Lava for Good Live: The War on Drugs - Did Anyone Win? - The War on Drugs

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, welcome to a special episode of the War on Drugs,
and we cooked up something really special for you guys today.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:11):
It's a lot different than our previous episodes and I'm
excited to kick this off. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (00:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Since we've concluded our last episode, me and Greg have met.

Speaker 5 (00:19):
Up in Atlanta, Clayton's hometown with a few of.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
Our fellow hosts from the Love of a Good podcast,
you know, Jason Flohm from Wrongful Convictions, Gilbert King from
Bone Valley.

Speaker 3 (00:30):
We all got together the iHeartMedia Offices and we did
a live panel discussion along with our friends from the Stuff
They Don't Want You To Know podcasts, Matthew, Frederick Van Bolan,
Noel Brown.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
Yeah, and I mean, as you can imagine, you get
three four podcasts together, it's gonna be a lot of talking.

Speaker 6 (00:44):
It was really cool.

Speaker 3 (00:45):
We dug deep in kind of the intersection of the
War on Drugs, Wrongful Convictions, and the criminal legal system
at large, and we really figured out that there was
a lot of synergy between our podcasts and got all
gussied up, had a live audience. We had a lot
to talk about it. It was an amaz time.

Speaker 6 (01:01):
No, it was dope.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
It was like Avengers team up a podcasts and we
recorded the whole thing so then we could listen to
it with all of you and with the listeners of
Wrongful Convictions, Bone Valley and stuff.

Speaker 6 (01:13):
They don't want you to know podcasts.

Speaker 3 (01:15):
So much, Sadie Eye to Blast.

Speaker 6 (01:16):
Yeah, man, give it a listen. We hope you all
enjoy it. Yeah, take care of y'all.

Speaker 7 (01:24):
Hello everyone, thank you so much for joining us tonight
for this very very important conversation. It's presented by Lava
for Good and iHeart Podcasts. We are here in the
brand new iHeart Podcast Studios in Atlanta, Georgia to have
this conversation. This is a multi podcast live event. We're
gonna be speaking with some very important people and I

(01:46):
just can't wait for you to hear. It's a conversation
we're gonna have tonight about a decade's long war against
a concept drugs, and it's about how that how that war,
how the attempts to win that war corrupted and completely
broke a legal system, and how that broken system affects
the lives, the livelihoods, and the futures of everyone who's

(02:09):
made to go through that system. So, without further Ado,
I'm just gonna have our panelists come on out join
us on stage and begin the conversation.

Speaker 4 (02:25):
Hey everyone, where are the guys from earlier?

Speaker 8 (02:33):
Thanks so much for coming. We're very excited.

Speaker 4 (02:35):
This is a truly unique collaboration with Lava for Good
and iHeartMedia, and as our pal Matt mentioned, Noel Brown
and me Ben Bollen, we host the show called Stuff
They Don't Want You To Know, and today we're bringing
together like an endgame Assembler's Avengers level assembly of some

(02:59):
of the greatest minds in.

Speaker 8 (03:01):
The world of criminal justice reform and in the world
of the war.

Speaker 4 (03:06):
On drugs, which affects every single one of us, regardless
of circumstance. So we've got some great minds on stage here.
Let's go ahead and start by introducing our guest. First directly,
here we have Jason Flam. Jason, you are the creator
and host of Wrongful Convictions. Additionally, you are a prominent
criminal justice reform advocate. You are a founding board member

(03:29):
of the Innocence Project, and wrong Bulk Convictions dives deep
into some harrowing accounts of what happens when the justice
system goes awry, or some would say works by Design right,
and we just want to thank you for joining us today.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
Well, thank you for having me. It's an honor to
be here.

Speaker 9 (03:49):
I love being at iHeart such a great company, great place,
and really excited to share some of these stories with
your audience and get people.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
Better informed and more get them anger.

Speaker 9 (04:04):
Honestly, I want people to get angry and get involved,
and that's what we're here for. And so, like I said,
being out on your platform with your audience, it's really
it's really exciting.

Speaker 10 (04:16):
Well, also here to help us a little bit with
that informed anger that I think we're all going to
participate in is Pulitzer Prize winning author Gilbert King.

Speaker 5 (04:25):
In addition, if that weren't.

Speaker 10 (04:27):
Enough being a Pulitzer Prize winning author, he's also the
creator and the host of the Ambi Award, which is
the thing they give out for podcasts now the Ambient
Award winning podcast Bone Valley.

Speaker 5 (04:38):
In addition to being a.

Speaker 10 (04:39):
Prolific author and incredibly tenacious researcher, King's work on his
book Devil in the Grove actually led to the exonerations
of the wrongly accused men known as the Groveland Four.
The podcast Bone Valley brings that same level of investigative
rigor to the story of Leon Schofield.

Speaker 8 (05:01):
So, Gilbert, thank you so much for pleasure to be here.

Speaker 11 (05:04):
I'm really looking forward to joining this very promising and
talented group of parents.

Speaker 8 (05:15):
And rounding out our experts.

Speaker 4 (05:16):
Today we have Clayton English and Greg glad Now, you
guys are the co host and creators of the podcast called.

Speaker 8 (05:24):
The War on Drugs. War on Drugs.

Speaker 4 (05:26):
No, Clayton, A lot of people in the audience doubtlessly
recognize you today. You are a prolific stand up comic,
an actor, a writer, and you in your material you
deal pretty often with concepts of the War on drugs
and I think connect with people in a way that
is entertaining but also powerful and educational. And so when

(05:50):
when you and Greg joined up. But Greg, you are
a huge criminal justice reform advocate. You are in the
trenches working to refocus the legal system right to repurpose
it as We're.

Speaker 8 (06:03):
Going to talk a lot about what that means.

Speaker 4 (06:07):
But we just want to thank you guys for coming
on the show today as well.

Speaker 6 (06:10):
Oh thanks for having me. I appreciate it that intro
was a little too good.

Speaker 3 (06:13):
Yeah, they passed.

Speaker 8 (06:19):
Interesting, No stress just be perfect.

Speaker 3 (06:21):
Like how they didn't sit us next to each other too.
I think it's like when the two kids in.

Speaker 5 (06:24):
The class had to separate.

Speaker 8 (06:27):
Yeah, no, it's better that way.

Speaker 4 (06:32):
Yeah, we just didn't have in the budget. But but okay,
so let's let's get into it right because we have
a lot of stuff in our minds. It seems that
no matter where you come from, no matter who you are,
no matter what your personal feelings are, like, virtually everyone
can agree that the US justice system has some serious issues.
Like right now, as of January twenty twenty three, the

(06:56):
US incarceration rate is one of the highest in the world.
Right We're talking five hundred and five people incarcerated per
one hundred thousand, and one of the big questions a
lot of people have from the outside looking in without
your expertise, is how did the US find itself in
this situation? And Jason, is something you talked about quite

(07:17):
a bit on wrongful conviction.

Speaker 8 (07:19):
Let's start with you. What's your take.

Speaker 9 (07:20):
Here, Well, we are the most incarcerated nation in the
history of the world, and we lock our own citizens
up at five times the rate of Western Europe, fourteen
times the rate of Japan, we lock our black residents
of America, black citis of America up at a rate
that is higher per capita in South Africa during apartheid.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
So just sit on that for a second.

Speaker 9 (07:43):
Right, We have not too many statistics, I promise because
this is not a college course, but we have twenty
five percent of the world's prison population while we only
have four point four percent of the overall population of
the world.

Speaker 2 (07:55):
So that's crazy. But we also have thirty.

