The Joe Rogan Experience - #2096 - Josh Dubin & Sheldon Johnson

Episode Date: February 1, 2024

Josh Dubin is the Executive Director of the Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice, a criminal justice reform advocate, and civil rights attorney. Sheldon Johnson is a criminal justice reform advocate. He works with at risk youth at the Queens Defenders in New York. https://cardozo.yu.edu/directory/josh-dubin

The Joe Rogan Experience. Showing by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. Okay, Mr. Dubin, good to see you again, sir. Mr. Rogan. Always, always a pleasure. Introduce your friend. This is my friend, my client, my brother, Sheldon Johnson. I figure we'd do something a little bit different. Typically, the person sitting to my right is someone that was wrongfully convicted.

So I don't want to bury the headline. Sheldon is guilty and I thought it would be a real interesting conversation to learn his background learn about his upbringing learn about the crime that he committed and

hear the sentence he got which I don't want to shade it and inject my opinion. I have a strong one, but it's pretty astounding how he was treated by the system. I think that there's a real interesting twist that happens at his sentencing. And I know I've said this before, and it probably sounds repetitive, but another miracle sitting to my right, just like a marvelous human being who was basically told by a judge, by an African-American judge, that you don't matter, American judge that you don't matter, you don't count, and I'm going to throw your life away for a crime in which the victim received two stitches and on a second offense, his first

offense being a gun possession charge. So I will say this, that he received a sentence that far eclipses a sentence that would be commonly doled out for murder or manslaughter. So with that, here's Sheldon. Sheldon, how long have you been out for? Going on nine months. I got out May 4th. And you were in for 25? 25 years and five months. For two stitches.

Two stitches. Jesus. But one of the things that always struck me about Sheldon was I didn't know him. And I got a call from these two remarkable attorneys at an organization called the Center for Appellate Litigation, Barbara Zolot and Allison Haupt, who had been working on this case for a long time. And they called me and Derek Hamilton and said, you know, we know you're working on some stuff with the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. We have this case that has sort of hit a snag. I want you to take a look at it and see if you could help us. And I called Barbara back and said, I think that there's a mistake here because it

says that he was sentenced to 50 years. I mean, that's no bullshit. I could not believe what I was reading. And then I read about what Sheldon had accomplished while in prison. And then his earliest date of release was, I think, 20... 2049. 49. And he had already served 25 years. So I was just blown away by the level of accomplishment and the mental wherewithal

that he possessed to accomplish what he did while incarcerated. And then the path he's taken in the eight months since he's been out is, we talk about on these episodes, how do you make change happen? He's living it and making it happen. So I thought it would be just fascinating to go through. Um, like I said, his life, um, how he got to where he was, why he got this, what his thoughts are and our thoughts are on the sentence he received, why that happens too often to people of color. And I know there's one thing I want to say, and then I'm going to shut up and really let Sheldon talk and you talk. I get this a lot.

Why are you always bringing up race when you talk about the system? And my response to that is if you don't talk about how it impacts the system even for people that have been found guilty it's like it's like having a conversation about President Biden and ignoring the very obvious apparent cognitive deficiencies he has. It would be like talking about Donald Trump and not recognizing that he seems like an unhinged lunatic. It would be like talking about Kamala Harris and ignoring that she, you know, didn't do much to advance criminal justice reform. You have to confront it. It's there.

Is it that all people that get wrongfully convicted are people of color? No, but most of them. Is it that all people of color get disparate sentences? Oh, absolutely. So that's why I thought that this is an important conversation to have. And getting to know Sheldon, just thought he has a remarkable story to tell and a perspective on his circumstances, the system. And he's someone that's taken responsibility for what he did and I think is a living example of what can happen if we think long and hard about if someone's life is worth just throwing away and putting behind bars so that they can rot in a dank cell. Because he would have been 70 years old when he got out, way past his life expectancy. You know, one of the things that's happened through all of our conversations that we've had on the show is it highlights how insanely broken the criminal justice system is and how little oversight there is and how few people are looking at these individual cases and that you can have one judge who does what they did to you

and no one's looking no one cares no one pays attention and until someone like you goes in and starts combing over this and then coming up with a strategy for you know to actually apply real justice or at least get someone out i mean the only way to apply real justice is to have a fucking time machine, right? But it's broken. I mean, it's so broken and it seems so overwhelmed. And the root cause of it is never addressed. The root cause of, I mean, I've said it ad nauseum, but I'll say it again. Where the fuck did we come up with a hundred and whatever billion dollars to send to Ukraine? And we don't have any money to try to do something about these insanely impoverished, crime ridden, gang ridden, drug ridden communities.

we don't do anything. We have nothing. I mean, this is my take on this whole make America great again thing. You want to make America great again? Make it so there's less losers. Make it so that more people have a fucking chance. The idea that everyone starts on the same line. I mean, I'm not talking about equality of outcome. That's not possible. But equality of opportunity is possible. That's a possible goal. And at least we could advance that. At least we could do something to just change the course of who knows how many people's lives. And we don't do a fucking thing about it. I mean, we're looking at each other because we just had we just like had lunch before we came it's like the precise conversation that we had um i told you this is a motherfucker that gets it oh i know it just makes no sense to me it makes no

sense to me and it's not a subject of any presidential debates it's not a subject of anybody who's running for Congress or running for Senate. We have to fix this. This is a problem that's been going on for decades and decades, back through Jim Crow, back all the way to slavery, the same communities, and we don't do anything? Pull that a little closer. Redlining, everything.

Pull that mic up a little bit. Yeah, just, that's good. That's good? Yeah, yeah, it's good. I mean, it's wild. It really is wild. And you know, and the race part of it is a major factor. It's a major factor. And it's a factor that gets ignored when people start talking about racism, systemic racism in the country. Talk about sentencing. How come that's not talked about? Yeah, well, that's a vestige of slavery, segregation. Jim Crow, redlining, everything.

Exercising your right to a jury trial and being punished twice. Yeah, it's hard to know where to pick up because we just had this conversation. But you're, you know, look, well, let's preface the episode by saying this, we are doing something about it. I keep telling you that this forum keeps paying dividends. We are making progress. We are opening people's minds. I'm getting letters from prosecutors. I'm getting letters from sheriffs. I got a letter from a sheriff in Oregon last week, and he sent me a badge and said, I want to show you how committed I am to trying to make change happen. And it was from this show. So we're doing it. We're addressing it. We're making it happen. Why politicians don't,

it we're addressing it we're making it happen why politicians don't um i i you know what drives someone to want to get into politics these days is for a different psychiatrist i have no fucking i have no clue what the allure is but you know like there's such a swirl of uh ego and power struggle and divided loyalties. I can't even wrap my head around it. But, you know, we're doing it. We're helping. We got to do it grain of sand by grain of sand until we have a sandcastle. So that's what we're doing.

So I do think we're making a difference. But, you know, it's crazy because Sheldon and I are the same exact age. And we didn't know that until we were on our way down here. Born days apart. Yep. And when we flew down, it was the first time he'd ever been on an airplane. Wow. What was that like?

Fucking weird, right? No, I actually loved it. I was very excited. I'm kind of like an adrenaline. I like the adrenaline rush. Just the speed of it and just the whole idea of just, you know, I had this analogy in my head when I was up in the clouds, and I'm looking down, and I said to myself,

I said, I just came from the bowels of hell, spending 25 years in prison. And now I'm in the sky above the clouds in the heavens, headed to a destination to talk about change and to talk about all of the things that brought me to this place today. And, you know, the conditions in which I grew up and you know how social conditions play a role in the decisions that we make or the lack of achievements or opportunities like Joe just said a couple of minutes ago you know those opportunities are very important and being able to start that line where everybody is not necessarily equity like but everybody has that same opportunity.

You have a chance. You have a chance. Yeah. A real chance. Well, so tell us about your upbringing. So I'm a CODA. My mother's deaf. My father's deaf.

My sister's deaf. My aunt is deaf. I grew up in a deaf household. What's a CODA? A CODA is a child of deaf adults. That's crazy. This is the second podcast in a row I'm doing with someone who's like that. Yeah?

Moshe Kasher, who was on yesterday. His parents are deaf. He signs and, you know, he had to translate for his mother his whole life. Same with me. So as a child growing up, my mother's also white. My grandmother came to America in 1918 from a boat from Sicily. My father is Nigerian. He's African. So there was always this contrast where, you know, I wasn't really sure where I belonged at, you know. Kids are cruel. So growing up,

you know, kids would say, oh, you're a mulatto, you're a half-breed, and oh, you're adopted. And for a long time, I kind of suffered as a child with an identity crisis, not really knowing where I fell at on either side, what my identity was, who I was supposed to be. And my father, I'm also a product of intergenerational incarceration. My father was incarcerated when I was young at an early age. My father was incarcerated when I was young at an early age. He did about 15 years. I was incarcerated.

My grandfather was incarcerated. My great-grandfather was a slave. And my son killed somebody when he was 12 years old. So there's this cycle of incarceration based on the conditions, the social conditions and where I come from. I grew up in New York City, Harlem, on the borderline between the east side and the west side on Fifth Avenue. You hit Fifth Avenue, you're like, oh, wow, you live in a nice place. Okay. Crack era Harlem, 80s, 90s.

You know, and I grew up, you know, protecting my mother, interpreting for my mother. My mother could hardly ever keep a job because of her handicap. There was always somebody that would replace her. A lot of people saw my mother as a victim. She was a white woman in on 112th Street and Lenox Avenue in all black community. So as a child I grew up protecting my mother so I never, I feel like in hindsight, I didn't really have an opportunity to be a child. I had to grow up and be a man early in my life in order to be able to protect my mother. And a lot of people didn't even know that I could hear.

So there were times where I would be standing there with my mother and people would just be making all type of random comments and just disrespectful, just hateful stuff. And I would sit there as a kid just kind of like looking up like, like, dude, I can like hear you. So, you know, I think my life took a significant turn when I was in the fifth grade, I was always pretty smart. But, you know, as being smart and growing up in these neighborhoods, you know, the school systems are not really equipped to handle the number of children that's coming through. So you had one teacher and like 30 kids. And me just being who I was, I was always pretty smart. And when I was finished with my work, I would kind of just clown around.

I had this teacher in the fifth grade, my math teacher. And what he would do was he, when you acted out in the classroom, he would call you to the front of the classroom. He had a stack of rulers. Today, he would be arrested back then, but it was, back then it was permissible. It was considered as, you know, just punishing kids. And he would call you to the front of the classroom. He would make you stick out your hand and he would put salt. He had a big salt shaker that he kept on his desk and he would sprinkle salt in your palm and he would smack the ruler into your hand and the salt would kind of embed itself into your palm and would kind of have like a little burning sensation so um one day I decided that I was tired of it. And he called me to the front of the classroom, and I put my hand out,

and when he swung, I moved my hand. And he almost fell over. He chased me around the classroom. I ran out into the hallway. He chased me into the hallway. I grabbed a fire extinguisher off the wall, and I sprayed him until he fell. That was my reaction, too. I was like, he sounds like he deserves it.

He was cursing. Oh, too. I was like, he's cursing. Oh, man. But long story short, I sat in the back of the police car for three hours as they determined my fate as a 10-year-old. Put me in handcuffs and everything. And I had a counselor at that time. And I guess she convinced them to send me to a hospital. So they sent me to Mount Sinai Hospital, psychiatric unit. And I remember them sticking me with a needle.

Dorothy, 10-year-old kid, man, just, you know, just. Jesus Christ. In a stray jacket, being escorted to a hospital, and they stick me with a needle. And so for months from Mount Sinai, I went to Metropolitan, and I attempted to escape from Metropolitan, and they sent me to a more secure area. What's Metropolitan? Metropolitan Hospital. It's also a psych ward. Why did they send you to a psych ward for that? I guess they, you know, I was considered as a young black kid who's out of control with behavioral issues.

as a young black kid who's out of control with behavioral issues. And, you know, I'm not sure exactly the gist of the conversation that took place. But from what I've gathered now in the future is that my mother felt that she would rather see me in a hospital than to see me in a jail. Because it was either that or they told her that they were going to send me to Spofford. So I went through that just being subject to just a whole bunch of different medications, Melaril, Haldor, lithium, cogentin. And then they transferred me to Pleasantville. From Pleasantville, I went to Hawthorne. And, you know, and I'm going to be honest, this is where I learned how to become a criminal

because prior to that, I was just a kid. They put me in this place where, you know, I was around older kids and these kids were really like about their life. There was stuff, there was really bad stuff happening. If you look up Hawthorne Cedar Knolls to this day, it's been closed for allegations of sex trafficking and child abuse. Just so, because we know it because we're from New York, but those are juvenile detention facilities. They're like group homes. Yeah, they're like juvenile detention facilities. So they considered me as a person.

