The Michael Knowles Show - ＂65 Years In Prison For Burglary＂ Michael & The Prison Inmate

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00:00:47.800 Coming in off the rec yard that day, and Carlos was waiting for me, man. He said, listen, man, when you go to the shower today, do you understand what's about to happen?

00:00:54.560 Either you're going to kill this guy and they're going to give you another life sentence.

00:00:58.000 They could give you the death penalty for this one because you're waiting for this guy in the shower to kill him.

00:01:02.000 Or he's going to do something to you that you're going to want to be dead and you'll eventually die from anyway.

00:01:05.960 And he's HIV positive.

00:01:07.600 This guy is death in so many ways, man.

00:01:10.160 Biggest rape is in there too, man.

00:01:11.540 Talking to God again.

00:01:12.480 Help me kill this guy.

00:01:13.860 Man, I'm getting the green light in my head, brother.

00:01:15.640 Like, let's go.

00:01:16.820 And here he comes, man.

00:01:17.700 The doors open up.

00:01:18.600 There were little half-saloon doors back then.

00:01:20.220 I reach back.

00:01:20.820 I hit him as hard as I could.

00:01:22.320 Boom.

00:01:22.640 And I've crossed this line where I'm ready to kill another human being and I don't want to stop.

00:01:26.520 I went berserk and I lost my mind.

00:01:38.900 One of the reasons I'd like to avoid prison is I don't know which gang I would join

00:01:43.400 because I'm probably a little too swarthy to join the Aryan Brotherhood.

00:01:47.580 I don't think they would have me.

00:01:48.740 and then I'm probably a little bit too white to join the Crips or the Bloods.

00:01:53.640 And so I think this would present me with a major, major dilemma

00:01:56.740 if I ever found myself in the slammer for any extended period of time.

00:02:00.420 My guest today, Damon West, found himself with effectively a life sentence in prison

00:02:06.700 and was confronted with all of these choices and somehow survived it all

00:02:12.600 and even made it out to sit here with me today.

00:02:14.320 Damon, thank you for being here.

00:02:16.180 Michael, thanks for having me, man. Super excited to be here.

00:02:18.240 So your story, on the surface, your story is not all that weird.

00:02:23.480 You're a guy who got into drugs and crime and ended up in prison and then got a second chance.

00:02:28.860 And that happens.

00:02:31.140 Once you start piercing into your story a little bit, it's really, really weird.

00:02:35.880 You had a great upbringing.

00:02:38.240 You had a very promising future.

00:02:41.340 D1 star athlete.

00:02:43.320 and then you throw it all away for drugs and crime, end up in prison, ostensibly for the rest

00:02:51.260 of your life, but somehow you end up here with me. Let's start from the beginning.

00:02:57.640 So I think the best place, Michael, to start this thing is the trial. May 18th, 2009,

00:03:05.380 I'm standing in front of a jury in Dallas and the jury, these 12 men and women, they've listened to

00:03:11.000 a six-day criminal trial. And a six-day trial is a long trial for crimes where no one was physically

00:03:16.980 hurt because these burglaries that we were committing all over Dallas for three years,

00:03:21.460 no one was ever home. And I went through a lot to make sure that no one was ever home. Like one of

00:03:26.060 the first burglaries I ever did is I broke into a U.S. post office and I stole a mailman uniform,

00:03:30.980 mailman bag, mailman hat. So I had to blend in in society, right? Well, just because I'm a meth

00:03:36.520 addict and I'm breaking into houses to feed my drug addiction doesn't mean I don't have a

00:03:40.620 preservation of life instinct, because we all have that, right? And I was a pretty smart guy.

00:03:45.320 So I was able to apply a lot of skills intellectually to a very bad habit I had in life. I was a drug

00:03:52.140 dealer, a drug addict, breaking into houses, and I became the leader of a bunch of other

00:03:57.060 meth addicts breaking into houses. It was a Berkeley crew, right? And so as the leader of

00:04:01.320 it, I'm trying to figure out ways for no one to get caught, for us to be able to do this as long

00:04:05.920 was possible because it was all about getting high. And the jury heard this story about Damon

00:04:10.860 West. They had it all. I grew up in a little Southeast Texas town called Port Arthur. Came

00:04:15.000 from two parents that were married for 55 years. We were in mass every Sunday and good student

00:04:20.400 growing up, great athlete, division one college quarterback. By the time I was 20, I was a

00:04:24.240 starting quarterback on a division one team at the university of North Texas. So I get injured

00:04:29.880 against Texas A&M in 96. That's when the drugs start. Cocaine, ecstasy, pills, but functional

00:04:36.140 how to graduate college, move off to Washington, D.C. I worked in the United States Congress,

00:04:40.960 worked for a guy running for president. And then in 2004, I moved back to Dallas to be

00:04:45.000 a stockbroker for one of the biggest Wall Street banks in the world.

00:04:47.480 Now, so far, the whole part of the story is, look, you had this great promising career.

00:04:50.980 It's so weird that you became a criminal. But then you say you worked for Congress and

00:04:54.960 you worked in finance. Well, now I'm assuming you're a criminal. That goes without saying.

00:05:00.700 That's training grounds.

00:05:01.800 Now I'm with the real crooks, right?

00:05:03.620 Yeah.

00:05:03.860 But yeah, I work for one of the biggest Wall Street banks in the world, UBS, Union Bank of Switzerland.

00:05:09.100 And it was in Dallas.

00:05:10.520 And it was at that job when I was introduced to meth for the first time.

00:05:13.060 Another broker introduced me to meth one day when I was sleeping at work.

00:05:15.480 Okay, now hold on.

00:05:16.160 I want to take it, you've got this good career, you've got this good future potentially because you're this D1 athlete.

00:05:23.400 And then you say, you hurt yourself, you're out of sports, and then you start doing drugs.

00:05:28.880 So this is before math, before you'd be asked, why do you start doing drugs once you lose sports?

00:05:35.300 The answer to that question is addiction. I'm an addict. And today I'm in a program recovery. I

00:05:41.320 work a 12-step program recovery that helps me deal with my addiction. But addicts can't live

00:05:46.200 life on life's terms. That's the very definition of addiction. And when we get into doing drugs

00:05:52.320 and alcohol, we're putting chemicals in to change the way we feel. Something's wrong in our lives.

00:05:56.420 And instead of dealing with what's wrong in our lives, we put chemicals in to deaden that pain.

00:06:02.000 And so that's why I got into cocaine and ecstasy and the pain pills because it took me out of the miserable world that I was in where my identity of being a college football player had been removed from my life.

00:06:13.100 And growing up in Texas, you know, Friday Night Lights, football was everything.

00:06:17.020 Yeah, yeah.

00:06:17.420 It was my entire identity.

00:06:18.680 That's an amazing cause because you could see someone saying, look, man, my mom died and my dad went to jail and, you know, my dog bit my sister.

00:06:30.880 And I don't know, all this bad stuff happened.

00:06:32.340 My girlfriend dumped me, so I started doing drugs because my life was terrible.

00:06:35.160 But for you, basically everything in your life was great, except you could no longer play college sports.

00:06:40.640 And that in itself was enough for you to say, you know what, time to fill that pain.

00:06:47.460 I made the monumental mistake that I see a lot of people making mine because I wrap my identity up into something external.

00:06:54.340 And we can't do that.

00:06:55.280 You know, your identity will never come from the car you drive, the house you live in, your bank account, the friends you have.

00:07:00.180 The job you have.

00:07:00.860 The job you have.

00:07:01.620 Your identity is who you are on the inside.

00:07:03.440 But I never had developed that because being a college quarterback and being the star high school quarterback in a town in Texas, you know, that was my identity.

00:07:12.680 And when it was gone, I was lost.

00:07:14.420 And that's on me because I didn't handle the adversity well.

00:07:17.460 But you had never been into drugs before.

00:07:19.580 I mean, I smoked pot, I drank alcohol, but nothing hardcore.

00:07:23.900 Yeah.

00:07:24.380 The hardcore stuff happened when the big, you know, the big life altering event of losing

00:07:29.260 my college football career.

00:07:30.180 When that happened, I was lost and I spun out in this, this world of like, you know,

00:07:36.000 like I said, it was cocaine first and then ecstasy, but, but I was a functional addict.

00:07:40.840 I want to add that in.

00:07:41.900 Like I, I was always a drinker.

00:07:43.620 I was always an alcoholic, but I was a functional addict, a functional alcoholic.

00:07:47.300 Like I graduate college, you know, most people can't do that if they're stuck in their addiction.

00:07:52.140 I go off and have these great jobs.

00:07:54.180 I mean, I worked in, like I said, worked in Congress, worked on Wall Street, but that addiction is still there.

00:08:00.320 It's never going away.

00:08:01.340 And in 2004, when this other broker introduced me to meth for the first time, it was like touching a live wire.

00:08:07.660 Meth, man, I was instantly hooked just like that.

00:08:09.740 It's the most evil, most destructive, most addictive drug ever created by man because it's made in a lab.

00:08:15.180 people that got to see Walter White and see Breaking Bad. The stuff is made in a lab.

00:08:21.480 So when I become a drug addict, I start giving up my goals to meet my behaviors. Another thing

00:08:25.980 about being an addict is we give things away. We give up our job, our home, our car, our savings

00:08:31.320 account, our families, our tethering to God. 18 months is all it took, Mike, for me to go from

00:08:36.620 working on Wall Street to living on the street. So why did you do the meth? So you're working this

00:08:41.520 job at UBS. I'm sure it's a stressful job, but did you want a thrill or did you just want to

00:08:48.160 get through the day? Yeah, I was just sleeping. I was sleeping at work. I was passed out. The

00:08:51.500 other broker saw me sleeping. He's like, dude, you can't sleep on this job. Markets are open.

00:08:56.020 You're messing with people's money. They'll fire you if they catch you sleeping here.

00:08:59.120 He said, come on down to the parking garage, man. I'll pick you. I got something that'll pick you

00:09:02.080 up. And that was the day I took my first hit of meth. I thought we were going to do a little

00:09:05.920 cocaine in the parking garage, to be honest with you, man, because that's what I was into at the

00:09:08.740 time was cocaine. Right. But man, meth was a live wire and I was instantly hooked. And I mean,

00:09:13.640 it took no time for me to lose my job at UBS. It's just, it's kind of funny. I don't mean,

00:09:18.500 you know, obviously it's very sad, but it's funny that you did the meth so you could keep the job,

00:09:24.560 but then because you did the meth, you lost the job to do the meth. Correct. Yeah. Correct. And,

00:09:29.960 but I didn't see the red flags because I'm stuck in this addiction and all I care about is the

00:09:35.320 math, right? Even whenever I've lost everything and I'm living on the streets and living in dope

00:09:40.620 houses, I still don't see that, hey, man, I got to get out of this thing. I go in deeper.

00:09:46.200 Yeah. Even losing the athletics. You lose the athletics, so you no longer feel like a cool guy.

00:09:53.360 So you don't want to feel like a loser, so you start doing drugs, which makes you into a loser.

00:09:57.860 Yeah.

00:09:59.200 That's an amazing... It's just so...

00:10:02.360 It's the power of addiction too, by the way. Because when you're in your addiction like that,

00:10:07.400 look at all the stuff people do in their addiction, man. They give up their families,

00:10:11.100 they give up their lives, their jobs, everything. Now is your view of it, because that resonates

00:10:16.620 for me because I think it would resonate for most people out there that when you have

00:10:20.480 an attachment to something disordered, it makes you go crazy. It makes you do crazy things and

00:10:27.120 give up other goods. Sometimes I hear people talk about addiction and it's as if they say,

00:10:32.360 there are two kinds of people in this world, addicts and non-addicts. And I have plenty of

00:10:37.020 friends who are addicts and recovering addicts and all the rest, but that's not how I view it.

00:10:41.620 I view it as all human behaviors are habit-forming. Good behaviors are habit-forming. Bad behaviors

00:10:47.040 are habit-forming. Some people more easily form habits than others maybe, but that this is a risk

00:10:52.980 for anybody. Or is your view more like, no, I just was born as an addict and it didn't kick in until

00:10:59.900 I did my first line of blow. No, no. I would say that a lot of it's environmental, man. It's the

00:11:05.400 stuff around you. I certainly think there's some hereditary components to being an addict,

00:11:11.140 but I don't think that that's the big thing that kicks it off. There's stuff that happens in your

00:11:15.420 life. You're exposed to certain things. There's a lot of people that you could say that were born

00:11:19.360 to a family with a bunch of addicts. So maybe they have that gene in them, but nothing ever

00:11:22.800 kicks in, right? But also, if you don't try the things that are the ones that are going to be the

00:11:28.140 most toxic to you, the most addictive to you. And it doesn't have to be drugs or alcohol either,

00:11:32.620 does it? I mean, it could be food, money, clothing, shopping, sex, pornography, the internet.

00:11:37.100 The list goes on ad nauseum of what this could be. When people give up their goals to meet a

00:11:43.000 behavior, that's really my bar of who's an addict, who's not an addict. It doesn't have to be this

00:11:47.700 thing where you say, oh my God, they got involved in drugs and alcohol. It could be the person you

00:11:52.540 see that gives it all up for gambling. It gives it all up for pornography. That's addiction.

00:11:57.320 It's not original, but someone described addiction as just narrowing the scope of pleasure such that I think, what gives me pleasure?

00:12:06.420 Playing my ukulele, smoking my cigars, having a drink, I guess that's something, a good meal, a long walk on the beach, a good book.

00:12:16.260 You know, I don't know, we can all list all these things that give us a lot of pleasures, playing with my kids, whatever.

00:12:20.680 Whereas for an addict, it's pretty much the addiction.

00:12:24.520 That's the only, you would give up anything else for the addiction.

00:12:27.220 Getting high. And I would do, more importantly, is I wouldn't do anything to get the high.

00:12:33.440 And that's what the jury was listening to this guy. The jury's not looking at it from

00:12:37.700 the conversation we're having today. Like, well, this guy's an addict, man. There's obviously

00:12:41.560 something went off the rails with this guy. The prosecutor put this case on. This is an

00:12:46.180 organized crime case too, by the way. This is Rico. This is like the highest level case

00:12:49.820 they can bring. This is not just street crime. This is not just a burglary. Because you had

00:12:53.340 Okay, so hold on. You get into the drugs, you lose the job at UBS, you're hanging out at drug

00:12:59.320 houses and stuff like that. At what point do you start breaking into people's homes?

00:13:03.780 Yeah, it wasn't immediate. The crime started off with low-level crimes like breaking into cars,

00:13:09.540 breaking into storage units. Then it escalated to burglary. And look, I want to say this right

00:13:14.300 here. Burglary is a very serious crime because my victims, when I broke into my victims' homes,

00:13:20.360 I didn't just steal property from my victims. I stole something way more valuable from my victims.

00:13:24.440 I stole my victim's sense of security. And that is gone. And look, I've got a family now. I've

00:13:29.620 got a wife. I've got a stepdaughter. My mom lives with me on my property now. I can't imagine

00:13:34.440 someone doing to me what I did to so many other people, man. And my victims, they're going to

00:13:39.920 live with that for the rest of their lives. Because in Texas, you can't apologize to the

00:13:43.780 victim of your crime. It's a felony. So you can't reach out and make apologies to anybody. So I'll

00:13:47.560 never be able to apologize to the victims of my crimes because it's another fail. They'll send

00:13:51.500 you back to prison in Texas if you reach out to your victims. Oh yeah. They're very serious about

00:13:55.380 that in Texas. So I kind of get it. It makes sense. I think the whole idea of that is like

00:14:00.680 victims of very harsh crime, violent crimes. Yeah. These crimes that we committed, no one was ever

00:14:07.260 home. No one, we never saw our victims. They never saw us. So thankfully it's not a physical contact

00:14:12.800 crime, which makes it non-aggravated, which is going to play into the story because there's

00:14:17.240 two different kinds of crimes in Texas. There's aggravated crimes where someone is physically

00:14:21.140 hurt, and then there are non-aggravated crimes where there is no physical victim. This is the

00:14:26.000 category that I'm in. So I've gone to trial for a six-day trial on a non-aggravated RICO case,

00:14:32.560 engaging in organized criminal activity. There's about a dozen other meth addicts in this whole

00:14:36.680 RICO indictment. So these are the guys in the crew?

00:14:39.900 I got men and women, young and old, male and female, black and white, because addiction

00:14:43.820 doesn't care who you are.

00:14:44.900 But you're the main guy, basically?

00:14:48.160 I'm the main guy on the crew.

00:14:49.080 So it starts out you're robbing storage units

00:14:51.360 or whatever, you know, low-level stuff.

00:14:52.960 And that was just me by myself doing that stuff.

00:14:54.900 So then how do you become like a mob boss?

00:14:57.800 Whenever, yeah, mob bosses.

00:14:59.540 I'm being slightly hyperbolic.

00:15:00.720 Yeah, but I mean, I would say mob is more organized.

00:15:03.720 What we were was just a bunch of meth addicts

00:15:06.200 breaking into houses to feed our addiction.

00:15:08.820 And when I say I was the leader of it,

00:15:10.380 I was kind of the guy that would put it all together

00:15:12.120 because I would case the places out that we're going to break into. Because you get addicted

00:15:16.960 to that too. You get addicted to the whole process of getting ready to commit a burglary, right?

00:15:21.360 And so this is all part of it. And I had access, man. Look, I'm a white middle-class guy breaking

00:15:28.060 into uptown Dallas. There's not a lot of people that can just break into uptown Dallas without

00:15:32.980 drawing a lot of attention. And what I was doing too, to deflect some of the attention is I would

00:15:38.620 take property from these burglaries. Sometimes it was in the form of a stolen car because

00:15:43.320 I was the mailman before. I was going into the mailroom to find out who wasn't home.

00:15:47.660 These are the places that we're hitting. These people that are out of town, if I can find their

00:15:51.420 key fob in their condo or their apartment, I can go to the parking garage and take a Mercedes,

00:15:56.380 a Land Rover, a BMW, and I can go drive that vehicle full of stolen stuff that's traceable,

00:16:01.540 laptop, checkbook, all this different things you don't want to keep from a burglary.

00:16:04.840 and I could park that vehicle in the neighborhoods where I want the cops to look.

00:16:09.260 South Dallas, East Dallas, places where the people don't look like me.

00:16:14.740 And so for three years, that's how we're evading this thing.

00:16:18.020 We're staying out of the limelight because cops are looking in other directions.

00:16:22.540 The evidence points in other directions.

00:16:25.340 But how do they catch you?

00:16:26.880 Well, it's how all crime goes down.

00:16:29.300 Everybody talks.

00:16:30.220 They got my partner in crime first.

00:16:32.200 My partner in crime was a guy named Dustin.

00:16:33.600 Dustin, Dustin got arrested 10 days before I did. It was, the day I got arrested was July 30th,

00:16:40.960 2008. So it's about a year before the trial, right? I'm at this apartment I live in in Dallas.

00:16:47.280 I got my dope dealer sitting next to me, a guy named Tex. And I'm telling Tex, we're passing

00:16:51.260 this pipe back and forth. You don't want to be here, brother. The cops are closing in. The end

00:16:54.540 is near. They got Dustin. And just about that time, the window on my right blows out and shatters.

00:16:58.440 flashbang grenade across the floor i scramble trying to get out of there it blows up in my

00:17:03.480 face bright white light loud noise right blows me back on the couch and when i came to and i can see

00:17:08.740 and hear again there was a cop standing over me in full swat right here his boot was on my chest

00:17:13.340 the barrel of an assault rifle my socket screaming don't move don't move and i'm like man don't worry

00:17:17.880 don't worry you got me i'm not gonna move and so one of the swat team officers yelled out out loud

00:17:23.140 we got him we got the uptown burglar and that was it man that was the day it went down and so i knew

00:17:29.520 i knew my time was limited after you know people started getting picked off the cops started

00:17:33.900 arresting people i knew it was going down you think about like you brought the mob so we'll

00:17:38.600 dovetail into like goodfellas right remember the scene where ray liot is really paranoid

00:17:42.300 that's me the last few days that i was free yeah because i know it's going down i'm watching cars

00:17:47.260 going down my street like that car looks suspicious like and it turns out they really were

00:17:50.940 They were casing my plates.

