#2096 - Josh Dubin & Sheldon Johnson

0:03The Joe Rogan Experience Showing my day, Joe Rogan podcasted my night all day

0:12Okay, Mr. Dugan, good to see you again, sir Mr. Rogan, always a pleasure, introduce your friend This is my friend, my client, my brother, Sheldon Johnson I figured 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, 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?

2:19I'm going on nine months, I got out May 4th and you were in for 25, 25 years and five months Two stitches Two stitches 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 Hopped, who had been working on his 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 is 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 early as date of release was I think 20...

3:3549 and he had already served 25 years so I was just blown away by the level of accomplishment and the mental wear with all 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 like I said, his life, 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 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 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 he didn't do much to advance criminal justice reformer you have to confront it, it's there, is it that all people that get wrongfully convicted or people of color?

5:31no 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 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 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 nauseam 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 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 lunch before we came, it's like the precise conversation that we had 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 run for Senate we have to fix this, this is a problem it'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 red lining, everything pull that mic up a little bit yeah just that's good, that's good, yeah that'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?

9:23yeah well that's a vestige of this episode is brought to you by NetSuite until they invent a crystal ball who knows what the future holds for business until then over 40 ,000 businesses have future -proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle the number one cloud ERP bringing accounting, financial management, inventory and HR into one platform with real -time insights and forecasting, you're able to peer into the future and seize new opportunities download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning for free at NetSuite .com slash Rogan that's NetSuite .com slash Rogan this episode is brought to you by Buffalo Trace Distillery actually have some Buffalo Trace cigars here they just sent me one of the world's most award -winning distilleries that's been making whiskey the same way for more than 200 years made as a tribute to the rugged free spirited pioneers who blaze their own trail to new frontiers it embodies the perfectly untamed spirit of independence it defines what an award -winning bourbon should be aged nearly twice as long as competitors in new charred white oak barrels and bottled at 90 proof Buffalo Trace is the perfect bourbon to be enjoyed in any way, anywhere and the taste it's damn good it's bold and sophisticated yet incredibly smooth finishing long and deep it's authentically American representing uncompromising quality for the rugged, the powerful and the passionate tap the banner to learn more or visit Buffalo Trace Distillery .com that's Buffalo Trace Distillery .com distilled, aged and bottled by Buffalo Trace Distillery 90 proof Franklin County Kentucky Buffalo Trace American family owned, independent and perfectly untamed that's a vestige of slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, Red Mining, everything exercising your right to a jury trial and punish 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 keep telling you that this forum keeps paying dividends we are 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 I you know what drives someone to want to get into politics these days is for a different psychiatrist I have no clue what the law is but you know like there's such a swirl of ego and power struggle and divided the 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 sand castle 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 one day's apart and he flew when we flew down it was the first time he'd ever been on an airplane wow was that like fucking weird right?

