The Joe Rogan Experience - #1858 - Josh Dubin & Derrick Hamilton

Episode Date: August 17, 2022

Josh Dubin is an Ambassador to The Innocence Project, Criminal justice reform advocate, attorney, and president of Dubin Research and Consulting. Derrick Hamilton spent more than 20 years trying to overturn his wrongful conviction, and he now helps others that have been wrongfully convicted. www.innocenceproject.org

The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. Alright, we're rolling. Joshua, my brother. What's up, man? Good to see you, my friend. It's great to see you always. Please introduce your friend. Man, it's hard to introduce the unintroducible.

Man, it's hard to introduce the unintroducible. So this is Derek Hamilton, who has been regarded by the New Yorker as the most prolific jailhouse lawyer that ever lived. He is single-handedly responsible for freeing probably over a hundred people including himself he spent three decades in jail for murders that he didn't commit he was framed by one of the most horrific horrific, corrupt cops in the city of New York's history, someone by the name of Scarcella. But more than that, he's become known as one of the biggest and most effective criminal justice reform advocates in the country. And I'll tell you, get into it a little bit more later, but Derek is not a miracle.

He's a force of fucking nature. And I'll tell you a little bit about how we met and how we got involved together. So probably about nine years ago, Jay-Z wanted to get into boxing Nine years ago, Jay-Z wanted to get into boxing. And Roc Nation started a promotional company to promote boxers. And Andre Ward was one of them.

So we were on the opposite sides of the negotiating table. And it might be less or more than nine years ago was right on the heels of the Eric Garner murder when he was you know putting a chokehold on Staten Island and Jay-Z was coming to sign the contract and I was there with Jay Prince and we started talking about like what the fuck is wrong with this country and figured out that we had like a common bond in that regard. So fast forward to a few years later, we I find out through working with Rock Nation on just criminal justice reform initiatives that Jay-Z has this foundation that flies under the radar that is just remarkable. It's called the Sean Carter Foundation. He and his mother started it. And they take inner city youth, mostly from Brooklyn, really the five boroughs, and help give them an opportunity to go to college.

But they start when they're in high school. They take them on a bus tour. They help them with the application process. And they literally change the trajectory of these people's lives. So I had this idea that I would have five of their scholars, we would do a scholarship program, come work on social justice cases with me. And Jay-Z's mom loved it. He loved it. Rock Nation. There's someone named Donya Diaz who runs their philanthropy arm, and she's on the board of the Sean Carter Foundation. We made it a reality. It took a couple of years. So this summer, I had five college students that were coming to work with me

on innocence cases. And I said, you know, I need somebody that can really connect with these people because I have sympathy for the way they grew up, for the conditions that they were born into, for the opportunities that they didn't have. But I can't empathize because I'm white. It's just as simple as that. So I thought of Derek and I had met Derek about five years ago after he had been out for only six years. And Derek was the first person on my mind that could mentor these students. And I asked him if he would join me in helping mentor them through this seven-week program working with me on a case. And over the past seven weeks, we're this close to freeing this man named Bruce Bryant, who they worked on together. They worked on his case

together. And to watch Derek and to know his story, I knew right away that he'd be able to connect with them, but I did not know his power. So when he picks up the phone and calls a district attorney of Queens, they take his call right away. He calls the head of a conviction integrity unit that's involved in re-reviewing cases. He's got such deep respect and people in high places have such admiration for him because of what he was able to overcome in not only helping himself, but helping free others. He had a settlement with the city and the state. And instead of taking that settlement and resting on his laurels and doing whatever which would have been understandable he's dedicated his life to helping get people out of jail and not only that to helping reform the criminal justice system but these are words like reform the criminal justice system we kick around this man is a he is a human tornado of of action that instead of leaving destruction in its wake, leaves hope. And instead of, you know, devastation leaves opportunity. I mean, so maybe tornado was the

wrong analogy, but I've just never witnessed anything like it. So I'm on the verge of starting this new criminal justice reform center, which we're not at liberty to announce that is being funded by someone that I've talked about quite a bit on this show. And they were asking me to find a deputy director, you know, a lawyer. And I said, I looked at resumes, I interviewed people, and I said, I found him. I found my lawyer. He may not have a law degree, but he knows more about criminal procedure. He's more respected. He's the best strategic thinker I've ever encountered. And he knows human beings better than anyone. And Derek's going to be my, I'm the executive director. Derek is going to be my deputy director.

And I mean, I'll let him tell his story but when you hear what he's been through and what he's overcome and what he has done since he's not a force of nature there's words aren't adequate to describe who this man is what he's overcome

and what he's been through I was trying to suck an ounce of his mental energy on the ride over here from Houston, just trying to understand how he summons the strength because I'm trying to use it and apply it in my own life. So it's just, I'm not going to cry yet. I usually wait till hour two, but it's just so, it's just amazing to meet you, Derek, especially after such high praise. So tell me your story. What happened to you? Well, thanks for having me. And Josh, thanks for the accolades.

I was a 17-year-old kid running around Brooklyn at a time when Brooklyn was terrible. happened to you? Well, thanks for having me. And Josh, thanks for the accolades. You know, I was a 17-year-old kid running around Brooklyn at a time when Brooklyn was terrible. And I was a product of my environment. I was doing little robberies and, you know, little stump stuff that adolescents do. And I got on the radar of the police department. They used to search me all the time, pat me down, you know, throw me up on the car, regular stuff that happened in that community. One day, a man was killed about 5 a.m. by some older guys in the neighborhood. The police had an identification of their car. They called the guy in, and he somehow told them he rented me the car and that I was the one that bought the car back and told him that I had committed the crime and that I had shot the guy by accident. And that was my first real experience with the criminal justice system because it was a murder.

I'm like, murder? You know, I did a couple of robberies. You know, I did some petty stuff, but murder? That's not me. So, you know, what was amazing to me is, number one, nobody would have gave me their car at 17 years old, right? Any cop would have known that this guy wouldn't have gave me his car. But they arrested me and they charged me with murder. And I was convicted by a jury because they admitted grand jury testimony of a witness who came before the court and said, I never seen this guy at all.

The police made me lie in the grand jury and say that I seen this guy. I'm not testifying. I refuse to testify. I'm not going to get up there and perjure myself. The judge told the prosecutor that day that they were dismissing the case, that if they don't get another witness, this case is going out of here. Judge's name was Lombardo back then. This was 1983. I went back to RikGazelle on that day. We came back the next day, and the judge said that he thought about this all night, and he felt that the only person would benefit from this witness not testifying would be me. Therefore, he was going to allow the prosecutor to admit their grand jury testimony

as evidence in chief at my trial, and I would forfeit my right to confront the witness and let the jury hear the truth that she never saw the crime. So that was my first real experience. I was a young knucklehead. The lawyer that I had at the time, Candace Kurtz, said, Look, young man, get your head out your ass, and you better read these cases, and you better see what's going on like they're arrowing you. She took the stand and told the judge what the witness told her,

and I was convicted. I was sentenced to 25 years of life, and it was at that moment that I know that I had to study law, that I had to really dig deep in the books, and I did it. New York State, thank God, had a law library. They had all the books in the world. All you had to do was apply yourself, and I spent the next five and six years working on my case.

In 1987, the Appellate Division in that case found that the judge had no evidence whatsoever that me or anybody acting on my behalf had threatened this witness, did anything improper. And that the judge was right. There was no evidence that can prove that. So they reversed the conviction and I was able to get out of prison after six and a half years. Unbeknownst to me, there was a rogue cop by the name of Louis Garcella who felt that I didn't do enough time for this conviction. He didn't like the Appellate Division decision. Eight months later, I was in New Haven, Connecticut at a unisex salon that I had on at the time. He came in that store and arrested me, told me I was going back to Brooklyn for a murder. And I'm like, a murder? Like, this can't be true. Like, again? Like, how many times has this

happened? I went to New York. I was processed. About a year later, I went to trial. I was convicted. They brought a witness in by the name of Jew Smith, who said that she was present at the murder when her boyfriend was killed, that I was a gunman, had a gun in my the name of Jew Smith, who said that she was present at the murder when her boyfriend was killed, that I was a gunman, had a gun in my hand, and I shot this individual several times with this gun. But her original statement to the police said she wasn't there, that she never saw this crime. She was around the corner at a store. When she came back, her boyfriend was dead. The jury never heard that statement.

But in any event, the ballistics evidence proved that this guy was shot with two different guns, that he wasn't shot in the building where she said he was shot at, but he was shot outside in the street. Despite this evidence, I was convicted. After I was convicted was when I learned that she had first told the cops at the crime scene. She never saw the crime, but she had told it to a different detective. the cops at the crime scene. She never saw the crime, but she had told it to a different detective. So I made a pro se motion to set aside the verdict. And in the motion, I argued that this detective that never came in that she gave the statement to could prove my innocence. And the judge ordered a hearing for a year. He said, I can't give this guy a day in jail, let alone 15 years, which was the minimum. I want this witness to come back. The prosecutor said, I'm not calling him. And the judge said, if you don't call her back, this case is going to a new

trial, right? They called her back. And she admitted that she never saw the crime, that the detective, Louis Garcella, told her what happened and told her that if she didn't get up here and say that I committed the crime, she was going to jail. She was on parole. Her boyfriend was a felon that just got out. She had kids. They said, you're going to jail. She said, what was I supposed to do? Here's the system telling me this, that if I don't come in and say this, I'm going to jail. And I came in and said it. The judge ruled a year later that, again, he felt that I was. He said there was a common thread of string. I manipulated this evidence. Again, I called the detective.

The detective came in and said exactly what the witness said, that she told him she didn't see the crime, that she was beat up and took to the priest and then told she was going to jail. And had that jury heard that, there would have been different results. At the trial, they told the jury that her first statement was the most important statement in this case, and that when the police robbed on the scene, she didn't hesitate. She said, Derek Hamilton, somebody I know my entire life, committed a crime, which wasn't true.

In fact, she said the truth, which she didn't see the crime, that she was somewhere else. I was sentenced to 25 years of life. I filed numerous post-conviction motions after post-conviction motions. Every time a judge gave me a hearing, every time he said he can throw the case out, every time he said he was troubled by this conviction, the prosecutor would come in and tell him I'm a bad guy, that this is not somebody you want to release, that, you know, they put, imagine harms and make a judge think that I was the most terrible person in the world. And he would deny the motion every single time. You know, I filed numerous motions, numerous post-convictions.

I did everything you could imagine to prove my innocence, but to no avail. I began going to parole board around 2009. It was a very traumatic experience for me because at that time, the parole board wanted me to admit guilt, and I wasn't going to do that. I'm not going to come in and say I killed somebody I didn't kill. I'm not doing that. I don't care what you say. And I had to challenge them and fight them for two years. I'm not doing that.

I don't care what you say. And I had to challenge them and fight them for two years. And then my family went out in protest, and we got a Daily News article put out that said that I would be free if the court would just basically give me justice. If they just give this guy a fair shot, he'd be home. So it changed the mentality of the parole board. They looked at all of my evidence, and they said, you know, based on the evidence that you presented here, we believe in your innocence. Like this evidence speaks for itself. Even the judge said you was innocent.

I don't know what you're doing here all these years. And they released me. And at that point, I began a crusade because when I was in prison, there were several guys. We built something called the Ask Your Innocence Team, guys who I was working in the law library. So I would read a guy's case and check him out. So what I had to do was get families together, get people to come together and bring their families and say, look, let's send these people to City Hall. Let them know there's a lot of us in here. It's not just me. There's white, there's black, there's a bunch of us in here that got the same issue, that they're procedurally

borrowing us. They're not looking at our cases, just kicking it into the garbage. We don't want to hear it. Get out of here. Right? Because they can. They have the power. So when we start bringing attention to these cases, it changed whole dynamic so when I got out I joined that group family and friends of the Romans convictions we had a PR guy by the name of Lonnie sorry who was helping us keep it together and we just began blasting the prosecutors we began protesting outside the offices and getting rid of them the first one we was able to get rid was Charles Hines and Brooklyn the prosecutor sent me to prison he was able to remove him and put a progressive prosecutor in that agreed that he would look at these convictions if he was elected.

So he got in, and in two years, he has honored 22 people. And he found that it was a systemic racist problem in Brooklyn that was convicting the wrong people. Fortunately for me, the New York Times reporter called me, and I believe it was 2012, and they said, why are people afraid of the police? I just thought, are you kidding me? Why are they afraid of the police? And I told them names of guys that I knew that was in prison that this cop set up. And a lawyer had contacted me and said that he was working on a case

which this cop framed another guy by the name of David Ranta. And he said in two weeks there's going to be an article in New York Times that exposed this cop. And I told the New York Times reporter that. And I said, look, in two weeks, if it comes out, you come back to me and I'll take you to these guys. And she came back, Frances Roberts. She came back and I took her to these guys. She got the prosecutor to agree to look at 50 of these cops' cases, 50 of them. And, you know, 20 was exonerated so far, those guys.

And I was exonerated in 2015. In 2014, for the first time in New York history, the Appellate Division's Second Department ruled in my case that a free stand in an actual innocence claim can be recognized under post-conviction motion. And they said that anybody that's innocent, the courts could no longer procedurally bar you. They got to reach the merits of your contentions. They just can't say, well, you should have raised this before, or your lawyer failed to do this before, or you should have did.

You got to reach the merits of it. Get to the bottom line. Is this guy innocent or not? And when they gave me that opinion, it kind of like in itself exonerated me because the prosecutor now had to hear my witnesses. I had alibis. I had police officers who said, look, this guy was in New Haven, Connecticut, not Brooklyn when this murder happened. We know because we've seen him there. He was at a party with him. I had hotel receipts. I had many witnesses that could verify where

I was at on the day and the time you cast his murder. The court was just throwing that evidence in the garbage. We, in fact, proved who committed the crime. The real murder was present when the cops arrived. He was on parole for manslaughter. They took his name down, but never even investigated who he was. So we had a lot of evidence. We had a witness who was there, who identified who was there, identified why the guy was shot. There was a 911 caller that said three male blacks fleeing in the red car. He admitted they was in a red car. So it was just overwhelming evidence of my innocence. But courts was just throwing it in the garbage because of the prosecutor lied to them and said he's a bad guy. So my experience has taught me that, you know, there's a lot of innocent people.

I was in prison, man. Look, one thing about prison that I tell people, they say, hey, everybody says they're innocent. That's not true. Right. They may tell a lawyer that, but they're not going to tell a guy in a neighborhood with them that. I know you're guilty. You know, I was with you. I know what you did. You told me. Everybody tells me.

You're from the same neighborhoods. So it's a small minority of people that's in the law library every single day. If you go to the yard, guys is working out in the way, pal, right? They're playing basketball. But the innocent guys is in that law library every single day trying to find a way out. And that was me um every single day and i studied every book in there i taught law classes um and i became very good at it i mean i was surprised i mean i know i went to college right when the lawyer gave me the first two cases and i read them i was surprised how well i knew the cases i was surprised how i comprehended them and it was because of that um that i kept going and i found the civilian who liked me uh he was working the

law librarian and the first test i got was a 44 and he said look man I'm not gonna waste my time you gotta explain what that is what a 44 a 44 was my grade on the test I particular test the first test he gave me was on the Constitution of the United States I had to learn the four fifth six eighth and fourteenth amendment and I failed I was playing and he said look, look, you're not going to waste my time. You're smarter than that. He challenged me. Next time I came back, I got a 97. So from that point on, I just started studying. I started gravitating to the older guys that knew more than me. Because I was young, they were willing to teach me. And I was like a young sponge. And I just loved what I did. I became passionate about it. And that's why I'm here now.

Derek, what kind of repercussions are there for cops that do things like this? None. I mean, in our case, the statute of limitations that ran out on this cop. And let me just tell you about this cop. He didn't just do it in the police department. He left the police department, went into the DOE, the Department of Education, and he did it there. He framed a guy in the DOE. They later found out the guy did nothing wrong. They had to reinstate him. This is just his nature and his character. And he just gets away with it?

He gets away. What's his name? Louis Scarcella. And he's out there still? He's out there. He's still getting a pension. The city is still paying this guy. We still got cases today that we are fighting in court for him. James Jenkins, Nelson Cruz. Are they still actual cases that we litigate? How many people do you think that guy wrongfully put in prison? You know, I'll tell you something that I didn't even tell you, Josh, about this one. And it's going to, this guy worked on over 200 cases. My father was killed in 1988. He was the detective on that case. And I'll tell you something about that. He said that one of the guys snatched a confession out of his hand and ate it.

