Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - How This Ivy League Lawyer Lost His License | Wayne Boatwright

Episode Date: November 10, 2022

Wayne Boatwright was a California Lawyer who has since been disbarred. On August 30th 2011, Wayne was driving home under the influence where he accidentally hit and killed a 56 year old mother and severally injured her 18 year old daughter. Boatwright pled guilty to "Gross vehicular manslaughter while driving under the influence, operating a motor vehicle with a blood-alcohol level in excess of .08 and one enhancement for inflicting great bodily injury on another person".   Boatwright received 7 years and 8 months.   Since his release, Boatwright  uses his experiences to help others and promote awareness about the true cost of going to prison. Boatwright has started his own blog, detailing his life experiences before, during and after prison.

Yeah, waking up in the hospital was the most, the saddest thing ever for me to realize I had committed this horrific crime. Hey, this is Matt Cox, and I'm going to be doing an interview today with Wayne Boatwright. Wayne is an attorney who had, you know, basically had an alcohol problem. He ended up getting a DUI and went to prison and has a very interesting story, a different type of story that I'm typically used to, or a different type of story that I'm typically used to kind of doving into. And let's check it out. So tell me about where you were, you know, yeah, where you were born, where you were raised, like. Sure, sure, Matt. You know, everybody's got their own story, right?

And there's no doubt I have one. I look at myself as kind of like the American dream story. I was raised by a single mother in California. We lived up and down the state as far north as Mendocino, as far south, as Long Beach and everywhere in between as we moved around a lot. I've lived in a trailer park, right? I've lived above a gas station in an apartment, raised on government assistance. But I had a real focus and a natural intelligence that allowed me to, you know, go to college and ultimately go to Cornell Law School and become an Ivy League attorney.

So I've had quite an adventure in life. And I, you know, I look at my prison journey as another facet of that adventure. I think the biggest surprise to me, though, and I've been home three years now since prison, is that I didn't realize the six. the six years, three months I spent in prison would turn into a life sentence. And I think I found in a lot of ways that it has, even though I've been back three years. And what do I mean by that? For example, I've been on three years. I've worked 26 different jobs in three years I've been back.

That's right. House sitting, cat sitting, you know, a host at a restaurant. Right now I'm working at a catering company. Now, don't get me wrong, it's a nice caterer company. I worked in an event where Bill Gates came, right, and the Google Dolls were playing. I mean, it's, and all that, and I dress up nice, but, you know, I'm a glorified Butler. I got an Ivy Law School degree, and I'm going to glorify Butler, because that's the best job I can find to do that. And I do a bunch of stuff in the techie-slash-nonprofit space.

So I'm a web manager and a web developer for a number of different websites as well. So it's not all manual labor, but, but nothing. of it is anywhere near the life that I lived before I lived to prison. Okay. Well, let's, so, I mean, when you, right, when you, you grew up and eventually, I mean, obviously, you, you know, you go to college and everything, I'm just wanting, like, were you a good student in high school? Yeah, you know, it's interesting how life works, right? I, um, I think, and you can, right, and you can, right? resonate with this. Money was a big issue to me. When you grow up in scarcity, as I did, it becomes very important to be able to take care of yourself in the best way you could think of doing it. So I was a middling B student in high school, mainly because I was working all the

time. As soon as I turned 16, I had a regular job working 20, 30 hours a week at a 7-11. you know my last year in high school i went to the school about two periods a day and worked the rest of the day i got work study it was called allowed we to get out and work and work and money and that was important to me um but i was working on a machine shop you know doing using a drill press and a lathe and stuff like that um i think what got me motivated to actually go back to school and get a a college degree and i started at l-a valley college college college the basic level, took all the remedial courses again, and then realized it wasn't going to give me to where I wanted to go, so I would Cal State Northridge. That didn't help me as much

as I wanted as my dreams were. So I ended up getting my degree at a place called BYU in Utah, and got a degree in economics and a minor in international relations in Spanish. He was a really good student, I think. I was getting straight aides, right? And that's what led me to go to apply to law school and be able to, you know, to get a number of good offers and selected Cornell, which was an amazing experience for me. I mean, I was a West Coast kid. I'm a fourth-generation California now. I mean, my mother and grandmother were both born in San Francisco. My family's been here a long time. So trust me, going to an East Coast town in upstate New York was a real cultural change for me. But I've had a number of those.

You know, I lived in Argentina for two years. I lived in Korea for six years. As an attorney, I had a global position at a publicly traded company called Accenture for a couple years. And in the Bay Area, I've done a lot of work with startups, maybe, you know, a lot of the tech startups that you think about prior to my crime. And I think that suited me well for prison life, believe you or not. I looked at prison as going to a new country. It's like, I don't know anything. I don't know how people think.

I don't know how they work. But I'm going to be observant and be open to change and figure out how I can survive. And what I think is the, you know, I went to San Quentin, which is quite a famous prison here in California. We have our death row for California in San Quentin. It's a lot of people who are called lifers. So they've got serious line of crime behind them, and that's why they're at San Quentin. So I felt like I was, you know, back in the Savannah in Africa, you know, where everything, you're either the, you're both hunting and you're the hunted by just about everything in the world. And so that was a very different world for me. I grew up in a nonviolent, you know, grew up. I lived the upper middle class life.

Right. Owned a house, had a good job, had a wife, had kids. And so prison was a whole different world to me. I didn't know anybody who'd ever gone to prison. well let's let's go back to you you started you you graduated college oh yeah so so for me I wanted to see the world was my real philosophy it's always been I've always been an adventures some sort like I said I went to Argentina for a couple years I did that before college because I was curious about the world and you know when you grow up in the way I do you know the first time I got on a plane was when I was going to Argentina I was 19 years home. Yeah, I've never been on an airplane before. So I really was having a new experience,

but that meant a lot to me. I philosophically, so I was a business lawyer, not a, most people see lawyers on TV and they're criminal lawyers or litigators. That's not my thing. Yeah, it's super sexy. Being a lawyer looks like it's very sexy, and the truth is it's not. No, no, and that wasn't what interested me. I wanted to, I think a philosophy that stuck with me is I wanted to make the world a better place. And I felt that being a corporate lawyer, helping people do business around the world was a way to do that. And that's what got me interested in law school in the first place. And I got to tell you, again, when you come from a humble beginnings, as you like to say, you do anything you can to scratch by. When I was in law school, for example, I was a house

father at a sorority. So Cornell's got a big Greek system. So I was an older male. I was married at the time. And so I was, me and my wife were working as the live-in house parents for 40 girls, right, who are who are there at college. But that's the way you pay the bills. And I, I wanted to do that because I wanted to go to law school. I wanted to learn how to gain a profession. I didn't know that from my, I didn't know that from my family experience. This is theory in practice, right? But people who are successful tend to have a profession, therefore I'm going to get a profession with how I got that. It wasn't like my family had that and I learned from them. Oh yeah. I've done, having 26 jobs right now is nothing to me. I've done

so many different things in my career, both as a lawyer and before becoming a lawyer, that it's easy for me to find work. But that's the kind of philosophy I come from. You know, my family actually came to America in 1600s. They were, what are called French Huguenots, which were French Protestants. They were evicted from Catholic France. And so they came over to America. So we got kind of that old WASP ethic, you know, the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant ethic. Work hard. Don't be proud. Don't promote yourself. But, you know, be a good person. Be a good citizen um was always been part of my value system and something that was important to me and that includes having to you know being able to take care of yourself so i've always been able to take

care of myself and like i said i was working from 16 on um but let's just say that when i was a lawyer i was better able to take care of myself and my family than i can now right so all right so you you got married where you were still in college when you got married oh my gosh i um you know I was naive as a young man. I got married at 21. I married an older woman. What's an older woman? She was only 24.

