Speaker 1: I've never been to trouble in my life. I didn't
Speaker 1: even have a parking ticket, and you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: I was brought up like cops are the good guys.
Speaker 1: I didn't know what was going to happen, but I
Speaker 1: do know that everything was stacked against me. Everything like
Speaker 1: everything this isn't supposed to happen this way. I'm innocent.
Speaker 1: I know I'm innocent. I know I had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with this. How is this possible? I grew up
Speaker 1: trusting the systems. I grew up believing that every human
Speaker 1: thing should do the right thing. And that's why, even
Speaker 1: though I was dealing with corrupt people, I wasn't going
Speaker 1: to brave anyone to get me out of prison because
Speaker 1: I wouldn't live with the fact that I braved my
Speaker 1: way out of my wife's death. I'm not innocent to
Speaker 1: proven guilty. I'm guilty until I proved my innocence. And
Speaker 1: that's absolutely what happened to me. Our system. Since I've
Speaker 1: been out ten years, it's coming little ways, but it's
Speaker 1: still broken, a totally little trust in humanity after what
Speaker 1: happened to me. This is a wrongful conviction. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to wrangful conviction with Jason Flamm that's me and today
Speaker 1: we have an extraordinary show and you're about to find
Speaker 1: out why. Today's guest is the one and only Meek
Speaker 1: mill Um and Michael Rubin is with him and Meek,
Speaker 1: you need no introduction, but welcome to the show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me. Man. I appreciate you for bring
Speaker 1: me on the show. I appreciate all the work you're doing,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna get into that right away. But with
Speaker 1: him is Michael ruben Um, who is the owner of
Speaker 1: this Philadelphia seventy sixers and has an amazing background as
Speaker 1: an entrepreneur and businessman, but who has become a tremendous
Speaker 1: advocate for criminal justice reform and is about to really
Speaker 1: take things up. So Michael, I'm thrilled to have you
Speaker 1: in the movement, and I'm glad you're here on the Showy,
Speaker 1: thanks for everything you're doing. I'm glad to be here.
Speaker 1: So welcome. We gotta train in the background night. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's what's weird in Philadelphia. It's all good people gotta
Speaker 1: ride the trains. So, Meek, one of the reasons I
Speaker 1: wanted to have you on the show is because your
Speaker 1: original case was in fact a wrongful conviction, and that's
Speaker 1: something a lot of people don't understand. And there's a
Speaker 1: lot more they don't understand about the circumstances in which
Speaker 1: you were arrested and how this nightmare saga, which is
Speaker 1: now in his second decade in the criminal justice system
Speaker 1: has unfolded. And it's important to tell this story because
Speaker 1: it shines a light on so many aspects of what's
Speaker 1: wrong with the criminal justice system. And we're here in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: not Philadelphia, Mississippi. But even still, the system here has
Speaker 1: been so backwards for so long, and you were born
Speaker 1: right into the thick of it. Yeah, I mean, let's
Speaker 1: talk about that because seven so, you know, the the
Speaker 1: the number of people in cars for the United States
Speaker 1: stayed relatively constant from nineteen hundred till about nineteen seventy,
Speaker 1: and then it went crazy. It doubled and tripled and quadrupled,
Speaker 1: and Philadelphia was a hotspot. And um, and you were
Speaker 1: born into a situation in which black men were being
Speaker 1: incarcerated at rates that were unprecedented actually in the history
Speaker 1: of the world. And your situation actually was the odds
Speaker 1: was totally stacked against you. But can you talk about
Speaker 1: that about how you grew up and how this you know,
Speaker 1: it was almost almost a fatal complete you know. I
Speaker 1: come from Philadelphia, actually the North North Philadelphia which now
Speaker 1: is like called the Temple area, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: we grew up in an environment as well, like drug
Speaker 1: infestive environments where a lot of violence, a lot of drugs,
Speaker 1: a lot of things taking place. So it's like you
Speaker 1: could be standing in the wrong place and lose your life,
Speaker 1: or you could be standing in the wrong place and
Speaker 1: get charged with a crime you didn't do. That was
Speaker 1: just like normal. Actually, I've been hanging with my friend
Speaker 1: p Mind Mike. I've been hanging with p Mind probably
Speaker 1: fifteen years, and I remember back he went to jail
Speaker 1: when he was probably about fifteen years old. He probably
Speaker 1: thirty now. He just turned thirty one a few days ago,
Speaker 1: and I've been hanging with him since he was probably
Speaker 1: fourteen years old. He said, it's like, yeah, the first
Speaker 1: time I went to prison, he said, a white guy
Speaker 1: just pulled up in the back of a car and
Speaker 1: just pointed at me out the car and said I
Speaker 1: robbed him for seven dollars, but he had three d
Speaker 1: and eighty dollars in his pocket and he went to
Speaker 1: jail for that. He ended up doing I think like
Speaker 1: two years and that in the juvenile UH facility. But
Speaker 1: that wasn't the worst part. The worst part was he
Speaker 1: got a felony on this record for UH arm robbery.
Speaker 1: And you know, if you know him, he's not like
Speaker 1: a it's not robbery. He's not robbery. And his system, Uh,
Speaker 1: he made mistakes in his life. But me being around him,
Speaker 1: I never knew that, but I witnessed that so many times.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have standing on the corner and the cop
Speaker 1: pull up with a Mexican guy in the back, and
Speaker 1: I don't know to Sometimes we say and in our world,
Speaker 1: in the sarcastic way of being funny, we obviously be like, uh,
Speaker 1: white people look the same to us. Some of my
Speaker 1: white friends were like all black people were saying to us.
Speaker 1: But sometimes that is the case with people and they
Speaker 1: just pull up and they point people out, and you
Speaker 1: stand there on the cops pull up and this be like,
Speaker 1: I hope this guy don't point me on. That's just
Speaker 1: one of the scenarios out of a million scenarios. Being
Speaker 1: caught in the middle of UH poverty uh where drug
Speaker 1: infesting neighborhood with people are getting robbed left and right,
Speaker 1: where uh you know, cops left were locking people have
Speaker 1: left and right just to get stripes on that record,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. And we grew up in
Speaker 1: that and you know, at eight years old, I was
Speaker 1: caught up in that system. And even though I've been
Speaker 1: on the path since ever since of doing spectacling in
Speaker 1: my life from where I come from, that same system
Speaker 1: is still haunting me and hunking me down, even at
Speaker 1: the age of thirty one and having a record deal
Speaker 1: and being being able to uh handle businesses and work,
Speaker 1: and still haunted me to pull me back to the
Speaker 1: same system where I just left eleven years ago. And
Speaker 1: you just brought up two things that I wanted to highlight.
Speaker 1: I mean, one is you were in very in a
Speaker 1: very real way of victim of that violence because your
Speaker 1: father was murdered when you were a child, right, so
Speaker 1: you had to grow up in that environment. And then
Speaker 1: on top of that, everybody was murdered. It was like
Speaker 1: everybody was mad. Yeah, it was. I mean, the violence
Speaker 1: and that time was was crazy, and and some of
Speaker 1: it was inflicted by the police, including the violence that
Speaker 1: they inflicted on you when they arrested you. But on
Speaker 1: top of that, you brought up a very important point,
Speaker 1: which is that we know from decades of research now
Speaker 1: that cross racial identifications are extremely unreliable. Dentifications in general
Speaker 1: are unreliable because when people witness a crime, their adrenaline,
Speaker 1: especially violent crime, their adrenaline goes crazy and the perception
Speaker 1: gets screwy and the brain doesn't function properly, so it
Speaker 1: almost becomes like guessing, but it gets even worse. And
Speaker 1: there's a movement now to try to h in various places,
Speaker 1: to try to uh put in a system where a
Speaker 1: jury has to be instructed in a case in which
Speaker 1: across racial identification is a is an important factor that
Speaker 1: these things are as unreliable as they are because they
Speaker 1: need to know, but in most cases they don't know.
