The Joe Rogan Experience - #1714 - Josh Dubin & Robert Jones

Episode Date: October 5, 2021

Josh Dubin is an Ambassador to The Innocence Project, Criminal justice reform advocate, attorney, and president of Dubin Research and Consulting. On January 26, 2017, Robert Jones was exonerated of four separate crimes, including rape, robbery, kidnapping and manslaughter, which had terrified tourists and residents over a two-month period in 1992 in New Orleans. He is now a motivational speaker and community activist, poverty abolitionist and one of the co-founders of Free-Dem Foundations, Inc; a nonprofit organization that mentors and guides the youth in a positive direction. https://www.instagram.com/robertjonesofnola

The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. Gentlemen. What's up? How are you? Good to see you, man. Good to see you, bro. Always.

And Robert, very nice to meet you. It's a pleasure as well. Pull this sucker up right to your face. It moves around. Yeah, it's very... That's cool. Yeah, try to keep it like a fist from your face. All right.

Let's just get into it. Let's explain Robert. Why don't you get started with this? Explain how you came to know Robert and what his circumstances were. Yeah. In 2016, 2016, right? Yeah. In 2016, 2016, right? I was speaking in New Orleans. I was asked to speak at this conference of like hundreds of criminal defense attorneys with Barry Sheck, who founded the Innocence Project. were teaching a class essentially from the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and Barry and I were giving a presentation in front of hundreds of lawyers about things that they could do to ensure that during jury selection and a trial that you can expose prosecutorial misconduct, how you can make stronger legal pleas to get what we call

exculpatory evidence or evidence that would tend to show someone's innocence. So it was an hour-long speech, and Barry and I were like going in 15-minute blocks. And at some point while we're on the stage, and I feel like we're killing it you know i'm like feeling myself like they're really loving this stuff and at some point on stage barry goes to me by the way you know we just had an exoneration here in new orleans and this guy might show up and and i said when was the exoneration he said just a couple of weeks ago And I said, when was the exoneration? He said, just a couple of weeks ago. And I said, it's kind of a tricky thing to put him in a position to come up and speak in front of hundreds of lawyers.

And I said, how long was he in for? He said, almost 24 years, 23 years, seven months for a vicious rape and murder that he didn't commit. So we're wrapping up our speech. And all of a sudden, I see this man walk in the room and like a lot of heads turn around because it was like a big hotel, like ballroom. And all the heads swung around because the door opened real loud, slam. So everybody is looking at this guy. And I see this very well-dressed man. And Barry says, oh, and we have a very special treat for you. This man just a few weeks ago was walked out of Angola, one of the most violent penitentiaries in the country. know, something bad is about to happen because I know what that's like to at least I don't know what it's like, but I know what it's like to see somebody in the throes of just getting out.

And they're usually shell shocked in a way that is not conducive to public speaking. So this guy just strides up on the stage, grabs the mic, and gives this galvanizing speech where, you know, like you could see the jaws dropping open about how important it is to fight while you're in court and to not back down from judges that aren't letting you, you know, protect your client's constitutional rights. And I'm sitting there watching him, and I'm thinking to myself, I've never seen anything like this. This is special. So Robert and I met right there on the stage and we got to talking and then we went across the street to a bar and we had a more than a

few cocktails and he he told me his whole story about the crime about this awful you know set of prosecutors and detectives that covered up evidence and lied and were responsible for his incarceration. And I've said this to you before, these, you know, if you've never been in the presence of an exoneree, you don't really know, you know, really the true strength and like the triumph of the human spirit in a way that is very hard to describe. So, you know, 25 minutes in, we're at a very crowded bar in the French Quarter, and I'm weeping. So this woman is sitting at the bar, and Robert puts his arm on me. He's like, it's all right, I'm gonna be all right. And we had like one of those conversations where it was like, uh, we just connected in a way that was, um, you know,

really extraordinary. And then, um, I went on to help represent him in his, his civil rights case. And, um, but that's how we met. I don't want to give away too much of his story cause I'd rather him tell it, but that's how we met. And then, you know, have kept in close contact over the last, you know, five years or so. And I say this with full confidence that none of it is hyperbole. You're in the presence of a miracle. I mean, what this man was able to endure, overcome, and accomplish since he's been out is nothing short of mind-blowing i mean he's a force of nature and it's just such a an honor to bring him here how long have you been out robert about five years or so and has it what what has the transition been like from the first day you're out to now?

Is it, have you like gradually become accustomed to this idea that they're not going to drag you back in? Have you, like, has freedom changed like the way it feels? Is it like normal now? maybe after after my charge it was dismissed I was released in 2015 but maybe two years after that being threatened for retry after that was over the charge it was actually dismissed on my 44th birthday, right? Which a day I'll never forget. I started feeling freedom from there, in a sense, because I wasn't tied into anything no more, in the sense of... You didn't have it hovering. Right.

So, yeah, it has been a transition from the first day I got out even to now, a lot of things I'm getting accustomed to. And just the way the world is, right? You know, inside of prison, you live under a set of rules and guidelines, administratively and as a prisoner, right? They got their own set of rules, you know. And one of the things is about respect.

Respect is huge, and just having that empathy for other people that's in the situation that you are in, right? So immediately when I got out, maybe about the first week I was out, I'm gonna tell you one of the transitional phases I were a friend in the Riverwalk like near the French Quarters in New Orleans and man I was just talking and I seen the old lady crossing the streets old white white lady on the on one of those canes like the full

the the full stand canes yeah like a walker yeah like a walker right and it's like she's crossing the streets but these cars kind of like moving kind of fast a lot of traffic you know and people blowing homes and different things of that nature uh and i'm looking at everybody like, ain't nobody going to help this old lady? Like, she might get hit. You know, a car might hit her, right? So I'm talking to my friend, but I'm constantly paying attention to what's going on, right? Paying attention to my surroundings. So I said, man, what the hell?

I went and helped her, made sure that she crossed the street safely. And when I got back to the other side, people were like clapping and patting me on my back. I'm like, this is a fucked up world. Like, you're giving me accolades. For doing a normal human thing. Right. Yeah, that you're supposed to do. Yeah, absolutely.

So I knew that I was in for a hell of a transition. Just to see that people didn't have respect for one another. I mean, just passing my people and just saying, excuse me, right? Open the door for women and older people and children. Shit like that. So are you saying that there's more of that in prison? Well, in prison, it's a lot of respect. Because when you don't respect nobody, I mean, there's consequences for it, right?

Right. Maybe not those particular instance, but just that level and that mindset of having that level of respect. If you're in your own space, a guy's not going to invade your space, and if he invades your space, there's consequences for that, right? So it's just having that level of respect so you know what i said is coming into society and making that transition was it was difficult in that aspect amongst a lot of other things so you were 20 years old when they arrested you? 19. 19. And can you explain the circumstances, like what happened, how you found out about it? How I found out about? How do you find out you were being accused of something that you didn't do? Well, actually, they came to my mom's house, it came to my mom's house uh knocking on the door banging on the door um the police raided the house uh pulled out guns and saying they was looking for

uh me for some crimes uh and i was like i mean knowing i commit no crimes right so like you had never been in trouble before that little shit yeah just normal things that people growing up in private they get in trouble for selling drugs at this being basically being a product your environment and the things that you see and participate in but not no shit idea was trying to say I was uh involved in like murder robberies rape Mike what the hell and so now was thinking in more terms of okay well I'm just gonna go to the station yeah but and I and I told my my mom I can stay remember this I said I said, I'll be back, I'll be right back,

because I know I didn't do shit, right? Right. So I left out the house and went down to the station when they went to telling me about this murder I was charged with, these armed robbers and raping, like, man, y'all people lost y'all mind. So me understanding the system as from what I was, I mean, for what was known, innocent people wasn't prevalent during that time. In 1992, it wasn't a huge thing where innocent people would get arrested for crimes and get convicted, right?

So I'm thinking that when people commit crime they get arrested they go to jail that's the standard norm right so I was under that presumption of assuming that well eventually they'll get this shit right once they go to talking to folks and right different things of that nature so yeah it was mind-blowing this to be knowing I was charged with aggravated rape, first-degree murder at the time, and a whole slew of armed robberies, you know? And what did they try to say they had on you as far as evidence? Well, a lot of that stuff kind of came out in the proceedings thereafter. I mean, initially during the arrest, they don't really tell you all that.

You don't find these things out until eventually you're arrested. I mean, because it was a British tourist that was involved in the I mean there was a part of the crime so shit me national news so I was on television like internationally this case was like really huge because of publicity so I mean half of the stuff technically I would charge what I didn't even understand as to what was the evidence and I mean what they had against me or what have you until I started going through the the court proceedings and you know they say they had eyewitnesses then they didn't and

then they said they didn't have eyewitness so in the Orleans Parish Jail, right, I stayed in the Orleans Parish Jail four years, four years before I was actually convicted. And that because the state's case had a lot of difficulties as it relates to the identification procedures that happened. And eventually I was ended up convicted because a lot of things was withheld that showed that someone else actually committed the crime. And they knew about this evidence. It would have exonerated you. They knew about it. These motherfuckers.

And they knew about this evidence. It would have exonerated you. They knew about it. These motherfuckers. That to me is the craziest thing when I hear about that over and over and over again. Josh has brought this up, I don't know, to me more than a dozen times. Horrific cases where the prosecutors absolutely knew that they were convicting an innocent person. They knew that there was evidence. They withheld that evidence.

How the fuck do those people not wind up going to jail? That, to me, wanting to put someone in jail for a crime that they're innocent of is almost as horrific as the crime you're charging the person with because you're ruining a life and you know better. You know better. Willfully holding back innocent people's evidence that would exonerate them. That's insanity. You know, Robert and I probably have different perspectives on this.