Oh, yeah. But she'd been working for a long time. She was my manager at the bank I worked at. So I was working as a teller at the tomb. And I was in love, you know, as 21-year-olds are. Yeah, I got married to 21 and it was still going to college and starting that world all over again and trying to be. about where to go with me. Yeah, I, I was, you know, you hustled in a different way than I did, but trust me, I was

hustling in my own way to make a few life, and I was doing pretty well. You know, when I was, I mentioned, you know, coming from a simple family, my first car was in 1972 Ford LTD, you know, an eight cylinder with a bunk bench, bench seat, because you wanted to go to drive-ins back then. That's how old I am. I mean, I'm 60. People don't get this stuff. I used to go to drive-ins, you know, and you wanted a girl to be able to sit next you. You don't want bucket seats. You want a bench seat so that can happen. Yeah, I had a, I had a stable life by a single mother, but a humble one, and that prepared me for moving on, and that included getting married, which I felt was the right thing to do at the time.

well all right so you you graduate college you went on to law school did you go right into law school yeah yeah went straight into law school you know i figured that's what i wanted to do um and uh law school was a great experience um the biggest difference for me is a west coaster who went to public high so i went to l a unified public high school i mean i had english teachers who were too lazy to teach they'd ask us to play board games, like Monopoly during the class when I went to public high school. You get back east and you go to a place like Cornell, you got a lot of these kids who went to private boarding school and small little lots colleges. They are so much more, they were so much more prepared for the college experience, how to articulate an argument, how to how to express

themselves clearly in written form and oral form than I was. That I had a lot of catching up to here when I got to, when I got to law school. I think I was the first time I realized I wasn't the smartest guy in the room. Right. And I think you can appreciate that, right? A lot of people, you can just kind of run rings around. And that's why I learned, no, no, you can't do that here. So law school was a real eye-opening for me.

Like the first time I ever got a C in college, right? In college, I was high school, I was an average student. But the time I got to college, I was studying hard. And, you know, law school was a different experience. Yeah, I did much better in college than I did. And I was, I was pretty much straight A's in college as opposed to high school, which I just skated by with C's and B's. Yeah. Yeah.

It didn't matter, right? Yeah. I didn't think I was going to go to college. So, but once you, so once you got out of college, you went to, you went to law school. like when you graduated law school like how did you go about finding a job and oh yeah so law school is um it's a very unique environment when you're going to

um and i need law school to be honest right so everybody's looking to hire you when you come out of there so I had originally planned on going to the DC because I like a lot of international stuff in fact my focus in law had a lot to do with international relations things like that so that was my plan I ultimately went to L.A. to work because my family was having a lot of problems, and I needed to go back to help them. I think that's a constant theme in my life.

I got kind of like survivor syndrome after I got out of my family environment, but I kept having to go back to that environment, mainly to help my family who were getting to different troubles. I was working in L.A. and, you know, I had that L.A. law lifestyle. You know, I had a new car, I had a good life. But it wasn't satisfying. I wanted the international stuff. I think the most interesting thing for me was two years into my law career, I decided to pack up with my wife and move to Seoul, Korea. You know, Korea only had 5,000 attorneys in the whole country,

and they've got like, you know, 45 million people. So there's not a lot of lawyers out there. But I felt like it would be a good opportunity for me to do what I really want. wanted to do, which is to work in the world and be part of this international community, the world. So, yeah, two years after being a lawyer, I packed up and moved to Korea. Never been to Asia. You know, I hadn't done anything like that. I said, what the hell? I want to see what this is like. Brought my wife along. Did you work for a company? Were you transferred with a company, or did you just go? Oh, no. I got a job from the dominant law firm in Korea.

Okay. These guys make a billion dollars a year in legal fees right now. It's a big company now. Yeah, I went over there was what's called a foreign legal consultant, and I loved it. And I loved trying to cross those boundaries and those barriers of culture, of education, of nation, of ethnicity that you get to do. I mean, I found that same thing when I was in Argentina of just how different that country is to America. Korea was also very different than the American standard. And so I got a chance to go there and experience that as well as work with all these international companies. I mean, I met George Shoros when I was in Korea. I met Michael Bloomberg when I was in Korea because their companies were coming into that market.

And I was a foreign-neutral consultant that worked with their companies as they were entering that market. It was amazing. Dude, I partied with Stevie Wonder and his crew after a concert one day because I was a white guy in Korea. They didn't know anybody. So they asked me to come sit with them. And, you know, we got to have a really good time. I even, shoot, I was in a cast beer commercial in Korea. It's one of their top beers, kind of like their cores, you know, where they brought you to do stuff.

So, yeah, you get to do a lot of crazy stuff when you're overseas as an expat. And I love it. He was a good life. So your, but your wife is there. Did you have kids by that point? This will sound crazy, but fortunately, we didn't. She had endometriosis, so she couldn't have children. We found out as we were one of the number of studies.

You know, it's funny. When you work at a hard job in Korea, you work six days a week in a suit. You work Saturdays, right? You work at night late. I was working really hard when I was in Korea. My wife couldn't really find a job, so she was working as an aerobics instructor in Korea. And I think I worked too hard for her. So she fell in love with somebody else, and we ended up getting a divorce when I was in Korea.

Now, my second wife, so my second wife says I didn't work hard enough. So I figured I haven't gotten the balance yet between how much you work and how much you don't. Right, but yeah, you know, Crea was hard for her because she had a, she didn't have a big community be part of like I did. You know, I had work. I had all the other stuff that I was doing, and she was in a more isolated experience there than I was. But, hey, I mean, that was her choice, and I'm lucky in a way because I ended up remarrying, and now I've got two kids. One just started college. In fact, he's going to my alma mater.

He's, shoot, he started school today. Today, this is his first day as an undergrad at Cornell University. So trust me, I'm a lucky man. I'm a lucky man with my kids. And that divorce wasn't the end of me. But, you know, I found that I had to give up a lot. Divorce, both my divorces and then my crime are probably those three events where you find you lose a part of yourself.

With my first divorce, I lost my faith and I lost my religion, for example. My second divorce came four months into my prison sentence. And so I lost my family. I lost my social network. I lost my profession with that. And by committing my crime, you know, you mentioned I had a DUI, but it's a lot worse than that, right? I killed someone as a drunk driver.

I took a life. Well, I mean, I hate to interrupt, but I mean, did you have an alcohol problem? Was this, this was an alcohol problem and not an isolated event where you had a few too many drinks? This was something that was that you had been struggling with. Am I right? No, yes, no. No, no, yes, yes, but not consciously. Right.

I'm the functional alcohol, right? Right. Like I drink too much at part of it. or I took a full bottle of wine at dinner, not realizing that it made me vulnerable to that day, right, or to that event that comes with that. Yeah, alcohol was something I never really got into. I first started drinking at 33. So it wasn't like it was something I had grown up with in my family or knew a lot about. But I got steadily worse. To be honest, as a, I called myself, so I was a lawyer, but a lot of ways I was a businessman. So I, one of the big things I did after I was, after I was on my own as an independent lawyer,

was I did a big project of 723 unit condominium development in Las Vegas. And I brokered this deal and I was asked to become the judge. general counsel of their team as we built this big Vegas, big project in Vegas. Trust me, all those things you hear about Vegas pales compared to what really happens when you're going there every week and you become a local. Yeah, the Vaca Red Bull became my drink of choice. And, you know, a bump every once in a while became the other way that you kept things in balance in Vegas. And so that became a habit that, that made me vulnerable to my crime, right?

Didn't destroy my life before my crime. I had still married, I had kids. I was working, having money. But yeah, alcohol became a worse and worst problem for me as time went on, but it wasn't a conscious recognition that it was really bad. I just thought that that, you know, I'm still partying, so what, and having fun like everybody else?

There was never anybody, nobody, nobody ever tried to cartel your drinking. There was no, no rehab stents no yeah none of that no none of that you know and i was again i told you was an old school wasp you know you carry your own water right you don't look for help right even if you know you have a problem at some level you you know you it's your job to deal with it not not anybody else's oh what happened to me was um where i fell off the cliff wasn't just my crime it was like a six-month process because my mom

had fallen and broken her hip. She was still living in L.A. with my special needs brother. And I had to make multiple trips down there. So over a four-month period, I was driving from San Francisco, L.A. to get her and my brother out of there, to get her hospice stabilized so that she would, you know, hopefully get better. She would also get her and my brother into an assistant living facility. And I had to do that on my own. So I was driving down there a lot. And I thought I thought alcohol was a good way to help self-medicate through that process, right? As I was going down there again and again to deal with that. In fact, the night of my crime was the day that I had checked them in to an assistant living facility.