I didn't believe that. I said, as much as I want people who may be responsible for my father to tell me, I can't trust this guy. I can't take nothing he say to be truth. Right? Just recently, that case was overturned. Samuel Edmondson case because of his sloppy police work. So he says 200 cases he worked on. I would like to believe at least half of those guys are innocent. Well, a lot of them have been exonerated. How many Scarcella exonerations have there been? 20 to date.

How does a guy not just get locked up immediately for that? And when he testifies, he has two lawyers with him now, right? I've never seen a witness come to court and have two lawyers standing with him. We object to it all the time, but I mean, this is how much of a criminal he is. He has two

lawyers standing with him all the time trying to protect his rights. And he don't remember anything now. Like he don't remember, you know, of course, he don't recall nothing. You got to bring the police reports to him and say, that's your signature. Did you do this? But he don't remember anything, of course. Selectively, he don't remember anything. It just shows you, you know, he's been written about a lot. Scarcella, there have been scores of articles out there about him because he was exposed. And this is not an indictment of all police that are amazing cops. But a couple of bad eggs that let the power get to their head, a couple of rogue cops, they don't just destroy a life. They destroy, you know, it's a ripple.

One, you know, if you, like Derek and I were at Sing Sing visiting one of our clients, this guy Bruce Bryant, and, you know, it's the brothers, the sisters, the family, and then you start to multiply that out and the ripple effect of how it affects these families. There's been 20 exonerations. There's been 22, actually, but there's been 20, 22 exonerations connected to this one cop. It only takes, you know, some rogue cops and people to look the other way.

And I mean, look at this beautiful man, how articulate and bright and he's prolific in what he does. And he snatched his life from him. You know, we were talking last night about how this is like a second chance to live for him. Some of the best years of his life, he'll never get back. You're never the same. But he's easily the exception to the rule because he's out there and a force of nature and working toward helping to solve this problem. But, you know, Scarcella, you know, we were just asked the same question on the way here because I'll show you how small the world can get. I haven't talked to Pauli Malignaggi in years.

And he said to me something interesting. Called me the other day to check up, how you doing? You know, what's been going on? He said, you know, I've been following the work you're doing. And for those that don't know, Pauli was a world champion fighter that liked to talk a lot that I managed years ago, but he's got, he's a good soul. He's got a good heart. a lot that I managed years ago, but he's got, he's a good soul. He's got a good heart. Um, and he said, you know, there's this case you got to look into for me. A guy named Louis Fama, F-A-M-A. Joey, Joey, Joey Fama, Joey Fama. Um, and he's like, this guy was railroaded by this cop, Scarcella. And he's like, will you look into this case for me i i write to him every month so i asked derrick on the drive over here you hear about this this guy joey fama he goes yeah i'm working on his

case right now we just filed post-conviction motions on his behalf so we called paulie in the car and paulie was like oh my god there's a reason why i called you and he said you know he asked the same question you did. How in the fuck is this guy still out there? Because whatever crimes he committed, the statute of limitations have run on, number one. Number two, nobody's got the balls to prosecute him because that would be an admission, wouldn't it? Absolutely. And let me tell you how crazy it was, right? Again, the prosecutor was down with him. They was all a part of the same clique. Right. And he used a witness by the name of Teresa Gomez and six murders for six months in a row.

Each month she gave him a murder and one murder. She says she looked through the peephole and saw the guy shoot. There was no peephole on the door. Six, look, just think about it. Six murders. Who sees one murder but six in your lifetime and six months in a row? To today, he swears she was the most credible witness ever, that she was the best witness in the world. And they used her. The prosecutor Ross at that time is now a judge in Brooklyn. And they used her. The prosecutor Ross at that time is now a judge in Brooklyn.

And on a cigar website, he said the first time he smoked a cigar was when that lying crackhead whore got a conviction. He was talking about Teresa Gomez. They knew she was a liar. They knew that she would lie on people. And that was in Robert Hill's case. He was exonerated. His brother, Alvina Jeanette, was exonerated. And Daryl Austin, three brothers she put in jail, all three of them exonerated. His brother, Alvina Jeanette, was exonerated. And Daryl Austin, three brothers she put in jail, all three of them is exonerated. Daryl Austin died in jail. There's no repercussions for that. He just lives his life, runs on happy. And he's still to the day, despite 20 convictions being overturned, saying he did nothing wrong. It's bigger than him. It was the system. He said, I arrest the prosecutors convict you know i give it to them they decide what to do it wasn't my decision and it's just crazy that's how the system works though how is there no law that first of all eliminates the statute of

limitations when someone puts someone in jail for the rest of their fucking life and and also treats something like that as organized crime. That's organized crime by any definition, isn't it? Yeah, that's a great question. Here's the thing that people have to start to understand and get through their heads and believe it. We have to be careful about who we put in power. This is not, are you a Democrat, Are you a Republican? Are you this? We have to be careful because power is worse than any drug. I'm now convinced of that. Fame, power, any form of

it. And if you don't start paying attention to the people that we are putting in positions of power, it is human nature that this will keep happening. The mammals that we are, we're hardwired to abuse power. And you ask a great question, which is how do we not suspend the statute of limitations? It takes people that are willing to do the right thing. You know, like I have been excoriated about, oh, you went on Rogan and said that Kamala Harris was this, but then you voted for her. No, I fucking didn't. I call it like I see it. And I'm not a Democrat. I'm not a Republican. We have to be careful about who we put into power. And once you start putting people in power that will do just the right thing, not the popular thing, but the right thing, laws like that can get changed. They can get changed. And you have said it before, and you're

right. Until we can get out of this tribal mentality of either us, them, those, we're going to keep on seeing this happen. That shit is built into our DNA. We have to understand that we evolved as tribal groups. And because of that, we had to fight off other tribal groups who wanted to steal our resources, who wanted to take our women. That's always been the case with human beings. And we have just moved that into Republicans versus Democrats. women. That's always been the case with human beings. And we have just moved that into Republicans versus Democrats. That's what we're doing.

And it's bad and it's dangerous. I call it like I see it. The reason I was critical of Kamala Harris is because I called it like I saw it. And I'll tell you what, it was not a popular thing to do. Derek knows some of the fallout that I faced from the left, quote unquote. Because they wanted to protect her, but it's accurate. The problem is everything you said was accurate. Everything you said is provable. Everything you said is a 100% stone cold carved in steel fact. Yeah, but it happens on both sides. Let me give you an example. Here's something that blows my mind. Okay. And we just have to be willing to step out of this tribal mentality all right you look at a guy like ron desantis all right everyone's

gonna has their backup already ron desantis all right what he did in orlando was so fucking mind-blowing or hell was it it in Orlando that he did this? No, in Hillsborough County in Tampa. He goes and removes this really terrific guy, right, who, whether you like him or not, let's not call him a terrific guy. He goes and removes a prosecutor, an elected official, on the hypothetical that if a state law passes, that this guy won't enforce it. All right. Hypothetical. Is this from a statement? This is a hypothetical because the guy signed a letter along with a bunch of other state and district attorneys saying if you pass an abortion law, I don't think it's a good use of our resources to prosecute people that might be

the victims of rape, you know, who are doctors who are trying to help the victims of rape. I don't, I think it clogs up the system and they have their rationale for it. But there had never been a case brought before him yet. Now, why did Ron DeSantis do that, in my opinion? He did that because he knows abortion is a hot button issue. And if he goes down there and removes this guy, he becomes a hero for it. Here's the hypocrisy in that. This has nothing to do with politics. This has to do with the right thing.

Watch this. This should fucking freak everybody out. Imagine this. In Florida, marijuana is still illegal. I want to get it right, so I don't... I'll tell you what statute it's in. In the Florida statute... It's very illegal.

The statute criminalizing weed in Florida is section 893.03. It's a controlled substance in Florida. There are a lot of states where it's still a controlled substance, but it's been decriminalized. Florida is not one of them. In Orlando, Orlando said, you know what? We're going to decriminalize it. Here's how we're going to do it. We're going to make it like a traffic ticket. here's how we're going to do it. We're going to make it like a traffic ticket. There's a sticky problem there though, because there's a state law, section 893.03 that makes it illegal. So they passed a county ordinance. They got the city council together and they passed a county ordinance and they said by a, what was it? a four to three vote, we are not going to prosecute according to state law.

We're going to prosecute according to this county ordinance. If Ron DeSantis gave a shit about state attorneys not prosecuting crimes, don't you think he would have been right there and said, what the fuck is this? You're not prosecuting according to state law. You're not fit to be a state attorney. I'm pulling you out of office. That's the first thing he would have done.

He didn't do that. They actually created a way to circumvent state law and did it. This is not a hypothetical. Why did he do that? Why didn't he do that? Because he doesn't give a fuck about this is not about the issue well also probably because it's politically popular it's abortion is politically popular so he knows he's going to make himself so whether you're a quote-unquote republican

a democrat a libertarian if you don't look at that fact and say there's something really wrong there, something wrong. I don't care about anything else involving this man. That in and of itself smacks of fascism. When you go grab an elected official by the scruff of their neck and yank them out of an elected position, that doesn't horrify you. I mean, but when it comes to weed, you know, it's illegal in the state of Florida. You sort of did an end around here to get around the law, but I'm going to leave that state attorney alone. There's no answer to that. I have met this man before. He threw a tissy fit over the fact that I was wearing a mask at the height of the pandemic because my son has type one diabetes and it wasn't known yet whether I could get it, pass it to him.

And instead of meeting with me, turned his back on me and walked out. He cancels clemency routinely in Florida. That should bother that should bother people that people like Derek. Who just want a hearing, just hear me. You cancel the fucking clemency? You cancel the entire hearing so people's cases can't get heard. And until we're willing to step out of this— Why do you think he does that?

Because he's—you would have to ask him. But the question is, why are we tolerating it? Why are we putting up with it? Why are we saying that that's OK? Because why? Because it's a tribal mentality. And until people are willing to sort of step away and say, you know what, I don't like what this individual does. I'm not going to vote for him. I'm not going to vote that person into power. into power. There are judges that get elected in the state of Florida, some that have ruined the lives of my clients. And they continually get elected because we vote along party lines instead of using our minds. And Derek and I were talking about it on the way here, like what is it that prevents people from saying, you know what, I'm going to do something. Instead of talk about it on Instagram or post about it or bitch about it at a cocktail party, what prevents people from saying, you know what, maybe I'll run for office or maybe I will write a letter or maybe I will go protest and maybe I

will take up this cause. I don't know what it is. It's something stops in people. And they say, I don't know what it is. It's something stops in people. And they say that's just something for other people. If you want to make change happen and be about the change, you can do it. If you actually – this guy is the best example of the power of one and how the power of one can sort of light a fire under the power of others. I'm inspired by him. I feel like there's not enough time in the day to get things done. And you start to see the fruits of your labor when you get the wind at your back and you start making change happen. And I just think people feel like, well, politicians, that's

for someone else, or being a leader, that's for someone else. A lot of it is just sort of getting out there and making it happen, or else we're just going to be in this echo chamber with each other talking about, oh, power corrupts, and what are we going to do about it? We have to do something about it. Derek, it's amazing when some people get their back up against the wall, they become like a different person. Like you literally changed the course of your education. You learned law. Like that is so inspiring to me that someone who gets put in a terrible situation instead of woe is me in and complaining, you went out and you changed the course of the history of your life.

You really did. You did it yourself. That's so incredible. I mean, I've heard similar stories of people becoming jailhouse lawyers, but I'm always inspired by that and I'm always inspired by the human spirit that someone can despite the odds despite the way it feels despite the the the inclination to lean towards despair that you figured it out man I mean it's really amazing well you know for me one of the most telling things I could never never understand how, you know, I'll give you an example.

In Rikers Island, you wake up 5 o'clock in the morning, you go to court. So from 5 a.m. to probably 10 o'clock at night, you're in the bullpen. You're stressed out and guys fighting each other, cutting each other. It's a zoo house, right? And I wish to be cursing these guys out because you're tough with each other, but when you go before the judge, you're a pussy. Excuse the vernacular. I just couldn't understand that. Like the most important thing in your life, you don't stand up and fight. And I know that didn't want to be me. I wanted to be the smartest guy in that courtroom. If they was going to

railroad me, I was going to have objection. I was going to say, Your Honor, may I address the court, and I was going to state the law and why what you was doing was wrong. So I thanks candidates, cursed that attorney that gave me the advice, study law, man. You gotta fight for your life. Nobody's gonna fight for it for you. And I grew up a fighter. I grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. And I couldn't fight physically, so I know I had to arm myself mentally with enough intelligence

to be able to take on a judge, to take on a prosecutor, to take on my defense attorney if they was wrong. And that was my thing. When I went in that courtroom, I wanted to make sure, even though you was railroading me, that record, and that's what got me out of prison, the record. All of my objections got me out. The judge had to admit that there was evidence to prove my innocence because I wouldn't let him have it any other way. I wasn't leaving that courtroom with him making a record like I was guilty. Whenever the prosecutor said that I shot somebody and killed them, I objected. I called them on the phone. I wrote letters.

I used to call the judge chambers and act like I was somebody in the mayor's office and say, why are you doing this to me? They would be like, yeah, tell your client don't call me no more. But to me, the most important thing I had was my life. And if I didn't stand up and fight for it, nobody else would. Nobody else could. Nobody else knew I was innocent. And they always believed that you're guilty because the prosecutor, lawyers, judges, a lot of them in the same Democratic Party in New York City,

they're all amongst party lines, they all hang out together. They're friends. I was on the outside in that. And I knew for a fact that if I didn't stand up and throw punches back, the only way that I could through the law, that I would have stayed in prison the rest of my life. What was the process like of learning law? Did someone guide you through it? Did you just pick up books? How did that work? I'll tell you, it was different

processes at different times. When I first began, the fortunate thing for guys in New York, they would have something called unofficial reporters. So they would give us books when we can cross-reference through something called digest. So let's say I got a criminal law topic. I can take that topic and run it through a digest and get 20 cases the same way. But for me, what I used to do was read a lot of briefs, read a lot of judges' decisions to try to, like, get the concept. And the more you read, the more you learn.

One of the things I did was I read the criminal procedure law from front to back, from one all the way to the end. And it gives you the procedures of what happened from the moment you're arrested to you're convicted to your appeal and everything else. I had to master that. There was a guy by the name of Joe Diaz. They used to call him a colonel. He was an old, miserable guy in prison, didn't like anybody. But he took me up under his wing because he seemed that I was very adamant. I wasn't going anywhere. And he just told me, you got to know procedure, that prosecutors beat you on procedure, that they don't want to go to the marriage you're claiming. If they can get the judge to get you out of here without hearing the marriage, they're

going to do that. So I had to master procedure. And I only did that by reading. I did 10 years in special housing unit. And all I did was study in special housing unit. Amongst the banging and the craziness, I just read books every single day. They would bring you two books from the law library, and I would read them from front to back.

Well, wait, can you explain for the listeners and for, I think Joe knows now, but what that means to be in the special housing unit? Special housing unit is some call it the whole, some call it punitive segregation. But you are in a very small box of a cell for 23 and sometimes 24 hours a day. You're around a bunch of mentally ill prisoners who throw feces and urine on you. They just burn themselves. It's a madhouse. You know, they bang loud. It sounds like bombs being dropped.

I mean, it's a very, very toxic environment for the prison guards and prisons alike. And it's a punitive tool that they use against people that they feel have too much power in the prison or they don't like you. For me, I was writing lawsuits. I was litigating against the conditions in prison. So they targeted me. And they always single you out and say, you know what, you think you're tough. You think you're going to be in the box.

And I did 10 years in there. I did 10 years in there. And it was the most horrific experience in the world, but I made it work. I would roll my mattress up, and I would put all of the lost stuff on the bed, and I would sit there, and I would work all day. I would put earplugs in my ear, and I would just block the noise out and work and work and work. And I did some of my best work in the special housing unit. the noise out and work and work and work and i did some of my best work in it and specializing in it that's it's incredible that you had this this determination and will and drive and then

never let go definitely i mean i had no choice i mean sometimes you put positions uh that you don't even know your strength until you're in them yeah and for me i just didn't know that i had it in me uh but you know when i got got out, you know, when I left, I left with a group of guys that I pledged that I was coming back to get. I mean, these are guys that were innocent. I knew it. They were some Scarcella victims. And Shabaka Shakur was one that we got out.