They put what they called a pin on you, and it's a person of interest, a person in need of assistance. And they put you in these places, and they just kind of just leave you there. So I finally got out of there I went through a lot there I was molested by a counselor and I finally escaped from there and I just went back into the streets at 13 years old and I just was fending for myself I was out so it was three years of that three years of that for one instance for one guys trying to hit you with a fucking ruler.

Yes. Wow. And, you know, I always look back and I see that as a trajectory in my life that just changed everything. I went from, you know, it changed me as a person. I lost my innocence. it changed me as a person. I lost my innocence. I felt like after I left that place,

I was a darker person because of the things that I saw and the things that I went through. So I come back, and we're talking about, this is 1988. Crack Arrow Harlem. You know, you got kids 13, 14 years old making $1,000 every two, three days. Selling drugs, looking out on the corners this was like real stuff you see new jack city new jack city was for real back people who

grew up after that do not understand pre-crack and post-crack oh yeah it was wild devastated my community it was wild and how the fuck did that happen like how the fuck did that happen when you go through the whole story of it all right i mean come on man like i had freeway ricky ross on here twice so last night we were talking about this and we were talking about like, what do we want to accomplish today? And last night when we were talking, he he's like, well, you know, the CIA brought crack into. I said, you might want to stay away from that. But here we are. The fuck out of staying away from that, man. My friend Michael Rupert, rest in peace. He was the guy who stood in front of the city council on television and exposed it.

He was a former Los Angeles narcotics officer. And he said, I personally witnessed the CIA selling drugs in the inner cities of Los Angeles. And that was the freeway Ricky Ross situation where they were using that money to fund the Contras versus the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. It's really not as crazy because last night, Sheldon's telling me about it, and I spent a long night into the early morning hours reading some of what you told me to read.

It's really not in dispute that it happened. Not in dispute at all. And what was – well, I'm going to let Sheldon tell. What blew me away about it was that not only was it known how addictive it was, it was also known how easy it was to reproduce the process. And how much cheaper it became. Yeah. Not only that, the differences in sent how much cheaper it became. Yeah. Not only that, the differences in sentencing.

The differences in sentencing. That's the wildest thing. One to five is like a... One to five ratio. Yeah. And then you had the Nelson, the Rockefeller drug laws that came into effect that required mandatory minimums and et cetera, et cetera. that required mandatory minimums and et cetera, et cetera.

So when we talk about social conditions and we talk about situations that were created for the purpose of what? You know, they separated, you know, you separated families. You had mothers who and really grandmothers who had to take care of the children because the mothers were in the streets smoking crack and the fathers were either in the streets using drugs selling drugs or in prison with astronomical sentences and removed from the family structure in totality because of these conditions so now you have the child just kind of left to fend for itself and we're not even talking about the children who were born that was subject to uh mothers who you know the the crack baby right yeah and that's just i mean the list just goes on and on when we talk about social conditions and we talk about the the long-term effects of of these conditions and how it produces behavior like ivan pavlov one of my favorite psychologists he talks about stimulus and a response right a classical condition and so you introduce the uh the stimulus and then you

have a response which equals to the condition that we see and um and you're also talking about what we were talking about earlier you're still dealing with these communities that are still suffering from segregation, Jim Crow, and then they throw crack in it, like just gasoline on a fire. It's crazy because we've had this conversation in the abstract. We've had this conversation about this very subject, and then the more I got to know Sheldon and his story, I said, well, here was someone that not only lived it. And I want to make clear one thing that has always struck me about Sheldon is his vulnerability, but also his honesty. He's like, he'll be the first to tell you out of the gate, I did it. I could have made better choices. He's not asking for a pass based on his conditions.

What he's always said to me was, I just want people to consider how it may have impacted me. So, and to me, you just can't ignore it. It doesn't say, well, poor Sheldon. I think that Um, I, I think that because I guess, you know, I know him, the human being. So I, I like, I trip out when people are like anybody that, uh, uh, murders or robs or does it lock them up and throw away the key. I always feel like, well, look, why don't you explain to me how you have gotten to know somebody that has been brought up in different conditions than you were? How long have you sat and listened to them? How long have you considered how that might have impacted them and compared it to the conditions you grew up in? How many people like him have you gotten to know?

and compared it to the conditions you grew up in? How many people like him have you gotten to know? So again, I'm trying to walk a fine line between sounding preachy and just saying, let's just consider the circumstances in which he was born. We're both 48. I don't want to get into, you know, my family, you know, struggled financially financially but had different opportunities. My mom was a schoolteacher. My dad was a knock-around Brooklyn guy that did what he could do to provide for his family and wasn't always great at it. But he was a wonderful man. But I can't ignore that I had different opportunities than Sheldon did. So when he gets out and then he arrives back on the street, I don't think anyone's gonna argue with the fact

that you're impacted and molded from 10 to 13 and forward, 13 to 18 by who are the people you're around, what are the conditions you're born in. And I never even went back to school after that. So I'm talking about after the fifth grade, I went back to school maybe for a week when I was 17 to Washington Irvin High School. I went to school for a week and I just dropped back out. I just saw no purpose in going to school. And I really didn't go back to school and really educate myself until I went to prison. Today, I'm pursuing a master's in human services.

Before we get to your master's, why don't you explain to you, get back at 13. So I get back into my community at 13, and I'm just kind of, not only am I trying to wean myself from all of the narcotics that have been pumped into me for these last three years. I'm talking about I gained so much weight. I went from a slim kid to being fat because of the medications that they was giving me. So what are they giving you? They were giving me Haldor, lithium, Thorazine, Melaril, and another medication called Cogentin. Those are the ones that I'm aware of. And I'm talking about I was just like heavily sedated.

And that's what they do to all the kids. And that's what they did to most of the kids, yeah. They just want to keep them calm and quiet. Just keep them calm and quiet. Keep them calm and quiet. And are they giving you any counseling when you're in there? Are they talking? It's superficial.

It's not really, it's not, you know, you got a bunch of kids who sit around in a group and, you know, they do a feelings check. But the counselors really, the counselors, as far as I was concerned, the counselors didn't really care because there was so much going on. The counselors were just there for a check. There was so much going on that was above and beyond what the counselors could control. It was just ridiculous. You had the kids going down into white planes, breaking into cars, stealing, getting high, going across the campus, having sex with the girls. It was just insane what was going on. And, you know, I learned how to become this person I

learned how to survive there I learned you know what it meant to go and steal a Benzie box remember the Benzie boxes where you could snatch them right out the car people used to hide them I learned how to you know break into a car with the older guys and how to take a Benzie box and sell it so I learned how to survive there I mean I've always known how to survive superficially, but I just feel like at that point I was put into a place where instead of getting real therapy or real help, I was just kind of put into a place and I was malleable.

I was young, I was impressionable, and this is what I was seeing. These became my role models. These were the guys that I respected, that I looked up to. They, you know, they were selling drugs. They didn't have a care in the world. They had all of the girls. And, you know, ironically, prison in my community was almost like a rite of passage, right? In my community, when you went to prison and you came back and you didn't tell on nobody and you were able to hold it down, you know, and word got back to the streets that you didn't get robbed or, you know, you didn't get pumped. People looked at you differently, treated you differently. I remember when I was 15 years old, I wanted to go to Rikers Island so bad that I lied to the officer.

I got arrested for smoking. I got arrested for smoking weed. Weed is legal now. But back then, like weed was a thing. Like if they saw you smoking weed, that gave them justification to get out, stop you, take you down to the precinct, run you for warrants and all kind of other stuff. You sat in the bullpens for three, four days before you even got out. And I remember lying to the officer. He said, how old are you? I said, I'm 16. Because I wanted to go to Rikers Island so that I could come back and be around older guys and tell them, hey, listen, I went and I still got my sneakers, you know, and the girls and everybody just treated you different. And it's really sad. But that was a reality that I was faced with. So I come back. I'm 13, and I'm going through this stuff.

My mother's still struggling. She's on SSD, which is Social Security for Disability. My father's in prison. And it's just, I started selling drugs. Guy offered me an opportunity to be a lookout. He said, listen, kid, I just need you. I'm going to give you $75 a day. I just need you to stand on that corner.

And when you see the police car, just yell, oh, shit, oh, shit. That was like a little thing. And I would just stand there. And eventually, I just slowly moved up the ranks. And I became this person that I feel like I was never meant to be. But because of the conditions and because of where I was at and because of what I saw, what I was exposed to, made me into someone else. It turned me into this person that I was never meant to be.

And I just, you know, just when you're in these, these, these, when you're in this melting pot of just insanity, you lose sense of what's permissible and what's not and what's impermissible. I'm committing crimes, and it just doesn't even matter no more. I was never the guy to hurt any old people. My era, when you seen old people come through, you help them with their bags, bags and we have respect for our elders that was something that was always taught to us um now these kids is just that's a whole nother story um but yeah i'm just and i'm communicating and i'm getting arrested for little stupid crimes driving without a license um standing on the corner standing on the corner, little small petty drug cases.

And I'm just kind of just moving through my life with no purpose. But I'm providing for my family. My mother doesn't, you know, at the end of the month, we don't have to worry about just eating grits and cheese no more. You know, we can eat chicken and Velveeta shells and cheese. You know, and for some people that's significant. You know, we can eat chicken and Velveeta shells and cheese. You know, and for some people that's significant. You know, I can buy a couch now. I can buy a real couch that's comfortable. I can buy a TV for my mother.

I can, you know, set up a cable where she can watch HBO. All of these little small things that I wasn't able to do that she couldn't really do for herself after she paid the rent was significant. And it made me feel like I had a purpose. It made me feel like a man when in all actuality, you know, many of the values and the morals that I adopted growing up were just so warped and so misplaced. Like Scarface, the movie, right? You know, you have this, oh, I don't work. I don't break my balls and my word for nobody. Right. You know, and I remember one time a friend of mine, he came to pick me up and he was on a run from the cops.

He had a warrant out for his arrest. He had a car full of drugs and a car full of guns. And because I gave him my word, I felt like I couldn't back out of the situation. Nothing bad happened, but it's just the idea of sometimes growing up and adopting these values and these morals. And you begin you begin to take them on as part of your characteristics, and you end up making really, really bad decisions that can cost you for the rest of your life. Like my son. My son, when he got into a fight with an Asian guy,

they called him the Columbia Law student killer, right? He gets into a fight with an Asian guy. They called him the Columbia Law student killer, right? He gets into a fight with this Chinese guy. And this is not to take away anything from that man's family. And, you know, as a man, as his father, I felt some type of way. But the guy goes into the street and gets hit by a car and he dies. But this is how fast your life can change from just one simple mistake. From one mistake. And I just feel like, you know, a lot of times these conditions are created and there's really no alternatives. I had never been on a plane, like Josh said. I had never even thought about going on a plane.

So I'm growing up in this community. My father's gone. My mother's, you know, she's deaf. I ended up having a son. My son was born in 1993. And that just made things, that just exacerbated the issue, right? So now I'm really, you know, what am I going to do now? You know, I have a son. I have someone to to look at and despite how many times i said that i was never going to be who my father was my actions were actually setting me up to be exactly who my father was and removed me from my son's life um and in 19 i caught the gun charge charge that that that that triggered the felony that allowed them to be able to sentence me the way that they did in 1994. I also caught another case at that time. I was I was I was what you call giving out consignment on drugs to people in particular. I gave consignment to and I ended up getting arrested for a case.

And when I sent someone to go pick up the money from them, they kind of just was like, you know, whatever, I'm not paying them. So when I came home, one guy in particular, I ran into him with his girlfriend. Did you get that case got dismissed, right? The gun charge? No, the one that you were away for. You got arrested for something. You're in jail. Yes.

These guys figure since you're in jail, fuck it, we're not going to pay him. Yeah, I'm not going to pay him. And then the case that you were arrested for got dismissed. Got dismissed. I got acquitted. So then you come home. So then I come home and, you know, I need my money. I need to quit. So then you come home. So then I come home and, you know, I need my money. I need my money.

It's just me being honest. It's just me being straight. You know, I gave you something, and we had an understanding that you were going to pay me. And when I came home, when I finally located this particular individual, he had his girlfriend with him. And this guy owed me $5,000 for some drugs that I gave him on consignment.