Speaker 9 (07:57):
Three percent of the world's female are in cells right
now while we're sitting here. They're sitting in steel and
concrete cages in the United States. So one out of
every three women in the world in prison right now
is in America. And America is not that big of
a country when you think about it, right It's like
I said, we're only like between four and five percent

(08:18):
of the world's population. So it's it has a lot
to do with the War on drugs, mandatory sentencing. I mean,
we're going to get into it, but it's it's got
to change. It doesn't make us safer, it actually makes
us less safe. It's a failure across the board. It's
a human rights disaster, and for some reason we feel

(08:39):
inured to this idea that we're just going to treat
our own people in such a barbaric way.

Speaker 2 (08:46):
But it's happening right now and it's we got to
bring it out into the light. So that's what we're
here for.

Speaker 4 (08:53):
Do you feel just a follow up here for the group,
do you guys feel that this has been normalized in
US society? And those those statistics are pretty shocking when
you hear them, just.

Speaker 1 (09:03):
Like, yeah, it's definitely like everybody. Most people think that
if you in jail, you're supposed to be there. Like
we we were talking about how people look at court
shows now like uh, the CSI's and the law and orders.
They think anybody that's in that box getting questioned is guilty.
So I think a lot of things are just people

(09:24):
don't care to realize if it's not affecting you, if
you don't have anybody close to you, that it's going
through these things, and you think, okay, well, and then
we vilify people on the news and the media makes
things seem like, Okay, this is what's going on, this
is why it's this way. People just accept it, But
when you really look at it, and then we see
it now things are starting to hit home for people,

(09:44):
and you know, the suburb things that you would just
look at, Oh well that only happens in the inner city,
that only happens in urban areas. Now it's reaching you
and now you're like, oh, okay, well maybe people need rehab,
you know what I'm saying.

Speaker 6 (09:56):
Maybe it's not you.

Speaker 1 (09:58):
Know, beat it out of 'em or put 'em in
jail or you know.

Speaker 6 (10:01):
So yeah, that's just kind.

Speaker 10 (10:02):
Of I think you have on something really interesting talking
about the cop shows and like the normalization you know
who loves those cop shows cops because it's sort of
this like fantasy world of like how the system operates,
like in its best light that could possibly be and
I've heard it called copagaina yeah, if there was a
piece on it that I think we talked about on
the podcast not too long ago, but to that point

(10:24):
about perception, you know, on stuff that I want you
to know. We hear from a lot of listeners who
have various opinions on you know, the brokenness of the
legal justice system, but they're all coming from kind of
anecdotal places, places of like you know, observations based on
someone they know or a story they've heard, and you
don't always get it right when you're just looking at
it from one side, and you know, you might have
a piece of the puzzle, but you're not going to

(10:45):
see the kind of holistic view of it. Greg, can
you talk a little bit about, you know, what the
average person needs to understand about the large some of
the large and that's a very big question, but some
of the larger rations at play here that maybe you're
not going to get from just having a kind of
anecdote or experiential you know, opinion on the brokenness of
the legal system.

Speaker 3 (11:04):
Yeah, I think one of the things that we need
to know is that the criminal justice system is one
of the is where the more they fail, the bigger
they get to be, and they're actually used their failures
to justify expanding So, you know, I see, like what happened,
you know, after COVID, We saw you know, significant rise
of violent crime. We saw you know, overdoses skyrocket into

(11:27):
you know, the hundreds of thousands in the United States,
and now lawmakers are utilizing those numbers and their failures
to actually solve these problems over generations, to justify passing
even tougher laws that were going to exacerbate this, So
overdoses increase, Let's make penalties stronger, Let's do mandatory minimums
for that violent crime is going up, Let's increase the penalties.

Speaker 2 (11:46):
It's like the penalties are already high. Guys, like, this
is not working.

Speaker 3 (11:50):
And so you actually see a system that the more
it fails, the more they're able to justify those failings
with getting bigger. And I think that's something that we
need to kind of like step back and look at
it and go, guys, we've been doing this for how
long on this drug war and drugs are getting stronger,
they're getting cheaper, they're more prevalent, more people are dying.

(12:10):
What metric are you describing that says success right now?
But it's up to us. We need to vote, we
need to talk, we need to get our voices out
there as much as possible. And so, yeah, I think
that's kind of an area that we need to start
talking about, like what are you succeeding at?

Speaker 2 (12:26):
And it really is nothing Gilbert, and.

Speaker 10 (12:28):
Your investigations are anything that you'd like to add to
this sort of the holistic view of what might be
wrong and why people can understand that better.

Speaker 11 (12:35):
Yeah, I mean, I think we're sitting up here because
of false narratives. False narratives have carried the day, whether
it's war on drugs or whether it's these criminal justice cases,
wrongful convictions.

Speaker 12 (12:46):
You know, I'll give you an example.

Speaker 11 (12:48):
I don't get into statistics, but in Florida, since the
Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty, I think one hundred
people have been executed in the state of Florida. In
that same time period, thirty one people sentenced to death
row convicted sentence to death row have been fully exonerated
by DNA. That means the wrong person was sentenced to death. Now,

(13:09):
these are death penalty cases where you have a lot
of eyes on these cases. These aren't just run of
the mill felonies somewhere. This is one where the appellate
process and the lawyering that happens around these cases is
pretty extensive.

Speaker 12 (13:22):
And yet we're still getting it wrong that often. That
tells you there's a serious problem.

Speaker 4 (13:27):
Let's go let's stay with you here for a second, because,
as we said earlier, your work has done something powerful.
It's led to exonerations, and it's due to the efforts
and time you put in as a civilian, you know,
not working in law enforcement yourself. What are some of
your first hand observations. And this is very timely right

(13:48):
now because the subject of Bone Valley is up for
parole in just a few days, correct.

Speaker 11 (13:53):
Right, third big parole hearing. This will be his fourth
parole hearing. Then, you know, this is the thing. He's
served thirty five years in prison already on a twenty
five to life.

Speaker 12 (14:03):
Sentence model inmate.

Speaker 11 (14:05):
But the reason that he's still being denied parole is
because he refuses to admit and express remorse for a
crime that he didn't commit.

Speaker 12 (14:16):
So that's being held against him.

Speaker 11 (14:17):
And he's been standing on a claim of innocence ever
since he was arrested, and that's being used against him
every step of the way he was This is I'm
talking about a man named Leo Schofield who, after he
was arrested.

Speaker 12 (14:30):
Didn't look like there was much of a case.

Speaker 11 (14:31):
The prosecutor came and offered him second degree murder, which
in Florida at the time it would have been a
twelve to seventeen year sentence.

Speaker 12 (14:40):
He would have probably served of those of that time
three and a half years if he would admit it
to it. Instead, he just chose to face.

Speaker 11 (14:47):
The death penalty because he was innocent and he was
not going to take this plea because he felt it
would dishonor his wife he was accused of killing, and
so he did not take that plea and he's been
in prison for thirty five years, and so this claim
of innocence has been hurting his case.

Speaker 12 (15:04):
That shouldn't be the.

Speaker 5 (15:05):
Case, you know, a hundred percent Clayton.

Speaker 10 (15:09):
In your work, you know, you found kind of a
universality or sort of a shared experience in your audience.
And when you explore the war on drugs in particular,
what kind of prompted you to explore that topic and
explore that universality and the idea of the war on
drugs quote unquote sort of affecting more than just the

(15:30):
people who are being targeted or the people who are
getting convicted. It's really a cultural kind of phenomenon and
it's changed sort of attitudes, you know, in this country.

Speaker 1 (15:40):
Because I was getting harassed and I go to jail
and then I did comedy and the only way to
kind of deal with it was to talk about it.
And I would just look at the hypocrisy of what
happens sometimes, and I would bring up situations and just
really realize, it's not about these drugs that are available.
It's about it's not a world or walled people. You're

(16:01):
the people are the ones getting crushed by the families
getting messed up if you go to jail, like I'm
and now that I'm able to talk to police and
hear what they actually say, Like they have a saying
you might beat the rat, but you're not gonna beat
the ride, which is okay, cool, it might not go
on to jail, but this night is over for you,
probably gonna mess up you trying to go to work tomorrow,

(16:23):
probably gonna lead to you getting fired. Now you can't pay.
So it's an effect of you're saying you're trying to
get drugs off the street, but if you didn't get
them in a shipment that was in the tons, what
is it doing when you got twenty dollars worth of
weed from this person on the street or just things
like that.