Richard Rosario was a part of that team. And there was many more, man, that I just knew that. I just couldn't get out and walk away from these guys. Nelson Cruz, we still fighting for this brother. I mean, here's a case where Scarcella framed this guy. There was a cop who witnessed the real murderer. The cop caught this guy with a gun in his hand shooting, locked him up, threw him in jail, gave him to Scarcella. Gun, the murder weapon. Scarcella let this guy tell him he didn't

do it that the killer was nelson cruz but why would he do that you know one of the things i learned is that informants right cops protect the informants they protect the informants that commit murder um and then they have to blame it on somebody to close the case and that happens a lot right in this case this guy was informing for them. They didn't want to get him off the street. So what do they do? They substitute him for Nelson Cruz, despite the fact that a fellow officer says, listen, I know who I saw shooting.

I witnessed this. I saw it with my own eyes. They let the guy go and locked up Nelson Cruz. He's still in prison today. His unfortunate is that we went through a hearing, we won, and you won't believe this. The judge caught dementia. What? The judge

caught dementia. Sean Davis Simpson. And she resigned on the dementia. She had dementia when she was hearing this case. And we're still fighting. So, I mean, the criminal justice system is broken. We got to fix it, as you said, even to waive the statute of limitations to hold people accountable, to hold prosecutors accountable,

to change the 11th Amendment. I mean, everybody, look, if you can go after Donald Trump, right, then you can go after prosecutors and cops. You can't tell me that you can go after Trump today for things that you said he did as a president, but you can let Scarcella get away, you can let the prosecutors get away, and you want me to say that that's okay? It's not okay. It's just incredible to me that they'd be willing, just because they want to keep this guy as a snitch, that they will go out and convict an innocent person. I mean, how does a person get so jaded that they're willing and don't care about putting innocent people behind bars? I mean, is their idea that everybody's guilty of

something so it's okay? Like, what's the mindset that allows a cop to do something like that? The way the system is designed, right? Cops get accolades based on arrest prosecutors based on convictions judges or judges on based on how fast the case moved to the system so if you're going to pat me on my back as a cop and say good job done and there's nobody investigating to see whether or not you did a great job prosecutors are supposed to investigate any case that cops bring before them that's broken they just accept the case and move on. So it's like a game, and they're just trying to score points. And if they can cheat to score points,

they'll score points by cheating. Absolutely. If there's political pressure, forget about it. Forget about it. You... This is like... The questions that you ask are so... They're rhetorical, but they're the same questions that I hear from people that hear these stories. And it's almost like your defense mechanism as a human being doesn't want to let you believe that that could be.

Because you're taught as a kid, cops are here to serve and protect you. Prosecutors are here to get the bad guys. What's woven in here and that we're not really, we're addressing it without addressing it, is that it is the racism that runs rampant in our system is that it is a very big part of this. It is a very big part of this. A lot of white cops, whether subconsciously or consciously, think the black guy or the brown guy, the Latin guy did it. There is a huge, that's one, you know, it's a messy stew. There's one part of it, a large part of it, I'm sure, is what you just said. It's you do not see the human cost that a prosecution of a human being leaves in its wake. And these prosecutors get accolades for convictions, and it is a game. It's about wins and losses. For cops, it's about arrests. And yes, it taps into something primal that winning is good, losing is bad.

And it's a messy stew. And I used to think that sometimes cops were out to frame people. I don't think it's always that. I think that they think that their hunch is better than evidence and they make the ends justify the means. But you can't ignore any one of these factors. Look, you and I had had a discussion not on the podcast about Brittany Griner. Right. And, you know, I think we all agree as human beings that she it's it's insane. It's insane. It's not the word doesn't give it justice. It's it's horrific. is that, you know, this happens here. And yes, she's getting attention because she's in Russia. It's a political thing. It's in vogue.

And I want her to get out, of course, more than anyone. But there are way worse situations here in this country. I sent you some of these cases. So I went down a bit of a rabbit hole. I went down a bit of a rabbit hole and I said, you know, there's got to be some, there has to be someone that has studied the disparity between the sentences that black men and women get for marijuana possession or marijuana, you know, marijuana convictions versus white people. And Derek found a study that I have with me. And when I read it, I kept on saying, this is unbelievable. It was commissioned by the ACLU from 2010 to 2018.

And they examined this from every angle. They took the crystal ball and they turned it around and then they turned it over. And then they looked at the inside of it. They looked at it from every angle. Okay. Did the decriminalization of marijuana reduce the number of arrests overall? Yes, slightly. Did it reduce the number, the ratio of arrests when you look at black people that are arrested for marijuana possession as opposed to white people? And the resounding answer is no. If you are a black person in this country and you are caught possessing marijuana, you are three and a half times more likely to A, get arrested,

and B, get a disproportionate sentence. And if anybody is interested in the report, it's called the ACLU Research Report, A Tale of Two Countries, Racially Targeted Arrests in the Era of Marijuana Reform. it will blow your fucking mind. They went down to a level of granularity that you would expect from a rigorous research study. They said, okay, well, do white people possess weed more than black people or do black people? Because if you would think that if black folks possessed more marijuana, they would get arrested at a higher rate. The answer is no. White people do.

You know, and you cannot look at these statistics and not be outraged and say, OK, we have a problem here in this country. This our criminal justice system is infected by racism. It doesn't just stay in one segment of society. They looked at the arrest rate, right? The black white ratio and table six of this report from 2010 to 2018. The arrest per 100,000 may go down, but black people get arrested in this country for marijuana possession in the same scenario, 3.6 times more than white people. They broke it down state by state. I brought it because I wanted to leave it with you. And, you know, they went down to states with the highest black arrest rates for marijuana possession, states with the largest increases in racial disparities.

I mean, a lot of this shit is happening in the South. It's happening to black people. They're being brutalized by our criminal justice system. And unless people are willing to wake up to that fact, I mean, we're in 2022, where marijuana is legal in many states, decriminalized in many others. And so getting back to DeSantis, I'm not beating up on him. If you really cared about removing a state attorney and you want to, you know, do something right, you know, decriminalize it in the entire state. How many people, you know, well, imagine this. This is who this guy is. And I'm just calling it like I see him. I've met him. I've met with him.

He is the jerk at work. You know, everybody has that person that is just an asshole at work and is always telling on people and causing a fucking problem and looking to be difficult. That's who this guy is. He has a bad temperament he doesn't have patience I mean I was there meeting with him as a favor from one of his biggest donors he had no patience with me and why was I there? I was there because I wanted him to simply

give me a clemency hearing I wasn't asking for anything I wasn't saying please commute the sentence of this innocent man, James Daly, who I know is innocent. I was just there to say, just hold the hearing and let me show you, as Derek said, the merits. Let me just show you the merits of the case. The only person that would meet with me on the clemency board and hear me out is a woman that's running for governor in Florida named Nikki Freed. She's the fucking commissioner of agriculture. She didn't need to meet with me. She met with me for three and a half hours with her general counsel, with other members

of her clemency team. I'm supporting her because I'm, you know, something that I'm interested in, she paid attention to. And she said, there's a problem here. We have to hear people out. This is before she had intentions to run for governor. And now, you know, she's neck and neck with Charlie Crist in Florida. People want to make change happen. You know, take a look at her. She's an interesting alternative. She was a she was a public defender.

I think she then became a prosecutor. She gets it from all angles. She's a commissioner of agriculture and she's not a politician. The thing that bothers me is that when you look at racial disparities in marijuana possession arrests, you know, what's happening in the south in this country, Pickens County, Georgia, the arrest rate for black people caught possessing marijuana, you're 97 times more likely to get arrested if you're black possessing marijuana the face that you just made is what happened in my fucking heart when i read it you know in in illinois people wonder that you know like it's like a popular thing for white people to say is like when they're in social circles where they don't think anyone's listening fucking black people are killing each other in chicago right well you know in in tazewell county

illinois you're 43 times more likely to be arrested if you're black and caught with weed than if you're white there's i mean I mean, we have a broken system. And if people aren't willing to step up and recognize that, this report confirmed what I already thought and knew. But if people aren't willing to recognize and say, okay, well, how do we go about fixing it? You know, the legislatures pass laws that are made by people and are conjured up by people.

They get in a room and they sit there with a pen and paper and they come up with a law and then we try to get him passed you're absolutely right there should be no statute of limitations for a cop like Luis Scarcella who has fucking ruined the lives of a generation of people and I would like to just add that that those stats just don't apply to marijuana. If you go to the Almanac, those stats apply to all crimes around the board, that black people were being arrested. In some instances, when you look at Almanac, white people were being arrested more but convicted less of the same crimes. So it's just systemic.

It's systemic racism. As you said, it's tribal, right? People tend to go with their tribe more than others. Right. And then if you pour, that plays another role. Whether you're white or black. Right. If you pour, you can't get the money to defend yourself. So you're relying on who? A public defender or somebody who a judge has to sign off on their money to get paid, right? So you're still stuck. I had an 18B lawyer, which is a county lawyer at one time, come to me on a motion that I made pro se and say,

the judge told me that he's going to deny your motion no matter what we do. She was scared to death. He was signing her voucher. She was scared. What did I do? Went right in the court and said it. Judge, this lawyer just told me that you're going to deny the motion no matter what we do. And she says, I never said that, Judge.

And I says, well, she's a liar. And that's the reason why I don't want her on my case. I'm asking that she be removed. There's a conflict. But she was so afraid. She was so scared that this judge had already told her what the disposition she didn't know what to do and this happens every day and if you pour you don't have a chance and there's also racial disparity that's clearly written in the law when it comes to the difference between the way they

recognize crack cocaine versus regular cocaine there's a far greater sentence for crack cocaine yes but if you talk to an actual person who understands the effects of the drug, like Dr. Carl Hart, he will tell you it is exactly the same drug. Yes. It's the same drug, but the conviction, what you get if you get convicted for crack cocaine, like you would probably know this better than I. It's far greater sentence, far more likely to be convicted, far greater sentence, and it directly impacts impoverished communities.

And thank you, Bill Clinton and Joe Biden and a whole score of other Democrats that The 94 crime bill. Yeah, the 94 crime bill was a fucking disaster. So that's why it enrages me. Well, it doesn't enrage me. Let's say it frustrates's why it enrages me well it doesn't enrage me let's say it frustrates me it enrages me it enrages me you know because you should be enraged yeah we had this talk last night i said if i was a black man in this country i don't know how he holds it together but i i was you know what what ends up what ends up up always blowing me away is what I think you touched on earlier. Because it's like this, how do you find a silver lining?

You know, I don't think there's any silver lining to a life that has been damaged the way Derek's life has been damaged. And as tough as he is, somewhere under there, he hurts in a way that we'll never understand. But I was watching these students. We got five college students who would never have got this opportunity, just wouldn't have got this opportunity to sit there if they weren't part of Jay-Z's scholarship. And his mom, Gloria Carter, was just a wonderful woman. And this woman, Donya Diaz, and said, let's see what happens when we give people an opportunity. And I watched five college juniors that are going into their senior year of college, some of them shy and timid, some of them who were intimidated by the notion that they would be working on a legal case, start to realize like this guy, Bruce Bryant, and if people that are interested, you go to the, just go to Free Bruce Bryant. There's a clemency petition for him. I can't

talk too much about his innocence case, but he has been called by the press the poster child for clemency in New York. There's stunning evidence of his innocence. They quickly got to the main facts of the case and were able to start solving it. These are college juniors. And they said, you know, who brings he was accused of being a shooter in a murder in which he's alleged to have brought his girlfriend in a cab where he was exchanging a Halloween costume for his niece. And the first question from the shyest kid in this group said, who in the world would bring their girlfriend to a preplanned shootout and exchange a Halloween costume in the meantime? And they started to find inconsistencies in the testimony of people that claim they saw him didn't see him and you know really it was like a a stunning reminder to me that if we just give people the opportunity

Derek was forced into the opportunity I told him I did a day in jail I was a fucking puddle I was a mess and I don't know how he was able to summon the strength you know to survive let alone have the discipline to plug he was telling me about when he was in the hole about how there was a guy in the cell next to him you know it was a fascinating analogy he gave me he said it's like social media is that there's some voice in the darkness that you'll never meet them. You'll never see them, but they can criticize you and get under your skin and call you names and say nasty shit about you looking for a reaction. And they sometimes get it. And that emboldens them more. He said, it was the same thing

when I was in the hole. You'd have someone next to me yelling terrible shit. I'm going to fuck your wife. I'm going to do this to your daughter, you know, and taunting you and being able to distinguish between anger and the recognition or the realization I'll never be able to confront this person. It's just a voice out there that is sick in the head, obviously, and it's trying to get a reaction out of me. And Derek was telling me how it forced him into patience and it forced him to be able to develop the skill at drowning out the background noise. And because I'm he to me, I mean, it must be annoying, because I'm always asking him questions like, how did you do it? It's the same thing you were

getting at how do you summon the strength to be able to overcome. And if people like him can overcome people that were born into the worst circumstances, born into a poor background, a system built against them. If we just start changing that paradigm, don't we want everyone around us to succeed and have the same chance that we have? It's hard to not sound corny about it. But I always tell people that I've heard criticisms of you, Joe, before, and I say to people, you have no fucking clue who this man is. You know how rare it is to come across a human being that wants other people to do well? We're almost hardwired to want to tear each other down because of our insecurities. You genuinely want to see people do well. We're almost hardwired to want to tear each other down because of our insecurities. You

genuinely want to see people do well. And it's like, I was telling Derek that about you. It's like, he genuinely wants to see people do well. And it comes from the heart. And, you know, if he's not an inspiring example of what we can all aspire to and, and doesn't open some eyes to say, you know, if I just give someone a chance, they can do it, you know, whatever the it is. Well, people don't understand what that means. They think that wanting someone to do well and somehow or another takes away from you, but it doesn't. It boosts you. It helps you. The more people do well, the better you'll do. you it helps you the more people do well the better you'll do but that's a competitor's understanding of the the nature of the circle that you surround yourself in you should always be around people that are killing it because then you want to kill it you you should always be

around people that are kind and people that are generous because you know that feeling you get when you go god damn what a fucking great guy i want want to be a great guy. It's good for you. It's good for everybody. That's right. The person that only wants to be the man and wants everything for themselves and wants to be selfish and cut everybody down, that's a lonely, sad fucking person.

That's a terrible place to be. It's terrible for yourself. It's a selfish thing to be kind. It's a selfish thing to be generous. It's great for you. It's great for everyone else too, though. It's like there's a selfish thing to be kind. It's a selfish thing to be generous. It's great for you. It's great for everyone else too, though. It's like there's a selfishness in it because I genuinely love the feeling when I can help people. I genuinely love the feeling of whether it's helping people express themselves on a podcast or elevate a comedian's career or just help someone out that I know

needs some help, that is a great feeling. But why is it so rare then? Because they don't understand what it is. People have been taught that there's a scarcity. They've been taught this famine mentality. It's wrong. We're a community. We're a community as a country and we're a community as a world.