I gave him an eighth of a kilo, which is 125 grams of cocaine. And when I saw him, he had a bunch of jewelry on. He was with his girlfriend. She had a bunch of jewelry on. And I said, hey, man, where's my money at? Oh, yo, I was going to pay you. As far as I was concerned, his jewelry was even. So I robbed him, and I took his jewelry.

And his girlfriend happened to be there, and unfortunately she got caught up in the situation. I had a bunch of young guys with me and they robbed her as well. And he got hit in the head with the gun right here on the side of his head. And he got two stitches and they gave me 25 years for that case. Did you hit him in the head? No. One of the guys that I was with hit him in the head.

Um, and he identified me in a photo array, unbeknownst to me. He identified me in a photo array. This guy, you know, as far as I was concerned, he was in the streets just like I was. So I didn't really understand that, you know. Like I said, we go back to morals and values and principles and how warped they can be, right? In my mind at the time, this is a guy who I gave something to.

He's living an illegal life. I'm living an illegal life. So as far as I was concerned at that time, it was fair game. In hindsight, as I moved on and I became more mature and I began to reevaluate myself, I realized how wrong that was. But that was later on. At this time, I committed the crime and I just kept moving. Another guy that I ran into, he also owed me some money. He owed me $7,000 and it kind of went along the same ways. He was selling drugs out of an auto parts store. He was a Spanish guy. I got word that this is where he was at and he was a Spanish guy. I got word that this is where he was at and he was selling drugs

and I was going to get my money. And the same circumstances kind of ensued. Saw him, hey, what's going on? You know, reading in between the lines and outside the margins without really going into all of the details, I robbed him because he owed me $7,000. Did he get physically hurt?

No, he didn't get touched. Got roughed up a little bit, because he owed me $7,000. Did he get physically hurt? No. He didn't get touched. Got roughed up a little bit, but there was no physical harm, nothing. Going back to morals and values and principles, right? In my mind, he was fair game. He's selling drugs, I'm selling drugs. You owe me money. I came to take what you have.

In that world, that was considered as permissible. These are one of the rules of something that was permissible. In that world. Long story short, in December 1997, I get arrested for both cases. Really for one of them. One with the guy and the girl. And then the other case drops with the auto parts store, the guy that I said they were selling drugs out of the auto parts store.

I am in the process of going to court. I'm going back and forth to court. I'm on Rikers Island at the time. It's just crazy on Rikers Island. That's when the gangs was involved. Prior to that, a year before that, I had got involved with the gangs. I was blood. I was a gang member.

That's where the cut come from on my face. I have a bunch of stab marks from just being in those environments and being on Rikers Island and just warring with other rival gangs, mostly Latin Kings and Inyatas. My final offer before trial was 23 years, which kind of blew me away because my lawyer kept telling me that my maximum sentence was 25 years if I went to trial. So in my mind, it just didn't make no sense to me. Why would I forfeit my rights to an appeal if there's only a two year difference? I told the judge I would take 15 years right now. I acknowledged that I had that I had made some mistakes and I had done some things that that were wrong.

And I said, I'll take 15 years right now he refused to accept my plea offer and I went to trial and that I ended up getting 50 years 5-0 and um so they give you 25 for each case is 25 for each case. Consecutive. So, and I remember, I remember like blowing trial and just not really understanding like what was being there, but not like, it was like almost surreal. And I remember when I went and got sentenced and the judge said 50 years. Now, mind you, I had a black lawyer, a black judge and a white prosecutor. And I remember when he said 50 years, he said he went into all of these reasons why he was sentencing me the way that he was sentencing me. There was never no post. There was never no, they're supposed to do a report prior to your sentencing,

and it's called a post-supervision interview. Pre-sentencing investigation is called a PSI, pre-sentencing investigation. There was never no pre-sentencing investigation. There was never no mitigating evidence presented on my behalf to, you know, highlight why I may have made some of the decisions that I made. And he just called me a menace to society and he just, he gave me 50 years. And I remember when I first got the downstate, which is a processing facility, and they give you what they call is a time computation sheet. And on the time computation sheet, it gives you all of the numbers,

like the beginning of your bid, how much jail time you have. And I just remember 2049. That's all I kept looking at. And I was like, 2049? Are they fucking serious? This is 1998, 1999. And I'm trying to do the math and I'm just like 2049. I'm like, that's 50 years from now.

And I remember going to the law library and I forget how I get the world almanac. And something just says, look up life expectancy. And I look up my life expectancy. And as an African-American man, my life expectancy at that time was 67 years old. And I did the math. And I said, I'm going to die in prison, man. I just really believed that I was going to die in prison.

I just really believed that I was going to die in prison. One thing I learned really, really quickly when I got to prison was that prison does two things to you. It brings out the best or it brings out the worst. And what I saw was I saw individuals who were at their worst and I saw guys who were at their best. The guys who were at their best were guys who were involved in education, post-secondary education programs. They were running the violence groups.

They were running the substance abuse groups. And I remember saying to myself, I want that. And I remember just being involved in so much bullshit because I was in a gang and I was top of the food chain. I had my own nation. I wasn't just like the random gang member. I had a whole nation under me. And I was just in and out the box, in and out the box, solitary confinement, which has been considered as unconstitutional now.

And I remember just having these moments of reflection and just asking myself, like, what are you going to do? Can you spend the next 48 years living like this? I said I couldn't do it. And I had lost all my privileges. They took everything from me. I was in Southport at the time, which is closed now. It's a solitary confinement facility in New York State. And I was on a loaf, which is also unconstitutional now.

So the loaf is a dietary restriction that they give you. It's a chunk of bread and it has cabbage and carrots in it. And they give you like a quarter of a cabbage and they give you a cup of milk. When they can't take any more of your privileges, this is what they would give you. Six days out the week on the seventh day, you would get a hot meal, breakfast, lunch and dinner. And then it would go back for 21 days. They would do this six and one, six and one, six and one. And it was at that moment where I really said, I have to change my life. I have to change my life. I just can't do this.

I had a wife. I had family still. My son was growing up. He was hearing stories about my so-called notoriety and I just didn't want to be that dad. Like I really was looking at myself and really evaluating and asking myself like, yo, what the fuck are you doing? I was smoking a lot of weed at the time. I was drinking Jailhouse Hooch. And I was at my worst. And I had to figure out how to get to my best. So I decided to, when I got out of solitary confinement,

I did 42 days on the loaf. I went from being 210 pounds to, like8 in like a matter of seven months. Deflated me. And when I got out, I made a decision that I was going to walk away. And I didn't care about what the consequences was. And I said to myself, I've been doing bad for so long, I'm going to try to do something good. If all else fails, I could always go back to doing bad. But let me try.

Let me give it a shot. And I ended up getting into a school program. I got my GED. I left the gangs alone, which was a benefit for them because, you know, I was what you call an authoritarian. I was a rule guy. I'm still a rule guy. I like rules. You know, I like rules. I like structure. I was a rule guy. I'm still a rule guy. I like rules.

You know, I like rules. I like structure. I like things to be a certain way. And it was to their advantage to get rid of me anyway. Plus, I knew a lot of the guys who were at the top. Why was it to their advantage to get rid of you? Because I was the type of person who would say, you're doing that for what reason? No, you can't do that. The rule says that you can't do this you can't do this this is the rule say and I was

rules of the prison or the rules of the game the rules of the street yeah there was rules give us a for instance okay so for instance I could be in a whole other facility. Let's say I'm in Greenhaven and a guy's in Attica, and they want to do something to him because they feel like he's not sharing his proceeds of drugs that he's bringing into the facility. The rules say you can't do that. That's his property. That's his property. That's his belongings.

So I was a rule guy, and they just, you know, it was to their advantage to get me out of the way. So when I decided to take a step back, they were like, yes. And it was to my advantage as well. And this was in 2005. So there was no resistance. None.

And at that time, this is where a lot of what they call set tripping began. The organization began to implode on itself. The gang organization. The gang organization. There was a lot of infighting, sets against sets. And I was just always against that. And it was time for me to go. And I didn't care whatever the consequences was.

I was fortunate that there weren't any consequences. But I didn't care what the consequences was. I just walked away. And then that begins your journey. This begins my journey. I got into school. I got my GED. From there, I got involved in correspondence courses. I started interacting with guys who were teaching ART, aggression replacement training, and I started to begin to understand how these concepts work, what positive visualization is, deep breathing, how to remove yourself, conflict resolution.

yourself, conflict resolution, all of these ideas of change began to take place with me. Substance abuse, I stopped smoking weed. I stopped smoking cigarettes. I was smoking like 30 cigarettes a day. I mean, I'm literally having chest pains from smoking cigarettes. And I realized that I wanted to live. And the only way that I was going to be able to live and walk out of prison was to remove myself from these substances. I've seen so many guys get carried out. I've seen guys dying. Not just from just being stabbed or with altercations from officers. I've seen guys dying from one guy I knew. He used to drink so much hooch.

His liver failed on him one night. He died in the cell that night. The morning when they came to do that count, he was frozen. He was stiff as a log. But these are the things that I was seeing, and I was really in a situation where I had to ask myself, do I want to go out like that? And I didn't want to go out like that.

Tell me about Jailhouse Hooch. How are they making that? So there's a bunch of ways they can make it. You can use fruit juice, but a lot of guys use tomato paste. Tomato paste, water, and sugar. You need a kicker, which is like what they call a mash. You would call it a mash. They call it a kicker.

Get a plastic bag. You put it in a plastic bag. You let it blow up. It goes through the process, the carbon dioxide process. I did a whole paper on ethanol when I was in Cornell so that I could learn how the process was. And it's pretty good stuff, especially if you distill it. But it's bad for you because it has a component in it called methane, and it goes straight to your brain.

But, like, you know, in the streets when distillation places or facilities, they distill it, They remove that part of the alcohol, the methane. But in prison, guys just drink it. It's just like, you know, give a fuck.

Or you make the fruit juice. Same thing, plastic bag, sugar, kicker, mash. What is the kicker? The kicker is

to accelerate the process. I know, I know, but what does it consist of? Usually like spoiled fruit, some spoiled bread with mold on it because it begins the process of fermentation. It's like a mash. So this shit's got to be super toxic for you. Oh, super fucking toxic. Dudes is dropping like flies, man.

Like flies. Here's the, when you hear like going forward what, how Sheldon changed his life and not just the correspondence courses, but all of these various counseling programs, outreach programs, his connections to the outside world, which he'll talk about, is that the impossibly sick, fucking twisted, horrifically sad irony to all of this is that it took prison to save him. And why couldn't he be saved as a kid? That's what I am really trying to sort of put energy towards now. When you asked him earlier, wasn't there counseling in the group home? And, you know, if you see what this counseling is like, obviously I can't cast aspersions on every counselor in a group home across America. But you know, I've had people on on, you know, the podcast with me, and I'm

listening to their anger management classes, right? I won't mention who it is, but I'm listening to like the anger management class that they take. And it's fucking, it's's on zoom it's run by a guy that can't fucking turn his camera on and it's like it is um it's it's bedlam there's just people screaming hey man i can't i can't hear you what the fuck did you just say what You hear not just the anger and the frustration, but the guy's inability to control the situation, to control the technology, let alone giving out, you know. Real advice. Real advice and constructive feedback on how different people are. He's checking a box, this guy, to do a job. Is that happening with

everyone? It's not happening with everyone. But again, just the paradox here is that this insane, inhumane sentence actually saved Shelton. But why weren't weren't there those programs that thought that implementation in his community to save him as a kid? Right. Right. And I don't just take cases, you know, at the Perlmutter Center, where I'm the executive director, the Perlmutter Senator for Legal Justice at Cardozo Law School, we get a massive amount of mail. And we get a lot of people calling us to help out on cases. I want to help as many people as we can, but people that I think can succeed, or that we could help succeed when they get out. And, you know, on paper, you can see pretty quickly what somebody has done with their time. You know, I've sat with people in institutions all over the country where I said, well, what programs are you in? And I feel like an idiot asking because I'd be a fucking puddle on the floor.

I asked him many times, how often did you cry? How did you extract yourself from the gang? How did you sleep at night with the noise? Sheldon told me about this thing called a human harpoon that people make out of magazines and a sharpened toothbrush. Can you fucking... The mind fuck on this. They stiffen the pages of a magazine with toothpaste, soap, water, let it dry, let it dry so that they could basically work it into a rod. You keep on working the paper between your hands. And then you attach with soap, newspaper, a sharpened toothbrush handle at the end of it.