00:17:54.520 But everybody talks, and you knew they were going to give you.

00:17:56.640 Everybody talks.

00:17:57.560 And that's the nature of crime.

00:17:58.980 And that's a preservation of life instinct, too.

00:18:01.420 I don't hold any ill will, by the way, against anybody in the burglary crew that spoke up.

00:18:05.940 It's not their fault I went to prison.

00:18:07.220 It's my fault I went to prison.

00:18:09.240 That's the thing.

00:18:10.340 Today, you're looking at a guy that's owned all of his mistakes in life.

00:18:13.020 I did everything they said I did.

00:18:14.320 I'm guilty of it all.

00:18:15.960 But on May 18th, 2009, you know, sitting in front of that jury, I haven't accepted any

00:18:21.300 responsibility. The jury's looking at a guy. They're like, man, this guy had it all. And he

00:18:25.160 became the leader of an organized crime ring. And he had all these opportunities that maybe some of

00:18:29.300 them don't even have in life. And the jury deliberated for 10 minutes, 10 minutes, man.

00:18:35.780 Like, I don't know how much law and order you watch, but if a jury's gone for 10 minutes,

00:18:39.980 it means they smoked you. They brought me back in the courtroom and the judge read my sentence.

00:18:44.860 He said, Damon Joseph West, you are hereby sentenced to 65 years in the Texas Department

00:18:51.120 of Criminal Justice.

00:18:51.960 How old are you at this point?

00:18:53.280 I'm 33 years old.

00:18:54.380 So that's a life sentence.

00:18:55.280 It's a life sentence.

00:18:56.000 And 65 years is life.

00:18:57.440 And in Texas, they stop calculating time at 60.

00:19:00.960 They don't tell juries about this.

00:19:02.680 But when you get to prison, you realize that you get a timesheet every month that tells

00:19:06.560 you how much time you've done in your sentence.

00:19:08.320 The max is 60.

00:19:09.680 Because 60 is the average lifespan of a human being who was 17 that went to prison in the

00:19:13.540 first place because it's an adult, right? So 65 is life. The jury gave me life. First felony

00:19:20.680 conviction ever. Probation was on the table, Mike. Probation was on the table, but I knew I

00:19:25.440 wasn't getting probation because I'm guilty of everything. I thought I was going to get like 20

00:19:28.820 years, but I got 65 and man, it took my breath away. That right there was my rock bottom moment.

00:19:36.160 That's the first time I realized, man, something's got to change and something is me, but I had no

00:19:41.820 clue how to do it, right? Right after the trial was over, they handcuff me. They get me out of

00:19:46.940 there. They take me in this little side room. It's got a bulletproof glass, the place where

00:19:50.500 you normally talk to your attorney. They bring my parents in about five minutes later on the

00:19:55.140 other side of the glass. They decided to give my parents one last visit before I go to prison.

00:19:59.020 They felt sorry for my parents because I just got life. My dad couldn't talk. I broke my dad, man.

00:20:03.720 My dad was in stunned disbelief that his son, who once had all this promise in life, just got a

00:20:08.200 life sentence in prison. So my mom does the talk and she's like, baby, debts in life demand to be

00:20:14.320 paid. And you just got hit with one hell of a bill from the state of Texas, but you did everything

00:20:18.960 they said you did. So you have to pay that debt to society. You owe Texas that debt. Now you owe

00:20:24.240 your father and I debt too, because we gave you all the opportunity to love and support to be

00:20:28.080 anything in life. And that's how you just repaid us. It's not going to work. She said, so here's

00:20:32.640 the debt you're going to pay to us. When you go to prison, you will not get in one of these white

00:20:37.360 hate groups, one of these Aryan brotherhood type of gangs. She said, you will not get any tattoos

00:20:41.880 while you're inside that prison. No ink, Mike. She said, no gangs, no tattoos. Come back as the

00:20:48.700 man that we raised or don't come back to us at all. Man, I'm stunned, man. And I'm looking across

00:20:55.580 at my mother like, man, she can't be serious. But just to back it up, she said, do you understand

00:20:59.960 the debt you're about to pay to us? I'm like, yeah, mom, I got it. And about that time, the

00:21:04.400 guards come and they take me out of there. And they take me back to my pod in Dallas County

00:21:08.760 jail. And I've got two months before the prison bus comes to get me to go serve a life sentence

00:21:12.360 in prison. And I'm frantically asking every guy that's been to prison before, how am I going to

00:21:15.820 survive? What am I going to do? And every guy's telling me the same thing. You have to get into

00:21:20.620 a gang. In Texas, they have a law that if you get a life sentence in Texas, you have to live with

00:21:24.560 lifers only. You don't live in a general population of a prison. They want the life

00:21:28.620 sentence people in one place so they can keep an eye on them. And so those life sentence people

00:21:32.060 also get the fence off their mind. You live on a building with lifers for five years. You can't

00:21:37.400 come off the building. It's an island on the prison. Is the idea that those people have nothing

00:21:41.640 to lose so they're more dangerous? Yeah. And they're the ones most likely to hit that fence

00:21:45.040 and try to escape. So once you get someone, you kind of have to break someone's will in a prison

00:21:50.300 for about five years because once you get acclimated into prison, the escape instinct kind

00:21:56.580 of goes away for a lot of people. Not for everybody. There were guys in there that talked

00:22:00.740 about wanting to escape all the time. I wasn't one of them. I always had hope I would get out

00:22:04.620 through the front gate. But in Texas, you get a life sentence, you have to live with lifers.

00:22:11.600 And so that's what these guys and counties y'all are telling me. You're about to go to the roughest

00:22:15.900 part of prison there is, the most dangerous part of prison where there's no hope. You have to get

00:22:19.860 into a gang. You have to. You won't survive any other way, except for one guy. It was an older

00:22:25.660 black Muslim guy named Muhammad. Now this is important. I'm telling you his demographics

00:22:29.900 in prison. Most Muhammad's I know are not lily white. Yeah. But this guy to say that he's black

00:22:36.980 is important because in the code in there, everything is about race, right? The blacks

00:22:41.300 don't intermingle with the whites. He's an older guy. I'm a younger guy. And on top of that,

00:22:45.660 he's a Muslim and I'm a Christian. So, but he always comes up to me. His name is Muhammad. He

00:22:51.060 comes up to me every morning. He checks on me. He seeks me out. I didn't seek this guy out. He

00:22:56.300 sought me out in there. And every day he checks on me. So this one day he comes up, he's got a

00:23:00.780 cup of coffee in his hands, had a smile on his face. He said, you know, man, I've been watching

00:23:04.640 how you're dealing with these knuckleheads and these dummies talking about you got to get into

00:23:07.320 a gang. He said, don't listen to these fools. He said, do you want to keep the promise you made

00:23:11.340 to your mom or your dad? And I was like, yes, Mohammed, I do, but I don't know how to do this.

00:23:16.560 He said, let me tell you what prison is really going to be like. And that's when he kind of

00:23:19.540 explains it to me. He said, the first thing you understand about prison is that prison is all

00:23:23.960 about race. Race runs the whole institution of prison. And that's the way, he said, that's the

00:23:27.920 way every race wants it, by the way. We all break off in our own racial group in a prison to keep

00:23:31.900 the peace in a prison. You have less chance for racial war if the whites are with the whites,

00:23:36.240 the blacks with the blacks, and the Hispanics stay with themselves. So to your point at the

00:23:40.360 beginning of the podcast, and you say you don't know where you'd go, you'd have your choice from

00:23:43.860 the whites and Hispanics. They would take you in. Yeah, yeah. I could pass. But you're not going

00:23:48.400 want the blacks. But you can't because race is everything. He said race is king. He even explains

00:23:53.840 to me, he said, when you go in the day rooms, you'll see TVs in the day room and there's rows

00:23:58.480 of benches in front of the TV sets. He said, the first row, you can't sit on that row. That's for

00:24:02.600 the blacks. The blacks have the numbers in prison, he said, by the way. He said, it's an upside down

00:24:06.200 world from the world you know now where blacks are in control in there. And like, you know,

00:24:11.140 you look in America, kind of the hierarchy just in population is, you know, whites, Hispanics,

00:24:16.600 blacks yeah in prison it's the opposite it's blacks hispanics whites so he's telling me the

00:24:21.660 first row of benches you can't sit on that row that's for the blacks get your head smashed in

00:24:25.600 if you sit on their row the second row you can't sit on that row either that's for the hispanics

00:24:29.440 they don't want you on their bench either he said the third row of benches is for the white people

00:24:33.760 he said now sometimes you'll be in a pod there's no third row of benches if you get into a pod like

00:24:38.280 that white people sit on the floor that's the way it works in prison he says so don't get into a

00:24:43.100 wreck over this race thing but he said pay very close attention to race never forget about race

00:24:47.720 he said because you when you walk in the door the white gangs get the first dibs on you yeah yeah

00:24:52.560 that's what he's telling me like the aryan brotherhood the aryan circle the white knights

00:24:56.160 the woods he said they're coming at you man and they're going to try to break you he said if you

00:25:01.060 can survive the white gangs and you can survive this then you're going to fight the black gangs

00:25:05.460 and the white gangs will coordinate with the black and they'll send the black gangs after you and the

00:25:09.120 black gangs they're going to be in concert with the white gangs to get you where you belong

00:25:13.100 Go to hallow.com slash Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S.

00:25:16.360 We're deep in Lent, walking steadily toward Holy Week, the Cross, and the Resurrection.

00:25:20.060 This is not a season for the half-hearted.

00:25:21.980 Lent is a summons to conversion, to strip away what dulls the soul and return to God with sincerity.

00:25:26.820 This time of year demands movement, prayer, fasting, and self-gift, and our sponsor, Hallow, helps you do that.

00:25:32.500 Do not drift through Lent, live it.

00:25:34.340 First, prayer.

00:25:35.520 Hallow can help you build daily habit that makes room for God's voice.

00:25:38.480 They have meditations on the passion, scripture, reflections, and the sacred music, real prayer

00:25:43.660 that draws you out of noise and into encounter. Next, fasting. Yes, from food, but more often

00:25:49.440 from what's poisoning your interior life. Gossip, constant scrolling, cynicism, complaint. Fasting

00:25:54.520 is not punishment, it's clarity. Freeze the heart and make space for grace. Finally, give.

00:25:59.340 Real charity always costs something. Offer patience when you'd rather be sharp, mercy where you've

00:26:03.820 and hurt, love when it's undeserved. Download Hallow today. I love Hallow. It's a wonderful app.

00:26:09.420 Spend intentional time in prayer and meditate on God's love for you. You can get three months

00:26:14.880 free at Hallow.com slash Knowles. Forgive my ignorance. What are the differences between the

00:26:22.320 white gangs? I kind of thought there was just one white gang in prison. It was like one for the

00:26:26.900 whites, one for the blacks. What is the, there's the white brotherhood. They have the Aryan

00:26:31.820 Brotherhood. There's just a few. I'll give you a few of the white gangs. The Aryan Brotherhood,

00:26:36.320 the Aryan Circle, the White Knights. Let's say those are three different white prison gangs.

00:26:41.200 And every one of those gangs has their own hierarchy in there, and they all report to

00:26:45.940 their own leaders. The gangs are basically an extension of the criminal street gangs that you

00:26:53.200 see out here in America. They're the same gangs on the black side. The Crips, the Bloods, the

00:26:58.480 gangster disciples, they're all connected to the crypts, the bloods, the gangster disciples out

00:27:02.380 there. The white knights, the Aryan brotherhood, the Aryan circle, they're all connected to their

00:27:06.880 gangs on the outside. And inside prison, they run drugs in there. That's one of the things they do.

00:27:11.800 They run drugs, they run cell phones. They've got to get guards that they can turn to make this

00:27:16.200 happen. And so that's what happens in prison. You see a guard get turned by an inmate and you can

00:27:21.080 see it happening, man. The first thing that happens is a guard does a favor for an inmate.

00:27:25.020 And then the favor becomes something they can't get out from because the inmate will say, look, I got you now.

00:27:30.500 You did me a favor.

00:27:31.380 You've been doing me favors.

00:27:32.260 I'll turn you in unless you start working for me.

00:27:35.020 And then the guard will start working for this inmate.

00:27:38.160 And that's how the-

00:27:39.120 Because the guard did a favor for the inmate.

00:27:41.000 Yeah.

00:27:41.280 And sometimes the guard, there's some correctional officers out there that are looking for that, right?

00:27:45.520 They want, again, most correctional officers are not down with that.

00:27:49.680 Yeah.

00:27:49.920 But there are going to be bad, just like there's anything else.

00:27:53.000 There's going to be bad apples in a group.

00:27:55.020 There's going to be correctional officers that are looking for that because they can make a lot of money to it.

00:27:58.200 But it's not like when the guy, when the white guy comes up to you and he says, hey, you know, here are your applications.

00:28:02.580 You can go to Harvard, Yale, or Princeton.

00:28:03.980 You can join the white circle, the Aryan Brotherhood, or the...

00:28:07.800 Is there any meaningful difference or it's just they're just related to different gangs on the outside?

00:28:12.240 I mean, I think there's going to be meaningful difference depending on where you are.

00:28:15.840 It's all going to be depending on where you are, what pod you're on in prison.

00:28:20.460 Every piece, every part of prison has their own dynamic of who the power players are.

00:28:24.440 So when this guy comes up to me the first day, he asks what family you're going to be a part of.

00:28:28.640 They call the gangs families.

00:28:30.400 And this guy is actually saying, I'll let you choose which one of these white gangs you want to be a part of.

00:28:35.640 But you've got to pick one.

00:28:37.020 And so that's, to me, I can't pick any of them.

00:28:39.220 And my mom made me promise I wouldn't do it, right?

00:28:41.040 Right.

00:28:41.700 So, but they, for the most part, they're all about the same thing.

00:28:46.820 They're all about, it's a protection thing too.

00:28:49.560 But here's the thing about it that I found out when I was leaving prison.

00:28:52.040 So when I leave prison, I'm in a facility where everybody's made parole.

00:28:55.840 About two weeks out, there's a table full of Aryan Brotherhood, Aryan Circle.

00:28:59.100 All these guys are sitting together, and they look miserable.

00:29:03.240 I walk by the table.

00:29:04.140 I'm like, man, what's wrong with y'all, man?

00:29:05.320 We're about to walk out of prison.

00:29:07.200 Oh, man, yeah, but when we get out, we got to report.

00:29:09.940 I'm like, I got to report to my parole officer, too.

00:29:12.420 They're like, no, idiot.

00:29:13.680 We got to report to the gang.

00:29:15.960 And I'm like, you mean this isn't over when you're done?

00:29:18.140 They're like, this is for life.

00:29:19.820 If we don't report, they come after our families and they eventually come after us and kill us for life because they wouldn't stand up and fight in the first couple months of prison, put their life on the line.

00:29:29.660 I'm so grateful to my mom for what she made me go through, you know, like makes me make that promise.

00:29:34.040 I go through it.

00:29:34.780 I'm either going to die in that place, but I'm not coming back like that.

00:29:37.600 Right.

00:29:37.980 These guys are going to have a whole life where they go out and commit more crimes because they are affiliated with a criminal street gang the day they walk out.

00:29:44.400 Yep.

00:29:45.180 Man, I was like, oh, wow.

00:29:47.440 Blew me away.

00:29:47.980 This thing is for life.

00:29:48.960 I didn't understand it because I didn't get wrapped up in their lives.

00:29:51.000 I didn't understand the dynamics of it.

00:29:52.700 All they're trying to do is get you to go with your own race.

00:29:55.620 They want you to join the white.

00:29:56.740 The black gangs want you to join the white gangs.

00:29:58.620 They want you to be on the other side.

00:29:59.920 So you're not this independent white guy that causes a wreck out there one day.

00:30:03.860 He said, if you can survive all this and you can survive all this, you will earn the right

00:30:08.460 to walk alone.

00:30:09.940 He said, the strongest man in prison always walks alone.

00:30:13.280 He told me the truth about fighting.

00:30:14.840 He said, you don't have to win all your fights, but you do have to fight all your fights.

00:30:19.100 And he said, man, some days you're going to win and some days you're going to lose.

00:30:21.480 He said, don't worry about when you lose.

00:30:23.300 Get up and keep fighting.

00:30:24.760 No one's keeping track of your wins and losses.

00:30:26.540 They just want to see if you're going to defend yourself.

00:30:28.660 That's it, man.

00:30:29.320 That was the secret to fighting in prison.

00:30:31.480 Don't worry about winning and losing.

00:30:33.340 Just show up to every single fight.

00:30:35.320 Don't miss a fight.

00:30:37.100 And man, I'm looking back at this guy like you're looking back at me right now.

00:30:39.980 Like, oh man, like a deer in headlights, right?

00:30:43.360 That's when he's like, he said, hey man, let me break it down for you a different way.

00:30:46.960 He said, I want you to imagine prison as a pot of boiling water.

00:30:51.860 And he said, anything we put into a pot of boiling water will be changed by the heat

00:30:55.620 and the pressure inside that pot.

00:30:58.020 He said, I'm going to put three things in this pot of boiling water and watch how they

00:31:00.940 change.

00:31:01.800 A carrot, an egg, and a coffee bean.

00:31:05.980 So here's where I first heard the story of the coffee bean.

00:31:08.320 It was the summer of 2009 in a jail cell in Dallas County Jail, 10 years before John

00:31:13.900 Gordon and I write a bestselling book all over the world called The Coffee Bean.

00:31:16.960 So he walks me through it.

00:31:19.120 A carrot goes into a pot of boiling water, hard, but becomes soft into the boiling water.

00:31:23.380 You don't want to be a carrot, he said.

00:31:25.580 The egg goes in with the soft inside.

00:31:27.580 The shell on the outside protects the egg on the outside, but inside the shell, the soft liquid core, the yolk, the heart becomes hardened.

00:31:35.780 You don't want to be an egg in that place.

00:31:37.020 You're going to find more eggs, he said, than anything else, though.

00:31:39.920 He said the coffee bean, the smallest of the three things, small like you, has the power to go in that pot of boiling water and change the water to coffee.

00:31:48.020 He said it's the only thing that will change the water.

00:31:49.360 It's a change agent, right?

00:31:50.240 The power is inside the coffee bean to change the water around the coffee bean.

00:31:53.540 And he said if you're going to come back as someone your parents recognize, you have to be like that coffee bean.

00:31:58.480 And that's what he's telling me.

00:31:59.460 You have to go in and change this place with the power inside you.

00:32:02.740 And he said it's not going to be easy, man.

00:32:03.960 It's going to be hard.

00:32:04.880 He told me what the first day of prison would look like.

00:32:07.060 he said when you walk in the door he said first of all they're going to separate you from everybody

00:32:10.580 else because you're a lifer so when you get off the prison bus you're separated out you'll probably

00:32:14.500 be the only life on the bus there's not a lot of lifers on a prison bus he said they're going to

00:32:18.100 separate you out take you to life sentence building he said when you walk in the life sentence building

00:32:21.940 the first day do not run to your bunker the guys are scared he said when you walk in the day room

00:32:26.340 the first day put your bags down put your back against the wall and let it happen and i'm like

00:32:31.860 I was like, what happened?

00:32:32.860 Yeah.

