Speaker 1: I've never been in trouble in my life. I didn't
Speaker 1: even have a parking ticket, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: I was brought up with cops are the good guys.
Speaker 2: I didn't know what was going to happen, but I
Speaker 2: do know that everything was stacked against me. Everything like everything.
Speaker 3: This isn't supposed to happen this way. I'm innocent. I
Speaker 3: know I'm innocent. I know I had nothing to do
Speaker 3: with this. How is this possible?
Speaker 4: I grew up trusting systems. I've grew up believing that
Speaker 4: every human being should do the right thing. And that's why,
Speaker 4: even though I knew I was dealing with corerough people,
Speaker 4: I wasn't going to break anyone to get me out
Speaker 4: of prison because I wouldn't live with the fact that
Speaker 4: I break my way out of my wife's death.
Speaker 2: I'm not innocent, too proven guilty. I'm guilty until I
Speaker 2: prove my innocence. And that's absolutely what happened to me.
Speaker 1: Our system.
Speaker 2: Since I've been out ten years, it has come a
Speaker 2: little ways, but it's still broken.
Speaker 4: I totally lost trusting humanity after what's happened to me.
Speaker 5: This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction with
Speaker 5: Jason flamm that's me and today we have an extraordinary
Speaker 5: show and you're about to find out why. Today's guest
Speaker 5: is the one and only Meek Milly and Michael Rubin
Speaker 5: is with him and Meek, you need no introduction, but
Speaker 5: welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 2: I appreciate you for bringing me on the show.
Speaker 5: I appreciate all the work you're doing and we're going
Speaker 5: to get into that right away. But with him is
Speaker 5: Michael Rubin, who is the owner of this Philadelphia seventy
Speaker 5: six ers and has an amazing background as an entrepreneur
Speaker 5: and businessman, but who has become a tremendous advocate for
Speaker 5: criminal justice reform and is about to really take things up.
Speaker 5: So Michael, I'm thrilled to have you in the movement
Speaker 5: and I'm glad you're here on the show.
Speaker 1: Hey, thanks for everything you're doing. I'm glad to be here.
Speaker 5: So welcome. Oh we got to train in the background night.
Speaker 5: That's what's were in Philadelphia. It's all good. People got
Speaker 5: to ride the trains. So, Meek, one of the reasons
Speaker 5: I wanted to have you on the show is because
Speaker 5: your original case was in fact a wrongful conviction, and
Speaker 5: that's something a lot of people don't understand. And there's
Speaker 5: a lot more they don't understand about the circumstances in
Speaker 5: which you were arrested and how this nightmare saga, which
Speaker 5: is now in its second decade in the criminal justice
Speaker 5: system has unfolded. And it's important to tell this story
Speaker 5: because it shines a light on so many aspects of
Speaker 5: what's wrong with the criminal justice system. And we're here
Speaker 5: in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, not Philadelphia, Mississippi. Even still, the system
Speaker 5: here has been so backwards for so long, and you
Speaker 5: were born right into the thick of it. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 5: let's talk about that, because nineteen eighty seven, so you know,
Speaker 5: the the number of people incarcerated the United States stayed
Speaker 5: relatively constant from nineteen hundred till about nineteen seventy, and
Speaker 5: then it went crazy. It doubled and tripled and quadrupled.
Speaker 5: And Philadelphia was a hot spot. And you were born
Speaker 5: into a situation in which black men were being incarcerated
Speaker 5: at rates that were unprecedented actually in the history of
Speaker 5: the world. And your situation actually was the os was
Speaker 5: totally stacked against you. But can you talk about that
Speaker 5: about how you grew up and how this, you know,
Speaker 5: was almost almost a fad of complete uh.
