March 11, 2019 • 41 mins
At age 30, Matthew was arrested for selling 216 grams of crack cocaine to an informant and illegally possessing a firearm. He was given a 35-year sentence. In prison, Matthew could easily have crawled deeper into his shell of anger, but he didn’t. His prison life was directed at exemplary rehabilitation. He took college courses and became a law clerk. And most importantly, Matthew became “genuinely repentant of his life before encountering the Grace of Christ, not offering empty excuses about his past, but taking ownership,” as a pastor would later describe him. In 2013, Matthew applied for a sentence modification because the Sentencing Commission had lowered guideline ranges for drug offenses. At his re-sentencing hearing, Judge Kevin Sharp commended his rehabilitation and reduced Matthew’s sentence. After spending 21 years in prison on a 35-year sentence, Matthew Charles was released in 2016. However, after a year and half of freedom, the court reversed the reduction in sentence, citing an error in his release. Remarkably, Matthew was sent back to prison in May of 2018 to serve out the rest of his sentence with more than a decade left to go. Then, the First Step Act, signed into law by President Trump on December 21, 2018, included a provision to apply the Fair Sentencing Act retroactively, which the government agreed would allow for Matthew’s immediate release. On January 3, 2019, Matthew Charles finally left prison for good.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This call is from a correction facility, and it's subject
to monitoring and recording exactly a hundred years. That's manly.
(00:21):
I'm a kid. I didn't do anything, you know, and uh,
you know that was that was real payingful man, No,
because my life was discarded as if you know, like
I was a piece of trash or something, you know,
a hundred years and I had dreams and I wanted
to do things. I wouldn't commit me crimes. You know.
That was a very good young man. That is what
(00:43):
happened in so many cases. The cops have a hunch
because they're so smart at the scene, they have a hunch,
and once they act on that hunch, they sort of
developed tunnel vision and they take off marching in the
wrong direction. And that happens in so many of these
wrongful convictions. The opening, uh the cell door, and I'll
(01:03):
walk down stairs. And I actually walked down stairs to
to be outside. It felt very strange to be, like
I said, to be walking without no shackles on my feet.
I thought it was a dream. But then again, it
wasn't a dream. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to
(01:28):
Wrongful Conviction with Jason flam. That's me. And today, UM
particularly excited because we have two amazing people in the studio.
First of all, the star of our show today, Matthew
Charles m His story is gonna blow your mind. I'll
leave it at that for the time being. But Matthew,
welcome to the show. And with him is Kevin Ring,
(01:51):
who has a remarkable story of his own, um, having
been imprisoned himself and now being the leader of an
organization that is very very near and dear to me,
Families Against Mandatory Minimums, on whose board I have served
for twenty five years. So Kevin, welcome, Thank you. So Matthew,
it all starts with you, because you've become sort of
(02:12):
an amazing symbol of this mandatory sentencing nightmare that is
a uniquely American problem, you know, and you're here now.
It's funny. I'm the only one here not in a
suit and tie, which is sort of ironic. But um,
that being said, Uh, you don't look like a guy
who would have been sentenced to thirty five years in prison.
(02:33):
You look like a guy who would be more likely
to be since the thirty five years sitting in a
corporate boardroom. But that's beside the point. So let's go
back to Tennessee and back to when this where this
story started, because you weren't wrongfully convicted, but you were
wrongfully sentenced and more than once. So let's go back
to the time of the crime and how this all started.
(02:54):
Back In was arrested on felony drilling a farm valations.
At the time, there was a warm drug so therefore
fifty grams and more for crack cocaine allowed you to
have a citizen range of ten years to life and
because of the amount exceeding fifty grams, it allowed me
to be at thirty years to life. And when I
(03:15):
was sentenced in nineteen ninety six, I received a thirty
or five years sentence. Then we'll get to that saga, right,
But what makes your story so newsworthy is the fact
that you were in for so long for decades and
then out and thriving on the outside for about two
years and then put back in. I was incoceprated for
twenty one and a half years before I was released.
The first time I went back in did seven more months.
(03:36):
Once I was sent back and the original thirty five
years sentence was reinstated, but throughout that process of time.
The citizen guidelines changed three particular times during that period
of mind conservation, in nineteen ninety six, in nineteen and
in two thousand teen, in nine and two thousand it
actually stated that the sentence that I was serving could
(03:58):
not even be above twenty years. So therefore, everybody that
got sentenced after two thousand, which was Book of versus Washington,
they received the sentence of twenty years for the same offense,
with the same criminal history and the same career. Fender
gut Last. The only thing changed was it took away
the mandatory nature by the sentence and gut Last. The
Rachel disparity didn't disappear, It didn't completely disappear. It got
(04:21):
a lord, you know, greatly in two thousand. In two
thousand ten, Senator Durban sponsored and championed the first mandatory
sentencing rollback in America in forty years. You know that rollback,
which I'm proud to say I worked. You know what
was involved in while it didn't establish parody for crack
and cocaine, it rolled it back from a hundred to
(04:43):
one disparity to eighteen to one. UM. Now, this is
an inherently racist situation because we know that the overwhelming
majority of crack arrests are people of color, and the
overwhelming majority of coke arrests are white people. So you
don't need to be a social scientist to figure out
what's going on there. I'll say this about Senator Durbin
because you mentioned him. He recently gave a speech, and
(05:03):
you don't hear politicians do this, but he said his
vote for the original hundred to one disparity A lot
of those guys voted for that at the time because
it was the height of the drug war. He said
it was the worst vote he ever cast and that
he was sorry for it, and that you know, since
that time he has worked hard to erase it, and
two thousand ten was the first step in doing that.
But I mean, it just takes a lot of courage
(05:23):
to say, you know, we were caught in a moral panic,
made a mistake, but as an elected ficial, I did
the wrong thing, and now I'm making amends. Even when
I went to meet him, he stayed at how he
was instrumental in the two thousand teen changes as well
as the ones that took place that released me in
two thousand nine, saying how does you know people? I
tell people about Matthew's case and they say, both, it
(05:44):
isn't that double jeopardy. He was in, he was out,
and he was put back into the same crime. Matthew
was sent back because the federal judge in his case
thought that the two thousand ten law applied to him
and should have benefited him, so he was able to
cut his sentence. And it turns out the appeals Corps.
So this was another funny thing about where politics work.
It was the Obama Justice Department who appealed the judge's
(06:06):
decision and said no, he should finish serving his thirty
five years, and then the appeals court agreed, and then
they sent it back to the judge. And now the
Trump Justice Department was there, and the judge said, I
really don't think I should be sending this guy back.
Are you sure you don't want to drop these charges?
Because he'd been out for two years and people saw
him and they said no, send him back. So everybody's
hands were on this. They could have left him out.
(06:26):
It was a decision to send him back just because
of this commitment to you know this this sort of
like formalism of this rule of law, like, no, that's
what the sentences. And even though we see that he
has been rehabilitated and he doesn't need this sentence, we're
going to send him back anyway. The thing about it,
you is me just being incoscerated for that period of
time and seeing others that are incostrated with the same
(06:48):
amount of time or more based on mandatory minimum sentences
with no way of having any type of relief. I
just hope that more changed his forthcomment, Well, what percentage
of the people that you were in with do you
are really a menister society? I would say probably, I
would say sevent five percent having over centers and are
(07:08):
not a minister society. And I would say fifty percent
of those people are changed. In February, I have become
a Christian. It doesn't matter what your religious beliefs are.
You have a right to justice for all. You have
a right to be senters for the crime and get
a punishment that suit for that crime, not to be
over centers. And the majority of people in there are
(07:29):
for non valiant offenses, and even some of those that
have valiant offenses, still they have changed over the years.
That's what I was speaking about. Either a person changes
because of their choice to change for themselves or their family,
or they may have an encounter or spiritual you know,
awakening like I may have had, or the fact that
they've just aged over the years and they've just taken
(07:49):
a real look at their lives. It doesn't take much
to awaken a person. But the sad part is that
those people that have been awoken are still awakened into
thirty years sentences life sentences, and they are non valient offenses.
We know that in most parts, I would say of
Western Europe, the maximum sentence you can get for anything
is fifteen years, you know, and some people say, wow,
(08:11):
that dangerous guyship. I mean, okay, we can have that
discussion right there. There may be exceptions, but in general,
the idea that in Western Europe you can murder multiple
people and get sentenced to less than half the amount
of time that Matthew did for you know, it wasn't
a small amount of crack, but it's still we're talking
about seven ounces, right, and can we put that in context?
Seven ounces? It would be like five or six sweet
(08:34):
and low packages, right or um. I don't know how
much is in an actual you know, sugar package that
you put in your coffee. But it's you know, it
would be not far off from that. So it's not
like you weren't Scarface exactly exactly. And you don't appear
to be a dangerous society either. I mean from everything
that I can tell from knowing you for the short
(08:54):
time that I have, But I can't even imagine your
perspective going from being one of two point two million
people in this school log system of America, anonymous, almost
without hope, and then the next thing, you know, here
comes Kim Kardashian. Next thing you know, you're being discussed
in the White House, and you're being discussed in the
(09:15):
halls of power, and you're actually visiting these places, and
you're on the front page of newspapers and everybody's knowing
the name of Matthew Charles. And the reason for that,
of course, is that you were freed. You were out.