Speaker 6 (16:42):
And I've and like.

Speaker 1 (16:43):
You know, I mean, I joke about stuff, but it
was things I was actually doing. Like I would be like,
I'm not going to jail for weed. I don't keep
more than I can eat on me. I see the
police lights, I'm eating a whole blood sometimes and it's
not even the police, it's a taxi. So you know
what I'm saying, Like now, I don't know when I'm
gonna be hi. But that was like that was like
situations that actually happened, and then like I just take

(17:04):
it to the stage because it I know that it's
going to connect with people, because if you smoke, when
you've been in that situation where you were high and
you get pulled over and you're not high anymore.

Speaker 10 (17:16):
It's like such a low barrier of entry to getting
you into the system, you know, and like then you're
in the system, whether you did something egregious or something laughably,
you know, minor, you're in it.

Speaker 5 (17:27):
And then you have to pay your way out of it.
And maybe you can't afford to pay your.

Speaker 10 (17:30):
Way out of it, and maybe then it's sort of
bankrupting you and causing problems with your family and leading
to additional problems.

Speaker 4 (17:35):
But yeah, that's like that's a question that I think
needs to occur more often for a lot of people.
It's there is a victimization of people who are already
disadvantaged and then demands placed upon them that would typically
depend on privilege, right, Like who who gets arrested for

(17:57):
twenty dollars worth of weed and then instantly has a lawyer?

Speaker 6 (18:02):
Right?

Speaker 4 (18:02):
Not a lot of people. And this leads us something interesting.
This one is for Greg. We'll start with you and
then we'll go to the group. You mentioned something that
I know you guys talk about a lot of more
on drugs, which is the perception of the uptick.

Speaker 12 (18:16):
And violent crime.

Speaker 4 (18:18):
Right, And we hear this cyclically like throughout the years
that there's an uptick and violent crime.

Speaker 8 (18:24):
Something must be done.

Speaker 4 (18:25):
We all agree there's a problem, no one agrees how
to fix it. And you guys, Clayton, Greg, you guys
have talked a lot about what solutions are. And Jason
you've done this as well, like ineffective versus effective solutions?
What does that mean to someone on the outside? How
do you How does that play out in the real world?

Speaker 3 (18:48):
Yeah, you know, our response always is that sledgehammer on
the back end that we want to increase penalties and
we want to you know, really show you up, get
that pound of flesh. And that's what gets your electorate happy.
That's why people want to move that.

Speaker 4 (19:05):
It's like the stance of typical legislators.

Speaker 3 (19:08):
Yeah, okay, yeah, and so yeah, so you want to
pass all these different laws and exacerbate these and you
want to put police in these situations where they have
to you know, arrest people and really get the arrest
numbers up on drug crimes. I know, like I grew,
I lived in Baltimore for a while and it was
during kind of the o'maley times.

Speaker 2 (19:23):
That was a big thing.

Speaker 3 (19:23):
Let's increase the arrest that's going to show that we're
really tough on it. Then you start thinking about it,
and so you know you're saying, wow, we don't have
enough police. Okay, so now you're wasting a bunch of
time utilizing your police department to you know, essentially harass
a bunch of people, like in the inner city to
just get arrests on there. So that's taking a cop
off the street. Now, that's putting that person in a
worse position. And then they start becoming these habitual offenders

(19:46):
because they have a bunch of drug arrests and things
like that.

Speaker 2 (19:48):
And so that's the issue.

Speaker 3 (19:49):
So we always go on this back end or pound
of flesh aspects instead of actually looking at what the
root causes are and when you have something like COVID happen,
or in two thousand and eight when the housing crisis happened,
we saw both those situations where crime went up and
also drug use grow significantly. It kind of really shows
the rot of the foundation of our criminal justice system,
how little we've invested in these other things, like the

(20:10):
front end community servicing programs or addiction treatment especially. We
have such a lack of knowledge societally and from a
government standpoint about what addiction is and how to actually
solve it. We addiction is so much about your social situation,
that things going around you and losing those connections and
trying to find that kind of fill something with that whole.

(20:30):
And so then we throw people into a steel cage
and tell them to get better. What do you think
is going to happen to these people? And so this
is what we continually do. And so this lack of
front ends I think treatment, removing this from the criminal
justice system, putting it as a healthcare issue, those are
things that actually solve it. You know, it's kind of
it's maddening when you know, we would talk to someone
Johann Hari, we talked on the podcast It's great authors

(20:52):
talk about what they've done in Switzerland and these amazing
things and how crime and violent crime went down because
you know, a lot of crime is really drug related
from like the fundraising mechanisms to try to get a
two hundred dollars heroin at it. We don't have a
job all the things that come from that and all
like kind of the turf wars and things like that
that happen, and we talk about crime and crime and
violent crime and there's ways to solve it, and we it's

(21:12):
just not politically popular, so we don't care, and so.

Speaker 2 (21:15):
It's a little we ever. Yeah, I'll pause there and yeah.

Speaker 6 (21:18):
Sure, something of that.

Speaker 2 (21:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (21:26):
This episode is sponsored by Stand Together. Stand Together is
a philanthropic community that partners with America's oldest change makers
to tackle the root causes of our country's biggest problems.
Like many others who experienced addiction, Scott Strode was using
drugs and alcohol to the pain for him who was
childhood trauma. In his early twenties, Scott was invited to
a boxing gym by a friend and that's where he

(21:48):
discovered the healing power of sport and community. In two
thousand and six, Scott founded The Phoenix, a free, sober,
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help people treat and heal from addiction. Scott Strode is
one of many entrepreneurs partnering with Stand Together to drive
solutions in education, healthcare, poverty, and criminal justice. To learn more,

(22:09):
is it Standogether dot org. Hi, I'm Jason Flamm, CEO
and founder of Lava for Good podcasts, Home to Bone Valley,
Wrongful Conviction, The War on Drugs, and many other great podcasts.
Today we're asking you, our listeners, to take part in
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(22:30):
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So please go to Lava for Good dot com slash
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Speaker 2 (22:42):
Thank you for your support.

Speaker 4 (22:52):
We know that nothing occurs in a vacuum, and one
of the things that Noel and Matt and I have
explored in our years on our show is the systemic issues,
the problem of the connective tissue and identifying that, and
that's one of the things that we wanted to ask
you guys about, what is the connective tissue between.

Speaker 8 (23:17):
War on drugs and wrongful conviction.

Speaker 4 (23:19):
How does the situation in one exacerbate, feed or create
a feedback loop into the other, because it sure seems
like a change in one reflects a change in the second.

Speaker 1 (23:32):
I'll give it to Red after this because he knows
all the details and stuff, But for me just to see,
like our Edwin Ruber's episode, we saw somebody that was
in jail for drugs that did not get caught with drugs.
And I think most people don't think that. They don't
realize that there's people in jail for kilos of cocaine

(23:54):
that they never had, never got caught in their possession,
never had video footage of, never been seen with it,
because because somebody in whatever organization they in entered into
a deal with the with the Feds, and they take
this person's.

Speaker 6 (24:08):
Word for whatever they say.

Speaker 1 (24:10):
So it's essentially somebody higher up that knows how the
system works, using somebody as a pawn. And this guy
didn't have a gun. He got a gun charge because
they said that he didn't have any drugs in his house.
He got charged with trafficking when it was.

Speaker 5 (24:27):
There's no checks and balances on stuff like that.

Speaker 12 (24:30):
How does that happen?