Speaker 2: You know, I come from Philadelphia, actually North Philadelphia, which
Speaker 2: now is called the Temple Area, and you know, we
Speaker 2: grew up in an environments where like dragonfest environments where
Speaker 2: a lot of violence, a lot of drugs, a lot
Speaker 2: of things taking place. So it's like you could be
Speaker 2: standing in the wrong place and lose your life, or
Speaker 2: you could be standing in the wrong place and get
Speaker 2: charged with a crime you didn't do. That was just
Speaker 2: like normal. Actually, I've been hanging with my friend p
Speaker 2: Mind Mike. I've been hanging with p Mind probably fifteen years,
Speaker 2: and I remember back he went to jail when he
Speaker 2: was probably about fifteen years old. He probably thirty now.
Speaker 2: He just turned thirty one a few days ago, and
Speaker 2: I've been hanging with him since he was probably fourteen
Speaker 2: years old. He said, he's like, yeah, the first time
Speaker 2: I went to prison, he said, a white guy just
Speaker 2: pulled up in the back of a car and just
Speaker 2: pointed at me out the car and said, I robbed
Speaker 2: him for seven dollars, but he had three hundred and
Speaker 2: eighty dollars in his pocket and he went to jail
Speaker 2: for that. He ended up doing I think like two
Speaker 2: years and that in the juvenile facility. But that wasn't
Speaker 2: the worst part. The worst part was he's got a
Speaker 2: felony on this record for arm robbery. And you know,
Speaker 2: if you know him, he not like a it's not robbery.
Speaker 2: He's not robbery. And his system. He made mistakes in
Speaker 2: his life. But me being around him, I never knew that,
Speaker 2: but I witnessed that so many times. I wouldn'ts standing
Speaker 2: on a corner and the cop pull up with a
Speaker 2: Mexican guy in the back, and I don't know. Sometimes
Speaker 2: we say and then our world in a sarcastic way
Speaker 2: of being funny, we always be like white people look
Speaker 2: the same to us. Some of my white friends were
Speaker 2: like all black people were saying to us. But sometimes
Speaker 2: that is the case with people, and they just pull
Speaker 2: up and they point people out, and you stand there
Speaker 2: when the cops pull up, and it just be like,
Speaker 2: I hope this guy don't point me on. And that's
Speaker 2: just one of the scenarios out of a million scenarios.
Speaker 2: Being caught in the middle of poverty, where drug infested
Speaker 2: the neighborhood, where people are getting robbed left and right,
Speaker 2: where you know, cops left blacking people who have left
Speaker 2: and rights just to get stripes on that record, you
Speaker 2: know what I'm saying. And we grew up in that
Speaker 2: and you know, at eighteen years old, I was caught
Speaker 2: up in that system. And even though I've been on
Speaker 2: the path since ever since of doing spectacular in my
Speaker 2: life from where I come from, that same system is
Speaker 2: still haunting me and hanking me down. Even at the
Speaker 2: age of thirty one and having a record deal and
Speaker 2: being able to handle business and work, it still haunted
Speaker 2: me to pull me back to the same system where
Speaker 2: I just left eleven years ago.
Speaker 5: And you just brought up two things that I wanted
Speaker 5: to highlight. I mean, one is, you were, in a
Speaker 5: very real way victim of that violence because your father
Speaker 5: was murdered when you were a child, right, so you
Speaker 5: had to grow up in that environment. And then on
Speaker 5: top of that.
Speaker 2: Everybody was murdered. It was everybody was.
Speaker 5: Murdered, Yeah, it was. I mean the violence in that
Speaker 5: time was crazy, and some of it was inflicted by
Speaker 5: the police, including the violence that they inflicted on you
Speaker 5: when they arrested you. But on top of that, you
Speaker 5: brought up a very important point, which is that we
Speaker 5: know from decades of research now that cross racial identifications
Speaker 5: are extremely unreliable. Dentifications in general are unreliable because when
Speaker 5: people have witness a crime, they're adrenaline, especially violent crime,
Speaker 5: their adrenaline goes crazy and their perception gets screwy and
Speaker 5: the brain doesn't function properly, so it almost becomes like guessing.
