All About Change - Dr. Benjamin Gilmer - The Tale of Two Gilmers

Episode Date: June 12, 2023

Dr. Benjamin Gilmer is a family physician, professor, and advocate who focuses on bringing attention to the social injustice of mass incarceration, scarcity of mental health care, and global and rural health disparities. A former neurobiologist turned rural family doctor, Benjamin Gilmer is a family physician, professor, and advocate who focuses on bringing attention to the social injustice of mass incarceration, scarcity of mental health care, and global and rural health disparities. Fresh out of medical residency, Dr. Benjamin Gilmer joined a rural clinic only to find that its previous doctor, Dr. Vince Gilmer, murdered his own father. The deeper Benjamin looked into Vince’s case the more he became convinced something was amiss and Vince’s mental and physical health. Benjamin started to research Vince’s cases and even worked with Sara Koenig of “Serial” to get to the bottom of the mystery, which inspired This American Life’s “Dr. Gilmer and Mr. Hyde.” Through the show,  they discovered the myriad of conditions that led Vincent toward these terrible circumstances. Moved, touched, and inspired, Benjamin went on to continue fighting for Vincent’s clemency until Dr. Vincent Gilmer’s release.  His recent book, The Other Dr. Gilmer, and an upcoming feature film project continue Benjamin’s mission to highlight and transform the atrocity of mass incarceration of people with mental illness Please find a transcription of this episode here.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We're kind of wed to this notion of punishment, and we're not wed yet to this notion of actually healing people. Hi, I'm Jay Rudiman, and welcome to All About Change, a podcast showcasing individuals who leverage the hardships that have been thrown at them to better other people's lives. This is all wrong. I say put mental health first because if you don't... This generation of Americans has already had enough. I stand before you not as an expert, but as a concerned citizen.

And today on our show, Dr. Benjamin Gilmer. Unbeknownst to me, I inherited this practice that had been started by another Dr. Gilmer. And then I started learning all about him because we shared patients. Dr. Gilmer is a physician, and I guess in a way all doctors are activists. They literally devote their lives to making people feel better. But his true foray into activism began completely by chance. Fresh out of medical school, he took on a small rural practice in North Carolina, only to find out that its previous doctor shared his last name. Everybody

was confused about it, as was I, and learned that my patients still believed in this man. Curious to learn more, Dr. Benjamin Gilmer started looking into the dark past of his predecessor, Dr. Vince Gilmer. And the deeper he dug, the more troubled he became. Of course, in my mind, I'd imagined all these crazy images of who Vince Gilmer might be, but when I saw him, he was none of those things. He looked like a decrepit old man who's only a few years older than me. He was clearly sick. Like, he was clearly ill mentally or and or neurologically.

Dr. Gilmour went on to spend many years fighting for Vincent's clemency and release. I'd never been to a prison before. I'd never witnessed someone suffering in prison. And, you know, as someone who grew up, you know, in a privileged community, like most of us don't see those things. And for me, it was a moment that changed my life. Benjamin, thank you so much for joining me on my podcast, All About Change. My pleasure. So, Dr. Gilmore, you were raised by parents who were called to service, both spiritually in the medical profession, mental health.

Can you talk about how your parents perhaps laid the foundation for you and your sense of activism and altruism? Yeah, I have great memories of both. I have two sets of parents. My stepfather ran a mental health center in the small community where I grew up. And so we were always inundated with him being on call and reaching out to people, especially who were suffering from mental illness, and seeing his daily ritual of being and working in service. That was really informative to my path as a child. My father was an amazing person who was a little bit of everything. My father was an amazing person who was a little bit of everything.

He was a union psychotherapist, an Episcopal priest, but his greatest work was serving in the hospital, so serving people around the time of their death. So I got to witness a lot of work that he did as someone who really committed himself to service, both in the church and in the hospital. And that was always really powerful for me to see as an example. And what part do you think spirituality plays in the practice of medicine? Because sometimes, you know, there's seen as a separation between spirituality and modern medicine. But do you think there's a connection? Absolutely. I mean, this is something my father has spoken to me about my whole life. Yeah, the trilogy of mind, body, and spirit is universal. I've witnessed how if you can't connect with people's hearts, then you can't connect with their overall wellness.