I went into this thinking, and when I say this, I mean this work. I went into this thinking these were just a bunch of malicious people that, you know, were out to frame young people of color. I don't think that that's always the case. I think subconsciously it's there. I think that they've become so focused on winning and believing their own hunches. And that's what happened in Robert's case, that they go down a path. And you'll never really know what their motivation is unless you could climb into their mind and they tell you. But I know in Robert's case, because I know the case really well, that they took the—I mean, I want you to explain it, but they took the word of people that claimed they could identify him, they knew and had, it's not that

they had reason to believe, they knew that someone else committed this crime. And they had an obligation to turn that evidence over to Robert and his attorneys, and they affirmatively didn't. So, you know, what their motivation was, is for people to figure out on their own but it's infuriating and I think that the only answer we could talk about this probably later about the reform work that Robert's doing that we're doing the only answer is that we need to change laws to make people more accountable as law enforcement officers and prosecutors to make sure that they can't just do this shit with impunity. Well, this should be a crime. It should be a crime of the highest order. If you want to imprison someone for something that you absolutely know they didn't commit, if you have the evidence

that shows that that person's innocent and you withhold that evidence and still prosecute and convict them, that should be a horrific crime. You should never work in the criminal justice system again, and you should lose your freedom. If anything will motivate you, motivate your listeners to believe what you're saying and to feel the same way, I can think of no other way than to take you through this man's journey. Because even over dinner last night, you know, I had to like turn away and not get emotional because I don't know how he did it. I don't know how these people can have the mental stability and find the wherewithal to not only survive in prison, but to play such an instrumental role in their own release. He's the smartest lawyer in the room.

So, you know, why don't you tell Joe about how you even became a suspect and what some of the initial problems were with the case. Yes. How I became an initial suspect is they had a false tip. It was a false tip that led the police to arrest me for these particular crimes, saying that they knew that I was involved in these crimes or what have you. Who gave them the false tip? It was anonymous.

Anonymous. Was it someone that had a grudge against you, do you think? Was it someone that was trying to throw themselves off the case? I really don't know that. You don't know? I really don't know. I don't know how that happened. But someone.

Someone actually did it, right? Yeah. And that's how easy someone in life can get through it. We're going to show you how things can take a different turn. So, you know, and a lot of these things, and one way you look at it a lot of times that, I mean, growing up in distressed neighborhoods and growing up in poor neighborhoods, you're young, you're black, a crime happened to a tourist, a white tourist. A lot of people is looking at the city because tourism, as I learned, I didn't know these things now, but as I learned while I was incarcerated, you know, tourism is a big attraction for the city of New Orleans.

There was a British tourist and a lot of news covering nationally. Like, this shit got to get done. Somebody got to go to jail for this. Right. Right? Something had to happen. And so, you know, when you take all those things into account and somebody allegedly called and said that I had something to do with a crime,

I get arrested. I mean, when I got arrested, as I said, you know, I grew up, and I can go off into this. You know, I grew up in poor neighborhoods and poor environments. I come from a single-parent household. I was the elder of five other siblings, which is one that's deceased now, because I essentially became a product of my environment in the sense of maybe telling drugs and doing things that normal teens do in those kind of environments.

Eventually I dropped out of school. And maybe a few years after that, I ended up getting arrested for these crimes, right? So when I went to prison, went to the jail first, and then eventually went to prison, went to the jail first and then eventually going to prison, the only thing I was equipped with was a lot of courage, street common sense, and that's it. That's it. I mean, I can read to the extent to get myself by, but I wasn't an excellent reader, right? I just had a lot of common sense and a lot of courage.

I just had a lot of common sense and a lot of courage. So, I mean, going through that process was horrible. It was horrific. It was really horrific in a sense because in more terms of I went through that system, and I tell folks all the time, it's like standing before a system, and they're speaking a whole other language to me. Legalese. Jargon. Yeah. The legal jargon and terminologies that I totally didn't understand.

Didn't understand that word, period, right? period right so going from that and being in the parish prison have to use of my courage and my strength from growing up in poor environments to survive inside this institution or jail was horrific I mean you still have hope that they were gonna figure out that you were innocent because you were innocent. Right. I still had a lot of hope because I didn't know, as I said, innocent people wasn't, to my knowledge, until the world knowledge in 1992, it wasn't really prevalent that innocent people get found guilty, right? So I still had like a smidgen of hope even in the parish,

like they're going to eventually get this shit right. Or if I go to trial, nobody's going to find me guilty because I know I'm innocent. Just living off, just holding on to that, right? But as the time went on,

me being in the parish, I started seeing guys that was getting convicted and they actually were saying that it was innocent. I'm like, he lying, because that shit don't happen. He must be lying, right? That shit don't happen.

I'm like, and God was more convincing. I'm like, okay, maybe that can't happen to me, right? So when the shit happened to me, I'm like, so it was like mind-blowing to a sense. Like, man, it was crazy. Robert, they assigned a defense attorney for you, right? A public defender? No, I had a yes and no.

Because what happened was I hired a guy, but my family was poor. They couldn't really afford him. And I think he was a parent at some level of the case, right? And, yeah, so that was the gist of that. But, man, it was so much stacks against me, though, to the extent of, man, like, I needed a dream team. Yeah. You needed a serious group of actual excellent defenders. Right.

Who could go through all this information and with a lot of work. Right. Find out that you were innocent. But did you get, you got a public defender eventually? No, he was a private attorney. So you had this private attorney. When you had conversations with him initially and you were trying to explain that you had nothing to do with this,

what was his initial reaction and what was his plan? Like, how did he, did he try to reassure you? What was his conversations with you like? How did he, did he try to reassure you? What was his conversations with you like? A lot of his conversation was that, I think we can beat this. I think we can beat this.

Predicated on if I get this information, if I get this, if I get this. And I was like, okay, if you can get this, then, you know. What was the information they wanted to get? You know, different reports, supplement reports and different things that he kept on fighting for that the coach was rejecting him on. He was like, man, I need that supplement report. I need to get this report. He was like, man, I need that supplement report.

I need to get this report. And it's weird because a lot of the things that he was requesting for, eventually years later, a lot of years later after I was found guilty, me litigating my own case and working with the Innocence Project of New Orleans where they was able to provide the resources to investigators, some of these same documents that this guy was looking for were some of the documents that has exculpatory evidence withheld inside these documents, and other documents as well, but for the most part. So I understood why he was looking for those things. But he's always telling me, like, man, we can do this and we maybe can do this if this happened and this happened.

But a lot of things never happened. Did you learn law when you were in prison? Yeah. And I can tell you about that. That was a long journey. And it was a long and it was a fast journey because I was left with no other options. As I say, after being convicted, I was maybe about 22 years old and I went to Angola. When I first went there, I look at a lot of the guys

who was already there when I got there they had guys who was down like 25 30 years 25, 40 years you know I'm like what you been locked up that long and I'm a person that I observe a lot

and you know I think a lot, and I strategize a lot. So when I actually just look at a lot of these guys, was talking to a lot of them, I noticed that these guys was uneducated. They didn't know the law, and they didn't have a lot of outside resources and connection with their families and other people, you know. So I kind of like picked those three things out of like, what the hell? And they explained to me why those things happen. They've been there so long, they lose, you know,

they get out of touch with a lot of their family members and different things of that nature. And they don't worry about educating themselves because they're worried about how to defend themselves all those years. So all those things kind of like put them in that situation. A lot of them, not all of them, but most of them was always angry guys. There was bitter. There was a screaming of dangerous.

And I kind of like used those guys as a mirror, like I'm not going to be like that, right? So I kind of like took the opposite direction but what happened was very interesting that actually changed my life uh me getting found guilty was like one of the most horrific traumatizing thing in my entire life right that? That was at that time. But within that same year, I lost a brother, my younger brother. He was killed in the form of street violence and what have you, right?

And I sort of like felt, and I can laugh about it now, but I used to cry all the time when I talk about it. I can laugh about it now because I sort of understand it and I'm able to accept it, right? But I felt kind of responsible for his death in a sense, even though I was incarcerated and he was free. even though I was incarcerated, and he was free. But the reason why he was killed, because he was selling drugs,

not to justify his means because that's all he knew because of the environment he grew up in. He was selling drugs to raise money to hire an attorney to get me out of prison. I felt really horrible and bad about that, man, you know. So, you know, I threw the two months and weeks or whatever. I felt so depressed. Actually, I wanted to kill myself because I couldn't even go to the funeral. You know, so all these things I was really, I was thinking about committing suicide and everything.

But what happened, interestingly what happened was, a guy who I met when I first got there, one of the guys who I got very close with, in the sense of, because me and them had a subject matter that we can relate to. When I was seven years old, I lost my father. My father was killed.

Yeah, my father was killed, but my father was a boxer, right? And so after my father was killed, like for maybe a couple of years after his trainers they wanted to like man your daddy was so good we want to keep this bloodline going like you got to go and try to be a boxer so they kind of like usher me in that move and I started training I started understand dynamics and the concept of other basics of boxing how How old were you? How old I was during that time. When they started training you? Maybe eight, eight to me, about 11 or 12, something to that, in that bracket.

It was a couple of years I stayed and going back and forward. Was this something you wanted to do? Is this something that you felt like they were just trying to push you into doing? I think they was pushing me to it. It's not that I actually didn't want to do, but that's why I stopped doing it, right? Eventually I stopped doing it and did something else.