Speaker 5: But it gets even worse. And there's a movement now
Speaker 5: to try to in various places, to try to put
Speaker 5: in a system where a jury has to be instructed
Speaker 5: in a case in which across racial identification is an
Speaker 5: important factor that these things are as unreliable as they
Speaker 5: are because they need to know, but in most cases
Speaker 5: they don't know. They just think an identification is the
Speaker 5: most powerful thing. Going to court room too, a guy
Speaker 5: points at you and goes, that's him. You know, it's
Speaker 5: hard for a jury to see past that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like it's a neighborhood. We all wearing white
Speaker 2: Teas of the summer of two thousand and three, everybody
Speaker 2: white T shirts is the popular thing to wear with
Speaker 2: denim shirts. And you've got a guy you might be Asian.
Speaker 2: He pulled up on a corner. We all seven of
Speaker 2: us got braids, and four of us got a little cousin,
Speaker 2: But we all look the same, the ones that got
Speaker 2: braized to him, that's just you allowed to repick, to
Speaker 2: get caught up in the system. Like whoever you point at,
Speaker 2: that's you. And you better hope you don't have no
Speaker 2: felonies on your record already because you might go to
Speaker 2: jail for a long time.
Speaker 5: And sociologically speaking, and this goes back again to the
Speaker 5: seventies and eighties. Right at the same time that they
Speaker 5: were rolling back welfare and other programs for the urban poor,
Speaker 5: they were ramping up the policing and they were Now
Speaker 5: you created the perfect storm because what was happening was
Speaker 5: you had these systems coming for tracking arrest. You had
Speaker 5: so many more cops. In fact, I think in Philadelphia
Speaker 5: sixty nine percent more police decade over decade than they
Speaker 5: were before, and they had to make arrests. So whereas
Speaker 5: before they were largely ignoring what was going on in
Speaker 5: the community, now there were heightened penalties for not just
Speaker 5: for violent crimes, but also for all kinds of different
Speaker 5: drug crimes, for vagrancy, for trespassing, for anything, and they
Speaker 5: were in a position where they were arresting people left
Speaker 5: and right and creating this permanent underclass, which is what
Speaker 5: you were referring to me. And Michael. You know, obviously
Speaker 5: you grew up here too, right, but your situation must
Speaker 5: have been.
Speaker 6: Very in a very different world. I grew up maybe
Speaker 6: twenty minutes for me. But Mick used to always say
Speaker 6: to me. We used to have this argument for years.
Speaker 6: He'd say to me, Michael, there's two Americans. And I'd
Speaker 6: be like, like, dude, shut up. There's like there's there's
Speaker 6: one America. Like stop, you know, like you're doing great,
Speaker 6: Like you know, I didn't understand, Like what are you
Speaker 6: telling me about these two worlds? We live in one
Speaker 6: great country and and you know, we'd argue about all
Speaker 6: the time. And I remember the day that that meet
Speaker 6: got sentenced November six, twenty seventeen, he called me from
Speaker 6: from the Philadelphia job before they transferred to a different jeneral.
Speaker 6: They said, he said, you see, I told you this
Speaker 6: is what happens to.
Speaker 1: The black people on that oage, right, And I just
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 6: You know, I said you were right, I was wrong,
Speaker 6: and there is two worlds. And you know, for me,
Speaker 6: November six, twenty seventeen, was really a life change in
Speaker 6: moment because I would never have been able to understand
Speaker 6: or really believe, and I don't think anybody would be
Speaker 6: able to believe how crazy circumstance he was living in,
Speaker 6: because it didn't seem possible until you sat in the courtroom.