Speaker 1: They just think an identification is the most powerful thing
Speaker 1: in a corrom too, guy pointed you and goes that
Speaker 1: to him. You know, it's hard for a jury to
Speaker 1: see past that. Yeah, it's like it's in the neighborhood,
Speaker 1: we all wearing white Teas of the summer two thousand
Speaker 1: and three, everybody white T shirts is the probably thing
Speaker 1: to wear with uh with denim shirts. And you got
Speaker 1: a guy, he might be Asian. He pull up on
Speaker 1: the corner. We all seven of us got braids and
Speaker 1: four of us got a little cause, but we all
Speaker 1: look the same, the ones that got braised to him.
Speaker 1: That's just you allow to repick, to get caught up
Speaker 1: in the system. Like whoever you point out, that's you.
Speaker 1: And you better hope you don't handle felonies on your
Speaker 1: record already because you might go to jail for a
Speaker 1: long time. And sociologically speaking, and this goes back again
Speaker 1: to the seventies and eighties. Right at the same time
Speaker 1: that they were rolling back welfare and other programs for
Speaker 1: the urban poor, they were ramping up the policing and
Speaker 1: they were Now you created the perfect storm because what
Speaker 1: was happening was you had these these systems coming for
Speaker 1: tracking arrest. You had so many more cops in fact,
Speaker 1: and I think in Philadelphia six more police decade over
Speaker 1: decade than they were before, and they had to make arrests.
Speaker 1: So whereas before they were largely ignoring what was going
Speaker 1: on in the community, now there were heightened penalties for
Speaker 1: not just for violent crimes, but also for all kinds
Speaker 1: of different drug crimes, for vagrancy, for trespassing, for anything.
Speaker 1: And they were in a position where they were arresting
Speaker 1: people left and right and creating this permanent underclass, which
Speaker 1: is what you were referring to me and Michael. You know,
Speaker 1: obviously you grew up here too, right, but your situation
Speaker 1: must have been very a very different world. I grew
Speaker 1: up maybe twenty minutes from me. But Mike used always
Speaker 1: said to me, and we used to have this argument
Speaker 1: for years. He'd said to mean, Michael, there is two Americans.
Speaker 1: And I'd be like, like, dude, shut up, there's like
Speaker 1: there's there's one America. Like stop, you know, like you're
Speaker 1: doing great, Like you know, I didn't understand, like what
Speaker 1: are you talking about these two worlds? We live in
Speaker 1: one great country. And and you know, he would argue
Speaker 1: about all the time. And I remember the day that
Speaker 1: that Meek got sentenced November six, two thousand and seventeen,
Speaker 1: he called me from from the Philadelphia job before they
Speaker 1: transferred to a different jail and said, he said, you see,
Speaker 1: I told you this is what happens to the black people, right,
Speaker 1: And I just like that, you know what I said,
Speaker 1: you were right, I was wrong, and there is two worlds.
Speaker 1: And you know, for me, Um, November six, two thousand
Speaker 1: and seventeen was really a life change in a moment,
Speaker 1: because I would never have been able to understand. I
Speaker 1: really believe, and I don't think anybody would be able
Speaker 1: to believe how crazy circumstance he was living in because
Speaker 1: it didn't seem possible until you sat in the courtroom.
Speaker 1: And even people that have come to later UM court
Speaker 1: hearings of Judge Brinkley have said, I've heard everything about this,
Speaker 1: but I didn't believe it until I actually saw it,
Speaker 1: and it's so crazy. So for sure, I grew up
Speaker 1: in a completely different environment. But Meek always told me
Speaker 1: from the DIAM met him. Remember we were at a
Speaker 1: NBA All Star Game and you know, within you know,
Speaker 1: a few minutes, you know, Meek realized I was involved
Speaker 1: with the Philadelphia seventy six ers, and um, you know,
Speaker 1: he was telling me a little bit about his background.
Speaker 1: He told me he was charged for pointing a gun
Speaker 1: at multiple cops. And he said to me, like, you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't do that. Like if you know, if I
Speaker 1: pointed you know, a gun of multiple cops, I'd be dead,
Speaker 1: like I heard him, but I didn't really comprehend it.
Speaker 1: And then like, if I've told that story to people
Speaker 1: in the last seven months, every person from law enforcement
Speaker 1: to politics, to anyone who understands anything, they all said
Speaker 1: the same thing. He's right, he'd be dead. No one
Speaker 1: would point a you know, pull a gun multiple cops
Speaker 1: and not get shot. And meet can't obviously talk about
Speaker 1: the case because the case is still unfortunately going on,
Speaker 1: which is crazy in itself, right, But I mean, you're
Speaker 1: talking about a guy who was wrongfully convicted when he
Speaker 1: was eighteen years old of a crime that he didn't commit.
Speaker 1: It's been sent back to jail multiple times, never committed
Speaker 1: a new crime, and he's the perfect example someone who's
Speaker 1: been stuck in a completely broken criminal justice system for
Speaker 1: criming and commit and it's now thirteen years later and
Speaker 1: it's still going on, and that shows how broken the
Speaker 1: criminal justice system is. It's incredible. You know, we have
Speaker 1: two point two million people in prison in America and
Speaker 1: including jail, other four and a half million people in
Speaker 1: probation and parole. Yeah, I mean the latest figure I
Speaker 1: heard was four point eight, right, And and when once
Speaker 1: we accept those figures, you also have to accept the
Speaker 1: fact that we now have between jail, prison, probation, and parole,
Speaker 1: we have more black people were mostly men under criminal
Speaker 1: justice supervision in America then all the slaves at the
Speaker 1: height of slavery in America in the eighteen fifties or sixties,
Speaker 1: whatever that was. That that should really mess people's heads up,
Speaker 1: like what are we doing we actually are It's just well,
Speaker 1: it's like Michael Alexanderson is the new gym Crow. But
Speaker 1: what's even you know, let's bring it to current. What
Speaker 1: you can't what what? What words can't explain? Is Miek
Speaker 1: is still on probation for something that we've already said
Speaker 1: he didn't do, and it's been going on for thirteen
Speaker 1: years from the original wrongful conviction. But he can't like
Speaker 1: you can't live that way, Like I say, I joke
Speaker 1: with him, I feel like I'm on probation because I'm
Speaker 1: worried about just something going wrong with him. If he
Speaker 1: decides to leave a state day early because something changed
Speaker 1: with the schedule, or he gets you know, someone says, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna pay you to go to this concert. I
Speaker 1: want to go, and I have the proper days of
Speaker 1: permission the judge will try to violate him. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's the system is chasing him and trying to violate
Speaker 1: and and that's not what probation is supposed to be about.
Speaker 1: Re imlitating somebody, not trying to catch them and send
Speaker 1: that back to prison. And something that someone told me recently,
Speaker 1: and you know I've now become too familiar with this,
Speaker 1: but sev people to go back to jail once they've
Speaker 1: been in jail in prison, are going back for technical
Speaker 1: probation violations. Like to me, virtually none of those people
Speaker 1: should be go You know, you had a technical probation violation, right,
Speaker 1: you didn't commit a crime. You were late for your
Speaker 1: probation officers, so you you know, didn't pay a certain
Speaker 1: amount of money. You you know you had you know something,
Speaker 1: you know, you traveled out of the state. You know,
Speaker 1: he went to his son in New Jersey because he
Speaker 1: lives in Pennsylvania, and he can be violated and sent
Speaker 1: back to jail. This is lunacy. This is absolute lunacy.
Speaker 1: And I want, I'm really glad you brought that up, Michael,
Speaker 1: because I don't want to get your take on this
Speaker 1: week because in a lot of the reforms that are
Speaker 1: underway right now, there's this hidden um caveat, or this
Speaker 1: hidden um um nightmare i'll call it, of of enhanced
Speaker 1: probation and other ways of the government keeping people under control.