13:25no I was it was I actually loved it I was I was very excited I'm kinda 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 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 and 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 achievement or opportunities like judges 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 equitable but you know everybody has that same opportunity you have a chance you have a chance yeah a real chance well so tell us about your upbringing upbringing so I'm a coda my mother's death my father's death my sister's death my aunt's death I grew up in a deaf household what's a coda a coda is a child of deaf adults that's crazy this is a second podcast in a row I'm doing with someone who's like that yeah motion cashier who was on yesterday his parents are deaf he signs and yeah he's he's he had a translate for his mother's 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 belong that you know kids are cruel so growing up you know kids would say oh you're my lot or you're 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 and my father I'm also a product of intergenerational incarceration 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 that 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 Eastside and Westside on Fifth Avenue you hit Fifth Avenue you were like oh wow you live in a nice place okay crack error 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 112 street and Lennox Avenue in all black community so as a child I grew up protecting my mother so I never really I felt 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 that I was that I could hear so there were times where I would be standing there with my mother and like people would just be making all type of random comments and just disrespectful you know just hateful stuff and I would sit there as a kid just kind of like looking up like like dude I can like hate you so you know I think my life took a significant turn and 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 have one teacher 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 you had to stack a 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 was sprinkled 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 burn sensation so 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 to the hallway he chased me into the hallway I grabbed the fire extinguisher off the wall and I sprayed until he fell that was my reaction too I was like he was cursing it 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 ten year ago put me in handcuffs and everything and I had a I had a council 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 or Dorsey ten year old kid man just you know just Jesus Christ in a stray jacket being escorted to a hospital they stick me with a needle and so for months from Mount Sinai went to metropolitan and I attempted to escape from metropolitan and they sent me to a more secure area what's metropolitan metropolitan metropolitan hospital so why did they send you to a psych ward for that I guess day day you know I was considered 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 spoff it so I went through that just being a subject to just a whole bunch of different medications Melville how door lithium cold jet in and then they transfer me to Pleasantville from Pleasantville I went to Hawthorne and you know and I'm gonna 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 that life there was stuff there was really bad stuff happening if you look up Hawthorne's pseudonols to this day it's been closed for allegations of sex trafficking and child abuse just just so because we know it because we're from New York but those are juvenile groups yeah they like juvenile detention of facilities so they consider me as a person they put what they call the 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 to 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 offended for myself I was out and so it was three years of that three years of that for one instance for a guy trying to hit you with a fucking roar 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 I felt like after I after I left that place I was a darker person because of the things that I saw and the things that I went to so I come back and we're talking about this is 1988 crack error Harlem you know you got kids 13 14 years old making a thousand dollars 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 I mean come on man like I had freeway Ricky Ross on here twice we just last night 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 brawl 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 resting piece he was the guy who stood in front of the city council on television and exposed that 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 the fun the Contras versus the Centinistas in Nicaragua it's really not it's 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 it's really not in dispute that it happened not in dispute at all and and what was what what well I'm gonna let Sheldon tell well well 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 difference is in sentencing the difference is sent that's the wildest thing one to five is like one to five ratio and then you had to Nelson or the Rockefeller drug laws that came into effect 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 street smoking crack and the fathers were either industries using drugs selling drugs or in prison with astronomical sentences and removed from the family structure and 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 a mother's who you know 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 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 stimulus and then you have a response which is equal to the condition that we see and 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 and then they throw crack in it like just gas a lean on a fire it's crazy because we've had this conversation in the abstract we've had this conversation you know about this very subject and then the more I got to know Sheldon in 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 I hope 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 and to me you just can't ignore it it doesn't say well poor Sheldon I think that because I guess you know I know him and the human being so I like I trip out when people are like anybody that murders or robes 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 of 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 it 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 were both 48 I don't want to get into my family struggled 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 you know 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 you know I don't think anyone is going to argue with the fact that you're impacted and molded from 10 to 13 and forward 13 to 18 by for 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 four weeks when I was 17 to Washington or even higher school I went to school four weeks 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 masters in human services before we get to your masters well why don't you explain so you get back at 13 so I get back into my community at 13 and I'm just kind of not only am I not only am I like trying to wean myself from all of the narcotics that have been pumped into me for these last three years I'm talking I gained so much weight I went from a slim kid to being fat because of the medications that they was giving so what are they giving you from they were giving me how -door lithium thorazine milleril another medication called called jinn 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 all the kids and that's what they did to most of the kids they just want to keep them calm and quiet keep them calm and quiet and are they giving you any counseling when you're in there or the tongue this episode is brought to you by buffalo trace distillery actually have some buffalo trace cigars here they just sent me one of the world's most award -winning distilleries that's been making whiskey the same way for more than 200 years made as a tribute to the rugged free spirited pioneers who blaze their own trail to new frontiers it embodies the perfectly untamed spirit of independence it defines what an award -winning bourbon should be aged nearly twice as long as competitors in new charred white oak barrels and bottled at 90 proof buffalo trace is the perfect bourbon to be enjoyed in any way anywhere and the taste it's damn good it's bold and sophisticated yet incredibly smooth finishing long and deep it's authentically American representing uncompromising quality for the rugged the powerful and the passionate tap the banner to learn more or visit buffalo trace distillery dot com that's buffalo trace distillery dot com distilled, aged and bottled by buffalo trace distillery 90 proof franklin county Kentucky buffalo trace American family owned independent and perfectly untamed 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 feeling to check but the council's really the council's as far as obviously showing the council's didn't really care there was so much going the council's was just there for a check there was so much going on that was above and beyond what the council's could control it was just ridiculous you had the kids going down into white planes breaking in the cars stealing getting high going across the campus having sex with the girls it was just insane what was going on and I 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 benzi box remember the benzi 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 benzi box and sell it so I learned how to survive there I mean I've always known how to survive superficially but from I just felt 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 like I was malable you know I was 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 right of passage right in my community when you went to prison and you came back and you didn't you didn't tell on nobody and you were able to hold it down you know and and where it got back to the streets that you 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 bullpen for three four days before you even got out and I remember lying to the officer he said I hold you I said I'm 16 because I wanted to go to Rikers Island so that I could come back and be around the older guys and tell them hey listen I went and I still got my sneakers you know and and and 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 with your social security for disability my father's in prison and it's just I just I started selling drugs guy offered me an opportunity to be a lookout he said listen kid I just need you know I'm gonna give you 75 hours a day I just need you to stand on that corner and when you see the police car just you know oh shit oh shit that was like a little thing and I would just stand in eventually I just slowly moved up the ranks and I 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 I what I saw what I was exposed to maybe into someone else it turned me into into 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 you know you lose sense of what's permissible and what's not and what's impermissible right you know I'm committing crimes and it just doesn't even matter no more I was never a guy that you know to hurt any old people my era you know when you see old people come through you helped them with their bags and we have respect for our elders that was something that was always taught to us now these kids is just that's a whole not the story but yeah I'm just and I'm committing and I'm getting arrested for little stupid crimes driving without a license standing on a corner little smog petty drug cases and I'm just 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 velvita shells and cheese you know and for some people that's significant you know I can buy couch now I can buy a real couch that that's comfortable I can buy a TV for my mother I can you know set up a cable the way 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 her rent um what's 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 which is so walked and so misplaced like Scarface the movie right you know you have this oh I don't work I don't break my balls in 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 in these morals and you begin you begin to take them on as part of your characteristics and you just you just make you end up making really really bad decisions that can cause you for the rest of your life like my son like when my son when he when he got into uh he got into a fight with the Asian guy they called them the Columbia Law Student Killer right um he gets into a fight with this Chinese guy and um 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 um 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 um and I just felt like you know a lot of times these conditions are created and there's really no there's no alternatives I had never been on a plane like just like I never even thought about going on a plane um so I'm growing up in this community um my father's gone my mother's you know she's deaf I ended up having the son my son was born in 1993 and um that just made things that's just exacerbated the issue right so now I'm really you know what am I gonna do now you know I have a son I have someone to look at and despite how many times I said that I was never gonna be who my father was my actions were actually setting me up to be exactly who my father was and remove me from my son's life um and in 1990 I caught the gun charge that uh that that triggered the felony that allowed them to be able to sentence me the way that they did in 1994 um I also caught another case at that time I was give I was I was what you call um giving out consignment on drugs um two people in particular I gave consignment to when I ended up getting arrested for a case um and when I sent someone to go pick up the money from them it kind of just was like you know ah whatever I'm not paying them so when I came home um one guy in particular I ran into him with his girlfriend 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 gonna pay him yeah I'm not gonna pay and then the case that you were arrested for got dismissed got dismissed I got to then you to then you come home so I come home and you know I need my money I need my money I'm just just just me being honest is just misbearing straight you know I gave you something and we had an understanding that you were gonna pay me and when I came home when I finally located this particular individual he had his girlfriend with him um and this guy opened me five thousand hours for some drugs that I gave him I won't consignment I gave him my eighth eighth of a kilo which is 125 grams of cocaine um and when I saw him he had a bunch of jewelry on he was with his girlfriend she had a bunch of jewelry on I said hey man where's my money at oh y 'all I was gonna pay you and as far as I was concerned his jewelry was we was even so I robbed him and I took his jewelry and his girlfriend happened to be there and um 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 the set and he got two stitches and they gave me 25 years for that case did you hit him in the head?