And if we don't look at it that way, we're always going to be stuck in this lonely, sad position where you think of the world as your enemy. The world's not your enemy. The world's filled with potential best friends. The world's filled with your brothers and sisters. The world is filled with people who, when they do great, it'll make you feel fantastic. Yeah, and I don't, look, I have to say that I think

that it comes with security, too. Like, I know that times when I have fallen victim to, like, hoping someone doesn't do great, it's because of your, my own insecurities would lead me there. True. And, like, Derek and I are, like, brothers. And it wasn't, like, it hasn't been, like, when I first met Derek, I was, like, this fucking guy seems angry. He seems angry. How could he not be? How could guy seems angry he seems angry how could he not be how could i not be right how could he not be 30 fucking years in jail for shit he didn't do it's amazing how not angry he is that's the the true testament to your character is that you've been able to overcome that and become this person who you are now absolutely that's a that's a lesson for everyone again, that's for all the people that if you can get a hold of this, if you're in

prison and you're hearing this, you can be like Derek. Everyone can figure there's a path that you can be a better person. There's a path that you can be more educated, more understanding, more compassionate. There's a path for everybody to be a better person. How did you get over the anger though?'s what I don't understand like how you not I never said I got over the anger what I did was challenge the anger somewhere else fueled it yeah yeah I didn't I didn't get over the anger I mean I do what I do my passion is is a direct line of that anger um you know

one of the things we know and I'm gonna say we and I'm talking about as black people right we believe that the system was designed the way that it is, that it didn't happen by happenstance, right? So when you know that, you work to change the system. I work to change the system so that my kids will get a better opportunity, their kids will get a better opportunity, and that we can together gel as human beings. If I don't do the work, what good is me criticizing it, right? If I be angry and upset and grab a gun and become some animal, that doesn't help the society. It doesn't help the criminal justice system. So again, I had to really, really think about it. Let me tell you,

I'm the first person to tell you that I had fantasies of killing the cop. I had fantasies of killing the prosecutor. I went and spoke to mental health people and said, listen, I can't sleep at night. All I think about is killing these guys when I get out of here. You know what the social worker told me at the correctional facility? I looked at your record. And this is what guys like you do. Right? And this is why until today, right, I got a trauma about speaking to mental health people. Because this is somebody I went to to say, look, I can't sleep at night. I got a trauma about speaking to mental health people because this is somebody I went to to say, Lord, I can't sleep at night. I have fantasies about killing Scarcella. You think I didn't? Fantasies, right? Had a whole list of people that I was going to kill. But it was a

program that I went to when I was in prison called Challenge the Change. I went to the program solely for the purpose to see if they can change that in my mind. And they did. And you know how they did it? They had me put the people that I love, my kids, up on the board. They said, put down the people that you love up there and think about how it would affect them. What would happen? You already did these many years. And I had a daughter that's 30 years old now.

And I was telling her for 21 years I was coming home. Every year I'm thinking I'm coming home. I'm following these motions. They're great motions. It's impossible for the judges to deny it, right? And at some point she said, you's a liar. You've been telling me for 21 years you're coming home, that you are a liar.

How do you deal with that? Your job. What was it like the day you got out? You know, it was the most rewarding experience ever. It was, you know. What's the first thing you did? You know, it was bells. I tell you, psychologically, you know, it was bells ringing.

It was a church bell that used to ring in Auburn correction facility and I used to say well you know what when the bells ring I'm going to pray and hopefully there's a God out there he'll hear my prayer right that was my spiritual analysis

and the first thing I did when I went out was found that church and went over there and said a prayer my wife picked me up. We went down to see my kids in Albany on the way down to the city, had dinner with my son who I haven't had dinner with in 21 years, and my other son came to visit me. And I just sat there and had the first. We went to a seafood joint.

What's the name? I forget it. It's a popular one. We went there and had a seafood dinner. seafood joint, what's the name, but I forget it. It's a popular one. He went there and had a seafood dinner. And, you know, I tell you, there's a video of me getting out,

and I'm moving so fast I almost got hit by a fucking car coming across the street. But even that was a blessing, to be able to almost get hit by a car. And just to spend time with my wife and my kids, I mean, it was the most rewarding experience ever. And, you know, from that moment, like I said, I knew what I wanted to do. I just wouldn't have, look, just the fact that I could stop in Albany and rekindle with my son

and just have a moment with my kids, man, that was the most rewarding experience ever for me. It was everything. What's the bottleneck, Josh, in terms of resources to to elevate this to get more people out to get more funds to do what can we do where we can amplify this get more people involved yeah well I think one big step is I always thank you and I I don't think that there should be a limit to my gratitude.

Being on this podcast is the best example because I don't think we would have got the two exonerations in Kansas without the attention. And I think we need to keep the drumbeat going. So I'm forever and continually grateful to you for giving me a platform. beat going. So I'm forever and continually grateful to you for giving me a platform. But I think that in addition to that, more people need to understand that they can help make the change happen. So again, we can't announce the name. We have been sworn to secrecy. But Derek and I are on the precipice of starting a very major legal justice center at a major law school together, where I'll be the executive director and he'll be the deputy director. And it was funded by someone who had this experience where they were wrongfully accused of a crime and had the resources to fight

it and has now funded it. And we need, you know, donations always help because the more resources you have, the more attorneys you can hire. But it needs the public awareness and then it needs to keep the drumbeat of pressure going the parole board's attention. Getting these stories out there work. There are guys that we have talked about and we might as well do it because we're here. OK, and we're here to try to get the word out. There are stories of cases that are out there now. You said this can't be true. And then I sent you the Joe Schilling case, right? Where Joe Schilling is serving life in prison, right? After being convicted of having an ounce and a half of weed and had his appeal denied. And you wrote to me, is this true? And then I sent you the opinion. And, you know, Joe Schilling is like an example. This happened in Mississippi. This is what happens to black men in the South. And Joe Schilling is an example of a case where if enough people write to the clemency board, write to the governor, somebody will pay attention at some point.

And here's a guy where they look at, you know, things that he has done in the past. And they say, well, it wasn't just this marijuana conviction. He was also involved in an armed robbery, right? Well, he wasn't involved in an armed robbery. When you say involved, you picture, stick them up. Here's a gun or a knife. You know, there are different levels of involvement and people make mistakes. So you don't use those past mistakes as a way to shoehorn them in to throwing their life away. Right. So I think for something so fucking innocuous, it should be legal anyway. the rate of deaths in this country, the rate of violence in this country, and you really are not a hypocrite, you'll ban alcohol. All right? Because alcohol causes a lot more accidental deaths because of drunk driving. There's not a lot of people

that are sitting there smoking weed, getting in their car and blowing up another car in a family. There's, you know, the biggest victims of marijuana smoking are fucking potato chips and chocolate. You know, I mean, it's like, what the fuck are we talking about here? So here you're throwing away a life and saying, oh, well, this is because of what you did before. Joe Schilling's case should be advertised. There should be letters flowing in by the hundreds of thousands. So the bottleneck is, I think, and maybe I sound a little bit arrogant in saying this, but you'll correct me and be my reality check both of you the bottleneck is not having the fucking balls to stand up and say i am going to speak truth to

power and i am going to tell you this is not okay and i've had my life threatened i have had my families threatened because i will speak truth to power. And I look, I wear it like a badge of honor. And, you know, Derek told these students because they said, well, what if we get emotional? He said, if this, this business is not for the faint of heart, you can get emotional and you can be sympathetic, but it just takes more caring and more doing. and you can be sympathetic, but it just takes more caring and more doing. So the more people that can write the clemency boards, the more people that can say, I'm not going to vote in a tribal way, the more people that say, you know what, I can do better as a leader by running for office, do it. We all feel like it's for someone else you know but like

this happened to you right did you ever think you would reach this many people I don't know if you did or not no this is accidental purely but there was a point in which

you me Derek we have all said to ourselves, how did this happen to me? Right? And I have come to the realization, well, if not me, then who? If not now, then when? It happened to me.

Now I'm gonna use my voice to try to empower other people. And I think that we get caught up in mediocrity, and I think that we settle for mediocrity as human beings. Right. That's what sort of like keeps the classes in check. You know, you don't have to be great or powerful or omniscient to make change happen. You just have to break from what's expected. You know, like I broke from some of my parents expectations. And as a result of that, they evolved.

You know, sometimes you're afraid of the backlash. You know, I remember like there were, there were certain things about marrying within your religious faith. And I remember the first time I dated a Cuban girl, my mom had a reaction and said, you know, aren't you going to marry someone that's Jewish? And I said, I have, I abandoned organized religion when I was 13. It's the most hypocritical thing imaginable to me. And I remember going to her to my girlfriend's house in college and they were roasting a pig and I remember my mom you married like this Jewish lady from Long Island oh my god there's a pig in the ground what kind of people do this that I said people want delicious food I said I said let me ask you she's like are you going to get married to someone I said

I'm more Catholic than I am Jewish at this point and my credit to my mom because what she did was she evolved she said you know you're right I haven't been to temple in 30 years

I don't know even why I think this. Other than that, this is how I was raised. And I watched her evolve to the point where when I finally got married to my wife, the fact that she was Christian and that a judge married us in a non-denominational ceremony that was more human than it was religious, it wasn't even an issue. So if we're willing to like break from what's expected of us and the norm, you know, and I had a dad, my dad recently passed, you know, that he was a complicated dude, but I, you know like we we we draw off of things that happen to us i remember in college i was home for thanksgiving and my mom sent my dad off to home depot to get light bulbs because the light bulbs in the living room burned out and uh he comes back from home depot with these two

young black guys that were selling, that were selling these key. They were like keyboards with a flip up screen that could connect to the internet at the time. It was like, he felt bad for them because he's like, these guys were out here in the head and the fucking Florida heat in November. And he's like,

they had nowhere to go for Thanksgiving. And it was like, my mom was like, what the fuck are you doing? You just take home two strangers. and he's like they had nowhere to go for Thanksgiving and it was like my mom was like what the fuck are you doing you just take home two strangers and he's like they need food for Thanksgiving they need to be here then it's human compassion this is part of who we are as human beings and it was like it was nuts it was like a it was like a fucking Seinfeld episode. But I was like, wow, this fucking guy. Who does that? I mean, what he does after is he goes and drives him home and comes back two hours later blazing high,

and he's like, I smoked something called the cryptos with them. You know? Yeah, a nice time. Yeah, he could have got arrested. Yeah, that's where my mom's like, what kind of an asshole does that? But it was like, you know, I think that we evolve and then we teach our parents and our parents evolve. It's like you have to not be afraid to do things that are outside of what's expected or the norm and look outside of how you were raised. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's, uh, there's moments in your life, right? Where you, you realize that maybe the path that you're on is not the best path. Maybe you should change a little bit of it. Maybe you should recognize that there's some information that you're getting from other people. Alter your case, alter your course. And be open. I mean, the main thing is to be open. Don't have a closed mind where you can't be willing to accept the change. Yeah. And, you know, as Josh was saying, be involved.

There's so many of these cases running around in every state. Some states don't have what they call actual innocence provisions, like St. Louis, right? A judge in St. Louis found the guy, Christopher Dunn, innocent. But because St. Louis doesn't have an actual innocent statue, he left him in jail. People should be outraged about stuff like that. But explain that.

How does that work? Name the case. Christopher Dunn is his name. It's in St. Louis. And in this particular case, the judge heard the evidence, found the guy innocent, put it in his opinion opinion and said, this guy is innocent. However, because St. Louis doesn't have a statute that permits me to let innocent people go. He stays in jail. How is that possible? And this is the problem. Right.

This is a problem with our criminal justice system. They have procedural bars. They have laws and laws sometimes limit the power of judges. This is why it's so important to have legislators, right, to enact laws that says innocence is the most fundamental to our criminal justice system. Every state right now should pass laws that says no innocent person should stay in jail no matter what, right? They don't have that. The Supreme Court and in retroy Davis in 2008, 2009 made that decision. That's how I was able to go to the television and get that decision in 2014. That said in New York, innocent people case have to be heard. Every state should have laws like this,

right? When they don't have laws like this, it gives an exception to judges excuse to say, I'm not going to let them go because there's no statute that says that innocent people have to be let go. Is it possible for the judge to let them go anyway, even without the statute? I would say yes. I would say that judges have discretion, right? You have discretion. Do it unless some court reverse you. But have the courage to say, how would you say a guy is innocent?

Right. As a human being, forget the judge factor. Right. Right? And you leave him in jail. Right? And this doesn't just happen in St. Louis. It happens everywhere.

It happened in the Supreme Court recently. Yes. Yes. I mean, this is not a political thing. Right. I think Donald Trump, look, he granted clemency to a man that now works for me. He was a beautiful guy, Jawad Moussa. I think that Donald Trump had the courage

that President Obama, President Clinton, nobody had to pass the First Step Act. A lot of our friends and clients have gotten out. I agree. But he also appointed a bunch of fucking nutjob Supreme Court justices who recently published an opinion

that said innocence doesn't matter. They literally wrote the words, innocence doesn't matter. What Supreme Court judges did that? Which ones? I will give it to you in a minute. All the ones that you would expect. It was Kavanaugh. He wrote the opinion.

He wrote, Kavanaugh wrote the opinion. Innocence does not matter. How can someone say innocence doesn't matter if the whole idea behind the legal system is to find out who is guilty of a crime and convict them? And I don't care, by the way, about that public circus about Kavanaugh's past. That's not what I'm glomming onto. I'm looking at this opinion. looking at this opinion, he was basically saying that if you do the spirit of the opinion, and Derek will pull it up, was that if you cannot overcome the procedural bars, so in other words,

if you are time barred to file your claim, that we cannot let innocence get in the way of the rules of criminal procedure. Can you explain time barred? So time barred means it's the same thing as the statute of limitations. So you have to raise claims of newly discovered evidence within a certain period of time in most states, okay, and in most federal jurisdictions. And if you don't, if you are in possession or should have been in possession of this newly discovered evidence and you don't file it in a timely manner and raise it, it's deemed waived. So what the opinion was basically saying was that we cannot let innocence or the fact that someone may be innocent trump these procedural hurdles. So in other words, rules exist for a reason. And if we don't follow those rules, just because somebody might be innocent and just

because there's compelling evidence of their innocence does not mean that we are going to let that get in the way of these procedural rules. This isn't made up. People can go and look at the opinion. Kavanaugh wrote the opinion. It was split along party lines. Yeah, Thomas and a few other judges was involved. Shin versus Ramirez was the case. It was a guy on Arizona death row. And, you know, you got to look at 28 U.S.C., 2254 is the habeas corpus statue

and the feds, if you're a state prisoner coming to the feds asking for relief. And they've been watering that down for years, basically saying that states should be the one to decide these things, that you shouldn't be able to come to the federal court to get relief. And let's just explain for the listeners what habeas corpus relief is. Habeas corpus means, I think the Latin translation is possession of the body. OK, so that is your last ditch effort to try to get relief from a federal court saying that you are possessing my body. In a way that violates my rights, you have my corpus. You have my corpus, right?

So when you raise a habeas or a habe, it's often referred to petition, you're basically throwing everything against the wall and saying, please look at the merits of the case. I may be time barred. I may have violated a procedural deadline. But if you just look at the evidence, I'm innocent. And what the Supreme Court decision says is your innocence is not part of this equation. Why the fuck not? Think about everything we waste resources on, time, energy, money. Do they have to give a reason for why innocence doesn't matter? When they say something like innocence doesn't matter, don't they have to have a justification for that distinction? No, and I just want to say that Clarence Thomas actually wrote the decision. Kavanaugh was a part

of it. But what they basically was ruling on in this case, the Ninth Circuit had reversed the case and they gave a hearing on ineffective assistive counsel claim. And he found that the lawyer was ineffective because he didn't present the evidence of innocence. And so what they did was reverse it and said, innocence doesn't matter. Now, in the feds, they got something called a gateway claim, right? So your innocence alone, they're saying, is not a freestanding actual innocence claim. You have to have some other constitutional violation.

In that case, the lawyers chose ineffective assistance of counsel because they said this evidence always was available, always was available, that the lawyer should have got it and presented it. The courts reversed it and said, no, we don't care about his innocence and you should stop holding hearings on ineffective assistance of counsel claims, whether it relates to innocence or not. And I'll give you the citation. But it's just... And people should not take our word for it. Read the decision. If we read the entire decision, we'd be here to the end of the podcast, because there's a lot of procedural nonsense built into it. But they literally say the words that the innocence is not a consideration. It's not something we should be considering because it should have been raised. And innocence doesn't matter in this context. I mean, they said it not just once in a bunch of different ways.

So the way people should fact check and vet is to read the Supreme Court decision. And we'll give you the citation. Just go read it. And it's 20-1009. It was decided 5-23-22. It was a 6-3 opinion by Thomas. And judges Sotomayor and Brian Kagan filed a dissenting opinion that they would reverse the case and release this guy. And the judges that was involved was Clarence Thomas, Roberts, Alito was a part, and Kavanaugh was a part of the majority. And it's just, you know, these cases, look, it's not just innocence.

Clemency is going to be a big part of our clinic. I don't know if you ever heard of Pamela Smart case out of New Hampshire. Yeah. Right? Pamela Smart has been in prison over 30 years. A remarkable young woman, white woman, that taught a lot of people in Befford Hills Correctional Facility in New York how to get out and run organizations. She had all kind of degrees, PhD, kind of like Bruce Bryan, but a female version of it. She got life from New Hampshire. New Hampshire sent her to New York to do her time.