But so me and this guy who I'm speaking of had this kind of relationship as it relates to it because he was a boxing trainer inside the institution. And me and him used to have discussions about certain things, about how you train guys. It's like, you know, if you train a guy to be aggressive in a sense, don't hit him too much with

the mid-gloves because you're going to make him a defensive. You know, and that kind of, just different things like that, right? So we used to have these kind of discussions. And so he was the one that kind of came to my aid when I was going through the dramatic process when my brother being you know killed right I was walking in yards crying one day and he just walked up to me like man what's going on I'm like man I don't really

want to talk about it you know like man, man, just give me my space. He was like, man, no, man, you're my friend. I won't help you. He said, let me tell you this, and you might understand this. He said that life is like boxing, right? He said every time life throw a punch at you, you got to throw a counterpunch. And he said, if you don't throw a counterpunch, life will just knock you out,

just like you get knocked out in the ring. And I'm like, it ain't dawn on me when he told me. When I went back to my cell, I'm like, you know what, this guy fucking right. You know, I got to fight back. I can't just, you know, just sit back and continue on to blame the system. Oh, dude, the system is at fault.

And blame other people for what they ain't doing. I got to fight. And that conversation sparked something in me and actually changed my life. So from there, I enrolled myself in a literacy program inside the institution. And it's funny now when I think about it because they started me out in the third grade. I dropped out in the eighth grade, but they started me out in the third grade in the literacy program, in which I excelled those programs extremely fast because I'm like what the hell third grade but I was glad I had to take that route right because I wanted to relearn all those things and freshen myself up and eventually I got that to

GED school and at the same time I was studying the law, right? Because I knew, I said, man, my brother was gone. He technically was my only financial resource that I had or a chance that I ever had of getting an attorney. My family couldn't afford it, right? So that led him to what he was doing to try to help me. So I was like, I got to do this shit myself. Ain't no way I'm going to get experience in the law if I don't know how to, if I don't have no academical skills, right?

So I got to master this shit. And it came back to these different things. I'm like, all these guys that have been here all this time, they were uneducated. That means I got to get educated. They didn't know the law. That means I got to master this shit, right? And they didn't have no resources. I got to get educated. They didn't know the law. That means I got to master this shit, right? And they didn't have no resources.

I got to get resources. So that's all I ever focused on. So inside the institution, after, you know, I studied the law for years, and I went in from the Constitution all the way up to, man, I studied everything about the law. To the point is I started taking corresponding courses in various aspects of laws on different branches, criminal, civil. And I started studying politics, started studying all this stuff. And one of the reasons why I didn't want to be the smartest person inside and go to prison,

but I didn't want to be that same 19-year-old kid that stood before the courtroom and didn't understand shit that was going on in front of me, right? And I wanted to be educated enough to help myself get out of prison and stay out of prison and change the system. So that's, that, that was brought on that, that level of education. Yeah, so, so, so for many years, and one of the things I maintain a lot of my resources, I get, got a lot of resources is a lot of people used to spend a lot of their money in the commissary in which I used to spend

money in the commissary as well but a lot of my money I used to sacrifice I told you I'm a very strategic person I used to invest in a hundred stamps a month and I said if I and I think stamp was maybe 25 cents,

29 cents during the time. So it was less than $30 a month, right, for to get me 100 stamps. So I said, if I can write 100 people in a month, and if three people respond from the hundred people I wrote and bring me help that's a that's a third of investment right for me to actually get the help that I need and to get my freedom who you're writing to everybody I wrote the president in the United States I wrote the federal

government I wrote everybody and I started talking over the president of the United States. I wrote the federal government. I wrote everybody. And I started talking. Over the period of years, I started talking to certain people, investigators, lawyers. Then when I started hearing about the innocent projects that were surfacing around the country, I started writing them. And eventually it worked out. All right. But prior to those folks coming on and bringing the resources to help me, I was litigating my own cases. I was litigating cases for other guys inside the institution. I had got so good at litigating to the extent I was winning cases in the high state court, the circuit courts. I had got so good at litigating to the extent I was winning cases in the high state court, the circuit courts.

I was getting guys like hearings. I had an impeccable prison record for rehabilitating myself. I had completed all the self-help programs. I was in charge of three of the organizations there that

was creating programs for guys. I mean, it was a whole lot of things I was doing. I didn't have like ruling fractions for like expand from like 10 to 15 years, which is hard to do. What do you mean by that? Ruling fractions 10 to 15 years? Well, getting a write-up.

What do you mean? Inside, when you're in prison, it's like a rule infraction is like they got a set of rules, really strict rules. And if you violate in any kind of way, they call that a write-up or a rule infraction. Okay. And it's hard to get that inside the institution. I mean, not to get write-ups, right? Right.

Because you got some guards that just got animosity towards you. They don't like you or whatever. They might get you to do something that you don't want to do. So it's hard to balance those things. But I managed to do that, right? And I was getting all these help from these guys, getting reversal from guys. And some guys was getting lesser sentencing and getting out of prison. I'm like, I can't help myself.

I can't win shit for myself. You know, and I had all the right things. As a matter of fact, some of the very same issues that I eventually got out of when I had the resources, some of the very same issues that I was litigating myself

like years before I got out. Why I couldn't get out then? Well, I just didn't have the resources. So, yeah, that's all I explained. And, you know, my level of educating myself to the extent of learning learning all these things man you know you know I was Joe last night you know I know Robert now for five years

and I almost I told him last night I was like I almost feel ashamed to ask you this because I got this reputation as like this real aggressive hard charging

attorney when it comes to these innocence cases and that I'll say things that other people may be you know a little bit more reluctant to say to a judge and you know I'm not the traditional attorney but I said to Robert last night you, but I don't kid myself that when it comes to toughness, I can't even wrap my head around trying to get it in your mind space where you're having a ninth grade education.

You're put in prison for something you didn't do. And I know myself and know that I would have been a puddle. And I don't know how I would have survived, let alone had the wherewithal to overcome what he overcame. So he was telling me a story last night about how, because I said, I know Angola is one of the most dangerous penitentiaries in the country. It's a very violent place full of very violent people. It has a long sordid past of not having oversight. There's murders. There's everything that you think about when you think of nightmares in a penitentiary happens there, maybe twofold. That's a guess, but it's a very violent place, suffice to say.

So I said, well, how did you navigate that? And, you know, I'm not going to put you on the spot to explain it, I mean, I love to hear that shit because, you know, he very early on, he said, I got that out of the way right away so that I could focus on, I identified these three things and wanted to do the opposite of what people lacked. In other words, he said, the people that weren't getting out of there had no education, didn't know the law and had no support.

He said, I was gonna get those three things. And I made that decision early. And I realized if I don't get respect to be able to focus on those three things, then I'm gonna have to worry about violence the whole time and protecting myself. So just the contours, you could hear these words about people getting out. And I just, that's why I

think this is so important that people understand the contours of the suffering and, and the practical considerations of survival that he had to go through. I mean, if you feel comfortable telling some of those stories, you should, because i think it helps people understand like what you have to deal with just to stay alive right just to fend off assaults right right and uh yeah it's it's you had to get that out of the way you had to make that a non-issue right you had to concentrate on your all all the things that you needed to concentrate on to get you out of jail. So how did you manage to avoid all that violence? By addressing the head on.

You know, and that became, that because of who I am as a person, I'm just a very courageous type person, but the environment I was raised in, it groomed you to be tough, right? Groomed you to be tough. And you know, as one thing, when I got there, I was saying, okay, I'm a coming, I'm a leave out just like I came in.

I'm going to leave out just like I came in. I came in a man, and I'm going to leave out there like that. If it's for me to get out of prison, I say I'm going to leave out. So I'm going to keep my dignity and my pride, and I'm going to stand up. Once I seen how that was, then in a situation that confronted me, in other words, it's like you bring me ignorance, I'm going to bring you ignorance like you've never seen before. Right? No matter how small I am, how big you are, how many of you are, if you bring me bullshit,

I'm gonna give you a cesspool. I'm gonna always go higher than your ignorance, right? And having that mindset, so you know, and I had some instance, well, and like I said, I was a good boxer, I was a good fighter. And I had a mindset because I understood boxing is like when I'm boxing if I'm in the ring

I can't hit below the belt but if I'm fighting you on the street I'm trying to win I'm going to bite your ass I'm going to poke your eyes out I'm going to wrestle you they ain't got no damn rules. I'm trying to win. And me having that mindset of defending myself,

what years later came to I had to use weapons. So I had a mindset, and I had incident after incident until guys realized that this guy, he don't need to be fucked with. And he's not afraid because most guys are afraid. In other words, if me and you exchange words, I'm going to give you a primary example. Like, fuck you. My fuck you is a physical confrontation. Your fuck you is a verbal, mind, physical confrontation. I'm always going higher than your ignorance, right?

And me having that mindset, I protected myself to the extent of a lot of bullshit stayed from ramen. Not that guys fear me, but it's like. You were too much danger. Yeah, if you cross his path, he going to bring you the best. He told me about the second day he was in the parish jail. Yeah. Well, you tell it. Because I said said how quickly did you have to establish that

you know well you don't have to tell all the gritty details yeah yeah yeah uh or you can this being in uh you know the second days is being in and arrested for the crimes and charges. I went in a situation of like, okay, I'm gonna be here. So I had to kind of like see how things was moving around. So it was a situation where the stronger guys would get more food and the weaker guys would kind of get lesser food. And there's certain things that was happening, right? Stronger guys eat first and the weaker guys

eat last. And I'm like, I ain't either one of these kind of guys so I'm going to get my shit straight now. So, incident occurred. I was able to manage to take care of my business in the sense of challenging one of the guys. And eventually it got to a level where guys had respected me from doing that

because I was a newcomer that was coming into it and I took it upon myself to actually challenge these guys and confront one of these guys and dominated the situation to the extent where everybody started giving me a level of respect, you know, to the extent like, you know, he's a newcomer

but he ain't nothing. So I kind of like mimicked that same role or concept when i got to angola to establish myself first and like i said it occurred over the period of years over the period of years but eventually this like starts smoothing out you know even though it's still happening around me all around me guys were getting killed. I didn't see a lot of that stuff. Guys, it was horrible.