40:49no one of the guys that I was with hit him in head um and he identified me in a photo array unbeknownst to me he identified me in a photo array um this guy you know as far as I was concerned he was in the streets just like I was so right I didn't really understand that you know like I said we go back to morals and values and principles and how warp they can be right and my mind at the time this is a guy who I gave something to he's living in illegal life I'm living in illegal life so as far as I was concerned at that time it was fair game and 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 selling drugs and I was going to get my money and the same circumstances kind of ensued so I'm hey he was 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?

42:15no he didn't get touched I roughed up a little bit but there was no physical there was no physical harm nothing going back to morals and values and principles right in my mind he was fair game he was selling drugs I'm selling drugs you owe me money I came to take what you have and that world that was considered as permissible these are one of the rules of something that was permissible and 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 -park store I said there was selling drugs out of the auto -park 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 a guy that got involved with the gangs I was blood I was a gang member this was where the cut comes from on my face I have a bunch of stab wounds from just being in those environments and being on Rikers Island and just worrying with other rival gangs mostly Latin kings and then yet does 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 on 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 made some mistakes and I had done some things 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 then I ended up getting 50 years 5 -0 so they give you 25 for each case 25 for each case consecutive so I remember I remember like blonde 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 my lawyer 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's supposed to do a report prior to your sentencing and it's called a post supervision interview pre -sentencing investigations called the PSI pre -sentencing investigation there was never no pre -sentencing investigation there was never no mitigating evidence presented on my behalf to you know how like why I made some of the decisions that I made and he just called me a minister's society and he just 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 gel time you have and I would 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 Lord library and I forget how I get the world all in that 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 gonna die in prison man I just really believed that I was gonna 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 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 at their best were guys who were involved in education post -secondary education programs they were running the program they was running the violence groups they was 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 I was 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 gonna 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 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 they would go back for 21 days they would do it 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 I just didn't want to be that dad like I really was looking at myself and really evaluating asking myself like oh what the fuck are you doing I was still so I was smoking a lot of weed at the time I was drinking gel house hooch and I was at my worst and I had to 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 two being 210 pounds to white 168 in like a matter of seven months deflated me and when I got out I made a decision that I was gonna 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 gonna try to do something good if all else fails I could always go back to doing back but let me try let me give it a shot and I ended up getting to school program I got my GD 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 like things to be a certain way and it was to the 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 get rid of you because I was the type of person who was saying you doing that for what reason now you can't do that the rule says that you can't do this you can't do this this is what the rules say and I was of the prison or the rules of the gang 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 I say I'm in green haven and the guys 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 belongings so I was a rule guy and they just you know it was till 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 till 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 the what they called set trip and began the the organization began to implode on itself 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 works what's positive visualization is deep breathing how to remove 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 had seen so many guys get carried out I see guys dying not just from just being stabbed or with altercations from officers I see guys dying from one guy I knew he used to drink so much who whose his his liver failed on 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 and I really 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 who how are they making that so there's a bunch of ways they could make it you use fruit juice or but a lot of guys use tomato paste tomato paste warden sugar you need a kicker which is like a what they call like a mash you 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 the whole 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 it has a component in it called methane and it goes straight to your brain but like you know in the streets when distillation are 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 it 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 is it consist of usually like spoil fruit some spoil bread with mold on it because it begins the process of fermentation it's like a mash yeah it's got to be super toxic for it oh super fucking hot it uses drop and like flies like flies here's the when when you hear like going forward what how sheldon changes life and not just the correspondence courses but all of these various counseling programs outreach programs his connections to the outside world what she'll talk about is that the impossibly sick fucking twisted him 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 what 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 let the anger management class that they take and it's fucking it's on zoom it's run by a guy that can't fucking turn his camera on and it's like it is it's it's bedroom there's just people screaming oh man I can't I can't hear you what the fuck did you just say what are you here 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 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 but again the the just the the paradox here is that this in this insane inhumane sentence actually saved Shelton but why aren't weren't there those programs that thought that implementation in his community to save him as a kid right and I don't just take cases you know at the program center we're on the executive director of program center for legal justice at Cardoza 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 say what programs are you in and I feel like an idiot asking because I'd be a fucking puddle on the floor if 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 with the noise Shelton told me about this thing called a human harpoon that people make at a magazine and a sharpened toothbrush I can you can you fucking the mind fuck on this years they 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 or bond or what or a bone or a bone from something that they ate 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 throughout feces 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 halfway 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 when I think about you know he was 10 years old my son's 11 and that 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 gonna try to do good like what how difficult was the process of trying to it was lonely establish an education it was lonely I had you know one side I had the guys who I used to run with saying 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 or you know you had a handful of guys that that that committed me to say y 'all applaud you you know I got you man if you need some help I can help you do this I can help you do that but you know if I just I felt like everybody the world was watching including my family because they didn't believe it up until the point where I graduated from Cornell my cousin told me she said she said you know when you called me inviting 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 or 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 but I just felt like I was just determined to succeed I just had this I just had this this energy in my spirit and I just and it was the it was the it was the will to live as far as I'm concerned it was the will to live I had read when I was in solitary confinement I read Victor Frankles our man search for meaning and one of the things that that struck me as being so powerful he says if you have a why then you have a reason to 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 the reason and I and I'm sitting there in the cell and I'm asking myself do you have a fucking reason to live you know and I think about my family and and that was my reason and I wanted to beat the system and that was my way of beating the system I'm not gonna 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 at the Correspondence courses I got um involved in the Cornell Prison Education program I obtained my associate's degree and then I went on to obtain my my be my bachelor's in behavioral science for mercy but you know in this process I'm you know I'm going through I'm measuring other young men you know now guys are looking at me and saying oh Lord wait a minute man this this guy is on to something I got guys on both sides now saying oh 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 what programs so I ran aggression replacement training and how many years in or do you start doing this um about nine years in eight years in I had a residence in two nineteen ninety seven and about two thousand five this is when I started to make my transitions about eight years in and 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 to for the guys that I knew that were coming to me and asking me for help I was helping guys with the GDs I was I became a two -day program and the rewards that I felt you know it didn't it didn't even matter anymore about when I was gonna 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 a at a earliest age and like he said don't wait till I fall catch me before I fall and that's part of my motto now is some of the work that we do like 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 fall and I want to show them the way and I 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 or drug abuse but how qualified are you to really tell somebody who's sick on heroin and they ready to do anything that they can for a bag of dope or what you went through you can't and this this experience is is priceless you said it that's why you know I'm just sitting back watching the work that Sheldon is doing now he's what what's your official title at the Queens defenders client advocate and we just created the the Yelp we titled it the Yelp me and two other brothers that I was incarcerated with formerly Bruce Bryant and Rashad Rouhani with client advocates we run a youth emergency 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 helped them with job readiness training whether it's OSHA training we helped them get the GDs we direct them to different programs like we got a program called hood coding and this is also a guy who's previously incarcerated and he teach coding he teaches coding to younger kids inside the inner cities and the projects like coding as in 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 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 officer one of the things that I that I take pride in while I was incarcerated I was also in the 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 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 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 to the system tricks you because you catch these cases and what they do is they slap you on a wrist right you catch this gun charge and they say oh no we just gonna give you six months don't worry about it but they don't tell you is that gun charge is 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 gonna not give fucking head off and you're gonna 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 it's still I was in like a situation last time I was here where I felt a little bit hopeless and now I'm more I'm trending toward more hopeful because Bruce Bryan who was on