And I was cleaning out their apartment that day after they had left so they'd have their precious things that they wanted to keep. And I thought drinking Red Bull Vodka was a good idea. And when I said drinking, I'm talking like a bottle of vodka, right? We're not talking. By then, I was drinking heavily. And then after I cleaned out their place, I thought it was a smart idea to try to drive home drunk. Kept drinking when I was driving, to be honest. And had an accident on the, my accident happened on the five three where.

My crime happened on the five three where. I had a head-on collision with another car and killed someone. about two hours into my drive back to San Francisco. So, yeah, alcohol was a problem, right? But not one I fully appreciated. And it really made it worse was trying to deal with these family issues on my own. You're not realizing I needed help to deal with those issues. So did you, I mean, did you pass out?

Did you just wake up in the hospital? and they told you. Yeah. You know, I fractured my pelvis, broke my neck. I shattered my foot. I've got a plate and eight screws in my foot. Yeah, I was pretty heavily injured as well. You know, they had medivac us through hospital.

But I killed someone. Yeah, I was hurt. No, you know, I, again, the old wasphing, I don't think I had cried since I was, you know, 18 years old. But when I found out I killed someone, I was devastated. you know i i take it a light and that's there's no coming back from that in a lot of ways well i have a question like how did you i mean okay you wake up in the hospital and does someone does an officer tell you yeah uh you know are you are you wake up and your handcuffed to the

bed or do they just say hey you know like were you arrested immediately uh they met a back to the hospital i met the doctors at the or excuse me i met some Highway Patrolman at the hospital, more than 24 hours after my accident. I was, you know, I had a concussion. I was not unconscious for a while. No, you know, no, they didn't handcuff me to the bed, but I was in the hospital for over 90 days. I had a fractured pelvis. I wasn't going anywhere, you know.

I was, my foot was, had to be reconstructed. I wasn't, I wasn't going anywhere. So no, they didn't handcuff me to bed. Um, uh, and you're on a lot of morphine, so that kind of helps you, uh, get a balance as you get a process. This is down in Fresno, too. I mean, I'm from San Francisco. It's the middle of nowhere.

I was in a place called Kings County, um, when I woke up in the hospital. Um, uh, you know, it's, it's interesting, you're, I've done a bunch of, you're, I've done a bunch of talks and interviews and A.A. meetings, stuff like that, you're the first guy to really ask me about my whole life. Most people have just started with, you know, my crime. So I appreciate that, man. That's a, that means something to me. Yeah, waking up in the hospital was the most, the saddest thing ever for me to realize I had committed this horrific, crime and, uh, and terminated somebody else's future and destroyed, uh, ultimately two families, right? Not just the victim's family, but my family as well. I was going to ask you,

did your, did your wife come down? Did your, you know, how did that play out? Like, uh, I mean, we were still married. Yeah. At this point, you have, you have, uh, what, two children? Two kids. Two kids. You're in the hospital. You wake up. Do they tell you right away? This is listen the other the other person died or he didn't make it or he's still in surgery oh yeah they tell me all the details she was alive when they were met her back in her and she uh she died in the hospital okay uh are you yeah my at that i'm sorry i just it's just that you know like at that time i i get you know i understand you know you took a life and that's You know, and absolutely, I get it like that's like, you know, what have I done? Oh my, you know, I'm, you're upset. But you're still self-preservation. I mean, you have to start thinking like, am I going to be charged? I mean, look, this is horrible, but I still have two kids and a wife. Like, and it's horrible. And I know something has to be done, but I need to know what that's going to be. Like, I'm not ready to be, you know, as horrible as you may have felt. There's still survival instinct and mitigating.

you know, what happened because I do have two children that I have to take care of it. And look, you know, you could say, like I know I would say, hey, look, what I did is horrible. I really made a mistake. I'm a horrible person for what happened. I feel horrible about it. But I still have a responsibility. So at what point did you start thinking to yourself like, what's going to happen to me? Like, am I going to be charged?

You know, you know, does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. I knew I was going to be charged. I mean, that's a crime. That's an issue. I didn't know what the penalty would be, right? For that. No, I'd never had a drunk driving, you know, ticket or arrest or conventions, a first offense, right? So, yeah, I wasn't sure how they'd treat me. I didn't expect what I got. I ended up getting what's called the midterm in the end of that process. So I got seven years. There's eight months for my crime. And I was surprised by that. I'll be honest. You're surprised that you felt it was harsh or? Yeah, I thought if I'm not the low term, I don't know who is, to be honest. Yeah, here's what bothers me about the seven years is like, to me, if you had, you'd had a DUI, you knew you had an issue.

You'd been to A.A. You'd been struggling for years to get your addiction, your alcoholism under control. Like, then it's like, okay, you knew you shouldn't be driving, but you hadn't had any real close calls or, you know, I drink a little bit, but it's not a major issue. It's not like people are showing up saying, oh, he's, he knows he has a major, major problem. You just felt like you just, I was, I had a shitty day and the way I dealt with it was, I, I, I just drank a little bit. bit and I didn't think I was too intoxicated and I clearly was but so to me that is the low end the guy that's been arrested done had several DUIs knows he's got a problem like that's the guy in not mid to high end well and now you're talking something about the criminal justice system that I think

a lot of a lot of normal people don't understand you know their idea the criminal justice system is watching it on TV right CIS or whatever right guy is a bad guy the CIS the CIS the guy is the The system is set up to maximize your time in prison, not to attain justice in a lot of ways. And I'm lucky. I know guys who've been in prison 40 years. Don't, you know, I'm not complaining about getting a sentence of seven years, eight months. But it's just, I was told that the only people who got the low sentence in the county that I committed my crime in were police officers. So a police officer would get the low end.

But anybody else got the mid or the high end. That was just the way it works. But is that fair? No, but, you know. Probably not to most people, but that's the way the system works in that county. If I commit in my crime in San Francisco, it might have been a different thing. Remember, I'm some rich, hot-shot lawyer driving to town from San Francisco who did this. Right.

I'm not a local. Yeah. Who got there and did it. So, so, you know, my process was probably different than yours. You know, I know that you went through a plea bargain process and you ultimately accepted a plea bargain. I think a lot of people don't know that almost all criminal cases are settled by plea bargaining. Right. Like 95%.

Yeah. For example. Don't go to trial. Don't go to court. You don't go before a jury. I didn't go before a jury. I didn't want to. I was happy to work out an arrangement and save.

the state, the expense and process is going to court. So, you know, being a lawyer, I was smart enough to hire two lawyers, one to deal with the civil side. I wanted to deal with the criminal side. And, you know, was given bond, was out on bond, right? So I actually, the time between I committed my crime and the time I went to prison was over a year, about a year, three months. I was in the hospital for three months and then I was in a wheelchair for six months and a walker and you know, but I was trying to drag out that process so I was healthy enough to go to prison. I didn't want to go to a prison in a wheelchair. Yeah.

You know, so I drug that process out and was able to do that from home, right, after my 90 days. Yeah, I'm sure you've seen the level of care that you get in prison as far as medical is consistent. or like you you do not want to get sick in prison no i mean these guys yeah that was so many guys dying that's just so many guys dying oh yeah um and it's not just yeah there's a lot of of death um from from cancer or illness there's some death from violence shoot my prison in san quentin there were 29 dies who died from COVID for having sick the prison only has 3500 people right you know so so yeah I didn't want to have to deal with that and I was able to to work through that process long enough to get healthy enough to go to

to prison where it wasn't obvious you know another thing about prison I I said it was like the Savannah you don't want to be an injured person going to prison because that just makes you a target. You're just a victim to go after. And I don't care if you're injured emotionally or because you have a drug addiction or because you've got a physical problem. Any of those means that they'll try to cull you out of the herd and take you down. Right. Right. Unfortunately, I know a lot of guys who couldn't get over their addiction and they just stayed addicted to prison, right? It's easy to get what you need and they're believing or not. But that's an example of what I mean. It's not just that can kill you.