Or a bone. Or a bone from something that they ate in the mess hall. From something that you ate in the mess hall. And then you're walking past their cell and you're – all of a sudden you get fucking stabbed with a harpoon. So I'm thinking – or I have feces thrown on you. So I'm trying to like process all of that. thrown on you so I'm trying to like process all of that and to be able to navigate that hell and come out to this half halfway sane and and I'm just I I'm you know I'm so it like it hurts me deep in my fucking guts to hear that I'm hearing you talk. And then I'm thinking,

this is what it took to save you. Um, when I think about, you know, he was 10 years old, my son's 11 and that, um, it's hard, it's hard to listen to.

And yeah, it's hard to process that you were able to have that wherewithal to sit a day in solitary confinement, let alone 42 days. And so your process, when you decide that you're going to try to do good, like how difficult was the process of trying to establish an education? It was lonely. On one side, I had the guys who I used to run with saying, what the fuck is he doing? And then I had the guys who were actually doing good just watching me to see if I was going to crumble or fail.

You had a handful of guys that committed to me and said, yo, I applaud you. I got you, man. If you need some help, I can help you do this or I can help you do that. But I felt like everybody in the world was watching, including my family, because they didn't believe it. Up until the point to where I graduated from Cornell, my cousin told me, she said, she said, you know, when you called me

and invited me to the graduation, she said, I didn't believe it. I didn't believe nothing you had told me prior for the last 10 years, anything that you said you did until I saw you at that graduation. So, you know, I had family. I had everybody just kind of just waiting for me to fail.

So, you know, I had family. I had everybody just kind of just waiting for me to fail. But I just felt like I was just determined to succeed. I just had this energy in my spirit. And it was the will to live. As far as I'm concerned, it was the will to live. When I was in solitary confinement, I read Viktor Frankl's A Man's Search for Meaning. And one of the things that struck me as being so powerful, he says, if you have a why, then you have a reason to live.

And this is a guy who was in a concentration camp during the Holocaust. And he found a reason to live. He found a reason, and I'm sitting there in the cell, and I'm asking myself, do you have a fucking reason to live? And I think about my family, and that was my reason. And I wanted to beat the system, and that was my way. And I wanted to beat the system, and that was my way of beating the system. I'm not going to let you motherfuckers kill me.

And that was my spirit, and I know it was only one way for me to accomplish that. So like I said, I started going to school. I did the correspondence courses. I got involved in the Cornell Prison Education Program. I obtained my associate's degree. And then I went on to obtain my bachelor's in behavioral science for mercy. But, you know, in this process, I'm, you know, I'm going through, I'm mentoring other young men, you know, now guys are looking at me and saying, hold on, wait a minute, man, this guy is on to something. I got guys

on both sides now saying, yo, can you help me? I started working in the law library. I discovered that I had a knack for complicated things, case law, and I was helping guys. And I was actually helping guys get out of prison. And I started running the programs. And I think that's something. What programs did you run? So I ran aggression replacement training. And how many years in did you start doing this? About nine years in.

Eight years in, eight years in. I got arrested in 1997 and about 2005, this is when I started to make my transitions. About eight years in. And it felt good. It felt good. It felt good. It felt good to be able to call my family and send them pictures and invite them to these events where they can actually see me change. They could see actual, tangible change. It felt good for the guys that I knew that were coming to me

and asking me for help. I was helping guys with their GEDs. I became a tutor in the program. And the rewards that I felt, you know, it didn't even matter anymore about when I was going to get out, right? It was just now about how can I help other people not go through what I went through and wait so long? Because I feel like I wish I had somebody that would have came along at an earlier stage. And like he said, don't wait till I fall.

Catch me before I fall. And that's part of my motto now in some of the work that we do at the Queens Defenders, Alternatives to Incarceration. And this is why I'm so passionate about a lot of the work that we do at the Queens Defenders, Alternatives to Incarceration. And this is why I'm so passionate about a lot of the work that I do now. I'm trying to catch these kids before they fall. I don't want to wait till they're falling.

And I want to show them the way. And I feel like I'm a credible messenger because when they see me, they know that I came from the same place they come from like like like Josh was saying earlier right there's a difference between being qualified and certified right you could read a hundred books about drug drug abuse but how qualified are you to really tell somebody who's sick on heroin and they're ready to do anything that they can for a bag of dope or what you went through you you can't and and this experience is is priceless you said it way better than i did certified versus qualified and that's why you know

i'm just sitting back watching um the work that Sheldon is doing now. What's your official title at the Queens Defenders? Client advocate. And we just created the Yelp. We titled it Yelp. Me and two other brothers that I was incarcerated with formerly, Bruce Bryant and Rashad Rouhani. We're client advocates. We run a youth emergent leadership program and we work directly with the district attorneys and the judges at the courts dealing with

the alternative to incarceration program. A lot of the young kids that catch the gun charges, we bring them into our program we help them with job readiness training whether it's OSHA training we help them get their GEDs we direct them to different programs like we got a program called hood coding and this is also a guy who's previous incarcerated and he teach coding he teaches coding to younger kids inside the inner cities and the projects like coding as in computer code computer coding he teaches coding and and we we get them into our program we help them with their resume because one of the main things we

realize is that outside of everything else a lot of these kids they did they're impoverished they don't have nothing you know so we want to be able to try to help them with some type of employment, right? That's number one. And then we take them through our program. We have a 36-week 10-point program. It deals with conflict resolution. It deals with knowing your rights, how to have a conversation with an officer. One of the things that I take pride in while I was incarcerated. I was also in a theater program. I played Macbeth on a stage. I also was on the debate team. We debated against Stanford, Harvard, and Yale on the topic of the future of automation, and we crushed them.

But one of the things I learned in those arenas is critical thinking and critical analysis, right? How do you critically think about a situation? And also looking back, I realized something about myself is that I did not have a term that I coined called situational cognizance, right? As a kid, for some reason, I felt like I was not able to see the long-term consequences of my behavior. It was like a wall there.

And I think a lot of these younger kids are also suffering from the same thing they don't. And the system sets you up to, the system tricks you because you catch these cases and what they do is they slap you on the wrist, right? You catch this gun charge and they say, oh no, we're just going to give you six months.

Don't worry about it. What they don't tell you is that gun charges is a pretext now to enhance your sentence when you catch another case. So it's almost like a form of entrapment, right? And a lot of these kids don't understand that. They think that these cases that they're catching are just going to disappear. They don't realize that there's a paper trail being established that's being created. There's a profile being created against you. And when you reach a certain threshold, there's a term that I like to say, they're going to knock your fucking head off.

And you're going to find yourself, a lot of these kids find themselves in situations where they get 25 years for an assault. You remember Scared Straight? Yeah. All right. I think the effectiveness of Scared Straight was because of the messenger. So you're seeing the change right now. And this is not meant to, you know, blow sunshine up your ass because you get plenty of that and you deserve it. But it's to, I was in the show, is a client advocate at the Queens Defenders. And I don't wear that as a feather in my cap.

That was just me. It was validation that if I get behind this man and give him new life, do part in it Lord knows there were others Steve Zeidman at CUNY Law School you know and if it wasn't for no honesty I'm adamant about to this day if it wasn't for Josh and Allison Holt actually going to and Derek as well Derek Hamilton speaking to the district attorney, like we were at a plateau where they just didn't, they just was like, nah. But I don't want it to be about me at all. Here's what I wanted to say,

is that you now are seeing the connections. And so, you know, legal aid was representing Bruce. There was an army of people. So that all believed that he could make change happen and do positive things when he got out. So now he's a client advocate of the Queens Defenders doing this kind of work, trying to explain to judges, this person, don't let them be another Sheldon Johnson. Don't let them be another me or Derek Hamilton. They deserve counseling. They deserve a second chance. They deserve to help really be rehabilitated.

And then Sheldon comes over and starts working at the Queens Defenders, which is, it's like the, you know, the appointed counsel for people that can't afford an attorney. They're criminal defense lawyers. So to watch them out there advocating and trying to change, you know, hearts and minds about the community, you have to be on the ground doing it and getting in front of people. And I know I said it before. Look at the, you know, I'm very thoughtful in who I bring with me. Look at this beautiful mind and how he articulates himself and educated himself. And you want to tell me that this couldn't have happened earlier? He doesn't need anyone's sympathy and he's not asking for it. It's something I admire quite a bit about him. Whenever anybody, you know, he doesn't want poor Sheldon, you know, how could you have gone through this? And he stops them. I've seen him do it right in their tracks. Listen, I did what I just don't know that my life was worth throwing away. But to watch them now on the other side of it, the change that we talked about that I'm like, how do we change it?

How do we do it? It's starting to happen. Could we use Jeff Bezos to sit down and think through how we can build a community center in East New York, in Harlem, yeah, we could. The means are out there to do it. All it takes is one person listening to this episode that tells someone, that knows someone, and then progress is starting to happen and we can just do it on the ground.

But the reason why I mentioned Scared Straight is because, because sure i could go in there and talk to these kids they're not going to fucking listen to me they're just not i i might be um certified but i'm not qualified right but i didn't i didn't i can't could sympathize, but I can't empathize. You know, I go through that talking sometimes like, you know, to fighters that I manage, right? I do it with Shakur Stevenson, you know, he's like a little brother to me. I love him. Sometimes I feel like he, you know, the message might be better coming from J Prince than it is for me because he's more qualified.

I try to wrap my head around what Shakur went through as a kid and growing up in Newark and the circumstance, but he, you know, I think that there is a disconnect and I have to be big enough to recognize that and say, yeah, you know, maybe I'm not the right person, but you know, you're telling me he's not going to inspire, and they're doing it. They're getting judges to change their mind. They're getting prosecutors to think twice.

We just got one guy. He shot at his brother without going into the details of his case. He has attempted murder charge. And we now have him on our program. They originally were talking about giving him 15 years. He's been in our program for a couple of months. We set him up. We help him get his resume. He's working towards his GED. And he's in the hood coding program. We also have him in an aggression replacement training program. And now the district attorney is considering giving him five years probation. So they went from 15 years and this kid is doing amazing. Like he's just picking up the coatings.

The guy that I spoke to, he said that this kid is just, it's like a sponge. He's just soaking it up so fast. But this is just one example of how we kind of level the playing field and create opportunities. I think that key you spoke, that word you spoke about earlier is so crucial to the context of this conversation. Opportunities, right? How do we create the opportunities for these kids to be able to provide living in new york city ain't no joke man the cost of living is is ridiculous um so how do

we create these opportunities how do we so now also what we're doing we go into the schools we talking to the teachers we're talking to the teachers and the principals and we asking them we're not even going to wait till you get to the courtroom we're asking the teachers and the principals who in your classroom do you think needs help which kids in your classroom are the most giving you the most trouble and they give us the names and we go and we talk to them and we try we're getting them involved in our program but it's all about opportunity. Well, kids sometimes need to see someone, not sometimes, always need to see someone who's done something from a similar situation. Yeah. Where they realize like there's a path out of this. Because if you don't see a path out of

this, you just see a path towards doing what the other people in your environment are doing. And that's how all human beings react. If you're in a bad environment with a bad group of human beings, the chances of you going down that same path are extraordinary. Learn behavior. Yes. And from someone like you, they can see this is not a given. There's a way to do this. There's a way to get out of this.

And there's a guy who's already gone the wrong way who could say, you know what? I figured it out and I'm going to help you. And the difference between someone like you saying it versus some uninspired counselor is massive. It's massive. And it speaks to you and your character that you want to do this, that you've dedicated yourself to doing this. That's where real change comes from. That's where real help comes from. Real help comes from someone, as you said, who's qualified to do it. It comes from the same place that you came from and that you can identify because being able to identify is a critical component, like you said. Is this someone who can identify,

empathize with what I'm going through, where I'm at right now in my life? Like a lot of the young kids, they're involved in the gangs. And we have this reculturalization program, right, where we're trying to teach them. Because in many of our communities, the gangs have become a part of the culture. Like you have parents who are gang members.

You've got the kids who are in communities. And it's just saturated with gang culture, language, dress, music, food, everything else. So we're trying to extract them out of these places and say, okay, this is something that you can do differently. We're taking them to different places. We're taking them to HBCUs so that they can see what people who look like them look like when they're going to college. This can be you. This is some of the take them into classrooms to meet with the professors. We have a financial literacy course

where Chase Bank actually works with us and we teach them how to establish credit, how to open up a checking account, how to open up a savings account. And at the end of that particular five-week program, we actually take them to the bank and we give them $25 so that they can open up their own bank account so that they can understand the difference between the money that you obtain from the streets and the money that you get working legitimately. It's two different kinds of money. You can't appreciate the money that you get from the streets.