Anyone could see that you were doing great right, You
were contributing to society, You're contributing to your community and
(09:36):
your family. And then what happened during the time that
I went back for those seven months, once my family
and friends started telling me that Kim Kardashian West at
first tweeted about asking the president to release me, I
do something about my situation. I wasn't all you know
what I mean. And then actually, once I was it
would be released. And thank her for speaking on my
behalf and having her hearts and her thoughts concerning me
(09:59):
throughout my plight. And I was able to go on
her page and tweet that. And then when she tweeted back,
God bless you, Matthew, I was like, Wow. And the
fact that she's speaking out against the mandatory minimum nature
of the citizen guidelines, all the mass and conceration extensive
sentences and calling for more criminal justice reform just as
amazing because voices like hers and people like her, Oh
(10:20):
I listen to and I'm just thankful for yeah, and
I am too. And you know, as you know, she
was on wrongful conviction. We did an episode with her
and we talked about your case, and you know, she
really is a passionate advocate. And because I started in
this work because of a mandatory sentence in case way
back in thee and once I was found out, I
(10:41):
was able to make a difference and get this kid,
Stephen Lennon home I was hooked and I'll never stop.
I mean, as long as I got breath to breathe,
I'll keep fighting the good fight. And I feel like
it's the same thing with her now that she's had
the experience of working with you and Alice Johnson and
she's in it now, and you know, having her voice
is it's just a great, great thing for the movement.
(11:01):
So and it takes voices like hers, and I'm asking, now,
what can we do for the laws that are still incocerating,
and that is it's a common thread. We've recorded about
eighty episodes of this podcast so far, and I would
say almost everyone has got the same goal that you do,
which is to help the others that were left behind.
I don't know any to come out and go, Okay,
I'm gonna go get what's mine now. No, everybody comes
(11:24):
out with this passion that is so inspiring and then
puts so much gratitude to my attitude because everybody wants
to go and help others and that's the way it
should be. And because the show is called wrong for conviction,
I wanted to ask you about that too. Before we
turn back to Kevin, what percentage of people because there
were hundreds, if not thousands, of people you've encountered in
twenty one and a half years in prison. What percentage
(11:44):
of them do you think we're actually in the sense
of the crimes for which they were convicted since my
incoceration in the federal system, I would say, because the
federal system uses a thing called conspiracy, and in the
conspiracy it doesn't take any real actual evidence. They can
just convict you on somebody's testimony. Are what we call
in the federal prison system as ghost dope. In other words,
(12:05):
they can give you an amount even though they don't
actually have that amount, just like even in my case,
be a two undred sixteen grounds, but the actual drug
amount that was attributed to me that could factually be
proven was fifty six grams. Everything else came from hearsay
testimony that I wasn't able to refute because the government
was able to get it in under the conspiracy rule.
(12:26):
So when saying that, I would say, either the people
that are incarcerated for drug offenses, I would say probably
sixty of them have been charged with conspiracy are ghost dope,
and the sad party is a lot of times in
the federal system they're forced to take complete So in
other words, the prosecution states to what it doesn't matter,
(12:47):
I'm gonna give you this amount of time. And normally,
because the court is bound by at the time, I
was sentenced to mandator a minimum and this is the
sentence that has to be imposed, and then the judge
just actually has the discretion to give you the low
end the mid of that sent us all the hot hand,
but it's normally already so hat they just give you
the low end anyway, you know what I mean. I'm
(13:08):
not laughing at this fact that they do that, because
it's sad and disappointing and so in other words, a
lot of times that is held over the inmates are
the prisoner's head to where they have to agree to
a police sent us then come into prison and know
that all the evidence that they gave against you was fabricated.
So a lot of times they got it wrong. You know,
we have this. I think it's an initiative that was
(13:30):
driven by the Innocence Project called the hashtag guilty plea
problem because in America, we know the nineties of felony
convictions are guilty please. And it's exactly I mean, you
said it very eloquently. That's exactly why it happens, because
for a lot of people, it's the only rational decision
you can make. Brian Banks a great example of that
in California, right pleading guilty to a rape that not
(13:51):
on even committed. It never happened, but he was advised
by his attorney like, we're gonna lose, you know, and
you're gonna get to life, and so he chose, you know,
the only rational choice. And fortunately eventually it was proven
that that he was as innocent as could be, but
it was too late to save him from the sentence
that he got. That You mentioned something you said about
(14:13):
these guilty plead problems. So glad the Innocence Project is
doing that. I've seen a lot of their work on
it and it's excellent. As you know, every year when
they released the number of gnorees, there's always a percentage
who pled guilty. People deny that it happens. Prosecuteur will say, no,
one innocent pleads guilty. It happens every year. We see
it now because of every day. Yeah, and we know
it because they get exhonerated by DNA evidence. And then
(14:34):
you look back in those cases and you say they played,
and it's always the saying why did you do it?
It was a better deal. And I was testifying in
Pennsylvania Senate and the great criminologist Mark Lemon said to
a hostile senator, if the prosecutor said to a person,
plead guilty and testify as we want, or we're going
to break your arm, no one would have any problems
(14:54):
seeing the moral problem with that threat. And yet breaking
your arm would be a luxury compared to spending thirty
five years in prison. So when you have a system
that's sort of incentivizes people to say whatever, do whatever,
admit to crimes that didn't commit, testivoue against people when
they didn't see something, you're going to get injustices. And
(15:15):
so I would even take one further. You can say
to people, um, please guilty, and we'll give you a choice,
either break your arm or spend years in prison. I'd
be investing in the company that makes the casts right
that company because everybody would take that choice, and I've
never heard a good comeback for that. That's exactly what
that choice feels like, is going to do this or
we have all the leverage in the world and especially
(15:37):
with mandatory sentences, because right if you say I want
to go to trial, I think I'm innocent or I'm
just bullheaded, and at least the judge would have some
discretion in normal case. Well with a mandatory minimum, if
the prosecutor brings it and threatens you with that, the
judge is cut out. Now you get to the end
of the sentence, you've been convicted, and the judge may say,
I don't want to give you that punishment, but I
have no choice. Now. These mandatory sentencing laws are so
(15:59):
out of step with the rest of the world, the
rest of the Western world, but almost anywhere in the
world you can't get these kind of sentences for for
drug crimes. No, that's right. It's only America who did this.
We had this crime rise, and we responded with these
mandatory sentences. No other country did that, and so our
incarceration rate, you know, grew. I always tell people the
(16:20):
same thing that from two thousand five, we built a
prisoner jail in this country every ten days, and that's
solely to keep up with how many people we were
throwing into the prisons because of these mandatory sentencing laws.
(16:40):
The fact that we incarcerate black males in America at
six times the rate of South Africa at the height
of apartheid is something that I can actually feel people
shaking their heads when they hear this, right, and that,
which is crazy becuse we're not even live so I'm projecting.
But the you know, the idea that a black man
in America without a high school diploma has a something
(17:04):
like a sixty something percent chance of spending a year
in prison before his thirtieth birthday. What like, I mean,
people don't talk about this. But the real reason that
Ferguson erupted, I think most people and most social scientists
would agree it was not because specifically of Michael Brown,
but it was because they were arresting people in Ferguson
(17:24):
for mowing their law in the wrong way, you know,
for walking down the street without I d I heard
that in Ferguson the average household had something like four
outstanding warrants, right, because they were just arresting people for
just being black, basically, right. And of course there's the
socioeconomic aspect of this, which is just basically pulling money
in so many sort of the farious ways from the
(17:48):
poor community and putting in the hands of certain corporations.
Who are you know, profiting from this mass incarceration, And
you know, I hope that listeners will check their portfolios
and divest from companies. If you have a pension fund
or anything else that you're involved with and you find
out that they own stock and private prisons, divest. We
have to make it known that we're not going to
(18:10):
be involved in profiting off of caging other human beings.
It's not okay. A lot of people doing don't know
they're doing it, so so it's worth taking a look. Well,
let me give you an example of something that just
happened this week, and I don't mean to be so
self absorbed about this. My sixteen year old daughter wanted
to have a debit card so she could go with
her friends and not have to always carry cash. So
we opened an account for her and she's been using
for a couple of weeks, and then we just got
(18:31):
to notice that her account was overdrawn, which it wasn't.
They said, we're closing it out and sending you the check,
and right away I knew what that was because I
had to co sign for that account. So I called
Capital One and I said what's going on here? And
they said, we're going to send you a close that
check and we'll inform you what this is about. And
all they did was send the close that check saying
this account was closed at the customer's request. No it wasn't.
(18:52):
We didn't ask to close it. And so I had
to bump around on a million phone calls and finally say,
I have a felony conviction. Is that why you closed
her account? And they finally said, yes, the bank has
made a business decision not to have an account with you.
So I went to prison for a year and a half,
as you know, for public ruption charges. My daughter can't
(19:13):
have an account a Capital One bank. So this is
a cultural problem. You wouldn't need to do this podcast
if everyone saw it the way you saw it. And
we see it right. So part of our problem is
we're trying to convince our fellow citizens that this is
the problem. And and look at its tentacles. I mean,
why can't a sixteen year old girl have a bank
account because her dad went to prison for year and
a half for you know, these charges. And that's the
(19:35):
way it is. And I'm fine, right, I have I
have a credit union account. I will be fine. I'm
more fortunate than most. What if you're a single mother
and you know you your husband had a conviction and
now you can't have an account for your kids and
that bank accounts the only chance. So we just penalize
people in so many ways, prison being the worst of it.