00:32:33.860 He said, your heart check.

00:32:36.060 The heart check is the most important fight you will ever fight in prison.

00:32:39.940 They call it a heart check because they want to see what your heart's pumping.

00:32:42.400 They want to see what you're made of.

00:32:43.400 It happens on day one.

00:32:45.400 He said, you're going to be approached first by a white guy because you're white.

00:32:47.860 The first guy that's going to approach you is not a threat to you.

00:32:49.900 He's an information guy.

00:32:50.900 He's a scout.

00:32:51.900 He'll ask you one relevant question in this first conversation.

00:32:54.220 What gang do you want to be a part of?

00:32:56.220 He said, man, get him out of here.

00:32:57.220 Aryan Brotherhood, please.

00:32:59.600 Where's the application?

00:33:00.600 But he knows that I've made this promise to my mom and my dad, so I can't say that.

00:33:03.820 So he's telling me, get this guy out of your face as fast as you can, Damon, and get your

00:33:08.100 head on the swivel and get ready.

00:33:09.680 Because the second guy coming up to you, he's not coming to talk to you.

00:33:11.980 He's coming to hurt you.

00:33:12.600 He's the enforcer.

00:33:13.840 He said, when the second guy gets within range of you, put your fist in his mouth.

00:33:19.480 That's how you get the jump on the first fight.

00:33:21.880 And this is in the summer of 2009.

00:33:24.580 My name is called out shortly thereafter.

00:33:27.520 The prison bus is there to pick me up.

00:33:29.640 He has four words for me on the way out the door.

00:33:32.100 The last words he ever said to me in prison, in county jail, before I went to prison.

00:33:36.140 He said, hey, West, be a coffee bean.

00:33:39.540 Those were the four words that really changed my life because those four words put the power

00:33:44.100 back inside me.

00:33:45.180 And what's interesting about this conversation that I've had with this guy, Muhammad, is

00:33:49.340 the day that I got sentenced to life in prison, I came back from the trial that day and I

00:33:54.340 go back to the pod.

00:33:55.260 And of course, it's a very high profile case.

00:33:57.500 So it's been on the news and all the guys in the pod have seen it.

00:34:00.400 No one will come near me, man, because I think they're afraid they're going to catch a life sentence, right?

00:34:04.060 So I come in.

00:34:05.280 I'm like this pariah that comes in.

00:34:06.580 Everybody's just staring at me like this guy just got life and he's walking around us now, you know.

00:34:10.880 Muhammad was the only one that came up to me.

00:34:13.000 He said, hey, man, listen.

00:34:14.100 And that's what he said.

00:34:14.760 He said, I saw they gave you six dimes and a nickel.

00:34:16.760 And in prison, every 10 years, a dime, every five years, a nickel.

00:34:20.040 So he said, I saw they gave you six dimes and a nickel, man.

00:34:22.860 It broke my heart.

00:34:24.060 And he could see that I wanted to cry.

00:34:25.380 He said, don't cry out here.

00:34:26.880 You can't you can't do that. You just got you got hit with life. You can't cry in here

00:34:30.160 You can sit but you can go to the shower and cry. He said go grab your shower stuff get to the shower

00:34:34.560 Get it all out one time. Don't ever cry again

00:34:37.300 So I go to the shower May 18th 2009

00:34:40.400 This is two hours after the jury said it's been a life in prison. My life is gone

00:34:44.320 My mom said this conversation with me

00:34:46.320 Shower water comes on and as soon as the water hits me man

00:34:49.420 I start crying like a baby and I am like like god. I don't know what to do and I'm coming back

00:34:54.420 I'm talking to God, man. And I'm like, I don't know what to do. I'm lost. And this is like the

00:34:59.140 moment where God's telling me, I got you. This is going to be all right. You have to trust me.

00:35:05.260 There was no admonishment though, Michael. It's not like, you know, God was saying,

00:35:08.480 Jesus was saying to me, well, you didn't listen to me. And this is what happens in life.

00:35:12.360 No, it was like, all right, we're going to go through this. So were you at this point

00:35:16.380 religious? Like you said, you grew up, you'd go to church, you would, you, but were you,

00:35:21.760 probably weren't all that practicing, but would you have called yourself religious? Would you

00:35:27.180 have said you were a Christian? Oh, yeah. I mean, I grew up Catholic. I grew up in the church.

00:35:33.780 When I went to college, the wheels came off as far as the religious stuff goes. I think a lot

00:35:38.660 of people have that story. They get to college, they kind of just start chasing things. I was

00:35:43.460 always chasing other things besides faith. Girls, I assume. Girls, drugs, alcohol, and eventually

00:35:50.740 crime. I mean, but I got so far away from God. God didn't leave me. I left God, you know? And so

00:35:58.300 whenever I got arrested, my mom reminded me that she had, my mom was a very faithful woman. She's

00:36:04.680 got prayer plaques that crosses all over her house. She's like one of those moms. But she

00:36:08.760 reminded me when I got arrested about this prayer plaque that she had on my wall as a kid growing up

00:36:13.300 called Footprints in the Sand. And she's telling me that, you know, you have to get on Christ's

00:36:18.400 back and let him carry you through this. And this is, man, I'm going through Dallas County jail and

00:36:22.580 I'm coming off dope. I still think I have a chance to get a small prison sentence and I can be out

00:36:27.020 soon getting high. But man, on May 18th, 2009, I got hit with life in prison and all, that's what

00:36:32.760 I said. It was the first time I understood that something had changed that some of it was me

00:36:35.560 because there's no more like talking my way out of this. And so when I'm in the shower that night

00:36:42.020 and Christ is talking to me, he's telling me things that I'm familiar with, like get on my

00:36:47.500 back. I'm going to carry you through this. And it's wild because I look back at this and I think

00:36:53.780 about Muhammad and you're going to hear about some of the other messengers I met along the way.

00:36:57.580 I think that's what Christ does is he sends messengers to us and messengers can come from

00:37:02.180 anywhere, man. The messengers won't always look like you. They won't come with the same background

00:37:06.000 as you, but that's why they're the messenger, right? They bring a message from a different

00:37:09.820 place, a different view. And I think that the thing about life is that we have to be receptive

00:37:14.020 to all the messengers to get all the messages. I'm not expecting a black Muslim man in county jail

00:37:18.960 to be the guy that's going to deliver this message that's going to help me out through

00:37:22.600 this whole thing and literally transform my life after prison with the coffee bean message. But

00:37:26.660 that's who Christ sent to me. You know, I totally buy this. And I think we entertain angels

00:37:34.340 unawares, sometimes kind of awares, you know, at least in retrospect. I think that might've been,

00:37:38.600 I think I've talked to angels and that's what angel means is a messenger.

00:37:44.020 from God. But it's also kind of funny from the Christian perspective that one of the messengers

00:37:49.880 would be named Muhammad. Because, you know, the Muslims say there's no God but Allah and Muhammad

00:37:54.400 is his prophet, his messenger. And I don't think, you know, the reason I even mention it is because

00:38:01.980 something about providence, you know, the divine ordering of the universe, is that it's kind of

00:38:06.640 funny. It's delightful, actually, when you look back in retrospect. And it is kind of funny that

00:38:12.040 You say, I was speaking to Christ, like Christ was speaking to me.

00:38:15.520 Yeah.

00:38:15.820 And one of the guys that he's using to speak to me is named Muhammad.

00:38:18.920 Yeah.

00:38:19.620 But that's the thing.

00:38:20.860 I mean, like you could either have a mindset where you would say, well, that can't be who he could send to me.

00:38:28.380 Or you could say he could send anybody because he's the creator of the universe.

00:38:31.980 Yeah.

00:38:32.140 This is actually a theme that's come up even in this series.

00:38:35.240 And I don't mean this as a joke.

00:38:37.160 I mean this 100% sincerely.

00:38:38.380 in my experience, and this is going to sound funny and I don't mean, angels have been black

00:38:44.160 guys. Like I've done, like the people, when I think I've spoken to an angel,

00:38:48.320 most of the time it's been a black guy. And the fact, so the fact that you say, you know,

00:38:53.520 it's kind of crazy. This black guy came up to me. I say, well, in my experience,

00:38:56.500 that actually is how it works. I don't know. People's mileage may vary.

00:39:00.680 And I think that it's up for your interpretation. So if you think that was an angel, that was an

00:39:05.280 angel. And you can't, everybody's got the ability to have their own perspective in life.

00:39:10.660 Well, hold on. But I don't agree with that. I don't think that, when I say I think I talked

00:39:16.140 to an angel one time, people are going to think I'm nuts for saying this. But you're saying the

00:39:18.920 same thing. Well, you're saying a slightly different thing. But when I think I spoke to

00:39:23.220 an angel, I don't think that a human being was just really nice to me that day, or even being

00:39:30.540 used for a special purpose. I literally think I spoke to an angel. I think there was a yes or no

00:39:34.660 answer to whether or not this person is an angel. And I think I've come to an answer. Like, I think

00:39:39.200 I've come to the correct answer, but I guess I could be wrong. Uh, so like, I, I don't know that

00:39:45.480 it, you know, and I'm saying, I believe it. Like you say that happened to you, then I'm saying,

00:39:51.600 I believe that you had that experience, but I could be wrong. You could be wrong, but that's

00:39:55.720 not for me to say. It's never going to be for me to say, or for someone else to say, Hey, Mike,

00:40:00.220 you're wrong. That wasn't an angel because they, they don't live in your body. They don't, they

00:40:03.800 don't know what you, they don't see what you see. Position determines perspective. Three words

00:40:09.400 together that make a lot of sense for a lot of things in life. Position determines perspective.

00:40:13.440 If you say it was an angel, then okay, I can live with that. It's not my place to tell you it's not

00:40:19.780 because I think that everybody has their own experiences in life. And again, we talk about,

00:40:23.760 you know, I'm a faithful Christian and I believe that Christ is capable of anything, right? And

00:40:28.460 use anybody. And that's what I know from my story. Muhammad's just the first one. There's going to

00:40:33.080 be other ones along the way. You know, this little Hispanic bank robber that I meet in prison named

00:40:36.760 Carlos. I'm going to tell you a story about him in a little while too, but there's going to be

00:40:40.540 other people on the way that he's put in my life. And like I said, the trick in life is to be

00:40:46.060 receptive to all the messengers to get all the messages. So I love this point, especially on

00:40:50.500 position and relative to perspective, because in the field of semiotics, this seems like it's

00:40:57.600 far afield, but it's actually exactly what you're talking about. There's this idea that there are

00:41:02.320 signs and they point to something. You know, we're talking about providence. We're talking

00:41:05.580 about getting signs and wonders. And it's some, you know, there's something that points to some

00:41:10.600 other thing. And, but one of the ideas within the study of signs and symbols and meaning is that

00:41:18.340 meaning, it's not like a sign is just like a stop sign. Like that's the sign and it means stop or

00:41:24.400 what that signs and meaning actually are, are a relationship. So there's the, the, the thing that

00:41:31.120 you call a sign. And then there's the signified, the thing that it points to. And then there's the

00:41:36.080 interpreter. There's the cognitive power. There's what, and that meaning is actually in that

00:41:41.980 relationship. Sure. And so it's got an intellectual aspect and it's got a kind of real aspect and it,

00:41:48.020 and from a guy looking from the outside, he might have no idea what, what you're talking about.

00:41:53.360 Right. Yeah. Because he hasn't lived your life or lived in your shoes. And that's the thing,

00:41:58.660 your experiences in life make up the world that you see. Your world's determined by the

00:42:04.340 experiences that you have. That's what you have in life that's unique to anybody else,

00:42:08.100 your experiences. Only you have lived in your life, right? So you see things a totally different

00:42:12.420 way than other people see it. But so I want to lay that out for the audience. You're going to

00:42:19.680 meet a lot of messengers in this story that Damon West didn't get to be sitting in this seat with

00:42:25.860 you today on his own. Damon West had a lot of help along the way. And this help was sent to me.

00:42:31.140 And I believe in all of our lives, when we come to a place where we are open and willing for that

00:42:37.140 help, we see the help. And I think people want help for a lot of different things, but they're

00:42:43.480 not ready to surrender, right? They feel like they still have this control over life. There's

00:42:47.940 only four things you can control in life, man. And everything else is God's. You can control what

00:42:52.760 you think, you can control what you say, what you feel, and what you do. And when I say you control

00:42:58.620 what you feel, what do you do with your feelings? And when you have these feelings, how do you

00:43:03.760 handle those feelings? That's your control. You control that, right? So what you think, what you

00:43:08.700 say, what you feel, and what you do, and if it's not one of those four things, who controls it,

00:43:12.900 right? This is the case for a higher power, a case for what I think is the case for Christ,

00:43:17.860 right? I don't control anything else, but if I can focus on those four things, I can really impact

00:43:22.540 my life. That's giving up this idea of control. And I think so many people, I met this chaplain,

00:43:29.380 this little volunteer chaplain in prison named Ms. D. Ms. D, she was probably about 84 years old

00:43:34.920 when I met her. She's passed away since now. But she told me something one day in the chaplain

00:43:39.660 prison I'll never forget. She said, if you're going to pray, don't worry. But if you're going

00:43:43.960 to worry, don't pray. She said, you can't have it both ways, right? You want to either let God do

00:43:48.280 his job or you're going to do his job. This is a famous saying of Padre Pio, the Italian Catholic

00:43:54.600 mystic. Maybe that's where she got it from. You pray, hope, and don't worry. That's what he says.

00:43:59.820 So she said, if you're going to pray, don't worry. And if you're going to worry, don't pray.

00:44:03.080 But I'm getting ahead of myself in the story. So the prison bus comes to get me,

00:44:07.660 picks you up. And then whenever you get on a prison bus in the Texas Department of Criminal

00:44:11.060 Justice, first of all, at the time, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice had over 100

00:44:14.980 prison. I think they got 104 left now and 110 when I was in. There's at the time about 150,000

00:44:21.340 inmates in the Texas prison system. So it's a very big system that I'm going into. And the prison

00:44:27.540 bus picks you up and they shackle you up to another human being. So you sit handcuffed to another

00:44:31.180 person. The bus rides go on all day, man. You're just weaving in and out of Texas, picking up

00:44:35.560 people at county jails to drop them off at a prison. There's fights breaking out on the bus.

00:44:39.440 People are scared. People are nervous. There's no bathroom breaks on a prison bus because the

00:44:43.100 bathroom is a five gallon bucket in the back. You know, if you've got to hit, you've got to go to

00:44:47.080 the bathroom, you hit the bucket, but remember you're handcuffed to another guy. Oh man. He goes

00:44:50.720 to the bathroom. You go to the bathroom, number one or two. So it happens all the time with these

00:44:54.360 prison buses. You got to get to prison still. So now you're at prison. They've unshackled you.

00:44:59.520 They've showered you. They've shaved your head and processed you through the whole thing. And

00:45:03.620 that day when I got to prison, they separated me out from everybody else. Kind of like what

00:45:08.380 Muhammad said was going to happen. And they take me to the life sentence building. So I go to the

00:45:12.160 Mark Stiles' unit in Beaumont, Texas. Stiles is one of the toughest prisons in Texas. It's a

00:45:17.560 maximum security level five prison in Beaumont, Texas. It has about 3,000 men on it. I know it's

00:45:23.920 one of the toughest prisons too because I did time there, but also you're going to hear when

00:45:27.500 I got out of prison, I went back to school and got a master's in criminal justice and then

00:45:30.900 became a professor at the University of Houston downtown teaching a class called Prisons in

00:45:35.680 America. I'm the only professor on the planet to teach a prisons class. I think more professors

00:45:40.260 Anyone should go to prison, but that's a separate story.

00:45:42.980 So, but Stiles is a very hard prison.

00:45:45.920 It's one of the toughest in the system.

00:45:47.300 So I get to Stiles, 3,000 men, lifers don't live with those 3,000.

00:45:51.800 We live in a building called Seven Building.

00:45:53.960 Seven Building has 432 people.

00:45:56.160 Every man's got life.

00:45:57.480 95% of these guys will never see the free world again.

00:46:00.140 It's the most hopeless place on earth.

00:46:02.040 And I walk in the first day, got a mattress under one arm, a couple of bags of property.

00:46:06.660 Within five minutes, I'm approached by a white guy.

00:46:08.560 just like Muhammad said, a little bitty bald-headed white dude. Tatted up from head to toe. Even his

00:46:12.020 eyelids are tatted up. He gets in my face. He says, hey, white boy. He said, what family are

00:46:16.620 you riding with? They call gangs families. Gang's not a family. He said, what family are you riding

00:46:21.220 with, white boy? And I'm like, man, get out of my face. I'm riding with God, man. Just leave me

00:46:24.620 alone, man. I'm riding with God. He laughed at me. He said, God isn't here, white boy. He said,

00:46:29.720 we kicked him out of here a long time ago, but we're here and we're going to come get you. You

00:46:33.900 need to get ready white boy he runs up the stairwell on the right side and man this is a

00:46:38.320 massive there's three levels of cells in this place it's huge room and inmates are yelling all

00:46:42.120 the hey man i'm standing there waiting because i know it's coming and coming on the third tier

00:46:47.700 biggest corn-fed white dude i've ever seen in my life man he's an ogre man and he points at me from

00:46:52.160 the third run he's letting me know he's coming i'm watching this dude walk down the stairs man

00:46:56.060 huge muscled up dude this dude has no neck on him man bald head swastika all on top of the skull

00:47:01.940 i know i'm like oh my god man this guy comes up at me and i did what muhammad said i reached up

00:47:07.780 and hit him first man i got him in the mouth as hard as i could boom yeah and in 20 seconds the

00:47:12.820 fight was over man he beat me from one side of the room to the other yeah didn't even phase the

00:47:16.620 dude when i hit him right yeah this is the neighborhood i live in man so within 20 minutes

00:47:21.900 the first fight in prison is over i've already lost i'm dragging my things up to my cell and i

00:47:27.120 meet the second messenger, Carlos. Carlos is a little bank robber from San Antonio, Texas,

00:47:32.240 about five foot four, little Hispanic guy, serving 99 years for all the bank jobs. Real nice guy,

00:47:37.660 though. He's a real nice guy, but it's prison, man. You can be a good guy in a bank. One of the

00:47:40.780 sweetest bank robbers. Yeah. One of the sweetest bank robbers ever, but he's a good dude. Um,

00:47:45.440 and, uh, he was a very like knowledgeable person and I needed something like that. I needed someone

00:47:51.240 to explain how prison works because I'm this fish out of water. My white middle-class guy in America

00:47:56.320 who's never even understood what the prisons look like on the inside. This guy's my guide, man. He's

00:48:01.600 a walking teacher, you know? So he's explaining things to me in there when I first get to prison,

00:48:06.180 you know, even like how you use the toilets in there because the toilets have a button. There's

00:48:09.720 no flusher on the toilet, but the toilet is more than just a toilet. In prison, the toilet is for

00:48:14.160 everything, man. You are going to do your dishes in the toilet. You're going to, oh yeah, you do

00:48:18.320 your laundry in the toilet. And he's telling me that the toilet is like our sacred thing in our

00:48:23.900 cell. The cell has a bunk bed, a desk, and a toilet. He said, that toilet, we do everything

00:48:28.600 in that toilet. We do our dishes in it. We cook with it. We do our laundry in it every week. We're

00:48:33.740 going to do our laundry, wash your sheets in there. He said, we have bleach that we're going

00:48:37.000 to clean the toilet out before we do all these things. But when you go to the bathroom, you have

00:48:40.940 to hit the button, keep the water moving the whole time. We don't want anything to sit that toilet.