They're going to take advantage of you. I want to make sure I could minimize that risk. So you're, you were at home for six, what, nine months? Yeah, over a year, yeah. Okay. So what, um,

so I mean, how did your, how'd your wife and, and kids like how do they, what were they going through? I mean, kids are pretty resilient. You know, they may or may not really know what's,

understand what's happening. And, but, you know, your wife clearly knows what's happening. happening. She knows there's going to be some issues. Oh, yeah. You know, it's interesting. The kids were really young at the time. Five and seven, for ten.

So they knew daddy was injured. And so I just had to make sure that they knew I would be okay, that I was recovering. We did sit down with them about the crime as I, once I knew that the sentencing would be, a significant time and I'd be going away to explain to them, you know, that it wasn't just an accident that happened, that I committed a crime. And then when you commit a crime, society judges you. And that judgment usually includes taking you away from society, away from family, putting me in prison.

They didn't know what those terms really meant. Right. We had the discussion. And that was important to me to be a father that helped kids understand. that as a citizen, you have a responsibility to society. It's not just society protects you through rights. You have responsibility. And I had violated those. And so I had a price to pay for it. That was the way I explained it to them. You know, wife, she had a hard time with it. I had not just committed a crime and taken the life, I had shamed her by being a

criminal. And that was hard for her to take. You know, you know, you asked how I felt when I found out I committed a crime and I said I broke down and I was crying and stuff. I'll be honest with you, when my wife came to visit me in the visiting room four months into my prison sentence and told me we were going to get a divorce, that hit me harder than taking a life in a lot of ways. Because I didn't see it coming. I thought we were going to get through the prison time and had that kind of safe, solid marriage. But we didn't. And I didn't realize it. And I almost got myself shot that day because I was, you know, you have to have the ducate, it's called to move around in prison. And I was in an area that I wasn't allowed to be in because I was just despondent,

crying and just bonded and you know I was lucky that they were more understanding than I appreciated them being at the town

when I was out of bounds that day yeah that was hard for me I smile about it now because I kind of take the philosophy like the ancient Greek plays that they would do you know life

is equal parts tragedy and comedy. And what you don't realize is that a tragedy, if you live long enough, becomes a comedy later on, right? You can laugh at it or you can smile about it. How silly you were or how ridiculous the things were you did at the time. I do it all the time. Right? You got to, oh my God, how did I do that?

Well, like, I, even when I tell my story, I constantly kind of have these moments. where I think, what the fuck were you thinking? Like, you had so many opportunities. Like, I'm getting to these opportunities where you, I could have done the right thing. Like, there were so many, many better choices. You made that one. Like, what were you, the arrogance?

And I always relate it to, you know, in my case, I always relate it to just a pride. Like, my pride has gotten, me in every major screw-up I've ever made has been specifically related to my pride. So, but I don't know, you know, if yours, you know, what, what your, you know, catalyst, what your issues, you know, are. But mine has always been just, just arrogance, pride, just, you know, I don't know. But that's the heart of it.

That is the heart of it. You're absolutely right. You know, you think you're God's gift to the world in some way. right um uh yeah i i i went through that that same process um but you know i so when i say i lost my family with my crime uh i didn't lose it at the crime i lost four months later right uh when i was getting divorced but you know i'm also an honorable man you know my my divorce um you know we so i was successful And I know you know what it's like to have the court impose financial obligations on you because of your crimes.

In my case, I have a small criminal penalty and a big civil suit that was going on. I settled with my victim's family. The settlement was $1.55 million for the life I took. A million of that was insurance and then the rest I had to cover. And so that was taking. care of before I went to prison. But the rest of my assets, I just were for my kids upkeep, right? I mean, I wasn't going to be able to pay alimony or child support from prison. So, so, uh, uh, I found out six months in that, you know, after our, we went through the

process of my prison sentence that I would be coming out just like everybody else from prison with $233 gate money plus whatever else I could save. All the rest of my assets were basically, uh, my settlement and i was happy to do it for my kids my kids didn't do anything wrong why should they have to to pay for that uh that penalty but you know my family didn't meet me at the gate when i got out and i was divorced even though i got to tell you i had a good friend of mine who who met me i told you i lived overseas for quite a while um he had lived in korea as well and he had become good friends there he met me at the gate and uh you know you go have a nice breakfast and you you buy some new clothes and stuff like that and he asked me what's the first thing you want to do

and have at your home i said there's only one thing we have to do we have to go to a korean sauna and he looked at me in surprise but he knew what i meant and you probably don't but a korean sauna you have first of all you get naked unisect right the men are one side women on the other you get naked you shower off then you go through three different pools from cold to medium to hot in different levels you go to. But the reason I wanted to go there wasn't to get a shower or a massage. They then do what's called a body scrub. And they put on these really these mittens that are really coarse.

And they scrub you from head to toe. Take like all those extra layers of skin off. The first thing I wanted to do when I got out of prison was to take off as much of fucking prison as I could. Take off those attitude letters of skin, head to toe. So yeah, I did that out of the first. first day I got out. Did you have to go to a halfway house or?

Oh my gosh. Now, you went to the federal system, right? Yeah. So I went to the state system. And, you know, I think a lot of people don't realize that there's one federal system that's nationwide. And then there's 50 different state systems, which are called prison. You know, you go to prison.

But there's also jails, which is the local prison in the city or the county that you belong to, right? So there's really three different types. of prison that you can go to in you know in america yeah i was in a state system unlike your federal system which has a halfway house to kind of transition you before you get out in state prison you stay in until your sentence is served and then you get out um now i had to return to the county of residents not the county i didn't my crime in so i had an obligation to report to my parole officer i had two years of parole when i got out of prison and there's a lot of

petitions of parole that you have that are stricter than the laws that you have to meet when you get out of a state prison sentence so i had two years of parole um government custody in a way right or government oversight um and uh the the parole officer said well where are you going to stay and i told him i was still looking into it and he told me that if I didn't have a place, if I went, if I didn't find a place within two weeks, I would have to go into a halfway house. Now, halfway house is different than you went to, because in California, to get in a halfway house, you have to be an addict, basically. So the halfway house I would have gone to would have been six months of 36 hours a week,

classes and training. You're like in prison. You have to be back by 8 o'clock. You can't. leave the facilities without a permission slip you can't look for a job you can't do anything and that was that was a bed that I could stay now I was lucky because I knew what to expect when I got out not when I went in I had no clue but when I got out I had been the managing editor of the San Quentin News newspaper and we have a a circulation of 35,000 throughout the state system It's a big newspaper, and we write a lot of articles. So I talked to a lot of people that's expect.