But that money that you've been working all week for, eight hours a day, 40 hours a week at the end of the week, and you can see that direct deposit when it goes into your account. You can take that card and you can actually utilize it to withdraw your money out the bank. That's a big difference. Civic engagement. You know, how can some of these kids feel like they have a voice in their communities when they're not making no decisions in their communities? We go into the rallies. We take them to the rallies out of Albany. Yesterday, they went to a rally. Last week, we went to a

rally about treatment, not jails. How to set up what they call diversion courts for people who have substance abuse problems instead of sending them to prison they need treatment and the money that they save is clear it's clear when you do the math the money that you say at the at it costs almost up to seventy thousand dollars to incarcerate one person but then there's the issue of privatized prisons. Oh, that's... Which is insane. That's disturbing. It's so disturbing.

They're using human beings as batteries to generate money. That's what it's like. Yeah, we're trying to take the charge out of their battery. We're trying to pull the plug out of the wall because, you know, these aren't controversial statistics. You know, these aren't controversial statistics, and I'm not going to start spewing them, but we incarcerate at a rate that is dwarfs any other Western country, any other civilized, anywhere in the world, really. So in any event, I was doing a relative comparison. So how do we put those privatized prisons out of business? You know, we have to start, you know, on the ground. And for, you know, it's almost like a rallying cry to myself because we get a lot of,

not a rallying cry to myself, but the way I got from being a little less intimidated by the mountain to climb was taking a step back really after the last episode and saying, well, what have we done and how have we changed things? Listen, I wasn't born a civil rights lawyer that was working on innocence cases. I have a trial strategy company called DRC. We do focus groups, mock trials on big cases, right? Try to unfold the thinking of jurors in a jurisdiction where the case is going to be tried. And we make demonstrative aides and we are alleged experts in jury selection and that became a platform i said how can we use this as a platform now that i'm operating the perlmutter center as well so just being in the boxing industry um speaking to the jay-z's team at rock nation and j-Z and his mom. How can we do this?

And he has something called the Sean Carter Foundation. It's a remarkable, it flies way under the radar. Have you ever heard of it? Yes. All right. Do you know what it does? Not exactly. All right.

So it's kind of remarkable that people know it because of his name and they've heard it, but no one really knows what it does. They take children from really from all over the country. A lot of them are in the tri-state area that have difficult circumstances. A lot of them come from single family households. households and they they not they're not just mentoring them from high school but they are trying to do some of the things that Sheldon talked about they do a college tour it's run by a woman named Donya Diaz and really Gloria Carter and a woman named Miss Archer and I I saw what they were doing and And I said, if we took these kids and created a fellowship program where we pay their last year of college, and five of them do it every summer and work on wrongful conviction cases at my consulting firm

at DRC, and also are a resource to my students who are taking an internship for the Perlmutter Center and are working on wrongful conviction cases and have them start a social media campaign. They spearheaded the free Bruce Bryant social media campaign. And watching this program, these kids, if they're given the opportunity, three of them now work for me full time. One of them is the mail intake coordinator at the Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice. So she is receiving mail from inmates and helping screen which cases we might want to investigate. Her name is Amelia McFarland. There's an old girl that works at my firm doing advertising and publicity. Her name is Jayla Madry. She made a presentation to me the other day. I was fucking blown away that this girl was, she was passionate about marketing, not advertising, marketing. about marketing not advertising marketing and she works at my consulting firm and she made a presentation to me you know that it had a level of detail

and ideas about how we can become you know increase our awareness and I was just thinking to myself you know all right so this is the change that we're making happen and it was just an idea that I had I didn't actually think that Jay-Z and his mom and Donya would go for it so I was reluctant to pitch them the idea and just being able to say well what do you have to lose by you know putting it out there and they have been remarkably supportive. So I think that there's a lot of people that want to help. Sheldon and I were talking about it before we came, and we often think, how can listeners help?

There is not, if you have an idea like I had, just try to put the next foot in front of the foot that's behind you. And just keep walking forward and don't be afraid to ask. There is not a public defender's office in this country. There is not a civic engagement organization that if you call them and say, I want to volunteer or I'm interested in helping, that will turn you away. You just have to say, all right, I could sit here and talk about it. And, you know, until it happens to you. Right. You know, we talk about not to cut you off. Right. No, I need to talk about like the opioid crisis. Right. You know, it's been an opioid crisis in my community since I can remember.

People were dying off heroin and it didn't become an issue until it was affecting white America, right? But my thing is, had you dealt with it from the beginning, it would have never became a situation later on. So it's this idea where people, we have a tendency to say, okay, I'm just going to turn away and I'm not going to say, okay, I'm just going to turn away and I'm not going to pay attention to it. I'm going to turn a blind eye. I'm going to act like it doesn't exist until it hits home. And then sometime when it hits home, it's too late. Yeah. Like I think it takes like something to happen to somebody for them to become an advocate, right? Michael J. Fox wasn't a Parkinson's advocate until it happened for her.

But that's great that he decided to do that. Absolutely. Remarkable. But I think that Sheldon makes a great point, right? We're a society that likes to sit back and complain. We want to react instead of responding. Like one of my favorite things to do is, I have severe anxiety about dying.

But for whatever reason, maybe this balances me out, at an airport when a flight gets canceled, even if it's hopefully my flight. Not hopefully, but I get a better view of it if it's my flight. To watch people stand up and get frustrated, berate, raise their voice at the fucking ticket attendant. It's a remarkable exercise and it's a social experiment, I think, that if people really were able to hover over the room and watch themselves,

they'd be like, why am I yelling at the ticket attendant? There's only two real possibilities of why this plane is not going to fly on time. There's either a mechanical problem or weather. Do you want to fly in either of those situations? And to watch people just like complain and they get – I don't know what they're getting out of it. know what they're getting out of it. But I just find myself trying to, A, have an awareness about myself not to do that. And rather than get intimidated by the problem, try to just keep putting one foot in front of another. And then when the flight gets canceled, maybe I could read something interesting and catch up. It's inconvenient or come up with an idea i mean trust me i'm an average

guy of average intelligence that just i think i have like more tenacity so i don't if i can help make some of this stuff happen other people can make it happen and i sheldon asked me should i go to law school before we came here? And I said, I can't. I changed my mind, by the way. I might have an opinion now. But I told him, like, most of the lawyers that I find that are most effective aren't the smartest. They're not the savviest. They possess something that most lawyers don't, which is common sense and street smarts. And they marry that with what they learned in school. And they're able to sort of that perfect stew, I think is what leads to a successful advocate, counselor, attorney, whatever you are.

And oftentimes there's so much of an emphasis placed on your grades and what score did you get? And how much of that really ends up fucking mattering at the end of the day? It matters. But does it matter to the degree we place an emphasis on it in our society? I'm not sure. we place an emphasis on it in our society? I'm not sure. But my whole thing is, rather than be intimidated by the problem, I think it's recognizing that it exists. Just decide one discrete thing you want to do to try to help make a change happen. And then,

again, just try to get some forward momentum and you'd be surprised at the buy-in that you get. I think that that's why this platform is so important because it allows people to start sharing ideas, reaching out to us, and we're taking them up on it. I've told you before, we've been contacted by, you know, a major law firm, Greenberg Trorig, and a really awesome attorney that's working on the case of peer rushing. This guy, Jordan Gratzinger, who's just – he was a corporate attorney. Had nothing to do with this kind of work.

Listen to the podcast. He's a passionate, passionate advocate. And he's going to get justice one of these days for Peter Rushing. We've tried to help apply pressure through this show by having people reach out to the DA and write letters on his behalf. And it's, you know, has it worked yet? It's working. We're going to get there at some point. So, you know, that's my objective, you know, would do with continuing to do these stories because you're right. The privatization of prisons and the industrial prison complex that is that a solvable problem? prison complex that is that a solvable problem I'm not sure I think it's I think that it's too much of a giant to slay unless we start pulling the electrodes not the neural link electrodes

pulling the electrodes out of the sockets and taking energy out of it as much as we can until they're like well we don't have any fucking or you begin sabotaging pieces of the machine right because you know a lot of these um these these corporations are what you call well-oiled machines right and it's like a watch when you open up a watch you see so many intricate pieces right and if you sometimes if you if you break the right piece in the watch the whole much the whole watch ceases to to to keep time um and it's just you know it's just a poor excuse for it's like putting a band-aid on on on a gunshot wound you know for for for for the government to allow these corporations to privatize and say, OK,

OK, it's not our problem anymore. We're going to pass the buck and let somebody else deal with it. Now you have these corporations who they really don't care about, you know, rights and humanity and cruel and unusual punishment and due process. They don't care about none of this stuff. Well, to allow it to exist in the first place, you have to ignore that people will be incentivized like every other industry, like the pharmaceutical industry, like the military industrial complex, like everything else. Once they start acting as a corporation, which all corporations,

Once they start acting as a corporation, which all corporations, it is in their best interest to try to maximize the amount of profit they make always. If they have shareholders, it's their responsibility to those shareholders to maximize profits with each quarter. Now, when that happens with human beings in prisons, you can bet your fucking sweet ass they're going to lock as many people up as they can. That's a fact. That's their commodity. We know for a fact that happened. We know for a fact that prison guard unions, they work hard to make sure that laws are not changed that will incarcerate people for petty drug offenses. Big business. Big business.

Like, for example, I was supposed to go testify at a congressional Senate hearing on what they call slave wages, right? So you have this corporation called Corkraft. I don't know how familiar you are with Corkraft. Is that when they use prisoners? Yes. They use prisoners. In Auburn, they make license plates. In Clinton Correctional Facility, they make mattresses and T-shirts and underwears.

I was just reading an article today about that I was just reading an article today about food manufacturers mm-hmm that use prisoners to sell commercial food yeah and they essentially work as slaves that's quick chill so you have different you have a whole bunch of different entities under this one large umbrella right and I remember I was getting paid 17 cent an hour at one point in time 19 cent an hour and um you know for operating these big machines and they were producing just like a mass amount of a core craft is actually a Fortune 500 corporation. And they function, they regulate out of the prison industrial complex.

There it is. U.S. prison is part of a hidden workforce linked to hundreds of popular food brands. Yeah. Fuck. Frosted flakes, you know. So a lot of times we walk into the supermarket and we see these products and we don't realize like you know what's going into you know making these products like you hear about these slave shops in china and all of this stuff and you know people campaign to say oh well we're not going to support that but what are you actually supporting here in your own country right right now unbeknownst to you. Unbeknownst to you, right? Yeah. And I mean, if you have a label on everything you buy, like this may contain harmful substances,

this may be bad for your health. GMOs. Why the fuck don't you have a label? This is made by prisoners. This is made by people making 13 cents an hour or whatever it is. Yeah. How do you not have that? Because wouldn't that change the way people would buy things?

Well, and the most important— Look at this. Including countries that—okay. So the goods are prisoners-produced wind up in the supply chains of a dizzying array of products found in most American kitchens, from Frosted Flake cereals, ballpark hot dogs, to gold medal flour, Coca-Cola, and Riceland rice. They're on the shelves of virtually every supermarket in the country, including Kroger, Target, Aldi, and Whole Foods. Some goods are exported, including to countries that have had products blocked from entering the U.S. for using forced or prison labor.

Wild. 13th Amendment. Yep, exactly. Slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. And we go back to Jim Crow. That's what they did. Yes. Right after the Emancipation Proclamation, post antebellum, you know, they created these laws to convict the freed slaves so that they could continue to force them into free labor right and it just

continues today like 13th and i was 17th and i was 19th and i during the pandemic uh great meadows correctional facility had these guys working 24 hours a day making hand sanitizers in mass that place is the scariest fucking place. That place traumatizes me. That place is like, it was one of the first prisons that I went to in New York State to visit with a potential client. And I almost peed down my leg. I mean, it looks like, feels like, is like what you saw in the Shawshank Redemption. It's worse than Attica. Hey, check this out.

What you're seeing on the screen is not some new thing. You know, speaking of The Shawshank Redemption, Stephen King writes a lot that is rooted. I'm not talking about Cujo. I'm not talking about, you know, his horror writing. His short stories, most of them are rooted in some sort of truth. Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption was a short story that he wrote that ended up getting made. I think it was part of Apt Pupil or one of his books of short stories.

