to have anything to do with her there was evidence
00:22:32.160that a couple weeks before she had said that she was going to do something like this there was a
00:22:36.460witness who testified to that but here's what got me there are two pieces of evidence that convinced
00:22:41.160me and i think convince the judge one that was not in the documentary it was in an a and e special
00:22:48.120we have the clip i asked them to put it together but this one was let's start with number two
00:22:53.160the thing that was in the documentary you you see her making a safe turn very safe very safe0.97
00:23:00.860deliberate slow and then she hauls ass 97 miles an hour no breaks but it wasn't a straight road0.89
00:23:09.400It was a curved road. And if she did suffer from pots, like her mother claimed, and thus would have passed out, like they tried to allege erroneously, then the vehicle would have gone off the road earlier. She wouldn't have been able to navigate that curved road until she got into the wall. That's number one. Did you want to respond to that one before I move to the second?0.87
00:25:20.380No. You heard it here on Positively Legal.
00:25:24.260What planet are you from that you can create a whole little weird non-language language to communicate with your parents who are wolves who raised you?
00:25:36.120You know what's funny? Okay, one quick thing, and I know we're going to have to move on, but you know how very recently, oh, God, what is the name?
00:25:43.920there was a kid uh who shot up a school his parents were convicted be oh what yeah i forget
00:25:51.800the name that was that in boston crumbly ethan crumbly right right yeah for the first time ever
00:25:57.480we saw parents prosecuted right conduct of their children we should see it again oh not the facts
00:26:07.220are different they had made the gun accessible it was a whole different thing and i didn't even
00:26:11.280agree with that prosecution. But to be continued, I'm going to preview our guest because I'm excited
00:26:16.260to hear from her. Oh, God, me too. I cannot wait to be speaking with Jenny Burden. She is a systems
00:26:22.860change agent and author of The Gabriel Plan. She's going to join us. You're not going to
00:26:29.040want to miss her story. Stay tuned. We'll be right back.
00:26:41.280Welcome back to Positively Legal, and we are so privileged right now to have joining us
00:26:52.780Ginny Burton. She's a systems change agent. She's host of the Modern America channel.
00:27:00.500She's also the author of the book, The Gabriel Plan. Ginny, first of all, thank you so much
00:27:06.620for joining us. We are extremely grateful for your time. Thank you.
00:27:11.280Yeah, thank you guys so much for having me.
00:27:14.360All right. So we got to start at the beginning. And I'm going to go on record and say you never had a chance, girl.
00:27:22.300I feel so sorry for what you went through, although I know that that's what made you the person you are today.
00:27:29.220But let's start as a child. What the heck happened?
00:27:32.920yeah uh arguably um it's exactly what was supposed to happen so uh i was born and forged for such a
00:27:43.560time as this and um i was born to drug addict parents i mean in the long and short of it and
00:27:49.260though i compared my life to tv shows um god had a different plan for me
00:27:56.300and so how bad was it i mean they were obviously not doing what they were supposed to do but what
00:28:03.900were you witnessing in the household what were you um you know subjecting yourself to uh unwillingly
00:28:10.440because that wasn't your choice no definitely wasn't my choice um my my house was raided when
00:28:15.740i was four years old my dad was taken to prison uh shortly after that my mom um her life sort of
00:28:22.480cascaded into despair and destruction. I think it felt good to her in the beginning because,
00:28:29.800you know, we're all building the plane as we fly it. And so suggesting that my parents should have
00:28:34.180done something differently would suggest that they had a different skill set than what they had. So
00:28:38.160I think that they were functioning from the foundation that they were skilled in. And
00:28:44.700And fortunately, when you put drugs, chaos, love and children in the same space, you get exactly what that kind of mixture would suggest.
00:28:54.680And, you know, what I got was a crash course in strength, really, and a real, real college education in the, I think, the real existence of humanity without, you know, the luxuries that we have been conditioned to participate in here in the United States.
00:29:18.720And so for a long time, I thought my life was happening to me, and I didn't realize that it was happening for me. And today, I just have a very different experience. And, you know, I'm so grateful for the entire thing.
00:29:35.240My mom and my dad both died in the same way in which they lived, which was in, you know,
00:29:40.440the outcomes of long-term drug and alcohol abuse.
00:29:45.040And, you know, there are a plethora of things that go along with that.
00:29:48.340And like I said, I'm just grateful for it.
00:29:51.340Weren't they the ones who got you involved in drug use?