But I just was there and not there because I was focused, man. I was trying to get out of prison. I know I ain't belonging there for number one. And I know what I had to do in order for, to put myself in the position to win. How difficult was it to stay on track had to do in order for to put myself in the position to win

How difficult was it to stay on track? You're in there for 24 years for something that you didn't do Like was it was it hard not to lose hope? Yeah, it's I wouldn't you it it's always a and And people can tell you this, as much as strong as people say I am and other people are, that come from a wrongful conviction inside of the most two fear things that they say, and I will agree with it, that scientists and other people say, man, it's two worse fears of dying and being terminally ill. Right? That's two ill.

Yeah. So, me having all the hope and saying, man, I'm going to get out of here. I'm going to get out of here. Didn't really know how, how that was going to happen. But it's a level of faith that you got to hold on to, right? But somewhere in your back of your mind, because you're constantly seeing it every day. And Angola guys have been incarcerated for so long that they die almost every day. A lot of people don't know that.

People die in that institution every day. And you've seen this shit. They're dying of old age. They're dying from murder. Old age. Old age. Old age. They've been there for so long.

How many people are in Angola locked up? More than 5,000. They have their own TV station. Radio station. Magazine. Yeah. It's like a world. And, you know, what's hard to, you know,

and the reason why I think that this is so important is because you have to transport yourself and allow yourself to go. You know, he gave the story short shrift what happens is the second day he's in there you know the guys that are there for a long time they call him a new jack and they he was first in line he got out of his cell first and he's ready to go get food and he said he saw on the first day that what happened is they come out with loaves of bread the guys that have been there for the longest take all the bread and leave the ends for the new jacks so he was out of his cell and was the third in line and one of the guys was like you need to get your ass to the back of the line. And he was like, okay.

And he went to the back of the line. And then when it came time to eat, the guy that put him to the back of the line didn't end up eating. He ended up on the floor. And to protect the details you know robert put him on the floor as a way to say okay if you kick me to the back of the line i'm not going to have words with you i'm going to make you feel it so that no one's sending me to the back of the line because i'm going to eat like everybody else. And that takes a level of ballsiness, I think.

And to also interject into the story, when he told me to get to the back of the line, actually I didn't go to the back of the line. Another guy allowed me to get maybe three spots behind him because he was like,

that's bull crap. But I already had in my mind like i'm gonna kick his ass i'm gonna kick thank god you knew how to fight yeah i'm gonna kick his ass uh that or either pick up something and use as a weapon on him um and eventually i did uh to kill my business i put his ass on the ground and pulled the blood. And I let everybody know on both sides of the tears, a tear that was maybe 56 people. I let everybody know on the pod that I ain't the one.

And if you think I'm just talking or I'm just verbally just saying these things, if you just give me a fair chance with each one of y'all that feel that way, and I kick everybody, I kick all y'all ass. And I wasn't, I mean, I know I can't beat everybody in the world, but I damn tried, right? So me, doing that, that's what kind of like, hold up man, this little guy here is something else, right? So eventually, man, this little guy, you ain't something else, right? So eventually I started getting my little respect. I ate just like everybody else ate,

the ones who was doing what they was doing. And eventually, over the period of time, a lot of that stuff I got upset with because it wasn't right. I'm a fair person, right? So eventually I ended up taking a guy's job in what they call like tier reps, right? You're the rep for these guys. And, you know, so I ended up getting in a competition with the guy, took his position. And from that point on, I was in the parish.

I always maintained that kind of position, that's being a representative for a lot of these guys cuz I'm up and guys wanted me with that position period because not that I was didn't know I wouldn't decide with the administration mm-hmm right they know I'm a play fair across the board like the administration was to bring me a pan that I know that wasn't going to feed the 50 people, I'm going to slide that shit back out the door. We're not eating, right? We're going to ban. We're going to ban.

We're not going to eat because I'm not going to take that and feed all these men. It's not enough food. And having that kind of, it just gives a lot of people a lot of respect for me while I was there. Like I said, I still went through shit that everybody else go through by being in jail. So they gave you, like they would give you a plan for how much food everybody would get? And then you would be able to negotiate with them?

No, in the parish jail what happened was, you know, like if- Robert, try to talk into the microphone just pull it up towards you or move your seat doesn't matter yeah so what happened what happens is they if they give you a pan of red beans right and a pan of rice and it may not be it's not enough they supposed to have two pans and maybe two pans of rice are paying to have a rice and other feed that in order for to give people amount of amount of food that's gonna make them full now it might be enough for somebody else to serve and skim guys on the trade, not giving them a lot of food.

But I'm not going to accept that, to feed them guys. I'm not going to do that. You might do that with somebody else. So you were able to negotiate? You were able to get more food? Yes. Every time. Every time.

And guys respected me for that because I was able to play fair across the board on those different levels there. And that's who I am. I'm just a fair person. So how many years did it take you before you started to see the light at the end of the tunnel? How many years did it take you before you were able to get people to review your case and recognize you had been wrongly convicted? Wow, never thought about that. Uh-oh. They had, you know, maybe after, no, I can tell you this. This is what happened.

And unbelievable. I got convicted in 1996. I filed my first post-conviction as a, what they call, pro se litigant. I mean, I did it myself. And in the year 2000, I received the evidentiary hearing, which is a hearing without no attorney. and my issue was mainly was about the DNA testing. I was asking the courts to preserve the testing, if there's any testing,

if there's any testing that's available to preserve the DNA testing so I can test it and prove my innocence and I got granted evidentiary hearing for a motion I did well unbeknownst to me years later that was the first ever of a motion that was granted on that capacity because they ended up creating a law for the preserved DNA testing. That's way after I did this in 2000, in the year 2000, right? I was like so ahead of time with this filing. And I didn't even know it. So from there, I ended up getting denied in the courts.

And this was a whole chain of other things. 10 or 11 that the Innocent Project of New Orleans came on board to bring their resource to help me out. And even after that, I still was getting denials with them, right? We still was getting denials. And I tell people all the time, it's like, you know, throughout the course of 23 years and several months, I had 16 denials from every court, from the lower courts to the middle courts to the highest courts. the way. What's happening here, just to put this into context, is that Robert is asking the court to order the prosecutors preserve the biological evidence from the crime scene. This was a rape and a murder. They had collected evidence and he is saying to them, please don't destroy the evidence because I want to prove my innocence. And I've talked to you about this before, about how prosecutors and state politicians fight this being made a law all over the country.

And they come up with excuses like, well, then we're going to have a rash of people that want their evidence preserved and retested. There'll be a run on the courts. I mean, this seems to me to be a fundamental human right. testimony, and hidden evidence, which we're going to get to what was hidden from him and his legal team in a minute, that he is fighting a seven-year battle, excuse me, a 14-year battle just to try to get somebody to help him get an order from the court to preserve the DNA. I would like to say that this is an anomaly and that this only happened in Robert's case. It happens in way too many cases that I've handled and that the Innocence Project handles and the criminal justice reform organizations handle all over the country. So a lot of what I get as a result of speaking out is how can I help? One of the ways you can help is, you know, your voice matters when you are voting for elected officials. Your voice matters when you are writing a letter to a governor. Your voice matters if you show up at a town hall meeting.

It really does all matter. And we have to keep on pounding the beating the drum to make sure that fundamental rights like this, laws to protect these rights, are enacted. But I just wanted to make sure I mentioned that before I lost the thought. Because by the time the Innocence Project of New Orleans comes along, and eventually Barry Sheck and my dear friend Nina Morrison, who, barriers, but Nina's one of the leaders at the Innocence Project in New York. She just got, you know, put forth as a potential federal judge pick. She'd be an amazing choice. Really started to take his case on and expose all of this evidence that was hidden.

But prior to that, he was, you know, a one-legged man in a shit-kicking contest to say the least i mean he's fighting this all on his own but go go ahead i don't want to yeah and well not only did a lot of my pleadings uh was about preserving the evidence it was it was also about all the withheld evidence and all the things that actually pertained to my innocence. So this one pleading, there was multiple pleadings that I was filing throughout the span of time. So as I said, these 16 denials came over the course of the 23 years and seven months. And trust me, each one of them denials felt like a guilty verdict all over again. Every one of them, right?

But eventually, it became numb to, like, this shit. It's all the same, right? Like, one denial feels like the same. You know, even though it hurt because you've been to build yourself up to the extent like alright I'm doing all this amazing shit and we educated myself I'm doing all this great shit but what the hell I'm still not out of prison and so when the innocent project of New Orleans was able to bring all the resources still was getting denied still getting denial.

I'm like, God damn, I got the facts, I got the law on my side, like, what the hell? You know, and, you know, you hold on to the hope, but, you know, it's always in the back of your mind to get back to this piece. It's always in the back of your mind, like, man, it's a possibility that I might die here, right? And something that you dread, you know, that's one of the worst things for any person incarcerated,

but especially like when you're innocent. Like, there's a reasonable probability that I might die here. How many guys do you think you met in jail that were innocent that were probably going to die there? I met a lot of innocent guys in there but I also met a lot of guys who actually died right because like and and in some instance when I was in prison I used to work for this hospice program. Right, we deal with a lot of the elderly, the terminally ill prisoners over there on the hospital wall, in the hospital wall, right?