Speaker 1: So to me, a true crime reform bill should eliminate
Speaker 1: those problems. And you obviously can speak firsthand about just
Speaker 1: how restrictive that is. And Michael has said very eloquently,
Speaker 1: when you have seventy people going back to jail or
Speaker 1: prison because they have some technical violation, that's insane, right, So,
Speaker 1: but but can you talk about that, because I'm very
Speaker 1: concerned that in there they're sneaking these devils into the
Speaker 1: details in these new crime bills that are going to
Speaker 1: allow them to maintain this control. There's no other way
Speaker 1: to look at it. Over millions of people's lives, and
Speaker 1: there's a profit center in there for a lot of
Speaker 1: people too. Yeah, it's it's more than insane to me.
Speaker 1: I take it as deep as like I said, I
Speaker 1: could go see my son in New Jersey and actually
Speaker 1: be locked in a cage and be locked and changed
Speaker 1: check who from like angle defeat for the crime of
Speaker 1: going from Pennsylvania to New Jerseys your son. That's what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, I'm being facetious for the crime and quotes.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you this right now, Judge Brinkley is lie
Speaker 1: to do that too. She's trying to right now today,
Speaker 1: I promise you she's sitting in her house obsessed about
Speaker 1: how she can figure out how to put them back
Speaker 1: in jail for nothing. That's a fact. He can't talk
Speaker 1: about that, but I can. I'm telling you straight up,
Speaker 1: that's what's going on. It's it's really bizarre. I mean,
Speaker 1: as a country, why would we want I mean, these
Speaker 1: are our tax dollars, right and it and it hurts
Speaker 1: the average taxpayer. Even if you're somebody who's not particularly
Speaker 1: concerned about criminal justice reform, or you think a lot
Speaker 1: of people or you maybe you think you're tough on
Speaker 1: crime or whatever, it might be. The money that's being
Speaker 1: spent to lock people like you meet up right and
Speaker 1: to keep you under supervision and is bloated and and
Speaker 1: draconian system is pure insanity. I mean that money could
Speaker 1: be spent. I mean I know that at one time,
Speaker 1: all at one time. I don't even know if it's
Speaker 1: still true. But a few years ago I checked and California,
Speaker 1: which a lot of people think it was in a
Speaker 1: progressive state, was spending more money locking people up, then
Speaker 1: they were educating people. And I'm like, uh, I think
Speaker 1: that's college but still um and we fact check that,
Speaker 1: but it's it's that that is absolutely staggering. And the
Speaker 1: crazy thing is these are Americans. There are fellow people.
Speaker 1: I say, the politicians when I talk to him, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, if another country treated our people the way
Speaker 1: we treat our people, we'd invade this stuff. We wouldn't
Speaker 1: even do to have pets, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: Like you wouldn't lock your pet in the metal cell
Speaker 1: for sometimes we get locked in and I say we
Speaker 1: because I've been through this experience so many times, and
Speaker 1: like sometimes we get locked in a room for twenty
Speaker 1: three hours a day for a month or two weeks,
Speaker 1: some people actually even years. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: It's like, uh, they say when you come home, it's
Speaker 1: a violation to be around felons. And how is it
Speaker 1: a violation to be around felons when you just had
Speaker 1: me locked up amongst thousands of felons? Like what rule
Speaker 1: is this? I'm glad you brought that up too, because
Speaker 1: that's another thing that creates this visious. It's by the
Speaker 1: way you think about it, in the environment you grew up,
Speaker 1: what percentage of people that live on your block have
Speaker 1: had a felony? Right, So what you're saying is essentially
Speaker 1: anyone can put you back in prison because there's a
Speaker 1: rule that says you can't be around felons. But everyone
Speaker 1: you grew up with has a felony. If somebody really
Speaker 1: made that an issue, I would probably go to jail
Speaker 1: any day. Because if I go to the studio with
Speaker 1: a rapper and we make a song, I don't know
Speaker 1: his record, but right you don't know. You have to
Speaker 1: have a like a database that we do at all times,
Speaker 1: which most people can't afford that, I mean, and you're
Speaker 1: not going to do it in the fact is and yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like I'm just quoting a statistic here
Speaker 1: in nineteen one in four black children born in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety had an imprisoned father by the time he or
Speaker 1: she turned fourteen, Right, and then, and the numbers just
Speaker 1: get worse and worse. I mean, thirty percent of black
Speaker 1: men without college educations today we'll have been to prison
Speaker 1: by their men thirties and spent up to a year
Speaker 1: in prison thirty. I mean that's what our college as cacations,
Speaker 1: and the numbers go to sixty. When you look at
Speaker 1: at blackmails without high school education, sixty of blackmails out
Speaker 1: high school education was spent a year in prison or
Speaker 1: jail before their thirtieth birthday. What are we doing? And
Speaker 1: the fact is it's actually impossible to succeed, which is
Speaker 1: why I'm always amazed when somebody does come from the
Speaker 1: background that you came from and make it, because with
Speaker 1: that cycle, how do you do it? They've created a
Speaker 1: minefield that you can't walk through. Right, once you get arrested,
Speaker 1: You're gonna get re arrested no matter what you do,
Speaker 1: pretty much, right Yea. And like like me and Mike
Speaker 1: we just been the hour my just teaching me about
Speaker 1: financial stuff and like texts and things that like when
Speaker 1: we're growing up, from like age thirteen to twenty years old,
Speaker 1: we probably invest ninety five percent of our thinking time
Speaker 1: and how to survive in these type of conditions because
Speaker 1: it's like almost impossible to survive. So like you gotta
Speaker 1: put like your ow into how to been my mind framed. Now.
Speaker 1: I still like, even though I travel the world is
Speaker 1: still installed in my mind. It's still like something that
Speaker 1: is like I might come into a certain situation in
Speaker 1: a certain area and I go into survival more and
Speaker 1: I have to double back and like this is not
Speaker 1: even that type of environment where I don't live this
Speaker 1: type of life anymore, but it's always installed inside of
Speaker 1: my head, you know what I'm saying that coming from
Speaker 1: environments like that, like you said, six, when I come
Speaker 1: from it feels like it's nineties. Likes do that count?
Speaker 1: Death probably go up to probably n uh people young
Speaker 1: black men being murdered, uh going to prison probably sixty
Speaker 1: plus another thirty five make I've heard you talk about this.
Speaker 1: You know, how many people do you know that you
Speaker 1: were close with, you had a real relationship with, that
Speaker 1: have been murdered? That's that's you know, how many I know?
Speaker 1: I mean zero? Yeah, you know how many I know
Speaker 1: they've been close? Zero? Right, So you're talking about yeah,
Speaker 1: different environments, So yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, that's great. We
Speaker 1: have two Shepherd systems of justice in America, one for
Speaker 1: people with money and one for people without, and one
Speaker 1: for people who are of color and one for people
Speaker 1: who are not. And when and when you hit that
Speaker 1: jackpot of the reverse jackpot of being a person of
Speaker 1: color without being born into a wealthy family, which is
Speaker 1: a huge majority. And you don't even have to come
Speaker 1: from a wealthy family to like not be around somebody
Speaker 1: that was murder. It's really like territorial, like I got
Speaker 1: one of my songs I'm talking about, like like we've
Speaker 1: being put in groups in certain areas, even with public
Speaker 1: house and public house, and it's really of Cross Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: So if you grow grow up less fortunate, they're sticking
Speaker 1: people in certain areas if you pay attention to it,
Speaker 1: Like it's North Philadelphia, but not the whole North Philadelphia
Speaker 1: is a certain part in South Philadelphia. It's a rich
Speaker 1: part of South Philadelphia where like houses cast a million
Speaker 1: dollars in and you got some houses that cost forty
Speaker 1: They only moving usin curren areas. And I always say this,
Speaker 1: like if you take a drone, the main line of
Speaker 1: Philadelphia is like City Line Avenue where my apartments used
Speaker 1: to be at City Line Avenue. You take a drone
Speaker 1: and then you make the drone go high in the sky,
Speaker 1: and if the drone had a zoom and kazoom on
Speaker 1: this side of the left and right, you will see
Speaker 1: it's quiet as piece here and his chaos going here.