00:48:45.160 Nothing, not number one or not number two. So like, how am I supposed to know that, man? Like,

00:48:49.540 that's not something they taught me in college, right? No. But that college education is not

00:48:53.240 important anymore at this point. It doesn't even help me at this point. In fact, I would say it

00:48:57.100 made me more of an outlier, man. I mean, like, I'm the most uncommon person I know inside this

00:49:01.440 prison, right? No one likes me. So, but he watched me go through this, man. It takes about two weeks

00:49:08.440 to get through the white gangs. After that, it was the black gangs, just like Muhammad said it

00:49:13.620 would be, you know? And Carlos is telling me, man, he's like, you just got to keep going every day.

00:49:17.960 And so- So what do the black gangs say? The black gangs are fighting me, man. They want me to get

00:49:22.300 with the white gang. So they go up. Just go white. This is over. As soon as you go find a family,

00:49:29.500 this is over with, man. And I'm like, nah, man, we're going to keep doing this every day.

00:49:33.040 And so they take me up on it. Like in the first two months, I probably get in three dozen fights

00:49:38.800 and lose 75% of these fights. I'm fighting almost every day in there, Mike. I mean,

00:49:42.360 it is a bloodbath. But remember, Muhammad said, you don't have to win the fights. You got to

00:49:48.900 fight the fights. And in prison fighting, man, you just got to show up out there and fight. And

00:49:53.060 when you're done fighting, you say, I'm done, man. You throw up the towel. And they have like

00:49:57.280 really only one rule in prison fighting is you can't hit a guy who's on the ground. That's it.

00:50:01.280 Really? Yeah. Well, it's for a fairness factor, right? Because this guy's on the ground. If we

00:50:06.880 beat this guy on the ground, it's going to attract wardens and everybody else because you can't have

00:50:10.920 a guy going around looking like the elephant man banged up like that. If you get too banged up in

00:50:15.100 a prison fight, those guys will lock you in your cell. They won't let you leave. People will bring

00:50:19.260 you food every day. The whole pod takes it upon themselves to feed this guy every day until his

00:50:24.100 wounds heal because you can't have a guy walking around the prison just banged up with knots all

00:50:28.600 over his head. It happened all the time. That totally subverts my expectations because I'd

00:50:33.280 figure if I've had this fear, I've had nightmares about this, that I just commit some crime and I

00:50:39.120 get life in prison. Exactly your situation. I don't know how it happened and now it feels like

00:50:44.060 my life is over. And I would have this fear that I'd walk in and whether it's the skinhead or the

00:50:49.160 black guy or whatever, they're going to come up to me and not just beat me up, but kill me. Like

00:50:54.900 kill, like they will beat me. I'm not, you know, look, I know this might surprise you. I'm not the

00:51:00.380 best scrapper out there. And that I would, they would crack my skull in basically, but that doesn't

00:51:06.680 quite happen. No, no, it's, I mean, it's possible to get killed, but I'm not a guy that's going

00:51:12.320 running my mouth and popping off and everything like that. They know that I'm trying to fight

00:51:16.900 against the grain. I've told people, man, I can't get to a gang. I made a promise to my mom. They're

00:51:20.520 laughing at me, man. They're like, your mom's not here, dude. You are, and you're going to be here

00:51:23.960 for the rest of your life with us. I'll tell you what happened. It was a Monday morning, six weeks

00:51:29.940 into prison, still fighting the black gangs. I get up that Monday morning, I'm this close to

00:51:34.960 being a broken man. I mean, the violence and the terror, it's a lot, man. I don't know how much

00:51:38.320 more I can take. I made a decision that Monday morning to use the one thing I haven't used to

00:51:42.600 earn respect, and that was my athletic ability. Mike, God blessed me to be a tremendous athlete

00:51:47.160 in life. I was a division one starting quarterback at North Texas at 20 years old. I'm a baller,

00:51:52.500 man. But this rec yard where you play sports, the most intimidating place I've ever seen

00:51:57.560 because it was the most segregated place I've ever seen. Every sport on the rec yard was

00:52:01.440 segregated by the color of your skin. It was like walking back in time in America. Let me

00:52:06.120 walk y'all through the rec yard real quick.

00:52:08.500 So you go out to the rec yard.

00:52:10.100 First thing you see is sand volleyball.

00:52:11.600 Sand volleyball is for whites and Hispanics only.

00:52:13.980 Handball.

00:52:14.840 Big concrete handball walls.

00:52:15.860 All races can play handball in prison,

00:52:17.340 but if you want to play a game of doubles,

00:52:19.020 your doubles partner has to be the same skin color.

00:52:21.160 You can't mix the races to play games.

00:52:23.380 The waist set, just like you see in every prison movie.

00:52:25.460 Everybody wants to push an iron in prison.

00:52:27.300 All the races can lift weights,

00:52:28.840 but if you wanted someone to spot you,

00:52:30.100 you wanted someone to work out with you,

00:52:31.660 your partner, your spotter, same skin color.

00:52:34.480 You're not working out with it.

00:52:35.680 the chow hall. You couldn't go to the chow hall and sit down at the table with people from another

00:52:39.680 race. Race was everything. And by the way, every race won it that way. That's how they keep the

00:52:44.320 peace in there. And here's this guy that won't conform to everything, right? So that Monday

00:52:48.220 morning, six weeks in, I face my fears. I go out to the rec yard. I pass up all those other sports

00:52:55.080 I just told you about. And I went straight for the basketball court. Who do y'all think runs the

00:53:00.180 basketball court in there, right? Probably not the white guys. The black guys. They run it. The

00:53:03.600 brothers run it. And there's no white boys allowed in the basketball court because that's the blacks

00:53:07.320 domain, right? But I'm going to tell you why I chose to go play sports at Monday morning to earn

00:53:11.680 my respect. I know that in America, in our country, sports is our great uniter. It is, man. It's the

00:53:19.720 one thing that brings Americans together like nothing else can. I mean, you just look back on

00:53:23.920 time and history of our country, man. Take the civil rights, man. Before there was Martin Luther

00:53:28.780 king jr there was jackie robinson a baseball player you know in the south before you integrated

00:53:33.960 lunch counters and integrated everything else you integrated locker rooms first you know

00:53:37.780 i knew sports had the power to bring me in that in there so i go out there that monday morning

00:53:44.020 got myself at a game of basketball they let me play basketball yeah but it's not on one man it's

00:53:48.400 not five on five my old teammates would want me out there right but i go out there and keep showing

00:53:52.500 up i'm like i'm fighting these guys either way either i'm gonna fight them playing sports i'm

00:53:55.660 fighting back in the pod. And I found out that when I would fight him playing sports, playing

00:53:58.920 basketball, I didn't have to fight the rest of the day on the pod. It hurt less. Yeah, man. It was

00:54:02.700 hard. I'm taking some rough shots. This lasts for six days, man. It's on a Saturday when it's

00:54:09.400 over, man. The wreck is called. It's over. All the guys circled around me in the wreck yard. I'm

00:54:14.960 like, man, what's about to happen? And it's the black guy circling me up. They said, Wes, you

00:54:19.000 don't have to worry about the blacks anymore, man. You're good to go with us, man. You took

00:54:21.640 everything we had. You gave it back when you could. It took a lot of guts, man. So look,

00:54:25.480 man. We're going to let you go live your life, man. You're an independent now. So man, right at

00:54:31.160 two months, Mark, man, the violence is finally over. The threat to my physical safety has been

00:54:35.820 removed, but it wasn't because those guys made a promise to me. They can't keep, there's no black

00:54:43.200 man in a prison that can keep other black men from jumping on a white guy. That's just suicide,

00:54:47.740 right? Cause race is everything. And I did what I had done all my life, Mike, cause I cut corners,

00:54:52.500 man. I was a corner cutter, just a corner cutter all my life. I was always trying to look for the

00:54:57.260 angle, man. So I'm like, you know what? I don't have to fight every day. I'll go play basketball

00:55:00.740 with these guys. That's how I'll fight. And Carlos told me, he said, man, don't, don't do that. You

00:55:04.740 don't belong in that basketball court. So at this point, these guys are coming by and grabbing me to

00:55:09.700 play basketball every day. Now I'm out there with the blacks playing basketball. The whites don't

00:55:13.160 want anything to do with me, but the blacks have let me come in and play basketball every day. So

00:55:16.740 I've got this, man, I think this is great. This is swell. So it was two weeks after the earning

00:55:21.900 of my respect part in the rec yard. I'm coming in off the rec yard that day and Carlos was waiting

00:55:26.920 for me, man. And he looks agitated. He's like, come with me. So we go under the stairwell and

00:55:32.100 under the stairwell in a pod is we're really the only place where the cameras can't see. That's

00:55:35.160 where people do a lot of fighting under stairwells. So the cameras don't see him. He said, listen,

00:55:39.600 man, when you go to the shower today, Blackjack is going to be in there to rape you. Now, Blackjack

00:55:44.920 is the biggest rapist in prison. This guy is about 6'4", 260. Big black guy, loves to rape white

00:55:51.540 guys, does it a knife point and he's HIV positive. This guy is death in so many ways, man. Biggest

00:55:57.760 rape is in there too, man. And I'm like, man, Carlos, I said, man, I'm not going to go to the

00:56:03.360 shower then. He said, you have to go to the shower. He said, because if he doesn't rape you today,

00:56:07.520 he's going to rape someone else. Now you've got two problems to deal with that could end your life.

00:56:11.440 He said, I told you about playing basketball at the blacks. I told you didn't belong out there.

00:56:15.360 That's where blackjack saw you playing basketball at the blacks. He said, now you've got his

00:56:19.220 attention. He said, what are you prepared to do? I said, man, I don't know. He's got a knife. I

00:56:23.660 don't have a knife. Carlos pulled a knife out of his pants. It must've been this long. I don't

00:56:27.420 know where he's hiding this thing, right? He hands me this big blade. And the blade in prison is any

00:56:31.540 piece of steel that's been sharpened or razor's edge, got tape around the handle. He hands me the

00:56:35.520 blade. I hold it for a second, move it around in my hand. I give it back to him. I'm like, dude,

00:56:39.820 I have never fought with a knife before. I don't even know how to fight with a knife. This guy's

00:56:43.000 been doing all his life. He's going to slice me up. There's got to be another weapon, another way.

00:56:47.760 He said, there is another weapon.

00:56:49.220 He said, go to the cell.

00:56:50.120 I'll meet you up there.

00:56:50.840 So our cell is 45 cells.

00:56:52.660 It's up on the third tier by the showers, right?

00:56:54.480 Yeah.

00:56:54.920 So I'm waiting in the cell, just pacing back and forth, going, what's going to happen?

00:56:58.020 What's going to happen?

00:56:59.260 Here comes Carlos, and he's got some tools in his hand.

00:57:02.020 So in Texas, there's no air conditioning in the Texas prison system.

00:57:04.980 None.

00:57:05.480 It's hot in Texas.

00:57:06.700 I'm on the Texas Gulf Coast, too, doing my time.

00:57:09.280 We have these little bitty fans that are supposed to keep you cool.

00:57:12.620 So Carlos takes his tool.

00:57:14.120 He cuts out the fan motor in my fan.

00:57:16.020 This fan motor is about five pounds of steel and wire.

00:57:18.640 Yeah, yeah.

00:57:18.980 He drops it in my little shower bag, little mesh shower bag that I have, and he starts swinging it.

00:57:24.100 He said, this is your weapon now.

00:57:25.440 He's made a medieval ball and chain flail.

00:57:28.140 He said, when you go in the shower, go in there.

00:57:31.180 He said, when you walk in, there's a change area on the side.

00:57:33.920 He said, there's one shower at the back.

00:57:35.580 It's a one-man shower.

00:57:37.080 He said, go in there and turn the hot water on and get it really hot and steam in there and wait in the little change area, a little bitty space on the side.

00:57:43.700 He said, now, when he comes into the shower,

00:57:46.540 hit him as hard as you can with the fan motor in the head.

00:57:49.040 You got to get him in the head.

00:57:50.520 He said, your first hit won't kill him.

00:57:52.120 You're going to stun him.

00:57:53.180 But when you get the upper hand of this dude,

00:57:55.100 he said, do not quit swinging at his head

00:57:56.860 until you see his brains come out of his skull.

00:57:59.260 He said, you need to kill this guy today.

00:58:01.200 And I found out later on that everybody wanted him dead.

00:58:03.740 And like Carl says, like, all right,

00:58:05.160 I'm going to get my cellmate to kill him.

00:58:06.380 Yeah.

00:58:06.840 Because I got the jump on him, right?

00:58:08.160 That's why he gave me the information.

00:58:09.420 Because he thought, man, Wes can go kill this guy today.

00:58:12.000 Now, was Black Jack actually going to rape you, or was that a setup just so you'd go kill this guy on their behalf?

00:58:16.560 No, Black Jack was actually going to rape me.

00:58:17.880 He was there in my pod.

00:58:19.360 Like, he was already there in the pod.

00:58:20.980 I couldn't see him, but Carlos saw it, and he got the word from the street.

00:58:25.340 In prison, they have a thing called ROY.

00:58:27.360 It's Rumor on the Yard.

00:58:29.020 ROY is an acronym for that.

00:58:30.520 So that's where the things come from, the rumor on the yard.

00:58:33.360 So he got the ROY, and so he let me know.

00:58:36.240 And so I'm getting ready to go to the shower, and I pray, man.

00:58:40.380 I'm praying to the same God that I've been talking to, you know, turning my life around,

00:58:45.460 talking to God. I'm talking to God again. Help me kill this guy. And I'm getting the green light in

00:58:49.480 my head, brother. Like, let's go. David and Goliath situation. Yeah. Because I mean, like,

00:58:54.660 you know, there's a point in time where you have to defend yourself and something's going to go on.

00:58:58.440 And like, I think that God's going to be on your side for that, man. You're fighting evil. This

00:59:02.140 guy's evil. He's going to rape me. He's HIV positive, man. I'm going to die. That's what

00:59:06.720 Carlos told me, he said, listen, man, you're never going to go home alive. Do you understand

00:59:10.700 what's about to happen? Either you're going to kill this guy and they're going to give you another

00:59:14.360 life sentence. They could give you the death penalty for this one because you're waiting for

00:59:17.000 this guy in the shower to kill him. He said, or he's going to do something to you that you're

00:59:21.480 going to want to be dead. You'll eventually die from anyway. He said, but either way, you're never

00:59:25.260 going home again. This is it, man. This is your life. I'm giving the weapon, man. So I go to the

00:59:31.400 shower. I do everything he said. I wait in the little change area. It must've been a minute and

00:59:35.760 half or two minutes, man. And here he comes, man. The doors open up, the little half saloon doors

00:59:40.320 back then. And I remember this dude had a grin on his face. Blackjack had this grin on his face

00:59:44.620 and that just pissed me off, man. I reached back. I hit him as hard as I could. Boom. And he raises

00:59:50.540 up the last second. I miss his head, catch his breastbone and it is the loudest thud. And he's

00:59:55.540 like a cartoon character getting shot out of a cannon. Boom. He shoots out, drops the knife

01:00:00.540 and I'm on him, man. Mike, I am hitting this guy as hard as I'm trying to get to his head.

01:00:04.220 He's got his head covered up.

01:00:05.060 I'm going for his ribs.

01:00:05.940 I hear ribs cracking.

01:00:07.560 And man, I'm kicking at his head.

01:00:09.280 And about that time, two of his gang...

01:00:10.980 He was a Mandingo warrior.

01:00:12.440 Two of his gang brothers are flown up the stairs already

01:00:14.700 because they saw it went south on him fast, man.

01:00:17.040 These are guys I play basketball with, man.

01:00:18.740 Yeah, yeah.

01:00:19.480 They're like, West, don't lay another hand on him, man.

01:00:22.100 He's on the ground.

01:00:23.260 They said, if you touch him again, we're going to kill you.

01:00:25.900 We're going to throw you off the...

01:00:26.600 I'm on the third tier.

01:00:27.320 They're going to say, we're just going to throw you off the run.

01:00:28.580 We got to do it, man.

01:00:29.400 We have to kill you if you lay another hand on him.

01:00:31.540 Do you understand?

01:00:32.100 And I'm like trying to reason why I'm like, dude, this guy tried to rape me. They're like, dude, he's a rapist. That's what he does. But he's our brother, man.

01:00:39.680 Yeah, his name is Black Jack the Rapist. What did you think he was going to do?

01:00:43.420 But this is prison, man. This is the world in prison. This is the world I'm in. I can't, and I've crossed this line, man, where I'm ready to kill another human being and I don't want to stop. I went berserk, man. I lost my mind.

01:00:52.380 You know, what's amazing is the internal logic of the guys come up, hey, man, you're our buddy, but you got to stop from killing our AIDS-ridden rapist.

01:01:00.820 And you say, well, but he's an AIDS-ridden rapist.

01:01:02.600 He's going to rape me.

01:01:03.160 They say, yeah, of course he is.

01:01:04.040 He's a rapist.

01:01:05.200 He's not Blackjack the sous chef.

01:01:07.660 Yeah, right.

01:01:08.280 Exactly, man.

01:01:08.900 You know, it's like when you pick up a snake and it bites you.

01:01:10.880 Like, that's a snake.

01:01:11.680 Yeah.

01:01:12.160 So they're like, man, just look.

01:01:14.380 Just get out of here, man.

01:01:15.240 Beat your feet and go.

01:01:16.560 So I got my bag with me and I go to my cell, throw my bag on the ground.

01:01:20.720 And I mean, I ball up on the ground.

01:01:21.860 I start crying like a baby.

01:01:22.840 That adrenaline is burning off.

01:01:24.500 The reality of what just happened and where I live, man.

01:01:27.400 And I'm just bawling like a baby, man.

01:01:29.260 I passed out.

01:01:30.340 I was out, man.

01:01:32.020 When you have an adrenaline burning like that, your body's wiped out.

01:01:36.040 And I remember waking up and I was hungry, man.

01:01:38.820 One of those hunger pains where your stomach and back are touching each other.

01:01:42.480 And I'm like, oh my God, I'm so hungry.

01:01:44.060 My stomach is cramping.

01:01:44.980 And I heard the doors rolling.

01:01:46.080 The cell doors are rolling.

01:01:47.100 The cell doors roll for chow all the time.

01:01:49.460 I'm like, okay, cool.

01:01:50.120 That's last chow.

01:01:50.780 I'm going to go hit last chow.

01:01:51.580 and I'm like, wait, where am I?

01:01:52.780 While I'm on the floor, I look over there at the bag.

01:01:54.840 The bag's got blood all over it.

01:01:56.440 Now I'm looking around.

01:01:57.460 This is HIV positive guy.

01:01:58.900 Yeah, yeah.

01:01:59.560 I'm not cut.

01:02:00.180 That's his blood, not mine.

01:02:01.960 And I'm like, oh, my God, that thing just happened.

01:02:03.600 It wasn't a bad dream.

01:02:05.300 And I got to walk out this door.

01:02:07.380 And I don't know what's going to happen, man.

01:02:09.300 I don't know if someone's going to stick a piece of steel in me.

01:02:11.160 I just beat a black guy in the shower.

01:02:13.720 And everything in the world says you can't do that, man.

01:02:16.680 But as soon as I walk out that door, that cell, prison changed forever, man.

01:02:20.780 I never had to fight again. Everybody saw that I spoke the only language that everybody speaks in

01:02:25.520 a level five prison is violence. Either you speak violence or someone speaks it to you,

01:02:29.360 but you become very fluent in the language of violence. And after that last fight with Black

01:02:33.540 Jack, no one touched me again. Everybody saw that I could kill a man if I had to.

01:02:38.260 And that's what they were looking for. They wanted to see that this guy was one of us now.