She's been in New York prisons over 30 years. She can't get clemency and she see New York prisoners walking out every day that don't have her credentials because she's in New York. The New York governor doesn't have control over her. New Hampshire is like DeSantis, the governor there. He waves clemency off. Don't hold no clemency hearings. What was her case? Was she had someone kill her husband? That was the allegations. And the guys that committed

the murder are home. Those guys been home now for years and years. That's exactly the case. She was working in a school. She was having sex with a student. The student becomes a cess and kills her husband. And she swears she never told him to do it. But despite if she did or not, she'd been in prison over 30-some years. Remarkable young lady.

Has every degree you can think of. Runs to prison. The superintendent gave her letters saying that she should get out on clemency. Why isn't she out? Like, it's things like this that keep me up at night. Because, you know, when you have redeemed yourself, whether you're guilty or not, when you can serve society best by being out and running programs and helping people, I think you should be here. Well, we're supposed to be not just punishing people in prison. We're supposed to be rehabilitating

people. This is the whole idea behind prison, right it's not I mean if someone goes to jail for ten years it's not just a punishment for a crime it's supposed to be let's figure out a way to make you a productive part of society absolutely the environments that you're describing and the environments that everybody that I've ever talked to that's been incarcerated describe are nothing like that. No, no. And if you can't, Larry Hoover, 50 years in prison, right? If you can't become a better person after 50 years, there's something terribly wrong with the system, right? It's not the person.

But a lot of times it'd be hype. It don't be true. In my case, they told the judge that I had a large-scale drug organization that terrorized my community. The first thing I did when I sat down with the prosecutor, I said, if you can prove to me that I had a large-scale drug organization that terrorized my community. The first thing I did when I sat down with the prosecutor, I said, if you can prove to me that I had this, I would draw my claim. I was home eight months. I could tell you everything I did in those eight months.

What it is, oh, we lied, we lied. You lied to judges. Now you admit it. But this is what kept me in jail for 21 years. You telling a judge in ex parte conversations that this guy's a terrible guy. You can't let him out. Imagine harms. Judges believe the hype. They don't believe the prosecutor's

lying to them. So that's another whole topic how we need to hold prosecutors accountable. Right? They get away with everything. They get away with, there's immunity for prosecutors and judges. Yet and still you want to hold Donald Trump accountable. Again, I'm back at, why not hold prosecutors and judges accountable yet and still you want to hold Donald Trump accountable. Again, I'm back at why not hold prosecutors and judges accountable? Yeah, they have something called qualified immunity. And qualified immunity means that

in most situations, they're not going to be held accountable. And you've asked this question before, and it is probably the most important question to ask. Because the way that we deter people from engaging in this type of behavior, I mean, the reason why people don't, you know, think twice about whether it's cheating on their taxes, selling cocaine, whatever is violative of the law is the fear of going to jail. Okay? The fear of going to jail is a real fear it should be a real fear you know derek and i were talking about it we were talking about different prisons in the state of new york it's an awful fucking place who the fuck wants to be in jail it depresses us when we have to go it It's awful. All right. Now, if prosecutors know that they're not going to be prosecuted or subject to prosecution themselves, you know, it makes it a lot more difficult for accountability to follow. And, you know, how do we change qualified immunity? We get new people in the fucking legislator. I'm not on some crusade against Ron DeSantis.

I'm not. But the reason why I always come back to him is because he very well could be who the fuck knows what's going to happen with Donald Trump. He very well could be the next choice for president. He's very popular. for president. He's very popular. Here's a guy that vetoed a bill for contraception. It was a bipartisan bill. You can't get Democrats and Republicans in Florida to agree on the fucking weather. So he vetoes a bill that would increase contraception. it would have provided $2 million to low-income women to gain IEDs, more access, IUDs rather, more access to contraception. So you would think that the president of the Senate, who's a Republican, and championed this bill, was blown away, shocked that it was vetoed. And here's a quote from him.

Okay. I thought that would solve a lot of abortion issues, probably eliminate thousands of abortions. And then he goes on and he blames himself for not convincing DeSantis. What was DeSantis' reasoning behind? His reasoning behind it and that that was a form of abortion in and of itself. So now he's become a doctor, and he's against contraception. So you're now invading, you know, the personal decisions of a woman of how she wants to go about contraception. Whether you are stymieing semen from entering a woman by putting a fucking raincoat on your dick

or you are putting a device in a woman to prevent sperm from getting into the uterine wall, I say, what's the fucking difference? Maybe I've had too many whiskeys. Maybe I'll catch some shit for that. No, that doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense.

So I am not a Democrat or a – it just doesn't make any sense. So this is a political decision based on the support of the Catholic Church. Yeah, it's basically – Which is arguably, if you want to go and talk about people that are guilty of something. Yes. I mean, that is a horrific history that the Catholic Church has. Yeah, he got a letter. I think it's called the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops.

That's who he got a letter from. And they object to the use of long-acting contraception, particularly these, what they call hormonal IUDs. And they say that they can prevent an embryo from implanting into a woman's uterus. So they deem them they're called abort abortifacients. It's like we have to have the ability to step outside of this tribal primal box and say, you know what? I don't care if you're a Democrat, Republican, Libertarian and say, I'm not going for somebody that fought to keep DNA testing from seeing the light of day. Why?

Why would Kamala Harris do that? And you want to know something? The campaign wanted to – I caught a lot of shit. I think there was a senator that was promoting a clip of me being critical of her. Senator, I think it was Carpenter. What is his name? He has an eye patch. He's a very honorable guy. Dan Crenshaw.

Dan Crenshaw. Yeah. Was promoting a clip of me being critical of her. And they wanted me to, you know, like, yeah, would you reconsider and walk it back? And I said, why can't, yeah, we had a conversation and she won't walk anything back. She won't say anything. I mean, why can't you just say, look, I was trying to serve my community. I realized with the benefit of hindsight that it's just, it's an $11 test, the DNA test. Why not give access? A lot of politicians,

they're afraid of the political cost of admitting a mistake. I'm so turned off by it, I almost want to run for office. And I was asked, would you ever run for governor of New York? I said, I don't want my family ravaged and people looking into my past and making a mockery of me. I understand why people don't want to run for office. But at the same time, it kind of makes you feel like if the people that are in power are wielding power in a way that is so dangerous and so harmful to people, sometimes I think about it. to people. Sometimes I think about it. I also don't want to give up my privacy. And I also don't want people judging me on every time I make, you know, a decision that they disagree with. And you know, I'm conflicted about it. I almost, I'm like encouraging people to get involved in a way that I even wouldn't get involved. You know, politics is a motherfucker. It is. It's a dirty

business. It is. You gotta constantly be asking people for money. Yeah. And, you know, then you end up, you know, serving many masters. Yeah, it's a dirty business. And I just don't know. You know, this is like a pretty simple equation to me when it comes to how problematic racism is in our criminal justice system. I don't get why people don't understand this equation, the following equation. You take an entire race of people, steal them from their homeland, enslave them, savage them, brutalize them, savage them, brutalize them, tell them they're free. They're really not free. Build a system in which in our lifetime, your parents, my parents could not urinate in the same bathroom as people of color. And then an entire system is built upon, you know,

making, you know, why don't you pick your, we've talked about this before, pick yourself up by your bootstraps and titer the excuses, all that. That blows my fucking mind. It's nonsense. It blows my mind. It's nonsense. you know, a family unit being broken, an entire civilization of people that have been stolen and brutalized in this country. And it just feels like the criminal justice system is going to have be problematic because people are wielding power, you know, and abusing it in the first place. And then you throw, you know, the racial injustice into it. And it complicates it even more because we're just not

willing as a society to say, you know, like I hear from friends of mine, look at the Jews, the Jews picked them. So I said, it's not a fair analogy. People didn't look at me and say, oh, he must be a Jew. People think I'm Italian, Latin. They think that I'm from, you know, and didn't discriminate against me. And they didn't create Jim Crow laws or vagrancy laws to stop you. I mean, look, look how many black people are killed from misdemeanor stops.

Right? I can get a ticket today for riding down the street and get a red light ticket sent to my house in New York City. So if I don't put my blinker on, why can't you send me that same ticket? Why you got to pull me over, throw me out the car, search me, look for a gun or look for whatever? It's designed that way. Right. It's designed to create an image that black people are animals. Like you say, they're killing each other. They're doing this. They're doing that. So police become afraid.

We spoke to the last commissioner in New York City. Right. And we had a conversation with him about how they was training cops of New York City, right, and we had a conversation with him about how they was training cops in New York City. And they was giving cops was pop-ups. They were showing videos of a cop going down the steps in the staircase and get shot. These are young rookie cops. What do you think they're gonna do when they get into an exit? They're gonna pull their gun out. They're afraid. They've been indoctrinated to believe that this is what happens when you're walking down a staircase in a project.

Somebody's going to jump out and shoot you. Right. You've got to train the way, change the way that you train people. Right. Because if they believe that if I'm working in a certain neighborhood that I'm going to get killed, I'm going to shoot first. That's just human nature. We indoctrinate people by institutions. And that's one of the biggest things that I always tell people that, you know, people by institutions. And that's one of the biggest things that I always tell people that, you know, why I believe in self-taught more so than institutions, because you become indoctrinated unless you got a strong mind. You got a strong mind. You're not so cut in how you think, right? And people come at you because of that. They don't like you. Josh, you're going on Joe Rogan's show. Are you crazy? What is wrong with you? You support Republicans because you can think for yourself. The institutions don't control you. A lot of people are indoctrinated and controlled

by institutions. They don't have the balls to be their own men. I don't always feel strong. I don't because it's like, you know, like we try to get like as as reform advocates, people try to censor us. We won't mention names, but on the way here, people were trying to censor us. People that you wouldn't expect it from. you know, yeah. Censor you in what way? Like,

you know, make sure that you are explaining that you were there in your individual capacity because they don't want people are so afraid of cancel culture they're afraid that that you will be um painted in a certain way because of who you associate with or who you speak to or who you, um, who you try to like sit across a table from.

It's like, let me say this. I'll say it publicly. This guy, Joe Rogan is like a brother. You know, we, we don't even know each other.

It's weird because our families don't know each other and we've talked about it. You know, like when I see him get dragged through the mud in the media, I've shed tears because he's a rare person. He roots for me and wants to see me do good. And we know each other in a way that is like it's weird because it's at a distance. But I feel like a closeness to him, like a brotherhood. Right. And that's because I understand the guy's heart. So I'm not going to be, you know, told what to do or censored or told what to think or what to say, because, you know, I don't think that that Derek, I honestly

don't think it's strength. I think that it's more out of anger and being pissed off that people think in a way that represents a herd mentality. Right. And it's like I feel it sometimes with you where sometimes people will judge him. They see a black man with a gold tooth who is big and has been in prison for 30 years and they make assumptions. And I won't even tell you it's happened since we've been associated with each other and you can't concern yourself with that i i don't concern myself with that no i know you don't much but you bring it up it's it's the nature of the business it's part of what happens when you get a lot of attention it's there's no getting around it you know and i appreciate it i i and i i appreciate what you are and who you are and what you're capable of doing and the love that you have for these people and the way that you put yourself out there. It's very, very rare.

And that's why you and I are brothers. Because I know you. I know your heart. I know what you're doing. And some people, they think, again, it goes along tribal lines. And it's also the fear of repercussions, the fear of criticism. They read too much. They're paying attention to too many idiots on social media. They're paying attention to too much nonsense. The greater good of what you're doing outweighs everything by a gigantic margin.

And the fact that they can't see that is just, it just shows that even on the right side of important issues, you're going to have people that are cowards. True. And that's the problem. You're not a coward. And that's what people don't like. They don't like when someone displays character and a point of focus that's beyond what they're capable of. It intimidates them. It bothers them, and they try to find weakness in it and they try to critique it and criticize it and shut it down. And it's just a lack of understanding of just the true character of human beings

and how important it is to have someone like yourself that dedicates a massive amount of their life to trying to help innocent people get out of jail, which should be the focus of our entire culture. Our entire culture should be, let's, first of all, make sure that no one is ever convicted of something that they're unjustly accused of. No one, ever. And if they are, we need to get them out. Before we need to convict people of crimes, we need to get them out before we need to convict people of crimes. We need to get people out that are innocent. That's more important than anything.

It's more important than anything. If we have a culture that not only allows people to be imprisoned, but creates law and signs decisions that keep people in prison that they know are innocent. We have a terrible system. Yes. That should be number one because these are innocent people. We're supposed to be protecting innocent people. Those people, that should be our primary concern, and that's your primary concern,

and that's an incredibly noble and brave and honorable and loving perspective. And for people to not see that and try to connect it with nonsense and try to just get you upset or just criticize you or try to tear you down, it's because they don't have what you do. They don't have what you are. They're not you. And that bothers people. The purity of your intent bothers people. Well, I appreciate you saying it. I mean, maybe I don't give myself enough flowers and I'm not looking for flowers. I just feel like, you know, I'm not looking for anything,

but the feeling of, you know, I just know, I've said it before that the feeling of restoring another human being. And when you walk someone out, there's just like, you know, I've said it before that the feeling of restoring another human being and when you walk someone out, there's just like, you know, I've done plenty of drugs in my life and I've tried it all. And there's just nothing that can match it. There just isn't. And it's like almost the feeling that you were describing of when you like surround yourself with good people and see them succeeding and you get a thrill off of it. This is the ultimate thrill. I remember one time where Emanuel Stewart, who trained Lennox Lewis and Tommy Hearns and so many other champions from the Cronk Gym. He, I mean, I was like a baby at the time now that I think about it.

You remember Walter Swift? Yes. He was in Detroit. Yes. I don't even think I've ever told you this story, have I? I don't think so. All right. So Walter Swift served like I think close to 40 years.

And I was with Barry Sheck at dinner, one of the founders of the Innocence Project. And he was telling me about this case in Detroit. And it was a rape case, and this black guy was accused of it, and they had stunning evidence of his innocence. And he's like, if I could just get the DA to pay attention, you know, anyone in Detroit? I said, I know Emanuel Stewart. And I remember even as I flung the name out there, I was like, he's a boxing trainer. But he was pretty famous in Detroit. Yes. And Emmanuel was like you. He, man, I was.

He was. And I walk in here every time don't cry just you're gonna cry it's just part of the progress and Emmanuel when I was like a young guy in Lennox Lewis' camp

he was the only guy that would... I was a cop there. I was there to look who was stealing from him. So I was really rejected. And Emmanuel, from the moment I met him, took me in. I was up in the Poconos. I feel like an idiot. I was writing a story about Lennox. And Emmanuel would take me to his cabin every night. Oh, you're this young lawyer I heard about. You got lettings back his money

and this and that and i told him i was just getting involved in the innocence project and uh i was helping you know with these cases he wanted to hear about all the cases so i told him about walter swift and i remember i called him and it was i woke him up wherever he was him about Walter Swift and I remember I called him and it was lit I woke him up wherever he was and uh I said just call me tomorrow he called me back like 20 minutes later he's like I can't sleep he's like tell me more about the case I ended up writing an article about this in boxing digest and Emmanuel wrote a letter to the parole board and like two months later Barry called me and said they're letting him out and Emmanuel wrote a letter to the parole board.

And like two months later, Barry called me and said, they're letting him out. And Emmanuel promised him a job. And I flew in from California and he insisted that he go to the parole hearing. I mean, to the exoneration hearing. They declared him actually innocent. And I went with Emmanuel to the hearing. And we got into the courtroom and the court officers were all saying hello to him. How you doing,

Mr. Stewart? Asking for pictures with him. And the judge, before she started the hearing, she took the bench and she said, Is that Emanuel Stewart in my courtroom? And he stood up and he said, Yeah, I'm here on behalf of Walter. So she said, It's a pleasure to have you here. I have the transcript in my office. And Walter got out of jail. Walter got out of jail Emmanuel came up and grabbed his garbage bag

with all his stuff in it and we took him to his victory party and I remember thinking to myself this guy was like looking around like shocked he was like I didn't know if it was the sunlight that was bothering him he could not he could not comprehend what was happening and I wrote this in the article that uh he struggled really bad Walter I don't even know where he is now. He had drug problems. He had mental health issues.