the show is a client advocate at the Queen's Defenders and I don't wear that as a feather of my cap that was just me it was validation that if I get behind this man and give him new life do my part in it Lord knows there were other Steve Ziedman Acuni Law School you know and if it wasn't for you know and honestly I'm I'm I'm adamant about to this day if it wasn't for Josh and Allison Hawk 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 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's an army of people so that all believe that he could make change happen and do positive things when he got out so now he's a client advocate at the Queen's 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 Queen Defenders Queen's Defenders which is it's like the you know the appointed council 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 that you know I'm very thoughtful and who I'd 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 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 him I've seen him do it right in their tracks listen I did but 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 and think through how we can build a community center in East New York and Harlem yeah we could the 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 you know progress has started to happen and we can just do it on the ground but the reason why I mentioned scared straight is because sure I could go in there and talk to these kids they're not gonna I might be certified but I'm not qualified right I didn't I didn't I can't I 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 was your core Stevenson you know he's like a little brother to me I love him sometimes I feel like you know the message might be better coming from Jay Prince then it is for me because he's more qualified I try to wrap my head around what the core when there was a kid and growing up in Newark and the circumstance but 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 tell me he's not gonna spot 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 we set him up we helped him get his resume he's he's working towards his GD 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 his kid is doing amazing like he's just picking up the coatings the guy that I spoke to he said that this 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 but of course the opportunities how do we so now also what we're doing we go into the schools we talking to the teachers we talking to the teachers and the principals and we asking them we're not even gonna 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 and well kids sometimes need to see someone not 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 I don't behave you 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 gonna 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 that's where real help comes from real help comes from someone as you said or who's qualified to do it comes from the same place that you came from that you can identify because I being able to identify is is a critical component like you said like you know this is this is this someone who can identify empathize with what I'm going to where I'm at right now in my life like a lot of the young kids they're they're they're involved in in the gangs and we have this 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 got the kids who are in communities and it's just 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 these this is something that you can do differently we take them to different places we take them to HBCU 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 in the 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 accounts so they can understand the difference between the money that you obtain from the streets and the money that you get working legitimately is two different kinds of money you can 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 weekend you can see that direct deposit when it goes into your account you can take that card and you can actually utilize it to to withdraw your money out the bank that's a big difference civic engagement you know how 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 it costs almost up to $70 ,000 to incarcerate one person but then there's the issue of privatized prisons which is insane that's disturbing it's so disturbing that using human beings as batteries to generate money that's what it's like yeah we're trying to 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 this is 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 and anywhere in the world really win so in any event I was you know doing a relative comparison so how do we put those privatized prisons at a 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 jurors addiction where the case is going to be tried and we make demonstrative aids 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 pro -motor center as well so just being in the boxing industry speaking to the JZ's team at rock nation and JZ and his mom how can we do this and we he has something called the Sean Carter Foundation it's a remarkable he flies way under the radar have you ever heard of it yes all right do you know what it does not exact all right so it's kind of it's kind of remarkable that people know it because of his name and they've heard it but no one really knows like what it does they take children from really from the 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 and they they um 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 Daniel Diaz and really Gloria Carter and a woman named Miss Archer and I I saw what they were doing 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 that my consulting firm at DRC and also are a resource to my students who are taking an internship for the Pearl Mudder 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 male intake coordinator at the Pearl Mudder Center for Legal Justice so she is receiving mail from inmates and helping screen which cases we might want to investigate her name is Samilia McFarland there's a old girl that works at my firm doing advertising and publicity her name is Jala Madri she she made a presentation of me the other day I was fucking blown away that this girl was she was passionate 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 Daniel 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 like there's a lot of people that want help yeah you know Sheldon and I were talking about it before we came and we all 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 a volunteer or I'm interested in helping that will turn you away you just have to say all right I can sit here and talk about it and you know until it happens to you right you know we're talking about not to cut you off right no I need to cut it into some right you talk about like the member of 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 I'm I'm just gonna turn away and I'm not gonna pay attention to it I'm gonna turn a blind eye I'm gonna 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 Jay Foxe wasn't a Parkinson's advocate until it happened for but that's great that he decided to do remarkable but I think that Sheldon makes a great point right where a society of where a society that likes to sit back and and complain we want to react instead of responding like one of my favorite things to do is I like I have severe anxiety about dying and but for whatever reason maybe this balances me out at an airport want to 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 and you know get frustrated berate raise their voice at the fucking ticket attendant I it's it's a remarkable exercise and it's a social experiment I think that if people really like we're able to hover over the room and watch themselves they'd be like what why am I yelling at the ticket attendant there's only two real possible abilities of why this plane is not gonna fly on time there's either a mechanical problem or weather do you want to fly in either of those situations um you know and to watch people um just like you know complain and they get I don't know what they're getting out of it but I just find myself let trying to a be of having 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 um 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 she'll then ask me should I go to law school before we came here and I said I can't I change my mind by the way I might have an opinion now but I told them like most of the lawyers that I find that are most effective aren't the smartest um they're not um 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 scored 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 agree to the degree we place an emphasis on it in our society I'm not sure but my my whole thing is rather than like 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 you know again just try to get some forward momentum and you'd be surprised that at the buy -in that you get um I think that that's why this platform is so important because it 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 Taurig and you know really awesome attorney that's working on the case of peer rushing um this guy Jordan Grazinger who's just thought he was a corporate attorney had nothing to do with this kind of work listen to the podcast he's a passionate passionate advocate um and and he's going to get justice one of these days for peer rushing we've we've tried to help apply pressure through this show by having people reach out to the DA um and and write letters on his behalf and it's it's you know has it worked yet it's working we're gonna get there at some point um so you know that's my objective you know what do what continuing to do these stories because you're right um the the privatization of prisons and the industrial 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 nirlink 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 people 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 and if you sometimes if you break the right piece and the watch the whole the whole watch she says to to to keep time um and it's just you know it's just a poor excuse for it's like putting a bandaid on on on a gunshot wound you know for for for for the government to allow these corporations to privatize they say okay okay it's not our problem anymore we're gonna pass the buck and and let somebody else deal with it now you have these corporations who they really don't they don't really don't care about you know rights and humanity and and cruel and unusual punishment and do process they don't care about none of this stuff well to allow it to exist in the first place you have to ignore the 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 it is in their best interest to try to maximize the amount of profits you make always if they have shareholders their responsibility to those shareholders to maximize profits with each quarter now when that happens with human beings and prisons you can bet your fucking sweet ass they're gonna lock as many people up as they can that's their commodity we know for a fact that happened we know for a fact that prison guard unions they they work hard to make sure that laws are not changed that will incarcerate people for petty drug offenses big business big business big like uh for example uh I was supposed to go testify uh at a congressional sitting hearing on um what they call slave wages right so you have this corporation um core core craft I don't know how familiar you are with core craft is that when they use prisoners yes yes prisoners and all Bernie make license plates and Clinton correctional facility they make mattresses and t -shirts and underwear I was just reading an article today about that I was just reading an article today about food manufacturers that use prisoners to sell commercial food yeah and they they they essentially work as slaves that's quick chill so you have different you have a whole bunch of different um um entities under this one large umbrella right and I remember I was getting paid 17 cents an hour at one point of time 19 cents an hour and um you know for for operating these big machines and they were producing just like a mass amount of a core craft is actually a fortune 500 uh corporation and a function they they they they regulate out of the prison industrial complex there it is you as prisoners 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 can't paying 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 I'm but no it's I'm been told to you right yeah and I mean that if you have a label on everything you buy like this may contain harmful substances this may be bad for your health GMO 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 well how do you not have that because wouldn't that change the way people would buy things well and and and you know the most important um look at this including countries that okay uh 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 flakes cereals ballpark hot dogs to gold metal flour cocoa and rice land 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 the countries that have had products blocked from entering the U .S.