You go over there and you care for them and you do these things for these guys. And a lot of those guys who, right before they die, like, you know, cause I share my story and let him know I was in this thing you know and they like it was in that right mind it's like Rob I'm innocent man I'm innocent and I'm like not all of them but I I didn't I didn't had that conversation with a lot of them. And I'm like, okay, he got no reason to lie, he about to die, right?

There's no reason for him to lie, right? As nothing that can happen. And so I believed him, right? So, and that was, it was quite a few of them that came into the junction of expressing that they were innocent. that came into the junction of expressing that they were innocent. I'm glad you're wearing that t-shirt. The death penalty kills innocent people

because I think there's a lot of people that have this sort of hard-nosed idea that the death penalty is a good thing because it kills people who do bad things. And it's very simplistic. But the problem with that is the legal system is very, very, very flawed. Very flawed. So this idea that the death penalty kills innocent people is a very important idea.

And people need to understand that for your case, your situation, it's not unusual. This story that you're telling, it's unique and it's amazing that you went through it and that you figured out a way to educate yourself and to get yourself out. But you're not an unusual case in that there's a lot of innocent people that get locked up. That's right. Look at the back of my shirt. Those all innocent people who were killed? Those are all innocent people that were convicted and sentenced to death and have since been exonerated.

Right. So Clemente Aguirre is on the back of this shirt. You've heard his story before. And, you know, we're going to talk a little bit later about some cases of people that are still on death row right now. That there are strong, strong cases for innocence for them. And, you know, you touched on something really important, which is that when you hear about a horrific crime, I think it's human nature. Eye for an eye. Yeah. Yeah. And there's this really fascinating thing that happens during the death penalty case.

The first phase of jury selection is called death qualification. It's a pretty shitty name for it. And it's this phase where you are there to gauge people's feelings about the death penalty. And having gone through jury selection and death penalty cases, it's a rather fascinating sort of human experiment if you think about it. What the Supreme Court of the United States, not of any particular state, has said is that if a state is going to put someone to death, you have to have this process by which you cannot have people on the jury. This is a bit of an oversimplification, but you cannot have people on the jury that feel that if somebody is convicted of a capital case and a capital crime that you will automatically vote for the death penalty and you also can't have

people on the jury that are so against the death penalty that they'll never vote for it now during this process of gauging people's feelings about the death penalty you get to have a conversation with them. And you can see the conflict, the emotional tumult in their words, in their body language, in wrestling with, well, if somebody would murder a child or they deserve to die, but then you also see, but unless I know 100% they did it, I don't know if it makes sense to hold that.

And you see this wrestling, this existential wrestling going on. Then there are some people that come in and say, that's right, I'm definitely voting for death if I think they did it. And, you know, it's fraught with so many problems because of the finality of it, right? And, you know, people have different philosophical beliefs. But if you knew the sheer number of people that, you know, Florida leads the nation in death row exonerations, it's had it would have put 30 people to death that were actually innocent that have been exonerated from Florida's death row. Over what period of time? 30 or so years.

30 or so years. So that would be, you know, one person, one person a year, innocent person killed on the death. So yeah, we all, we all, I think a lot of criminal justice reform is about, we live in a society that's so, if you're not this, you're that. You're either on this team or that team. It's a very binary. Simplified. Yeah, zero sum game. And I think human existence is far more complicated and there are too many layers of gray areas

that everybody should really stop and pump the brakes in their thought process and not be so wedded to how they were brought up or what their parents believe or what they think their friends believe and really take stock of you know what am i really about and what do i stand for you know i say often that i stand in awe of these exonerees and even if as i'm listening to it today i'm hearing it and I know the story. But to know what Robert had to endure, it's just hard to imagine how a human being could get past it. I mean, he told me about the first time he saw people go for food in jail.

And he said it was like a bunch of fucking savages, you know, running after food and grabbing it and running away. savages, you know, running after food and grabbing it and running away. He said, I thought it looked to me, it was like, you know, I think what you said, it was like paralyzing to me because it was like, you know, I saw human beings in their most sort of, um, primitive form. And he said, well, this is, this is different. You know, I'm in a, I'm in a battle yeah Robert can you explain some of the what you ended up finding out was hidden from you what was the exculpatory evidence They were held that, first of all, maybe I can explain the crimes, right? There was a sp was tied to that.

So they took all these crimes and said it was a part of a spree. was involved in the crime and they eventually, over the period, well, over the couple of weeks after the crime happened, maybe, they found out who the car that was involved and during the time when they was doing the investigation, my name came up as the anonymous tip came in, right? So what they did was they eventually arrested me and connected me to the car that was actually used in all these sprees of crime, including the murder, the robbery, the kidnappings, and the rape. the murder, the robbery, the kidnappings, and the rape. And years later, eventually found out that another guy got arrested for the murder and was connected. In his possession, he had possessed jewelry and articles of evidence from each crime spree.

From each of the victims. He had jewelry from the woman that was robbed. He had clothing from one of the other women. I think the woman that was raped. And they never turned this over to him. Right. And so yeah, they would have held that from

me. That was that. How did they connect you with the car? That's what I'm about to explain. They connected me to the car. How they connected me with the car? The prosecutor's theory was that, like when they arrested this guy, they got him to say that me and him was friends

and he allowed me to use the car, right, at times to commit the crime, but all the evidence suggests it differently. And so at trial, what they did was they charged. He got convicted of the actual murder. Right. He got convicted of murder and they separated him from the other crimes and they charged me with the other crimes, right? But unbeknownst to me, on the day of trial that I was for the rape, kidnapping, and the armed robberies, that he told the prosecutor that I had nothing to do with none of the crimes that he,

I never used a car, none of that. Right. But when I went to trial, the prosecutor said something totally opposite. They prosecuted me on the theory that me and this guy was best friends. He allowed me to use the car. Did you know him? I didn't know him at all. Never seen him a day in my life. And the short answer to your question, Joe, about what they had connecting him to the car,

a driver's license, you would think a driver's license, a registration, insurance, someone that had seen them in the car. The answer is they had absolutely nothing. They had the word of a guy that had been accused and tied to these murders who was looking to put it on someone else. How did he put it on you, though? He found out that there was a tip implicating him.

Right. Mm. Right. Absolutely. And so he tried to be a snitch to get the heat off of him and put it on you. Absolutely. And they let that happen. Yep.

Even though they knew. Right. And it goes deeper than that. So after I get convicted, I'm still charged with the murder of a British tourist, right? I'm still actually charged with it, even though I haven't been going back and forth to court with it at this time. After I get convicted,

and I know I was going to get a life sentence for the rape, the kidnapping of three armed robbers so the district attorney made an offer to my defense attorney and eventually brought to me on the day of my sentence and say that okay we can we can give him 25 years or 21 years for the murder, give him a manslaughter, right? And I don't know what type of stuff that happens out of my presence between my attorney and district attorney, but I was scared as shit. I just received a life sentence. I was scared as shit. I just received a life sentence.

I know I was about to give sentence to life for the rape and 25 or whatever, maybe 99 years for every own robbery. I don't know, I was scared as shit. So I took the 21 year plea, but I never admitted to anything, right? And a part of the evidence was that the guy uh who we we talking about that that it was initially trying to involve me he was found guilty of the murder already he was already found guilty so they were trying you for a crime they already had convicted someone for. Absolutely. How is that possible?

It happened. Because what they were trying to say is that if two people are in a car and you're both out committing crimes, right? You're both responsible. You're both responsible. There's something called the felony murder rule. And the felony murder rule is that if you're in the commission of a crime and somebody dies,

so if you and I went and robbed a bank and I go in and start, you know, shooting up the tellers and kill two tellers, you're responsible for the murder also. So the theory of Robert's prosecution was that they were friends, they were on this crime spree together, and that even though he was convicted of the murder, You know, he was still responsible and guilty of murder. It's no different than the James Daly case, which I've talked about before. They convicted one guy, Jack Piercy, and then they tried my client after that. One guy got sentenced to life.

One guy got sentenced to death. It's crazy. They don't have to have any evidence whatsoever that you're even friends with that guy. Right, right. They had his word. Right right isn't his word enough and and the piece of evidence another article evidence that we're held is a report that That when he made a statement Like the money on my trial as I said

That I didn't have anything to do with the murder. He never knew me and different things of that nature. And they withheld that. And they withheld that. And that was important to change the outcome of my trial because they took me to trial on the theory that we were friends and that I knew him and that I had a connection to him through the car. But had I had that piece of information, the interject in my trial, I would have never probably got found guilty to that extent. And they also would have held various different statements and evidence as it relates to the witnesses that was very inconsistent,

that was very favorable to me, that was very inconsistent, that was very favorable to me, and that could have actually printed back to the guy who was actually convicted of the murder and attached to all those other spree of crimes. Yeah, so it just was a lot of stuff, man, that they would have held that almost made it impossible for me to unravel and to obtain my freedom. are working on one theory, full steam ahead, right? And they then are met with, you might be wrong. We might've been wrong all along. The instinct 99 times out of a hundred is to plow ahead and rationalize why the true perpetrator in Robert's case, why did he all of a sudden say Robert had nothing to do with it?

Oh, well, maybe he is making this up because he feels guilty that he implicated his friend who really wasn't his friend. I've in Clemente Aguirre's case, which we've talked about in your listeners know about, the true killer confessed. She confessed over and over again to friends, to neighbors, drunk, not drunk, to police, and denying him post-conviction relief. Now, this is a judge. The judge chalked it up as survivor's guilt. So in other words, whether it's a prosecutor's judges, they'll make an excuse to protect the prosecution because it's all about winning or losing. Let's talk about that. What is that?