And he would steal from Emanuel. He would call Emanuel at all hours of the night. Can you pick me up? I'm stuck. I don't know where I am. And Emanuel would call me and say, I got Walter last night. And I would say, you know, Emanuel, you don't have to keep doing this. And he'd say, nah, don't worry about it.

He would come over and smoke weed in his bathroom and smell up the house when there were amateur fighters there. I would say, well, say something to him. Nah, it's okay. He just steals little shit from time to time. And I would say, well, say something to him. And he would say, nah, it's okay. Don't worry about it.

And like right up until right before Emmanuelmanuel died he would ask how's Walter doing you know and uh he just understood and got it he said you know he's out and he's gonna struggle but we saved him trauma yeah and he understood the trauma the idea that you're supposed to get out and just be healed is crazy yeah without any help without without without any assistance without any counseling without any whatever whatever it is that you need to get over that experience the fact that you're just supposed to get over that when you were innocent and in prison for years and years is insane i don't understand how you do it without you know like my wife has this idea for equine therapy for people that get out she spoke to you i think a little bit about it or about dogs

to help that probably helped a little i think psychedelics would really help that's what mike tyson said yeah psychedelic yeah mike and i have talked about that many many times about how much that's helped him you know we because he knows I'm a proponent of it. We've talked about it on the podcast, his experiences of it. It changed his perspective. It changed my perspective. It changed me as a human being. It's changed a lot of people. It's like it's like having a conversation with God. You know, how do you do it? How do you do it? You know, there's no answer. I mean, I couldn't you know, I don't know. I just do it. I think if, you know, I think what it comes from is what kept me going in prison,

I'm doing the same thing. So I haven't changed much. I was representing guys in prison. I think that's my therapy, right, knowing that I'm fighting back a system that did so much to me and continue to do it to others is my therapy. I think when I'm reading the case and I'm like, I'm going to get these bastards, I'm going to get this motion in. I mean, we got a guy right here in Houston.

We didn't get a chance to see him. 44 years in Louisiana prison. Vincent Simmons, 44 years walking him out on Valentine's Day with Justin Bonas was remarkable. 44 years, 16 judges denied him. 16. The judge that granted it, Bennett's own father denied him. Right? I mean, these are the moments that we live for, right?

To walk that guy out after 44 years in Angola. You know, like you said, it's therapeutic, right? To know that you can go back and pull people out and you continue to fight against the powers that be. I mean, to me, that's therapeutic. To me, there's no better therapy for me than to be able to work on these cases and to free some slaves. That's what they are. You know, and to get them out of the prison industrial complex, to me, is therapeutic. I got to also imagine that that hard work that you did when you're in prison fortified your character and changed you as a

Person because you knew that you could do that now you knew you could become this incredibly knowledgeable lawyer now absolutely It changes a person when they accomplish things it changes a person when they go through things it fortifies What it is like your human potential? Yes changes you and you get out of there, and what do you do? You keep doing the same thing. Same thing. And it fortifies you further, strengthens you further. It's very admirable.

Yes. And it's very inspirational. And for a lot of people listening to this that maybe have pity on themselves for nonsense, they're listening to your case right now, and they going, holy shit. What what am I talking about? Yeah. And, you know, if you Google Derek Hamilton is like I remember the dean of the law school where the center is being launched and it's killing both of us that we can't. We'll come back. Hopefully you'll have us back again and we'll announce the launch. The dean of the law school. I told her, I said, you know, there's this guy that got out. And she said, you're going to have an exoneree be the deputy director of this big legal center?

I said, Google him. It felt good to say that. I had never said that. I said, Google him. And she called me and she said, I want to meet him. So much has been written about Derek and how prolific he was. And, you know, like to be honest with you, I want to be around him as much as I can because I draw strength and knowledge and wisdom. them and I watch him like navigate a room and whether it's street folks, people in education and higher education or on wall street, whatever it is, he can navigate any room and he could do

it with what, what, what are the Ivy leaguers say with a plum? He, he knows what the fuck he's doing and how to say it. And that is a skillset in and of itself to be able to read a room. And, and I, you know, I, and to know what is appropriate and what isn't, you know, a lot of guys that get out, have a real difficult time socially. You know, we have friends in common that are exonerees that they struggle to get things done because they're inappropriate. Sometimes they haven't been around women forever. They haven't been around people forever. And, um, I just know we're on to, you know, we're going to free a lot of people and the clemency arm of our legal justice center. You know, you mentioned it earlier.

of our Legal Justice Center, you mentioned it earlier. You got to make a decision as a human being is what do you believe in terms of the ability to forgive and give a second chance? Are we all better than the worst thing we've done? If you take a real look at yourself in the mirror, and I'll take a look at myself in the mirror and say, I hope I'm better than the worst things I've done. And if the worst things I've done define me, then I should be condemned. We're all fallible. We've all made horrible mistakes that we wish other people didn't know about. And if prison is really about rehabilitation, clemency should be a real option. We still incarcerate at a rate that is six times what South Africa incarcerated during apartheid. That says terrible things about who we are as a culture.

during apartheid. That says terrible things about who we are as a culture. Are we trying to rehabilitate and send people back into society to be productive members of society? Or do we want to lock people up and throw away the key and forget them? That's a choice we have to make. It seems like there's a problem in this country too, in that there's an industry in incarcerating people. Yes. That it's a business. Yes. And to stop that business dead in its tracks, you're going to have a lot of people out of work, and they have a vested interest in continuing that industry. It's not different than the pharmaceutical industry. Not different.

Prison industrial complex. I mean, who makes all the license plates on every car you see in the country? Who makes them? Guides in prisons. And when they get out, they can't even get a job from DMV. Right? Let's look at the reality. Yeah.

You know, and that's in every state. Explain to Joe and the listeners the private prisons and the inherent dangers that that presents our country. Well, I mean, you talk about private or state rent, but private more so allows, you know, I mean, you talk about private or state rent, but private more so allows, you know, I mean, look, you get a private prison, it's not going to be regulated on the same way that state prisons are supposed to be regulated. So the minimum standards go out the door, right? Because it's strictly for profit, right? There's no rehabilitative

characters in it whatsoever. But I think they both kind of marry each other because whether state ran or private ran, the deprivations are the same. It's all about a dollar. Right. So whether you in a state ran prison, you're going to work for 14 cents an hour. Right. You're going to be in the industry because the industry might pay a dollar a day or two dollars a day. Fourteen cents an hour on average. So if you go to industry where you make lockers or you make furniture, right, they say, okay, we give you $2 a day. Commerce service is going to cost you money. So you're just doing it to eat.

You're doing it to survive, right? And then the 14 cents a day you get, it's not like the state's paying it. They're getting it from the interest of all of the money that your family sent in. So they're taking interest from that money and they're paying you. So it's all about a dollar, whether it's private or whether it's state rent.

It's industries in the prison that make money for corporations, and the corporations get rich. So it's about a dollar. It's about whether it's private or state. You can get a bid on a comb. If you're a prison owner, you say, okay, I'm going to bid combs. I'm going to pay $ a bid on a comb. If you're a prison owner, you say, okay, I'm going to bid combs. I'm going to pay $0.25 per comb.

If they're giving you $1,500 a day for an inmate, why would you want to let them go anywhere? You're going to give them a ticket. You're going to say, look, I have guards tell me, you know, you got a parole date. You better be careful because you may lose that any second. Because you know it's job security.

If I write this guy up and say he punched me in the face, who's going to disbelieve him? Cuomo, when he ran for governor of New York, one of the first things he said in the State of the State of the Address is that New York got to stop using prisons as an industry, that we got to find another way to make some money. He admitted it outright that New York was doing it. So I think that the private, whether it's private or whether state ran the goals are the same

it's the industry it's it's a money-making machine and nobody want to give it up nobody want to give it up I used to tell correctional officer and get him mad this is a overpaid babysitting job I said I grew up I never heard anybody say they want to be a correction officer I'm not disrespecting you it's a fallback job you know everybody got to make a living but it's just it's about money it's about money and nobody want to give it up I mean it's modern-day slavery who else gonna do those jobs who was gonna make a license place tell me will you know that there's a any

industry out here in society making license plates. There's none. There's none. There's not one. So who else is going to do it? The guy that they stop and charge him with a marijuana offense, right, and find a gun in his car. They're going to give him seven years. What he's going to do? He's poor from the beginning. What goes back to the history when slavery was first absolved,

abolished rather, one of the first things they did was go out and arrest people and force them to work for slave labor in prison that's vagrancy laws yeah yes I mean and they did it specifically because they wanted to incarcerate people that used to be slaves yes they didn't give them like there wasn't some sort of comprehensive plan to rehabilitate them and introduce them to and and no Reparations and no nothing no no punishment for the people that did it to them and no assistance to those people And so they would just arrest them and that that was the beginning of our prison industrial complex in this country Yes, I mean it was literally founded off of slavery

That's exactly what it was and he just kept modernizing it. Yeah. I mean, it was literally founded off of slavery. That's exactly what it was. And they just kept modernizing it, kept building it. I mean, look, we talk about truth and citizen bill, right? Clinton gave states. He the one created, took good time away in every state. 85% mandatory prison time to states who joined in this truth and citizen bill. He said, look, I'm going to give you the money to build prisons and put 100,000 more cops on the street.

Right. So I don't believe in, you know, Democrat or Republican. I believe that prison industrial complex is going to be built no matter who's in political office. It serves a purpose in this society. They're going to continue it. Abolitionists kind of got it right. I think you got to start over. Right. If you're going to change it, you have to start over.

You can't put a Band-Aid right on a wound that needs a stitch. Right. This doesn't work like that. You got to get that stitch to close it up. In this case, they're not trying to change the prison industrial complex. It costs too much. It's too much money being made in it. The powers that be don't want to see it go away. The only thing that makes sense to me is to make it financially viable to revitalize communities.

Absolutely. That's the only thing that makes sense to me. If you look at all the communities that were damaged by red line laws, all the communities that were apart, that's the number one problem in this country. Yes. Is that these people that grow up in this, the idea idea this is where I have the biggest problem with this whole bullshit about pull

Yourself up by your bootstraps. Yes, like you have people that are growing up in a neighborhood that you couldn't comprehend filled with violence and crime and gangs and To tell that person that they just have to be accountable when they have no examples around them. We imitate our atmosphere. You surround yourself with good people, more likely you're going to become a good person. You have a much better chance. You surround yourself with people that are criminals, that becomes the norm for you. It becomes natural.

And if we don't concentrate on that, we spend $40 billion to Ukraine. We spend billions of dollars for all sorts of military programs that many of us don't agree with, interventionist foreign policy that many people don't agree with, and there's a countless coffer that pays for that shit. Where's the money to revitalize communities? Well, I mean, you know, and that takes the—I don't know what happened to Van Jones. I like Van. That takes the, I don't know what happened to Van Jones. I like Van.

He, we were part of the same criminal justice reform group. Van Jones? Van Jones. The guy from CNN? Yeah, listen. He was given a hundred something million dollar pledge by Jeff Bezos. Where the fuck did he go? And before that, reform gave him money. I don't like Van Jones.

So I don't know where he went, but think about this. Imagine this, okay? And this is like, you know, Joe raised this with me before, and it makes so much sense. Because you think about a guy like Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk or any of these guys that are, you know, Elon Musk seems to me to be one of the most forward-thinking, progressive, dynamic, creative human beings I've ever laid eyes on or listened to. And if anyone could reimagine a society, there's a case in Alabama. People should look up this case.

Willie Simmons. Willie Simmons is serving a 40-year sentence for stealing $9. That's not made up. Go look it up. Look at the Breonna Taylor case. Just imagine this for a minute. Imagine you walk into your

fucking office and you think that someone is in your office and shouldn't be. You shoot at them five fucking times. Could you imagine going to your boss and saying, I want a raise. In Louisville,

they increased the budget for police and the way they did it was to cut it out from libraries, right? In response to that. So in other words, increase the budget for police for what? For training, for what exactly is it going to right so we need to do we need to reimagine how we how we you know um think about this is why it was it was so eye-opening for me to work with the sean carter foundation and jay-z's mom and with these students, because I was watching these students that I know were born into circumstances that I was not born into. And they just didn't have the same opportunities that I had. And to watch them flourish, and they doubted themselves quite a bit. And this man, Derek, would tell them, you can do this. I don't want to hear any bullshit that you can't.

I don't care that you're not a law student, you're not a lawyer. You're just solving a puzzle. And they never said, these are, what, 20, 21-year-old kids. And they were given an opportunity. And when you watch human potential flourish, oh oh boy, is that an uplifting thing. And it is like, it is not only uplifting, it fills you with the type of hope that propels you forward and says, well, I have to do more, right? You know, Jay-Z sits in the background and so does his mom. And he has this pretty remarkable impact on society and culture that he does not really seek attention for. Right.

And, you know, Roc Nation and Donya Diaz and these folks at Roc Nation that empower these kids, they're not out there looking for like a story about it. But, you know, they trusted me and put confidence in me to basically take their children. They call them their babies, right? Because they know them since they're in high school. And it was a really, it was a moment of awakening for me this summer to see children that otherwise didn't have the confidence or didn't even know the potential in themselves realize that potential. And they're not going to all go on to be lawyers.

One of them is a dancer. One of them is a drama major. And one of them wants to help the incarcerated through dance and healing in that regard, right? Jasmine. You know, Jalen wants to figure out a way to maybe go to law school. Sam wants to maybe go to law school. We had a computer programmer who he, you know, I don't know if he's going to figure out an app that will, you know, categorize bad cops. Your namesake, Josh.

My namesake, Joshua. And then there's, you know, Brittany and they all had something different that came together and they helped solve a case basically. And if that can happen, you know, we can make anything happen. Sam, believe it. Yeah. People have to, and then, yeah, we have this girl, Sam, who like she whiteboarded the whole case and figured things out that people that have been working on the case for decades haven't figured out. So I just – I feel like people listen to your podcast and it's a weird thing, Joe.

You know, it's like I was in an airport going to Greece a couple of weeks ago. And I pulled down my mask to look at the board. And some guy goes, Josh Dubbin. He goes, thank you, man, for what you're doing for my people. And my daughter was watching and he said, would you mind mind take a picture and she's like I felt dumb I was like my like known for being on a podcast and he's like I said it to her and she got he goes no you know for what you did in that case and I read about the case and I so it's like I said well what are you gonna do now? He worked at the airport

and he was telling me about how he's going to college. And he's like, I don't really know. My dad was a mechanic. Um, and I said, well, what do you want to do? He said, I want to, I want to do things to change people. And I said, well, you can do that. He goes, well, how? And I said, you tell me how so we got into this conversation i was with this guy for 25 minutes talking to him and i saw him realizing as we were speaking i can actually do something i can you know it's just like the self-belief that you can actually do it and that's why i like hanging around derek that's why i like hanging around you because it just needs more encouragement for people to like realize their own potential you know some other human being can do it you can do

it you know i marvel at everything i marvel at the lights i see i marvel at the person that made this table you realize what you're good at you know and and then you get out there and do it instead of figuring out reasons why you can't, you can make this kind of change happen. And that starts with like, if someone makes a stupid joke, that's a racist joke that you don't think is going to propel the conversation forward. Here's why that's harmful and won't advance the ball, you know, and call them out on it. If you see a law that you don't like, or you think is stupid, you have the power to change it. Absolutely. You talked about legislators.

Legislators are just people that decided to run for office and write laws. Shit. And it don't take money. I mean, we talk about $100 million that Van got, but it doesn't take $100 million to help somebody that's innocent get out of prison. You know, it doesn't. It just takes action. It takes work. It takes dedication.

Last two years, we got three people out, one lawyer. It didn't take, you know, a bunch pro bono. You got to dedicate yourself to the cause. Just yesterday in Jersey, family and friends of the wrong convicted, protesting against Jersey because of so many innocent people and they're incarcerated. Bad lawyering. Terrible. Jersey's terrible. But you

have to take action. While I'm here, the organization is up there working. Right? They up there working, saying, free these guys in Jersey. Family and friends, you have to take action. Right? And there's more people that, you know, I was told something in Louisiana. They got an organization called Vote There, all incarcerated,

formerly incarcerated people. And what they do, and we should actually link with them, they do is they get involved in elections. And that's how they got to New Orleans, governor, and different people up there. And one of the things the guy said to me up there I'll never forget, he says, our motto is that if it's 10 of us and each of us bring one person, that's 20. And then each of the one person bring one person, that's 30 and 40 and 50. This is what we believe in, that it don't take a bunch of us.