Speaker 1: And you take a kid from over here and let
Speaker 1: him spending three summers in this area, he will be less.
Speaker 1: He won't be the way the chaos is. He will
Speaker 1: turn to be more lean like these people in this area.
Speaker 1: And I witnessed that with my family. I used to
Speaker 1: have a nephew. He lived in the projects. He used
Speaker 1: to cuss, he's seen a lot of things. He used
Speaker 1: to act up in school, and you know, he moved
Speaker 1: to a suburban area and his whole life changed within
Speaker 1: two years. It was just that simple. And I don't
Speaker 1: want to ask you this me because I come from
Speaker 1: the music industry. In fact, today's my thirty ninth birthday
Speaker 1: in the music industry, but later or not, because I
Speaker 1: started when I was eight teen years old. I know
Speaker 1: I look younger than that. I don't have to say it,
Speaker 1: thank you very much anyway, But yeah, I started July nine,
Speaker 1: nine point on posters and record stores. But that's beside
Speaker 1: the point. For a long time, and nobody talks about this,
Speaker 1: But for a long time I've been pondering, thinking about
Speaker 1: obsessed with the idea of with the grim statistics and
Speaker 1: and and uh scenario that we're painting here. How many
Speaker 1: people and you're exactly guy, I want to ask this question.
Speaker 1: How many people as talented as you are either got
Speaker 1: shot or got locked up more importantly, got locked up
Speaker 1: in prison? And and society as a result is being
Speaker 1: deprived of those talents and all the revenue and all
Speaker 1: the culture that would have come from that. How many
Speaker 1: jay zs are there that didn't make it out and
Speaker 1: ended up in prison doing thus, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I know as guys and in locked the wood as
Speaker 1: talented as me. You know what I'm saying. And they're
Speaker 1: probably there for felonies on phonies, and when you say,
Speaker 1: like when people label you as a fellon, like how
Speaker 1: it's at my friend or a felon he was fifteen
Speaker 1: for something he didn't do. Now actually when he do
Speaker 1: make a mistake, when he do go hang on the corner,
Speaker 1: or when he when we come up on the corner
Speaker 1: around drug does everybody sells drugs? Your first step is
Speaker 1: to pick up a drug. So when you get your
Speaker 1: second felony. Uh, you might be actually good at basketball.
Speaker 1: You might have been in the eleventh grade and actually
Speaker 1: one of the best players on the team. And here
Speaker 1: it comes you in a bad neighborhood. You get arrested
Speaker 1: for something else and we don't have your money. You
Speaker 1: might take a deal, and the deal was put this
Speaker 1: felony on your record. Now you've got three felonies on
Speaker 1: your record and you're not They might call you a
Speaker 1: career criminal. You're not a career criminal. This was in
Speaker 1: the wrong mix. Basically. Now you might get fifteen years
Speaker 1: for something small. You see how he told you that
Speaker 1: the guy got fifteen Well he had to life sentence
Speaker 1: for stilling. Now your your record, your jacket is up.
Speaker 1: You get fifteen years. So now you trapped inside a prison.
Speaker 1: You will never get a real shot at life. And
Speaker 1: you might be good as Ben Simmons, Joe and BIEB
Speaker 1: and you know all that went down to dream. But
Speaker 1: for us, rap is the hundreds of it was probably
Speaker 1: at least fifty guys that was actually good when I
Speaker 1: was at when I was locked up at where if
Speaker 1: they was on the street, we would spend time in
Speaker 1: the studio and ability of them make music together. Fifty
Speaker 1: I would say in that one prison that I know of,
Speaker 1: right and rap music, and they're so surprise, probably very
Speaker 1: few people that are listeners of the podcast. But recently,
Speaker 1: hip hop recently passed rock and roll every pop as
Speaker 1: the most popular genre worldwide. Right, and it all comes
Speaker 1: from almost all of it comes from America. Right, So
Speaker 1: when we're exporting that, we're bringing tax revenue into this country.
Speaker 1: When we're when when when guys like you are making records,
Speaker 1: selling millions of records, selling concert tickets, you're paying taxes.
Speaker 1: All that stuff goes back into the system. Everybody is
Speaker 1: being hurt by that, and society is being deprived of geniuses.
Speaker 1: As as you said, basketball is another story. Right, But
Speaker 1: and and when you talk about it, s like that
Speaker 1: you have a kid as good as whoever you want
Speaker 1: to talk about, Simmons or whatever. Uh, they get arrested
Speaker 1: like that, the college scholarships going out the window. They
Speaker 1: can't play college ball. Now their their whole, their whole thing.
Speaker 1: And let's say that guy was gonna make a hundred
Speaker 1: billion dollars not unrealistic. We have the one of the
Speaker 1: seventi six is here, right, We look forward to writing
Speaker 1: many checks for a hundred billion dollars because that we
Speaker 1: have that many great players. And let me ask you
Speaker 1: that those players pay taxes on those checks. Of course,
Speaker 1: of course they do right coming back into the city,
Speaker 1: coming back into the state, coming back into the country,
Speaker 1: because those people were the few lucky ones that managed
Speaker 1: to escape from this, you know, sort of trapped that
Speaker 1: society has built. But even more than money, if you
Speaker 1: look at the math and you say, there's six point
Speaker 1: seven or six point nine million people today in America
Speaker 1: trapped in the criminal justice system, the question is what's appropriate.
Speaker 1: Like if we just all said, if you got anyone
Speaker 1: together and said, what do you think someone should be
Speaker 1: in prison for? What should someone be on probation for?
Speaker 1: If you said, hey, that person got caught smoking weed? Shoulday,
Speaker 1: there's people be in prison if if ifs if someone
Speaker 1: stole a hundred dollars, is a fifteen year old kid,
Speaker 1: should they be stuck in prison? And the amount of
Speaker 1: story Like I think if you looked at the math
Speaker 1: and just said, let's just take this top down the
Speaker 1: six point seven or six nine point nine million people
Speaker 1: the criminal justice system, I think you could say if
Speaker 1: we just also what should people be in the system for?
Speaker 1: And not being the system, we just took a bunch
Speaker 1: of rational people. The numbers probably half and so to me,
Speaker 1: what's such a travesty is you've got millions of people
Speaker 1: stuck in the criminal justice system that don't belong there,
Speaker 1: and by the way, you're ruining their lives, their families, lives,
Speaker 1: their friends lives. By the way, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: people that belong in prison. We want to live in
Speaker 1: a safe world. We want to have you know, violent offenders,
Speaker 1: people that murder, people are rapists, you know, armed robbers.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of people that belong in prison, and
Speaker 1: I want those people in prison. But the problem is
Speaker 1: there's millions of people that shouldn't be in the criminal
Speaker 1: justice system that are. And that's the problem that needs
Speaker 1: to be addressed. And that's what I know. Meek is
Speaker 1: really excited to help make an impact on. I'm excited
Speaker 1: to help me an impact on. I think, um, this
Speaker 1: is an enormous problem that's costing tens of billions of
Speaker 1: dollars and it's ruined millions of people's lives. So yeah,
Speaker 1: and Michael, picking up on what you were saying, five
Speaker 1: years ago, we had three hundred thousand people in prison
Speaker 1: in America. Right now it's two point two million, and
Speaker 1: I'm sure the numbers on probation and parole were proportionately
Speaker 1: about you know, seven times, lest like this one is too.