And oftentimes as physicians, we're afraid to delve into the spiritual of a patient. But it's so important. And that spirituality could be, you know, it could be Christianity. It could be Buddhism. It doesn't matter. Like it's delving into the spiritual heart of a patient is supremely important to understanding how their belief systems are formed and how their sense of hope is instilled. And that's so critical to fighting illness. My wife is a yoga teacher, and so I've witnessed her ability to heal through yogic practice and connecting with a deeper spirituality.

My father always spoke about the collective unconsciousness, which is a big part of Carl Jung's philosophy. And that is very important, I think, to understanding the depths of where pathos comes from, like from the collective unconsciousness. And Jung himself believed that the spirituality was part of the centerpiece of our collective unconsciousness. So true. And I'm a big believer in that. But you seem to have embodied the fact that medicine is more than just seeing a patient for a few minutes and diagnosing them and moving on, which a lot of modern medicine has become, more of like a factory. And I think that what you have embodied was really connecting very deeply with

your patients and giving them the time to speak to you and to really understand what they were going through. Well, this isn't unique to me. This is unique to family medicine and community medicine and public health. And this is what we strive for in family medicine. Family medicine and primary care in general is about relationships and about connecting relationships within families and understanding them more deeply and having a longitudinal relationship with them. It's so important to understanding someone's struggles and helping them to heal and build trust with them. It's so important to understanding someone's struggles and helping them to heal

and build trust with them. So yeah, this is something we take very seriously in family medicine is our ability to appreciate and really commit ourselves to not only our patients, but to the overall health of our community. And that's sort of the essence of public health. You know, I was intrigued by your practice. And did you make a conscious decision? I understand you grew up in the country. Did you make a conscious decision to want to work in medicine in the country, serving people, you know, in that part of our country? You know, I'll have to admit, no.

I would, my plan originally was to do urban emergency medicine. And then I discovered what rural medicine was. But even in practicing medicine in the developing world, which is really powerful, you taught me many powerful lessons along the way. But after graduating from residency, I really wanted to be a teaching physician. And the only job available at the time was this rural practice. So I kind of wanted to stay in the city. So it was by random chance that I ended up in that clinic. But it was so fortunate for me because practicing rural medicine and teaching rural medicine and running a rural fellowship has been a big thread of my life

and discovering the joys of rural medicine and discovering that, you know, this is what America needs right now. But it wasn't because I intentionally chose it initially. It really sort of fell into my lap, as did the crazy intersection with Vince Gilmer's life. But I feel so grateful now that it did happen this way. with Vince Gilmer's life. But I feel so grateful now that it did happen this way.

So I want to get a little bit into that, which is obviously started out with a recording of This American Life and then in the book that you've written, The Other Dr. Gilmer, Two Men, a Murder, and an Unlikely Fight for Justice. So you are Dr. Gilmer, and you are interviewing to take over practice of Dr. Vincent Gilmer. Can you tell us a little bit about the story for those listeners who haven't heard it and who are yet to read your book? Because it is truly a bizarre story. It was certainly bizarre for me starting my career sort of following the footsteps of a presumed murderer, but that's what the beginning of my professional career was.

Then I started learning all about him because we shared patients. I learned that he brutally killed his father and was sentenced to life in prison in Virginia. I learned that everybody was confused about it, as was I, and learned that my patients still believed in this man. It was a very dissonant time for me starting this career, really just trying to learn how to be a doctor. And then living in this kind of shadow world where everybody wanted to talk about the other Dr. Gilmer because no one made sense of the murder. And so over time, I started becoming more and more curious about what happened to him and started forming my own little theories about what happened. But I learned remarkably easily from his patients who wanted to tell his story. And then ultimately, I learned that if I was going to continue in that practice, that I needed to know what happened to him. I needed to dig a little bit deeper and discover, you know, why this good doctor, by everyone's account, why his brain went awry and why he killed his father. So that was the baptism of my career was trying to figure out this crazy mystery. And my understanding is that Dr. Vincent Gilmer was, according to your patients and some of the stories they told you, was a very unique individual. Wasn't always paid for his services, received corn as payment, helped out people start their jobs or their small businesses that they didn't have the money. And the more you

heard about him, the more you thought like, this is a man who, what happened, which, you know, he killed his father and cut off his fingers to hide the identity. It just didn't, it didn't match up. But I believe that what was the impetus for you to start to look into this was sort of a fear or paranoia when a patient came to you and said, oh, he's going to get out and he's not going to be happy that you're running his practice. Does that sound right? It's true. There were many aspects of discovering who Dr. Gilmer was that were perplexing. And I didn't anticipate developing paranoia about him after learning that he might be getting out of prison and coming after me because I didn't want to believe that.