01:02:42.320 And there I was living my life in prison. I mean, Black Jack didn't mess with me again. He would

01:02:46.620 give me some crazy looks every now and then, but he's a predator. Predators are not looking for a

01:02:50.280 tough prey. They want the easy prey. They don't want someone who's going to bash your head in

01:02:53.180 with a fan motor if they try to rape them. He went on to rape other people and that was just

01:02:57.360 what he did. And, and I went on to work on myself and started like chiseling away at this life I

01:03:02.620 want to have, man, and become that coffee bean. What an amazing, uh, lucky break though, where

01:03:08.560 you get the, all the goods that come from demonstrating that you could kill a guy

01:03:14.560 without having to actually kill him. Yeah. In both the legal sense, cause you would have never

01:03:20.020 shot to get out of prison. We wouldn't have this conversation. Certainly not. And also in the

01:03:23.880 moral sense, like I think of Plato's Gorgias, his this dialogue on justice and in it, Socrates

01:03:32.040 says, you know, it's actually, it's cruel to the guilty not to punish them. Like you have to,

01:03:38.140 it's like rehabilitating them. That's kind of where we get the idea of the rehabilitation or

01:03:42.740 correctional system. Like it's actually good to correct and punish criminals. And so like,

01:03:48.580 even just from a moral sense, you, even if it were justified, you killing a guy would do something

01:03:54.000 to your soul. Yeah. That would actually injure you. You'd have to work through that. Yeah.

01:03:59.340 No, I totally agree. I couldn't agree more. I'm so grateful that he didn't die, but I don't think

01:04:03.360 that was the way the story was supposed to go. And I think that, you know, it was supposed to be

01:04:06.780 one of those things. You said the break is this, that I had to go through this traumatic situation,

01:04:11.240 which I survived and bring it to the point where I could kill a guy, but didn't. So now I don't

01:04:17.300 have any kind of fight I don't have a fight case on me man because the guards aren't there they

01:04:20.760 didn't see it nothing happened man it's like it never happened but in this alternate world I live

01:04:24.360 in called prison it was the best thing that could have happened because everybody saw this guy will

01:04:28.780 defend he'll do anything to defend himself he can't take another man's life no one mess with me

01:04:33.360 again so you were doing a ton of drugs and pretty hardcore drugs you can't get the drugs in prison

01:04:40.260 or I assume it's harder to get the drugs in prison are you going through withdrawal in the early days

01:04:44.740 in prison? This is Dallas County Jail. When they arrest me, so Dallas County Jail, when they

01:04:48.680 arrest you, first of all, there's about 9,000 people in Dallas County Jail. One of the biggest

01:04:52.280 jails in America. It's like a city when you walk in. This is not Barney Fife. No, this is like a

01:04:57.300 city, man. 9,000 people live in this place. Think about it in terms of what that costs

01:05:01.360 taxpayers, right? 9,000 people, three meals a day, 365 days a year. Jails and prisons are

01:05:07.960 expensive. So Dallas County Jail, there's no detox program. They arrest you. They throw you

01:05:13.060 in a jail cell with a bunch of other people. You come down off this stuff on your own, in your own

01:05:16.860 time. Man, I went through a period where I slept a lot because I didn't get a ton of sleep whenever

01:05:23.740 I was out there on meth for three years. I went through a period where I slept a lot. Then I went

01:05:28.120 through months of just eating everything in sight because I'm coming off that dope and I'm starving

01:05:32.100 because of my body. I didn't feed my body like I was supposed to because people on drugs don't

01:05:36.260 feed themselves. They're doing drugs. And it wasn't the hardest on me. Meth was hard to come

01:05:41.260 off of, but meth was typically fatigue sets in and then hunger sets in. So you eat everything

01:05:48.020 inside. I put on about 60 pounds of fat when I was in Dallas County jail waiting to go, yeah,

01:05:51.880 waiting to go to trial. When I reported to prison, I was like 60 pounds heavier than what you see me

01:05:55.980 now. It wasn't muscle, brother. I'm fighting for my life. So I've been a really fat person before.

01:06:00.960 So when I talk about people getting in shape, you know, physically, I've been there, man. I've had

01:06:05.260 to do that. I had to get back in my shape. I've got an athletic frame. My body's not used to having

01:06:09.320 that kind of weight. But so the comedown for me was getting very unhealthy, overweight,

01:06:15.620 being depressed, trying to cope in there. I was trying to get guys from, like I did some stuff

01:06:21.800 with some cartel guys from the dope world. And I'd see some of these guys get arrested and come

01:06:25.680 in like, Hey man, do you know any of these guards? Can you get them to bring some dope in?

01:06:28.900 So the first, when I'm in Dallas County jail, I'm trying to get people to bring dope in. I never got

01:06:33.080 it brought in. My sobriety date is the day SWAT team got me July 30th, 2008. Not because

01:06:38.880 I was trying to stay sober and hit county jail. I just couldn't get it brought in.

01:06:43.280 But the day I got sentenced to life in prison, May 18th, 2009, that was the day that I hit rock

01:06:48.420 bottom. And that's the place every addict, when they get to, they get to the point of being sick

01:06:53.220 and tired of being sick and tired. And there's just no further left to go. Some people's rock

01:06:57.040 bottom, though, is death, man. They say in addiction, we have three things guaranteed to

01:07:00.980 is jails, institutions of death. And so the jails, the institutions, there I was, the only thing left

01:07:06.960 was death. And in a way I lost my life that day. You know, they took my, the state of Texas took

01:07:13.340 my life from me because the choices I made, I'm not a victim. I did everything. But as we know

01:07:18.820 from the story, I went back to the shower that night and talked to Christ and got reborn again

01:07:23.140 in a different life. And so, but yeah, I was trying to get dope brought in, but I never thought about

01:07:27.940 doing it again after that. When I got to prison, now prison is a whole different thing. Prison,

01:07:31.680 remember all these gangs run all the drugs in there. There's gang, there's drugs being brought

01:07:34.840 in. There's stuff being snuck into prison. The second day I'm in prison, man, somebody goes to

01:07:39.860 my cell door, bangs on the door, a white guy, because I'm a white guy, bangs on my cell door,

01:07:43.940 says, hey, Wes, man, come over here. This guy knows my name. They got guys with cell phones

01:07:49.180 in there. They look you up right when you get there. This guy comes up and he's got meth in

01:07:52.420 his hands, ice, the same stuff I was smoking that I was out on the streets with, the stuff I was

01:07:56.560 trying to get to was Dallas County Jail. Now it's in my face in prison day two. He's like, man, I got

01:08:01.400 what you want, man. I read all the story, man. I read everything about you, man. You love this

01:08:05.220 stuff. I got it for you, man. Let me get away from you, dude. That stuff that caused too much

01:08:09.980 pain in my life, man. Just go on. What was he after? Was it, I'm going to do you a favor and

01:08:15.660 then you're going to? Oh yeah. They're going to sell it to you. So what they'll do is they'll

01:08:19.080 sell it to you. You go buy something off the commissary. There's a store in prison called

01:08:21.960 commissary. Some prisons call it a canteen. It's whatever the store is in prison. You can buy

01:08:27.140 soups, pastries, stamps, all kinds of different stuff, food. You can buy a lot of food in there.

01:08:31.620 It's a store. So whenever you get a drug habit in prison and you're doing drugs, guys will sell

01:08:36.820 you drugs and you give them food to put in their locker. The drug dealer gets to eat well while

01:08:42.140 you starve and do your drugs and then get into debt and they may kill you over it. A lot of the

01:08:47.720 drama that happens in prison right now is around people that run up a drug debt with drug dealers,

01:08:52.660 you know, because drugs exploded in prison in 2020. When COVID hit, remember when Congress

01:09:00.940 rushed to give everybody all that money, the COVID relief money? Two things in my life,

01:09:05.240 you're probably close to the same age as me, two things in my life that I've seen were unanimous

01:09:08.500 votes. That was the war powers, privileges that they gave to Bush for the Iraq, go to Afghanistan,

01:09:14.840 the Iraq war. That was unanimous. And then this vote to give everybody in America like $2,400

01:09:21.020 or whatever. I think one person voted against it. Unanimous votes are bad. Like overwhelming

01:09:26.460 unanimous votes. That's how you know it's wrong when both parties agree. So they rushed to do

01:09:30.960 this. And when they passed that law, it said every American is entitled to, let's say $2,400 for the

01:09:36.380 sake of the conversation. Every American is entitled to $2,400 of COVID relief money.

01:09:41.880 They got a bunch of guys in prison that are pretty smart, man. They get newspapers too.

01:09:45.620 This inmate in the California prison system read that. He's like, well, I'm an American.

01:09:50.400 All these guys in prison are Americans too.

01:09:52.340 I'm going to write a lawsuit on behalf of everybody that's locked up.

01:09:55.160 Won the lawsuit.

01:09:56.960 Supreme Court says, yep, because you didn't write the law correctly, every person in prison

01:10:03.020 gets $2,400.

01:10:05.180 And that's when prisons exploded around America with a big drug problem, K2 and all these

01:10:09.920 other drugs.

01:10:11.060 Think about it, man.

01:10:11.780 Every person got $2,400 handed to them in prison.

01:10:14.160 What are you supposed to do with $2,400 in prison, man?

01:10:16.100 It's a lot of soup.

01:10:17.120 It's a lot of soup.

01:10:17.860 Yeah.

01:10:18.060 Or, you know, the gang saw that's a lot of money that can come in our pockets.

01:10:21.980 And so the gangs got bad, the drugs got bad.

01:10:24.780 That's one of the things I get to do.

01:10:26.020 I get to go in there and share my story with the inmates, too, and the guards.

01:10:29.660 And like, hey, I'm going to show you a story about a guy that overcame a lot.

01:10:33.020 So I start working on trying to become a coffee bean.

01:10:36.480 And the first thing I had to do, Carlos told me, he said, you have to stop seeing prison as a punishment and see prison as an opportunity.

01:10:42.920 And it was hard to wrap my brain around that, man, because this is like I just got done fighting a guy in the shower for my life, man.

01:10:48.020 But he's like, this is the opportunity of a lifetime, man.

01:10:50.960 Because you get 24 hours a day, seven days a week to work on you.

01:10:53.940 What kind of version of yourself could walk out of here?

01:10:56.680 And so I believed it.

01:10:58.020 I was in a place where I was crazy enough to believe it.

01:11:00.140 He's a messenger.

01:11:01.020 I see him as the messenger.

01:11:02.140 He saved my life, man.

01:11:03.160 He gave me this fan motor to save my life.

01:11:05.520 And I start working on changing myself first.

01:11:09.100 Because here's what I learned, too, is you can't change another person.

01:11:12.820 But if you can help somebody change the way they think, they could change themselves.

01:11:16.720 So the first thing I had to do was change me.

01:11:18.760 And I started with a thinking change, right?

01:11:20.660 Prison's my opportunity.

01:11:21.560 I get up every day.

01:11:22.940 God, thanks for my opportunity, man.

01:11:24.940 I'm going to go to work today.

01:11:26.220 And I got into the 12 steps of AA.

01:11:29.620 I don't speak for AA, but I got into 12 steps.

01:11:31.600 I still work the program.

01:11:32.480 I go to meetings every week still.

01:11:34.440 But I learned how to pray when I was in AA.

01:11:36.960 Because being an addict is a very selfish thing.

01:11:39.380 And people that work a program recovery, they're very selfless.

01:11:41.900 So that's where I'm working.

01:11:43.080 I'm trying to become a selfless person.

01:11:44.480 But I got this prayer that I pray every morning and i'm gonna share it with your audience because I

01:11:48.700 I want them to have the prayer if they want it for their lives

01:11:51.100 This is the only thing I pray for i've been praying for since prison

01:11:53.820 I woke up this morning in nashville and prayed for it

01:11:55.680 I get up every morning say hey christ

01:11:57.480 Put in front of me what you need me to do today for you and let me recognize that when I see it

01:12:02.460 Because I don't want to miss whatever that is

01:12:04.780 Amen

01:12:05.640 Now that's it. That's the only thing i'm praying for and that's

01:12:09.160 Because I believe that if I take care of what christ needs me to do for him

01:12:12.480 they'll take care of my needs. Not my wants, but my needs, right? So there I am filling these

01:12:18.140 needs. I'm looking for ways I can help, serve other people. And I come across this guy,

01:12:23.600 they had volunteers that would come into the prison through the chapel. The chapel was my

01:12:26.880 life raft in there, man. I went to all the chapel programming I could in there.

01:12:30.400 It occurs to me, your prayer is a version of the Lord's prayer, of the Our Father, right?

01:12:36.340 Like, Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done

01:12:39.940 on earth as it is in heaven. And then to your point on like, give us, you know, uh, just you'll,

01:12:45.040 he'll take care of my needs. It's like, give us a stair of daily bread. Yeah. And you're good.

01:12:49.740 Yeah. That's it. I mean, so I'm just, I'm rewiring Damon West and it's happening inside

01:12:54.920 of a level five prison, but I'll tell you what happened in there. I had a spiritual awakening

01:12:58.780 and it's inside this cocoon called prison. I go in a caterpillar and I'm working on becoming this

01:13:04.120 butterfly, you know, in the metamorphosis sense, but I have a spiritual awakening and that's when

01:13:09.040 I finally surrendered and turned everything over. I had that conversation with Ms. D when I was in

01:13:13.860 there about if you're going to pray, don't worry. If you're going to worry, don't pray. And now I'm

01:13:17.600 living it. So I'm at the chapel one night and they have these volunteers that come into the chapel

01:13:21.920 and it was really neat, man. These Christian volunteers would come in and fellowship with

01:13:26.440 us. They'd spend time. It meant so much when someone would come in from the outside world

01:13:30.320 to be with us, man, because we're in prison and a level five prison, a lot of us are lifers and

01:13:35.000 there's some pretty bad crimes in there. My crime's a bad crime, but there's some bad crimes in there

01:13:39.420 that I'm around. But these men would come in there and they would live out that Matthew 25, 36.

01:13:45.700 When I was in prison, you visited me, right? So this one volunteer chaplain guy named Joe

01:13:52.620 Totoris, I met him in the prison chapel. Every Monday night, he'd be in there. Joe was a neat

01:13:56.700 guy. Joe could have been anywhere he wanted to. Joe had a private jet. Joe had millions of dollars.

01:14:02.320 Joe had thousands of employees for the business he started.

01:14:05.140 Joe started a restaurant chain called Jason's Deli.

01:14:07.600 Oh, really?

01:14:08.160 Yeah, I don't know if you've ever been to a Jason's Deli before.

01:14:09.240 Yeah, Jason's Deli is great.

01:14:10.620 Yes.

01:14:10.960 I'm a big fan.

01:14:11.660 I drove by it.

01:14:12.340 It's so providential.

01:14:13.840 I drove by Jason's Deli the other day and I just thought,

01:14:16.060 I was like, man, maybe I should stop in Jason's Deli.

01:14:17.760 And I did.

01:14:18.140 But I don't think about that place a lot.

01:14:19.460 This was like a week ago.

01:14:20.200 Yeah.

01:14:20.500 That's very funny that you mentioned it.

01:14:21.480 Joe Titoris started Jason's Deli.

01:14:23.300 He started in Beaumont, Texas, where I'm doing my time.

01:14:26.500 The first Jason's Deli is in Beaumont still.

01:14:28.260 It started in 1976.

01:14:29.180 six at four employees in one store, this thing just blew up, man. And so Joe, I would talk to

01:14:34.960 Joe when I was in the chapel and Joe took a shine to me, man. He's another messenger, right?

01:14:39.840 So I'm telling Joe, I was like, Joe, I can't, I can't get these guys to follow me in there, man.

01:14:44.360 I'm in the most negative place in the world. And this coffee bean thing's not working out, man.

01:14:48.460 And cause I mean, I can be positive, but I can't get these other guys to be positive. They won't

01:14:51.880 follow me. Joe said, these guys will never follow you until you serve them. He said, because a

01:14:58.260 leader has to serve his people. And he said, if you're not willing to serve them, why would they

01:15:03.780 follow you? I said, I don't get it, man. He said, servant leadership. Servant leadership is helping

01:15:09.320 other people reach their goals in life, helping to raise other people to a different station of

01:15:12.720 life. Joe said, when we help other people grow, we grow. And he said, what you have to do is you

01:15:17.600 have to go back to that pod, get to figure out what your gift is, the pod, and give it away to

01:15:22.000 them. You got to give it away to keep it. So I went back to the pod. I'm like, all right,

01:15:25.740 what's my gift? It came to me, education. I had a very privileged life, Mike. I'm a guy with a

01:15:32.240 bachelor's degree in prison. Most of the guys I'm locked up with, their education stop somewhere in

01:15:35.700 junior high or early high school, right? So I opened a free tutoring service. I start teaching

01:15:40.180 guys how to read and write. I'm going to transfer education to these men. I get these guys ready

01:15:44.560 for the GED test and they're all lining up to take the GED because they all want to be a better

01:15:48.080 version of themselves, right? And that's a very big, a man wants to be able to take care of his

01:15:52.660 family one day. If he ever gets out, now he's got education. So all of these guys are lined up to

01:15:56.620 learn how to read and write from Damon West. And prison is a very transactional world. They tell

01:16:01.960 you when you get to prison, there's nothing free in prison and you don't want to accept something

01:16:04.940 for free because the price for that may be way more than you want to pay. Fill in the blank what

01:16:09.560 you think that is. So these guys are getting tutored and they're like, West, you got to tell

01:16:14.980 me how I can pay you. Can I get you some coffee from the commissary? Can I get you some stamps?

01:16:19.820 How about some cookies? And I told him, I said, ma'am, don't pay it back, pay it forward.

01:16:24.800 And I explained to him, servant leadership. I served you. Now you go serve someone else.

01:16:31.100 And these guys were looking for ways to help other people. And they did it, man. The guys

01:16:34.920 I'm teaching on the Read and Write started helping other people. And they would explain to those

01:16:37.920 people, you don't have to pay me for this help. You got to go help somebody else. That's what

01:16:42.320 started happening in that prison, man. I was thinking about this today, praying the rosary,

01:16:46.260 that the real, like, you know, Christ gives us a good type of everything we should do and be.

01:16:53.920 And, uh, the symbol of Christ's kingliness, like of him as ruler, as leader, you know,

01:17:01.160 political leader is a, is a crown of thorns. Yeah. You know, that's the crown, right? That's the,

01:17:05.660 that's the emblem of like, that's what rulers should think is not some gold crown with lots

01:17:10.900 of jewels or something, but a crown of thorns that pierces your head. Yeah. That's, and that's

01:17:16.860 what it is. I'm like, when you wear the crown, you understand that like, we're all here to find

01:17:24.180 ways to serve other people. And I think that's how, I think that's how Christ shows it is real

01:17:28.260 anyway. He takes people's lives, they're broken down and then they put, they get put back together.

01:17:34.020 How do you explain that? How do you explain what's going on in my life? You know? And I'll tell you

01:17:38.940 The way that the liberal materialist types would explain what happened in your life is they would say, well, you just realized that your life was not working out, and so you did something different, and you did it through your own power.

01:17:54.260 And what's so crazy is you're giving credit to this God out there who doesn't even exist, but really it was just all you, and you don't need to have a sky daddy.

01:18:02.480 That's what they would say.

01:18:03.160 Yeah, that's exactly what they would say, but also I'd tell them, come walk me through a prison sometime.

01:18:08.660 Tell me, they have a saying, they say there's no atheists in foxholes.

01:18:13.120 Yeah.

01:18:13.560 Prison is the ultimate foxhole, brother.

01:18:15.200 And I didn't meet a lot of people that really, like you had Lee Strobel on, you know, I watched

01:18:20.740 the episode because I read Lee's books in prison.

01:18:22.620 Yeah, yeah.

01:18:23.060 Case for Christ and all this stuff.

01:18:24.180 I mean, so he was a neat guy.