00:29:55.100Not just because of their behavior, but they actively got you involved.
00:30:04.940And I think it made it easier for her to participate in some of the things that she was.
00:30:11.760And in order for her kids not to say anything, she introduced them to us.
00:30:16.180And, you know, though I did not like the way that they felt, what I realized was that they provided an escape from the chaos that was very frightening.
00:30:23.700And, you know, eventually, just like any other condition that we struggle with as human beings, they became patterns of behavior that provided me opportunity to, you know, move around in the environment that I was in.
00:30:39.820Were there any good childhood memories?
00:30:41.520Oh, I mean, yeah. And let me just say, like, I think it's really important to note that because outsiders tend to perceive addiction as just a place of desperation and suffering, arguably, people wouldn't stay in those conditions if they didn't provide some sort of escape.
00:31:01.480So, you know, it wasn't like just this terrible experience the entire time.
00:31:06.060There were definitely things that were hard and very frightening.
00:31:08.600But, you know, yes, I mean, I had six brothers and sisters.
00:31:13.460We got the opportunity to explore and be free.
00:31:17.900There was definitely violence and fear that came along with all of the life experiences.
00:31:23.120But, you know, I have a lot of fond memories that I can reflect on, even with my mom, who
00:31:28.460was my first abuser, et cetera, et cetera.
00:31:31.480You know, we grew up together. And just the way that I see it now is just very different than the way that I saw it when I was in the midst of it. I had an expectation for a long time for my mom to do something that she didn't have the skill set to do. And, you know, and again, I just want to talk about gratitude. I'm really grateful for it today because what I get the opportunity to do today is teach people how to live differently than their patterns of behavior, if that makes sense.
00:31:59.080Yeah, I got to ask you. Sorry, Mark, I got to ask you something because your story is is remarkable and so much different than people who suffer very similar to you.
00:32:09.460Right. Not not everybody breaks free from addiction and turns out to to change themselves and change the world for the better.
00:32:16.940But you did. So despite being addicted, perhaps at a young age and growing up in that kind of chaos, there had to come a moment or maybe it was a series of moments.
00:32:28.140that truly changed the way you operated as a person. And is there, and I know it's not a
00:32:36.020secret sauce, but can you describe for our listeners in case somebody is going through
00:32:39.480the same thing, what is it that inspired you to change and come out of that chaos in,
00:32:46.980in such an inspiring way? So I've answered this question so many times and the way that you set
00:32:53.440it up just caused me to sort of have a different experience with how I'm going to answer. So first
00:33:00.520of all, I was tired. Uh, you know, every single person I think in the world, um, has behaviors
00:33:09.000that they don't like the outcomes of, but they don't know how to change them. I, I was just
00:33:13.920really tired and uh you know I the moment that I was arrested last time I just knew that something
00:33:25.400needed to change and I realized I realized something really simple which was um I just
00:33:31.400have to do the opposite of what I've been doing and because I realized that I was the author of
00:33:38.220my story that the change was going to have to come from me for a really long time I had an
00:33:43.020expectation for systems and governments and providers to have the answer for me. But how
00:33:52.000could they have the answer when they had never been there? How old were you when you finally
00:33:56.500made the shift? Yeah, 40. I just want to say that I think it's really important to say this.
00:34:03.860Law enforcement was a blessing that intervened to help propel that shift. So, but I was 40 years
00:34:12.740old. Okay. And you had been arrested how many times? And I say this with love, it's just part
00:34:18.960of your story, you know? Yeah. Just so you know, my life is an open book. So I, for a long time,
00:34:25.560I've walked around essentially naked on the stage of the world. Everybody knows my story. So there's
00:34:30.300no area you cannot go into. I just want to say that right now. But yeah, I don't know. I've been
00:34:36.000arrested a lot of times. I served three different prison sentences. I've done a number of different
00:34:40.260jail stays, juvenile justice stays. For a long time, though, I expected other people to, you
00:34:47.000know, give me what I needed to be able to exist differently. But when I got arrested at 40, I was
00:34:53.820just, I was sick of it. I was sick of myself, and I knew that something needed to change. So,
00:34:59.580yeah. Had you gone to rehab any of the times as part of any previous sentences?
00:35:07.960Sure. Yeah. Yeah, I did. And what's the most amount of time? I'm just curious. What's the
00:35:13.540most amount of time that you're able to get under your belt? Because maybe that
00:35:16.220helped when you finally made your decision at 40.