And you remember in the Shawshank Redemption where they had this precise thing, where it was, they came up with this idea, you know, the warden came up with an idea for a work program where they were profiting. That was true back then. He was basing that on something that was happening in the Northeast back then. So, you know, the notion that this is still happening shouldn't be that shocking. It's just like, what is our news cycle pay attention to? And how do you make sure that this kind of stuff doesn't keep happening? My idea is you need people on the ground that are working on policy and reform. So at the Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice at Cardozo, we have a policy advisor. Her name is Sarah Chu, who knows forensics.

She's a scientist and like one of the more respected or in my mind, the most respected reform advocate about how we stop using junk science like bite marks and, you know. Blood splatter. Well, blood splatter well blood splatter ballistics even fingerprints to some extent conversation we was having earlier yeah and lobbying um to make sure that laws get changed and you know it's like at the end of the day the scariest part about all of this is that the politicians that we poke fun at, I poke fun at, everybody has a field day. These are the fucking people. These are the people that are sitting in some white fucking building at your state capitol. And the prosecutors are the worst.

Before you get to the prosecutors, these are the people writing the laws. These are the people writing the statutes. writing the laws. These are the people writing the statutes. They need to be influenced by people like Sarah Chu, other great people that work in policy and reform advocate. There's a woman named Rebecca Brown. Her and Sarah Chu both used to be at the Innocence Project. Sarah came to work with me. Rebecca Brown is a great one that are working boots on the ground and trying to change and educate, really. I mean, how much does your local representative or a state senator really know about how dangerous it could be to draw conclusions about the directionality of how blood hits drywall versus how it hits lucite, how bite marks leave an indentation on someone's skin.

I could, a qualified, certified actually, strike qualified, a certified odontologist, totally, total horseshit, could take one of these skulls and make the same case that the bite marks left on someone's leg came from this set of teeth, Sheldon's teeth, your teeth or my teeth, and convince four juries four times, 100% of the time. That you're guilty. That you're guilty. That you're guilty. That it was you that did it. A skilled odontologist could do that. So when bite marks became subject of a report that everybody should read, the National Academy of Sciences did a report in 2009 that should have changed our criminal justice system. It had the most qualified,

certified scientists from all over the world study all of these disciplines of forensic evidence, all of these disciplines of forensic science, and come to the conclusions that none of them, none of them were supported by scientifically credible body of evidence. There was no repeatability. There was no reliability. The scientific method that you learn in grade school, you could apply it to any of them and they would all fail the test. Which are the standards for admissions at trial. And it talks about the standards for admissions at trial, the Daubert standard, the Frye standard. It's just, is it credible in the scientific community? And they come to a resounding no on everything except for DNA. And DNA is still fraud right now because there are all

these new technologies. I shake your hand this morning and then I later pick up a knife and stab someone and your DNA ends up on the knife. From the sweat on his hand. Yeah, because there is such sensitive what they call low copy or touch DNA that can now be detective, that can now be detected. And the mixture can be untangled. And they can say, well, Joe Rogan's DNAna is on the knife where was he at this time there's a case of a guy named emmanuel fair in seattle where he was implicated in a murder because he was at a party on halloween when this girl got murdered he ended up getting um you know sitting in in prison for, I think, seven or eight years before he finally got acquitted. So this report should have turned forensic science on its head and no one gives a fuck.

Bite mark evidence. Until it hits home. Well, bite mark evidence is still admissible in all 50 states. So, I mean, you know, look, we could sit, I could sit and bang my head against the wall about it, or I could, you know, just keep on speaking up when you're in front of a judge. How often, Sheldon, do you hear from an attorney, well, I don't want to piss off the judge? All the time. You're right. Your absolute obligation when you're defending someone is to piss off the judge if they're not doing their job.

To protect their rights, their constitutional rights. That's what the Constitution was designed for. And it's so interesting when you think about the Constitution, right, and the founding fathers and the Bill of Rights and how it has just transferred over hundreds of years

into today and how our rights are still fundamentally protected but you know when we talk about when we talk about rights there's two different worlds like you know his rights and my rights may be two different kinds of rights because of where we come from and because the color of our skin unfortunately I don't say prevention is worth a pound of cure, and you constantly keep hitting on the fact that, you know, why do you wait for a problem to end up at your doorstep before you decide to do something about it?

You know, you have, like he said, you have people at all of these different organizations reach out. Google is very effective. I've only been home nine months and I've pretty much learned how to how to navigate Google pretty good, better than most. And you know it's actually pretty easy to be able to find different organizations. Like he talks about the people at his organization, Sarah Chu. And we have Gina Mitchell at Queens Defenders, who is our policy coordinator. And we work on so many different subjects.

Reach out. Reach out. Change is real, but it has to begin somewhere. You have to just be willing to take a step forward. It doesn't matter where you're from, how old you are, Republican, Democrat, rich, poor, black, white. It doesn't matter. You know, I look like I took a picture of a guy, a homeless guy on a train station a couple of days ago,

and I posted it on my Instagram page. And it just blows me away how... And I and i'm just going to be straight i'm kind of i have an issue with the whole immigration thing um because i feel like like he said like joe said earlier like you have 70 million dollars that you can give to a whole nother country yet you know you're not addressing the issues right here at home right now. Like, you know, I work for Department of Homeless Shelters. Like, I've worked in there. I've seen it with my own two eyes. Like, and then you have citizens,

you have veterans that come back from wars and can't even get the same services that people from other countries come here and get immediately. They get housing vouchers. They get education vouchers, everything. Like, you know, make America great again. If you're going to make America great again, focus on the people, the citizens, the people

who put you in office. It's just, I don't know. It's like, you know. What does that even mean? Look, I've been reading this book called Thinking Fast and Slow. Have you heard? It's a fucking phenomenal. I highly recommend it. It's about how your brain works and why we believe what we believe and the two systems of our brain. And one is the quick judgment and the other is the slow it down and critically think about it. And there are all these, you know, puzzles in it where he makes the point by saying, like, consider the following. the same words over and over again and how that translates into people feeling that it's a credible and be that the person uttering the words has some credibility are astounding just by keep

make them i mean trump might be in my opinion a little nuts but he's you know a little crazy he's crazy like a fox though he knows if he keeps on saying those words those those words are going to stick if he keeps saying witch hunt people are going to start repeating it and they do so you know maybe um think a little like i don't even know what it means um i i just know that we need to start like having some individual thought before we, it's just like this group think about other people and, you know, how they're different and lock them up and throw away the key. And, you know, I, I just think like we should all slow down and really think. Yeah. And what I, what I hope to bring is, is these stories where you get to know the person.

He's no, look, I'm deeply, deeply flawed. Sheldon will be the first to tell you, like, I did some fucked up things. But when you watch what he's doing, you know, why can't we make people in these communities, why can't we make them great again by giving them a better chance? Like you said at the outset of the episode, let them hit the starting line. Yeah. Well, you know, what you were saying earlier about building a sandcastle one grain of sand at a time we're i think from my perspective the feedback that i get it's these conversations we've had

we've had quite a few of them now they they have changed a lot of people's ideas on how the prison prison system is structured what the problems with it are, how many people are wrongfully incarcerated, how incredible some of these people are, wasted potential, locked away forever for something they never did, and they didn't break. Instead, they got stronger and wiser and more intelligent and more educated

and came out better. And they're incredible human beings. And how many of them are just being wasted? Yeah, that's my... How much potential? I mean, this is what you want, though, right? You don't want somebody to go into the prison system and come out worse.

Right, which happens most of the time. Which happens, right? And then we hear about these horrific incidences or people getting pushed onto the train tracks because you have a guy who has a mental illness and instead of getting the services that he needs, or people getting pushed onto the train tracks because you have a guy who has a mental illness. And instead of getting the services that he needs, you put him in prison. You sedated him for three, four years, five years.

You sent him to a parole board. The parole board let him out. Two days later, he pushes somebody into the train tracks, right? This is not what you want. Yeah. And how do you prevent these things from happening, right? By being proactive, by being responsive instead of being reactive. Don't wait for something to happen. these are the miracles that are coming out right i mean most of the time you're right the the cycle of from the street to prison back to the street to prison most of the time yeah the yeah i mean i i'm just saying it in plain english most of the time it's churning out

um monsters because what else would you expect right Right. Right. I mean, there's a great book called In the Belly of the Beast about a guy that went to prison and he describes what it did to him psychologically, what it did to him, to every cell in his body. And then he goes out and he murders someone and he writes this book just explaining, I want you to understand what this did to me. I read it when I was in college and I should read it again.

I probably have a different perspective on it now. It might hit home even more. But yeah, these are, talk about grains of sand on a beach. You know, if you look at the population of people that keep getting churned out of correctional institutions, most of them are not getting corrected. It take, you know, why do I like to spend my time with these guys? Because I hope some of their strength rubs off on me somehow. some of their strength rubs off on me somehow.

When I came home, right, in May, it took me almost 30 days to get any type of benefits or help. And I had to call this lady. I called this guy, put in for the SNAP, the food stamps, the benefits, the little bit of benefits that I had, right, or that I could possibly acquire to help me navigate and kind of transition back and reintegrate back into society. And I had a conversation with a lady on the phone and she told me, she said, you don't qualify for emergency services. And I said, what? I said, miss, I just spent 25 years and five months incarcerated. If that is not a qualification, then what is?

Oh, sir, I'm just telling you, you don't qualify for it. I said, I need to speak to your supervisor. It took me two days to get to her supervisor. But when I finally got to her supervisor, her supervisor, oh, I'm going to look into it. And they finally gave me my benefits. But I'm saying all of that to say that there's there's there's these institutions in place that need to change. And for the people who are listening to this and you're directly involved in these institutions. There has to be a conscientious response to what classifies as an emergency. A person should not, I should not have had to wait 30 days. What if I didn't have family resources?

What if I didn't have anything? And how much does that incentivize you to go right back to crime? Right. You know what I'm saying? How much would that have incentivized me to go out and commit a robbery or steal a piece of pizza like a guy out in California where they have the three strikes laws and they end up giving this guy 20 years for stealing a slice of pizza because he's starving.

This is real stuff. This is stuff that's really happening. Nobody offered me anything. I had to actually go out. Do they give you any sort of guidelines of what you can do to reintegrate to society, or do they just release you? They just release you. They gave me $40 and a bus ticket.

And I had a little J-Pay debit card because I had a couple of dollars in my account that they gave me with a little bit of extra money on it. They have some programs that you're supposed to be entitled to prior to release. But it's a joke because the programs don't teach you any real skills, right? Like, one of the most significant hurdles I had upon my reintegration was technology, right? I've never had a cell phone in my life. I sent out my first email in 2019 from a tablet that they gave me in Auburn Correctional Facility. I don't know what a PDF.

I don't know what a PDF that I went online and they said I had to convert my application into a PDF before I could submit it. Excuse my language. I don't know what a PDF. What the fuck is that? You know, so these are some of the things that when we when we talk about opportunities, right, and leveling the playing field and recidivism right someone being able to get out and not have to be in these situations where they feel like the whole world is against them and they really don't know what to do they can't get the services that they need they don't know how to navigate the basics of technology Microsoft Microsoft, Excel. I was fortunate. I was in the computer program while I was incarcerated, and I was able to, you know,

as my role in the Cornell Prison Education Program, I put myself into a position to where I was. I knew what an Excel spreadsheet was. I knew what a Word document was. But a lot of these guys that's coming out, they don't know what that is. But you skipped the PDF course? Yeah, there's no PDF course.

I don't even know how to convert something to a PDF. Yeah. It's pretty simple. I'm sure, but I don't know how to do it. Yeah, I'm saying. If I saw that in an email, I'd be like, fuck. Fuck. Well, you know what's crazy?

There's a great program in New York called Hudson Link. You know what's crazy? There's a great program in New York called Hudson Link. I think it's a college program, and they do a lot of great reintegration. They provide a lot of great reintegration services, and they're right a few blocks from Sing Sing Prison. And you were part of Hudson. Shout out to Hudson Link. So I obtained my degree in mercy from Hudson Lake

Sean Peker uh it runs the organization amongst many other formerly incarcerated individuals Sean Peker is also formerly incarcerated um they have a post-secondary education program on the inside and they also have a post-secondary they're actually paying for my master's right now to go back to school. They have a housing reentry program called New Beginnings. Amazing. That's where I went when I first got released. But, you know, going back, had it not been for these these formerly incarcerated individuals, like I don't know where I would have been at had I had to depend on my my elected representatives uh you know my elected assembly and senators like I would be you know I would probably be trying to steal a

loaf of bread out the grocery store um you know what's crazy there's um this was a trippy moment man fucking trippy moment the warden at Sing, a guy named Mike Capra. Mm-hmm. All right? And when you conjure up in your mind what a warden looks like, I mean, he's right out of Central Castle. Big, burly dude. You know, looking at him, you think, boy, watch out. You know, he's doling out punishment.