They told me the dumbest, worst thing I could do would be to go to one of those halfway, our state halfway house, which is different than your federal one, because it's usually tied to some sort of addiction or other things they want you to be treated for. And I was told, whatever you do, avoid that, because you're still in prison. You have, like, four roommates, some of who are active addicts who are going to want to steal from you to pretend. But you can't protect yourself because you'll be in violation with your parole. You know, if you try to do anything to protect yourself from somebody attacking you. So you just got to take it because you don't want to do that. So I, I hustle to find a

place. I was very lucky that I was an active church member before I went to prison. I've been a deacon and a Sunday school teacher. And my church was able to help me find what's called an in-law unit which you may not be familiar with but in san francisco you have a little this was attached to a woman's garage so a little single you know bathroom and a and a little like living room that's it like no kitchen and that's stuff mother-in-law's you know like a you know they're like a you know they're called mother-in-law yeah and so this this woman who i now consider she should be i'm not catholic but she should be a saint and what she didn't mean she deserves sainhood as far as i'm concerned because when i got out

I was $450 in my pocket because I'd saved up some money from my job and the gate money. She let me stay in her in-law unit, rent-free. I stayed there for five months until I could, you know, earn enough money to get my own apart. So you say I was lucky that way. So can we go back to prison when you went to prison? like what's what's the first like what is your first day in prison like I mean how are you like you walk through the gates the doors closed like I'm sure in your mind you know is this like like in the federal system they have like they have well they have supermaxes but then

you have penitentiaries you have mediums you have lows and you have a camp they have what level like right a one two three four something like that in yeah california has levels but you know you always start out in jail right you don't go to you don't go to prison um so i spent about two months um in uh in jail now mixed with everyone i was an educated man i knew this is going to happen so um i i ask around of how to deal with this and i was sophisticated enough to find a woman who, a former warden of a California state prison who was running a nonprofit, I made a substantial donation to her nonprofit and had her guide me through the process. So a process that takes most people six months to a year took me less than two months to get to the prison of my choice.

and it's a level two prison called San Quentin. I chose that because it was closest to my home. That was all that I cared about. Remember, I was still married at the time. I wanted my kids to be able to visit me in prison. I didn't want them to have to drive halfway across the state. There are level ones in San Quentin prisons, but I went to a level two. My crime was considered a violent crime because I killed someone.

And so the minimum standard is usually level two. when you commit a violent crime. But I was lucky to go through that process quickly and go to that. County was a hellhole. You got guys who were in prison for, who can't get bail and are in prison for years. I was one guy who had a murder, you know, on a murder case. He'd been there for six years in a county jail. We had triple-tiered bunks and we had mats on the floor for other guys.

because it was so full a lot of people who come in and you know they're they're still high when they get there but three days later uh they're in a whole world of hurt uh as they're waiting there and going through that process so yeah jail was was a difficult time um but uh you know the hardcore stuff was going to prison so in california you go to what's called classification after you finish your jail term you go to prison so that's where they put everybody together level one through level level four. So I was in classification for six weeks, pretty much. And while I was there, you know, the guy next to me had a broken jaw from a fight. I saw guys get hit with what are called block guns. Block guns shoot out like a bean bag, but it's got like a shotgun propellant

behind us. It knocks your ass down. It doesn't kill you, but it knocked you down. I saw guys get stabbed. In my block, which is called an X block, because there's four different wings to it. One guy got killed, you know, during the time I was there. We were on lockdown the whole time. It was very rare that I got out of myself where I had one cell and we were in there when I was in classification. It was not a fun time. And I, again, because I had spent enough time in different environments, I was able to kind of navigate those waters, I think, better than a lot of guys in my situation. But something you didn't have, California is very, it's a very racist system. You know, I think you had mentioned one of the times that one of your cellies was like a Mexican or

Latin or something like that. I would, I never had that in prison. My prison were, uh, uh, bunkies, right, in the same pair of bunks or my cellies who were in the same cell, had to be white. right under kind of an unwritten law so uh when i first got to a prison it was um it was in january it's a place called wasco and it was a super bowl weekend and they were going to let us out to watch the super bowl and i didn't realize that i was uh i almost sat i saw an empty bench and so i was going to go sit in the bench but it was the black section of the open area and i'm a white man And so I was gently told that I wasn't allowed to sit there, and I should go sit with the white guys. But, you know, I did a couple dumb things like that, but I learned my lesson pretty quick to abide by the rules in prison.

And to make myself useful, not as an ATM machine. You know, a lot of guys who have money in prison, they act like an ATM machine. They get a lot of money and they're giving out gifts to everybody. That's the way they stay safe. That wasn't a game for me. But I made myself useful, help people write letters or, you know, talk about what their court documents for, stuff like that. Yeah, I did the same thing. It was the same.

Then I ended up getting, teaching GED, taught the real estate class for 10 years. There you go. You become an important person. And you, how, when did you start becoming the editor or the, was it the editor or assistant? Yeah, I was a managing editor, right? So I had a different, California is about 5% African-American, but the prison population is about 40% African-American. So the prison has a much more African-American vibe in California than you would think, given the population in the state. And I figure these guys need to be the editor-in-chief.

You don't need a white guy doing that. So my job was to make sure all the articles were edited and they were on a range of different themes and stuff like that, the managing editor. So I managed the newspaper. That was kind of my service loss. You know, when I got to prison, I kind of went through a three-step process. You know, the first thing I wanted to do was self-realization. I need to understand how I could commit my crime. Who was I that I could do that?

And why did I do that? And then after self-realization, you need to get into self-expression. And self-expression is your ability to communicate with your community. Now, some guys do it with art. You know, some guys do with music. Mine was writing. I like to do a lot of writing to do that. And then the next day is you become service, you know,

because you want to help others on that journey of self-realization, self-expression. And my concept of service, as well as tutoring, guys in math and other stuff, was to be the managing editor of San Quentin News. Because San Quentin's a unique prison. I think it's just like the Silicon Valley prison system. They have tons of COVID has changed everything. But before COVID, we had about 180 different organizations or nonprofits that had active meetings. and events inside San Quentin. You know, most prisons just seem to have A, A, or N-A, and that's it, right?

Maybe Al-Anon, you know, that's it. Our prison had a ton of different offerings for people to try to learn about, you know, why they committed their crime and what they could do to make sure they didn't do it again. And so a lot of our articles are about what can be done in prison to prepare yourself for when you get out, prepare yourself for re-entry. Think of like non-violent communication. right so so you can be able to express yourself without having to get behind the people understanding your emotions you know a lot of times people think they're angry and they're not

they're just frustrated right we'll help them understand that how do you become a better citizen how do you become a better father how do you become a better husband how do you deal with your your addiction how do you get ready for getting the job you know there's a lot of non-profit organizations like that in same point and i took a bunch of those classes too So I got to figure out what the fuck was going on with me. I mean, I was so dumb that I was drinking and driving, and I killed someone. I wanted to make sure that I wouldn't happen to him as my first goal, right? So I did a lot of time of that work of introspection.

You know, who am I? What am I? The way I characterize it is I am, you know, everything is narrative. That's how we understand things. And so the narrative that I created for myself was, you build this psychic, delusion house that you live in as a, as a person. And that psychic delusion house is made up of all your beliefs and your philosophies and the way you look at the world. And I had burned down my psychic delusion house with my crime. I wasn't this great, smart, good citizen lawyer. I was a murderer, right? I'd taken a life. And so I spent a lot of my time in prison rebuilding

my psychic delusion house as an adult instead of the one I had built up over my life. that existed before, that had led to me thinking I could drink and drive, are not caring that I was putting others at risk. It's probably a better way of characterizing. I didn't want to have to be in that process again. Now, a lot of people like to dance to the 12-step, you know, so they think that AA is the only solution. I'm not an AA guy, per se.

I think AAA keeps you focused on your addiction. And I think NAA keeps you focused on your addiction. My goal wasn't to guard against my addiction. I wanted to change who I was so my addiction no longer have power over me. So like after I got out, I worked in a high-end restaurant with a celebrity chef. Chris Costino, he's one top chef, top chef master, a very famous guy. I knew a lot of guys in the restaurant industry who were good friends and say, hey, you've got to get a job. They had two bars.

I didn't have a problem. I don't have a problem with drinking. I've got out three years. I'm not worried about it because I can go to a bar and not worry about drinking. I'm afraid a lot of guys in AA still worry about their addiction. That wasn't my thing. I kind of rebuilt my psychic delusion house in a different way. I didn't follow the design that AA gives you to rebuild your head.

habits, your police so that you can survive. So once you, once you got out, you got, I mean, what's, what's with all the different jobs?