I wanted to believe the stories that his patients were telling, that he was an agent of change in that community, that he practiced medicine for all the right reasons. He was the benevolent country doctor who committed his life to serving that community. Those were the things I wanted to believe. But as I learned more about some of the darker sides of him, I started getting more paranoid. And at that point, my family was asking me to be more careful and to maybe even leave the community. And that all felt very dramatic, but I wanted ultimately to know who he was and to figure out what had happened to him so I could continue on without living in this shadow of paranoia. So my understanding is that when you started to look into Dr. Vincent Gilmer and no relationship

at all between you and the other Dr. Gilmer in terms of relations. But when you started looking into it, it was done in conjunction with Sarah Koenig of NPR, who was producing an episode of This American Life, and that the two of you began to investigate this together in real time. That's right. She reached out to me to do a story, and I first said, no way. That's the craziest thing I would ever want to do, but later learned that I needed some help. I needed some structure.

I needed a partner to kind of delve into this, and she was that person. She was amazing, and we both did a deep dive, which is part of the pathway towards advocacy. And in my mind, like you'd become curious about something and then you have to pursue a very intentional inquiry, process of inquiry. And Sarah helped me with that. She helped to teach me some things about journalism and writing. And together we really pursued to understand what happened to this man. And my understanding is the first step is that people that you were interviewing, or she was interviewing, former detectives and people involved in the case were convinced that he was lying, that he was guilty, that it was sort of an open and shut case. And I remember a point

in the recording where she came to you and said, it really sounds like he, this was all premeditated, premeditated, that he wasn't insane, that this, you know, he's guilty. And at what point did you start to question that and say, well, I think there's more here than what everyone else is thinking? Six years into this, I mean, the cat, he's exhibiting the same kind of behavior. Right. You'd figure if he was, if he were faking, he'd let it go. Yeah. Like, what's the point now yeah just you know believing he's he's just a pathologic so she got that killer who did it in cold blood and that that it was that he's just that

that I do not believe anymore he he was a mess yeah I don't think you're gonna get to the bottom of this Benjamin you don't think it's ever gonna be I don't know. I don't think you're going to get to the bottom of this, Benjamin. You don't think it's ever going to be? I don't think it's ever going to be clear. I mean, I think you can end up telling yourself something about it, but I don't know that it's going to be true. Well, I always wanted to believe there was something else. That was my deep intuition. And part of it is just being born an optimist, I think, and never having experienced much trauma myself. I wanted to believe that there was something wrong that

explained why his behavior changed so dramatically. But it wasn't until actually like setting foot in the prison and seeing him as a person. Of course, in my mind, I'd imagined all these crazy images of who Vince Gilmer might be. But when I saw him, he was none of those things. He looked like a decrepit old man who's only a few years older than me. He was clearly sick. He was clearly ill mentally and or neurologically. So we no longer think it was premeditated? I don't think so. So we don't, so we believe, so, okay. So we're saying we believe his story

that he snapped in the moment. That's what feels right to me. Do you feel that way too? Because before you were premeditation all the way. I know, I guess I do feel like that. But if that's true, then he was wrongly convicted. Yep. That's right.

And so at that point, when you see someone who's suffering, like you sort of have been practicing in medicine to identify with him as a patient, which is what I started doing is seeing him as a patient. And once, once I made that shift, everything changed, everything about how I envisioned him, his, his, the act that he committed, it was clear that he was a man who was suffering in prison. And that was, that was the hook. That was the big hook for me to really delve into his supporting him and advocating for him and ultimately making a diagnosis that did explain what happened to him. So my understanding is that at one point you visit the prison and there's a psychiatrist who's accompanying you.

And can you tell the story about what happened as you were exiting the prison after visiting him with the psychiatrist? the prison after visiting him with a psychiatrist. Yeah, it's funny what happens to your mind when you are trying to shed a belief that's so ingrained. And the belief for me was that he was a murderer. And so taking a psychiatrist, we kind of bandied out a psychiatrist and Dr. Steve Bowie with me to the prison. And I was still experiencing this dissonance between whether Vince was potentially a sociopathic person versus someone who was like neurologically ill or psychiatrically ill.