1:38:07for using forced or prison label wow 13 for memme yep exactly slavery and involuntary service to accept as punishment for a climate and we go back to Jim Crow that's what they do yes when right after the emancipation proclamation post antebellum you know they created this this these laws to um convict the freed slaves so that they can continue to force them into free labor right and it just continues today like 13 cents an hour 17 cents an hour 19 cents during the pandemic uh great metals correctional facility had these guys working 24 hours a day making hand sanitizers in mass that place is the scariest fucking place that place traumatize me that's that place is like it was one of the first uh prisons that i went to in New York state to visit with a potential client and um i almost peed down my leg i mean it looks like feels like is like what you saw in the Shawshank redemption swarced an article hey check this out what you're seeing on the screen is not some new thing you know speaking of the Shawshank redemption steven king um writes a lot that is rooted i'm not talking about kujo i'm not talking about you know his horror writing his short stories most of them are rooted in some sort of truth read a hay worth in 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 of you know the wording came up with an idea for a work program where they were profiting that 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 um shouldn't be that shocking it's just like what is what is our news cycle pay attention to you know and you know and how do you how do you make sure that this kind of stuff doesn't keep happening my idea is um you need people on the ground that are working on policy and reform so at the promutter center uh for legal justice at Cardoza we have a policy advisor she's 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 and and um you know blood splatter blood splatter ballistics even fingerprints to some extent and yeah 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 a field day these are the fucking people these are the people that are sitting in some white fucking building the prosecutors and your state capital and the prosecutors are the worst and what before you get to the prosecutors these are the people 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 um 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 um your your local representative or a state senator really know about how dangerous it could be to draw conclusions about um the directionality of how blood hits drywall versus how it hits lose sight how um bite marks leaving an indentation on someone's skin you could 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 a hundred percent of the time that's your guilty that your guilty a skilled odontologist could do that so when when bite marks were um you know became subject of a 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 the most qualified certified scientists from all over the world study all of these disciplines of forensic um evidence all of these disciplines of forensic science and come to the conclusions that none of them none of them were supported by scientifically a scientifically credible body of evidence they weren't there was no repeatability there was no reliability the scientific method that you learn in grade school could you could apply it to any of them and they would all fail attention which are the standards for admissions at trial and it talks about it talks about the standards for admissions at trial the daubert standard the fry 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 fraught right now because there are all these new technologies i shake your hand this morning and then i later pick up a knife and you know stab someone and your dna ends up on the knife from the sweat on the sand 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 dna is on the knife where was he at this time there's a case of a guy named a manual 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 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 where 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 you're you're absolute obligation when you're defending someone it's the it's the piss off the judge if they're not doing their job you know to detect protect their rights their constitutional rights that's what the that's the constitution was designed for and it's so interesting when you dig 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 maybe two different kinds of rights because of where we come from and because the color of our skin unfortunately um I want to prevention is worth a pound of cure and you 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 um and now you know it's it's actually pretty easy to be able to find different organizations like he talks about the people at his organization salvage you and um we have Gina Mitchell at at Queen's defenders who was our policy and a coordinator and we work on so many different subjects reach out reach out change is real but it has to it has to begin somewhere you have to just be willing to take a step forward it doesn't matter where you from how old you are Republican Democrat rich poor black white it doesn't matter you know we we I look like I took a picture of a guy a homeless guy on the train station a couple of days ago and I posted it on my Instagram page and it just blows me away how and I'm I'm just gonna be straighter 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 that you can give to a whole another country yet you know you're not addressing the issues right here at home right now like you know I worked for department of homeless shelters like I worked and they have 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 to 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