Is that human nature? Is it like, do people just want to confirm their initial suspicions and they rationalize all sorts of reasons why what they initially thought was right and this new evidence that shows that it's not right is wrong? Like, what is it? Is it they just don't want to be, they don't want to lose? thought was right and this new evidence that shows that it's not right is wrong like what is it is they don't they don't just don't want to be they don't want to lose i think it's a fundamental flaw um that we have as human beings that i share as a taurus i especially share it how dare you bring

up astrology but but i um i'm stubborn but i think as i see this time and time again and watching juries deliberate because i do mock trials and focus groups are speaking to people post-verdict but you can apply it to politics anything to anything i think of one fundamental flaw we have as mammals is our inability to be flexible in our reasoning and i think that once we make a decision about something it's very very difficult to get people to reconsider i see that in really intelligent people too and it makes me sad it's maddening it's maddening it drives me crazy yeah because it's like you aren't the the part of the problem. I think with police with prosecutors with the whole legal system is that

It becomes a game and I don't mean a game like it's a joke I mean a game like you're trying to win yes, and whenever someone is involved in something where they're trying to win They do whatever the fuck they can people cheat they move golf balls right they do whatever the fuck they can. People cheat. They move golf balls, right? They do whatever the fuck they can. Don't look at Jamie. I watch people moving those fucking things. I bet you do. They cheat.

Whenever I hear a golf ball. Well, people cheat, man. They find ways to pretend that they didn't do something when they did it. They find ways to justify the things that they did do. They find ways to pass the buck and put it on. If they can score that W, right, and you see cops do it, they plant evidence on someone they think was probably guilty, but they don't have enough evidence on them.

They find rationalizations, and it's because there's a game going on. It's a win or lose. And it becomes a real problem. And not only that, with a lot of cops, there's quotas. Like, you literally have to arrest a certain amount of people. Right. Which is insanity. Like, what the fuck do they do if no one commits a crime?

What do they do if no one speeds? If you have a quota where you have to arrest 100 hundred people for speeding what the fuck do you do if everybody makes an agreement we all get on Facebook and we say hey let everybody drive the fucking speed limit for the next 60 days and let's crush the legal system because these cops have to they have to make a certain amount of

pullovers they have to pull a certain amount of people and write a certain amount of tickets they have quotas if you don't meet those quotas they get in trouble so what the fuck kind of game is that right i would say a lot a lot of that a lot of just like we have structural racism right and with when i say structural racism meaning like institutional uh uh things that set set up through regulation rules and policies. Like redlining. Right.

And you just have like flawedness in a variety of different systems. They got people that work for a company and they got a lot of flawedness and they don't really understand that you're employed in a system that treat people unfair, cause people harm, and you can't even see it.

And some people can be a part of a system, a part of a program, or a part of an organization that have that win mentality, right, that win-win-win-by-all-cause mentality, and they lose their empathy for people. And when people lose their empathy, when we define those things, and a lot of people don't like the hittish, this type of shit, but when you lose your empathy for people,

you become technically a sociopath. That's a real problem with corporations. That's like a thing that they say about corporations, that corporations technically, if you look at the actions, behavior of corporations, particularly ones that cause harm to the environment or to people or sell products they know are dangerous and harmful and hide the evidence, that they're acting like sociopaths. Absolutely. And there's a term called the diffusion of responsibility. And diffusion of responsibility happens If you have like a large group of people like here's the the term applies to if you're standing around

There's a hundred people in this group and you watch some guy beating the shit out of somebody You don't step in because you feel like it's not my fault. It's not I'm not responsible There's so many people here But if it's just you and one guy beating the shit out of someone Then you feel responsible because no one else is there to help Right, but the large number of people you would think would stop someone from doing something like a corporation Like there's so many people how could this corporation? How could they act in such an unethical way that they know is harmful to a community? Polluting rivers are harmful to the people that they're selling these products to.

There's so many people. Surely someone's going to tell. But it's actually easier for them to get away with it, which is how pharmaceutical companies operate. It's easier for them to get away with it if it's an enormous amount of people because there is a diffusion of responsibility and there's an overall commitment to keep the profits going for the greater good of the corporation. And there's no accountability. No accountability. Well, and we've stumbled on something very magical here in this moment. I'll tell you why.

But it's no different with a corporation than it is with prosecutors and detectives. And I'm going to tell you why. My theory, at least. My humble perspective on this is that when you're a prosecutor or a corporation, a case or a person, whether they're taking a drug or buying your product, is just a number on a sheet and a name on a sheet on in a spreadsheet or in a program. And when talking about lack of empathy is that they lack the ability, partly because of how they're positioned, to be positioned practically, in other words, to be able to sit down with the person accused and hear from them. They're in a position where they are told they have to win or in a corporation's, in the case of a corporation, make money and increase profitability. But I think it's the same flavor, which is that the lack of human interaction and being able to understand with prosecutors the human toll that is left in the wake of these prosecutions, I cannot tell you, Joe, how many former state prosecutors, federal prosecutors, federal judges who are now criminal defense attorneys have moments where they break down emotionally and go through years of regret about how callous they were and how much they lack sensitivity. And some

of them realize sort of, I don't know if it's so much the error of their ways, but I know, and he doesn't fall into any of those categories. I know a former federal judge, I don't even want to name him, who is a former federal judge, who was a former prosecutor. I've become very, very close with him in New York. And he is doing unbelievable things now through a project where he is trying to get clemency for people that were disproportionately sentenced. And he is moving mountains to do it. And I think some of it is because he feels a sense

of obligation. Because in some instances, he was forced to sentence people because of sentencing guidelines disproportionately. I think some of some of it is a change in perspective. And if we could figure out a way, like I have a theory that it's lack of training. It's the lack of, you know, a system whereby prosecutors can really sit down with a criminal defendant, the accused, and their attorneys and get to know them and understand how damaging this all is. Because just getting accused of a crime, even if you get acquitted, it's life ruining. Now, I've seen it happen in white collar crimes, certainly in crimes where you're, you know, accused of some violent offense. So I think we've, you've put your finger on something

remarkably relevant. And if we could somehow get across to people in law enforcement, prosecutors, I have someone that's an expert in a civil rights case right now, who was a former warden at a prison in Florida and at a place where they used to execute people. And he's come to the other side and cannot believe that he was ever, you know, in a position where he was taking lives and realizes how many mistakes are made. So oftentimes it takes them sort of coming to the other side, having interaction with someone like Robert and seeing the empathy because what he's been able to accomplish in the five short years since he's been out and reforming the system is nothing short of remarkable.

To me, it's both a happy ending and it's terribly depressing because look what they wasted on taking him through this. And we were talking about on the way over here whether or not he ever would have become the force that he's become in criminal justice reform if this all didn't happen to him. So maybe that's the silver lining. easy for me to say because I wasn't the one, you know, toiling in a terrible penitentiary for 23 plus years. It's a horrible thing that people get a thought in their head and then try to confirm it, right? Like this guy's guilty and then you do your best to try to confirm it instead of looking at it objectively and trying to figure out if you're right or wrong. Right. Well, that's called confirmation bias. Yeah, it's a very real thing. if you're right or wrong. Right. Well, that's called confirmation bias.

Yeah, it's a very real thing. It's a very real thing. And that these prosecutors, they're not held accountable for bad mistakes. That's what's crazy. I can tell you another. Not just mistakes, but holding back evidence that would exonerate someone. Right. I can tell you another ticker in this thing, another thing that they kind of would have,

and this was very important, the detective that, the detective, Detective Stewart, and I can say that he's an honorable person, and I have a lot of respect for him because what what ended up happening is detective stewart was the detective as long as he was the head uh detective on the homicide and his job when he did his his investigation was for the murder and he determined from his own investigation and investigation of of teams that he worked with that the spree of crimes as well as the homicides were all tied into one person who committed the crime. And that was the person who was convicted of the murder. So in other words, he did that and he told the prosecutor that he had the wrong man. That was the first time he ever did it in over 20-something years of him being a police. He told

the prosecutor that, because he was the one that made the arrest on me, and he felt so bad when the Instant Project of New Orleans reached out to him and said, hey, do you remember the Robert Jones case? He said, yes, I do remember the Robert Jones case. He was saying, hey, how you doing? He's out, huh? He said, hell no, he's not out. He's in prison. Well, how he was in prison, I told the district attorney that we had the wrong guy.

And his mind was blown. When I met him at court, going through my hearing process, he brought his wife, he met me in court. Because he went from New Orleans, detective in New Orleans, to working for the FBI, to working in various high-level places. And this man was blown away. He was like, I thought that cleared that guy up that case for this guy years ago he felt so bad he felt so relieved when I got out of prison uh uh it it was crazy for the prosecutor to have all this kind of information in there and in their pocket and it would withhold that information.

Now, knowing what we know now, now that you are exonerated, that you are out, what are the repercussions? Did they have to compensate you? Does anything happen to them? The people that withheld that evidence, did they continue to work? Are they punished? That's a timely question, huh? What's going on? You can ask that.

Well, no, you should answer it. I mean, Robert just agreed he filed a federal civil rights claim, which is for monetary damages. In term, let me answer the first part of it first. The people that did this to Robert were not held accountable. Criminally, they were not held accountable in any way. And that's a huge problem. Robert just, it made headlines in our world quite a bit. He was compensated. It wasn't nearly enough. In fact, it was an amount that I find tragic relative to his experience, but it took a change in leadership in New Orleans. The new district attorney there is a gentleman by the name of Jason Williams, who's a remarkable guy, former defense lawyer, who just became district attorney and knew that Robert needed to be compensated. But he wasn't compensated nearly enough. He did 24 years. And how do you put a number on that,

on 24 years of lost life? Robert's 48 today, right? He spent half his life in prison for a crime he didn't commit. And he got, I mean, it was public, right? The amount? Yeah. $2 million? Right. you know and he got i mean it was public right the amount yeah two million dollars right now the i know intimately well you know what robert has been through i i don't i can't empathize i can sympathize i can't empathize because i didn't go through it but i've seen how he's struggled financially since he's been out and how do you pick up the pieces of of a lost life um you know i once heard a civil rights attorney asked for 36 million dollars in a um in a case where two guys were both spent 18 years in prison for crimes they didn't commit and he said it and and it brought me to tears.