Speaker 6 (24:30):
Well, they take go ahead, Greg. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (24:33):
So, I mean all these laws that we passed that
are for the guys of public safety, mandatory minimums, conspiracy charges,
truth and sentencing, all these things, they're all to make
the system move faster and quicker and more efficient. And
it all gets back to terrible incentives that we have
because the more convictions that prosecutors get, that's the way.

Speaker 2 (24:54):
That they rise up.

Speaker 3 (24:55):
The more arrest that cops are able to get and
get those convictions on there, that's how you rise up
on this wants to be a good soldier. Grants from
the federal government, a lot of them are based upon
the amount of arrests that you're getting and the amount
of drugs that you're coming in through there. And so
it's all these horrible ascents that are under the guys of
public safety. So conspiracy charges are absolutely terrible.

Speaker 2 (25:12):
We call it ghost dope.

Speaker 3 (25:13):
So Edwin Rubis was literally charged with thirty nine hundred
kilos that were never discovered. A guy higher than him,
and that more money was able to say that guy
had it on him and then he's able to get
it because there needs to be a body because you
charge this much, you arrested someone doesn't really matter who
goes down for this, like someone needs to because I
need a conviction that we just move forward.

Speaker 2 (25:34):
So what happens all the time.

Speaker 3 (25:35):
That's where I see kind of that connection between what
you do and you know, you talked about it earlier,
were talking about death penalty cases where there are multiple procedures,
tons of attorneys, all these evidence, all these definitely rules
of procedure, and they screwed up how often with these
let alone, you're run of the mill drug case or this,
and so it's this massive every court system and every

(25:55):
you ever sit in a court, it's all trioge.

Speaker 2 (25:57):
They're just triosh.

Speaker 3 (25:58):
And there's a public defender that just met you three
minutes ago, looking through your case file and wants you
just to plee out because he wants to get through
this case because he has four hundred a year. There's
a prosecute that's being overworked and has like two hundred
and fifty cases a year and he wants these to
move through.

Speaker 8 (26:11):
There's a judge that wants to get back and.

Speaker 3 (26:12):
Have cocktails at the the whatever club with his buddies,
or on going to his golf Git. They need to
move these through. No one wants you to actually go
to trial. And when you do, man, are they going
to come at you? Edwin went to trial. Edwin said,
I didn't do anything that they're telling me of. There's
no physical evidence. We when everyone's out of prison and
you're going to be in there until at least twenty
thirty three, this is how it goes. They punish you

(26:33):
for exercising your right. So everything actually works as planned,
and this is where you get those cloud our consequences
of wrongful convictions where people are actually innocent or you
just get hammered with it even if you've done something
wrong by the letter of the law. And so it
works exactly how it's supposed to. And the war on
drugs is really exacerbate all this because of the massive
amount of people that are just filing through our criminal
justice system.

Speaker 9 (26:54):
And I think one more point on the police and
the war on drugs and how that all plays out.
It's important for people to recognize that in the past
forty years Ish police have arrested they've made more pot
arrest they've arrested more people for pot than all violent
crimes combined.

Speaker 2 (27:10):
So when we think about it, and.

Speaker 9 (27:12):
This goes back to your question and how these two
worlds collide, right, Wrongful convictions happen as frequently as they do,
and they happen a lot. If you don't think it
can happen to you, it can definitely happen to you.
The fact is that because the system has created this churn, right,
eleven million people going in and out of jail in
America every year, and because it's some of the things

(27:33):
that Greg just highlighted, you have a system that doesn't
have time to worry about whether you actually did the
crime or not. They have a saying in police and
prosecutors offices, a body for a body, right, and this
is just on murder cases, right, But there's a body,
there's a dead body. They got to get it cleaned up.
Especially if it's a smaller town, high profile case. You know,

(27:53):
they got to clean it up. There's a lot of pressure.
They got somebody, it doesn't matter, and then they get
this tunnel vision. They start ignoring obvious signs that it
wasn't the person that they're targeting, and they for reasons
conscious and subconscious. They shut all that out and they
just laser focus on the person who they've got in
their sights, and that person goes down for the crime.

(28:14):
They're probably poor, they're probably underrepresented, they're probably, as you said,
represented by it. You know, in New Orleans public defenders
are representing four hundred people for cases a year, right,
and courts are closed on the weekends. I mean, I'm
not a mathematician. That sounds like at least one and
a half a day, right. So you know, a guy
comes in and goes, oh, yeah, what are you charged
with again?

Speaker 2 (28:33):
What was your name? Oh no, that's the other guy. Damn.

Speaker 9 (28:35):
Oh oh, my phone's ringing. You know, it's like and
you're going and they go, I think you should plead guilty.
You don't have been willing to offer you two years,
but if you go to trial, he might hit you
with We got a case we guy you actually call
me named.

Speaker 2 (28:47):
Siah Johnson in Virginia.

Speaker 9 (28:49):
He was innocent and he was offered a plea of
three years, turned it down, got one hundred and thirty
seven years in prison. How can we say you're so
dangerous that you have to be in prison for two
life times. But also you're not that dangerous because three
years of school, just like they did with Leo. Right,
you're so dangerous, we're going to send you to death.
When I said, well, it actually got life right. But

(29:10):
the fact is we're going to threaten you with death.

Speaker 2 (29:13):
The life which was just a stroke of luck.

Speaker 9 (29:16):
Yeah, living death right, which sends you to living death,
and it doesn't doesn't serve us as a society in
any way. Not to mention the expense, you know, David Kim,
who's right here, pointed out to me that the New
York City Controller, Like, I'm going back to your city
because where I'm from, But in New York City, it
costs five hundred and sixty five thousand dollars a year

(29:38):
to keep somebody in Riker's Island. At the same time,
you can put them in the Ritz Carlton in a
sweet you could send them with room service. Yeah yeah,
Harvard to throw that in too, right into my house.
That's what I'm saying, What did you do? I've stayed
there to night. And at the same time you have
you have organizations like Avenues for Justice that can take

(29:59):
a kid who's experiencing their first serious interaction with the
criminal legal system and take that kid and provide a
holistic solution, and they are able to sometimes talk with
prosecutors and judges and get them to turn the kid
back over to them. They spent spent two or three
years working with that kid, and the kids, ninety one
percent of them, never have another interaction with the criminal
justice system. They end up going to college instead of prison.

(30:21):
So we know what works, but I don't know why
we resist it so mightily. And if we were able
to reduce the mass incarceration problem, then there would be
time for people to actually have some of their rights
and to actually we got to go back to those standards.
I talk about this on the show on ronflk Bigshow
all the time. We got to go back to because
they're just words now, innocent until proven guilty. Everybody knows

(30:45):
that right, everybody knows beyond a reasonable doubt. But it's
out the window when you're just something to be processed.
You're not a human being after you arrested. You're just
somebody who needs to be processed into prison as quickly
as possible so they can get to the next one.
And it's I mean, that's that sounds it sounds pretty

(31:06):
dead wrong.

Speaker 3 (31:06):
To me, and it is and if I can just
and that's where the kind of the drug war gets
on it.

Speaker 2 (31:11):
It really is a war.

Speaker 3 (31:12):
We looked so much into kind of the propaganda, and
I know we all grew up in the times of
like Dare and all these CBS news reports, and they
made it look like they were like, you know, the
villain from a war that you are fighting. And when
you villainize people and you make them subhuman, you're able
to do things to them like deprive them on constitutional right,
send them to prison for a long time because they

(31:33):
deserve it, because they are an enemy. And so you're
able to do all these things because of this propaganda,
like you said, to make them just less of a
person very much.

Speaker 1 (31:42):
And you say it too, you always say, if it's
a war, then you got to have casualty. Yeah, So
what do you think the casualty is gonna be? Yeah,
and you mentioned it too. It mostly affects like poor people.
And I have a thing I say, it's expensive being broke,
like super expensive, just like even when I'm getting pulled over,
it's because a lot of times it was because I
had a.