We just take enough of us. And that makes the difference. I mean, if everybody brings somebody in, right, the numbers multiply. These listeners are hearing us, and know that to me, this is a real, real situation because we all Americans at the end of the day, no matter how you want to say it, no matter how you want to believe it, we all are Americans. We all believe in this system where we dislike what it does or not. We all are fabric of our environment, right? So we all should hold our government accountable. One of the things that kept me going was the Mag of our environment, right? So we all should hold our government accountable.

One of the things that kept me going was the Magna Carta. What I learned that in 1215, it was bold English barons that held King John at gunpoint and made him sign the Magna Carta. You didn't give it to them. They made him give it to them, right? And when people talk about, you know, I speak to people, they talk about what happened at the Capitol, right? And what I teach people, the Second Amendment, if you the Capitol, right? And what I teach people, the second amendment, if you read it, right, it says when the government becomes tyrant,

the people can get a militia to revolt. Well, will you agree with them people or not if they believe that the election was stole, right? They had a right to revolt. You don't have to believe that. Read the second amendment. This is why the right to bear arms existed. I studied it. Right. And this is why you have three branches of government. When there was a debate, when the Constitution was being put in effect, there was a great debate on what type of government we're going to have. Right. They knew that the government was corrupt. So they put all these checks and balances in place. Right. So that we wouldn't be abused by the government, right? So when we see government abuse as our responsibility, it's our obligation to stand up

and do something about it. If not, then you're a victim. I don't want to be a victim. I believe in fighting back. So I believe that the call to action is that every American, every person that's on this shore should stand up and change something in your lifetime. Change something to make it a better place. And I just believe that from the core of my being. And when you talk about the government being involved, I mean, what about the people that were involved in January 6th that were agent provocateurs? Yes. That were encouraging people to go into the Capitol?

Yes. There's people that are on record that they 100% got that they know most likely were federal agents that did this that have faced no criminal consequences whatsoever. They were actively encouraging people. They know who these people are. There's video of it. You can watch it yourself. That's like the informant I told you. Yes. Right? They protect the informant to lock up somebody else. This is how our government works. Yeah, they're trying to get people to commit crimes so that they could get them. So explain that to me.

So you have – is your point, Joe, that you should be going after – if you're going to go after the people that actually were revved up to do it, you should actually go after the people that revved them up? Well, they are doing that. They are going after some of the people that revved them up. They're just not going after federal agents that revved them up. There's people that encourage people to commit crimes that would not have necessarily done those crimes in the first place. There's an example of a guy who the, I don't even want to name the branch of government, but they convinced this guy. They gave him a fake bomb. They convinced him that he was an extremist, a religious extremist. He was a 19-year-old kid, very impressionable, not very bright.

They convinced him to use this cellular phone to activate this device that didn't even work. And then they arrested him They gave him the bomb. It wasn't a bomb. They talked him into doing it They convinced him that he was a martyr and they convinced him that he was doing this for a righteous Holy cause and then they arrested him trapment and trapped and it was it was a hundred percent not just entrapment But they built the whole 100%, not just entrapment, but they built the whole organization around him. Wow.

They built this case around getting this guy to plant this bomb and ignite this bomb that doesn't even work. Right. It's not even really a bomb. And then they arrested him. I mean, what is that? Is that protecting or serving? What is that? Right.

What the fuck is that? What? And I think that speaks to what we were talking about earlier, that part of the problem is that this is a game. These guys are trying to convict people. And if you can arrest someone who was a religious extremist that wanted to blow up a bomb, and they wanted to become a martyr, and they wanted to do this because they felt like this was a righteous thing to do because they were convinced by people. What the fuck kind of, what kind of a government is this? What is this? Well, I mean, you know, I never really looked at it that way.

There's a lot of those cases. I never really looked at it that way because a lot of these, a lot of the people that were involved in January 6th end up becoming fall guys, fall men and women. But, you know, look look what kind of government is this you know there's a reason you either believe it or you don't is there a reason why there is a separation of powers do we believe that fundamentally that the executive branch should do their job and the judiciary should do theirs i do or all right so i got out of prison all right so if that if you believe that what the fuck is a governor who is an executive going and removing someone from the judiciary? How do we not get as human beings up in arms about that?

I don't understand it. Then if we elect people to do a job and we think they might not do that job, you can remove them from power? That law is unconstitutional. We should remove the law that allows a governor to do that in every state. And what's going to happen with this guy, Andrew Warren, who was the state attorney that was removed, what's going to happen is he's going to appeal this. He's going to launch a fight. Okay. And the Senate, this is where the lines start to get blurred and we have to start thinking, the Senate, this is where the lines start to get blurred and we have to start thinking, what are we doing? Do we believe in the dream of America? The Senate in Florida is controlled by Republicans. The law in Florida says if the Senate affirms the suspension, he's suspended.

It's a kangaroo court. He's getting suspended. They're going to affirm it. That's going to happen. So, you know, if you were a Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, if you just believe in America, you should not get behind somebody that is willing to go move an elected official from office on something they might do, but allow and stand idle behind a county ordinance that circumvents state law. I just don't get why people don't get more pissed off by this. I'll tell you something that's more egregious to me than that. Where's the presumption of innocence? Right.

Right? Where's the presumption of innocence? Once he was removed, right, there is a presumption that he's guilty. Right? He's removed. Then you give him a hearing after the fact. That's not how due process work right he's accused of doing something but he was removed first what does that happen then yeah i don't i don't i just don't understand it and i think that it's people are afraid of the

consequences of abandoning who they think other people should think they support. You know, I have a cousin whose children have no fucking earthly idea why they stand for what they stand for, but their parents are right-wing Republicans, so they think they should do that. I have another cousin whose kids, and they're actually sisters, her kids are growing up in a quote unquote progressive household, and they think that they should be everything that's on the left. We are influenced by the people that rear us, right? And I feel like what I'm trying to encourage my kids to do is we don't raise them, and I'm not saying this is the right way. Maybe I'm fucking totally off on this. We don't raise them as Catholic, Buddhist, Jewish. You know, we raise them as human beings.

We try to teach them a little bit about everything and say, you make the decision. Do you believe? You know, my daughter talks to me about God. Do you believe in God, Dad? I said, I don't even know what that means. I just don't. I would rather be honest with you. Is it a man with a white beard that sits in the sky?

Is it a feeling that you get? I don't know. And I don't know how you reinvent human beings, you know, other than what I know about what might change human beings. what might change human beings. And the only thing that I think help that changes them is having the ability to let your guard down and say maybe everything that I thought I knew is not true. And maybe everything that I was taught by the people I held up as heroes, as idols.

You know, we all have that moment where we stopped viewing our parents as superheroes and as human beings. And it's a jagged pill to swallow. That's the work. That's the work that you're doing. See, that's the work. Going back and, you know, use precondition a certain way. So as you get older, you go back and you look at those conditions and see if they still apply. I'll give you a good example of what you just said.

This summer in the Family and Friends Organization, we had summer youth, right? So all of them was from impoverished neighborhoods. Had some from Brownsville and some from Red Hook. So we gave them a case of a lady that was accused. She wrote in and she was accused of killing a kid. The first group of kids had it for two weeks. And they're saying, well, we really just don't know. We really just don't know. We just can't tell. then she was accused of killing a kid the first group of kids had it for two weeks and they saying well we really just don't know we really just don't know we just can't tell we need a medical

examiner to determine if the way the kid was hit could create those you know those injuries the second group came in from brownsville the worst part of brooklyn and they was there for one day i gave him the case and my wife called me the next day, she says, yo, you gotta hear what these kids gotta say. They said, Mr. Hamilton, this bitch is guilty, right? I said, why you come to that conclusion? They said, we went down Facebook, we went on Instagram, we seen statements she made, we this and that. But two group of kids come to two different conclusions,

one coming one day, and I say to them, here, we objective, right? We objective, we don't know if she made that Facebook account, we don't know if she made that Facebook account. We don't know if it's authentic. We don't know none of that. Right? But to show the way that they think. Right? Conservative kids from Brownsville.

You would never think the kids in Brownsville would be conservative. Right? But they were. Because they believe that the kid was killed. Three years old. The mother should have some answers. You in the house was killed. Three years old. The mother should have some answers. You in the house with her.

Right? You should know what happened. You should be. So it's just, you know, like you said, it could be the way that you were raised. It could be your conditions. But, you know, I teach my daughter that's nine years old. We have a debate in my house. Right?

Since she was a kid, I told her she got freedom of speech. You got freedom of speech in this house. You tell me what you're thinking you tell me I don't care what it is her mother says you don't got no freedom of speech with me that stops with your father you know but this is the debate you know cuz I wanted to feel free to tell me anything and we have it every day she's nine now you know and she'd tell you what that I got for you yes you do I'm gonna be all right you better watch your mouth with me well I you know you said what the call to action is earlier yeah I agree with you I think the call to action is to believe that you can make change happen to believe that you there are things that you can do that will move the needle.

And I feel like, you know, I've heard this before. I would vote, but it's just one vote. That's bullshit, man. That's a cop-out. Yeah. You know, you could, I agree that maybe one vote in a big democratic state might not be the answer. But, you know, you never know what it is that you're going to do that is going to change a mind, change, you know, someone's perspective on something. You know,

that's what I try to do. I don't know what, I don't know any other way to do it because none of these are easily solvable problems. How do you fix the criminal justice system? Do you start from scratch? You can't. Well, I was saying Brooklyn, what we did with a voter block, we was able to remove the bad prosecutor and put one in that had the values and ideas of the people of Brooklyn. Right. So I do agree with you that, you know, when you talk about locally, right, we can create voters' blocks. People talk about the Jews. They vote on one block, most of them.

The Orthodox, right? They vote in one block, most of them, when you talk about Orthodox Jews. So I believe that we can change the system by organizing people to understand and educating them. Look, we're talking about educating judges, not just human people, junk science. We talk about it all the time, right? That's going to be a part of our curricula, right? What's junk science? People believe in fingerprints.

They believe in blood splatter. They believe in these sciences, bite marks. They really believe that this is a science, that it's reliable, right? Our job is to educate them on how unreliable it is and how when people are sitting on jurors that they're being fooled right they're being fooled yeah i mean isn't that isn't that scary the case of bruce bryant that i've talked about before a ballistics expert gets on the stand and i'm not making this up the trial transcript transcript is public. People can read it. The ballistics expert gets on the stand, and they're trying to prove that two guns were used in this crime. So you're a man that knows something about ballistics, right?

You own guns and shoot guns. He says that it was a.380, all right, that was used in this crime. He says that it was a 380, all right, that was used in this crime. And the prosecutor in this case served 30 months in federal prison for bribing witnesses. Not in the Bruce Bryan case. Later on. All right. The prosecutor in this case is a guy named John Scarpa. John Scarpa.

John Scarpa has the ballistics expert on the stand, and he says, you found two shell casings. And he says, yes, and were you able to identify common characteristics in those shell casings such that you were able to determine whether or not they came from the same gun? And he said, to a degree of scientific certainty, the markings on those

shell casings lead me to believe that they came from the same gun. And he came up with all the reasons why the striated- Shell casings? Shell casings. And that's- That's outrageous. Okay. Well, he then says, well, you also found two bullet fragments. And he says, yes, I found them at the autopsy. And he said, can you match the bullet fragments up to those shell casings? He said no, to his credit, because they pass through different parts of the gun. All right? And he said, so how many guns were used in this crime?

He said at least two. And he's basing this on the same caliber weapon? Same caliber weapon. Same caliber weapon. And what about the shell casings would indicate they're from different guns? That's distinguishable. He said that they came from the same gun. But how was that?

The way they were ejected from the firearm? Yeah, the way that they were ejected. There are markings that are left that he can match up to the barrel of the gun and say that the— But the shell casings, that's a whole different thing. It's a whole different thing. They get ejected. They get ejected. The shell casings have the same common identifying characteristics. You can say to a degree of scientific certainty that they were ejected from the same gun.

Do you agree with that? I don't. I do think that they're- I've never heard that being used before. Oh, it is- Is that a common thing? It's a common science that's peddled in courts all over the country. And do you agree that that's junk science, like blood splattering and a lot of other things that you call it? Yes, and I'm going to tell you what's even junkier, okay?

Here's what makes it really hard to swallow. They then find two bullet fragments. Now, the logic is that those fragments came from those two shell casings because no other shell casings were found. And he says, to his credit is a detective hopkins those show those bullet fragments could have come from another gun could have come okay so the prosecutor says to him so how many guns maximum would you say were used in this crime he said at least two the prosecutor then within the same two pages of transcript, says, if I take a gun and shoot it into that file cabinet in front of this jury

and you find two shell casings and two bullet fragments, how many guns will you say were used in my shooting the file cabinet? And without missing a beat, the ballistics expert says two crazy how he says even though it was from one gun the jury just saw me shoot the file cabinet he said yeah because i can't tell you whether or not those two bullet fragments match those two shell casings. And I literally had to read it five times. I called Derek. I said, this was— So in other words, what he's saying is, in other words, what he's saying,

to introduce the possibility that two guns were used in a crime, he is saying that if you find two shell casings and two bullet fragments, you cannot assume that those bullet fragments came from those shell casings. He's introducing the possibility that two guns were used. Right, but possibility versus deciding that there was two guns. They convicted him. And he's sentenced to 37 and a half years to life in prison have they replicated this have they shot different rounds through different pistols and never never and what happens is is that when jurors hear a detective and they hear ballistics expert it's

over it's game over and this is because they're they don. Yeah, they don't know. Listen, you know, bite mark evidence was born out of the Salem witch trials and a judge just accepted it. It was born, you know, they, bite mark evidence, odontology is basically out of the criminal justice system now because it has been outed as a junk science. But for decades and decades and decades, they could claim, as a junk science, but for decades and decades and decades, they could claim, it's pretty handy that I have a skull with some teeth here. They would claim that you could make an indentation in someone's skin and match it up to the ridges in this tooth. Okay. And there was a guy by the name of West that would testify case after case after case that you could look at the indentation in the skin and you could match it up to teeth marks.

And it was proven to be such junk science that they set him up and they gave him the teeth impressions of a detective and they asked him if the detective's teeth, they told him that it was from the suspect. Right. And he said it's a perfect Match great because he was told it was a suspect So odontology has basically worked its way out of the criminal justice system was born out of the Salem witch trials

How was it born on the Salem? So there was a there was a a case of a guy who They claimed was biting young children and killing them and sacrificing them and that he was a witch and it was in the i think it was in the 1600s the salem witch trials and they paraded him around they pried his mouth open They put a stick in his teeth and they said to the jury, look, see that ridge? You see that slope in his tooth? That is what left the indentation in this child's skin. Now, it was later proven that this man didn't commit these crimes. He was hung in a public hanging. If you want to listen to Wrongful, here's my shameless plug, Wrongful Conviction Junk Science Season 1, I did the first episode on this.

They ended up finding out that this man was not only innocent, he was in jail in another town when these crimes were committed. It's the first case of a wrongful conviction and compensation because the Commonwealth of Massachusetts ended up compensating his family for executing him for a crime he didn't commit. And that was the first known case of teeth marks, bite marks being used. Since then, it's been outed as a junk science, but it's one of the few junk sciences that has been outed. In 2009, the National Academy of Sciences did a study on forensic sciences, and the only one that they could find was even remotely credible was DNA.

So everything that we knew about forensic science should have been turned on its head. Fingerprints are completely subjective. We're taught that they're the gold standard. They're just not. Subjective. You know, Brandon Mayfield case. Yeah, that's a great example. Yes. Proved that he was a doctor who they locked up and accused him of blowing up something in Scotland, I believe it was. And they found out that they wasn't his prince. It was actually a terrorist prince. And the FBI kept saying it was his and his. Scotland Yard did their own fingerprint analysis

and it's honorated by Brandon Mayfield and got the real terrorists that committed the crime. And fingerprints was used in that. And what they never told people, the error rate of fingerprints. They would tell you that it's 100% reliable. And we find out now the error rate in some cases is 50%. So it's just terrible.

And these are the sciences that we indoctrinated to believe. We believe that you couldn't tell a juror that fingerprints are not reliable. Until today, they still believe that fingerprints are absolute. Find your print, that's it. You committed a crime. The similarities of the witch trials and what happens today is that we're looking for, we're looking to take evil people off the street, right? That's what they were looking for back then.