Speaker 6: And even people that have come to later court hearings
Speaker 6: of Judge Brinkley have said, I've heard everything about this,
Speaker 6: but I didn't believe it until I actually saw it,
Speaker 6: and it's so crazy. So for sure, I grew up
Speaker 6: in a completely different environment. But Miek always told me
Speaker 6: from the day I metum. I remember we were at
Speaker 6: a NBA All Star game and you know, within you know,
Speaker 6: a few minutes, you know, Meek realized I was involved
Speaker 6: with the Philadelphia seventy six ers, and you know, he
Speaker 6: was telling me a little bit about his background. He
Speaker 6: told me he was charged for pointing a gun at
Speaker 6: multiple cops. And he said to me, like, you know,
Speaker 6: I didn't do that, Like if you know, if I pointed,
Speaker 6: you know, a gun at multiple cops, I'd be dead.
Speaker 6: Like I heard them, but I didn't really comprehend it.
Speaker 6: And then like if I've told that story to five
Speaker 6: hundred people in the last seven months. Every person from
Speaker 6: law enforcement to politics, to anyone who understands anything, they
Speaker 6: all say the same thing.
Speaker 1: He's right, and he'd be dead.
Speaker 6: No one would point a you know, pull a gun
Speaker 6: on multiple cops and not get shot. And meet can't
Speaker 6: obviously talk about the case because the case is still
Speaker 6: unfortunately going on, which is crazy in itself, uncommon sense, right,
Speaker 6: But I mean, you're talking about a guy who is
Speaker 6: wrongfully convicted when he was eighteen years old of a
Speaker 6: crime that he didn't commit. It's been sent back to
Speaker 6: jail multiple times, never committed a new crime, and he's
Speaker 6: the perfect example of someone who's been stuck in a
Speaker 6: completely broken criminal justice system for criming and commit and
Speaker 6: it's now thirteen years later and it's still going on,
Speaker 6: and that shows how broken the criminal justice system is.
Speaker 5: It's incredible. You know, we have two point two million
Speaker 5: people in prison in America and including jail, another four.
Speaker 1: And a half million people on probation in parole.
Speaker 5: For yeah, I mean, the latest figure I heard was
Speaker 5: four point eight, right, And once we accept those figures,
Speaker 5: you also have to accept the fact that we now
Speaker 5: have between jail, prison, probation, and parole. We have more
Speaker 5: black people with mostly men under a criminal justice supervision
Speaker 5: in America then all the slaves at the height of
Speaker 5: slavery in America in the eighteen fifties or sixties, whatever
Speaker 5: that was. That that should really mess people's heads up,
Speaker 5: like what are we doing? We actually are It's just well,
Speaker 5: it's like Michelle Alexander says, is the new Jim Crow.
Speaker 6: But what's even you know, let's bring it to current.
Speaker 6: What you can't what words can't explain, is Miek is
Speaker 6: still on probation for something that we've already said he
Speaker 6: didn't do, and it's been going on for thirteen years
Speaker 6: from the original wrongful conviction. But he can't like you
Speaker 6: can't live that way, Like I say, I joke with him,
Speaker 6: I feel like I'm on probation because I'm worried about.
Speaker 1: Just something going wrong with him.
Speaker 6: If he decides to leave a state a day early
Speaker 6: because something changed with the schedule, or he gets you know,
Speaker 6: someone says hey, I'm going to pay you to go
Speaker 6: do this contract. I want to go and I have
Speaker 6: the proper days of permission, the judge will try to
Speaker 6: violate him. I mean, it's the system is chasing him
Speaker 6: and trying to violate, and that's not what probation is
Speaker 6: supposed to be about, reabilitating somebody, not trying to catch
Speaker 6: them and send that back to prison. And something that
Speaker 6: someone told me recently, and you know, I've now become
Speaker 6: too familiar with this, but seventy percent of people to
Speaker 6: go back to jail once they've been in jail in
Speaker 6: prison are going back for technical probation violations. Like to me,
Speaker 6: virtually none of those people should be going You know,
Speaker 6: you had a technical probation violation, right, you didn't commit
Speaker 6: a crime, you were late for your probation officer. You
Speaker 6: you know, didn't pay a certain amount of money. You
Speaker 6: know you had you know something, you know, you traveled
Speaker 6: out of the state. You know he went to his
Speaker 6: son in New Jersey because he lives in Pennsylvania. And
Speaker 6: you can be violated and sent back to jail. This
Speaker 6: is lunacy.