Speaker 6 (32:03):
Rundown car tag lights out.

Speaker 1 (32:06):
Oh, you taped up the tag light and it would
just be a reON. I would see weed be the
reason for why they pulled me over. Oh we smelled marijuana.
You smelled marijuana. I was going in the opposite direction
you were going with both windows up. And I don't
have any weed on me because I ate it already.

Speaker 6 (32:22):
How did you like? So?

Speaker 10 (32:24):
Yeah, you know, Jason, you're talking about some you know,
positive things that can possibly change this system.

Speaker 5 (32:30):
But it sounds to me like these are generational things.

Speaker 10 (32:33):
These aren't These are you know, things that have to
be changed through education, like of a whole other generation
who will then maybe be in power.

Speaker 5 (32:40):
And actually enact those changes.

Speaker 10 (32:41):
Like can we look at a positive spin on this,
Like we talk about criminal justice reform?

Speaker 5 (32:46):
What does that look like to all of you?

Speaker 10 (32:48):
And how is it as simple as just like legislation
or is it a longer game than that.

Speaker 6 (32:54):
Oh?

Speaker 9 (32:54):
We have to changed people's hearts and minds first, right,
we have to change attitudes and perceptions. And you know, drugs,
as we've talked about, are not the problem, right, Drugs?
You know, at the Drug Policy Alliance on whose board
I serve for over twenty years. We have a philosophy
called harm reduction, right, which basically says, first you have
to accept that drugs have always been and will always

(33:15):
be a part of society.

Speaker 6 (33:16):
Right.

Speaker 9 (33:17):
Cavemen did payote Little kids been around in a circle
until they get dizzy because they like that feeling of
being out of there, you know, like being a little goofy.

Speaker 2 (33:24):
Right, and you do it too, right. I say, I
was a little worried, but I figured it'll be okay.

Speaker 9 (33:32):
But the you know, but the fact is we need
to accept that and then start to say, okay, what
can we do to reduce the amount of harms that
drugs do to society. These guys made the great point
on the War on Drugs podcast about how you can.

Speaker 2 (33:46):
Say one thing for the war rus. I think it
was you, Clayton.

Speaker 9 (33:48):
We gave it a good try, right, one hundred years,
a trillion dollars, and it's worse that it's ever been.
I'd say, I mean, I'm not a genius, but I'd
say that's a pretty great failure. And the fact is,
so I think we do have to elect better, you know,
people into office, right, who will you know see these
changes through and the good news is. You know, when

(34:08):
I started this, we were talking about earlier, when I
started this work thirty years ago, and people are like,
you're doing what like decriminalization, that's crazy mandatory sensing.

Speaker 2 (34:15):
What's that? I don't understand, blah blah blah.

Speaker 9 (34:17):
But now, but somebody put their arm around me, somebody
who I thought was old and wise at the time,
turns out he was and said, hey, kid, takes thirty
years to change anything. And I was like, well, here
it is. I was ninety three. It's thirty years later.
And we you know, it used to be get cracked
in the head by a cop for smoking a joint
washing Square park and now you can buy it in

(34:38):
the park, like from people who have a little booth
set up right, and they got like a little rainbow
flag or whatever.

Speaker 6 (34:43):
You Yeah, things are.

Speaker 2 (34:44):
Good, you know what I mean.

Speaker 9 (34:45):
And so and I also have to say because Clayton
made that point before and growing up, I mean, I smoked.
I kind of thought of myself as like the Jewish
Bob Marley. I wanted to smoke as much weed as him, you.

Speaker 6 (34:56):
Know what I mean.

Speaker 9 (34:57):
And I had hair down like down hear and all
the way around. I couldn't even see unless I look
this way to see through the little slit in between.

Speaker 2 (35:05):
My hair and their style.

Speaker 9 (35:06):
Yeah, and I always smelled of weed and I because
I started the morning, I mean half the time I
was on fire, you know what I mean. And yet
I never got arrested because I was white and I
lived in a zip code where they didn't arrest kids
like me for things like that. So that's one of
the things that informs my work is that I don't
like on fairness and it's totally unfair. I don't think

(35:29):
anybody likes unfairness when they see it, but when it
happens behind closed doors in police stations and prison cells
and places like that, we don't see it, and we
need to see it, and we need to see these
people as just people. We're not perfect, you're not perfect.
But I also didn't need to go to jail. I
went to rehab and I ended up starting a business
employing dozens of people, paying lots of taxes.

Speaker 4 (35:51):
This we're talking right about huge changes, shifts and paradigms,
right see changes, and we your statistics constantly and we
know I think the average person again will agree there's
a problem, will not agree on the solutions often, and
then they'll have the kind of party line. They'll say, like, oh, well,

(36:14):
what I should do is just I should vote right,
I should vote once every four years, I think, is
how most people do it in the States. But when
we talk about this, you know, Matt said something really
beautiful earlier when he beautiful and horrifying when he said,
you know this, the war on drugs affects you.

Speaker 8 (36:37):
And it's something I've heard all of us echo.

Speaker 6 (36:40):
Right.

Speaker 4 (36:40):
It doesn't matter if you do or don't smoke weed
or whatever, it somehow will affect you.

Speaker 9 (36:48):
Is the.

Speaker 8 (36:50):
Reverse of that true?

Speaker 4 (36:51):
Does that mean individuals can somehow affect the situation for
the better? Can you affect the war on drugs? You
affect wrong and full conviction as a civilian, as just
a regular person like all like all of.

Speaker 1 (37:05):
Us, right, I didn't think you could before I did
this podcast, really like, I just thought it was you know,
it is what it is. You could say stuff and
you could post online all you want, but it took
somebody like Greg to be like, no, Like, if enough
people make enough noise on this issue, then you can
get the ball rolling on things. You said, what call

(37:25):
your legislator three times.

Speaker 2 (37:27):
It does.

Speaker 6 (37:28):
People started getting it moving.

Speaker 3 (37:30):
It really does. Like if anyone's ever worked on the
wallmaker's office, some of that. You get a couple of
calls on the bill. I mean things, it goes nuts
in the in the bility. They think people really care
about it.

Speaker 10 (37:39):
You'd be surprised to know how few people actually do that.
So when it happens, it's kind of alarming.

Speaker 6 (37:46):
It's probably my design too, Like you know what I'm saying, what's.

Speaker 5 (37:51):
The same with convoluted laws.

Speaker 10 (37:52):
I mean, like you're just not being able to drill
down and fully understand. They make it that way, you know,
to disempower people. But can you talk about the Eric andresuation.

Speaker 5 (38:00):
A little bit that you're involved in, Like I mean.

Speaker 10 (38:02):
That's I think a good example of like giving a
megaphone to these types of injustices.

Speaker 1 (38:08):
Oh yeah, So if you all don't know, I was.
I have a lawsuit against Clayton County because I was
harassed at the airport. Just try to give it to
you long story short. I was go, this is past security.
I'm at the airport. I'm getting on the flight to
go to California. I'm getting on the jet bridge. This

(38:29):
is the jet bridge. It kind of curves around. Two
officers stop me. They don't stop anybody else. They asked me,
can we search We're looking for people who have drugs
and bla blah blah blah. And I'm like just trying
to get on this flight, and in my head, I'm
also thinking who takes drugs to Los Angeles? Like I
think you need to be on the other flight when

(38:50):
they come, because like it wouldn't make sense to me,
But that later made sense. But they just, you know,
doing a lot of small talk and searching. And when
I got on the plane, I was thinking, Okay, they're
going to come back on here and pull me off
this plane. They're just waiting for everybody else to get
on the flight, and then they're gonna take me to jail.
I don't know what they're taking me to jail for.
I didn't have anything, but I just remember thinking that,
and I wanted to say something to the story this.