But you just never get out of the penalty box.
(19:56):
You don't get occupational licenses to do. You know, people
who barber in prison, then they can't do it on
the outside. We just never let people out and we
punish them. And that's I'd love to point to somebody
say it's their fault. But we countenance this unless we
go to say that the politicians, we don't want these
policies anymore. No, that's that's absolutely right, and you know it,
it's nuts because all of us want to live in
(20:18):
a safe society, right, all of us want our ourselves
and our families to be, you know, able to walk
the streets. And it shouldn't be that difficult for people
to understand that since ninety five or more percent of
people that are in prison right now are going to
be coming home, the only approach that makes any sense
(20:39):
is to give those people the best chance possible to
get back on their feet when they get out. Instead
we pull the rug out from under them. Then then
we act surprised when they have to resort to stealing
something or doing something else because they need to eat.
It's amazing. You know, in other countries they have recidivism
rate that's a tiny fraction of hours because they treat
(21:01):
their prisoners like human beings, and they paved the way
for them to come out and get back into society,
where we just put up barriers one after the other.
I love my country. I was born here. I know
how lucky I am to have been born here in
the first place. And it's because I love my country
that I want to see these things changed. You know,
it's a very interesting moment because this is, at least
(21:24):
to some extent, the only bipart is an issue right now.
Right there's such a divide in this country, but on
this issue there's some alignment. Is it because of the
fiscal problems that come? Yeah, I think it's more personal
than that. I think that people use arguments that they
can justify to their own side. So you hear conservatives
talking about the cost of prisons and and these things,
(21:46):
but Ultimately, I think it's a morrible issue for everybody.
It is a matter of fairness. The system didn't hit
every community in the same way, so certain communities were
sensitized to this issue earlier on. But now we have
this new study from Forward dot US that said one
out of every two adults in America has had an
immediate family incarcerated. So that's over a hundred thirteen million Americans.
(22:08):
I mean, obviously, I'm self interested. Fams been fighting this
for over twenty five years, thanks to your help. What
we're trying to do is take that number. Right. If
you were a lobbyist and you were trying to influence
a member of Congress, you'd say, hey, do I have
any plants in his district? Do I have any constituents?
We have constituents everywhere across this country. A hundred thirteen
million people have been affected by this system. What we're
(22:28):
trying to do is make them advocates, make them part
of a loud, noisy army that says we can't do
this anymore. A bad system will breed bad results, and
we have a bad system that incentivizes the wrong things.
And so what we're trying to do is get people involved.
Our particular interest is bringing forward the families who have
been affected by this. And I think about my situation,
(22:49):
you know the fact that I wasn't somebody who thought
he was going to end up in federal prison, but
when it happened to me, and all of a sudden,
you know, the next day, I'm taking my kids to
the bus stop, and one at a time, neighbors are
coming up to me over the next week saying, I've
never told anyone this, but my brother went to prison.
Somebody else come up and never told you when my
dad went to prison, and I thought, we're not talking
about this. It gets the point where I think it's
(23:11):
Abraham Lincoln has said, if you want to repeal a
bad law, enforce it strictly. We've got a point now
where we're locking everybody up, and so now every community
is saying, maybe we're doing this wrong. It's almost self
interest that's got us there. Every family has been touched,
either directly or indirectly by mass incarceration, you know, and
in this country the statistics are so insane, like the
(23:31):
one you just talked about, Like I'm sitting here listening
to it. I knew that number but it still doesn't
make any sense. Write a hundred and thirteen million people,
what is it. It's not a rite of passage. It's
nothing to be proud of. It's disgusting. What are we doing.
All we're doing is like trying to hurt our own people.
And unless you believe that American people are inherently evil
and need to be punished differently and more than other
(23:54):
people around the world, then the only other conclusion you
can draw is that we're doing it wrong. I believe
that mass incarcerations, maybe a controversial statement, is the worst
social policy disaster since slavery. I used to same analogy,
and I said that's not politically correct because I was
talking to some inmates and when some prisoners and I
(24:14):
was like, well, really, whenever in two thousand tens Centisen
guidelines changed and they said that this was based on
the racial disparity, crack cocaine, the pot of cocaine, the
majority of the people that got inconcerted with African Americans.
Then when it was changed from eighteen to one, but
those changes were not made retroactive. I did you kind
of make the analogy of slavery, because I was like, well,
(24:36):
you know, the slavery was wrong, and then it shouldn't existed.
So therefore you let the slaves go free. In this situation,
you're saying, Okay, we acknowledge that it's wrong, and we're
gonna stop slavery, but we're gonna keep the people slaves
that's already in there. And that's the way I look
at retroactivity. Not only did they turned around and change
the Centisen guidelines themselves to drug tables, So therefore it
(24:57):
was a clear admission that this was wrong. It was
the is proportionate to the black community. But yet you
still had over three thousand people me included that was
still inconcerated because it was never made retroactive. Uh so
the first step fact did make those changes retroactive. And
if I hadn't got out for those two years and
they was actually able to see me in society showing
(25:18):
that I had been rehabilitated by society's terms, they did
never even knew, and I still would have served nine
or ten more years in federal prison. Whereas I got
some fellow brothers that I considered my brothers because they're incocerated.
It doesn't matter what their race is. A lot of time.
People say, well, you didn't receive an infraction or distiminary
report in twenty one and a half years. Well, okay,
(25:40):
that's fine. To Dan, I'm still a work in progress.
But these people shouldn't have a long center just because
they commit a minor infraction or they do something wrong
in prison for centers that they shouldn't have had anywhere.
I don't want to say that their behavior shouldn't be
taken into accountability. But any time that you say, okay,
Charles is in a different category than the rest of
the prisoners that are in press federal prison, you're sadly mistaken.
(26:02):
Some of my best examples, some of my best mentors,
had life sentences, and to me, they were living a
better example of how to be. Somebody just changed and
I ever could. And it doesn't matter that I became
a Christian at that time, and they may not believe anything.
But once you start looking at it from the perspective
that he's a Christian, he didn't get it any trouble
(26:23):
and therefore the wrong that was done him needed to
be righting. Well, the wrong has done, anybody need to
be writing right. And it's interesting because talking to Matthew
and you know, he's a man of faith and everything else.
I'm a Jewish atheist, right so, but at the end
of the day, I think we all believe in the
same thing, which is redemption, right and America is supposed
to be a nation of second chances, and yet we're
(26:43):
actually the opposite. We are lock him up and throw
away the key nation. The amount of human potential that's
being wasted, the people that could be contributing to society
tax dollars, you know, is the most mundane example. But
you know, culture and everything else, it's a tragedy, you know,
(27:16):
in the limited amount of time we have left, I
want to talk about Families Against Mandatory Minimums. It's some
of the victories that the organization has won over the
last couple of years are really phenomenal. F A M
M dot org. By the way, Fleck blom right, f
A M M like music music, f A M M
dot org. I encourage everyone to go to the website,
(27:37):
sign up, learn more, get involved. But can you talk
about some of the work and some of the priorities
of Families Against Mandatory militis right now? Yeah, sure, Well,
a lot of the things that we've been working on
at the federal level were included in this first step back,
and you know, we're the first ones to say it
was first step back for a reason. It only made
incremental reforms. But the retroactive change of the crack law
(27:58):
has been a priority since they passed it in two
thousand and ten. We thought at the time that was
a difficult decision and probably for you too, that we thought,
this isn't retroactive. All these guys whose stories were told
now aren't going to benefit from this law. It made
no sense. So it's so glad to see that finally happen.
What we're seeing is people getting out like Matthew who
weren't serving twelve or fifteen year sentences and getting a
(28:18):
couple of year of breaks. There's lifers who are getting out.
There are people with sentences like thirty or five years
like Matthews were getting out. So it's been that's been
incredible changes to the compassionate release rules. We talk about
a sickness in our culture. We have this just bloodless
to make people die alone in prison cells, even when
they didn't get a life sentence. If they fall ill
(28:39):
while they're in prison, they just can't get out. Because
no one, you know, their family can't get through the
bureaucracy to get out of prison. And so there was
a change in this law that allows families and prisoners
to appeal denials by the Bureau of Prisons, or if
they don't get an answer in a timely way and
they're terminally ill, they can go straight to court. So
we're starting to see that work out. Another big change
(29:00):
that we were happy to support was in Florida, there
was a ballot amendment um. The big one was obviously
Amendment four, which gave felons the right to vote in Florida,
so that was hugely important and we supported that. But
we had another ballot measure because Florida had its third
highest incarceration rate in the country and had the quirk
in its constitution that said, even if the legislature wanted
(29:20):
to make its sentencing reductions retroactive, it didn't have the
power to do it. So we had to change the constitution.