And I wanted to have this third opinion to look at Vince. And so walking, as we were walking out of the prison, you know, Dr. Bowie said, there's no way in hell that he's faking these symptoms. When Vince was tried during his trial, he was branded a malingerer, that he was faking these symptoms. And the whole time he had been incarcerated, over a decade at that point, he was believed to be faking. And Dr. Bowie immediately observed that that was impossible, that that was the case. And so while we were exiting the prison, stuck between two doors, the two doors that closed behind each other, he was the one who first postulated, oh my gosh, does he have like a neurologic illness like Huntington's? And then it was like a bolt of lightning before my eyes because I had been thinking about a very broad differential and Huntington's had been on the list at one point.

But at that point, it became very clear that he could have Huntington's disease, which would have explained many of his symptoms, his delusions, his emotional lability, his depression, his anxiety, part of his PTSD. So many things. That was the pivotal moment that really changed everything in terms of turning towards Vince as a person who needed advocacy and treatment rather than incarceration. And for me, this was a big experience because I'd never been to a prison before. I'd never witnessed someone suffering in prison. And, you know, as someone who grew up, you know, in a privileged community, like most of us don't see those things. And, and, and for me, it was, it was a moment that changed my life.

But my understanding is that you were able to finally get him diagnosed that, that the facility, I think he was moved from a general prison to a hospital prison, but he was eventually tested and came back positive for Huntington's disease. And then after that, he began to receive some medication that actually improved his condition. Because on This American Life, you hear recordings of him where before he is diagnosed and after he starts to receive the medication to deal with serotonin and it seems like two completely different people hello how are you i am ridiculously doing so much better. It's not even funny. You sound so different. I mean, right now, I am so close to being back to normal. I'm so glad to hear that.

It's just, my brain is getting better. Yes, he became a new person. It's interesting when you think about, firstly, Vince was moved to another prison that was more psychiatrically centric, although their psychiatric services are pretty limited. It's still prison. He still lives in a cell that's eight feet by six feet. And I've always wondered how much of the change in his personality was because of just starting a simple SSRI, which we use for anxiety and depression in patients. Or was it his first experience to have hope again? Or his first experience to understand what had happened to him and to begin believing that he wasn't this monster that everyone was telling him. him and to begin believing that he wasn't this monster that everyone was telling him. So it's a very complex moment for Vince because he didn't understand what was going on in his mind.

He didn't understand why he was hearing voices or why he would have lightning bolts in his brain or why he was more clumsy and couldn't find his words. He was just as lost as, as we were more so. So it's interesting when you instill hope in someone, I mean, you spoke about the spirituality aspect of healing, like for him, this was a, it was a spiritual diagnosis too, because it meant that he was enabled to shed the stereotypes that he had been branded with for so many years, that he was simply a cold-blooded murderer, which is how the judge described him. And now he was beginning to see himself as someone who was suffering, or others were beginning to see himself as someone who was suffering, someone who was ill, and that he was a patient, not just an incarcerated person.

You know, the story is so bizarre, and you dive into many different aspects, including aspects of before you were actually involved personally. allows someone who clearly was exhibiting signs of mental illness to fire his counsel and to represent himself at trial. And the fact that that trial wasn't overturned is just mind-boggling. Well, it's more than mind-boggling. It's tragic. And as a prosecutor you would you would find great sorrow in reading the 800 pages of the trial because it was it was just a terrible example of our of a constitutional mechanism you know because he he was floridly mentally ill throughout the

trial and everybody knew everybody knew it they all watched it painfully so you know like the lawyer that he fired described it as like watching someone commit suicide with a butter knife. That's how excruciating it was. And in the end, Vince asked the judge for another opportunity to be evaluated by a medical provider. And the judge denied that and said he had ample opportunity to do that before. But you could, as the trial went on, you could see events continuing to spiral. And it was just a horrific thing for all people. I think for the prosecutor herself, it felt like an ugly experience to see this man who was clearly ill to be flailing so desperately. So it was not a great act of a