1:48:27it's just I don't know it's like you know what does that even mean look I've been reading what it's slow have you heard it's a no phenomenal but I highly recommend it it's about how your brain works and and why we believe what we believe and um the 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 all these you know puzzles in it where he makes the point by saying like consider the following and the studies that have been done on someone just repeating 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 or are astounding just by keeping 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 which 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 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 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 I look I'm deeply deeply flawed she'll don't be the first to tell you like I did some fucked up things but um when you when you watch what he's doing um you know why can't why can't we make people in these communities um why can't we make them great again by giving them a better chance um like you said at the outset of the episode let him hit the starting line yeah well you know what you were saying earlier about building a sand castle one green 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've changed a lot of people's ideas on how the prison prison system is structured what the problems with it are how many people wrongfully incarcerated how incredible some of these people are wasted potential locked away forever for something 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 they're they're incredible human beings and how many of them are just being wasted yeah that's my much potential this is what you want though right you don't want you don't want somebody to go into the prison system and come out worse right and which happens which happens 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 yeah instead of getting the services that he needs you put them in prison you you sedated him for three four years five years you sent them to a parole board the parole board let them out two days later he pushes somebody into the train tracks right this is this is not what you want yeah so how 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 but you said something that Joe said something that um is worth sticking for on for a second these are most of the time 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 said of his yeah there yeah I mean I'm just saying it in plain English most of the time it's churning out monsters because what else would you expect right I mean you're 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 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 you know yeah these are the these are talk about grains of sand on a beach you know if you look at the 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 of me somehow when I came home right and me it took me almost 30 days to get any type of benefits or help and I had to call this lady I called this I put it for the snap the full stamps the benefits the little bit of benefits that I had right or that I could 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 I'm gonna 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 I had to wait 30 days what if 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 in California where they have the three strikes laws and then I'm giving this guy 20 years for stealing a slice of pizza because he's starving these is this is real stuff this is stuff that's really happening oh why do you offer 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 I had a little J pay a debit card because I had a couple of dollars in my account that they gave me with 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 but it's a joke because the programs don't teach you any real skills right like one of the one of the most one of the most significant hurdles I had upon my reintegration is was technology right I hadn't I've never I've never had a cell phone in my life I sent out my first email in 2019 for my tablet that they gave me an all burn correctional facility 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 didn'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 and and recidivism right someone being able to get out and not have to be any 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 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 the 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 I don't even know how to convert something to a PDF like you know so pretty simple I'm sure but I don't know how to do it yeah I'm saying all that in an email be like fuck fuck well you know you know it's crazy you know there's a there's a great program in New York called Hudson Link where they 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 like a few blocks from sings in prison and you're a part of Hudson Link so I I obtained my degree of mercy from Hudson Link Sean Peaker it runs the organization amongst many other formerly incarcerated individuals Sean Peaker is also formerly incarcerated 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 I don't know where I would been at had I had to depend on my my elected representatives uh you know my elected assembly incentives like I would be you know I would probably be trying to steal a loaf of bread out to grocery store um you know what's crazy there's um this was a trippy moment man fucking trippy moment the warden it sings sing a guy named Mike Capra all right and uh when you conjure up in your mind what a warden looks like I mean he's right at a central cast big burly dude um you know you looking at him you think he's the boy watch out you know he's dull and out punishment this guy was so inspired by what he saw at sing sing with formerly incarcerated with formerly incarcerated individuals that got out and started programs J .J.

2:00:16V. Lasquez is uh voices voices from within started this 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 them the super intended in New York that's what they call wardens uh now works for J .J. he retired and now he works for J .J. going around trying to uh he's like a missionary but um for the work we're doing the Frederick Douglass program we were at uh U .J. C uh a couple of months ago united justice coalition I don't know I was at the no that was the Jacob Javits it was at the Javits Center at the Javits Center he was there he spoke uh Derek spoke a huge huge event but Michael Capra was 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 J .J.

2:01:23his organization speaking on behalf of incarcerated individuals so yeah right did you talk to him how did he make that 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 um like a thrift shop and it and it kind of is but it's only for people getting out so you could go in and get some clothes um you could go get so that was Kiki's Kiki Dungeons that was hot thrift shops he created so I so when Bruce gets out he had needed clothes we said we'll bring you some clothes he said no Hudson Link has this great little spot by so well while he was still the warden he came while Bruce was picking out things to congratulate him and wish him well and I so yeah I mean I not only did I talk to him is he told me when I retire I'm going to come work with these guys so yeah when I saw him in this event called the United Justice Coalition um he's in a booth working for J .J.