So we were able to get that on the ballot,
and I think partly because of the wake of Amendment four,
it passed with fifty of the vote. So now in
Florida we're working on sentencing reforms that will be retroactive,
so we can get some of the cases that you've
been helpful on, Jason, So get some of those people out,
(29:43):
because again we've told stories about people are getting unfair
sentences and then we changed the law, but it didn't
benefit them. So now we're working on that. I think
the next big thing we have to look at is
these long sentences. Um if you talk about violent offenders,
or if you get to the specifics of the offense,
people get nervous. But if you say, how about after
fifteen years of serving a sentence, no matter what the crime,
(30:05):
the judge gets to take a second look at you
and see whether you've been rehabilitated, whether you've just grown
out of the crime, or whether they've just, on second thought,
maybe the punishment was too severe. So we're talking about
pushing forward what would be known as sort of a
second look provision to get at some of these longer
sentences because that's really what's driving our incarceration rate. And
(30:26):
we hope that people realize the more they see people
like Matthew get out that if you even if you
don't make an internal change, is he said, people grow
out of crime. I served time with the guy who
get ten years for a drug sentence and I said, oh,
you probably needed two years, and he said, no, I
needed five. I was a punk, I was a bad guy,
and I needed to get away from my community, away
from my family, which brought him into the drug selling.
(30:47):
He said, I needed some time, he needed to grow
out of it. Anybody who was in that prison would
have looked at him though, after those five years and said,
you can go home now. But we don't have a
system that allows for it. There's no parole in the
federal system. So we have to have some way for
judges to look back at these sentences and get people out.
So FAM is committed to continuing our work at the
state level to make sure we get rid of mandatory sentences,
(31:08):
which are the most absurd in Pennsylvania, Florida, Arizona, in
North Carolina. Um, we're making great Jusiana has been incredible. Yeah,
And so I think you know, there's a lot of
groups doing this, a lot of movement. Our particular interest
is bringing forward the families who have been affected by this.
Sometimes there's a problem where you know, members of the
(31:28):
public or the media or lawmakers will see somebody, even
a guy like Matthew, although I haven't seen it happen
with Matthew, and they'll say, well, you did something wrong,
and so there's somehow they're able to not feel sympathy.
But when you have family members come forward and say,
you know, my dad made a mistake or my brother
made a mistake, and they deserve to be held accountable.
But you don't know what this sentence and this punishment
(31:50):
is doing to all the rest of us were innocent
collateral damage. That is very effective. And so when we
bring those family voices. When Matthew was away, his friend
Naomi came to our rally last July. She spoke with
Tennessee senators. She was his advocate. That really does make
a difference. And it's seeing people in the flesh. We're
good at punishing others that we don't know, but when
(32:11):
you see people and I always see this, and you're
an artistic person, so you'll get this. If somebody said
to me, what did it for Matthew? It wasn't just
that Juliete Martin Elliott NPR Nashville wrote a great story.
It's that she took pictures and when you saw Matthew
working at a pantry and just saw him living his life.
You just knew this guy was not a threat who
needed another decade in prison. You were embarrassed that we
(32:33):
sent him away for thirty five years. It's like when
you first were talking earlier, It's like, this guy was
in there for thirty five years. That makes no sense.
And so we've got to bring some sunlight to the system.
And so that's you know, by bringing the families forward
and meeting with lawmakers and putting them in their face
and telling those stories. That's what we're trying to do.
I mean, not only am I not scared of Matthew,
I'm thinking I need to get a hold of his
(32:53):
tailor looking like a model. I mean, it's like every
week it's another students. It's crazy, so right, and again
that's f a MM dot org Families Against Mandatory Minimums
dot org. We're doing amazing work and we're really winning.
We're starting to really got on a roll. So now
it's a great time to join. You know, together we
can turn this upside down and get back to a
(33:16):
sane system and free up money for education and healthcare
and all the other things that we really need instead
of spending it all unlocking people up, which has costs
upon costs. Mean, it's amazing. And in New York City,
the state controllers that it costs a hundred and seventy
five thousand dollars a year to keep somebody in Rikers Island.
If you break that down to a daily rate, it's
more than the four seasons on fifty seven Street, you
(33:36):
know what I mean. Like, excuse me, Like you don't
have to be an economist to understand that there's something
really really wrong with that, and no one should want
to see their tax dollars being spent that way. And
going back that we do have touched on before. You know,
it wasn't forty years ago that we had three hundred
thousand people in prison America. Now we have two point
two million and women in prison. I mean, we don't
(33:57):
have time to go into that, but the fact is
we have four point four percent of the world's population
we have of the world's prison population. That alone is
mind blowing, But we have thirty three percent of the
world's female prison population. Many of those women are mothers,
and those children will most likely end up in the
system themselves because we know from decades of research that
(34:19):
the number one cause of why a child may end
up incarcerated as if they've had a parent incrce rate.
It's not education, it's not race, it's not socio economics.
It's if someone is missing their parents and missing that
family structure, you know they're going to fall into, you know,
some of the same traps and uh, it's it's a
cycle that we need to break in the country will
(34:41):
be much better off when we do. This has been
a great discussion. I could talk to you guys for hours,
but I'm assuming that people who listen and probably have
other things they want to do with their day as well.
The good news is my favorite part of the show
is this part of the show, UM, And here's how
it works. At the end of each episode, UM, I
get to take a rest and give everybody a break
(35:05):
from hearing my voice. And so what that means is
that I'm going to thank both of you again for
being here. Kevin Ring, the fearless leader of Families against
Mandatory Minimums, and of course Matthew Charles, who has been
tremendous force for change in the in the brief amount
of time we've been out and I know he's going
to go on to do great things. So thank you
(35:27):
again for being here. And now I'd like to turn
it over to you for final thoughts. And like I said,
I get to turn my mic off and just listen.
So Kevin, how about you go first. I'll go first.
I'm gonna be brief because I want Matthew to have
more time and attention because he deserves it. When I
first heard about Matthew's case, I was surprised that more
people weren't working on it, and we jumped in and
(35:47):
a lot of people, ending with you and Kim Kardashian
and then the White House, everybody getting involved, and it
was amazing. What strikes me so much about Matthew is
his humility and what a decent person he is, and
how ashamed I am that we had somebody like that
in prison for as long as we did. And when
I first met him and he agreed to come to
DC and meet with lawmakers to think him. We're always
(36:09):
criticizing policymakers, we have to thank them when they do
the right thing. And that was a really great visit
when he came, and when we had a chance to talk,
he said, what I want to do with my life
is serve the poor and those single parent households. That's
what my life is going to be. And when he
was out, he had worked in a pantry helping families,
(36:31):
and that tells you all you need to know about him.
And we had to say, could you not look for
a job for six months and just help us be
an advocate. So, you know, we hired Matthew to be
a fam fellow for the next six months. And we've
already met with the Tennessee governor of the Florida governor.
He's met with lawmakers, he's giving speeches, he was on
panel yesterday, He's in high demand, and it's just illustrative
(36:54):
of who he is. Even aside from those who want
to give back on criminal justice reform, he just wants
to be a positive members community. And we're grateful that
he is using his voice to help us on this
cause for now and then he's going to be the
pride of Nashville when he finishes up. I've worked with
a lot of people in this area, a lot of
people who you know, do good things and have been rehabilitated.
(37:17):
But what has struck me about Matthew's story is that
he has stayed grounded. He's not looking to be a celebrity.
He is just looking to use his voice and experience
and the best possible way. And we're incredibly grateful for
Thank you. I thank you Jason for having me today. UH.
I like to say I became known by default due
to the fact that my circumstances caught media attention and
(37:40):
therefore people able to hear my story. You hear the situation,
you say, Okay, this can't be possibly true. Then you
find out that it is true. Man was released at
serving twenty one and have years on a non balance
drug offense. UH, an offense which actually cares now less
than twenty years. I was given a third or five
years centis for and that they're not being for Judge
(38:01):
Kevin Sharp allowing me to go for in two thousand sixteen,
nobody would even heard of me or my study or
that I had changed. So I'm grateful that all of
those spokes in that room we're working at the time.
But my situation is not isolated from other people situations
that are still inconcerated, that don't have anybody speaking on
their behalf that's actually asking how can I get some
(38:23):
relief from a system that has caused me to feel
bitter are pressed only because of the sentence, not the
crime I committed, but the sentence that I was imposed.
I've seen them, I listened to their studies. I worked
in a lot of library where they would come up
to me and asked me to read letters from home,
whether read from their kids, or their wives or their siblings,
because they didn't have that educational level. So because I
(38:45):
worked as an educational two to before I worked in
a lot library, I was able to make friends with
some people and help them to write letters back home
to their families, to their children, as well as read
their letters to them and what they was receiving from
their attorneys. And someone was like, I took this plea
because that I not took this plea, I would have
been sentenced to this or that, And all of those
thirds soundeds anonymous to the point that it became it
(39:08):
was the same. This person pleaded out to what they
thought was less so that they wouldn't get a larger sentence,
but yet they weren't even deserving of the sentence that
they were given. It's just that it was a trap system.
Whether trap doors are closed and there's no way out.
If that happened to you, or that happened to your child,
you will want somebody to speak out on their behalf,
or you will want some system to change. Well, that's
(39:29):
all we want as well. They want to be able
to get out and get back into society and regain
their dignity. And so I'm thankful that I was able
to be out for those two years. I'm thankful not
that I went back those seven months, but during those
seven months that it took on a whole new realm
of people looking at my situation to where they were
also able to present it to the senators and representatives saying, hey,
(39:51):
the person can change, and we have an example of
someone who has changed. They would have been able to say, oh,
he certainly don't need to be there anymore. You've got
people with like Center says, You've got people with sixty
years all throughout the federal system, all throughout the state system.
That's just bigging and praying and hope a full a
second chance. Even why is deserving of a second chance
(40:11):
if they've changed, Well, you know, it's great that you're
here being the spokesperson that you are. And I was
closed by just quoting uh the Great Brian steven Sue said,
I believe everyone's better than the worst thing they've ever done.