Speaker 1: And then you look at the country like Japan, right, well,
Speaker 1: we locked and you look at Western Europe, we lock
Speaker 1: people up at five to nine times, depending which country
Speaker 1: you choose. The rate of the rest of the countries
Speaker 1: in Western Europe below US is five times as many
Speaker 1: per capita. Right, And then when you look at we
Speaker 1: have more people in prison just for drugs in America
Speaker 1: that everyone in prison of all of Western Europe for everything,
Speaker 1: and Western Europe is much more than many more people
Speaker 1: investern Europe in Northern America. And then you get to Japan.
Speaker 1: In Japan they have approximately seventy thousand people in prison.
Speaker 1: We probably have seventy thousand people in prison and in
Speaker 1: the mid size state. Yeah, maybe even a smaller state
Speaker 1: than this one, right, because I mean do the math.
Speaker 1: So they we lock people up at fourteen times the
Speaker 1: rate per capita that Japan does. And for anybody listening, going, yeah,
Speaker 1: but that's why we have a lower crime rate than
Speaker 1: they do. No, we don't. Our crimemates are the same,
Speaker 1: and there's no evidence that supports In fact, I think
Speaker 1: every social scientist that has studied this would agree that
Speaker 1: this system is the worst system in terms of you know,
Speaker 1: in terms of crime and perpetuating the cycle because of
Speaker 1: the fact that when people go to jail or prison,
Speaker 1: as we talked about, growing up in the situation they are,
Speaker 1: they come out there uneployable to understand. And that's something
Speaker 1: I talked about the show a lot, like people that
Speaker 1: are out there that are employers take a shot with
Speaker 1: somebody who was system affected, because those people will work
Speaker 1: harder and better. You know, there's a bakery in New
Speaker 1: York I just found out about. I saw Ted talk
Speaker 1: about this that hires anybody who walks in system affected.
Speaker 1: They don't even ask, and there's hugely successful. They make
Speaker 1: all the brownies for Ben and Jerry's ice cream. Right
Speaker 1: they sell a zillion imagine brownies them right now because
Speaker 1: we have a little weight lost back on and we
Speaker 1: can get this delivered to him right now. If you're
Speaker 1: looking a little slimmer the last time. Yeah, though, no,
Speaker 1: but it's you know, that's something that we really need
Speaker 1: to as a society start to uh be much more
Speaker 1: progressive on and you know, more like empathetic. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't want to sound like some like touchy feely
Speaker 1: person here, and I'm with you, Michael. I believe you
Speaker 1: think that's an easier problem to solve because I've actually
Speaker 1: been thinking, Look, we employ eight thousand people between my companies,
Speaker 1: and you know, I think, um, if you got you know,
Speaker 1: a bunch of business leaders to focus on taking big
Speaker 1: companies saying what areas in the company could start to
Speaker 1: take people right out of prison to help rehabilitate them.
Speaker 1: I think there's actually I think there are I think
Speaker 1: they're actually easy ways to make real progress against I'm
Speaker 1: actually optimistic with a little bit of focus and energy
Speaker 1: that real impact can be made there. Well. And another
Speaker 1: way that I can tell you, I think a lot
Speaker 1: of those times, a lot of those cases you have
Speaker 1: better employees as you just indicated as well. So if
Speaker 1: we took and we have you know, thousands of people
Speaker 1: that manufacture a power working for film and centers, working
Speaker 1: call centers. Um, you know, I I think that. So
Speaker 1: my point is there's you know, big opportunities to hire people.
Speaker 1: And I think that that, Um, you know, again, if
Speaker 1: you look at how many people working in America and
Speaker 1: then how many people are coming out of prisoner jail
Speaker 1: each year. If there's two point two million people in
Speaker 1: prison and jail, maybe I don't know, five people come
Speaker 1: out of year. I don't think it takes a lot
Speaker 1: to get a set of big companies to focus on
Speaker 1: helping solve this problem well, and especially with long time offenders.
Speaker 1: Like a long time offenders, like people who serve over
Speaker 1: ten years, they spend most of their jail time working.
Speaker 1: In fact, the reason working for the prison that their mind,
Speaker 1: they have experience, their mind is structured, uh to just
Speaker 1: work all day and UH. Member rival was telling us
Speaker 1: he had a program where you hired like a lot
Speaker 1: of ex offenders and he asked me, like, how many
Speaker 1: of them messed up? Was you in that conversation? He
Speaker 1: asked me, so, how many you think messed up? Out
Speaker 1: of two? I'm probably, like I said, because I knew
Speaker 1: the number would be high, because I know of long
Speaker 1: time offenders, people that come home doing a lot of
Speaker 1: time now they don't really want to mess up again.
Speaker 1: He told me none out of Yeah, I was only
Speaker 1: two of I think this was thirty years ago. Robert
Speaker 1: Kraft had a um real focus on taking people that
Speaker 1: had come out of prison and hiring them and the
Speaker 1: point to your point was, there is best employees. There's
Speaker 1: best employees. And it's interesting too. I mean, call it luck,
Speaker 1: call it whatever you want. I've got. I've been very fortunate,
Speaker 1: blessed whatever to be able to help advocate successfully for
Speaker 1: clemency for dozens of people deserving people over the years,
Speaker 1: not just people who are innocent, by people who were
Speaker 1: primarily who are sentenced the mandatory senses, crazy mandatory sensors
Speaker 1: like Lenny Singleton who you referenced earlier, um or or
Speaker 1: Travion Blount who was sentenced at fifteen years old since
Speaker 1: to six life terms for a robbery in which no
Speaker 1: one was hurt. Um fifteen years old, six life terms.
Speaker 1: It made international news like what it? What in the
Speaker 1: world even is that? Like that's it's got to be.
Speaker 1: That should be. That should be a crown to send
Speaker 1: some minds today like why and And to me, that's
Speaker 1: the that should be the easy things to get everyone
Speaker 1: aligned on and fix. And by the way, talk about
Speaker 1: the state the meeks from that I'm from in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: We're one of three states in America that has no
Speaker 1: cap on probation. So states have caps of probation. Summer
Speaker 1: three years, two years, four years, We have no cap
Speaker 1: in Pennsylvania. So someone like me who was separate that
Speaker 1: he was wrongfully convicted thirteen years ago, appointed a gun
Speaker 1: that didn't point a gun and a cop by the way,
Speaker 1: where multiple police officers have come forward and said it
Speaker 1: was a lie. So we have affidavits from a police
Speaker 1: officer came forward and said no, I was one of
Speaker 1: the two resting officers and though he didn't point the gun. Okay,
Speaker 1: now after after after that, um, you've still got you've
Speaker 1: got a system that just come completely completely broken. And
Speaker 1: in Pennsylvania, Um, he gets sentenced to probation and then
Speaker 1: he does a concert in a different state without the
Speaker 1: proper authorization and the attack on another five years of probation,
Speaker 1: and now he's got he still as six years of
Speaker 1: probation left. He's been right. So so he's got no
Speaker 1: chance to actually succeed in that situation. I can tell
Speaker 1: you if you put me, the Jewish kid from suburban
Speaker 1: Philadelphia on probation, I couldn't make a year with what
Speaker 1: he needs to go through. There's not possible. And the
Speaker 1: prime time funk up years of my life from eighteen
Speaker 1: to thirty one he's the prime years where you make mistakes.
Speaker 1: I still sun up with forty six, by the way,
Speaker 1: is basically a probation violation. But what I was gonna
Speaker 1: say before um is that of the people that I've
Speaker 1: been involved with, that that I've helped to get out
Speaker 1: of prison, none of them have have re offended or
Speaker 1: offended for the first time in the cases of which
Speaker 1: they were innocent. None not, and some will. And that's
Speaker 1: okay because because you know what, at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, we need to make the world a better place.