01:18:26.000 But, you know, I didn't meet a lot of people in prison that claimed to be atheists.

01:18:30.520 And there was a couple of guys that would say it.

01:18:32.140 I don't believe in anything.

01:18:33.680 I said, well, you may be agnostic.

01:18:35.260 I don't think you're atheists.

01:18:36.120 It's real weird to be just detached from everything, right?

01:18:38.800 Yeah, I guess atheism, but that's really for like rich white undergrads at like Williams College or something, right?

01:18:47.380 I mean, it's a little more of a privileged idea.

01:18:49.640 I think it's for people that haven't been through anything in life, right?

01:18:51.820 Because in prison, everybody's been through something.

01:18:54.220 So it's like everybody believes in something in there.

01:18:57.100 And that's what I, you know, AA was a program I got into that was great because it didn't say you had to be a Christian to be in this group.

01:19:05.420 He says you can be whatever you want to believe, but you have to believe in a higher power.

01:19:09.340 You have to believe in something to be part of this group.

01:19:11.480 You can't just be out in therapy because that's the idea.

01:19:14.860 I mean, we control four things.

01:19:16.220 Who controls the rest of it?

01:19:17.300 It's a big universe out there.

01:19:18.440 You know, something, I've never been to AA, but I have friends who are in it, who have been in it, and who are in it still.

01:19:23.840 And a buddy of mine who's been in it for a long time gave me this line.

01:19:27.640 It kind of ties in with the addiction, ties in with the crime, which is, he learned in AA,

01:19:33.040 wherever you go, there you are. Yeah. I love that expression. Yeah. Wherever you go, there you are.

01:19:38.420 You take yourself to the party. Every single party, you take yourself. Yeah. That's the one

01:19:42.520 thing you take with you is you. I moved at one point whenever I was on, when I graduated college

01:19:48.700 and I got into cocaine and stuff like that after the football injury, I moved to DC thinking I

01:19:52.800 could run away from this addiction, but it followed me there because there I was. I took

01:19:57.580 myself everywhere I went. So yeah, he's right. And we learned that in AA, wherever you go, there you

01:20:01.740 are. And addicts, I think, have a thinking problem. We think about using, and we have to

01:20:06.080 change those thoughts out. You got to think about something else. You got to be able to work with

01:20:09.320 your thoughts again and not... Because addicts, we have a three-part process. We have a thought

01:20:14.120 that will become an obsession, then become something physical we put in. Yeah. So thought,

01:20:18.940 obsession, physical. And that's really the... Isn't that true of all sin? Like I think...

01:20:23.260 Oh, sure. But like you said, you said it really well. It's like a singular view on one thing.

01:20:27.740 Yeah. That's the obsession part. When you said that, I'm like, oh yeah, he's talking about

01:20:31.200 the obsession part. Say I'm someone that thinks about drinking, but I'm going to do it on the

01:20:36.140 weekend. All right. So I'm just like, all right, I'm not going to drink all week, but all week

01:20:39.400 long, I think about drinking on the weekend. That's an addict. Cause there's people that tell

01:20:43.140 me, I just drink on Friday or Saturday. I'm like, do you think about drinking all week? Yeah. Yeah.

01:20:47.620 Okay. Well, you may have an addiction. Yes. Yeah. Even, you know, we were talking about

01:20:52.040 Catholicism and when you go to confession, at one time I actually had to correct a priest on this

01:20:57.800 because he said it wasn't a mortal sin.

01:20:59.560 And I said, I think it might be a mortal sin.

01:21:01.660 Which is, if you, like, if a thought comes into your head,

01:21:05.040 let's say you get, you're driving in traffic

01:21:08.100 and you get really angry all of a sudden,

01:21:09.460 but you don't will it, it just kind of pops into your head.

01:21:12.160 That's probably not a mortal sin

01:21:13.520 because it's not involving an act of the will.

01:21:14.960 You can't, like, you can't really accidentally commit a mortal sin.

01:21:17.740 Or, you know, a good-looking lady walks by

01:21:19.980 and you get a thought comes into your head.

01:21:22.060 That's not the mortal sin.

01:21:23.960 But the mortal sin does creep in when you delectate on it.

01:21:29.120 When you start fantasizing about it.

01:21:30.660 When you start fantasizing about the drink or about killing the guy ahead of you in traffic or the girl or whatever.

01:21:35.680 All of a sudden, when you start participating in that, I think that's what you're describing as the kind of obsessive stage.

01:21:41.660 Then you're already committing a sin.

01:21:43.800 And by the way, what happens next?

01:21:45.900 Yeah.

01:21:46.160 You just do it.

01:21:47.060 You just do it.

01:21:47.660 You obsess over it until you do it.

01:21:49.220 What's interesting, too, you brought up about the thought about killing somebody.

01:21:53.440 This is another aspect about prison I learned.

01:21:56.340 Dude, give me a cellmate any day that it's a murderer over a child molester or a rapist.

01:22:01.720 I'm going to tell you why.

01:22:03.000 I can wrap my brain around the crime of murder because I think most people can, too.

01:22:09.400 I think most people have had a homicidal thought or two, right?

01:22:12.320 You know, like you just gave the example on traffic.

01:22:14.160 Today.

01:22:14.700 I'd like to kill that SOB.

01:22:15.920 You know, that's a homicidal thought.

01:22:17.520 You didn't act on it.

01:22:18.220 You didn't obsess about it.

01:22:19.600 You didn't do anything with it.

01:22:21.100 But these people in prison that are murderers, a lot of them, they went to prison for the

01:22:25.380 first crime they committed.

01:22:26.700 Yeah.

01:22:27.380 I didn't go to crime for the first crime.

01:22:28.960 I committed dozens of burglars before they finally caught me, but I could wrap my brain

01:22:33.680 around that crime because I've had those crazy thoughts before, but I never acted on them.

01:22:37.600 Yeah.

01:22:38.080 But a child molester or a rapist, I've never had a crime.

01:22:40.820 I've never had a thought like that.

01:22:42.220 But don't those guys get killed in prison?

01:22:44.240 No, not anymore.

01:22:44.980 They have a thing called, this happened.

01:22:46.480 So I get to prison, you know, I go to prison in 2009. In 2011, they have a thing called PREA.

01:22:52.760 PREA is an acronym, stands for Prison Rape Elimination Act. Now, rape is already illegal

01:22:59.460 in a prison, right? Think about how bad rape was getting in prison. They passed an act in 2011

01:23:04.480 that says, no, no, it's really, really illegal. Here's a new law that says how really, really

01:23:09.260 illegal- It's a double illegal now to rape people in prison. Double secret illegal.

01:23:12.980 But yeah, so rape got so bad, they passed a law in 2011 called PREA. And when PREA got passed,

01:23:21.300 they had to put more cameras in the prison system. They had to establish new laws that said, hey,

01:23:26.640 if an inmate says that they feel like their life's in danger or someone might sexually assault them,

01:23:30.800 they tell a guard, if that guard doesn't act on that and separate that person from the pod and

01:23:36.440 separate the person they're accusing of it while they do an investigation, then that guard is

01:23:40.020 held criminally liable if something happens to that person. Yeah. So it really changed. There's

01:23:45.200 cameras everywhere now, right? And so it happened about two years too late for me to experience

01:23:51.160 prison where there's a lot of cameras everywhere. But now the guys that have committed crimes like

01:23:55.180 that, they just, hey man, they live in this world and you can't really touch them.

01:23:59.100 Because the cameras are everywhere. So they don't kill the pedos.

01:24:02.080 And they know that if I tell on this person that nothing's going to happen to me. So prison is

01:24:07.600 still a very dangerous place. And that was just in the Texas prison system. So prison's still a

01:24:11.840 very dangerous place. People get killed in prisons all the time, but there's not a lot of like

01:24:16.720 telegraphing it. Like, okay, you know, this guy's a chomo and he just walked in, he's going to have

01:24:20.660 to fight everybody. We're going to break this guy down. That used to be how it was. It's not that

01:24:24.480 way now. I heard a friend of mine made a passing comment to a chomo the other day, and I didn't

01:24:29.580 know what he was talking. I was talking, is that like a cholo? But then I figured out what it meant.

01:24:33.660 Yeah. And that's the thing. I lived in the license building, man. So you've got different

01:24:40.060 kinds of people that you commit different crimes. You get a lot of cellmates. Carlos wasn't my only

01:24:43.340 cellmate. But I learned that when I went back and got my master's in criminal justice, I learned

01:24:50.080 the academic side to my thought about living with a murderer anyway, because I live with murderers.

01:24:53.660 They make great cellmates for the most part. They committed a crime. They acted on this

01:24:58.140 passionate thing, the thought in their head, and they took another person's life. And now they

01:25:02.000 were serving life in prison. And they really weren't a criminal when they went in. You hope

01:25:06.240 they don't become a criminal while they're in there. But when I got my master's in criminal

01:25:09.560 justice, I learned that people that commit the crime of murder are more likely to be rehabilitated

01:25:15.180 than someone who's another kind of criminal because they were not criminals when they went

01:25:19.160 into the system. And if they get rehabilitation while they're in there, they pick these things

01:25:23.380 up because they're still a good person. They can be reformed more than anybody else. So I was like,

01:25:28.360 wow, that's interesting. There's actually the academic side to back up what I thought when I

01:25:33.620 was in prison and I had murderers that were cellmates. So before I let you go, are there,

01:25:37.880 you know, you've got the kind of academic side looking at prisons. You have a very serious

01:25:41.400 firsthand account and you completely went through the gauntlet and somehow survived without joining

01:25:45.620 any of the gangs. Do you have recommendations? You always hear this from the left and the right

01:25:51.580 about, oh, we have over-incarceration. I think we probably have under-incarceration because we

01:25:56.080 still have criminals out on the street, but certainly there are ways prisons could be

01:25:59.380 reformed. Well, if you had to give, you know, three or five recommendations to help inmates,

01:26:07.100 what would it be? Okay. So this is a great question. Let's dive into this before we get

01:26:11.200 the rest of the story. This is great. I'm glad we're talking about this. So first of all, I believe

01:26:14.920 that the criminal justice system has nothing to do with prisons. Criminal justice system to me

01:26:19.860 is the criminal in the street, the defendant in the courtroom, the cops, the judges, the DAs,

01:26:24.920 the defense attorneys, the legislators that write the laws. That's the criminal justice system.

01:26:29.140 When prisons get a hold of people, they've already gone through the system. And society,

01:26:34.020 largely for the most part, forgets about those people because we washed our hands of that.

01:26:38.040 Remember that trial that went on? He's gone or she's gone. They're in prison now.

01:26:42.500 Prisons is a whole different thing. Corrections is a whole different thing. So what I think we

01:26:46.480 have to do in America first is we need to separate corrections from the criminal justice system,

01:26:50.640 make it its own system. Now make it a priority. Here's a number I learned when I was getting my

01:26:55.180 master's. 95%. That number, Mike, represents the number of people that are incarcerated they get

01:27:00.380 out one day. Three million people almost in this country are incarcerated. 95% walk out one day.

01:27:06.540 They're going to be walking down your street. They're going to be pumping gas next to you.

01:27:10.220 They're going to be in the line of Walmart next to your families. They're going to be your

01:27:12.940 neighbors in some cases. We want these people to have the ability, the opportunity to turn this

01:27:17.120 thing around, right? Because they're going to come out one day. We want them to be a better

01:27:20.380 version of themselves. Now that's ultimately up to the inmate because the inmate, like I said a

01:27:24.360 while ago, nobody can change that inmate, but the inmate changes the way they think they can change

01:27:28.920 themselves. But here's what I think we have to do. We have to take care of correctional staff

01:27:35.100 better than we have in this country. It's a travesty what's going on. I do a lot of work

01:27:40.120 with the Bureau of Prisons now, like volunteer work. I get to, I tell people all the time,

01:27:44.840 I changed my mindset. Everything is I get to. I get to go to every federal prison in America

01:27:49.620 while I'm on the road speaking because my job as a speaker, I'm speaking all over the country

01:27:52.840 every single week. And I get to stop in at Federal Bureau of Prisons, prisons everywhere,

01:27:57.020 voluntarily walk in. And I spend a lot of time now with the staffs in there, 10 years out of prison.

01:28:02.720 Now I'm spending a lot of time with the staff as well as the inmates. But I want to pour into

01:28:06.920 those staff because when I was in prison, there were staff that made sure it was safe while I was

01:28:11.900 in there. I didn't do that. They did that. They made sure I got to the chapel or to my programming

01:28:16.480 that I was doing to become a better person. They had counselors available to me. I could go to the

01:28:20.620 counselor when I was struggling with something. They had medical people I could go see when I

01:28:24.400 needed to be healed or hurt or something like that. They had wardens, captains, majors, people

01:28:29.020 that all bought into this mission of rehabilitation that helped Damon West out. Now I think it's kind

01:28:34.920 of my job to go into these prisons and pour into the staff and the inmates. I've always been able

01:28:38.960 to go in to talk to the inmates for the last 10 years. This is the first time I've ever

01:28:42.160 got to go to the staff and show them the example that someone got it right. Thank them for

01:28:47.120 the job that they do every day from someone that's been on the other side of it and been

01:28:50.360 the recipient of it, but also pour into them for their mental health. Corrections is one

01:28:55.500 of the most dangerous jobs in the world. In society, we celebrate in some places. I know

01:29:01.160 you see a lot of people that don't celebrate law enforcement officers and they should because

01:29:04.240 I lived in a world where there's no law enforcement officers called prison, man. It's a very dangerous

01:29:07.340 place. You know, these people that talk about defund the police, that's the same people that

01:29:11.000 you were talking about are probably atheists in college somewhere, right? I lived in a world with

01:29:15.260 no cops. It's a prison, man. It's a very dangerous place. But if you're in law enforcement, you're a

01:29:20.080 police officer, people will buy you a cup of coffee. They'll buy your gas. They'll buy you a

01:29:24.960 meal. They'll tell you thank you for your service. No one does that with correctional officers, man.

01:29:29.600 Think about it. Being a law enforcement officer can be like playing under the lights in a stadium

01:29:34.180 when you've got people cheering for you, some people cheering against you.

01:29:36.920 But being a correctional officer is like practicing in a gym.

01:29:39.680 No one's watching.

01:29:40.840 The director of Bureau of Prisons told me that.

01:29:44.560 William Marshall III, he's the director of the BOP now, he told me that.

01:29:47.620 Because he used to be a cop, a West Virginia state trooper.

01:29:50.280 And that's what he told me.

01:29:51.120 It's like being a state trooper was like playing under the lights.

01:29:54.160 Being in corrections is like being in a gym.

01:29:56.440 So no one's there to celebrate you.

01:29:57.820 But they got one of the highest suicide rates of any occupation.

01:30:00.900 Since 1997, there's been over 190 staff suicides in the BOP, 70% divorce rate, hypertension.

01:30:09.520 Their life expectancy is like 67 years old for a career corrections person.

01:30:15.440 This is a dangerous job.

01:30:17.900 So here's the answer totally to your question.

01:30:21.080 I believe we have to take corrections off and make it its own separate thing and understand

01:30:25.700 that corrections is really just a big triangle.

01:30:28.300 At one point of the triangle, you have the inmates that live in the prison system.

01:30:32.600 At another point, you have the staff that staffs the prison.

01:30:35.940 And the other point is the family members.

01:30:38.120 And I'm not just talking about the family members of the inmates.

01:30:40.620 I'm talking about the family members of these staffers that work in there because they take

01:30:43.840 these jobs home, obviously, to their families.

01:30:45.620 Yeah, yeah.

01:30:46.020 And their families go through the trauma with them.

01:30:48.400 I think if we can get all three of these points to row in the same direction, I do think it's

01:30:53.840 possible to understand we are all on the same mission because 95%, keep that number in mind,

01:30:59.460 we're all on the same mission. We all want the same things out of life. If we can get all three

01:31:03.380 of these groups rolling in the same direction, then I think incarceration changes in America.

01:31:07.360 Then I think the system gets better, but you have to get better communication between those three

01:31:11.980 groups. I hope that answered your question. So I've given this a lot of thought because

01:31:16.140 I got into a position, obviously being a professor, an adjunct professor of criminal justice, that

01:31:22.880 I'm on a platform that no other ex-con is on, you know? And so I've got this unique

01:31:27.840 opportunity to educate the next generation of criminal justice practitioners.

01:31:33.460 I guess there's the other ones that come to mind are Bill Ayers or Angela Davis,

01:31:37.780 these sort of left-wing terrorists. But I don't want to listen to their lectures. Yours,

01:31:41.280 I think, is a lot better. And you actually served your time, unlike those people.

01:31:44.260 Yeah. And I'm, you know, in my book, I did it for three years. I don't teach anymore because

01:31:48.200 I'm just on the road speaking so much, but I did it for three years and I was the textbook.

01:31:52.440 you want to talk about anything in prison, let's go over this topic. And I'll tell you what I saw

01:31:56.420 when I was in there, you know, but one of the first things I tell these people is that you

01:32:01.560 don't want to be against law enforcement in this country. Cause I lived in a world where there is

01:32:05.380 no law enforcement and that is not the world you want. I don't care what you might see on TV or

01:32:09.280 hear people talk about a protest. That's not the world you want to live in. Let's get behind law

01:32:13.680 enforcement. And so it's really cool. Like in this life right now to put my money where my mouth is,

01:32:18.160 I found the SWAT team that took me down. This is later on the story. This is a couple of years,

01:32:21.740 Last year, I found Dallas SWAT.

01:32:24.200 I go meet with them.

01:32:25.200 I told them my story.

01:32:26.540 I said, man, you saved my life when you pulled me out of that dope house that day.

01:32:29.800 You didn't think you did it then.

01:32:31.040 You didn't even know.

01:32:32.180 But you saved my life.

01:32:33.160 You pulled me out of a situation I could get myself out of.

01:32:34.720 I even told them, back to the angel thing, I told them I felt like they were angels sent to me by God.

01:32:39.740 And my angels don't have wings.

01:32:41.840 They have assault rifles and shields and helmets.

01:32:44.020 They're busting the door off the hinges and coming through my windows.

01:32:47.500 But they plucked me out of this world that I was in.

01:32:49.540 The SWAT team didn't arrest me that day.

01:32:50.980 they rescued me that day. And that's what I told them last year when I met with them. I said,

01:32:54.560 now let me tell you something. You saved my life and I want you to be able to save the lives of

01:33:00.160 other people. And your job is a very thankless job. I came here wanting to tell you thank you

01:33:04.660 today. And they told me no one's ever come back to say thank you to a SWAT team. That's probably

01:33:09.600 the first one ever. But then I told them, I said, listen, give me a list of all the equipment that

01:33:14.060 you need, but you can't get from DPD. Maybe it's hung up with some red tape somewhere. Whatever it

01:33:18.060 is you need to be safe to come back to your families after you save other lives, give

01:33:22.120 me the list. I'll buy it for you. God has been so good to me. They gave me a list of

01:33:26.040 $20,000 worth of money that they needed. How about like $5,000? How about we...

01:33:32.080 But I told them to do it. They did it. I bought it all. I went and dropped it off to them

01:33:36.080 last year, man. Went and met with them. They were just like, what perspective do you think

01:33:40.360 changed some of those men and women in that room that day? The potential of what we do

01:33:44.800 is so important that there may be another Damon West out there. It may feel like we're taking the

01:33:49.380 same trash out over again, but by golly, there could be another Damon West out there. And so

01:33:54.280 that's one of the things when I talk to God every day about that prayer, put in front of me what

01:33:58.260 you need me to do. God told me, go find the SWAT team, man. Let them know what they did in your

01:34:02.820 life and show them some gratitude. You know, I was talking to a priest who's appeared on this

01:34:07.540 show actually. And he said, one thing that I think about when we get up to the particular judgment

01:34:13.000 someday, you know, we see everything, it's all clear, nothing's hiding. I said, something that

01:34:18.540 we're not aware of now that will probably give us pause is all of the downstream effects of our

01:34:24.940 sins. Like you think, you know, you do a bad thing and you kind of see it, but all that affects

01:34:29.840 everything else, right? I mean, John Milton writes about this in Paradise Lost. It's kind of the

01:34:33.420 image of sin in the world. And, uh, that's probably going to be horrifying and we'll probably be,

01:34:38.600 If we're lucky, we will be sobbing before the pearly gates when this happens.