Once again, this has been a unique and special episode
of Wrongful Conviction, and thank you Kevin ring Man was
against mandatory meadowums and Matthew Charles for joining us. Thank
(40:34):
you don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever
you get your podcasts, it really helps. And I'm a
proud donor to the Innocent Project and I really hope
you'll join me in supporting this very important cause and
(40:57):
helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence Project
dot org to learn how to donate and get involved.
I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and
Kevin Awardis. The music in the show is by three
time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow
us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at
Grown Full Conviction podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam is
(41:20):
a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with
Signal Company Number one
This call is from a correction facility, and it's subject
to monitoring and recording exactly a hundred years. That's manly.
(00:21):
I'm a kid. I didn't do anything, you know, and uh,
you know that was that was real payingful man, No,
because my life was discarded as if you know, like
I was a piece of trash or something, you know,
a hundred years and I had dreams and I wanted
to do things. I wouldn't commit me crimes. You know.
That was a very good young man. That is what
(00:43):
happened in so many cases. The cops have a hunch
because they're so smart at the scene, they have a hunch,
and once they act on that hunch, they sort of
developed tunnel vision and they take off marching in the
wrong direction. And that happens in so many of these
wrongful convictions. The opening, uh the cell door, and I'll
(01:03):
walk down stairs. And I actually walked down stairs to
to be outside. It felt very strange to be, like
I said, to be walking without no shackles on my feet.
I thought it was a dream. But then again, it
wasn't a dream. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to
(01:28):
Wrongful Conviction with Jason flam. That's me. And today, UM
particularly excited because we have two amazing people in the studio.
First of all, the star of our show today, Matthew
Charles m His story is gonna blow your mind. I'll
leave it at that for the time being. But Matthew,
welcome to the show. And with him is Kevin Ring,
(01:51):
who has a remarkable story of his own, um, having
been imprisoned himself and now being the leader of an
organization that is very very near and dear to me,
Families Against Mandatory Minimums, on whose board I have served
for twenty five years. So Kevin, welcome, Thank you. So Matthew,
it all starts with you, because you've become sort of
(02:12):
an amazing symbol of this mandatory sentencing nightmare that is
a uniquely American problem, you know, and you're here now.
It's funny. I'm the only one here not in a
suit and tie, which is sort of ironic. But um,
that being said, Uh, you don't look like a guy
who would have been sentenced to thirty five years in prison.
(02:33):
You look like a guy who would be more likely
to be since the thirty five years sitting in a
corporate boardroom. But that's beside the point. So let's go
back to Tennessee and back to when this where this
story started, because you weren't wrongfully convicted, but you were
wrongfully sentenced and more than once. So let's go back
to the time of the crime and how this all started.
(02:54):
Back In was arrested on felony drilling a farm valations.
At the time, there was a warm drug so therefore
fifty grams and more for crack cocaine allowed you to
have a citizen range of ten years to life and
because of the amount exceeding fifty grams, it allowed me
to be at thirty years to life. And when I
(03:15):
was sentenced in nineteen ninety six, I received a thirty
or five years sentence. Then we'll get to that saga, right,
But what makes your story so newsworthy is the fact
that you were in for so long for decades and
then out and thriving on the outside for about two
years and then put back in. I was incoceprated for
twenty one and a half years before I was released.
The first time I went back in did seven more months.
(03:36):
Once I was sent back and the original thirty five
years sentence was reinstated, but throughout that process of time.
The citizen guidelines changed three particular times during that period
of mind conservation, in nineteen ninety six, in nineteen and
in two thousand teen, in nine and two thousand it
actually stated that the sentence that I was serving could
(03:58):
not even be above twenty years. So therefore, everybody that
got sentenced after two thousand, which was Book of versus Washington,
they received the sentence of twenty years for the same offense,
with the same criminal history and the same career. Fender
gut Last. The only thing changed was it took away
the mandatory nature by the sentence and gut Last. The
Rachel disparity didn't disappear, It didn't completely disappear. It got
(04:21):
a lord, you know, greatly in two thousand. In two
thousand ten, Senator Durban sponsored and championed the first mandatory
sentencing rollback in America in forty years. You know that rollback,
which I'm proud to say I worked. You know what
was involved in while it didn't establish parody for crack
and cocaine, it rolled it back from a hundred to
(04:43):
one disparity to eighteen to one. UM. Now, this is
an inherently racist situation because we know that the overwhelming
majority of crack arrests are people of color, and the
overwhelming majority of coke arrests are white people. So you
don't need to be a social scientist to figure out
what's going on there. I'll say this about Senator Durbin
because you mentioned him. He recently gave a speech, and
(05:03):
you don't hear politicians do this, but he said his
vote for the original hundred to one disparity A lot
of those guys voted for that at the time because
it was the height of the drug war. He said
it was the worst vote he ever cast and that
he was sorry for it, and that you know, since
that time he has worked hard to erase it, and
two thousand ten was the first step in doing that.
But I mean, it just takes a lot of courage
(05:23):
to say, you know, we were caught in a moral panic,
made a mistake, but as an elected ficial, I did
the wrong thing, and now I'm making amends. Even when
I went to meet him, he stayed at how he
was instrumental in the two thousand teen changes as well
as the ones that took place that released me in
two thousand nine, saying how does you know people? I
tell people about Matthew's case and they say, both, it
(05:44):
isn't that double jeopardy. He was in, he was out,
and he was put back into the same crime. Matthew
was sent back because the federal judge in his case
thought that the two thousand ten law applied to him
and should have benefited him, so he was able to
cut his sentence. And it turns out the appeals Corps.
So this was another funny thing about where politics work.
It was the Obama Justice Department who appealed the judge's
(06:06):
decision and said no, he should finish serving his thirty
five years, and then the appeals court agreed, and then
they sent it back to the judge. And now the
Trump Justice Department was there, and the judge said, I
really don't think I should be sending this guy back.
Are you sure you don't want to drop these charges?
Because he'd been out for two years and people saw
him and they said no, send him back. So everybody's
hands were on this. They could have left him out.
(06:26):
It was a decision to send him back just because
of this commitment to you know this this sort of
like formalism of this rule of law, like, no, that's
what the sentences. And even though we see that he
has been rehabilitated and he doesn't need this sentence, we're
going to send him back anyway. The thing about it,
you is me just being incoscerated for that period of
time and seeing others that are incostrated with the same
(06:48):
amount of time or more based on mandatory minimum sentences
with no way of having any type of relief. I
just hope that more changed his forthcomment, Well, what percentage
of the people that you were in with do you
are really a menister society? I would say probably, I
would say sevent five percent having over centers and are
(07:08):
not a minister society. And I would say fifty percent
of those people are changed. In February, I have become
a Christian. It doesn't matter what your religious beliefs are.
You have a right to justice for all. You have
a right to be senters for the crime and get
a punishment that suit for that crime, not to be
over centers. And the majority of people in there are
(07:29):
for non valiant offenses, and even some of those that
have valiant offenses, still they have changed over the years.
That's what I was speaking about. Either a person changes
because of their choice to change for themselves or their family,
or they may have an encounter or spiritual you know,
awakening like I may have had, or the fact that
they've just aged over the years and they've just taken
(07:49):
a real look at their lives. It doesn't take much
to awaken a person. But the sad part is that
those people that have been awoken are still awakened into
thirty years sentences life sentences, and they are non valient offenses.
We know that in most parts, I would say of
Western Europe, the maximum sentence you can get for anything
is fifteen years, you know, and some people say, wow,
(08:11):
that dangerous guyship. I mean, okay, we can have that
discussion right there. There may be exceptions, but in general,
the idea that in Western Europe you can murder multiple
people and get sentenced to less than half the amount
of time that Matthew did for you know, it wasn't
a small amount of crack, but it's still we're talking
about seven ounces, right, and can we put that in context?
Seven ounces? It would be like five or six sweet
(08:34):
and low packages, right or um. I don't know how
much is in an actual you know, sugar package that
you put in your coffee. But it's you know, it
would be not far off from that. So it's not
like you weren't Scarface exactly exactly. And you don't appear
to be a dangerous society either. I mean from everything
that I can tell from knowing you for the short
(08:54):
time that I have, But I can't even imagine your
perspective going from being one of two point two million
people in this school log system of America, anonymous, almost
without hope, and then the next thing, you know, here
comes Kim Kardashian. Next thing you know, you're being discussed
in the White House, and you're being discussed in the
(09:15):
halls of power, and you're actually visiting these places, and
you're on the front page of newspapers and everybody's knowing
the name of Matthew Charles. And the reason for that,
of course, is that you were freed. You were out.
Anyone could see that you were doing great right, You
were contributing to society, You're contributing to your community and
(09:36):
your family. And then what happened during the time that
I went back for those seven months, once my family
and friends started telling me that Kim Kardashian West at
first tweeted about asking the president to release me, I
do something about my situation. I wasn't all you know
what I mean. And then actually, once I was it
would be released. And thank her for speaking on my
behalf and having her hearts and her thoughts concerning me
(09:59):
throughout my plight. And I was able to go on
her page and tweet that. And then when she tweeted back,
God bless you, Matthew, I was like, Wow. And the
fact that she's speaking out against the mandatory minimum nature
of the citizen guidelines, all the mass and conceration extensive
sentences and calling for more criminal justice reform just as
amazing because voices like hers and people like her, Oh
(10:20):
I listen to and I'm just thankful for yeah, and
I am too. And you know, as you know, she
was on wrongful conviction. We did an episode with her
and we talked about your case, and you know, she
really is a passionate advocate. And because I started in
this work because of a mandatory sentence in case way
back in thee and once I was found out, I
(10:41):
was able to make a difference and get this kid,
Stephen Lennon home I was hooked and I'll never stop.