I didn't expect that. I got to tell you. So think about the startup community that everybody knows about it's heard about, right? And I'm working in that area with a bunch of different companies, doing a lot of different work as an attorney. but also more as a businessman, helping them figure out their businesses. So I went to prison with, after living in the Bay Area for, at that time, 15 years,

I had a lot of friends. You know, I had a big network business-wise and social-wise. But my network is that kind of educated, elite, atheist business worker, right? That kind of high mindset. They don't know how to forgive somebody for committing a lot of. a sin or wrong so when I got out nobody wanted to talk to me not maliciously they didn't know how to interact with me right I was something beyond their comprehension and I would say that that's still true of that I'll give an example

even the ones who could interact with me looked at me as kind of a disabled person right they didn't want me to be a lawyer again I got a friend of mine aimed has me house sick for her and and cats it, you know, pays me to house it and cats it for her. So she trusts me in her house is my point, right? Absolutely trust me. But she doesn't invite me to her birthday party. Right. I'm a disabled person or like a mentally disabled is the way that my old network still sees me.

So when I got out, I had to figure out how to make money to get my own place because the most important thing for me is not to be a burden to my family. or to society, right? So I got out and I started to hustle and I, I've done a couple jobs as a lawyer. I helped to, I mediated a divorce between a couple and, you know, made some money that way. I worked on the First Death Act, which as part of the federal system, you know, is a big legal change in the federal system trying to reduce prison population to get people out past during the Trump years. So I worked on developing a manual for the first step back. I've worked with an organization called Prison Professors to develop like four different

remote learning classes that you can get people like a manual and they can go through the lessons and correspond and send back in their answers. I help them do that and it's kind of an author of an editor and a contributor. So yeah, I've done a bunch of stuff like that. But I've got to tell you, even those jobs only pay like 30 to $30. 50 bucks an hour. I think the best one I got was 50 bucks an hour. Most of them are like 30 bucks an hour. So you still have a law degree. You're still a member of the California. Oh my god, hilarious. You're going to love this. No, I'm not. If you commit a felony,

right. They disbar you. Now, they charge you for the privilege of disbarring you. But they don't disbar you when you're in prison. They wait until you get out. And then you're supposed to have a six year time of like cooling off before you can apply for the bar again so not only am i disbarred i can't be a lawyer but i got a six thousand dollar debt on top of that for the privilege of being disbarred and remember i got out with no money i can't pay six thousand bucks back right i don't have it so yeah no i'm i'm just barred i can't practice law as a lawyer you know i can provide consulting services to a level can you can you go to another state and be a lawyer and you're still i take the bar in that state and only if they allow former

felons to get it usually you have to get an exemption to their standards you'd have to go to court to get permission to become a lawyer uh and that's a hey i'm 60 years old i'm not going to waste my time on on that stuff but you know i'm i assume you've learned this as well there are so many restrictions yeah on felons to do jobs to get a light you can't get an insurance license. You can't get a real estate license in San Francisco unless you get an exemption, an exemption, excuse me, to the standard. Because the standard says, no, you can't get one of your favorite thing. Yeah. So it's, it's a really challenging process once you come back. And for me, that's meant that I've done a lot of stuff, you know, whatever I can

get, to be honest. Yeah. I understand. I understand. I do it's people ask me like, what do I do for a living. I mean, I don't really, you know, I always joke. I'm like, well, I don't really have a job. But, you know, and they're like, well, how are you, you know, paying your, how do you pay your bills? I'm like, well, you know, I paint. I do YouTube. I get paid to do, you know, to do talks. I get paid to, you know, like it, it, no one thing pays my bills. It's a little here. It's a little there. It's a little. And at the end of the month, it's enough to pay all my bills. Like, it's not, like, I'm not. There haven't been really many months where I've been like I don't have it like I'm in lucky I have it but I I don't ever have it to the point where it's like I can get my credit cards paid off I could pay

off my car like I it always just seems to be I'm like oh I'm doing really well oh I'm doing really well oh it just keeps happening it's like oh every time I get ahead suddenly my $950 car insurance is due it's like what that came out of nowhere you know so it's uh yeah It's an issue. I just, and the, you know, I have, in the federal system when you get out, you know, you typically go to a halfway house. Then you have, I have, every crime is different. I have five years of supervised release, which is that, you know, it's not parole. It's like probation.

You have a probationary period. Because of my crime, I have a five year. Most of them are two to three years. Mine's five. So I have a five-year term of a supervised release, and I have all these restrictions. So I'm not allowed to do this. You can't work in development. You can't work in real estate. You can't work in finance. You can't work in construction. You can't work. I mean, by the time you're done, it's like, so McDonald's. They're like, yes, but not, but not at the, as a cash register or as a cashier. Like, you have to work in the back, you know, with the fries.

like she's you know I feel like I can do more than that but uh so I started doing stuff you know I'm I'm selling my books and I sell paintings and I do YouTube and I do talks and so yeah I I hear so I hear you know I get it I get it and what's even worse is that I got a guy I got I have like a probation officer who's watching me oh yeah so suddenly I went to work for a finance company that'd be an issue she would very quickly come in and say what are you doing You can't do that? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, trust me, that first two years I got out of, you know, you're peeing a cup, right?

I mean, they're not just talking to you. They're inspecting where you live. They come into your home. You know, and I'm a proud man. So, for example, in the state system, you can't travel more than 50 miles from your county of residence without permission. I'm too proud to ask permission I hate asking I won't I won't do it

I didn't do it I said I'm fine I'll just stay in fucking San Francisco until I'm two years ago then I'll travel without having to ask permission I just couldn't do it I travel almost every month and I have to ask almost every month I have to fill out a form send it in then I don't hear from her for three days then I have to send another to hey I'm supposed to be leaving

I need permission then, oh, I'm sorry, I missed this. Yeah, yeah, that's fine. You know, and I've been denied before. Imagine being asking to go to Atlanta and being told no. What do you mean? Yeah, I couldn't do it. Yeah, I couldn't do it. Like, this is for work.

Well, the answer's no. It's like. And for me, it was a double bond because my, I mentioned my kids were young when I went to prison. They were teenagers by the time I got out. So I had been in prison half their lives. But I worked to make sure my kids did well, even though I was in prison. So, for example, my son, you know, we had to take my kid, my son had been going to a private school.

We had to take him out and put him in public school. My kids were living in bunk beds because in half the house, because of their half was being rented out to Airbnb to help pay the bills, right, by the time I had gone to prison. So, you know, it makes stuff like difficult. But I looked at my poor son, and he had a mother, a grandmother. a sister and even the cat was female right and then his class was 23 girls and four boys so when I was in prison I wrote to the two private schools that were boys schools in San Francisco one of them were consciousness enough to write back and I worked it out so my son can get an interview so he spent a couple of years at a

private school cathedral school for boys in San Francisco and then he got accepted at a boarding school So both my kids, when I got out, my kids were living in Connecticut at school. They come home for the summer. But I didn't get to see them a lot when I got out. And I couldn't go to their school because I wasn't allowed to travel. So I didn't even get to see them there. This past year was the first time like I got to go to my kids' school

and see my son play baseball as a senior in high school on the varsity baseball team to watch my daughter play golf as a. as a sophomore to go to my son's graduation to meet their friends first time ever was this you know this past fall and that meant a lot to me right meant a lot meant a lot in May to go to his graduation and be able to celebrate him graduating in high school but I hadn't been able to do that prior to him so what are you doing I'm sorry you're going to say something yeah it's like you don't I'm guessing you don't have kids because I haven't heard you mention them but I have one son he doesn't talk to me well here you've just

hit upon it my son so before I went to prison that that year before I went to prison when I was able to move around I like took him to every Giants game I could right the baseball game so we got some fun and spent some time together and we bonded over baseball. In fact, we still bond over baseball. This past summer, we went to like six Johnny Tammies, our favorite time together. But my daughter, when I went to prison, I was still her daddy that she loved more than anybody. But by the time I got out, I was a criminal that killed somebody. And so she's been much more distant than my son has. It's been much more of a challenge to get back into her life and to find ways that she values it.