This guy was so inspired by what he saw at Sing Sing with formerly incarcerated individuals that got out and started programs. individuals that got out and started programs. J.J. Velasquez's Voices from Within started this organization when he was incarcerated, where they bring people in the community into the prison just to talk to inmates and to establish that there's some humanity there. Capra, the warden of Sing Sing Prison, they call him the superintendent in New York. That's what they call wardens, now works for JJ. He retired, and now he works for JJ,

going around trying to, he's like a missionary, but for the work we're doing. Frederick Douglass program. We were at the UJC a couple of months ago, United Justice Coalition. I don't know. No, that was the Jacob Javits. It was at the Javits Center.

Yeah, the Javits Center. He was there. He spoke. Derek spoke. Huge, huge event. But Michael Capra was there. That was what I was saying. It was a trippy moment.

I see him there. This guy was the warden of the prison. And now he's there at a booth for JJ's organization. Speaking on behalf of incarcerated individuals. Did you talk to him? How did he make that talk? Oh, did I talk to him? When I saw him, he told, when Bruce got out, he came to Hudson Link.

They have like a, it looks like a, like a thrift shop. And it kind of is, but it's only for people getting out. So you could go in and get some clothes. You could go get. That was Kiki's, Kiki Dunson's. That was her thrift shop. She created that. So I, so when Bruce gets out, he needed clothes.

We said, we'll bring you some clothes. He said, no, Hudson Link has this great little spot by. So while he was still the warden, he came while Bruce was picking out things to congratulate him and wish him well. So, yeah, I mean, not only did I talk to him, he told me when I retire, I'm going to come work with these guys. So, yeah, when I saw him at this event called the United Justice Coalition, he's at a booth working for JJ on the Frederick Douglass project. Side by side with us. And I saw him and he looked at me and he goes, I told you, Josh. And I just walked up.

I gave him a big hug. He like recoiled. I was like, come on, baby. Hug me. And I just walked up, I gave him a big hug. He like recoiled. I was like, come on, baby, hug me. And he came in, he's like, man, it's like, he's like, it's life changing. You know, it really is. And we had a great talk about it. He was telling me how, you know, just being on the outside with these guys that I saw in, you know, not only in prison uniforms, but in a construct that I was the head of. And now they're the ones inspiring me. We need more Mike Cappers. Speaking of Michael Capper, right. So prior to my release, we, me and Bruce, Bruce Bryant,

were working. So we created a number of programs. One of them was a civic engagement in New York where we actually teach incarcerated individuals on their rights to vote, how they vote, how do you go to a booth, how do you register to vote, et cetera, et cetera. And Michael Capra was pivotal in allowing us to be able to create these programs and have a platform in the school building. One of them in particular that we are trying to work on now is dyslexia, right? And this blew me away. According to the Department of Correctional Education, 47% of the incarcerated population all across the United States have some type of dyslexia or

reading disability, right? That's almost half of the individuals that are in the Department of Corrections that have some type of reading disability, right? So when you look at, and that's the tip of the iceberg, right? So when you look at the bottom of the iceberg, right, and you go and you delve even deeper into that. Right. What are the key factors that played in this person? Actually, you know, what are the what's the correlation between incarceration and illiteracy? Right. in any department of corrections throughout the United States that's actually screening men for dyslexia or to determine who can read and who can't read. So how do you... Wow. Oh my God. However, a study of Texas prison inmates by the University of Texas Medical Branch estimated that approximately 80% of prisoners in a sample group struggled

with their literacy skills and that half were likely to be dyslexic. So half of them dyslexic, 80% of them struggle to read. So when we talk about recidivism and we talk about preparing someone to be reintegrated back into society, the Department of Corrections has failed. How can you say you're going to rehabilitate somebody reading for me? Right. I believe that reading is a fundamental right. My grandmother used to read to me when I was a kid. I would lay in her lap and she would read to me. And it wasn't even about what she read to me. But it was the connection that she and I had together and just being there with her. And it made me respect the idea of what it means to read, right?

But when we talk about going back to the PDF thing, right? A guy comes home and he's supposed to go online and fill out an application, but he can't even read. How is he supposed to follow basic instructions during transportation and trying to get onto the train and navigate through all of the basic necessities in life and he can't even read. There's an even more startling picture to that, right? What about due process Right a guy's in a courtroom and a lawyer is giving him paperwork and he can't even read So there's there's there's no system in place um And I think that that's something that needs to be that needs to be addressed

I want to get to what were the circumstances that got your sentence reduced and how'd that come about? Okay, so I can't even count how many motions I filed throughout my incarceration. 440-10 is witness of motion to vacate. Rated error com nobis, which is an appeal to a judge to the appate division, to overturn your appeal, your right to appeal. I filed a motion called the Domestic Violence Justice Survivors Act. And I knew that the motion was going to get denied because I didn't qualify for the motion. But my spirit told me to do it. My intuition told me to just file it.

And I filed it. And in the process of filing that motion, that's when I met Allison Hart and Barbara Zoloff at the Center for Appellate Litigation. And they have what they call is the YEARS program, Youth Emergent Assisted Resentencing Program. litigation and they have what they call is the years program youth emergent assisted resentencing program and what they do is they look for individuals who meet a certain age bracket when they were sentenced uh a crime and then the sentence that's attached usually disparaging

sentences and so um the motion got denied but in the process I connected with Allison and they reached out to me and they said hey listen um we think you qualify for the program we think you're the poster child for this program based on your circumstances and it that began the process of my release. I think what played a significant role was what I had done while I was in prison because that's one of the major things that the district attorney's office had looked at. That's one of the major things that Josh and Allison and everybody had brought to the attention of these people.

Say, okay, you have a guy who has these set of circumstances, but look at what he has done while he was incarcerated. Look what he has been able to accomplish. And he did all of this under the pretenses that he was never going to get out. So we were going back and forth. We filed a bunch of paperwork. We had to get a bunch of documents. I sent out a whole bunch of documents, and they put together what they call a mitigation packet. accountability and a whole bunch of other factors. And they submitted it. It was a 44020 in New York State, which is a motion to resentence or a motion to vacate the sentence. And initially, the ball was rolling. The district attorney's office had

initially conceded to the motion saying saying we're not going to oppose the motion and then something happened I'm not exactly sure what happened but maybe Josh he has more of a background insight and at that time me and Bruce were working I didn't know Josh and Bruce said yo listen man I'm to talk to my man, Josh Dubin. He knows some people that know some people. And I didn't know that he was working with Derrick Hamilton. Derrick Hamilton and I had worked in a law library together. So I think when he mentioned to Derrick, he said, you know, my nickname was Superb.

That was my nickname in prison. And he said, do you know a guy named Superb? He said, yeah, I know Superb. So him and Derek got together along with Allison, Harp, and Barbara Zoloff, and they went back to the district attorney's office in full force. They had all kind of me-gay. Josh, you could probably attest to that. No, I mean, I don't.

You know the details more than I do. Well, I mean i mean listen i don't want to get too much into the details because i i don't think they matter and i think i want to make sure that the credit is given where it belongs which is probably to sheldon first before transforming his life um and to barbara and Allison, because these are two amazing attorneys that saw potential and the injustice in what was done to Sheldon and who he had become. And they got to know him. And I'm on the phone with Bruce. And these prison calls, if they're not a legal call, these prison calls are like sometimes they just end real abruptly. It's like, oh, shit, oh, shit, oh, sometimes they just end real abruptly. You know, it's like, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, I got to go by, you know, or, oh, they're giving me a hard

time. They're doing a count now. I got to go by. Or sometimes it'll just click off. So Bruce is, you know, about to get out. He's got his clemency is granted. He had gone to the parole board with a claim of innocence, which is so rare, and got granted the parole pending the reinvestigation of his case. But he has clemency with no strings attached other than being on probation until they make a final decision on his innocence. And he's on the phone with me going, yo, yo, you got to, I got this guy, Sheldon Johnson, right here, and he wants to talk to you. His lawyer knows your cousin. And I was like, what the fuck is this guy talking about? And I was like, Bruce, man, I got to worry about about getting you out and this was going on for like a full month and you know he's right

here he's right here he wants to talk to you I said I'm not talking to anyone else I'm dealing with your case I got to get you out he's like please talk to Allison she's been at your house before no you got something you got your lines crossed somewhere. So I finally like paid attention to it. I had a million other cases going on. And Bruce was our first client at the Perlmutter Center. And we were like, you know, really lining things up for his release. And I speak to Sheldon's lawyer. she said you know I'm actually friends with your cousin and when she organized the baby shower for your first for your daughter was my oldest Lila she said I was at your house for your baby shower I remember your wife Jillian

real well she's like tells me I remember your house and i'm like this come on you can't make this shit up the connections the connection and uh i mean in new york city it was just too wild right so i said send me send me um the mitigation submission and that was when I read about Sheldon and I went to Derek Hamilton, who is a one man cyclone of justice. You know, he's been on the show. He's just he is doing he just does so much for so many people. He's like, I know him. He's an amazing guy. We got it. We're going to get him out. So right in the middle of it, there's so many Trump things where there's cameras all outside that I forget. I forget what it was.

Pushing it back, they said, oh, it's too much going on. What was it though? It was him being indicted or? It was him being indicted and then they were saying that it was too much police activity there that they just kept pushing it back. So what happened was there was like we we were at the district attorney's office on a different case that we're working on and we asked to speak to the

district attorney of New York and let him know that we were now representing Sheldon along with the Center for Appellate litigation and made a passionate plea on Sheldon's behalf and I don't want to go too much into the details, but we ended up, you know, kudos to the Manhattan District Attorney's Office for actually, you know, paying attention and seeing that Sheldon was worthy of a second chance. And really, the sentence did not fit the crime. And the twist on Sheldon's story that I, it's like a head scratcher to me that I asked him about was the judge that sentenced him as a black man. And, you know, I said to Sheldon, did that ever strike you as, And, you know, I said to Sheldon, did that ever strike you as, I mean, here's an African-American judge that looks at this young black kid and should understand his circumstances and have a better understanding of it and not want to throw away his life.

And I said, so what do you do with that fact? And Sheldon said, well, I'll let you respond to it because he said something to me that I didn't really. I mean, this judge now, you know, sits as a federal judge in the Southern District of New York. I don't know what to make of that. I don't know. It just seems so strange to me that that is who, you know, said this guy's not worthy of redemption. was that just in my experiences dealing with judges and prosecutors and correctional officers in particular who are black, right? They struggle with this idea that they feel that they have to be harder on their own people, for one, to make an example, and so that their is supposed to be someone who is in a position of power and authority, should be able to look down. And I mean, maybe he saw something.

I don't know what his experiences was. I can't speak to that. Maybe he saw me as a menace. But I do honestly believe that we need these people to be able to look at things from an objective, right? Because as a person of color and in a position of power, a lot of times it's a subjective reality. It's a reality that's attached to personal feelings and experiences.

And a person who's in that position should be in a position to be more objective, right? When we talk about objectivity. And I think that's what it boils down to, you know, subjectivity versus objectivity, right? I think what you're talking about, too, is expressed by, I know a lot of guys that have been, that have had dealings with black cops. Black guys having dealings with black cops, and they will tell you, man,

they will go out of their way, oftentimes, to show that they're not showing any favoritism yeah like they have to show because they're a minority in their precinct and they they go out of the way to show that they fit in with that culture and so so so you know and and you know showing just to speak to what he said right like when i was in was in upstate New York, Auburn and Clinton and Attica, you had a sprinkle of maybe one or two black cops. And the black cops were always the worst. Right. They are a minority and they don't want to be ostracized by their coworkers or made to seem as if they're showing favoritism towards the prisoners. So they go out of their way to just be extra.

That's what we used to say. He's just being extra. He wants to enforce all of the rules. What a white cop might say, this guy got a pot and an eye. So, you know, in prison, you know, we have like, you know, we have pots, guys cook, and you have an eye. It's usually like a coil that's detached from a hot pot, and you use it to make food.

There's been times when, you know, you'll have a white cop that'll come in the cell, and it's contraband. You're not supposed to have it, but you'll have a white cop that'll come in the cell, he'll see a pot and he'll just be like he's just using that to cook then you have a black cop that'll come and be like no he can't have that you know and it's and it's just it's just it's just it's just interesting um and i think it goes and i think it goes back even farther than that right when? When you go back all the way into slavery, you know, you had the house nigger and the field nigger.