I mean, as long as I got breath to breathe,
I'll keep fighting the good fight. And I feel like
it's the same thing with her now that she's had
the experience of working with you and Alice Johnson and
she's in it now, and you know, having her voice
is it's just a great, great thing for the movement.
(11:01):
So and it takes voices like hers, and I'm asking, now,
what can we do for the laws that are still incocerating,
and that is it's a common thread. We've recorded about
eighty episodes of this podcast so far, and I would
say almost everyone has got the same goal that you do,
which is to help the others that were left behind.
I don't know any to come out and go, Okay,
I'm gonna go get what's mine now. No, everybody comes
(11:24):
out with this passion that is so inspiring and then
puts so much gratitude to my attitude because everybody wants
to go and help others and that's the way it
should be. And because the show is called wrong for conviction,
I wanted to ask you about that too. Before we
turn back to Kevin, what percentage of people because there
were hundreds, if not thousands, of people you've encountered in
twenty one and a half years in prison. What percentage
(11:44):
of them do you think we're actually in the sense
of the crimes for which they were convicted since my
incoceration in the federal system, I would say, because the
federal system uses a thing called conspiracy, and in the
conspiracy it doesn't take any real actual evidence. They can
just convict you on somebody's testimony. Are what we call
in the federal prison system as ghost dope. In other words,
(12:05):
they can give you an amount even though they don't
actually have that amount, just like even in my case,
be a two undred sixteen grounds, but the actual drug
amount that was attributed to me that could factually be
proven was fifty six grams. Everything else came from hearsay
testimony that I wasn't able to refute because the government
was able to get it in under the conspiracy rule.
(12:26):
So when saying that, I would say, either the people
that are incarcerated for drug offenses, I would say probably
sixty of them have been charged with conspiracy are ghost dope,
and the sad party is a lot of times in
the federal system they're forced to take complete So in
other words, the prosecution states to what it doesn't matter,
(12:47):
I'm gonna give you this amount of time. And normally,
because the court is bound by at the time, I
was sentenced to mandator a minimum and this is the
sentence that has to be imposed, and then the judge
just actually has the discretion to give you the low
end the mid of that sent us all the hot hand,
but it's normally already so hat they just give you
the low end anyway, you know what I mean. I'm
(13:08):
not laughing at this fact that they do that, because
it's sad and disappointing and so in other words, a
lot of times that is held over the inmates are
the prisoner's head to where they have to agree to
a police sent us then come into prison and know
that all the evidence that they gave against you was fabricated.
So a lot of times they got it wrong. You know,
we have this. I think it's an initiative that was
(13:30):
driven by the Innocence Project called the hashtag guilty plea
problem because in America, we know the nineties of felony
convictions are guilty please. And it's exactly I mean, you
said it very eloquently. That's exactly why it happens, because
for a lot of people, it's the only rational decision
you can make. Brian Banks a great example of that
in California, right pleading guilty to a rape that not
(13:51):
on even committed. It never happened, but he was advised
by his attorney like, we're gonna lose, you know, and
you're gonna get to life, and so he chose, you know,
the only rational choice. And fortunately eventually it was proven
that that he was as innocent as could be, but
it was too late to save him from the sentence
that he got. That You mentioned something you said about
(14:13):
these guilty plead problems. So glad the Innocence Project is
doing that. I've seen a lot of their work on
it and it's excellent. As you know, every year when
they released the number of gnorees, there's always a percentage
who pled guilty. People deny that it happens. Prosecuteur will say, no,
one innocent pleads guilty. It happens every year. We see
it now because of every day. Yeah, and we know
it because they get exhonerated by DNA evidence. And then
(14:34):
you look back in those cases and you say they played,
and it's always the saying why did you do it?
It was a better deal. And I was testifying in
Pennsylvania Senate and the great criminologist Mark Lemon said to
a hostile senator, if the prosecutor said to a person,
plead guilty and testify as we want, or we're going
to break your arm, no one would have any problems
(14:54):
seeing the moral problem with that threat. And yet breaking
your arm would be a luxury compared to spending thirty
five years in prison. So when you have a system
that's sort of incentivizes people to say whatever, do whatever,
admit to crimes that didn't commit, testivoue against people when
they didn't see something, you're going to get injustices. And
(15:15):
so I would even take one further. You can say
to people, um, please guilty, and we'll give you a choice,
either break your arm or spend years in prison. I'd
be investing in the company that makes the casts right
that company because everybody would take that choice, and I've
never heard a good comeback for that. That's exactly what
that choice feels like, is going to do this or
we have all the leverage in the world and especially
(15:37):
with mandatory sentences, because right if you say I want
to go to trial, I think I'm innocent or I'm
just bullheaded, and at least the judge would have some
discretion in normal case. Well with a mandatory minimum, if
the prosecutor brings it and threatens you with that, the
judge is cut out. Now you get to the end
of the sentence, you've been convicted, and the judge may say,
I don't want to give you that punishment, but I
have no choice. Now. These mandatory sentencing laws are so
(15:59):
out of step with the rest of the world, the
rest of the Western world, but almost anywhere in the
world you can't get these kind of sentences for for
drug crimes. No, that's right. It's only America who did this.
We had this crime rise, and we responded with these
mandatory sentences. No other country did that, and so our
incarceration rate, you know, grew. I always tell people the
(16:20):
same thing that from two thousand five, we built a
prisoner jail in this country every ten days, and that's
solely to keep up with how many people we were
throwing into the prisons because of these mandatory sentencing laws.
(16:40):
The fact that we incarcerate black males in America at
six times the rate of South Africa at the height
of apartheid is something that I can actually feel people
shaking their heads when they hear this, right, and that,
which is crazy becuse we're not even live so I'm projecting.
But the you know, the idea that a black man
in America without a high school diploma has a something
(17:04):
like a sixty something percent chance of spending a year
in prison before his thirtieth birthday. What like, I mean,
people don't talk about this. But the real reason that
Ferguson erupted, I think most people and most social scientists
would agree it was not because specifically of Michael Brown,
but it was because they were arresting people in Ferguson
(17:24):
for mowing their law in the wrong way, you know,
for walking down the street without I d I heard
that in Ferguson the average household had something like four
outstanding warrants, right, because they were just arresting people for
just being black, basically, right. And of course there's the
socioeconomic aspect of this, which is just basically pulling money
in so many sort of the farious ways from the
(17:48):
poor community and putting in the hands of certain corporations.
Who are you know, profiting from this mass incarceration, And
you know, I hope that listeners will check their portfolios
and divest from companies. If you have a pension fund
or anything else that you're involved with and you find
out that they own stock and private prisons, divest. We
have to make it known that we're not going to
(18:10):
be involved in profiting off of caging other human beings.
It's not okay. A lot of people doing don't know
they're doing it, so so it's worth taking a look. Well,
let me give you an example of something that just
happened this week, and I don't mean to be so
self absorbed about this. My sixteen year old daughter wanted
to have a debit card so she could go with
her friends and not have to always carry cash. So
we opened an account for her and she's been using
for a couple of weeks, and then we just got
(18:31):
to notice that her account was overdrawn, which it wasn't.
They said, we're closing it out and sending you the check,
and right away I knew what that was because I
had to co sign for that account. So I called
Capital One and I said what's going on here? And
they said, we're going to send you a close that
check and we'll inform you what this is about. And
all they did was send the close that check saying
this account was closed at the customer's request. No it wasn't.
(18:52):
We didn't ask to close it. And so I had
to bump around on a million phone calls and finally say,
I have a felony conviction. Is that why you closed
her account? And they finally said, yes, the bank has
made a business decision not to have an account with you.
So I went to prison for a year and a half,
as you know, for public ruption charges. My daughter can't
(19:13):
have an account a Capital One bank. So this is
a cultural problem. You wouldn't need to do this podcast
if everyone saw it the way you saw it. And
we see it right. So part of our problem is
we're trying to convince our fellow citizens that this is
the problem. And and look at its tentacles. I mean,
why can't a sixteen year old girl have a bank
account because her dad went to prison for year and
a half for you know, these charges. And that's the
(19:35):
way it is. And I'm fine, right, I have I
have a credit union account. I will be fine. I'm
more fortunate than most. What if you're a single mother
and you know you your husband had a conviction and
now you can't have an account for your kids and
that bank accounts the only chance. So we just penalize
people in so many ways, prison being the worst of it.
But you just never get out of the penalty box.
(19:56):
You don't get occupational licenses to do. You know, people
who barber in prison, then they can't do it on
the outside. We just never let people out and we
punish them. And that's I'd love to point to somebody
say it's their fault. But we countenance this unless we
go to say that the politicians, we don't want these
policies anymore. No, that's that's absolutely right, and you know it,
it's nuts because all of us want to live in
(20:18):
a safe society, right, all of us want our ourselves
and our families to be, you know, able to walk
the streets. And it shouldn't be that difficult for people
to understand that since ninety five or more percent of
people that are in prison right now are going to
be coming home, the only approach that makes any sense
(20:39):
is to give those people the best chance possible to
get back on their feet when they get out. Instead
we pull the rug out from under them. Then then
we act surprised when they have to resort to stealing
something or doing something else because they need to eat.