She didn't talk to me for a while after I got back or didn't have any desire to see me, even though my son was open to it. But you know, you can find ways to deal with that. I actually wrote a letter to Neil deGrasse Tyson, who's a very famous celebrity, right? He runs a museum and he's on TV shows all the time. He does Star Talk as a podcast. and, you know, and he wrote back, and one of my letters that I wrote to him, he published in his book. But the best thing was, when the book came out for publishing, he said, hey, Wayne, we kept in touch. Because I'd ask him for help on how to deal with my kids and how to keep them involved in the science and stuff like that. And so he started up a correspondence.

And he put my letter in his book and he says, hey, I'm doing a book show at Davy Symphony Hall, which has 1,500 people, you know, for a book signing. Why don't you bring your kids? And so my daughter, my son was away at school. I brought my daughter. And he invited her up on stage and she got to talk with him for four minutes. So I was able to do something that showed that it isn't just mom that has value. Dad is giving something to your life. Whether it's getting my son into a different school or having my daughter meet a celebrity in the green room before the show and then actually being invited on stage to talk with him during the show.

So I've done stuff like that to try to add value. And, of course, they know a lot of the work I do in the nonprofit sector to try to help reform the criminal justice system. So these guys, first of all, if they are ready when they get out, to give them an opportunity, but also to help them rehabilitate when they're in prison so they can have an opportunity. Right. I'm on the board of a nonprofit that teaches fatherhood values to guys inside. It's called man-to-man. And they'll be in three prisons before the end of this next fiscal year. and then, you know, almost a year in the future.

Because these guys don't know how to be fathered. You know, they don't know, non-violent communication. They don't know, they get frustrated or angry, and they lash out. Let's teach them how to communicate non-violently, both with the mother and with their children. Let's help them develop a connection with their children so they don't become ostracized. Because I know exactly what we mean. My son, there was 18 months, he wouldn't visit me in prison.

because when he transferred from to that boy's school he had a really hard time and I caused that hard time because the other kids knew their parents knew and they told their kids that I was in prison and you know he didn't know how to process that

yeah those are real challenges for the kids so I hear you I hear you those good Christian values that upper that upper middle class America has always seems to be selective you know they never never seem to jump from the you know to be a good person do the right thing they never seem to jump to the forgiveness portion of of Christianity it's it's always used to elevate them in such a

way above everyone else and if you make a mistake then discard them oh my gosh and and that includes the non-profit world unfortunately um you know i got one website I worked for about nine months and they brought me in as a web manager so help them with their content and post their content and then they asked me to become a web developer to help them redesign their website I'm getting paid 30 bucks an hour right to do that work so I said okay well I got to learn some new skills to these web development oh no do that on your own time you know it's like wait a second no no I'm all if you want me to learn how to do it. I want to get paid. And they didn't want to do that. And then they brought in summer

interns. They said, okay, well, we don't need you to work 18 hours, just work five hours. And they said, well, we don't need you at all, actually. So, you know, thank you for your service. And they just term it, they didn't give me two weeks notice. They just said, hey, you know, we're done with you. Because they still look at you as like they're doing a favor for you. By hiring you. They don't look at you as a regular employee that deserves common courtesy of giving. two weeks notice when you terminate a contract yeah um yeah i've seen that and that that's frustrating um but that's the way the world really is not all this virtue signaling you see on tv about how everybody's helping everybody these kumbaya moments it's a lot more challenging

it you know what always amazed me when i was locked up was that like the black guys who have, who have, you know, four kids from, you know, three different, you know, baby mamas and, you know, and have just been, have never paid child support, have just been nothing but abusive and been locked up for domestic violence and all these other things. In that community, those women will grab their kids, drag them down to visitation, will send them money and put money on their books. will and it's like like my buddies that I made millions of dollars for don't want to talk to you don't want I can't you want me to come and see you in the prison are you serious like they don't

want to take your phone call God forbid if you asked them to actually send you a hundred bucks like that's don't even ask that it's like I made you on the last deal we did you made $150,000 and then when you get out of prison they don't want to help you at all it it was it blows my mind I knew guys that were, guys who were getting out of prison, going to the halfway house, and guys are dropping off money for them. And it's like, but I had nobody to help me. Nobody. I had written a book, I had written a book, and I had gotten an advance on the book.

And I'd optioned the film or the life rights to one of my, one of my subjects that I wrote a story on. And they happened, as soon as I got to the halfway house, they just had. happened to re-option it. So I got, I happened to get a check. Like in the perfect, it was a perfect moment. I got a check and I was able to go buy a shitty car and pay for 300 bucks worth of clothes at Walmart. And then I had a buddy who hired me to work at his gym.

Like, it was just, just what? And I had a friend who was a saint who said, as soon as you get out of the halfway house, you can come live in my spare room like I lived in her spare room with her husband and her two kids and I slept in the spare room and I was so I was thankful I had nowhere to go nowhere to go

and even if they are a saint because they're that rare because they're that rare because everybody else was saying no no I'm sorry I just can't I they can't be bothered right is the way it is they're busy with their own life

and where they don Yeah, I think the heart, the thing I'm most proud of is how well my kids have turned out more than what I've done. But they're smart, they're educated, they're happy, they got a good life. They don't use what happened to me as an excuse. Yeah, as a crutch, yeah. Yeah, and that's important for me. The best way, the closest thing I've been able to do to get into my daughter's life is I, So she's got a cat called Milky Way. She likes the space stuff so the cat's called Milky Way and so she's away at school now and so I'm cat sitting her cat, you know, so that's one way I've been able to add value for her and I'm able to say in touch with her because she uses a platform called Snapchat all the time. And so I send her a Snapchat of her cat every day.

And that's shown the real issue for her is she this isn't conscious. This is just the defense mechanism she she's developed because she was so hurt by my disappearance that she thinks she can't trust men now because I abandoned her in her mind. I got that. Her child's mind, right? I abandoned her. And so I do everything I can to both promise to do something and then make sure I actually do it so that she can learn.

She can see by example that she can trust me. She may not feel she can trust me yet. But I think if I stack up enough of these actions where I show her she can trust me, she'll come to the realization that she can trust me. But that's a slow process. And it hasn't been easy, and it's not over. She just told me that I have to ask her permission to interact with her school now. Even though I've been to her school, because her brother and her weren't at the same school

in a number of times, but that was because it was both. their school but now i need her permission and um believe it or not i'm happy to give her that because i want her to take ownership of her life but i'm not i'm not happy she asked me to yeah i thought we were beyond that but i might not be able to go to parents weekend because she's not sure if she wants to do that so so it's not over but but i that's my main i can't help my victim any more than i have right family me more than I have. They don't want to talk to me and that's fine. And I did go through a process called victim offender education and a victim panel and because one of the sons of my

victim had written a note to me on Facebook and by law I can't communicate with them. But I did go through the process of offering to communicate with them and had a violence counselor interactors are in a mediary and they said no we don't really want to interact at all and of course the civil settlement was the best I could do even for my victims family but my family is a different story right when I interact with them as much as I can I want to be a true father to my kids as best I can and I do that I do that today I do it every day and I'll cat sit or anything else I have to do to show my daughter that she can trust me.

So what's the game plan from here on out, you know, just in work and just life in general? Is there a goal or just continuing to work with the nonprofits? No, it's funny you say that. You know, you've heard the term conscious and unconscious. and conscious and you know subconscious right there's stuff that happens if we don't recognize this happening our conscious mind can't see it can't think about it um i can say that i was kind of in a stuck in a pattern of what am i going to do um but my uh my ex-wife just got remarried in july so you know just just a month ago and i think that's helped me get unstuck um and not

I'm happy she got remarried. I want her to be happy. I'm not happy she divorced me. Right. I would have preferred a love story that transcended my crime to be an example for our kids. But she didn't, so we don't have that. But I want her to be happy. And I'm glad she's found somebody that she wants to spend the rest of her life with.

um for me uh that life is is savoring my freedom um and part of that could be solitude i don't know about you but when i was in i lived in a dorm with 200 other men you know i had to listen to rap music for six years for heaven six. And guys who thought they were rap stars, they had to sing. I felt like I was Simon Cowell that I wanted to come out on American Idol and tell him to shut up that they really need

a job of profession. But, you know, so I appreciate solitude. I got a great apartment in San Francisco. I work hard. But I got my passport. And I think my dream right now is I want to come, my goal is to become what's called a digital nomad.