2:02:23on the Frederick Douglass project 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 he came and he's like man it's like he's like it's life changing you know it really is and 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 my cats speaking of Michael Capra right so um prior to my release we uh me and Bruce Bruce Bryant uh we're 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 the vote etc etc um 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 um and this might this blew me away and it may and it may you may see 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 um 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 and and they are they are currently no programs 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 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 and 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 so when we talk about when we talk about recidivism and we talk about preparing someone to be reintegrated back into society right um um 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 belay 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 and it made me respect the idea of what it means to read right but when we talk about like going going back to the pdf thing right a guy comes home and and and he's 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 on to the train and and and and and navigate through all of the basic uh uh necessities in life and he can't even read this this is even there's an even more startling picture to that right what about due process right a guy is in a courtroom and a lawyer's giving him paperwork and he can't even read

2:06:22so 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 did that come about okay so um I can't even count how many motions I filed throughout my incarceration 44010s with this emotion to vacate ready Eric Calm Nobis which is an appeal to a judge to the pilot division to overturn your appeal your right to appeal um I filed a uh 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 emotion for the motion um but my spirit told me to do it my intuition told just foul it um and I filed it and in the process of filing that motion that's when I met Alison Hawke and Barbara Zolloff at the Center for Appellate litigation and they have what they call is the years program youth emergent assisted recentencing 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 Alison and they reached out to me and they said hey listen um we think you qualify for the program we think you you're the poster child for this program based on your circumstances um and it that began the process of my release um I think what paid 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 that's one of the major things that Josh and Alison and everybody had brought to the attention of these people say okay you know 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 um so we were going back and forth we filed a bunch of paperwork um we had to get a bunch of documents I sent out a whole bunch of documents and they put together what they call as a mitigation packet um and a mitigation packet just outlines everything my circumstances my sentence my crime um accountability and a whole bunch of other factors um and they submitted it it was a 440 20 in New York state which is a motion to resentments or a motion to vacate the sentence um and initially the ball was rolling um the district attorney's office had initially conceded to the motion saying we're not going to oppose the motion um and then something happened I'm not exactly sure what happened but maybe Josh he has more of a background insight and um at that time me and Bruce were working I didn't know Josh and Bruce said y 'all and I didn't know that he was working with Derek Hamilton Derek Hamilton and I had worked in a law library together so I think when he mentioned to Derek he said you know my nickname was superb that was that was my nickname in prison um and he said you know a guy named superb he said yeah I know superb so him and Derek got together along with Allison Hoppe and Barbara Zolloff and they went to back to the district attorney's office in full force they had all kind of me get Josh you could probably know I mean I don't you know the details more than I do well I mean listen I don't want to get too much into the details because 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 and the injustice in what was done to Sheldon and who he had become and they got to know him you know 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 you know it's like oh shit oh shit oh shit I gotta go buy you know or oh they're they're giving me a hard time they're doing account now I gotta go buy 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 he had gone to the parole board with a claim of innocence which is so rare and got granted the parole pending his the re -investigation 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 um he's on the phone with me going yo yo you gotta I got this guy Sheldon Johnson right here and he wants to talk to you he's his 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 getting you out and this was going on for like a four month and you know he's right here he's right here he wants to talk to you so I'm not talking to anyone else I'm the dealing with your case I gotta 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 promutter center and we were like you know really lining things up for his release and I I speak to a Sheldon's lawyer and she said you know I'm actually friends with your cousin and when she organized a baby shower for your first um for your daughter was my oldest Lila she said I was at your house for your baby shower I remember your wife Jillian Rowell she's like tells me I remember your house and I'm like this come on you can't make this shut up connections the connection and now I mean in New York City it was just too wild right so I said send me send me 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 gotta we're gonna get him out so right in the middle of um it's 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 what was it though it was him being indicted or those him being indicted and then they were saying that it was too much police activity there that they just kept trying 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 were ended up you know kudos to the Manhattan district attorney's office for for actually you know paying attention and and seeing that Sheldon was worthy of a second chance and really though that 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 set this Sheldon did that ever strike you as I mean here's an African American judge that looks at this young 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 what do you do with that fact um and Sheldon 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 and 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 one of the things that I expressed to Josh when we had this conversation was that just in my 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 colleagues don't think that they're being weak or showing favoritism because oh this guy's black so you're showing him favoritism but the idea of like what Josh is saying like you would think that someone who's in this position as a judge he's an arbitrator right he is supposed to be someone who is in a position of power and authority should be able to look down and I mean maybe maybe maybe he saw something I don't know what his experience was I can't speak to that um you know maybe he saw me as as a menace you know but I do honestly believe that you know we need these people to be able to look at things from an objective right because when you when when as a person of color and in a position of power like a lot of times it's a subjective reality it's a reality that's attached to uh personal feelings and experiences and a person who's in that position should be in a position to to be more objective right we talk about objectivity and I think that's what it boils down to you know subjectivity versus objectivity right um I think what you're talking about too is expressed by I know a lot of guys that have been uh 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 a way to show that they fit in with that culture so so you know and you know showing just to speak to what he said right like when I was in upstate New York or Auburn and and and Clinton and and Attica you you had a sprinkle of maybe one or two black cops um and the black cops were always the worst right because like you just said you know they are a minority and they don't want to be ostracized by their co -workers or made this 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 the rules what a white cop might say uh this guy got a pot and uh uh I so you know it in prison you know we have like you know we have pots guys cook and you have a eye it's usually like a coil that's detached from a hot pot and you use it to make food um there's been times when you know you'll have a white cop that are coming to sell and it's contraband you're not supposed to have it but you'll have a white cop that are coming to sell and he'll see a pot and he's just like he's just using that to cook or then you'll have a black cop that are coming 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 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 yeah right you know I'm saying and at 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 some of the overseers may have been or the slave masses so it's this this transfered psychological state where you know a person feels like they have to just go above and beyond to like like Jojo said to show that or I'm not sure on favoritism yeah or I'm not speaking you know this whole uh 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 thank when I'm driving home just like what the fuck like they're just