Speaker 5: This is absolute lunacy. And I want, I'm really glad
Speaker 5: you brought that up, Michael, because I don't want to
Speaker 5: get your take on this week because in a lot
Speaker 5: of the reforms that are underway right now, there's this
Speaker 5: hidden caveat or this hidden nightmare i'll call it of
Speaker 5: enhanced probation and other ways of the government keeping people
Speaker 5: under control. So to me, a true crime reform bill
Speaker 5: should eliminate those problems. And you obviously can speak firsthand
Speaker 5: about just how restrictive that is, and Michael has said
Speaker 5: very eloquently, when you have seventy percent of people going
Speaker 5: back to jail or prison because they have some technical violation,
Speaker 5: that's insane, right, So, but can you talk about that,
Speaker 5: because I'm very concerned that they're sneaking these devils into
Speaker 5: the details in these new crime bills that are going
Speaker 5: to allow them to maintain this control. There's no other
Speaker 5: way to look at it over millions of people's lives,
Speaker 5: and there's a profit center in that for a lot
Speaker 5: of people too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's more than insane to me. I take it
Speaker 2: as deep as like you said, I could go see
Speaker 2: my son in New Jersey and actually be locked in
Speaker 2: a cage and be locked and changed. Shechecky from like
Speaker 2: angle to feet.
Speaker 5: For the crime of going from Pennsylvania to New Jersey
Speaker 5: to see your son, that's what I'm saying. I'm being facetious. Yeah,
Speaker 5: for the crime in quotes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll tell you this right now.
Speaker 6: Judge Brinkley is to do that too. She's trying to
Speaker 6: right now today, I promise you, she's sitting in our
Speaker 6: house obsessed about how she can figure out how to
Speaker 6: put them back in jail for nothing. That's a fact.
Speaker 6: He can't talk about that, but I can't. I'm telling
Speaker 6: you straight up that's what's going on.
Speaker 5: It's it's really bizarre. I mean, as a country, why
Speaker 5: would we want I mean, these are our tax dollars, right,
Speaker 5: and it hurts the average taxpayer. Even if you're somebody
Speaker 5: who's not particularly concerned about criminal justice reform, or you
Speaker 5: think a lot of people or you maybe you think
Speaker 5: you're tough on crime or whatever, it might be. The
Speaker 5: money that's being spent to lock people like you meek
Speaker 5: up right and to keep you under supervision, and this
Speaker 5: bloated and draconian system is pure insanity. I mean that
Speaker 5: money could be spent. I mean, I know that at
Speaker 5: one time eighty billion eighty billionaire at one time. I
Speaker 5: don't even know if it's still true. But a few
Speaker 5: years ago I checked and California, which a lot of
Speaker 5: people think I was in a progressive state, was spending
Speaker 5: more money locking people up than they were educating people.
Speaker 5: And I'm like, uh, I think that's college but still,
Speaker 5: and we have fact check that, but it's it's that
Speaker 5: that is absolutely staggering. And the crazy thing is these
Speaker 5: are Americans. There are fellow people, you know, I say
Speaker 5: the politicians when I talk to him, I'm like, you know,
Speaker 5: if another country treated our people the way we treat
Speaker 5: our people, we'd invade this stuff.
Speaker 2: We wouldn't even do to our pets, you know what
Speaker 2: I'm saying, Like you wouldn't lock your pet in the
Speaker 2: metal cell. For sometimes we get locked in and I
Speaker 2: say we because I've been through this experience so many times,
Speaker 2: and like sometimes we get locked in a room for
Speaker 2: twenty three hours a day for a month or two weeks,
Speaker 2: some people actually even years. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: It's like they say when you come home, it's a
Speaker 2: violation to be around felons. Like how is it a
Speaker 2: violation to be around felons when you just had me
Speaker 2: locked up amongst thousands of felons? Like what rule is this?