constitutional trial. No, I think there were so many officers of the court in that case that could have stepped up, the judge, the prosecutor, so many people that could have said, hey, this is not right. And perhaps the most serious crime that can be prosecuted in a court is first-degree murder. And in that case, when the stakes are so high and someone's life is at risk of incarceration, that no one stepped in and said, something's going on here. We've got to get a professional in here to do an evaluation because this is just not normal. It's not normal and it's not moral is what it is. I mean, the example that I give in medicine that's sort of a parallel to this

legal experience is someone who comes in who's diagnosed with a very complex cancer. And before a surgery is performed or chemotherapy, typically you have what's called a cancer board and you have an interprofessional group of people that look at this case and really think about it from different angles so that that patient can have the best treatment, whether it be chemotherapy or surgery or radio ablation. And so, you know, I love that example because it's something that we could be doing better in the legal system as well. It's hard for me as an outsider to imagine committing someone and the expenses of committing someone to life in prison with only one psychological evaluation. That seems crazy to me, that there wouldn't be multiple opportunities for people to intervene and evaluate that patient, that person who's on trial.

Because we know that, you know, the mind changes. And Vince's mind changed quite a bit, like through the trial as the pressure built. But there was not an interdisciplinary approach to, or there was not a clinical approach to Vince during this process. to events during this process. And I think there are some lessons that we could learn from medicine in terms of how you think about a person who's being, you know, considered spending the rest of their life in prison. And for me, the sort of spin is thinking about it through a clinical lens. And I propose in the book that we could potentially heal crime. And that really means exactly this, like looking at the person who is on trial as someone, looking at their whole person as we would through a clinical lens, through different perspectives. And trying to see the humanity in that person, too, because they may have had a lapse of their mind, but they haven't lost their entire humanity. And that's something that we have to preserve if we want to make change in

our system. Is this what you talk about in chapter eight when you say you have to take the whole story and nature of truth into account? Is this what was happening to Vince that they weren't taking the whole story? I mean, he did murder his father, but they weren't taking the whole story I mean he did murder his father but they weren't taking the whole story of who he was and the impact of a lifetime of sexual abuse um the the the trauma that that had on him the disease that that he had at the time that no one knew or diagnosed. Is that what you were talking about? Yes.

I mean, the whole story would demand of the prosecutor to look for the whole story. And as you know, prosecutors and defense attorneys, they have their very specific jobs. The defenders are trying to defend their clients. The prosecutors are trying to put them away in general terms. And so, you know, if we opened our eyes a little bit and shifted the perspective for both parties, for the defense attorneys and prosecuting attorneys, it would have made a big difference in Vince's case for sure. You know, there was no intentionality, of course, from the prosecuting attorney to ask the question, wow, is Vince mentally ill? Is that something we should consider? His father was mentally ill. We know that schizophrenia runs in families.

We know that his father was in a mental hospital the day before he was killed. We know that maybe we should be considering a family history. Like these are very basic things that that a first year medical student can pose. And, and there was, you know, the, the prosecutor was not, it was not part of her job and Vince didn't have a defense attorney. So, and didn't have the cognitive ability to, to ask those questions himself. So you can see there was a lot lost in the history taking of

this trial. Right. Although as a former prosecutor, I would say in that situation, the prosecutor has the obligation as an officer of the court to stand up and say, hey, something's not quite right here. I have a role to play in this court, in this trial, but let's have a sidebar and talk about this because this seems like an injustice, and that wasn't done in this case. But I wanted to ask you another question about preconceptions, because in chapter 11, you write a sentence that preconceptions can blind us from the truth. And how do you think in this case, especially especially preconceptions of Vince and who he was affected him and how does it affect us all in our daily lives?

Well this is such a fascinating question for me because if you look deeply everyone, we live within a world of preconceptions, our own preconceptions. This is the natural design of our prefrontal cortex to make sense of the world, to do it efficiently, to do it in a way that makes sense with our own aligned values. You know, we see this play out in politics. We see it play out in religion, plays out in every conversation. But this is the birth of racism. This is the birth

of why we, you know, our civilization is struggling so desperately right now because preconceptions are cemented. And this is just part of our natural biologic design. And I think it's helpful to recognize that, that we all come with our preconceptions. Mine was that Vince Gilmer had a traumatic brain injury. And I was so committed to that idea and blinded to other ideas because that was my master's thesis was traumatic brain injury. And so, you know, if you really look at yourself deeply, you start to see all of these different preconceptions. And I think building a great awareness, being an observant person in general, requires looking at these deeply seated preconceptions. And if we don't have an intentional practice to do that, then we won't get to the next step of change. And this is where, I mean, I'm blinded every day in medicine. Like I walk into an exam room and before I even hear the patient's story, in my mind, I know exactly what's going on with them. And so it takes a lot of intentional effort to get out of that circuitry that we continue to lay tracks over.