I was his co-counsel in the case, but I'll give him the credit because it was a remarkable line. He said $36 million, a lot of money, ladies and gentlemen. That's not nearly enough. So he was compensated, but is it enough? I don't know. You know, I don't, unless you sit in a prison cell and know what it's like for a day, a week, a month, and, you know, your lifetime starts passing by, it's hard to put a dollar value on it. Well, here's a good way to judge it.

Ask any of those people that wrongfully put him in prison if they'd be willing to go to prison for 24 years for $2 million. I guarantee you none of them would say yes. It's not nearly enough. It's not nearly enough. It's a lot of money for a regular person to consider, like, oh my God, $2 million. It's not enough for 24 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. And a lot of your listeners have reached out to me asking, what can I do? There's a lot of states in this country right now, and, you know, we can provide you with the information to put in the notes of the episode that have limits or no compensation for people that were wrongfully incarcerated.

That's crazy. And that's a big reform effort that not only the Innocence Project has undertaken, but people all over the country and criminal justice reform organizations that there should be minimum amounts set. And they jump through trap doors all the time. Watch what happens in Florida. In Clemente Aguirre's case, the state of Florida owes him a lot of money for his wrongful incarceration. And there is a statute in the state of Florida to show you how fraught this is. And so he applied for the compensation after his exoneration. And what the state of Florida did was they said, you know what? The statute of limitations has passed

because when we overturned the verdict, when the state overturned the verdict in 2017, whatever it was, he went from being incarcerated to being in custody. And what the statute says is that you have to file within whatever the time frame was, two years from being released from incarceration. So the state's argument was that, well, when the Supreme Court threw out his conviction, the same day, the same day that the Supreme Court unanimously reversed his conviction, the state announced we are retrying him. Nobody came to Clemente Aguirre's cell and said, by the way, you're no longer incarcerated. You're just in custody now, just so you know. All right. So what they would have you think is that or have

the court think is that at that moment when his conviction is thrown out and they say, we're going to try you again and try to put you to death, that you should have filed the wrongful compensation claim when you're trying to save your own life and get out of this mess yet again. So they jumped through this trap door. And the judge, who was a magnificent man, his name is Judge John Galluzzo, who I credit with saving Clemente's life because in his retrial, he let the jury selection process play out like it should. And he at one point said to the prosecutors, you know, what you think is the truth may not be the truth after all. And he let me put the real killer on the stand because I was afraid she was going to leave town as a material

witness to preserve her testimony. And she all but confessed on the stand and the state dropped the case. He wrote an opinion denying Clemente post-conviction relief and apologized essentially in the conviction. And he said that basically the Florida legislator wrote this statute in a way that ties my hands because he wasn't incarcerated anymore. He was in custody awaiting trial. So even when you get these laws on the books it's like you know your mind starts to spin like where does the the fuckery end so that's why you know you know the way that robert has not only when he should tell the story of how he finally got out and and but he you know can you tell me what's happening with Clemente, though, before we do that? Yeah. So Clemente right now is I'm in the process of representing him in his federal civil rights case.

I can't talk too much about it because there's a law or there's a rule about not speaking out. But we are holding the people accountable civilly. I was able to, I've taken some of the depositions so far. And we're, you know, excited to be able to get him some measure of compensation. But he is, you know, he's in a tough place. He's here. He can't work. He's in immigration limbo. And he is doing the best he can, you know, to survive. And hopefully the civil rights case works out. I have a great team of people working, you know. How long does something like that usually take? Yeah. I mean, the wheels of justice grind slow and getting both exonerated and compensated. I

mean, the case has been going on for a couple of years or a year and a half. It'll probably go on for a couple of more. And then, you know, there's more hoops to jump through to finally get them to write the check. They can appeal. And sometimes it can drag on for many, many years. Absolutely. Robert, what are you doing with your time these days? That's a good question. Well, I'm doing a lot.

Right now I'm currently the director of community outreach and lead organizer and client advocate for All Needs Public Defender's Office. And Public Defender's, as you as you know attorneys who represent people who can't afford attorneys generally poor people I work in that office and so I kind of like work in the same criminal justice system

or the same court system that actually sent me to prison. Wow. You know, it was more in terms of, like, when I got the job and I sort of worked my way into a position, because some of the things I used to tell guys, like, when I was in prison, anticipating getting out, when I started seeing things was going to work out like okay increasing my hope I was gonna get out I should tell guys in prison because I was an inmate counsel when

I was in prison right I should tell guys say one day you're gonna see me come back inside the prison in suit and tie I'm'm not going to be a prisoner. So I had that experience like several times. I have more than like 50 something clients in Angola. Wow. So I actually walked back into the same prison that I was actually housed in. With a suit and tie. It was a great feeling. So and I take, I share that same level of inspiration and gratitude when I go back in the same courtrooms that I was actually prosecuted in. working relationship of a respectful relationship with a lot of the judges and now that we have a new district attorney they just return so we have a beautiful working relationship and understanding both aspects of the criminal justice system from a you know from the prosecutor perspective from a prosecutor perspective, from a defense perspective, which all surround fairness to me, right, and justice.

So I see it. So I do that. I run a nonprofit organization that's meant to the youth. So I like to help them make a transition from childhood to adulthood, which is a huge thing for a lot of you. I'm called Freedom Foundations, and I'll give you information where people can actually go and check it out. Me and another guy who was formerly incarcerated who also is a zonary, I do some public speaking in different places and help change different laws and

because of the position I am I have a lot of influence in the community amongst a lot of our state representatives, city councilmen and I sit on a lot of boards and committees for the city of New Orleans so I have a lot of influence and a lot of respect in the city of New Orleans, not just because of my experience, because of my skill set, of bringing everybody on one accord, not being afraid to speak truth to power, which a lot of people don't like me for it, but they respect me for it as well. And, yeah, so that's what I'm doing, you know.

And we can get off into it later, but it's another book that I'm writing that's going to try to tie everything in, you know. And because of your platform and what you're doing to uplift the voice of people who have been in this type of situation and also to affect change. And that's one of the reasons why I respect your podcast and what you do and people that's in your position. Like people like, because I can go on and on about this guy, Joss and Jason, how they use their position to help people. And I'm going to be really asking for your help to push this book down that I'm about to do because I want to be on a platform, right?

I want to create my own platform of fairness and using the influence I have to expand these type of things and to change the concept, you know, change the mindset of a lot of people, man, because they need more people like yourself, you know, using their platforms to change things, man, to break this system that we have that's destroying people. I think there's a problem in that a lot of people have no idea how the system works until they're getting trapped by it. Absolutely.

So there's a lot of people that until they hear a story like yours or some of the other stories that Josh and Jason have brought to us and explained until you see the horrific details of it, there's a lot of people that just don't know how these things work, and they assume like you assumed when you got arrested that innocent people don't go to jail for crimes they didn't commit. And then having a person like yourself who can explain what happened to you and all the horrific details, when we have a few of these conversations, then people realize like, oh, this system is fucked up.

And then when Josh can explain just this human nature that's involved in this confirmation bias and in trying to confirm your initial suspicions and ignore all evidence to the contrary and all that this is some sort of a weird flaw in human nature we'll get these conversations going and people can sort of have a different perspective so when they hear about someone getting convicted or they hear about someone getting arrested, instead of just immediately assuming that they're guilty, instead it's going to bring up a conversation like, this is a flawed system, a very flawed system in so many different ways. that, if I may interject,

a lot of people look at the individual that have been impacted, like myself, right, by the system. But wrongful convictions of putting people through the system is beyond me. This stuff impacts the lives

of family members, your children, your mother. It changes a lot of things. There's a lot of things that I experienced inside of prison of losing family members, losing relationships, losing connections with family members, and to be released out of prison to rebuild those relationships, right? To rebuild those relationships. Some relationships I had to cut off.

Some relationships that just got lost and don't know how. relationships right to rebuild those relationships some relationships i had to cut off some relationship uh that just got lost and don't know how and try to mend a lot of those things but uh and in my in my state the state of louisiana uh as you said yes i have been in the you know how many years it took for me to actually get to this point of being compensated to an extent? I had to fight for that, right? And my state, the state of Louisiana, they have a compensation law. It was $25,000 for a cap of 10 years. So no matter how many years you stayed in prison, it was $25,000 per year that you stayed in.

That's crazy. Yes. That is fucking crazy that increases the 40 000 right whatever still crazy what a 10 a 10 year cap and give someone a year in jail tell them like for every year in jail you get to keep 40 000 who the fuck is going to say yes to that right so and we have been and that's a part of my reform work and working with the instant project new orleans and a variety of other organizations and working with state legislators to keep on fighting for that change. Right. That's some of the things that I also participate in. that conversation, you still got to fight for that. It's not automatically given to them.

And I like to dispel the myth that when a lot of guys get out of prison and get exonerated that a big fact check is waiting on them and they're going to ride off into the sunset. We need to dispel that. People need to get that out of their mind. That don't happen because

when I came home, I didn't have jack nothing, right, outside of the Innocence Project of New Orleans and the Innocence Project in New York helping me financially. And this guy, Jason Flum, like, you know, and, man, if I wouldn't have had that, I don't know what type of situations that I would be in right now, you know, because I eventually got a job.