Speaker 5: I'm glad you brought that up too, because that's another
Speaker 5: thing that creates this vicious story.
Speaker 6: Ex's by the way you think about it. In the
Speaker 6: environment you grew up, what percentage of people that live
Speaker 6: on your block have had a felony?
Speaker 2: Ninety five percent?
Speaker 1: Right, So what you're saying is essential family.
Speaker 6: Anyone can put you back in prison because there's a
Speaker 6: rule that says you can't be around felons. But everyone
Speaker 6: you grew up with has a felony.
Speaker 2: If somebody really made that an issue, I would probably
Speaker 2: go to jail any day. Because if I go to
Speaker 2: the studio with a rapper and we make a song,
Speaker 2: I don't know his record, but.
Speaker 5: Right, you don't know, how would you go? You have
Speaker 5: to have like a database that we do at all times.
Speaker 5: Most people can't afford that, I mean, and you're not
Speaker 5: going to do it. The fact is, and yet you know,
Speaker 5: it's like I'm just quoting a statistic here. In nineteen
Speaker 5: ninety one in four black children born in nineteen ninety
Speaker 5: had an imprisoned father by the time he or she
Speaker 5: turned fourteen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, And the.
Speaker 5: Numbers just get worse and worse. I mean, thirty percent
Speaker 5: of black men without college educations today will have been
Speaker 5: to prison by their men thirties and spent up to
Speaker 5: a year in prison thirty percent. Yeah, I mean that's
Speaker 5: without college ass and the numbers go to sixty percent
Speaker 5: when you look at black mails without high school education. Yeah,
Speaker 5: sixty percent of black males out a high school education
Speaker 5: was bet a year in prison or jail before their
Speaker 5: thirtieth birthday. What are we doing? And the fact is
Speaker 5: it's actually impossible to succeed, which is why I'm always
Speaker 5: amazed when somebody does come from the background that you
Speaker 5: came from and make it, because with that cycle, how
Speaker 5: do you do it? They've created a minefield that you
Speaker 5: can't walk through. Right, once you get arrested, You're going
Speaker 5: to get re arrested no matter what you do, pretty much.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, one hundred percent. And like me and Mike,
Speaker 2: we just spend an hour Mike just teaching me about
Speaker 2: financial stuff and like texts and things that like when
Speaker 2: we're growing up, from like age thirteen to twenty years old,
Speaker 2: we probably invest ninety five percent of our think and
Speaker 2: time in how to survive in these type of conditions
Speaker 2: because it's like almost impossible to survive. So like you
Speaker 2: got to put like your owe into how to even
Speaker 2: be in my mind frame now, I still like even though
Speaker 2: I travel the world, it's still installed in my mind.
Speaker 2: It's still like something that is like I might come
Speaker 2: into a certain situation in a certain area and I
Speaker 2: go into survival move and I have to double back,
Speaker 2: and like this is not even that type of environment
Speaker 2: where I don't live this type of life anymore, But
Speaker 2: it's just always installed inside my head, you know what
Speaker 2: I'm saying, And coming from environments like that, Like you said,
Speaker 2: sixty percent where I come from, it feels like it's ninety.
Speaker 2: Like is do that count death? Death is going They
Speaker 2: probably go up to probably ninety five percent. Uh people
Speaker 2: young black men being murdered or going to prison probably
Speaker 2: sixty plus another thirty five percent.
Speaker 1: Mick, I've heard you talk about this.
Speaker 6: You know, how many people do you know that you
Speaker 6: were close with, you, you had a real relationship with, that
Speaker 6: have been murdered?
Speaker 2: Twenty twenty five?
Speaker 1: That's how many?
Speaker 5: I know?
Speaker 2: How many?