They thought that they were gonna get rid of witches. They thought they were gonna get rid of evil people. That's exactly right. Yeah. Do you know the source of the Salem witch trials? You know what it all started from? You mean the hysteria? Yeah.

Around that? Yeah. No, I'm not ergot Hmm. These people were eating bread that had gone through the wheat had gone through a late frost and it develops fungus called Ergot and ergot is psychedelic. Mmm. So it's very similar to LSD so these people were all tripping balls to LSD. So these people were all tripping balls, eating bad wheat and all the other products that they made with the wheat bread and all these different things. And they were getting ergot poisoning. So they were all tripping. And they were all conjuring up this notion that there were witches out there. Exactly. It was like this hysteria. For a while. And then when the late frost was gone and all that wheat was consumed, they went back to normal. And that's why there was a waning of...

There's some dispute about this, but there's no dispute about whether or not there was a late frost. There's some dispute about the way they cook the bread and whether or not ergot would still be available. Right. But there's no dispute that there was a late frost when they do core samples of the earth and they find out during that time period that this matches up to what is established science on this and they have found residue of ergot and they know that in similar situations

when people have consumed ergot they have these horrific unexpected psychedelic consequences yeah i mean it was in doing the research for this uh wrongful conviction junk science i went back to the and this was a couple of years ago when we first met many years i guess four four three four years ago i was doing the the research into the origin stories of all these junk sciences and I was just blown away that nobody said Wait a second. How how why are we accepting this and the way things become legal precedent in our system is Is you know, it's it's scary because if one judge accepts it and other people start citing it Yes, and if other people start saying, well, there is precedent here, then it just becomes ingrained in the system.

And it's happened with everything from fingerprints to blood spatter to bite mark impressions to tread marks, right? And, you know, if you look at the origin story of each of these, you know, so-called forensic sciences, you would think that you were listening to some tale of like a religion that was cooked up. I mean, you know, blood spatter evidence was born in the basement of some fucking crackpot in upstate New York that was taking college age girls and having them dip their hair into the blood of cadaver dogs and fling it around the room. And they would make these assumptions about the direction in which a certain weapon was wielded. I mean, that's still used today. Now, is there some blood spatter evidence that is useful?

Yes. You can tell the difference between projected blood that's spattered on a wall or a transfer stain or blood that has been dropped from you know dripping from a wound all of these like shit um horse shit forensic scientists infect a lot of the cases we work on clementia gary's case we've talked about it on this i can't talk too much about it because if you could believe it, the state of Florida is doubling down. He's been exonerated. He's now suing them for federal civil rights violations, failure to investigate. I have to try the case in December where I'm trying to get him compensated. And they're saying he still did it. That's what they do. They're saying he still did it. And I have found out in the case that they re-reviewed, I mean, talk about fingerprints. They re-reviewed the forensic services unit of the Seminole County Sheriff's Office and found out that this latent print examiner had wrongfully claimed in numerous cases that she could match a print to a suspect.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement and an independent agency deemed that she had made mistakes to the point where she couldn't be relied upon. And you think that when you hear from a fingerprint expert, what do jurors know? They know what they're being educated about. And if a judge lets it in, why would they question a certified latent print examiner? Well, I don't know. Might you question them if you found out, as I found out during Clemente's case, during discovery, something I didn't even know when I exonerated him, that the detective in the case was going down to the lab and saying, this is the suspect. Did you match the prints yet? You know, we're human and we get influenced by people and that shouldn't be happening.

It creates confirmation bias. And, you know, I didn't even know it at the time. And you end up finding out that there's no training manual. There are no training standards. There are no standard operating procedures. There's no one doing administrative review on their work. You would think if we're going to be so quick to accuse someone of a crime and take their freedom away, we want to make damn sure we're getting it right. Right. I think it speaks to what we were talking about earlier, that people, when you set up this thing, whether it's with cops or with prosecutors, where a conviction is good for

their career and good for their record, that's a point. They want to score that point. They want to win. When you take away that point, they want to go to a review. And that's what's happening in Clemente's case, I'm sure. They want to win. Yeah. They got their W taken away. They want to win. Yeah. They got their W taken away.

They want it back. Yeah, well. And they think they're going to be able to connive their way and weasel their way through it. Even when, if they look at what you've said, just on this podcast where you reviewed it and brought me to tears, there's astounding evidence that he's innocent. Well, it's not just astounding evidence that he's innocent. I had my Perry Mason moment. I got the real killer to essentially confess on the stand, essentially. And, yeah, I mean, look, we had a mediation in the case, right?

It's confidential. So I'm not allowed to say, but they insisted on him being there. Now, why do you want the person there that has already lived this trauma right to hear you re-accused him of the crime right and you know it's like he's been exonerated when he's been exonerated you didn't exonerate him for no reason why can't you just pay him admit that you fucked up and pay him now i have to go he has to relive this whole experience again. I'm happy to do it because it's a labor of love for me. The guy that's trying the case with me is a guy named David Rudolph, who has a bit of a cult following because he was the lawyer and then Netflix hit

The Staircase, where the guy Peterson was accused of pushing his wife down the stairs. And he's just a tremendous civil rights lawyer who's seen it all. David's in his 70s by now. He's mind-blowing. Have you seen the most recent evidence about that? That they think an owl attacked that lady? I actually think there's something to it.

There's 100% something to it. Yes. Because they do that. This lady has claw marks on her head. She was bleeding blood outside of the house. So she was attacked. Look, people, when they see their own blood, when they get hit, they fucking faint all the time. I watched a friend of mine faint the other day because he was getting an IV drip.

He saw blood squirt out of his arm, and he started panicking, and he fainted. Imagine getting hit in the head by a fucking owl, and then you walk inside the house moments later, and you fall down a flight of stairs. It's normal. The beak marks? Yes. David told me about this years ago, before the documentary. You know David.

Before the documentary came out. Now, it was pretty ingenious what he did. He had them following him for years, and he said, you have to embargo the footage until his final appeal is exhausted. David has gone on. He would be an amazing guest. Him and his wife, Sonia, have gone on to become tremendous criminal justice reform advocates, some of the finest civil rights attorneys. He just wrote a tremendous book, David Rudolph.

You should check out his book. He told me about the owl theory years before it ever got press He said Josh I I actually think a fucking owl did this you look at a woman's head and the full head of hair Tell me that shit doesn't look like an animal and not only does it not look like an animal But there are claw mark impressions and a beak impression in the same exact spot that an owl will do it and people say come on And now yeah, it on, an owl? Yeah.

It happens all the fucking time. Why would a guy push his wife down the stairs? For what fucking reason? For what fucking reason? And also, it's like there's a history of that. Owls attack people. Yes. It happens. They're aggressive creatures.

They're fucking ruthless predators with a brain the size of your thumb. They're not brilliant. They're not fucking give a hoot, don't pollute. That's all horseshit. We're out of our fucking minds with that shit. How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll pop? One, two. It's not a fucking wise old animal.

It's a ruthless predator. Oh, it's a ruthless. And he told me the whole theory. And then I said, man, what have you been smoking? And he said to me, let me show you the photos. I'm going to show you the crime scene photos. And. I'm going to show you the crime scene photos, and then I'm going to show you the impression that an owl attack makes.

There's blood outside the house. He showed it to me. He said if he pushed her down the stairs, and that's where the, take them at their word, that's where the murder took place, the so-called murder. How the fuck was she bleeding

when they were out by the pool walking in toward the pool? Exactly. I believe it wholeheartedly. I don't believe that guy killed his wife. It doesn't seem like he did. It certainly seems like, at the very least, she was attacked by an owl before he killed her. Can you imagine the luck,

the bad luck you have to have to get attacked by a fucking owl? You know what, man? If you're outside at night, it's not that bad luck. Like, it can happen. I mean, it's not the best luck in the world, but that's a possibility. That's a possibility. I'll tell you what.

That's more probable than somehow being a witness to six murders. Right. And also being on record calling that woman a lying crackhead. Right. Right. Yeah, and then using also being on record calling that woman a lying crackhead right right Yeah, and then using her as a witness You know this this use of jailhouse informants. Maybe we close on this Pamela Koloff Is an investigative reporter that wrote a an award-winning story?

About the most notorious jailhouse snitch in history named Paul Skelnick. He was the informant that was used in, where do you think, Florida. Wow. He was used in over 20 cases. And if you read the article in, I believe it's in Texas Monthly that she wrote, The article in, I believe it's in Texas Monthly, that she wrote, she won a very prestigious award for investigative journalist of the year for this story about Paul Skelnick. And then you tell me how you don't give James Daly a clemency hearing. This guy claims that James Daley walked by his cell, a known informant, and said, hey, by the way, hey, you informant that are in isolation, hey, by the way,

I killed this girl. What do you think about that? You read that story. A call to action for your listeners would be go read the story that Pamela Koloff, C-O-L-O-F-F, wrote about Paul Skalnik and watch the 2020. And if you're not enraged that this guy put somebody on death row on his word alone with no physical evidence, I don't know what else will inspire you to get involved. Insane. There's a feeling of helplessness that I get, and I'm sure a lot of people also get listening to this, that there's so many cases. There's so many cases,

and for every Clemente, for every case like Derek, for every case that you get out, there's countless more that are still being locked up. It's a terrible feeling. It's a terrible feeling to know that there's people out there that didn't do anything wrong or at least didn't do the crime that they've been accused of, and they're going to be locked in jail for the rest of their life, and that this is the system that we rely on. And this is when you call the police, when you see someone getting tried and convicted, and you sleep well knowing that, oh, good, they got the bad guy, they got the right person,

that it's not right. Well, listen, another call to action would be if you get called to jury duty, this notion that there is a presumption of innocence only exists if you breathe life into it. Absolutely. Do not believe the headline when you hear so-and-so committed the crime. Someone was arrested. Believe they're innocent. Actually start there. The question that I get the most traction from is I ask people during jury selection,

you know, I just picked a jury in a case that is not so sensational but for the media. It was one of the so-called Varsity Blues cases. All right? You've heard of these cases where the parents were accused of- Bribing the teachers, giving them money. Yeah, bribing the universities to get their students in. Oh, that's like the California case? Yeah, the Lori Loughlin case.

All right. Well, this guy was accused in Boston of putting $180,000 in a brown paper bag and giving it to the tennis coach so accused of it. You know, a bunch of famous people. And those cases were all about their kids never played sports. It was all like phony pictures. And this guy's daughter actually played tennis. She played at a prep school. He was the he had gone to school and played college tennis with the tennis coach of Georgetown. They went to college together. Now this guy's the coach of Georgetown. They go out. They are at an alumni event. And he says, my daughter's actually a pretty good tennis player. She tries her ass off. Georgetown is a private school. It's a private business. One of their criteria for

getting people into the school is to look at their aptitude for philanthropy. Are they from a wealthy family? They have every right to run their business how they want to. They're not a public school. So they had a memo, an internal memo that said that the coaches could get gratuities. The tennis coach made something like $50,000 a year. The basketball coach made millions

of dollars a year. They were allowed to get tips? Gratuities, yes. So someone could give them $180,000? Yes. That's legal? So it was legal. That seems a little fucked up. Right. Cash and a brown? Yes. That's legal? It was legal. That seems a little fucked up. Right. Cash and a brown paper bag. That's legal? Yes. You could give them a gratuity.

It might have tax implications, but... Alright, so my question during jury selection, Roy Black, one of the best criminal defense attorneys of our time, he defended William Kennedy Smith. He's from Florida, too. Yeah, he's from Florida. He's a very famous criminal defense attorney. He said, you pick the jury. In federal court,

here's somebody whose freedom is on the line, and I am forced to rush. Can I ask a question? Please let me ask. The judge won't let me ask a single fucking question. So finally, she asks them, how many of you read about the Varsity Blues or the college admissions scandal cases? And 87 of the 92 jurors, I'm not making the numbers up, raised their hands. And she said, do you have anything, any follow up? I said, yeah, I want to know what they read. Go ahead, ask. We're finishing today, though, I want to know what they read. Go ahead, ask. We're finishing today though, this race to finish. So my first question was, please tell me what you read. All right. Well,

I read that like the woman from Full House brought, I said, okay, given that my client was charged with essentially the same thing, isn't it fair to say that he's probably starting off a little bit behind? You think he probably did something. Right after telling the judge they could be fair and impartial, she would turn it over to me. And I would say, don't you think they could tell me what you read? How did it make you feel? And the very first perspective juror said, it made me feel like they're all a pack of criminals. Who bribes their you feel? And I, the very first perspective juror said, it made me feel like they're all a pack of criminals who bribes their way in. And she told me the story about how she tried out for her college volleyball team. And she said, I had to work my ass off to get there.

And I said, isn't it fair then to say that this might not be the case for you? She said, you know, now that you put it like that, I'm not quite sure that I could be fair. This happened nine times in a row. The judge was pissed at me. I didn't care because I'm showing that if you ask someone, can you be fair and impartial? 99 times out of 100 in a room full of strangers, they'll say yes. Okay. No one wants to view themselves as unfair, especially in a room full of strangers. They don't want to be viewed by others as unfair. This is, I'm giving you one little piece of the criminal, and I was like hailed in the legal community as some sort of hero for getting individual jury selection.

The guy got acquitted and it was the only Varsity Blues case where there was an acquittal. I give Roy Black the credit for getting him acquitted. All I did was my job. I just helped get a jury that was the fairest possible. But give that some thought as a closing thought. You are charged with a crime in federal court in this country 999 times out of 1,000. 999 times out of a thousand that jury will be picked in one day and the lawyers won't get to ask a single question why because federal judges just said you know what that's the way we're going to do it there's no law there's no statute that says that and and a lot of lawyers don't want

to stand up to the judge and say you're violating my clients right to a Sixth Amendment right to a fair and impartial jury part of a fair trial subsumed within that right how do you get a fair trial if we don't know whether the jurors are fair if you don't know what their occupation is if you don't know what their spouse's occupation all these things that inform decision making. So I think it's also incumbent on lawyers to be able to not worry about pissing off judges so much and be more interested in protecting your client's rights and standing up for their rights. The conviction rate should not be 99% in federal court if we really have the presumption of innocence. I didn't make that number up. That's the conviction rate in federal court. If you go to Trump... That sounds like Russia. Isn't that wild? Because that's

one of the things they said about Brittany Griner. They were saying, well, you know, it's really bad because 99% of the people that get convicted or that get accused become convicted. What a bad court system they have over in Russia. If that's the exact same- 98, 99% of most federal jurisdictions.

Yep, it is. Because we don't really presume people innocent. We assume they're guilty. Let's wrap this up. Derek, you are an admirable and inspirational person. And I really appreciate you being here. And I really appreciate your story. And I think it means a lot to people people I think what you've done is incredible and what the impact

just the millions of people that are going to listen to us talk here it's uh it's going to have a profound impact on people and and people like you really do make a difference really really do make a difference and Josh you're you're the fucking man. I love you to death. Yeah, I love you back. And I second that emotion. I'm inspired by you every day, brother. I'm excited for the journey that lies ahead. Free Bruce Bryant.

Sign the petition. Yes. And anything you can do to support these cases, it does make a difference. Tell people where to go in terms of where they can contribute. What is a good place to start? Is it innocenceproject.org? Is that the website? No, I'm not here on behalf of the Innocence Project. Yeah. I think that what, what, what really needs, because I'm branching out on my own. I think that, um, if you contact me on Instagram, dubin.josh, we, we can give you can give you the details on our criminal justice reform organization,

but a great place to start would be the Midwest Innocence Project. The Midwest Innocence Project, the executive director is someone by the name of Tricia Bushnell. She does remarkable work. That's a great place to start. Do you have anyone to direct people to? I would say family and friends of the wrongfully convicted, Brooklyn, not for private organization as well. And we're going to announce something in the months to come, man. We want y'all to know that you'll be doing some good work. And I want to thank you for having us, man. I'm really inspired by the work that you do. And Josh, of course, I want to thank you for giving me this opportunity, man, to do what I love to do, man.

Well, when you guys can announce, please come back. We'll do this again. We love it. And we're committed to doing this on a regular basis, you and I. I love it, man. I can't thank you enough. I can't thank you enough either. Thank you.

Thank you, everybody. All right. Bye, everybody. Bye. Bye. Thank you.