01:34:43.360 However, there is something else we can do, which is these little effects of just, like, one good thing you do.

01:34:49.080 One, well, $20,000 is actually a lot of money, but one $20,000, you know, drop-off of equipment.

01:34:54.800 What is that?

01:34:55.300 What are the downstream effects of that?

01:34:56.700 That's one, that's what penance is, I guess.

01:34:58.580 Yeah, it's what penance is.

01:34:59.840 And it's like, yeah, $20,000 is a lot of money, but it's also, God has put a lot of opportunity in my life.

01:35:06.220 And it's almost like that crown. Heavy is the head that wears the crown. I've got this crown

01:35:11.680 that God's put on my head. It's like, hey, you're the guy that's going to show that I'm real and I

01:35:18.160 need you to show up when I call you. And I'll tell you when that conversation happens. So

01:35:22.280 I'm in prison and I'm serving these guys. They start serving each other. The prison changed.

01:35:28.500 The whole pod changed. Everybody takes notice of it. In 2015, the parole board comes to see

01:35:34.000 Damon West. Now look, in 2015, seven years and three months into my life sentence, I know I'm

01:35:39.500 up for parole, but I don't think I can make the first parole. And the only reason I'm up for

01:35:43.020 parole is because my crimes are non-aggravated. I didn't hurt anybody in my crimes. It is a 65-year

01:35:47.780 sentence, which is a life sentence in prison. But in Texas, at seven years, you're up for parole

01:35:52.200 on a life sentence. So I go to the parole office that day. The lady from parole called me in.

01:35:57.660 This is inside of her prison. She's like, hey, Mr. West. She said, look, I got one question for

01:36:02.760 you for this parole hearing. She said, it's going to be a one question test. The answer to my

01:36:05.920 question is going to determine whether or not you're going home or you're staying in prison.

01:36:08.900 But the answer to my question is not in the file by the guy I'm reading about who committed all

01:36:13.540 those crimes. She points to my criminal file on the desk. She said, we don't see a lot of people

01:36:18.760 like you in the system because you had it all. You had everything going for your life, every

01:36:22.440 advantage, every privilege, and every opportunity. But you blew through all of that. You became a

01:36:26.280 drug addict. You became a criminal. You became a thief. A jury in Dallas gave you life in prison

01:36:30.460 for the things you did.

01:36:32.080 But instead of letting that license to fine you,

01:36:34.060 you changed yourself inside this prison, Mr. West.

01:36:35.920 She said, there's no doubt about the change

01:36:37.160 you made to yourself.

01:36:38.460 But what got our attention,

01:36:39.480 the reason why we're here today,

01:36:41.260 is you didn't just change yourself inside this prison.

01:36:43.960 You changed the whole prison.

01:36:45.480 She said, one man changed our prison.

01:36:47.900 So my question for you is this, Mr. West,

01:36:49.700 and think very hard about this answer

01:36:50.920 because your life depends on it.

01:36:53.300 If you could be remembered for being anything in life,

01:36:56.440 anything at all, she said,

01:36:57.860 tell me what that one thing would be,

01:36:59.400 but give it to me in just one word. Go. You said a member of the Aryan Brotherhood.

01:37:05.900 I finally have my answer. I picked something more like basic. I said useful. I said, I just want to

01:37:15.720 be useful. And I think, I think Mike, I think everybody wants to be useful. I've lived in a

01:37:21.260 level five prison and I've lived out here in the free world and every human being I've ever

01:37:24.200 encountered wants two things out of life. We want to belong and we want to be loved. And some of us

01:37:29.440 get so far away from those two things that we forget that that's what it's all about. But I

01:37:33.960 told that lady the day, I said, ma'am, I just want to be useful and I can be useful inside this prison

01:37:38.860 as you've already seen, or I could be useful in the free world again. November 16th, 2015,

01:37:46.260 I walk up to Texas prison. Not a free man. You're not looking at a free man in front of you because

01:37:52.020 I've got a little more time left on parole. I'm on supervised release. I'm on parole

01:37:56.060 in the state of Texas until the year 2073. They said 65, they meant 65, but I'm not worried about

01:38:06.180 that. And they got a very short leash from me. I had to get permission from my parole officer to

01:38:09.560 be here with you today because I left Texas. Anytime I leave Texas, I had to get a travel

01:38:13.280 permit. Every month I take a piss test. And if I fail one piss test, I go back to prison.

01:38:18.360 So you could, I can't, can I give you a cigar?

01:38:21.340 Yeah.

01:38:21.780 Cigar would probably qualify.

01:38:22.640 I could smoke a cigar.

01:38:23.520 Yeah, I could smoke a cigar, but I can't drink.

01:38:25.000 I can't do drugs.

01:38:25.540 I can't go to a bar or a club.

01:38:27.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:38:27.440 In Texas, they have signs on the door that say 51%.

01:38:29.900 A 51% sign is for someone who carries a concealed handgun.

01:38:33.460 When you see a 51% sign, it means that establishment makes 51% of their sales from liquor or beer.

01:38:39.040 It's not a restaurant.

01:38:39.940 It's a bar or club.

01:38:41.280 If I see a 51% sign anywhere in America, I can't go in the establishment.

01:38:45.640 It's a violation of parole to go in.

01:38:47.280 Wow.

01:38:47.600 And they don't have 51% signs. My parole officer said, just look around. If the bar is bigger than the restaurant, it's not a bar. But I have a great parole officer. But yeah, so I'm not really worried about going back to prison because I'm a coffee bean. And so when I walk out that day, my parents are in the parking lot out there waiting for me. They open the gate. I go out. I take a few steps and the voice in my head, God, says, turn around, Damon. I turn around. I'm looking back at the guard. Now the guard's like, go. Free, go. Can't come back, right?

01:39:18.080 But this is what God's telling me.

01:39:19.740 It's not like God's coming down from the sky,

01:39:21.780 but this is the voice in my head

01:39:22.840 that's been talking to me through prison, Christ, right?

01:39:26.340 Damon, I put you through all this for a reason.

01:39:28.320 You're gonna go work for me now.

01:39:29.760 You're gonna go show everybody that I'm real.

01:39:31.800 And here's the deal.

01:39:33.000 If I call you, you gotta show up

01:39:34.560 because you're just a vessel

01:39:35.720 and I can find another vessel.

01:39:38.020 So let's go, let's get to work.

01:39:40.640 And if you don't do the thing,

01:39:42.060 if this becomes about you and not about me,

01:39:44.680 you're coming back to prison.

01:39:46.400 I want you to see the gates before you leave.

01:39:48.360 And so I'm like, yeah, I got it, man.

01:39:50.120 So I turned back around and run into my parents' car.

01:39:52.080 My mom was like, what happened?

01:39:53.460 Why'd you stop?

01:39:54.220 My mom's a very spiritual woman.

01:39:57.100 I said, well, it's God talking to me.

01:39:58.880 And she said, you better listen to God.

01:40:00.120 I told her what God said.

01:40:01.080 She said, listen to that, Damon.

01:40:02.080 And so I go back.

01:40:03.640 I live with my parents in their spare bedroom.

01:40:05.160 So now I'm 40 years old, out of prison, on parole for the rest of my life.

01:40:09.400 I found a job at a law firm making just above minimum wage, living in my parents' spare bedroom.

01:40:14.640 Not your best dating profile, but I'm free, man.

01:40:18.180 So I get out of prison.

01:40:19.960 I start sharing my story locally in Southeast Texas.

01:40:23.240 I found out really quickly, too, you can't go knock on the door of a high school and

01:40:26.020 say, I just got out of prison.

01:40:27.000 I want to talk to your kids.

01:40:28.580 So it took a while for people to trust me again.

01:40:31.600 And I didn't have a lot of places to speak in the very beginning.

01:40:33.840 But what I did have in my parents' spare bedroom, there was a mirror in there, a little vanity

01:40:37.240 mirror.

01:40:38.040 My mom had the day I moved in.

01:40:39.320 So every night for two years, I practiced my presentation in front of a mirror, my story

01:40:44.060 of the coffee bean. I got good, man. I got in my reps. Because anything you want to be good at in

01:40:48.820 life, you have to practice that in life. There's no such thing as an overnight success. That's me

01:40:52.780 with the cigars. Yeah. I have a cigar company and I practiced. I mean, I smoked a lot of cigars

01:40:57.040 and I got really good at it. I'm going to try to connect you with a friend of mine named Steve

01:41:01.280 Harvey that loves cigars. Great. Yeah. The TV host? Yeah. Really? Yeah. Oh, really? I'd love to get

01:41:07.260 him. Yeah. He's great. Steve's gone to a prison with me before. Really? Oh, wow. Oh yeah. Steve's

01:41:11.640 incredible guy, great servant leader. He's a busy man. I'd love to get him. I'll get your cigar to

01:41:19.200 him. I know he likes cigars. There's nowhere for me to speak. Not really. There's a few places I

01:41:26.260 get to speak in the first two years, but I practice from a mirror. I'm getting myself

01:41:29.840 ready for the right opportunity. I believe the right opportunity is the world of college football

01:41:32.640 because I played division one college football. The problem is it's been 20 years I took my last

01:41:37.160 snap in 1996 coaches don't know me and i don't know them so january 11th 2017 i've been out of

01:41:43.900 prison 14 months uh a buddy of mine in houston calls houston's 90 miles from beaumont yeah he

01:41:49.360 calls me that he works in the media they even get to houston right now it's the bear bryant coach of

01:41:53.320 the year award they're going to name the best college football coach in america tonight that

01:41:56.780 eight best coaches in the country in this room i'm gonna sneak in i got a press pass for you

01:42:00.040 so i drive the 90 miles from beaumont to houston he sneaks in the back door to toyota center

01:42:04.760 handed me a press pass. He said, you're on your own, man. I got to go to work.

01:42:08.340 So I'm in this room, Mike, and all these coaches are there. You know, I run around that room and

01:42:11.620 I shake every coach's hand and I give them my pitch of why they should bring me in to talk to

01:42:16.160 their team. And every single coach slammed the door in my face. They all said no, man. I mean,

01:42:22.120 it's just like, man, these guys are running away from me when I talk about prison, man. They're

01:42:24.600 like, get away from me, dude. Like, so in one hour, I got seven no's from eight coaches. I said

01:42:29.960 no every eight minutes, man. And I'm about to leave. I'm about to walk out the door.

01:42:34.540 The voice in my head is telling me to go home.

01:42:37.520 But, man, I stopped before I got to the door that night.

01:42:40.200 I'm like, you know what, man?

01:42:40.940 No, Damon, you came to talk to eight coaches.

01:42:43.120 You've got to talk to that last coach, man.

01:42:44.540 Just let the last coach tell you no, and then go home.

01:42:47.600 Like Muhammad said, you don't have to win all your fights.

01:42:49.260 You've got to fight all your fights.

01:42:50.580 It's like prison, man.

01:42:51.640 Prison was a good training ground for this.

01:42:53.000 This won't hurt like prison.

01:42:54.620 Go get the last no.

01:42:55.420 Just go to that last coach and punch him right in the face.

01:42:57.420 No, I'm sorry.

01:42:57.960 I did not do that.

01:42:58.720 But what I did is I stalked that last coach around the room.

01:43:01.940 He was the hardest guy to get through the room.

01:43:03.300 His team beat Alabama two nights before for the national championship.

01:43:06.580 Everybody was in line that night to talk to Dabo Sweeney, the head coach of Clemson.

01:43:10.000 And I stalked Dabo out, hiding behind a fake plant, waiting to ambush him.

01:43:14.000 Now, he sees me.

01:43:15.220 Security sees me, too.

01:43:16.800 I go to Dabo, and I make my pitch.

01:43:19.160 Dabo, he looks terrified.

01:43:20.620 He's like, you got a card on you?

01:43:22.420 I gave him my card, and he took it from me.

01:43:24.020 He said, I'll check you out.

01:43:24.780 And he was gone.

01:43:26.400 Well, that's a no.

01:43:27.260 I've seen that no before that night, but I felt good about that no because I left it all on the field.

01:43:30.800 One of the biggest takeaways from sports, right?

01:43:32.440 You've got to give your all.

01:43:34.220 Went home.

01:43:34.820 I forgot about that night.

01:43:35.680 Four months later, I get an email out of the blue.

01:43:37.520 It's the director of football operations at Clemson University.

01:43:40.280 A guy named Mike Dooley.

01:43:41.360 Mike Dooley's email said, hey, Damon, Coach Sweeney met you at a award show in Houston.

01:43:45.300 He'd love to have you come talk to the team.

01:43:47.200 Do you have August 1st open?

01:43:49.360 Brother, I got every first open, right?

01:43:51.460 Matter of fact, I do.

01:43:52.640 August 1st, 2017, I go speak to the Clemson Tigers, the fitting national championship

01:43:56.160 of college football.

01:43:57.600 And when I get done with my presentation tonight, Dabo's in my face.

01:43:59.900 And Dabo's a high-energy guy.

01:44:02.000 Yeah.

01:44:02.760 He's another messenger.

01:44:03.860 He's like, Damon, most amazing story I've ever heard.

01:44:06.420 I've never seen my players respond like that to a speaker.

01:44:08.720 He said, have you been to Alabama to talk to Alabama's football team?

01:44:12.580 And I'm like, no, man, I've been to Clemson.

01:44:14.380 I hadn't been anywhere.

01:44:15.040 I said, Alabama doesn't know who I am.

01:44:17.300 He said, we'll see about that.

01:44:18.260 He said, I just texted Nick Saban from the back of the room.

01:44:20.740 Mike, the next day, when my flight went into Houston for my trip to Clemson,

01:44:23.640 I turned my phone on.

01:44:25.040 There was a voicemail and a text message from the director of football operations

01:44:27.820 at the University of Alabama.

01:44:30.080 The Whale, the biggest program in America with the best coach to ever do it.

01:44:32.960 They didn't let me in.

01:44:33.920 And then the voicemail said, hey, Damon, Dabo called Coach Saban last night.

01:44:37.940 Coach Saban can't wait to hear your story.

01:44:39.340 How does August 21st, 7.30 p.m. work for your calendar?

01:44:42.880 I laughed out loud because I didn't have a calendar.

01:44:45.300 I didn't need a calendar back then, right?

01:44:48.000 Dabo Sweeney becomes the person, the relationship in life that believes in you and puts it all

01:44:52.960 on the line.

01:44:53.840 Every coach in America starts blowing up my phone because Dabo's calling.

01:44:56.320 Kirby Smart, Lincoln Riley, Chip Kelly, Lane Kiffin, Ryan Day.

01:44:59.520 When are you talking to my team? Man, it's happening. But the biggest event hadn't happened

01:45:04.360 yet. The biggest messenger, the biggest servant leader is about to walk into my life. It happens

01:45:09.400 in August of 18. I get a phone call. This is one year after Clemson. I get a phone call out of the

01:45:15.600 blue. On the other end of my phone is a guy named John Gordon. Now, John Gordon is one of the biggest

01:45:20.180 motivational speakers and authors in America, the energy bus guy. And he's on my phone. John,

01:45:25.500 I know who you are. How do you know who I am? Dabo Sweeney. He said, I just got done speaking

01:45:30.300 to Clemson today. Dabo brought me off for 30 minutes to tell me your whole story. John said

01:45:34.420 this before the pandemic. He said, Damon, the world needs a coffee bean message. Let's deliver

01:45:38.580 this message to the world. He said, well, you write a book with me. We'll call it The Coffee

01:45:42.440 Bean. In the summer of 2019, 10 years after our first story from Muhammad in a jail cell,

01:45:48.880 the book, The Coffee Bean, came out, took the world by storm. The whole planet, man. It starts

01:45:54.160 off in America. So four to six weeks, that book rides high at the top of every bestseller list.

01:45:59.000 It got a global publishing deal. Global publishing deals are rare. That's when your book is printed

01:46:03.300 to every language in the world. So the coffee bean starts popping up in Chinese and Spanish

01:46:06.860 and Arabic, French, Italian, German, Vietnamese, Korean, just in time for the year 2020.

01:46:14.360 Remember 2020, right? COVID, pandemic hits. The world becomes a pot of boiling water and the world

01:46:20.340 searching for a message that's when the world discovers me the coffee bean guy damon west

01:46:24.540 mike my life went from this to this yeah i've been on the road 20 to 25 days of every month

01:46:31.080 since 2021 sharing my story and message with corporations groups organizations sports teams

01:46:36.280 all over the country but it all goes back to that one night in houston texas january 11 2017 that

01:46:42.000 night i had seven no's the first hour and i'm standing by the door getting ready to leave

01:46:46.560 If I listen to the voice of fear and doubt that night and I walk out that door, we're not having this conversation.

01:46:51.300 Yeah.

01:46:52.080 That's right.

01:46:52.560 It's the last one.

01:46:53.380 It's that last one.

01:46:54.400 The last one.

01:46:55.000 Stick around and get the last no end up being the biggest yes.

01:46:58.100 And I tell people all the time, man, you can't give up.

01:47:02.480 Life gets tough.

01:47:03.580 Life gets hard.

01:47:04.180 You don't quit.

01:47:05.140 Yeah.

01:47:05.360 You don't not ask your questions in life.

01:47:07.360 The only question you really know the answer to in life is the one you do not ask.

01:47:11.140 That answer is no every time because you didn't ask your question.

01:47:13.560 I really think Wayne Gretzky said it best.

01:47:16.620 Wayne Gretzky said you miss 100% of the shots you don't take in life.

01:47:19.900 You have to take your shots in this life, man.

01:47:22.440 God wanted something big for you in life, but you got to take the shot.

01:47:25.380 It's interesting, too.

01:47:26.540 I've noticed in very rare moments of despair over the course of my life, I have a pretty sunny disposition.

01:47:32.440 But I've had them.

01:47:33.980 And it's funny because then I think about it rationally for a second.

01:47:37.580 And I think, well, hold on.

01:47:38.820 I am essentially the most privileged person that's ever lived.

01:47:42.620 You know, I am in America in the 21st century.

01:47:47.240 I, you know, have a great relationship with both of my parents or, you know, when one of them was alive.

01:47:54.280 And I have a great, I just have a great life.

01:47:57.460 I just check every single box, right?

01:47:59.120 And so I, if I can't hack it, you know, if like things are too tough for me, then it's totally hopeless for, you know, everybody else.

01:48:07.040 But sometimes it's the people who have these privileges, which every single person in America

01:48:12.280 has an immense amount of privilege. It's those people who have those privileges who, I don't

01:48:17.660 know, they sometimes despair the hardest. There's a kind of paradox to that.

01:48:22.520 Yeah. You got to find what a bad day looks like. And I believe every human being has

01:48:30.880 experienced a bad day. Bad days are life-altered events. A real bad day, a marriage fails. A job

01:48:38.480 is lost. A career is over. Something happens to one of your kids or your pets, right? Those are

01:48:42.820 bad days, man. Life changes on those days. Most of your bad days aren't one of those days. You

01:48:47.860 used traffic a while ago. Sometimes you sit in traffic and traffic bothers you. Other times you

01:48:52.340 sit in traffic, it doesn't bother you at all. Is it the traffic or is it you? It's always you,

01:48:56.320 Right? Yeah. I believe firmly that we have to define what a bad day looks like and then ask

01:49:01.740 ourselves on these days that we think are bad, is this one of those days? Pretty good chance it's

01:49:07.160 not one of those days. Then it's just really not a not so good day. Now we can turn this thing

01:49:10.600 around, man. We can right the ship right there in the middle of the day. We can start the day over

01:49:14.660 because we're not sinking into this life altering moment that we thought this was a minute ago.