Speaker 1: And if we get millions of people out of the
Speaker 1: criminal justice system, and if you make mistakes, that's okay
Speaker 1: because there's a lot of people that aren't in the
Speaker 1: criminal justice system that will also make mistakes. This is
Speaker 1: never gonna be perfect. And that's someone says, hey, we
Speaker 1: should keep that six point seven or six point nine
Speaker 1: million people stuck in the criminal justice system, the few
Speaker 1: millions that shouldn't be there because someone may make a mistake.
Speaker 1: Nothing's perfect, like we need we need to get it
Speaker 1: right overall. And that's the same approach I take in business.
Speaker 1: We want to make good overall decisions. We don't go
Speaker 1: for perfection. I wen't went for perfection. We never get
Speaker 1: anything done, of course not. And I said, I've been
Speaker 1: lucky in that sense. And of the people of the
Speaker 1: Innocence Project, the people that we've gotten out, a tiny
Speaker 1: percentage of them have ever been in any sort of trouble. Again,
Speaker 1: people age we're telling about real trouble, probably zero saying
Speaker 1: I got back in real travel. We know that people
Speaker 1: age out of crime. There's a couple of other very
Speaker 1: important topics I wanna talk touch on with you, Meek
Speaker 1: and Michael um. One is prisons themselves and how barbaric
Speaker 1: our prison system is when it's supposed to be called
Speaker 1: the correctional institution, and we know that that is the
Speaker 1: farthest thing from the truth in most cases. And the
Speaker 1: other is how important it is for people to get
Speaker 1: out and vote, because I don't think we can have
Speaker 1: this conversation without talking about that. You just are in
Speaker 1: the middle of actually a criminal justice revamp slash and
Speaker 1: some people I've heard somebody say we don't need criminal
Speaker 1: justice before, we need a criminal justice revolution in Philadelphia
Speaker 1: that's taking place under your eyes because because of an election,
Speaker 1: right in an election in which I can bet that
Speaker 1: eighties something percent of people didn't vote at least right
Speaker 1: because the race. And so I mean, what can you say,
Speaker 1: which one do you want to take on? First of those?
Speaker 1: We can talk vote in Uh, this coming from our
Speaker 1: wotch you on where we come from. Wasn't it a
Speaker 1: few years ago? Could you even vote when he was
Speaker 1: the felon? Did that change? I don't know if it's changed.
Speaker 1: We're trying to change it. And while it was changed
Speaker 1: in Virginia, UM Governor mcculliff, fix that reenfranchised two thousand
Speaker 1: people in Florida. There's a referendum on the ballot. Now,
Speaker 1: anyone who was listening in Florida, you must vote on
Speaker 1: this referendum. We're going to restore the right of ex
Speaker 1: felons to vote, the seven hundred thousand people in Pafarida
Speaker 1: who can't vote here. Yeah, and this goes this goes
Speaker 1: far us back when I say, like the other side
Speaker 1: of America where people don't even believe like that world
Speaker 1: tends to us. And I used to think that, but
Speaker 1: that that was that was deeply false. And part of
Speaker 1: my campaign this year two thousand and eighteen, two thousand nineteen,
Speaker 1: as I'm moving around one of my jobs is trying
Speaker 1: to teach people and and teach people the routes of
Speaker 1: how voting go. Because it's even with a judge trying
Speaker 1: to lock me up for what going to going over
Speaker 1: a bridge. Basically, uh, we voted for her. Uh district
Speaker 1: attorneys where they they enforced mandatory minimums and uh they
Speaker 1: enforced locking people up for smoking marijuana and things like that.
Speaker 1: We vote for them. We have to be the ones
Speaker 1: that vote. And and our culture, the black community, a
Speaker 1: lot of us don't vote. So it's like white community. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I I don't really know. I knew that
Speaker 1: in our community we don't vote at all. I don't
Speaker 1: even know anybody in my age at the age of eighteen,
Speaker 1: Uh we we ever got up as a group and
Speaker 1: everybody wanted to vote. It was like never a thing.
Speaker 1: We didn't believe in it. So my new thing is
Speaker 1: to teach the younger people from our culture that come up,
Speaker 1: well all younger people that come up, that voting is
Speaker 1: important because you know, we have to live under these
Speaker 1: laws that these people are creating. And if we don't vote,
Speaker 1: we don't have a voice at all. It's like you
Speaker 1: don't even count. And a lot of times you look
Speaker 1: at TV even they had a campaign that's that voter
Speaker 1: or uh, I always seeing it, but I never really
Speaker 1: knew what it meant. It was that that problem was
Speaker 1: like eighteen years old when they did that campaign. I
Speaker 1: never really understood it. But nowadays I understood. It's like
Speaker 1: you either a vote or you get housed under the
Speaker 1: regime which will eventually kill you. If not by jael
Speaker 1: not by placing you in a keeping you in a
Speaker 1: ruthless environment, it will turn out bad for you, basically.
Speaker 1: And I just believe that if we vote, if we
Speaker 1: make our president don't like justice reform. Justice reform right
Speaker 1: now is the number one topic in America. Probably so
Speaker 1: me too. Justice reform. These are like the biggest topics
Speaker 1: of America. And I think if we make this topic
Speaker 1: big enough politically, a lot of people would have to
Speaker 1: lean towards being leaning on these topics and coming to
Speaker 1: like I want you to leaning, I'd say appropriate, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd say I'd say punishment to fetch the crime, because
Speaker 1: by the way, I'm not leading. I want to appropriate punishment.
Speaker 1: And that was right, that was that was right, and
Speaker 1: and and when we even speaking lenient, like I would
Speaker 1: say like what is lean and is lead into how
Speaker 1: barbaric jail prisons are? Right, But before you go there,
Speaker 1: you know, I've been on the board of Families Against
Speaker 1: Mandatory Minimums, was a great organization for over twenty five
Speaker 1: years now, and our motto is let the punishment fit
Speaker 1: the crime. I mean, nobody's advocating for chaos. Nobody wants
Speaker 1: a society that is like, you know, I want to
Speaker 1: feel I want to feel safe everybody I want. I
Speaker 1: want my daughter to be safe. I want your family
Speaker 1: to be safe. But I want to kids to be
Speaker 1: safe in some situations though that the crimes are booths
Speaker 1: so high up is like what is lenient? Like if
Speaker 1: something like basically, but I'll make something except like how
Speaker 1: many people I would saying how many people are in
Speaker 1: prison and jail today we're on probation because they have
Speaker 1: a drug problem. Probably it's more than a million. Yeah, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about selling drugs anyone who smoked weed.
Speaker 1: How could you possibly we just become illegal everywhere? How
Speaker 1: could possibly put someone in the criminal trust system for
Speaker 1: joining something that's becoming legal? Make absolutely no sense. Someone
Speaker 1: had a problem with Perker, Why do you send him
Speaker 1: to jail something to rehab It makes no sense. So
Speaker 1: to me, that's that's where the punishment needs to fit
Speaker 1: the crime. I would take everybody who has a drug problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah I don't get them help, so get stop the
Speaker 1: drug problem. But it's like it's deep as this. Like
Speaker 1: if I sell drugs and the cops come to my
Speaker 1: house and I'm not there, and my mom get found
Speaker 1: guilty for these drugs in my house and the drugs
Speaker 1: are in her house, she may know these drugs are
Speaker 1: in her house and she gets found guilt. The people
Speaker 1: moms are getting thirty years in prison and federal prison
Speaker 1: for stuff like that. Like your mom got thirty years
Speaker 1: in prison because she didn't get your thirty years is
Speaker 1: like a lot, you don't think. So that's a life sentence.