So, you know, I'm looking at like doing, like trading apartments with somebody who's who, right now I'm talking to Paris, London, Paris, Covington, and Rome, right? Where people want to spend a month in San Francisco and I could spend a month in their place. So I'm hoping to be able to do that. Is that a, is there a website or something? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, home exchange, it's cool.

And it's not going to affect you because you're working basically remotely anyway. A lot of the stuff I do, yeah. A lot of stuff I use normally. So I'm looking at doing that as a way of kind of doing what I want to do. Yeah, it's, you know, you mentioned that you've written books. I admire you. The main thing I've gotten to is writing articles, some of them long, you know, 10,000 words. a lot of them short.

I post them on a platform called Medium, and Medium allows me to, I've got over 70 pieces on there about kind of my journey, you know, and my recovery, to become a better person than I was that allowed me to commit my crime at the time and to make sure I wouldn't do something like that again. It's an important story for me, and I share it that way.

That's kind of my creative writing way. You know, that's been a good mechanism for me. I make a little money on that as well because it's behind a paywall, right? So you get paid for people to read your stuff. But so I'll continue to do stuff like that. But no, I haven't found my home yet. You know, in the nonprofit world, I'm a white, straight male. Nobody wants to hire a white straight male anymore.

I'm not complaining about it. I'm just being honest. Right. if i claimed i was transitioning i'd get a job how's that yeah might be worth it but i'm not going to do that play that game um i am what i am and if they you know if they feel any more diversity i get it i'm not going to tell them otherwise uh how often do you uh write now or oh all the time i'm writing a piece right now the reason i knew how many jobs i worked before is i'm writing a piece called 26 jobs and i'm writing about the challenges of uh

of you know finding work once you get out of prison and how that's systemic it's not just me not just you i think your average journey is decreased by like 40 percent if you've been convicted by a felony over your lifetime it's systemic and so to helping people to know about that is as part of the message i just wrote one on compassionate release in the federal system because people don't understand just how twisted and broken the system is how let's call it institutional racism because a lot of the four people are black and so they're the ones that are impacted the most but it's institutional in that the system is set up to make it impossible for you to say goodbye to your family if you have a terminal illness it's it's heartbreaking you know I published that last month so yeah I write stuff all the time have you thought about well I was going to say I know a guy I know a guy by Walt Pavlo. I don't know if you know who Walt is.

Anyway, he writes for Forbes magazine. And he's, he was incarcerated. I think he did like two or three years. He was involved in, um, um, um, uh, MCI. And, uh, I think he did, he did a few years. And he got out and he, he, he, of course, does prison consulting. And he, he does the, he taught at NBA pro, not taught, but he does speeches at NBA program. and now he, one of the things he does is he writes for Forbes.

I don't, you know, so, for Forbes.com. He's written a couple articles on me. It's, you know, so I don't know if that might be another avenue for you, but. Yeah, I'm doing, I've been writing for a number of publications. So there's one thing you do in the gig economy out here. It's called Upwork. So Upwork, they post these jobs online and you can bid on. Yeah, I've used it.

Have you? Yeah. I've written reviews. One of my jobs was to write a bunch of reviews for dog vitamins. Okay? I've used upward to write stuff. So, you know, there's stuff out there that, you know, you can make a little money on. Yeah.

I hire, I've hired an editor one time for one of my books I wrote. You know, all the books I wrote were on other, we're on other. other or on other inmates. Gosh. So, you know, true, they were all nonfiction and, uh,

I've stayed away from that. My best friend in prison, he called me this morning, um, is a guy who pretended to be a Rockefeller for 20 years and got away with it. He got married and had a child as a Rockefeller. You know, his wife,

his wife was a partner at a firm called Bain Consulting, which is one of the premier consulting firms, in the world. You know, she's making over a million a year of fame. I think I saw a doctor. She didn't know. Oh, yeah, he's been on TV. They've been books about him. They've written books about him. He's been movies about him, all kinds of shit. Um, guys, hilarious. Uh, he's actually German. Yeah. Came over here as a child, grew up in Wisconsin, went to California, and then adopted this Rockefeller persona permanently when he went back east to like Massachusetts. Isn't there a body associated with that crime, with him?

Oh, my God, no, he was his first, the way they found him was he was getting a divorce from his wife and he kidnapped his daughter. Yeah, I'm telling you. Yeah. Yeah, so. Like, there's somebody involved in this whole thing disappeared. My best friend. Well, what had happened was they found out that 20 years before this. Yeah.

That there was a couple that he had been living in their pool house. Right. And they disappeared. And then he disappeared and showed up back east as a Rockefeller. so they just did you know they ended up convicting him of those murders right um uh and so he's in prison as a lifer it's called and a lifer is kind of a weird term um California has three times as many life lifer prisoners than Texas okay so it's a big issue so these are guys who are sentenced to a set sentence and then they are they have a an indeterminate life sentence it's

call. So they could be sentenced to 20 years to life, which means they have to serve 20 years. But after that, if they can be found suitable by the parole board, they're able to get out and be on parole. But almost nobody gets found suitable. I knew one guy who had been in for 20 years for a murder was found suitable by the parole board. The governor at that time revoked his parole, so he didn't give it to him. He ended up spending 38 years in prison, even though he had already been found suitable at 20 years. So guys spend a lot of time in prison. And so any time those guys want to stay in touch,

I help them out as much as I can. I call it the lifer discount. If they don't call me anytime, if they need a subscription to a magazine, if they need some money on their books to get something they want to buy, I'll do it for them because I knew I was going to get out of prison. Right. They don't.

They literally could be there until they got. And that's... What's interesting... I don't think that's justice. What's interesting? thing about murders is that it's the lowest recidivist they have the lowest recidivism rate you know like i mean these guys you get out there's almost there's almost no chance they're ever going to do anything again you know so if you're if the if your goal is keeping society safe you know

letting them out isn't the option you know or i'm sorry isn't the issue like there there's there's almost no chance at all they'll ever do anything again so well we want to keep society safe but you're really not like that's a bad argument oh not only you not keep them safe in california it costs 130 000 a year to keep somebody incarcerated right so you're by the way the federal system is like 35 to 40 000 it's a lot cheaper in the federal system in california it's 130 000 so not only are you keeping them out of society which costs them something let's say or maybe you know it doesn't really keep society safer. It's costing you $130,000 a year to do it. Right. I mean, it's insane. That's a

California issue, right? Every state's different. That's how much it is in California. We've got over 100,000 guys in prison to California. It's a big number. Okay. So, I mean, do you have anything else you want to talk about, discuss? I think the main thing is just that give people some hope that you know whatever trauma they experienced whatever went through that had them develop these defense mechanisms and habits that got them into prison that they can dismantle those habits and defense mechanisms if they want to it's not easy it takes time and it takes work but they don't have to stay a violent criminal they don't have to stay an addict they don't have to say a

you know, someone who adopts other people's personas and becomes a fraud in different ways. They can get out of that if they want to. I'm not saying it's easy, but you can do it. And that there's a clear path to doing that

if they're willing to try. The main thing is read the San Quentin News. You know, we got it online. I'm still the web manager for those guys. So we get over 10,000 hits a month, you know, people read the newspaper to give people some idea of some of the programs and some of the stories. of these guys who successfully

learn something in their prison sentence and then when they get out, become what are called returning citizens. Nobody from San Quing News has ever gone back to prison, by the way, I have to get that out. Zero recidivism for the guys who worked on these papers. So they're good role models to a community that needs them. So I guess that's the main thing.

Sanquinn News.com. It's called all one word. Easy to find. If anybody wants to hear more, about these things. That's where I go. Hey, I appreciate you guys checking this out. And if you like the video, do me a favor. Hit the like button and hit the bell so you get notified of, you know, subscribe to the channel, of course.

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