It's amazing. You know, in other countries they have recidivism
rate that's a tiny fraction of hours because they treat
(21:01):
their prisoners like human beings, and they paved the way
for them to come out and get back into society,
where we just put up barriers one after the other.
I love my country. I was born here. I know
how lucky I am to have been born here in
the first place. And it's because I love my country
that I want to see these things changed. You know,
it's a very interesting moment because this is, at least
(21:24):
to some extent, the only bipart is an issue right now.
Right there's such a divide in this country, but on
this issue there's some alignment. Is it because of the
fiscal problems that come? Yeah, I think it's more personal
than that. I think that people use arguments that they
can justify to their own side. So you hear conservatives
talking about the cost of prisons and and these things,
(21:46):
but Ultimately, I think it's a morrible issue for everybody.
It is a matter of fairness. The system didn't hit
every community in the same way, so certain communities were
sensitized to this issue earlier on. But now we have
this new study from Forward dot US that said one
out of every two adults in America has had an
immediate family incarcerated. So that's over a hundred thirteen million Americans.
(22:08):
I mean, obviously, I'm self interested. Fams been fighting this
for over twenty five years, thanks to your help. What
we're trying to do is take that number. Right. If
you were a lobbyist and you were trying to influence
a member of Congress, you'd say, hey, do I have
any plants in his district? Do I have any constituents?
We have constituents everywhere across this country. A hundred thirteen
million people have been affected by this system. What we're
(22:28):
trying to do is make them advocates, make them part
of a loud, noisy army that says we can't do
this anymore. A bad system will breed bad results, and
we have a bad system that incentivizes the wrong things.
And so what we're trying to do is get people involved.
Our particular interest is bringing forward the families who have
been affected by this. And I think about my situation,
(22:49):
you know the fact that I wasn't somebody who thought
he was going to end up in federal prison, but
when it happened to me, and all of a sudden,
you know, the next day, I'm taking my kids to
the bus stop, and one at a time, neighbors are
coming up to me over the next week saying, I've
never told anyone this, but my brother went to prison.
Somebody else come up and never told you when my
dad went to prison, and I thought, we're not talking
about this. It gets the point where I think it's
(23:11):
Abraham Lincoln has said, if you want to repeal a
bad law, enforce it strictly. We've got a point now
where we're locking everybody up, and so now every community
is saying, maybe we're doing this wrong. It's almost self
interest that's got us there. Every family has been touched,
either directly or indirectly by mass incarceration, you know, and
in this country the statistics are so insane, like the
(23:31):
one you just talked about, Like I'm sitting here listening
to it. I knew that number but it still doesn't
make any sense. Write a hundred and thirteen million people,
what is it. It's not a rite of passage. It's
nothing to be proud of. It's disgusting. What are we doing.
All we're doing is like trying to hurt our own people.
And unless you believe that American people are inherently evil
and need to be punished differently and more than other
(23:54):
people around the world, then the only other conclusion you
can draw is that we're doing it wrong. I believe
that mass incarcerations, maybe a controversial statement, is the worst
social policy disaster since slavery. I used to same analogy,
and I said that's not politically correct because I was
talking to some inmates and when some prisoners and I
(24:14):
was like, well, really, whenever in two thousand tens Centisen
guidelines changed and they said that this was based on
the racial disparity, crack cocaine, the pot of cocaine, the
majority of the people that got inconcerted with African Americans.
Then when it was changed from eighteen to one, but
those changes were not made retroactive. I did you kind
of make the analogy of slavery, because I was like, well,
(24:36):
you know, the slavery was wrong, and then it shouldn't existed.
So therefore you let the slaves go free. In this situation,
you're saying, Okay, we acknowledge that it's wrong, and we're
gonna stop slavery, but we're gonna keep the people slaves
that's already in there. And that's the way I look
at retroactivity. Not only did they turned around and change
the Centisen guidelines themselves to drug tables, So therefore it
(24:57):
was a clear admission that this was wrong. It was
the is proportionate to the black community. But yet you
still had over three thousand people me included that was
still inconcerated because it was never made retroactive. Uh so
the first step fact did make those changes retroactive. And
if I hadn't got out for those two years and
they was actually able to see me in society showing
(25:18):
that I had been rehabilitated by society's terms, they did
never even knew, and I still would have served nine
or ten more years in federal prison. Whereas I got
some fellow brothers that I considered my brothers because they're incocerated.
It doesn't matter what their race is. A lot of time.
People say, well, you didn't receive an infraction or distiminary
report in twenty one and a half years. Well, okay,
(25:40):
that's fine. To Dan, I'm still a work in progress.
But these people shouldn't have a long center just because
they commit a minor infraction or they do something wrong
in prison for centers that they shouldn't have had anywhere.
I don't want to say that their behavior shouldn't be
taken into accountability. But any time that you say, okay,
Charles is in a different category than the rest of
the prisoners that are in press federal prison, you're sadly mistaken.
(26:02):
Some of my best examples, some of my best mentors,
had life sentences, and to me, they were living a
better example of how to be. Somebody just changed and
I ever could. And it doesn't matter that I became
a Christian at that time, and they may not believe anything.
But once you start looking at it from the perspective
that he's a Christian, he didn't get it any trouble
(26:23):
and therefore the wrong that was done him needed to
be righting. Well, the wrong has done, anybody need to
be writing right. And it's interesting because talking to Matthew
and you know, he's a man of faith and everything else.
I'm a Jewish atheist, right so, but at the end
of the day, I think we all believe in the
same thing, which is redemption, right and America is supposed
to be a nation of second chances, and yet we're
(26:43):
actually the opposite. We are lock him up and throw
away the key nation. The amount of human potential that's
being wasted, the people that could be contributing to society
tax dollars, you know, is the most mundane example. But
you know, culture and everything else, it's a tragedy, you know,
(27:16):
in the limited amount of time we have left, I
want to talk about Families Against Mandatory Minimums. It's some
of the victories that the organization has won over the
last couple of years are really phenomenal. F A M
M dot org. By the way, Fleck blom right, f
A M M like music music, f A M M
dot org. I encourage everyone to go to the website,
(27:37):
sign up, learn more, get involved. But can you talk
about some of the work and some of the priorities
of Families Against Mandatory militis right now? Yeah, sure, Well,
a lot of the things that we've been working on
at the federal level were included in this first step back,
and you know, we're the first ones to say it
was first step back for a reason. It only made
incremental reforms. But the retroactive change of the crack law
(27:58):
has been a priority since they passed it in two
thousand and ten. We thought at the time that was
a difficult decision and probably for you too, that we thought,
this isn't retroactive. All these guys whose stories were told
now aren't going to benefit from this law. It made
no sense. So it's so glad to see that finally happen.
What we're seeing is people getting out like Matthew who
weren't serving twelve or fifteen year sentences and getting a
(28:18):
couple of year of breaks. There's lifers who are getting out.
There are people with sentences like thirty or five years
like Matthews were getting out. So it's been that's been
incredible changes to the compassionate release rules. We talk about
a sickness in our culture. We have this just bloodless
to make people die alone in prison cells, even when
they didn't get a life sentence. If they fall ill
(28:39):
while they're in prison, they just can't get out. Because
no one, you know, their family can't get through the
bureaucracy to get out of prison. And so there was
a change in this law that allows families and prisoners
to appeal denials by the Bureau of Prisons, or if
they don't get an answer in a timely way and
they're terminally ill, they can go straight to court. So
we're starting to see that work out. Another big change
(29:00):
that we were happy to support was in Florida, there
was a ballot amendment um. The big one was obviously
Amendment four, which gave felons the right to vote in Florida,
so that was hugely important and we supported that. But
we had another ballot measure because Florida had its third
highest incarceration rate in the country and had the quirk
in its constitution that said, even if the legislature wanted
(29:20):
to make its sentencing reductions retroactive, it didn't have the
power to do it. So we had to change the constitution.
So we were able to get that on the ballot,
and I think partly because of the wake of Amendment four,
it passed with fifty of the vote. So now in
Florida we're working on sentencing reforms that will be retroactive,
so we can get some of the cases that you've
been helpful on, Jason, So get some of those people out,
(29:43):
because again we've told stories about people are getting unfair
sentences and then we changed the law, but it didn't
benefit them. So now we're working on that. I think
the next big thing we have to look at is
these long sentences. Um if you talk about violent offenders,
or if you get to the specifics of the offense,
people get nervous. But if you say, how about after
fifteen years of serving a sentence, no matter what the crime,
(30:05):
the judge gets to take a second look at you
and see whether you've been rehabilitated, whether you've just grown
out of the crime, or whether they've just, on second thought,
maybe the punishment was too severe. So we're talking about
pushing forward what would be known as sort of a
second look provision to get at some of these longer
sentences because that's really what's driving our incarceration rate. And
(30:26):
we hope that people realize the more they see people
like Matthew get out that if you even if you
don't make an internal change, is he said, people grow
out of crime. I served time with the guy who
get ten years for a drug sentence and I said, oh,
you probably needed two years, and he said, no, I
needed five. I was a punk, I was a bad guy,
and I needed to get away from my community, away
from my family, which brought him into the drug selling.