And that takes a lot of work. And oftentimes it takes a lot of external work, like seeing a therapist or being an active listener. These are the things that can lead to change. And, you know, I've been really curious how the book would affect some of these preconceptions that others have had about Vince, about why, you know, what happens to people after they've committed murder? Why they commit murder in the first place. Preconceptions about punishment and treatment. And I've learned that it's sometimes insurmountable to change people's preconceptions. But that is the great gift, I think, that I've received from readers is that this book has helped them to start seeing mental illness in a different light. It's helped them to start imagining mental illness in a different light. It's helped them to start

imagining how mass incarceration could be different. It's helped them to start imagine and question why we lock up our most vulnerable citizens, the mentally ill. And that's the great work, I think, that I would like for this book to seek upstream change in that regard. But as you can see, Jay, it boils down to our preconceptions on so many levels. How many people in the United States are incarcerated? And out of those people that are incarcerated, how many of them have issues of mental health that could have been dealt with or could be dealt with outside of a prison system, but they are essentially locked away?

Well, all people who experience mental illness can be treated. I mean, I think that's something we have to make as an assumption, that there's effective treatment for mental illness, make as an assumption that there's effective treatment for mental illness, that this requires long-term treatment, not just acute crisis management. But when you look at the numbers, and this was something I knew nothing about, I had no idea after 16 years of education, I had no idea that there were 2 million people in our country locked up. I was blinded to that. And I certainly didn't know that 40 to 50% of those people have mental illness. So that's like 800,000 people today with severe mental illness reside in our prisons. That's a staggering number that it's just hard to even fathom that. I did not know that

there are 10 times more people with mental illness who live in prisons than in our own hospitals because we have such a paucity of mental health centers for long-term treatment. I had no idea that the three biggest mental hospitals in our country were Rikers Island in New York, Cook County Jail in Chicago, and the LA County Jail. That just blows me away. So those were things that also really led to, that inspired me to want to write about them. So what is the solution here? The solution is to take people out of the traditional prison system and to get them the help that they need in order for them to improve their lives and perhaps be able to re-enter society and not to house so many people, you know, and lock them up just because they have

issues of mental illness. But that seems like a huge task. How does that begin? What can people do after reading your book and listening to you? What can they do to try to address this massive issue in our country? I was hoping you were going to tell me, Jay. You know, this is a question that I think is really, it's interesting to think about because if you try to delve or tackle a question like this, you will just get overwhelmed by it. And this is oftentimes a barrier to advocacy, knowing that this is just not right, what we're doing with mass incarceration. It's morally wrong. It's a racial injustice. It infringes upon our most vulnerable people.

We know that that's wrong. How do we change it? And, you know, when I got involved with Vince Gilmer, I wasn't thinking at all about like changing the system. Like I just wanted to getocular view of it. And now that I've been learning so much more and have committed to this pathway of advocacy, which ultimately, you know, you get curious about something, you do a deep inquiry and then you start to become transformed and getting to know events transformed me. And then at some point,

you have to arrive at this stage of visioning. And this is where a lot of people get lost. This is where I get lost. How do we change the system? And I was very intentional about not being prescriptive in the book about, okay, these are the top 10 things we can do to change our system. There are many books written about that. A fantastic one called Healing.

written about that, a fantastic one called Healing. I wanted to firstly sort of try to reach into people's hearts to sensitize them to this greater issue. That was my first intention. But when you think about and to start referencing, you know, to really change the system, we have to think far, far upstream. And that means thinking about the fetus in the womb. That means paying our kindergarten teachers more, having access to social workers in all of our schools. Those are the things that will lead to this change. But if you think about healing crime and you realize that other people, like in Norway, for example, their intention for incarceration is rehabilitation. And their success is based on actually doing that and getting someone through an incarcerated state and back into the general public. And they do that twice as fast as we do.