Speaker 1: That's deaf. And you talked about that earlier. I mean
Speaker 1: you can and um about how people get caught up
Speaker 1: just because they that's definitely don't want to extend you
Speaker 1: to prisident, even though she might preach to you every
Speaker 1: day that you're selling drugs. You're getting out my house
Speaker 1: and she know it's wrong, but you her son, You
Speaker 1: know this that if you're in a car with someone
Speaker 1: who's got drugs, and you get pulled over and they
Speaker 1: find the drugs. It belongs to everybody unless somebody takes
Speaker 1: responsibility for it, and nobody ever does nobodever it goes,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, those are mine, right. So this is how
Speaker 1: crazy the system is, where you could just be next
Speaker 1: to someone who's doing something wrong and then you get
Speaker 1: wrapped up. I'm not even talking about full in instance.
Speaker 1: I'm just talking about, like, say, if you come from
Speaker 1: where I come from, like your mom worn a crack,
Speaker 1: she's a strung out fan. You're thirteen years old, you
Speaker 1: got a seven year old sister, and you're coming in
Speaker 1: the house. It's just baking soda and butter and infrigerated.
Speaker 1: When you go out and look out the windows, people
Speaker 1: in the corner selling weed, marijuana, craig cocaine, and they're
Speaker 1: running in fast cash and your little sister don't got
Speaker 1: nothing to eat. The first thing you're gonna do is
Speaker 1: go outside and pick up like this is like normal.
Speaker 1: Like Mike, if you was in a situation, I bet
Speaker 1: a million dollars on it that you would go outside
Speaker 1: and pick out of a drug. If Kylie was in
Speaker 1: the house, you seven, you fourteen, heart everybody to work
Speaker 1: for me to doing No I'm saying, I'm talking about no,
Speaker 1: I'm talking about if you don't have any of this
Speaker 1: going on, and you're poor, like you don't have any
Speaker 1: family in the house, and you come see Kylie and
Speaker 1: it's it's but after a while, this is gonna. This
Speaker 1: is gonna. But by way, that's also where and that
Speaker 1: person have no punishment. No, but may be set to
Speaker 1: jail for thirty years especial ridiculous thing I've ever heard.
Speaker 1: And that's why I said to me. But even if
Speaker 1: you bring it down to ten years, it's not even
Speaker 1: a tenure, then ten years will ruin your life. So
Speaker 1: like what they got is leaning, is not even leaning,
Speaker 1: like it's the thing the rates of bootsteps so high,
Speaker 1: like what they call like I watch media and social
Speaker 1: send him to prison. Like even when people be like,
Speaker 1: he should have went to prison, he breaks broke probation.
Speaker 1: Even if I did break probation, if I did commit
Speaker 1: a crime ten years ago and I broke probation, people
Speaker 1: are like, send him back to prison. I'm like, do
Speaker 1: you know what prison is? And like when I say
Speaker 1: shackled up in a cage, I mean like shack of
Speaker 1: real chains. When you take a baby step is cutting
Speaker 1: your legs and like the same thing you see in
Speaker 1: the slavery movie. It's the same thing. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: do people really understand what they're saying, like send him
Speaker 1: to prison, like Mike Cain to myself. Mike was like,
Speaker 1: he was like, it's not bad as it could be.
Speaker 1: I'm gonnahit. I'm like, oh, but that's because I'm an
Speaker 1: optimistic person and I always want to look at things positively.
Speaker 1: And it's ten degrees. I don't have a tallest seat.
Speaker 1: The water that I'm coming out of my sink is
Speaker 1: the same water connected to the tallt is filthy, Like
Speaker 1: it's like it's ten mices in my cell and night
Speaker 1: running around you like is you can't even imagine it?
Speaker 1: And I'm like, I'm here. I didn't hurt anybody. I
Speaker 1: didn't kill anybody. I didn't. By the way, the thing
Speaker 1: that bothers me so much, the amount of people I've
Speaker 1: told about your story and everyone it's now proven that
Speaker 1: you were wrongfully convicted because we have a cop who
Speaker 1: was one of the two arresting officers signed AFFI David
Speaker 1: say no, you didn't point the gun, which what you
Speaker 1: were charged for. Yeah, yeah, and and your probation violations
Speaker 1: where you popped a wheelie on a motorcycle, you broke
Speaker 1: up a fight in an airport. Yet there are people
Speaker 1: I put them back in jail for ten years, which
Speaker 1: is it shows how backwards so many people are in
Speaker 1: this country as well. Just when you speak on jail
Speaker 1: that it's like it's just like it's just like a
Speaker 1: place of hotel where you go to sit that now
Speaker 1: it's some ship that will warn your whole train of thought,
Speaker 1: like you went here, Like the match sleeping on is
Speaker 1: probably four inches thick, and then after that is metal
Speaker 1: and cement, like you got eighty minutes. These guys eighty
Speaker 1: years old sleeping on mattress and stuff like, they didn't
Speaker 1: kill anybody. They may have been on probation and they
Speaker 1: felling the after felling in you eight years. Oh you
Speaker 1: you're poorer. You've been in the system so long. It's
Speaker 1: hard to explain. You have to see it and be there.
Speaker 1: Like even what they do with juveniles, they got juveniles
Speaker 1: locked in cages. These are suebment cages that they had
Speaker 1: these kids and and most of these kids didn't kill
Speaker 1: anybody tell you something. I was so proud of you.
Speaker 1: But it's a scary story. So the day that I
Speaker 1: brought Robert Craft to visit make in prison, UM we
Speaker 1: were sitting there and UM, we were just kind of talking.
Speaker 1: I was really just kind of listening to Robert Meek talking.
Speaker 1: And Robert looked at me and he said, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't understand how how you're handling this. So how
Speaker 1: are you so happy? He said, Like, last time I
Speaker 1: was with you, we were on a plane flying to
Speaker 1: an All Star game and you were on the top
Speaker 1: of the world. Now you're in an orange jumpsuit, locked
Speaker 1: in prison. You've got a smile from me. You're gonna
Speaker 1: ear to ear and me. He's generally pretty quick with
Speaker 1: his answer. You thought about it for about thirty seconds,
Speaker 1: and he looked at Robert. He said, you know, it's
Speaker 1: been my entire adult life. I was wrongfully convicted for
Speaker 1: a crime and commit I've been sent back to prison
Speaker 1: multiple times, never committed a new crime. But this is
Speaker 1: the first time people actually fighting for me, and that
Speaker 1: makes me so happy. So for me, I was mortified
Speaker 1: of the situation, but completely proud of how well he
Speaker 1: was handling that horrific situation. This is the best situation
Speaker 1: I've ever been in for as dealing with the system,
Speaker 1: with having like real credible people stand behind me, because,
Speaker 1: like Mike said, I'm telling them, like, yo, you really
Speaker 1: think I should if y'all had guns in here, you're
Speaker 1: not even police officer. If I came in here and
Speaker 1: all you'll have firearms and I came in here point
Speaker 1: a gun nine times out of tenn where would I be?
Speaker 1: So when the police against the copy cops are trained
Speaker 1: to neutralize people who calls threat towards their lives, like
Speaker 1: this is like normal, Like you get away with this,
Speaker 1: This is what you should do. You're trained to do this,
Speaker 1: not me one on one with a cop like and
Speaker 1: you know, one on want anybody could get scared and
Speaker 1: want to run away. Now this is a group of
Speaker 1: cops doing a full blown read and me being accused
Speaker 1: of pointing the gun at all of them and so
Speaker 1: so me we're down to h we're runn out of
Speaker 1: time with a time. One more question, which is a
Speaker 1: hard one for me. There's so many questions I want
Speaker 1: to ask you, and you might go, but I'm gonna,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna, I'm gonna narrow down to one. Before I
Speaker 1: do that, I want to remind people who are listening vote,
Speaker 1: vote and vote voting your local races and your DA's
Speaker 1: races and your judges races. Your vote counts. We have votes,
Speaker 1: we have races that actually ended up tied, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: your vote counts. And they have to be white against
Speaker 1: the black to be racist. It could be white on
Speaker 1: white racism, it could be black on black racism. And
Speaker 1: make sure you vote for the right people. When when
Speaker 1: you're vote for judges, nobody really knows because you just
Speaker 1: see a judge on the DA you can make good decisions.