00:35:19.720A hundred percent. Now, let me just say, I've been to treatment a couple of times. I've been
00:35:23.880to prison three times prior to this experience. And each of those times, I gathered more information,
00:35:32.640right so what these industries do is they provide a one dimension of what is necessary which is
00:35:38.800separation from the destructive path so in saying that it gives a person in the past not not today
00:35:46.160it's a very different system today it gave or gives a person the opportunity to be removed
00:35:51.940long enough to get clarity and every single person that i've ever interacted with in any of
00:35:59.020these spaces, whether it's me residing inside of these spaces or me serving inside of these spaces,
00:36:04.060they start to develop a plan for how they want their life to be different. Now, I just want to
00:36:10.980say this. If a person is not practicing new behaviors, the likelihood of those behaviors
00:36:16.760changing when they exit out of the other end of those institutions, whether it's treatment,
00:36:22.100whether it's mental health, whether it's shelter, whether it's prison or jail, if they haven't been
00:36:27.460practicing those behaviors, the likelihood of those behaviors changing is very slim.
00:36:31.980We as a species gravitate toward familiarity. We gravitate toward familiarity. So when things get
00:36:39.220harder and comfortable and you have absolutely no idea how to navigate or access things that
00:36:44.300you want to do to change, you're probably not going to do that. And those are some of the
00:36:49.020things that I realized at 40. Mind you, I was searching for death. I was sick of it. I thought
00:36:54.320I was a failure in all areas of my life. Um, but there was a different thing that happened for me
00:36:59.880when I was arrested and I became clear and, and, you know, and that's like, there's this whole
00:37:04.100spiritual component to, you know, everything that's happened, but you know, I woke up and
00:37:09.100that's what happens pretty consistently with most people that end up in these environments when
00:37:14.780they're not put on drugs. And I'm going to tell you that today when a person is separated, um,
00:37:21.540They're immediately put on drugs, whether it's through detox, whether it's a treatment program, whether it's prison, they are immediately put on drugs. And when you cannot access the deepest recesses of yourself because you are continued to participate in, you know, chemical escape, what happens is, is people don't ever find that place of clarity.
00:37:44.940so you don't believe in suboxone to wean people off of no go cold turkey and then yeah i'm not
00:37:53.160i'm not zero tolerance but i can tell you that i am abstinence based so when we have blamed the
00:37:59.880pharmaceutical companies for the problem of opiate addiction are we all really so dim that we think
00:38:05.620that the pharmaceutical companies are actually the answer to the very problem we're suggesting
00:38:09.980that they created isn't their business model exactly the same how does any drug dealer make
00:38:16.820money just like any business return customers right they don't profit even some of the rehab
00:38:24.180i'm a fan of rehab a lot of clients have gone through some of them successfully some of them
00:38:30.100not they tend to make more money if they have more clients and they have more clients if people
00:38:35.840remain addicted and i can you talk to this part of it and that is you you just said you were sick
00:38:44.800and tired of feeling the way you were feeling right the pain of doing what you were doing
00:38:47.940living the way you were living was just far greater than the pain of change i get that but
00:38:54.020how can a person you somebody else any professional get inside another person's head to make that
00:39:01.580switch, to flip that switch. Because I find when I have clients who are not successful in rehab,
00:39:06.860it's because they are going through the motions. They're saying what the counselors want them to
00:39:10.180say. They're just doing it. They're sneaking around behind their backs. They haven't been
00:39:13.780motivated. They're not sick and tired of feeling that way. And if we can bottle whatever it takes
00:39:18.680to change that in a person's brain, I think we have a lot more successful people who are
00:39:24.700rehabilitated. But how do you get there? Well, you said some really important things. First of all,
00:39:30.600our entire system currently is focused on long-term management. So back in between 2013 and
00:39:36.7602015, we had a massive shift. We saw the DSM-5 change. Everything became diagnosable and
00:39:43.760prescribable. So when that is the focus, and I can tell you right now, I said it on a federal
00:39:48.720briefing. I think it was the homelessness EO. It was either the homelessness EO or the treatment EO.
00:39:53.620I've got some friends, uh, you know, in DC that are involved in a lot of this stuff. Uh, I do
00:40:00.260consulting on, um, different policy stuff with, uh, currently the state of Tennessee's department
00:40:05.360of human services. Um, but I was able to sit in on some HUD stuff too, that showed the timeline
00:40:10.780between 2013 and 2015, which made a lot of sense to me because I was working in the behavioral
00:40:17.280health industry at the time. So we changed addiction treatment to substance use disorder,
00:40:22.860with the EO, the briefing that I sat in on, what I saw was a complete rebranding with pharma at the
00:40:32.680helm of some of these changes. So we have decided that homelessness is a behavioral health problem.