And their numbers for recidivism are twice as good as ours. So we know it can work. We know that that model is out there. But we have to first sort of shake our notion of our historical inherent need to punish people, which comes from the roots of slavery in this country. And that's a bias or a preconception that many people have, that we're kind of wed to this notion of punishment. And we're not wed yet to this notion of actually healing people or seeing someone who's committed a crime as someone who might be ill, as a victim

even. So that there's so much work to be done. and there's so many great people doing this work, and there's so many active changes in legal systems, in judiciary systems, and hospital systems that are trying to divert people from the prison pathway to a hospital pathway. So there's great work that's happening, but you can see that the fundamentals of this problem lie in our history and our need to punish and the fact that jails or prisons are a lucrative business in America, just like health care is a lucrative business. Right. So we certainly love to lock people up. And I think that, you know, while there's been some slow movement on the stigma surrounding mental health in popular society, especially with many sports figures and celebrities speaking out about mental health, and it's a major discussion. It hasn't yet filtered through to incarceration and how we deal with people, you know, charged with crime, which I think is a very important discussion to have, not only based on the waste of human lives, but also the tremendous cost that

we bear in just housing people in the millions. I understand that Vince ultimately received clemency from the governor of Virginia, but has not yet become a free man. Yes, thank you for asking that question. This has been one of the more disheartening aspects of this advocacy journey is that, you know, I thought that the governor was going to grant clemency immediately. I had no idea that we would have to face two different governors. I had no idea that it would be so hard to get Vince out of prison after the governor did grant his clemency. So he, this happened in January of 2022. And so Vince is probably the person who's served the longest time in prison as a free human. And the root of the

problem is that our hospital and mental health system is completely broken. The state of Virginia, the Commonwealth of Virginia has not enabled us to get him to a hospital in Virginia. That requires the Department of Corrections and their Department of Mental Health. And they have refused to collaborate with us. And so that shuts the door on the whole state. Since then, I've gone after many hospitals and we did a fundraiser. Thanks to 1,500 people who donated, we raised $100,000 to pay for Vince's care. But we can't even find a hospital now who will accept the money. So we've tried for-profit systems. We've tried public systems. And now we're currently aiming at the Veterans Affairs, the VA hospital, who's been very cooperative. This is after several failures

with two very large hospital systems that, you know, after months of negotiations, eventually decided not to take Vence because they were concerned about PR risk. So a patient like Vence can only go to a few places in each state, namely the public mental health hospitals, state, namely the public mental health hospitals. And those hospitals will not even entertain an application until Vince's lands in North Carolina. So you can see it's a difficult situation. But I'm very hopeful that the VA system, who's been very responsive over the last two months, and it's currently in the office of the general counsel that we're going to get movement over the next few weeks to get him to a hospital. It's been one of the most frustrating things in my life. And people wonder how is he still in a prison and not in a hospital?

It's because our hospital system is completely broken. And it's another story that we'll need to tell on a different time. But yeah, as a physician, like watching him suffer in prison, knowing that there's a mental hospital across the street from the prison where he's at, it's a violation of the Eighth Amendment, cruel and unusual punishment. It truly is. I can't think of another example that would be more stark than Vince's right now. But fingers crossed, we're going to get him out very, very soon. Well, good luck. I'm sure his physical condition is not the best these days. Dr. Benjamin Gilmer, it was a pleasure having you as a guest on

All About Change. And thank you for your advocacy and for the continued impact you're having in your community and in our society in general. So thank you so much. Thank you, Jay. And thanks for your podcast. This is the type of media that we need to be focusing on is all about change and thinking about the positive ways that we can influence the world right now. Thank you. All About Change is a production of the Ruderman Family Foundation. All About Change is a production of the Ruderman Family Foundation. This show is produced by Yochai Meytal and Mijon Zulu.

As always, be sure to come back in two weeks for another inspiring story. I'll be talking to Yvonne Benson-Idehosa, who will tell us how she went from fancy boardrooms in New York City to rural villages in Nigeria. Yvonne is a leading expert and advocate against modern-day slavery and sex trafficking in sub-Saharan Africa, and our episode will focus on the very troubling and important topic. In the meantime, you can go check out all of our previous content live on our feed and linked on our website, allaboutchangepodcast.com. Lastly, if you enjoy our show, please help us spread the word. Tell a friend or family member, or consider writing a

review on your favorite podcasting app. I'm Jay Ruderman, and I'll catch you next time on All About Change. Or if I Thought not goodbye