Speaker 1: And people knew when they voted for the d A
Speaker 1: in Pennsylvania that he was a more thoughtful person on
Speaker 1: the criminal justice system and been lots of new d
Speaker 1: as that have had much more modern approaches. That approach
Speaker 1: hasn't been locked everybody up and put all black American prison.
Speaker 1: It's been let's have it accurate punishment for a crime.
Speaker 1: And that's who you should be voting for. And I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say one more thing before I turned the last
Speaker 1: question over to you, which is everybody who's out there,
Speaker 1: at some point you're gonna get asked to serve on
Speaker 1: a jury and nobody likes it. We get those things
Speaker 1: in the mail, We're like, oh my god, I gotta
Speaker 1: time for this whatever, it's a big pay I gotta go.
Speaker 1: You gotta go because when you go, there might be
Speaker 1: a meek Mill in front of you. There might be
Speaker 1: somebody else who's making and Eric Ritta get fund of
Speaker 1: your case that all three of us are involved with,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna get him out come hell or high water.
Speaker 1: So get up, get out, and go vote, and go
Speaker 1: serve on the jury because as you saved, could be
Speaker 1: your own. And now, rather than ask a final question,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna do what I do at the end
Speaker 1: of the show, which is I always say it's my
Speaker 1: favorite part of the show. I think it's probably audiences
Speaker 1: favorite part of the show too, which is when I
Speaker 1: stop talking and just turned the mica over to you
Speaker 1: for final last words, and Michael, I'm gonna let you
Speaker 1: go first and then Meeke and back clean up and
Speaker 1: close out the show. So, Michael, what would you want
Speaker 1: to tell people? How could they get involved? What can
Speaker 1: they do? What's what's the solution? Well, I think we're
Speaker 1: in a great position because I actually think this is
Speaker 1: a big problem that needs to be addressed. I think
Speaker 1: it's gonna be I think it would just take common
Speaker 1: sense to this juice problem. We're gonna make the world
Speaker 1: a better place. And I'm actually for a guy who
Speaker 1: had absolutely zero points your exposure until to the criminal
Speaker 1: justice system until I met Meek, and I'm still really
Speaker 1: didn't understand it until November six of last year. I'm
Speaker 1: really optimistic because I believe that UM, this is a
Speaker 1: completely broken system that UM, with a lot of focus
Speaker 1: and energy, we can make the country a much better
Speaker 1: place than to me. That's exciting. So you know what,
Speaker 1: I would say that everybody is make a difference. I
Speaker 1: didn't make any difference until seven months ago. And I'm
Speaker 1: actually you know, I've got three great businesses that I run,
Speaker 1: and I've got a great daughter and a great family
Speaker 1: and friends. Get almost energized about this as anything because
Speaker 1: I see how broken it is it is, and I
Speaker 1: see how much fixing it needs. Meek last words, and
Speaker 1: before you even go, I want to thank you and Michael,
Speaker 1: thank you for not just for being on the show,
Speaker 1: but for lending your voice and your energy and your
Speaker 1: your money and your time to this movement. Thank you
Speaker 1: for your focus. What you're doing is incredible. But you've
Speaker 1: been at this for twenty five years. Um, he's been
Speaker 1: sucking the system for thirteen years, and I've been at
Speaker 1: this for seven months. So thank you. Well, I'm older
Speaker 1: than yours, I've had more time. But yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: a it's a very it's it's a you know, it's
Speaker 1: an obsession and I'm not gonna stop until we fix
Speaker 1: it together. So but anyway, so thank you both again
Speaker 1: for being here and sharing your your thoughts and your
Speaker 1: and your energy, your collective wisdom. So, Mike, what are
Speaker 1: your last words for the audiences out there? My last
Speaker 1: words to the audience that just now, I'm dedicated. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is a life mission. I actually suffer from the
Speaker 1: criminal justice system for over ten years. And you know, uh,
Speaker 1: I actually walked the walk on the other side of
Speaker 1: the wall with some innocent men who I know are
Speaker 1: basically suffering and families are suffering. So you know, I
Speaker 1: felt the pain first hand, and you know, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: continue to do what I need to do to help
Speaker 1: make change. Uh, not fixed the system, but break the
Speaker 1: system completely and rebuild it again. Because um, the way
Speaker 1: we lived and the things we've been through with the system.
Speaker 1: It doesn't even take crime or take being a villain
Speaker 1: to go to jail, you know what I'm saying. And
Speaker 1: you know it's it's thousands of millions of people trapped
Speaker 1: inside on the other side of the wall that actually
Speaker 1: need help. And you know, I think this is the
Speaker 1: right season to make change and uh UM putting all
Speaker 1: my efforts onto it and hopefully, you know, we make
Speaker 1: change within the next few years and a free a
Speaker 1: lot of people from the prison system. We're going we're
Speaker 1: gonna do it. We're gonna do it together, and we
Speaker 1: need everybody's help. I did want to say that there's
Speaker 1: a book that really touches on everything that you went
Speaker 1: through called On the Run by Alice Goffman, where she
Speaker 1: chronicles life in you know, a Princeton PhD sociologist, um
Speaker 1: who went and lived on sixth Streets in Philadelphia, uh
Speaker 1: for eighteen months, and just one thing I wanted to
Speaker 1: read from here, which I think really will will give
Speaker 1: people an insight into what goes on and then will
Speaker 1: wrap up. But she said, in the first eighteen months
Speaker 1: that I spent the neighborhood, at least once a day,
Speaker 1: I watched the police stop pedestrians or people in cars,
Speaker 1: searched them, run their name for warrants, asked them to
Speaker 1: come in for questioning or making arrest. In that same
Speaker 1: eighteen month period, I watched the police breakdown doors, search
Speaker 1: houses and question, arrest or chase people through houses fifty
Speaker 1: two times. Nine times, police her helicopters circle overhead and
Speaker 1: beam search lights on the local streets. I noticed blocks
Speaker 1: taped off and traffic redirected. This police search for evidence
Speaker 1: fourteen times. During my first eighteen months of near daily observation,
Speaker 1: I watched the police punch, choke, kick, stomp on, or
Speaker 1: beat young men with their nightsticks. That's what the situation
Speaker 1: was like. It's what it still is like, and that's
Speaker 1: what has to change. So please check out the book
Speaker 1: Too On the Run Fugitive Life in American City by
Speaker 1: Alice Coffman. And thank you everyone for listening. This has
Speaker 1: been an amazing experience for me. And once again you've
Speaker 1: been listening to Michael Rubin, best known as the owner
Speaker 1: of the Philadelphia seventy. Yeah, one of the owners, but
Speaker 1: the one who's gonna bring the championship back to Philadelphia
Speaker 1: and uh and and Meek Mill Again, no need for
Speaker 1: any further introduction. Thank you again for being here, Thank
Speaker 1: you for having us man, don't forget to give us
Speaker 1: a fantastic review. Wherever you get your podcasts, it really helps.
Speaker 1: And I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project and
Speaker 1: I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very
Speaker 1: important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go
Speaker 1: to Innocence Project dot org to learn how to donate
Speaker 1: and get involved. I'd like to thank our production team,
Speaker 1: Connor Hall and Kevin Wardis. The music on the show
Speaker 1: is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be
Speaker 1: sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and
Speaker 1: on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason
Speaker 1: flam Is a production of Lava for Good. Podcast in
Speaker 1: association was Signal Company Number one