(39:11):
I didn't, and I just kind of took it, took
it on the chin. That's how most things happened with injustice.
Are getting harassed, you just kind of ride with it.
And then the same thing happened to Eric Andre. He
talked about it on the Jimmy Kimmel Show, and I
knew him, I've worked with him a few times, so
I just reached out to him and I was like, hey,
the same thing happened to me w and he was like, oh, okay.

(39:31):
And then he reached out a few weeks later and
said that he was gonna try to pursue, like l
a lawsuit and if I wanted to be a part
of it. And We've had other people that have joined in.
And one of the things that we found was I
think sixty seven percent of the people they stopped were
people were like black people, and I think eighty percent
were people of color.

Speaker 6 (39:52):
And they called it a.

Speaker 1 (39:54):
Drug in addiction program, and they took they stopped.

Speaker 6 (39:58):
They got three.

Speaker 1 (39:59):
Stops for drugs, ten grams of weed, a dude with
some gummies, and somebody who had no uh prescription pills
with no prescription And that was in eight months. But
in that same eight months, they confiscated a million dollars
from people getting on the plane of course. Yeah yeah,
uh civil ascid forfeiture, yeah, which I yeah, and yeah.

(40:22):
So basically they were taking money from people who didn't
really and and it's a shakedown, cause if I wouldn't
had money on me, they would have said, where'd you
get this money from? We think it's drugs? Were charging
the money s. Do you wanna get on this flight?
You wanna argue with us, maybe go to jail, or
you wanna get on this flight, then you could fly
back here, get an attorney and try to figure out
how to get this money back, which you won't, which
you won't exactly. So yeah, what's happening now is basically

(40:44):
they're uh, they're accusing, uh, they're saying that they're you know,
there's no wrongdoing on their part, they're allowed to do it,
and they're trying to get the case dismissed. But we've
had more people that have joined the case and no
money was taken from me or eric Andre. But now
some of the people in the case are people who
actually had their money seeds.

Speaker 10 (41:05):
You're talking about a more brazen version of what happens.
And you already get put in the system in the
first place, where you got to pay for those buy
classes or whatever they might be. That's all third party
you organizations that aren't governmental, they're just a company that's
set up to take your money.

Speaker 1 (41:22):
Yeah, And I think the way Atlanta Airport is set
up is it's patrolled by Atlanta Police Department, but it's
in Clayton County's jurisdiction. So what it looked like to
me is they were just kind of using the airport
as their own little piggybag and Okay, this person looks
like they might have something. They were definitely profiling because
they're like, Okay, who looks like they have something, And Okay,

(41:42):
let's see if they have cash. And it was a
lot of people that'd be like, well, why would someone
have that much cash? And first of all, it's US currency.
Second of all, this is Atlanta, this is a city.
It's everything operates off cash. We got a big strip
club industry, big nightlife industry. We've got I mean I
get paid in.

Speaker 6 (42:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:02):
So yeah, I just think that somebody shouldn't have cash
and that it should just be taken from that's ridiculous
to me.

Speaker 3 (42:07):
Well, here comes back to like bad incentives within the
drug wars that a significant amount of that revenue goes
directly back to propitiatory law enforcement offices, and that's actually
how they raise a lot of their resume for their
operating budget. So the VIDOJ did a big, you know
investigation first in Missouri after you know, they had up
people there and what they found was like this one
incident happened and then you know, things happened after that,

(42:28):
but it was a lot of other foundational stuff where
there's emails from the city council to the police chief saying,
we need a ten percent increase in revenue.

Speaker 2 (42:34):
What are you going to do?

Speaker 3 (42:35):
And now they're harassing the community members and they're actually
putting cops and like these spots where like they're having
to harass to sent and finally when something happened, they're like,
we've had enough, and like this is the things that
start to happen. And so these horrible incentives and drug
cases are the ones that bring in the quickest, easiest
revenue when you're able to suspect drugs on it.

Speaker 2 (42:51):
So that's what happens.

Speaker 8 (42:52):
Yeah, what'd you call it? Ghost dope?

Speaker 6 (42:54):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (42:54):
Yeah, So that's that's another part of like what you're saying, Clayton,
is this describing a situation where someone is able to
fight back to seek redress for what's happening. And we
see so many people, I think again targeted because it's
known they it's assumed they will not have the means

(43:15):
to survive the length of time it takes to fight
the system.

Speaker 6 (43:19):
Right.

Speaker 4 (43:19):
So with with this in mind, you know, we see
again this is something that can affect everyone, like Jason,
like you were saying, he said, And if you don't
think it can happen to you, it can happen to you.
And with this, like we've we've laid a lot of
groundwork here and you guys, shows are such deep dives
for firsthand knowledge like Bone Valley, wrongful conviction, War on drugs.

Speaker 8 (43:43):
I think no, I think we open it up to
the audience.

Speaker 4 (43:46):
Yeah, let's get some let's because we can't answer the questions,
but these guys in the middle probably can't.

Speaker 9 (43:53):
So yeah, I want to just make one statement before
we do that, on asset for for sure, because since
twenty fourteen, this was first reported to Washington Post, police
have stolen more money and property from civilians every year.

Speaker 2 (44:08):
Than all the robberies combined.

Speaker 9 (44:10):
And you can look that up. It's five billion to
three and a half billion. And that was twenty fourteen
and since then nothing's changed. And it's because of that
because they don't have to prove a crime. They just
take your money. They go, we think you might have
been involved in some work.

Speaker 6 (44:23):
They don't even charge you with the crime.

Speaker 5 (44:25):
You don't need to arrested.

Speaker 2 (44:26):
No, there's no condotion requirement that you're.

Speaker 6 (44:28):
Pretty charging your money.

Speaker 3 (44:30):
The state of Georgia versus one hundred, one hundred and
seven thousand dollars or in nineteen eighty five Corolla.

Speaker 8 (44:38):
There's no recourse.

Speaker 6 (44:39):
Well, you could challenge it.

Speaker 8 (44:40):
A lot of yeah, but a lot yeah.

Speaker 3 (44:42):
A lot of the forfeitures are such little money, and
you'd be like a voucher or something, six hundred dollars
from you, You're going to hire defense attorney for five
grand to get your money. All these good default judgments
most of the time anyway, don't. People don't challenge it,
and it's a very low barrier. It's from unders of
the evidence normally, which is like.

Speaker 8 (44:56):
How are you more likely than not? How are you
getting to court when they take your car? Right?

Speaker 7 (45:14):
So, I just wanted to start opening everybody here being
able to ask questions here with a question to you, guys,
I've never had to hire an attorney for a criminal thing.
I have no idea what that looks like. I have
no idea how to do that. I probably don't have
the money to hire the right attorney to get me
out of something intense like this. Are there any resources

(45:34):
out there for someone who has been arrested they can
look for, like a pro bono attorney who would work
on their behalf or is it we really just have
to rely on the attorney that's assigned to us when
we go to prison.

Speaker 3 (45:50):
Yeah, and I'm sure you have. Yeah, I mean it's
few and far between. There is some and even a
public defender if you have financial means, if you're not
a below a certain thing rushole. A lot of times
they you know, they kind of really can't provide one
to you either, and so it's tough. There's some law
firms that do some pro boner work, you know, on
that with criminal defense, but a lot of the times

(46:11):
it's either the public defender or you kind of trying
to figure out our scrape around.

Speaker 2 (46:15):
I mean, it's it's it's tough.

Speaker 3 (46:16):
I mean, public defense is one of the most underfunded
systems that we have, and Sore already had a disadvantage
going against the government, and then we underfund our public
defense system pretty egregiously. There's federal lawsuits all across the
country on that type of disparity.

Speaker 8 (46:30):
So yeah, you're yeah, good luck.