(30:47):
He said, I needed some time, he needed to grow
out of it. Anybody who was in that prison would
have looked at him though, after those five years and said,
you can go home now. But we don't have a
system that allows for it. There's no parole in the
federal system. So we have to have some way for
judges to look back at these sentences and get people out.
So FAM is committed to continuing our work at the
state level to make sure we get rid of mandatory sentences,
(31:08):
which are the most absurd in Pennsylvania, Florida, Arizona, in
North Carolina. Um, we're making great Jusiana has been incredible. Yeah,
And so I think you know, there's a lot of
groups doing this, a lot of movement. Our particular interest
is bringing forward the families who have been affected by this.
Sometimes there's a problem where you know, members of the
(31:28):
public or the media or lawmakers will see somebody, even
a guy like Matthew, although I haven't seen it happen
with Matthew, and they'll say, well, you did something wrong,
and so there's somehow they're able to not feel sympathy.
But when you have family members come forward and say,
you know, my dad made a mistake or my brother
made a mistake, and they deserve to be held accountable.
But you don't know what this sentence and this punishment
(31:50):
is doing to all the rest of us were innocent
collateral damage. That is very effective. And so when we
bring those family voices. When Matthew was away, his friend
Naomi came to our rally last July. She spoke with
Tennessee senators. She was his advocate. That really does make
a difference. And it's seeing people in the flesh. We're
good at punishing others that we don't know, but when
(32:11):
you see people and I always see this, and you're
an artistic person, so you'll get this. If somebody said
to me, what did it for Matthew? It wasn't just
that Juliete Martin Elliott NPR Nashville wrote a great story.
It's that she took pictures and when you saw Matthew
working at a pantry and just saw him living his life.
You just knew this guy was not a threat who
needed another decade in prison. You were embarrassed that we
(32:33):
sent him away for thirty five years. It's like when
you first were talking earlier, It's like, this guy was
in there for thirty five years. That makes no sense.
And so we've got to bring some sunlight to the system.
And so that's you know, by bringing the families forward
and meeting with lawmakers and putting them in their face
and telling those stories. That's what we're trying to do.
I mean, not only am I not scared of Matthew,
I'm thinking I need to get a hold of his
(32:53):
tailor looking like a model. I mean, it's like every
week it's another students. It's crazy, so right, and again
that's f a MM dot org Families Against Mandatory Minimums
dot org. We're doing amazing work and we're really winning.
We're starting to really got on a roll. So now
it's a great time to join. You know, together we
can turn this upside down and get back to a
(33:16):
sane system and free up money for education and healthcare
and all the other things that we really need instead
of spending it all unlocking people up, which has costs
upon costs. Mean, it's amazing. And in New York City,
the state controllers that it costs a hundred and seventy
five thousand dollars a year to keep somebody in Rikers Island.
If you break that down to a daily rate, it's
more than the four seasons on fifty seven Street, you
(33:36):
know what I mean. Like, excuse me, Like you don't
have to be an economist to understand that there's something
really really wrong with that, and no one should want
to see their tax dollars being spent that way. And
going back that we do have touched on before. You know,
it wasn't forty years ago that we had three hundred
thousand people in prison America. Now we have two point
two million and women in prison. I mean, we don't
(33:57):
have time to go into that, but the fact is
we have four point four percent of the world's population
we have of the world's prison population. That alone is
mind blowing, But we have thirty three percent of the
world's female prison population. Many of those women are mothers,
and those children will most likely end up in the
system themselves because we know from decades of research that
(34:19):
the number one cause of why a child may end
up incarcerated as if they've had a parent incrce rate.
It's not education, it's not race, it's not socio economics.
It's if someone is missing their parents and missing that
family structure, you know they're going to fall into, you know,
some of the same traps and uh, it's it's a
cycle that we need to break in the country will
(34:41):
be much better off when we do. This has been
a great discussion. I could talk to you guys for hours,
but I'm assuming that people who listen and probably have
other things they want to do with their day as well.
The good news is my favorite part of the show
is this part of the show, UM, And here's how
it works. At the end of each episode, UM, I
get to take a rest and give everybody a break
(35:05):
from hearing my voice. And so what that means is
that I'm going to thank both of you again for
being here. Kevin Ring, the fearless leader of Families against
Mandatory Minimums, and of course Matthew Charles, who has been
tremendous force for change in the in the brief amount
of time we've been out and I know he's going
to go on to do great things. So thank you
(35:27):
again for being here. And now I'd like to turn
it over to you for final thoughts. And like I said,
I get to turn my mic off and just listen.
So Kevin, how about you go first. I'll go first.
I'm gonna be brief because I want Matthew to have
more time and attention because he deserves it. When I
first heard about Matthew's case, I was surprised that more
people weren't working on it, and we jumped in and
(35:47):
a lot of people, ending with you and Kim Kardashian
and then the White House, everybody getting involved, and it
was amazing. What strikes me so much about Matthew is
his humility and what a decent person he is, and
how ashamed I am that we had somebody like that
in prison for as long as we did. And when
I first met him and he agreed to come to
DC and meet with lawmakers to think him. We're always
(36:09):
criticizing policymakers, we have to thank them when they do
the right thing. And that was a really great visit
when he came, and when we had a chance to talk,
he said, what I want to do with my life
is serve the poor and those single parent households. That's
what my life is going to be. And when he
was out, he had worked in a pantry helping families,
(36:31):
and that tells you all you need to know about him.
And we had to say, could you not look for
a job for six months and just help us be
an advocate. So, you know, we hired Matthew to be
a fam fellow for the next six months. And we've
already met with the Tennessee governor of the Florida governor.
He's met with lawmakers, he's giving speeches, he was on
panel yesterday, He's in high demand, and it's just illustrative
(36:54):
of who he is. Even aside from those who want
to give back on criminal justice reform, he just wants
to be a positive members community. And we're grateful that
he is using his voice to help us on this
cause for now and then he's going to be the
pride of Nashville when he finishes up. I've worked with
a lot of people in this area, a lot of
people who you know, do good things and have been rehabilitated.
(37:17):
But what has struck me about Matthew's story is that
he has stayed grounded. He's not looking to be a celebrity.
He is just looking to use his voice and experience
and the best possible way. And we're incredibly grateful for
Thank you. I thank you Jason for having me today. UH.
I like to say I became known by default due
to the fact that my circumstances caught media attention and
(37:40):
therefore people able to hear my story. You hear the situation,
you say, Okay, this can't be possibly true. Then you
find out that it is true. Man was released at
serving twenty one and have years on a non balance
drug offense. UH, an offense which actually cares now less
than twenty years. I was given a third or five
years centis for and that they're not being for Judge
(38:01):
Kevin Sharp allowing me to go for in two thousand sixteen,
nobody would even heard of me or my study or
that I had changed. So I'm grateful that all of
those spokes in that room we're working at the time.
But my situation is not isolated from other people situations
that are still inconcerated, that don't have anybody speaking on
their behalf that's actually asking how can I get some
(38:23):
relief from a system that has caused me to feel
bitter are pressed only because of the sentence, not the
crime I committed, but the sentence that I was imposed.
I've seen them, I listened to their studies. I worked
in a lot of library where they would come up
to me and asked me to read letters from home,
whether read from their kids, or their wives or their siblings,
because they didn't have that educational level. So because I
(38:45):
worked as an educational two to before I worked in
a lot library, I was able to make friends with
some people and help them to write letters back home
to their families, to their children, as well as read
their letters to them and what they was receiving from
their attorneys. And someone was like, I took this plea
because that I not took this plea, I would have
been sentenced to this or that, And all of those
thirds soundeds anonymous to the point that it became it
(39:08):
was the same. This person pleaded out to what they
thought was less so that they wouldn't get a larger sentence,
but yet they weren't even deserving of the sentence that
they were given. It's just that it was a trap system.
Whether trap doors are closed and there's no way out.
If that happened to you, or that happened to your child,
you will want somebody to speak out on their behalf,
or you will want some system to change. Well, that's
(39:29):
all we want as well. They want to be able
to get out and get back into society and regain
their dignity. And so I'm thankful that I was able
to be out for those two years. I'm thankful not
that I went back those seven months, but during those
seven months that it took on a whole new realm
of people looking at my situation to where they were
also able to present it to the senators and representatives saying, hey,
(39:51):
the person can change, and we have an example of
someone who has changed. They would have been able to say, oh,
he certainly don't need to be there anymore. You've got
people with like Center says, You've got people with sixty
years all throughout the federal system, all throughout the state system.
That's just bigging and praying and hope a full a
second chance. Even why is deserving of a second chance
(40:11):
if they've changed, Well, you know, it's great that you're
here being the spokesperson that you are. And I was
closed by just quoting uh the Great Brian steven Sue said,
I believe everyone's better than the worst thing they've ever done.
Once again, this has been a unique and special episode
of Wrongful Conviction, and thank you Kevin ring Man was
against mandatory meadowums and Matthew Charles for joining us. Thank
(40:34):
you don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever
you get your podcasts, it really helps. And I'm a
proud donor to the Innocent Project and I really hope
you'll join me in supporting this very important cause and
(40:57):
helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence Project
dot org to learn how to donate and get involved.
I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and
Kevin Awardis. The music in the show is by three
time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow
us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at
Grown Full Conviction podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam is
(41:20):
a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with
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