the sea of human beings that are entrapped in the 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 actually 1 .92 rounded off is two roughly Austin and the surrounding areas so interesting that all in Austin right Texas Texas taxpayers pay 3 .5 million dollars in taxes towards prisons 3 .5 million dollars 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 for investing that money so for example right on on the 17th of this month we went to I told you we went to the route the 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 in 21 cents 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 so 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 yeah then they have to worry about how will that impact my electability right because is the 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 a the DA Brooklyn his name is district attorney Gonzalez and you know we have an amazing relationship with him the pro -mother center um dare accountant especially where we're able to go to him and his 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 six dollar 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 you know we're really hoping I think we're very close to the finish line of getting him released so um you know I think that the short answer is yeah it would take a governor to implement a program to be able to um point funds in the right direction and a fam you talked about just one second you talked about HBCUs fam you in Florida um the only land grant HBCU in the state is the disparity and funding of that school versus other schools in the state is is um not a matter of you know it's a matter of fact I was recently arguing on behalf of these students um that just want um to be funded the same way 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 the statistics now this is all traceable to what they called de jour segregation um there there was the you know and and please fund the school appropriately well the judge just dismissed the case a few days ago and I would I would invite people to go online and read the decision because we're going to appeal it to the 11th circuit in Atlanta but it wasn't it wasn't it's not a matter of of um there's no controversy there's no argument that no we are funding it appropriately fam you was founded on a slave plantation um uh a former slave plantation and you know when I brought that up at the oral argument the judge won't nuts on me well 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 fam you appropriately and they entered into these consent decrees with them where they had to what do what's called destroy vestiges of de jour segregation because since brown versus board of education there was another supreme court decision called fortice which talked about how do you establish that a pattern or practice is traceable to segregation and the state of Florida just is ignored it um so does governor de santis have the ability to make sure that fam you is funded appropriately or is governor de santis going to worry more about florida state university being um somehow short -changed in the national championship and and earmarked funds to 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 um some you know a level playing field you know it's a controversial subject amongst ignorant voters and it's it's a controversial subject amongst ignorant voters because all all um governor de santis has to say is he took a page out of trump's book because he knows it works is all he has to say is woke 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 fam you the only hbcu that is a land grant institution in florida mean that they were granted land is 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 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 um I mean I had the judge asking me questions in the oral argument on the motions of dismiss the questions like this well well couldn't couldn't it be that florida state university had better 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 uh 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 fun raising organization and boosters well couldn't they have got a lobby the legislator yeah they could have who was running the legislator in florida um you know and so when you start to run into arguments like that the writing sort of on the wall and we have to work we have to now take it up with the you know the eleven circuit in Atlanta and try to get that decision overturn 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 is true and assume them to be true at this stage so it's you know the 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 fam you a 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 the graduation rates you look at other metrics I mean I think yeah I think you see the flaw there right um so yeah it can get frustrating at times and what you know like what well I have a choice now do I fold up the 10 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 so so to pick you back off what you just said right you know um when you say it can the governor do these things right yes they can a lot of times these these objectives are long term um 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 um a lot of times these governors are more concerned about whether or not this is going to come out during an election year and and people are going to you know whether liberals or conservatives are going to go against them and vote against them because they supported uh education of incarcerated individuals um I remember when I was going to Auburn um and I was in the Cornell prison education program this is 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 degrees and bachelor's degrees are like 90 192 % less likely to return back to prison so so so this is quantifiable uh evidence of of how you take money and you allocate it into one uh project so over the long one you can save money yeah I like it wouldn't be done would you read 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 and why I don't focus my attention on governors is that 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 I mean that guy wouldn't that guy wouldn't answer a fucking letter uh wouldn't return you know his clemency um program was to not have a clemency program so here's too busy hugging people he's too busy yeah rubbing shoulders or stealing still in still in feels oh my bad I mean you know I was just that let's just give him yeah yeah so I think that the time energy and resources are better spent I think the private sector comes up with better solutions often times at helping like 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 Zollop 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 than the worst in people a lot of these civil rights organizations you know again you throw human beings into any endeavor together they're gonna fuck it up they like to argue and get like mom I mean he goes and look what happened to me by coming on the show and uh the the some folks tried to censor me um 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 pro -mother center is providing them with the money to do those reports um steves idman akuni is like he's this guy that I think that he's responsible single -handedly for over 50 clemencies in the state of New York amazing phenomenal guy he's coming actually he's coming to queen's defendants to do uh um we're getting ready to start a uh clemency initiative at queen's defendants he's coming to train a bunch of guys he's just this guy yeah he's that doesn't surprise me 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's not paying attention they've ever 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 show and to sort of um humanize the clients 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 have agreed to donate some funds there um and I think it just like having this this um more synergistic approach rather than have it be about me um or put my name on the door let me get the credit you know we just all pitch in yeah to wrap this up um 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 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 pearl motor center for legal justice at Cardozo law it's it's like Sheldon can google anyone can google it um there it is right there yeah there it is um and I think googling it would be faster if you scroll down to the bottom of it um you'll find the donate button you know there are ways and there's some of my students um there's a give now button we put it all the way to the bottom um but in any event we um you can reach out to me at joshua dot doobin at why at why you dot edu that's my email for the the um pearl motor center and um you know we're we're on the precipice of a major announcement with uh one of the 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 um that came as a result of the exposure that we're getting here so um 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 uh doing this quarterly and telling these stories I'm very thoughtful and who I bring on um I think this was one of the best ones yet it was uh they're evolving amazing um I just love I love the fact that that shaldon 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's that's an example to so many people that there's this great work that could 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 well 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 um you can also find us at queensdefenders .org um there's also uh my email address as johnson at queensdefenders .org you can reach out to us we're also on a precipice of an amazing 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 um you know we can use all the the help that we can get well i'm sure you're gonna get some people listening all right thank you thank you very much thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you

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