Speaker 2 (46:34):
That's why a lot of people play.

Speaker 6 (46:35):
I mean, yeah, that's what happens.

Speaker 11 (46:36):
Yeah, I'll just jump One of the things that you know,
I hear a lot is that the post conviction process
is so daunting that storytelling is actually one of the
most effective ways to change the narrative.

Speaker 12 (46:47):
I mean, we're all up here because of false narratives.

Speaker 11 (46:49):
I mean, if you look at you know, Jason's how
many how many people have you had on the program three?

Speaker 9 (46:54):
I think we're three hundred and sixty something episodes so far,
and we will never stop making.

Speaker 12 (46:59):
The who's been exonerated?

Speaker 11 (47:01):
So a false narrative has brought them into prison for
years until something happens and they're cleared.

Speaker 12 (47:07):
The War on drugs, you could look at that.

Speaker 11 (47:09):
As I remember this just like the demonization and the
dehumanization of people and just scaring people into thinking that,
you know, black people are going to have this crack
mania and they're going to have superhuman strength. We need
to protect it, we need to write stronger laws. I
mean that was part of it too, and so these
narratives that get built. I mean, I'll just tell you

(47:29):
in the case with Leo Schofield, you know, at one
point I've been working with him for several years and
you know, we're kind of done with the investigation, and
he said, you know, what do you think is going
to happen to me? And I said, Leo, I don't
know the post conviction process. I mean, it's so daunting.
The only thing I can promise you. I can't promise

(47:49):
that you're going to get out of prison because of
this information, but I can promise you that we are
changing the narrative of your story. And that's why these
podcasts are so important, because as we can do the
deep dive into a topic and actually show the truth.

Speaker 12 (48:04):
And I think that's why you see so.

Speaker 11 (48:06):
Many exonerations, because if you have the storytelling aspect, whether
it's lawyers or writers or journalists who can come in
and sort of expose this, it's really important. And it
is a positive step because I have to be honest
with the state of journalism right now is not that great.
And so when you look at a lot of these
communities that are having these crimes, a lot of times,
the local reporters their biggest sources of the prosecutor and

(48:28):
the police. They don't get the other side of the story,
so they just kind of repeat the state narrative and
that's how it just perpetuates and grows until some people
like us can come in and look at.

Speaker 12 (48:38):
It from a different angle and hopefully change it.

Speaker 7 (48:41):
You guys are really fun at parties, aren't you?

Speaker 6 (48:43):
On those Ben's line?

Speaker 9 (48:47):
By the way, anyone, I hope somebody asks a question
about bail reform by the way, just saying.

Speaker 7 (48:52):
Oh yeah, hey, does anyone have a question about bail reform? Okay, okay,
but really would anyone like to ask a question of
the panel?

Speaker 12 (49:01):
Hi?

Speaker 13 (49:02):
I just want to say, I'm thankful for what you
guys do, But what's a way that US citizens can
really make a difference outside of the narrative? Because there
is a larger crime that's more than the citizens. It's
like the government, Like how do you come against that
when you can sell weed now but you're not getting

(49:27):
the people out that you got on petty crimes? Or
like how do you come against a government that is
backed by the NRA?

Speaker 2 (49:33):
You know?

Speaker 13 (49:34):
Like so it's big companies that pay for the media,
that pay for like how things get ran, and they're
also behind the government.

Speaker 9 (49:41):
I think the first thing is to learn what's really
going on. There's a fantastic newsletter called alex Copaganda Newsletter.

Speaker 2 (49:51):
You mentioned copaganda.

Speaker 9 (49:52):
It's alig alec Apostrophes Copaganda Newsletter, and that will give
you a perspective on I think a lot of the
questions that you're so properly raising. And thanks for that question,
by the way, and yeah, and since nobody asked about
bail reform, I'm just going to say, you know, back
to the question that was posed a minute ago. You know,

(50:13):
you better hope with your public defender that you're not
in jail awaiting trial, because if you are, that creates
a whole nother cascade of problems, right if you think
about it. If you too poor to post bail, then
you can't not only can't assist in your own defense,
you can't meet with your attorney. They're not going to
come to the jail to meet with you. They're busy,

(50:34):
and you can't take care of your family. You can't
go to your job, you can't do any of the
things that you would be doing otherwise. Jails are generally
more violent and dangerous than prisons. People think that's counterintuitive,
but it's true. So you're subjected to the most horrible
conditions and deprivation. And then on top of that, you
don't see this on the TV shows, But if you're

(50:55):
in on because you can't post bail and then you're
being brought to trial, first of all, prosecutor can offer
you listen, you're going to stay here for two three
years before we get around to you unless you want
to plead guilty and go home.

Speaker 2 (51:05):
So you got that pressure.

Speaker 9 (51:07):
But if you decide to go to trial, now, they
wake you up around two in the morning, they don't
feed you, They put you in a bay, they put
you a waiting room, then they put you in a van.
Then they take you to another jail in the courthouse
and you're held there. You're also not fed. Then by
the time you get into the courtroom you look half
crazy because you're sleep deprived, you're starving, and also you've
been subjected to the most brutal conditions imaginable for weeks, months,

(51:31):
or years. Think about Khalif Brouder and that whole horrible story. Right,
rest in peace, But so the bail reform. I just
wanted to mention this because bail reform is so misunderstood
and it's so important for people to understand it.

Speaker 2 (51:44):
It makes us much safer. And every study that's been.

Speaker 9 (51:49):
Done has shown that bail reform decreases the probability of
the person who didn't go to jail pre trial committing
a new crime dramatically. And it makes sense because I
think you were talking about it before. If you do
go to jail, your problem's just got a lot worse.
Even if you're there for three days a week, you're
losing all the things that Clayton talked about, and now

(52:09):
you may not have a choice but to commit a
crime if you want to eat, or if you want
to feed your kids, or whatever it might be. So
bail reform is one of the most successful policies that
I've seen in my thirty years of doing this work.
But politicians are trying to They'll take one case of
somebody who got out on bail and when it hit

(52:29):
you know, some old lady over the head at an ATM,
and you know, they'll make that into a big thing,
and of course the news will report that because it's
better for clickbait. Right, nobody wants to report good news stories.
No one wants to report the things that we're talking
about now. But bail reform makes us safer and saves
us huge amounts of money. Remember the five hundred and
sixty five thousand dollars year to keep somebody in riker's

(52:49):
ould who hasn't been convicted of a crime.

Speaker 4 (52:51):
So that is so then to that question, that's one
of the things average person could do is maybe engage
with their legislators about bail reform.

Speaker 3 (53:00):
Absolutely, yeah, and give a damn about your local elections.
Like we can talk about president and they're all important,
but your sheriff's elected, your district attorney's elected, a lot
of judges are elected where you're at, Like, those are
the people making the decisions. So you talk about bail reform, Yeah,
you can be able to pass a law, but if
you get a district attorney that says this is how
we're going to handle our jails, or you get a
sheriff that says that this is how we're going to

(53:21):
handle our jails, or this is where we're going to
prioritize resources, like those are the elections that don't get
as much attention, particularly when they're not in a presidential cycle,
like those are the ones you really need to care about.
That's where you see that kind of systemic change happen
in these areas. And so I know, and you know
in Houston when they went through a lot of their
their bail reform, stuff like that probably doesn't happen if
there isn't certain actors and you know, within that that
realm and things like that, and that's what really really

(53:43):
matters to a lot.

Speaker 6 (53:45):
Of this stuff.

Speaker 3 (53:46):
You can have, I know, how many bills get passed.
A good example this is onforfeiture in New Mexico banned
criminal for civil forfeiture.

Speaker 5 (53:53):
It was only criminal city.

Speaker 8 (53:54):
If Albuquerque just.