01:49:19.820 It's in your head. You've got to be able to talk yourself out of these bad thoughts and into good

01:49:24.140 thoughts. And I think that people for the most part want to have good thoughts. I think these

01:49:28.460 phones have separated us from other people and communication has changed so much for humanity

01:49:32.900 that it's hard to get to the positive again. But that's my space in life. I get to go out and

01:49:38.680 transfer this message of the coffee bean to other people and how I did it. And it gives people hope.

01:49:44.380 And that's a big thing in life. Everybody needs hope. It's like the movie Shawshank. I think it's

01:49:48.140 the best prison movie ever because it was the one movie about prison that really depicted how

01:49:52.840 hopeless prison is. And the whole movie was about hope. It was Red. Red needed his hope back. And

01:49:57.880 at the end of the movie, Red tells you about getting his hope back. He's telling you on the

01:50:01.380 beach in Mexico, you know, I hope I see my friend again. I hope it may cross the border. I hope the

01:50:06.640 Pacific is as blue as it was in my dreams. I hope. That's what he says at the end. I hope.

01:50:11.280 Yeah. That's how, when I have that nightmare about going to life in prison,

01:50:15.600 the thing that hits is the despair, is the hopelessness. You know, that's what, because

01:50:19.660 even if you say, I have to go to prison for five years, I'd like to avoid that too.

01:50:22.840 But you think, all right, in five years I get out.

01:50:24.720 But if you're just there, if it's just your life is over, you know, that gives you a different look until sometimes you get out of prison.

01:50:34.500 So try this on for size.

01:50:36.220 I meet more people out here in the free world that are locked up than I ever did when I served time in real prison.

01:50:40.780 Yeah, I believe that.

01:50:41.620 More people are imprisoned by their thoughts and by their things than by steel bars and barbed wire and concrete combined.

01:50:46.120 Yeah, of course.

01:50:46.700 You can't become a prisoner in your own mind.

01:50:48.000 That's a very Christian idea, too, that the real slavery is sin.

01:50:51.180 And actually, sin is what enslaves you.

01:50:53.380 So you can be a free man in solitary confinement.

01:50:56.200 You can be a slave out on a beach in Boca or something.

01:50:59.640 How'd you meet your wife?

01:51:01.260 Oh, man, that's a great story.

01:51:02.680 So you know from my story, May 18th, 2009, we've talked about that date several times,

01:51:08.380 right?

01:51:08.900 That's the day I got sentenced to life in prison.

01:51:11.780 So when I get out of prison, I live in my parents' spare bedroom and I'm making minimum

01:51:16.200 wage and this guy's on parole for the rest of the life.

01:51:18.660 I said, not a good dating profile.

01:51:20.680 Right, right.

01:51:21.180 But I meet this woman named Kendall Romero.

01:51:23.720 Kendall Romero is a nurse practitioner in Beaumont, Texas, where I live with my parents.

01:51:28.740 And she meets Damon West that's got none of the stuff.

01:51:32.220 Look, now I'm one of the biggest speakers in America, right?

01:51:34.640 And books everywhere and in demand to share my message.

01:51:38.840 None of this stuff has happened when she met Damon West.

01:51:40.820 Like, I didn't have a book.

01:51:41.760 I didn't have anything.

01:51:42.520 I had a dream.

01:51:43.920 But she saw into that dream.

01:51:45.680 And she said, you know, look, Damon, you've paid a hell of a price for the things you've done.

01:51:49.280 And she fell in love with that guy.

01:51:51.540 And more importantly, her family fell in love with me, man.

01:51:54.420 Her family took me in, warts and all, man.

01:51:56.580 I get chills talking about it, man.

01:51:58.340 I can't tell you how many times I laid in my bunk in prison.

01:52:00.740 I thought, man, there's no one for me, man.

01:52:02.520 Who's going to ever love me after all the stuff I've done?

01:52:05.520 And man plans and God laughs.

01:52:07.800 Right.

01:52:08.080 So I meet Kendall.

01:52:10.160 We start dating.

01:52:11.100 And then in 2019, we get married.

01:52:13.580 And we pick our wedding date is May 18th, 2019.

01:52:17.760 Now, May 18, 2009, life in prison, 10 years to the day, I get married for the first time.

01:52:24.360 I've become a husband and a stepfather to our daughter, Clara, and Clara is now 14 years

01:52:29.000 old.

01:52:30.000 Or as Kendall said, on May 18, 2019, you went from one life sentence to another.

01:52:34.520 Yeah.

01:52:35.520 Much better cellmate though, right?

01:52:37.000 It's like, Carlos, I'm sorry, but it's much better cellmate.

01:52:39.440 Yeah, less chance of parole, but a better deal.

01:52:41.760 Yeah, less chance of parole.

01:52:42.760 I'm not looking for parole in this one, but it's great.

01:52:44.600 And so one of the things I did is, because these people were so good to me, her family.

01:52:51.000 And when I started doing really well as a speaker and money started coming in from the speaking thing,

01:52:57.300 none of us ever saw this coming, right?

01:53:00.180 But again, God is just providing.

01:53:02.720 And I said, Kendall, we got to figure out a way to bring everybody along for the ride, the whole family, you know, your family, my family.

01:53:09.900 So we took the money from that.

01:53:11.240 we started a construction company in Southeast Texas. And we bought a dirt pit, too, because

01:53:16.920 you need dirt for all kinds of construction stuff, and you need a construction company to build stuff.

01:53:20.960 And the company is in Kendall's name and my mother-in-law's name, so it's a female-owned

01:53:24.900 business. And right now, the construction company has got like 60 employees. And yeah,

01:53:30.580 they're doing great. The whole family works there. All the family works there.

01:53:33.900 My dad passed away in 2023, stage four colon cancer, but he got to see me turn around.

01:53:41.640 My dad was a sports writer his whole life.

01:53:43.140 He thought it was one of the greatest comeback stories ever that he got to witness.

01:53:46.180 And after my dad died, I saw that my mom was struggling in life, and she was on her own

01:53:52.200 for the first time.

01:53:53.420 So Kendall and I just bought a piece of property, and we built our house on it.

01:53:57.000 And then we went and talked to my mom.

01:53:58.820 We said, listen, pack your bags.

01:54:00.800 We're building you a house.

01:54:01.860 You're coming to live with us.

01:54:02.640 So my mom lives on my property now.

01:54:04.260 That's great.

01:54:05.260 Yeah.

01:54:05.720 So I take care of my mom now.

01:54:06.980 My parents came to see me over 150 times in prison.

01:54:10.340 150 visits.

01:54:11.460 My mom has got this, such a strong devotion to the Blessed Mother.

01:54:15.200 That's her real outlet in life.

01:54:17.220 And we're all Catholic.

01:54:18.300 We're still Catholic.

01:54:19.140 My wife is Catholic.

01:54:20.040 My stepdaughter's Catholic.

01:54:21.100 We're raising her.

01:54:21.820 She's going through confirmation soon.

01:54:23.740 Love it.

01:54:25.060 My mom's devotion to the Blessed Mother is so strong.

01:54:27.520 Like she never let go of me, man.

01:54:29.340 I never felt like I had both feet in prison.

01:54:31.200 Yeah, yeah.

01:54:31.560 And she would come to visit me over and over again.

01:54:35.580 My dad would come too, but over 150 visits.

01:54:37.800 No one in prison got that many visits, man.

01:54:39.660 Wow.

01:54:40.260 So back to where we started the story, man.

01:54:43.620 The messengers, man.

01:54:44.840 The messengers were everywhere.

01:54:46.360 And I believe in most people's life, the messengers are everywhere too.

01:54:49.240 Yes, I totally agree.

01:54:50.280 But you've just got to be open to it.

01:54:51.500 And sometimes it takes being knocked down a life so great that you're like,

01:54:54.900 I'm looking for messengers, God.

01:54:57.240 But be on the lookout, man.

01:54:58.280 Yeah, it's funny you mention that.

01:54:59.580 that is, I'm actually working on a book right now on this topic, and it didn't even occur to me,

01:55:03.960 the connection, but I've been finally digging into it. But that the Christian view, and especially

01:55:09.220 the Catholic view of the world, is a very symbolic view. It's rich in symbols. You just,

01:55:16.740 everything means something, and nothing means nothing. And in our modern kind of liberal

01:55:22.660 atheist life, we think that nothing means anything, and it's all just kind of absurd,

01:55:26.200 and a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury and all the rest.

01:55:28.940 But the Christian view, and especially the Catholic view,

01:55:33.920 is, no, there's a lot of meaning.

01:55:36.820 In fact, the world is super abundant with meaning.

01:55:39.700 It is suffused and overflowing with meaning.

01:55:42.240 And you have to, it would behoove you to tune in.

01:55:46.760 Yeah, absolutely.

01:55:48.080 Get something from it.

01:55:48.800 And I believe, to go further in what you're saying,

01:55:52.960 And the meaning, like, look, I think that most human beings, like I said, want to belong and be

01:55:59.500 loved. And like, one of the things in life too is forgiveness. And that's a big thing with people

01:56:07.080 that call themselves Christians and people like Catholics, like us, like, but there, a lot of

01:56:13.240 people, and I talk to people all the time, you want to show me you're a Christian, show me you're

01:56:16.980 a Catholic, whatever, then show me the things that show up in red ink in the New Testament.

01:56:21.820 Show me love, forgiveness, mercy, compassion.

01:56:24.620 Show me love for your neighbor.

01:56:26.120 And when someone wrongs you, show me that stuff in red ink that says,

01:56:28.920 let he without sin cast the first stone.

01:56:31.140 Don't tell me you're a Christian.

01:56:32.780 Show me you're a Christian.

01:56:33.860 Often I can't hear what you're saying because your actions speak so loudly.

01:56:37.240 In my life, in recovery, I go out there and one of the things we do at the eighth step,

01:56:43.380 the eighth step and the 12th steps is you make a list of all the people you've harmed.

01:56:47.000 The ninth step is where you make the amends to people.

01:56:49.300 But in recovery, we have this caveat in the ninth step that says, except when to do so

01:56:54.860 would cause you or the other party harm.

01:56:57.120 Now, remember, I committed all these crimes.

01:56:59.780 I got victims out there everywhere.

01:57:01.180 I can't make apologies to my victims.

01:57:03.180 That's a felony.

01:57:04.340 I will go back to prison if I ever apologize to people.

01:57:06.820 So I have no way to reach out to them and tell them any kind of an apology or anything

01:57:11.360 like that.

01:57:11.880 I just can't do it.

01:57:12.660 It's off the table for me.

01:57:14.460 So it's just a part of my life.

01:57:16.240 But a living amends is when you go out in good deeds.

01:57:18.080 You do good deeds.

01:57:19.300 And you expect nothing in return. That's what a living in men's is. Living in men's is like,

01:57:23.100 hey, I'm going to go out and do good deeds. And I don't want anything in return from it. I'm just

01:57:26.080 going to go out and help other people. So that's what I've been doing my whole life.

01:57:29.480 Well, there was a victim that I had, the biggest victim of all my crimes. Just to sum it up,

01:57:37.300 when Dustin and I broke into her condo, we stole something from her that was so sacred.

01:57:43.340 Her fiance had stepped on an IED in Iraq in 2007,

01:57:47.640 and she had an engagement ring in her safe that he gave her before he went to Iraq.

01:57:51.760 And Michael, we stole the ring and we traded it for dope.

01:57:55.500 The ring is gone forever.

01:57:56.640 She was the first witness at the trial.

01:57:58.640 I mean, like, I thought about this lady the entire time I was in prison, man.

01:58:03.080 She represented all my victims because this is the one that I hurt so badly.

01:58:08.120 I'm like, oh, man, I'll never forgive myself for it is what I told myself.

01:58:12.660 It was like a toxic companion that I carry around prison.

01:58:14.640 And I thought, that's my penance in life.

01:58:16.480 I'm going to carry this.

01:58:17.480 And we talked about prison.

01:58:19.340 I mean, the word penance is in the word penitentiary.

01:58:21.620 But I carry around this memory of what I did to this person.

01:58:26.840 And I'm not going to ever let it go.

01:58:29.500 But I go around, and I'm doing my thing in life, and I'm sharing my story.

01:58:33.660 And media picks up on it here and there.

01:58:35.720 And a media station in Dallas ran my story.

01:58:38.440 And I got an email one night from her.

01:58:41.820 And she, it was a hearty, but the subject line of the email said, Damon, I forgive you.

01:58:48.180 I'm going to read you some of the email. So I'm going to tell you about the email first. So the

01:58:51.080 email, it's tough to read, man, because she's going through what it was like to see me on the

01:58:56.980 news that night. And then told me about the whole story of what it felt like coming to her condo

01:59:02.120 that day, see the door been pried open and that she ran straight to the safe and the ring is gone.

01:59:06.060 You know, but she starts talking about seeing the life that I have now and what I'm doing.

01:59:12.200 And she let go of all that.

01:59:15.780 Here's what she wrote me.

01:59:17.600 Let's see if I can read this.

01:59:20.800 At the end of the email, she told me this, Mike.

01:59:22.760 She said, with that, I'd like to say, I forgive you.

01:59:26.460 I'm moving on the hope that you're a genuine person with a good heart and the hope that

01:59:31.340 you put others before money or fame as you share your story and the hope that you and your family

01:59:36.860 never experienced great loss or violation. Most importantly, in the hope that you feel peace in

01:59:42.400 knowing that we are saved from the mistakes we make in this world. Thanks to the unfailing love

01:59:49.100 of Christ. Life is such a gift. May you live it to the fullest, Damon. How hard was it for her to

01:59:59.420 do that, man. And she set me free on the end of it, man. I mean, you live your life to the

02:00:04.340 fullest. After what I did to you, you're telling me to go live my life. Just another one of those

02:00:10.740 examples, man. I mean, you live a life looking for what God needs you to do for him. It was to

02:00:18.060 carry your needs. My need was that I needed to be forgiven. I had to forgive myself and

02:00:24.360 but she let me go, man.

02:00:26.520 And so like the quality of mercy speech

02:00:28.280 from Shakespeare from Merchant of Venice,

02:00:29.900 this is the quality of mercy is not strained.

02:00:32.160 You know, it droppeth like the dew from heaven

02:00:34.880 and it blesses twice

02:00:37.320 because it blesses the person who is forgiven

02:00:39.320 and the person who forgives.

02:00:41.100 And it becomes a king

02:00:42.640 even more than his crown and his scepter.

02:00:45.000 Yeah, that's, ah.

02:00:47.880 Yeah, it was.

02:00:49.280 I got a little misty during that.

02:00:50.860 I'm not gonna notice it.

02:00:51.760 If I were in prison right now,

02:00:52.920 I'd be in big trouble.

02:00:53.660 Got a little misty on that one.

02:00:55.540 Don't let them see you cry.

02:00:56.600 But out here, it's okay.

02:00:58.280 And like, I've never had a conversation with her.

02:01:01.840 I've never, you know, I couldn't email her back.

02:01:04.860 My parole officer told me that night, I sent it to her.

02:01:08.220 And I was crying.

02:01:09.260 She was crying.

02:01:10.100 And I was like, her name's Ms. Braggs.

02:01:11.920 Ms. Braggs, I got to email her back.

02:01:14.580 She said, do not email her back.

02:01:17.000 She said, I'm telling you, don't do it.

02:01:18.240 And she said, no one else better email her either.

02:01:19.980 I said, will you email her?

02:01:21.640 She says, not how it works, Damon.

02:01:23.060 You can't have contact with your victims.

02:01:24.880 And they can have contact with you.

02:01:27.640 And so I can share what my victims write to me.

02:01:31.420 And most of the time, it's not been a positive interaction with victims when they've reached out to me because they've seen me on social media or whatever.

02:01:36.420 Yeah.

02:01:37.160 But the biggest one reached out to me, man.

02:01:39.460 And you suspect she knows you got the email.

02:01:44.100 You know, you suspect she kind of.

02:01:46.040 I put it in a book called Six Dimes and a Nickel.

02:01:48.600 Remember this prison sentence called Six Dimes and a Nickel?

02:01:50.680 So I wrote a book last year called Six Dimes of Nicholas, My Whole Life Story.

02:01:54.360 And that's where I put the story in there.

02:01:56.480 The book was about that chapter that story came out in was called The Healing Power of

02:02:00.360 Forgiveness.

02:02:01.620 And like you said, it blesses twice.

02:02:04.920 And so I hope that she has been able to let go.

02:02:08.360 And for email, she said she had.

02:02:11.180 I hope that's true.

02:02:12.700 Because, you know, I cause a lot of people a lot of pain, a lot of harm, but I can't

02:02:17.140 ever atone for that.

02:02:18.180 And the only way I can atone for it is to go out there and go do good deeds in return.

02:02:22.440 So, Mike, that's what I'm going to do the rest of my life.

02:02:24.520 I'm going to go out and do good deeds and expect nothing in return.

02:02:26.780 Where can people find you?

02:02:28.500 Oh, my website, DamonWest.org.

02:02:31.880 And social media is at DamonWest7.

02:02:35.620 But DamonWest.org, that's where people find me for speaking engagements and all this stuff

02:02:40.460 I've got going on in life.

02:02:41.360 And I want to really wrap this up, though, with a little bow around it.

02:02:45.020 I found Muhammad after prison.

02:02:46.820 I went back to try to find the guy that told me the story of the coffee bean.

02:02:49.720 He was dead.

02:02:51.020 He had passed away.

02:02:51.820 He, a drug overdose.

02:02:53.040 He was a drug addict.

02:02:54.240 Passed away an opiate overdose on May 9th, 2017.

02:02:57.640 But I didn't stop there.

02:02:58.740 I went and found his family and I started a scholarship in his name.

02:03:01.560 His family picks the winner every year.

02:03:02.880 I fund it.

02:03:03.460 It's a $10,000 scholarship called, his real name is James Lynn Baker II.

02:03:07.340 It's called the James Lynn Baker II B.A. Coffee Bean Scholarship.

02:03:10.080 And every year, one little boy or one little girl that grows up in his old neighborhood

02:03:12.920 in Dallas gets out and gets a better chance of life through education.

02:03:15.720 because two guys met in a jail cell one day.

02:03:18.260 So it's a good story, man.

02:03:20.120 That's great.

02:03:20.760 People love a good comeback story.

02:03:21.960 Yeah, that's beautiful.

02:03:24.060 Head on over, follow Damon on all social media,

02:03:27.640 and maybe, I don't know,

02:03:28.520 donate a little bit to the scholarship or something.

02:03:30.340 You know, do these good acts.

02:03:31.540 These penances are good to do.

02:03:32.840 Damon, thank you so much for being here.

02:03:33.840 Thank you so much for the opportunity today, man.

02:03:35.280 Thank you so much.

02:03:46.160 The Hyundai Upgrade Your Ride Sale is here.

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02:04:00.560 Or get up to $750 off when you make the switch to Hyundai from select brands.

02:04:06.200 Hurry! The Upgrade Your Ride Sale is only on from March 19th to the 31st.

02:04:11.120 Conditions apply. Visit your local Hyundai dealer today.

02:04:15.720 Thank you.

The Michael Knowles Show - March 29, 2026

＂65 Years In Prison For Burglary＂ Michael & The Prison Inmate ｜ Damon West

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