It wasn't paying much of nothing, but it was a job, right? I worked there, and I got good at what I do. I worked at a meal shop. I respect the owner so much for giving me the opportunity because I learned a lot there. And I was able to build myself into the capacity of where I'm working now. But financially, morally, to surround myself with guys like Josh and Jason Flum is huge

because these guys have platform. They're famous. You don't like to call it so. You know a lot of people. You're in position to be real friends with these guys

and allow me the opportunity. And don't look at you like, you know, just because they may be at a certain level. That's why I respect about them because they're going to see you equal. You know what I mean? And I would not only assume, but just maybe doing my own research on y'all, I will presume you are the same way. You know, to have that type of humility for people that maybe have been in bad circumstances, a situation that you may have been in, but to still to be able to look a person in the eye and extend the opportunity

for that person is huge to me. That's real humanity, you know what I mean? Because it's like, he don't have to do what he have to do. Jason Flum don't have to do what he have to do. I mean, you don't have to do what you have to do. You don't have to raise your voice about certain things, but to do that, it's huge to me. You know what I mean?

That's really huge, and that's humankind, because most people, we're all human, but some people don't act like human. People, they think about their own problems, and everybody's got their own problems. It's easy to ignore other people's problems. Absolutely. Here's the point.

You know, when we and Robert and I have the opportunity to speak to lawmakers that have different political views, this type of conversation is extraordinarily rare. I spoke to the governor of Florida about the James Daley case. He literally has a snapshot view of it, gave me less than 35 seconds after having me wait for several hours to meet with him. And there's a clemency mechanism in the state of Florida. All that means is that you listen. You just listen. You can deny it. You can say, sorry, not granting you it. But what point is there in having it if you're not going to listen? And the problem is that, you know, like

Julius Jones is about to be executed in Oklahoma. Richard Glossop is sitting on Oklahoma's death row, stone cold innocent. And, you know, these, it becomes a political thing with protecting the win. We talked about this herd, this tribal mentality. Now you got me on herd immunity. Tribal mentality. And it becomes, rather than just sitting and having the conversation and listen and being able to break through and saying, okay, I've heard you. Now hear me. Hear what I have to say about the reasons why you might want to, you know, did you hesitate at all? If you hesitated a little bit, are you sure you want to take a life? You know, and that in the case of Robert and so many others, it took,

it took an army of people. It's really easy to throw someone in jail. It took a literal army of people fighting and clawing and kicking and scratching to get him out. And why I think he's such an extraordinary story is that, you know, to be able to get out and now basically create a position for himself at the public defender's office, it's a miracle to get out in the first place. It's more of a miracle to find the, I mean, to find the sort of emotional, physical fortitude to want to stay in the system that imprisoned you. A lot of people that get exonerated run and they have every reason to. California, Florida, Midwest.

Just get the fuck away. Just get the fuck away. They don't want to see their lawyers again, send them a postcard. Well, Robert, what you bring to this is you have a peace and composure about you that's very unusual. Because of the horrific thing that you went through and to have to educate yourself about law and to try to figure out your case while you're locked up in a jail, dealing with all the other stresses of that environment.

You have a composure about you. You have a character that's literally built under fire. I mean, you were forged under horrible conditions. horrible conditions and because of that you are uniquely uniquely qualified to discuss this and to have these kind of conversations and to open people's eyes because of who you are and how you've gone through it and who you what kind of man you are now and the way you can describe it so calmly and serenely which is so it's very impressive Most people who would have gone through what you've gone through would be a broken husk of a person after all those years. But you're not. But you're not.

And the fact that you continue to help and work with the Innocence Project and try to help people and actually do what you said, go back to Angola with a suit on and help people. Right. Absolutely. It's an amazing thing. It's an amazing thing. It's an amazing thing. And you've literally turned, I mean, there's no way to completely turn that negative into a positive, but you've made the most out of it for sure. Right.

That's sort of like my motto, you know, in the sense of turning all of my negatives, everything that happened bad in my life, I try to make it out of positive for the most part. From working at the public defender's office, I also was in charge along with two attorneys that I work with. Like currently right now, we created like a recent program about a new law that changed. law that changed and currently we I was a part of a team that maybe 60 60 guys that got out of prison helped 60 guys that got out of prison it and it is not about it it's a joy to me in the sense of of seeing those guys get out of being

reunited with their family, guys who maybe would have thought they would never get out of prison, to have that type of thing is, I mean, it's a joy. It's a thing. And because of my experience and because of the education I have about the system, not just the criminal justice system, about the entire system, because that's what I studied, right? Me understand that it's hard to stay inside. It's like, you know, it's like if you was a doctor that knew a cure or something that would bring someone relief from pain, and you see this person in pain, you just like, you know how to help them,

but you don't do it. That's in the sense of, that's what it is to me. Me having educated myself and put myself in position, it's hard for me to stay inside. There's no way I can have a knowledge of these things and not help someone. I mean, I wouldn't be the person who I am. That speaks to your character.

Absolutely. It's very inspiring. It's very inspiring, I'm sure, to other people that are listening to this too. Right, absolutely. And it's sort of like bringing me to the point if one of the things that outside the things that I do and the relationship I build inside the community, and like I said,

I'm working towards this book. I'm working towards this power of endurance. Are you writing it right now? It's almost complete, yes. When do you think it'll be done? Maybe two more weeks. I should have it all edited out.

Do you have a publisher already? You can help me with it. We'll do what we can. We'll do what we can to get it out there, for sure. And we'll do what we can to promote it once it's actually for sale. Absolutely, absolutely. And it's done with the power of endurance. And the book came about because I get this question all the time.

People always ask me, like, Robert, how the hell can you do it? How you can keep your composure? How you can do these things? How you can be grew up in distressed neighborhoods all your life, poor, come from single-parent household, uneducated, to all this. How you do these things and still now we're in a pandemic, you're not scared, you're not afraid,

you know, like, man, how you keep a smile on your face? And I used to always joke, I'd say, one time, one day I'm gonna put it in the book, I'm gonna show you how. And I created like, well, it's four easy steps and I actually tell them like through my own experience and how I was able to maintain a tough mentality. And me and Josh were talking about it last night,

and I think that what I want to do is sort of different from people that inspire people, like motivational speakers. Got a million of them right I'm not a motivational speaker I'm a transformative speaker right it's like because anybody anything can basically inspire you like I can inspire you right now you can leave out of here and soon you face adversity it's like a deflated bloom that inspiration leave right but if you've got a tough mentality i can maintain i can teach you how to maintain your inspiration right how when you face difficulties that you're able to overcome you can still keep your inspiration

and keep on scribing but the difference is also you're coming from a. You can still keep your inspiration and keep on scribing. Well, the difference is also you're coming from a place that you've actually had to overcome something absolutely horrific. There's a lot of people that are what you would call motivational speakers. But if you try to find the actual adversity that they had to overcome, like where, what are they doing? Well, they're taking advantage of a thing that people desire. They desire external motivation. They desire people that say something to them that gets them fired up. And there's benefit in that.

I'm not knocking it. But there's a big difference between that kind of motivation and the kind of motivation that someone like you could bring. Absolutely. Absolutely. Should we wrap this up? Sure. All right. Let us know when your book comes out.

We'll definitely let the world know, and we'll try to get you in touch with publishers, and I'm sure Josh can help with that too. And anything else on your end? No, I just, I know that I do this as much as I can, but I want to thank you for giving us this platform. You know, I'm eternally grateful to you for your humility, your empathy, your compassion,

because if we don't get these stories told and make people realize that this is not a political thing, this is not anything but a human thing, and all it really takes is being able to sit down and realize that you're dealing with a person of of mind body and flesh and that you know they're worthy of of being listened to and certainly of redemption and I think Robert's just a living breathing example of the miracles that can happen when people come together to try to help I think it's important to have as many of these people on as we can,

whether it's as many cases that you could describe when you come on or have people like Robert come on and talk about this so people can get a more nuanced understanding of what's actually going on, that this isn't some fucking thing that may or may or may not exist this is a real human being they're right in front of you right now and they're telling you their story and it's real and there's dna evidence and there's evidence that the prosecutors withheld evidence and there's evidence that you were you were innocent the entire time that they knew it this is this is important yeah i'll say this in closing i can't That's why we're so grateful that we're like, you know, we can't express it enough because we have seen the difference that it's already making.

Thousands of emails, Instagram messages of people that are writing to me and Jason, you know, you've changed my path in life. I want to now become a criminal defense attorney. I want to become a legislator and enact new laws. You know, the amazing reach of this podcast has been transformative. Talk about transformative speakers, been transformative in our approach to this. And if we didn't have this platform through you, it wouldn't be possible. So you have, you know, my eternal thanks. Well, you have my eternal thanks for your hard work and what you've done is exceptional and extraordinary and selfless and humbling. And I think, you know, I, as a friend, I'm, I'm honored to be your friend. I think,

I feel the same way. I think what you do is amazing. And thank you, Robert, for coming on here and telling your story. And I think these stories make a difference. I think, you know, having people on here to discuss these things, I think it can make a difference. Thank you, brother. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share my story and hopefully to build from it, you know, to build from it and continue on to reach out to folks.

And allow people to have that conversation. Allow them to see different perspectives. Sometime that we can grow up with if it's an ideology or perception that's passed down from our family and from friends and just our own experiences. And to keep our mind closed, right, to the real perspectives of life. So I just thank you for giving us this opportunity and I think that uh it's gonna change some people lives it's gonna inspire some folks uh started looking at things differently you know so I think so thank you all right thank you thank you thank you everybody bye Thank you.