Speaker 3 (53:55):
Had some folks there that were like, well, I guess
it doesn't it doesn't apply to us. We're going to
continue to do this, like all right, well there you go.
I mean, yeah, they can have the best law in
the books, but they'll be able to figure out a
way to navigate around that.

Speaker 2 (54:05):
You can pass earn.

Speaker 3 (54:06):
Credits where you allow people to get her in credits
in prison, but if you're a prison warrior, share doesn't
want to give those out.

Speaker 2 (54:12):
Ain't gonna happen.

Speaker 3 (54:13):
So it really is that local, hyper local elections that
really matter on the criminal justice level.

Speaker 14 (54:18):
So I wanted to talk about prosecutors in this process.
You guys talked a little bit earlier about kind of
the way things are perceived in the media, with you know,
police and everything being kind of pro police. I think
a lot of times there's also a perception that prosecutors
everything they're doing is noble and good, and I think
that's oftentimes the case. But I'm curious your perception about

(54:40):
the concept of like prose prosecutorial misconduct, kind of the
politics of play, the pressure there under to secure convictions,
just kind of in broad terms of your thoughts on that.

Speaker 2 (54:51):
You've had a perspective on this, take it to like
a micro level.

Speaker 11 (54:56):
I think one of the things that happens with prosecutors is,
you know, their job is defined to their job is
not to win convictions.

Speaker 12 (55:03):
It's to pursue justice.

Speaker 11 (55:05):
And so but you know, there's ego and career that
gets involved in that, and so you know, you want
to work your way up to be chief prosecutor or
maybe a judge someday.

Speaker 12 (55:13):
You don't want, you know, a bunch of open cases
or lost cases.

Speaker 11 (55:17):
And so I think what happens is it's like every
other business in terms of capitalism. You know, you have
prosecutors that are winning at all costs and they're willing
to cut corners, and a lot of that is that
what Jason just mentioned, that tunnel vision. That part of
your story doesn't fit my narrative. So I'm not going there.
I'm doing my narrative, and my narrative is this, and
that's how they get caught up in this thing.

Speaker 12 (55:39):
And I've talked to a lot of prosecutors who have had.

Speaker 11 (55:41):
Wrongful convictions, and you know, they attribute it to tunnel
vision and wanting to win the case, and so they
end up making a lot of decisions that you know,
cost people.

Speaker 12 (55:52):
Their lives basically, and they like to see themselves as
very noble and they don't want to see themselves as
somebody who's doing something.

Speaker 11 (55:58):
You know, frankly, there's no accountability for prosecutors. One of
the things that you know, sometimes I sometimes ask prosecutors
to talk to me about the cases, and they don't
want to talk to me because they know I'm not
doing the you know, the CSI type stuff.

Speaker 12 (56:13):
We're going to make them look like, how did you
catch the bad guy? How'd you do it? What genius
did you bring to the table for that.

Speaker 11 (56:18):
I'm asking questions about cases that went wrong, and you know,
they don't always want.

Speaker 12 (56:23):
To talk to me.

Speaker 11 (56:24):
One of the things that is really disturbing about that
is like they'll say, well, we don't do our cases.

Speaker 2 (56:28):
In the media.

Speaker 11 (56:29):
We do them in the court of law, where like
all the integrity is apparently. You know, if a prosecutor
screws up a case so badly and it gets overturned
at a higher court and appellate court, the worst thing
that ever happens to a prosecutors maybe he gets called
out in the opinion of that court saying the prosecutor
aired in withholding evidence that would have been exculpatory.

Speaker 12 (56:51):
And then he goes on and does to his next
next case, next conviction.

Speaker 11 (56:55):
If I was withholding evidence, let's just say, like I
had Leo confess to me, Schofield confessed to me, and
I said, gee, that doesn't fit my narrative. I'm going
to put that to the side and not tell people
about that. And then later on it's discovered that I
was withholding evidence.

Speaker 12 (57:09):
My books would be pulled from the shelves.

Speaker 11 (57:11):
I probably wouldn't get a chance to do another story
because that would be seen as such such a horrific
violation of integrity. And yet why is it that prosecutors
can do that all the time and go on to
the next cases, because there's zero accountability.

Speaker 12 (57:25):
And that's the thing I think that really needs to change.

Speaker 10 (57:27):
Couldn't you even be prosecuted yourself for withholding that kind
of information?

Speaker 9 (57:30):
Yeah, as a centien like first obstruction, or as a
defense lawyer, yeah, But as a prosecutor, you have absolute immunity.
Think about those words, absolute immunity, so nothing you do
can bounce back on you. And so then and you
also have almost total power. And we know what power
does to people, right, And I think there are people,
I think there are cops that go into the job

(57:52):
very idealistic, and then they change. The power does something
to them, right, and the culture does something to them,
and the train And then with prosecutors, they're human as well,
and they some of them I think, go in, you know,
very noble aspirations, but then they they become ambitious and
when they go back I have the criminal defense lawyer
that I know in California. Uh, Andrew Stein, he told

(58:14):
me that he sometimes in his closing argument, he'll say
to the jury when the prosecutor goes back to their
office for you know, tonight, this afternoon, after they've finished
the case, no one's gonna ask them, did you do
justice today? They're gonna say, did you win? And that's
what they want to do. They want to win, and
it becomes a game. And the problem is they have

(58:37):
the ability to mess with to mess with people's lives
to an absolute extreme. And when they do that, in
Prosecutorma's conduct is one of the leading causes. You'll hear
it again and again on the Wrongful Convictions podcast. It's
one of the leading causes of wrongful convictions. Polaves the
Prosecutormi's contuct also lying forensic people, et cetera.

Speaker 2 (58:55):
But the fact is that.

Speaker 9 (58:58):
They're incentivized to do that, and they're given the power
even with Brady violations like Brady is a Brady versus Maryland,
very famous Supreme Court case which says that prosecutors must
turn over exculpatory evidence to the defense, but they get
to decide what they think is exculpatory. So the wolf
is literally guarding the henhouse. And when they get like
I said, they get set, they're just gonna go and

(59:20):
they're going to And the last thing I'll say on
the subject is we should all care about this because
when prosecutors frame an innocent person for a crime, sometimes
they knew, let's face it, they knew they didn't commit it.
We don't like to think about that, but it's true,
it happens. Listen to the podcast if you haven't already,
you'll hear it.

Speaker 2 (59:38):
Again and again.

Speaker 9 (59:40):
They are actually acting in service of the actual perpetrator,
right that those forces of police and prosecutorial power are
focused on protecting the person who committed this heinous crime.
Because almost by definition, when you lock up the innocent guy,
you're letting the guilty person remain great, you're becoming an

(01:00:04):
accomplice well or or worse.

Speaker 7 (01:00:06):
Guys, I just want to say thank you so much
for this conversation. Uh it has been it's been like heavy, right,
really heavy. This is serious stuff. But you guys know,
you know what you're doing, and you're exploring this every
day on your podcasts. So as you said, Jason, I
think the best thing everybody can do here is subscribe.
To these podcasts, to wrongful convictions, to the War on

(01:00:28):
drugs and to Bone Valley and even stuff they don't
want you to know. Yeah, you can subscribe to us too,
that's fine.

Speaker 8 (01:00:33):
We're not above it.

Speaker 12 (01:00:34):
Yeah yeah, yeah, sure we.

Speaker 2 (01:00:36):
Talk about it's a good show. Check it out.

Speaker 7 (01:00:40):
But really, thank you, guys.

Speaker 12 (01:00:43):
I think we're gonna end the show now.

Speaker 5 (01:00:44):
Second incredible conversation.

Speaker 4 (01:00:46):
Thank you to Guiltful Clay, thank you, thank.

Speaker 8 (01:00:52):
You so much, in the

Speaker 6 (01:01:03):
In the tin, and then depend

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Lava for Good Live: The War on Drugs - Did Anyone Win?

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