Excuse my language for using those words, right? You could use them. We can't. Right. You know what I'm saying? And the idea of the person, the guy who was in the house, he was harder on his own people, his fellow slaves, than some of the overseers may have been, or the slave masters. So it's this transferred

psychological state where a person feels like they have to just go above and beyond, like Joe just said, to show that, oh, I'm not showing favoritism. Or I'm not speaking this whole talking white.

God, it's such a fucked up system. It's crazy. It's so fucked up. And every time we have one of these conversations, I leave and I just drive. And I think when I'm driving home, just like, what the fuck? Like, just the sea of human beings that are entrapped in this system. What is the number of incarcerated individuals in the United States right now? Two million.

So that's more than the population of Austin. It's actually 1.92. We round it off as two million. Roughly Austin and the surrounding areas. So interesting that I was looking at Austin, right? Texas. Texas taxpayers pay $3.5 million in taxes towards prisons. $3.5 million. How much of that could be saved if it's invested? I mean, it would be a fascinating study if one state would implement what we're talking about, like community outreach programs,

starting at a grassroots level, how much money would be saved by the state by investing that money? So for example, right, on the 17th of this month, we went to, I told you we went to the rally, treatment, not jails, right? So the idea of the treatment, not jails,

is to have a diversion court that deals with substance abuse and give the judges the discretion to send people who clearly have substance abuse issues into a program as opposed to incarceration. Right. And for every dollar that is spent in this program, you save two dollars and twenty one cents. save $2.21. I mean, there are studies we could go through, you know, incarceration in the federal prisons and the state prisons. And at the risk of sounding like stat machines, you obviously see Sheldon is very well versed. I am as well. But the point is, is the short answer is we would save a ton of money and be able to invest in people and things to make people happy, not sad, to engage in enjoyment, not suffering. Productivity, not dependence. Wouldn't it just take one governor to implement something like this that would show that there's a benefit financially for the state? But look who they're beholden to. You mentioned it earlier. Then they have to worry

about how will that impact my electability, right? Because are the corrections officers union, the police union, are they going to get behind me in the next election? You know, it takes, I think when you take a step back from a governor, like we have a guy who is the DA in Brooklyn. His name is District Attorney Gonzalez. And we have an amazing relationship with him. The Perlmutter Center, Derek Hamilton especially, where we're able to go to him and the people that work with him and say, look. And we have a client right now that's in prison for I think 30 years on a 30-year sentence for a $6 robbery at a drug house. And the diversion

programs, the drug diversion programs that are available now weren't available back then. He's 69 years old. So we're really hoping, I think we're very close to the finish line of getting him released. So, you know, I think that the short answer is, yeah, it would take a governor to implement a program to be able to point funds in the right direction. point funds in the right direction. You talked about, just one second, you talked about HBCUs. FAMU in Florida, the only land grant HBCU in the state, is the disparity in funding of that school versus other schools in the state is not a matter of, you know, it's a matter of fact. I was recently arguing on behalf of these students that just want to be funded the same way Florida State, University of Florida, and all the other public universities are.

Florida State, University of Florida, and all the other public universities are. Like two weeks before my argument on the state's motion to dismiss, the United States government, the United States Department of Education sent a letter to the governor in Florida and said, here are the statistics. This is all traceable to what they call du jour segregation. There was the, you know, and please fund the school appropriately. Well, the judge just dismissed the case a few days ago. because we're going to appeal it to the 11th Circuit in Atlanta. But it's not a matter of – there's no controversy. There's no argument that, no, we are funding it appropriately. FAMU was founded on a slave plantation, a former slave plantation. And when I brought that up at the oral argument, the judge went nuts on me. What? No, you're saying it's a slave plant. No, I'm saying that's where it started.

And if you take a thread and pull it forward through time, the United States Office of Civil Rights in the 1970s, in the 1990s, went to the state of Florida and said, you are not funding FAMU appropriately. And they entered into these consent decrees with them, where they had to do what's called destroy vestiges of de jure segregation. Because since Brown versus Board of Education, there was another Supreme Court decision called Fortis, which talked about how do you establish that a pattern or practice is traceable to segregation. And the state of Florida just has ignored it. FAMU is funded appropriately? Or is Governor DeSantis going to worry more about Florida State University being somehow shortchanged in the national championship and earmark funds to challenge the college football folks to make sure? I mean, are you fucking kidding me? I went to Florida State. I think it's fucking it's lunacy. So to answer your question is yes, but he's not going to do it for whatever political reasons he has. Why not fund the school so that there is some, you know, a level playing field, you know.

And it's a controversial subject amongst ignorant voters. It's a controversial subject amongst ignorant voters because all Governor DeSantis has to say is he took a page out of Trump's book because he knows it works. All he has to say is woke, woke, woke, woke, woke, woke, woke. What does that mean? What does it mean? It means different things to different people. All I'm saying is look at the statistics and you cannot come to any conclusion but that FAMU, the only HBCU that is a land grant institution in Florida, meaning that they were granted land, is funded disproportionate to any other college in the state. And there is no reason for it other than that it is a vestige

of segregation. And, you know, really the state has the burden to say, no, there is a justified reason for it under the law. I'm just giving it to you in plain English. They don't put anything forth. I mean, I had the judge asking me questions in the oral argument on the motion to dismiss questions like this. Well, couldn't it be that Florida State University had a better boosters club and that they were able to raise more money? And I said, you're absolutely right. You're making my argument for me. When you are struggling to make sure that the microscopes work in your science labs, which one of my clients will tell you is the case, and you have dilapidated buildings, are you worrying about starting a fundraising organization and boosters? Well, couldn't they

have gone and lobbied the legislator? Yeah, they could have. Who was running the legislator in Florida? And so when you start to run into arguments like that, the writing's sort of on the wall, and we have to now take it up with the 11th Circuit in Atlanta and try to get that decision overturned. This was on a motion to dismiss where the standard is just, I have to take all of the facts that the plaintiffs are alleging as true and assume them to be true at this stage. So it's, you know, the point is the problem would not exist if the governor just said, you know what, I just got these statistics from the Department of Education.

Let's just fund FAMU proportionate to how we fund every other school. And they just don't. And what they fall back on is, well, you know, there's merit-based funding. I mean, start peeling the layers of that. So you look at the graduation rates, you look at other metrics. I mean, I think- Quantifiable. Yeah. I think you see the flaw there, right? So yeah, it can get frustrating at times and what, you know, like what, I have a choice now. Do I fold up the tent? No, you go to the court of

appeals and you make your case and you just keep on fighting and trying to get it right. So to piggyback off of what you just said, right, you know, when you say, can the governor do these things, right? Yes, they can. A lot of times these objectives are long term and it takes time to quantify them. are long term. And it takes time to quantify them. So when we speak about quantifying like these examples of what are the circumstances surrounding the lacking of funding, a lot of times these governors are more concerned about whether or not this is going to come out during election year and people are going to, you know, whether liberals or conservatives are going to go against them and vote against them because they supported education of incarcerated individuals. I remember when I was going to Auburn and I was in the Cornell Prison Education Program. This was in 2014. You had correctional officers' families outside the

facility protesting as the volunteers were coming into prison with signs saying, does my kid have to get convicted in order to get a free education? And the idea was that we were receiving a free education because we were incarcerated, which is not the case. The idea is that education has been proven to prevent recidivism. Individuals who have been shown to acquire associate's degrees and bachelor's degrees are like 91, 92% less likely to return back to prison. So this is quantifiable evidence of how you take money and you allocate it into one project so over the long run you can save money.

So it can be done. The response to that is not stop prisoners from being educated it's like make it easier for everybody exactly that's the that's the response i mean i think the easy answer though to your question of why i don't focus my attention on governors is i like am i leaving this in people like bill clinton's hands when he was the governor of arkansas that fucking guy am i leaving it in the hands of Andrew Cuomo? Right. That fucking guy?

Right. I mean, that guy wouldn't answer a fucking letter, wouldn't return, you know, his clemency program was to not have a clemency program. He was too busy hugging people. He was too busy, yeah, rubbing shoulders or whatever the fuck he was doing. Stealing feels. Oh, my bad. I ain't mean it.

You know, I was just, you know. That's just your opinion. Yeah, so I think that the time, energy, and resources are better spent. I think the private sector comes up with better solutions oftentimes at helping, watch how what are they called the virtuous cycle the virtuous cycle works like this when i saw the work that allison hopped and barbara zoloft were doing at the center for appellate litigation i said this is this is like you know god's work this is like beautiful stuff they're doing and they're on a shoestring budget. So rather than be like, you know, the civil rights community can be interesting. It brings out the

best and the worst in people. A lot of these civil rights organizations, you know, again, you throw human beings into any endeavor together, they're going to fuck it up. They like to argue and get like, um, I he goes he goes and look what happened to me by coming on the show and the some folks tried to censor me and I just wouldn't have it so I saw the work that they were doing and I said you know what do you do you need help and they said we need help we need we have to do these mitigation reports and we have to hire people like in sheldon's case to assess him a clinical psychologist a social worker whatever

it is and we don't have the money to get the reports done and there's just two of us so the perlmutter center is providing them with the money to do those reports um Zeidman at CUNY is like he's this guy that I think that he's responsible single-handedly for over 50 Clemency's in the state of New York. Amazing, phenomenal guy he's coming actually he's coming to Queens Defenders to do a um we're getting ready to start a Clemency initiative at Queens Defenders he's coming to train a bunch of guys he's just this guy yeah he's that doesn't surprise. He's a guy that just he's a letter writing machine and he keeps the pressure on and he just doesn't give up on people.

And, you know, he needs help. And we're looking for ways to collaborate. So we said, well, what what is it that moves the needle to these clemency units at governor's offices? Because the governor is not paying attention. They have a battery of people that listen to these cases. And what they do are videos. He does these really great videos that are like a day in the life and to sort of humanize the client so they're not just on paper and pictures. And they go and interview them and have them talk about what it would mean to be free and how they've changed themselves. So he needed a little bit of help to get these videos produced. So we've agreed to donate some funds there. And I think it's just like having this more synergistic approach rather than

have it be about me or put my name on the door, let me get the credit. We just all pitch in. To wrap this up, if someone's listening to this and they want to reach out, they want to help, they want to contribute, maybe somebody does want to, some Jeff Bezos type character does want to get involved and see if there is something that they could do in terms of like some sort of a community outreach center or something that can help. What can they do? Who can they reach out to? They can go to the Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice at Cardozo Law. It's like Sheldon can Google. Anyone can Google it. There it is right there. Yeah, there it is.

And I think Googling it would be faster. If you scroll down to the bottom of it, you'll find the Donate button. You know, there are ways, and there's some of my students, there's a Give Now button. We put it all the way to the bottom. But in any event, you can reach out to me at joshua.dubin at yu.edu. That's my email for the Perlmutter Center. most prestigious law firms in the country in a couple of weeks that has agreed to not donate just financial resources, but woman and manpower to help litigate these cases. That came as a result of the exposure that we're getting here. So as I always do,

I thank you from deep within my soul for allowing us to have this platform and, you know, the commitment that you made to doing this quarterly and telling these stories. I'm very thoughtful in who I bring on. I think this was one of the best ones yet. They've all been amazing. best ones yet it was all they've all been amazing um i just love i love the fact that that sheldon was able to tell his story and this was a different version of um i think an important element of the story that needs to be told so my my deep respect and love for him for you and my same to you you know i think what you do is extraordinary it's it's so admirable it's so important and it it it sets an example to so many people that there's great work that can be done and real good.

And Sheldon, thank you very much for being here, man. Thank you. Thank you for the example that you set and all you've done to educate people and to just to set an example with your own life that there's a way out of this and and and um you can also find us at queens defenders.org um there's also uh my email address is s johnson at queens defenders.org you can reach out to us we're also on the precipice of what a major announcement working with columbia university their youth justice ambassador program and coordinating with professors and volunteers on a major announcement working with Columbia University, their Youth Justice Ambassador Program, and coordinating with professors and volunteers from Columbia

to work with our Youth Emergent Leadership Program. And, you know, we can use all of the help that we can get. Well, I'm sure you're going to get some. People are listening. All right. Thank you, Joe. Thank you very much.

Appreciate you having me here, man. It's an honor. Appreciate you being here. It's an honor to have you on. Thank you. Thanks, very much. Appreciate you having me here, man. It's an honor. Appreciate you being here. It's an honor to have you on. Thank you. Thanks, Josh. All right. Bye, everybody.