00:40:39.100So it's Medicaid reimbursable. It's diagnosable. The shift is to move everybody towards some sort
00:40:44.840of medication-assisted treatment. So I just want to say that. How do we bottle that? Well, first of
00:40:50.400all, we have the wrong people at the table making decisions when you don't have lived experience who
00:40:55.140have overcome. I just want to identify that very distinctly. Lived experience who has overcome
00:41:01.020and not drank the Kool-Aid and bought into this idea of industry standard, which current industry
00:41:07.740standard is long-term management. If you're not sick, I'm not funded. We've seen a lot of problems
00:41:15.380with funding and how funding is directly associated with these problems, with people
00:41:24.520remaining sick, right? So what we can do to bottle stuff, which is what I'm doing inside
00:41:28.800of prisons today, I'm developing a model that's very intentional. And we have to, when a person
00:41:33.920is removed and clear, are we ever going to have 100% efficacy? No, we're talking about human
00:41:39.500beings who like to change the way that they feel. But what we do is during those periods of clarity,
00:41:45.380We assess deficits. So we take a look at many life domains of the individual who is like, you know, receiving some sort of service inside of these industries, whether it's homelessness, social services, behavioral health, incarceration.
00:42:00.240The model has to look the same everywhere. And what we have to look for are the outcomes that we seek, not inputs and outputs of the agency that is serving, but the outcomes that we seek with the individuals that are being served.
00:42:12.940How do we as a system equip and enable individuals to become the strongest version of themselves? Well, we have to first address from lived experience perspectives and engagement. Because I'm sorry, when you have the 25-year-old academic who just came from suburbia, who has never once in their life had a challenge outside of what their parents could solve for them, and we're sending them into these arenas, these doubles dens, which that's exactly what we're doing.
00:42:40.980we indoctrinate them and we turn them into these advocates that are progressing the very industry
00:42:47.920that is contributing to the destruction of human life. And that's exactly what we're doing across
00:42:52.680the country. Can I ask you a question? Let me just ask you a question. Is there any way that
00:42:59.240you can force change upon someone unless they believe their behavior has become intolerable
00:43:04.980to themselves? In other words, I watch these programs intervention. Most of the time,
00:43:10.360I don't think it tells the story because a lot of these people, I think, you know, relapse because the parents are forcing it on them or friends want them to get well.
00:43:19.360You know, doesn't the individual like you, you worked because you said, I've had enough.
00:43:25.260How do you force people to get into treatment if they don't want it?
00:43:35.200So if there are 15 people that hang out in a house or live in the same place and 12 of them are mountain climbers and the other three are exposed to these people for a long enough period of time, people acclimate.
00:43:57.840You remove people from the destructive path when you're and I don't know one drug addict that doesn't commit some sort of crime.
00:44:03.740We've decided that possession of narcotics that have the ability to kill people is not a crime.0.99
00:44:10.620I think that's the stupidest thing we've ever done as a country.0.81
00:44:13.760When we when your civil liberties encroach on my civil liberties as a community member, then you have put yourself in a position to be removed from society until we address your problems.0.99
00:44:25.060And so when that happens and we immerse people in an environment where change is actually occurring, we're going to have a much higher likelihood over time that people are going to acclimate to that change.
00:44:36.340Most people are using drugs and participating in certain behaviors because those are the patterns of behavior that they learn to navigate those environments.
00:46:57.820So I bring a host of network relationships from around the state into the prison prior
00:47:03.860to them releasing right around graduation.
00:47:05.860And what I do is I introduce the guys that I teach into relationships and opportunities so that they can sustain the goals that they have set for themselves.
01:02:50.020She said things to them like, don't be fooled by Alex,
01:02:53.700and this decision shouldn't take too long.
01:02:56.640She did it because she was promoting a book,
01:02:59.520and if he was found guilty, the sales would go up.
01:03:02.900A book, by the way, that she plagiarized portions of.
01:03:07.540So I was very eager to find out when the news hit this past week that the convictions were overturned, that they were now going to go to trial again, great financial and emotional and physical tax on everyone.
01:03:20.900I was curious to see what did all of her crimes yield?