Speaker 1: Zero?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: You know how many I know that have been close? Zero? Right,
Speaker 1: So you're talking about yeah, different environments, So.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 5: We have two Shepherd systems of justice in America, one
Speaker 5: for people with money and one for people without and
Speaker 5: one for people who are of color and one for
Speaker 5: people who are not. And when and when you hit
Speaker 5: that jackpot of the reverse jackpot of being a person
Speaker 5: of color without being born into a wealthy family, which
Speaker 5: is a huge majority.
Speaker 2: You don't even have to come from a wealthy family
Speaker 2: to like not be around somebody that was murdered. It's
Speaker 2: really like territorial, Like I got one of my songs
Speaker 2: where I'm talking about like like we've been put in
Speaker 2: groups in certain areas, even with public house and public house,
Speaker 2: and it's really across Philadelphia. So if you grow grow
Speaker 2: up less fortunate, they're sticking people in certain areas if
Speaker 2: you pay attention to it, Like it's North Philadelphia, but
Speaker 2: not the whole North Philadelphia is a certain part in
Speaker 2: South Philadelphia. It's a rich part of South Philadelphia where
Speaker 2: like houses cost a million dollars in and then you
Speaker 2: got some houses that cost forty thousand. They only moving
Speaker 2: us in certain areas. And I always say this, like
Speaker 2: if you take a drone, the main line of Philadelphia
Speaker 2: is like city Line Avenue where my apartments used to
Speaker 2: be at City Line Avenue. You take a drone and
Speaker 2: then you make the drone go high in the sky,
Speaker 2: and if the drone had a zoom and kerd zoom,
Speaker 2: and on this side of the left and right, you
Speaker 2: will see it's quiet his peace here and this chaos
Speaker 2: going here. And if you take a kid from over
Speaker 2: here and let him spend three summers in this area,
Speaker 2: it will be less. He won't be the way the
Speaker 2: chaos says. He would turn to be more leaning like
Speaker 2: these people in this area. And I witnessed that with
Speaker 2: my family. I used to have a nephew. He lived
Speaker 2: in the projects. He used to cuss, He's seen a
Speaker 2: lot of things. He used to act up in school,
Speaker 2: and you know, he moved to a suburban area and
Speaker 2: his whole life changed within two years. It was just
Speaker 2: that simple.
Speaker 5: And I want to ask you this, Meek, because I
Speaker 5: come from the music industry. In fact, today's my thirty
Speaker 5: ninth birthday in the music industry, believe it or not.
Speaker 5: Because I started when I was eighteen years old. I
Speaker 5: know I look younger than that. I don't have to
Speaker 5: say it, thank you very much anyway, But yeah, I
Speaker 5: started July thirty first, nineteen seventy nine point on posters
Speaker 5: and record stores. But that's beside the point for a
Speaker 5: long time, and nobody talks about this, But for a
Speaker 5: long time, I've been pondering, thinking about obsessed with the
Speaker 5: idea of with the grim statistics and scenario that we're
Speaker 5: painting here, how many people, and you're exactly the guy
Speaker 5: want to ask this question, how many people as talented
Speaker 5: as you are either got shot or got locked up
Speaker 5: more importantly, got locked up in prison, and society as
Speaker 5: a result is being deprived of those talents and all
Speaker 5: the revenue and all the culture that would have come
Speaker 5: from that. How many jay zs are there that didn't
Speaker 5: make it out and ended up in prison doing back of.
Speaker 2: The life thousands, you know what I'm saying. I know
Speaker 2: as guys in there and locked it with as talented
Speaker 2: as me, You know what I'm saying. And they probably
Speaker 2: there for felonies on felonies. And when you say, like
Speaker 2: when people label you as a fella, like how it's
Speaker 2: that my friend caught a fella and he was fifteen
Speaker 2: for something he ain't do now. Actually when he do
Speaker 2: make a mistake, when he do go hang on the
Speaker 2: corner or when we come up on the corner around
Speaker 2: drug doos, everybody sell drugs. Your first step is to
Speaker 2: pick up a drug. So when you get your second felony,
Speaker 2: you might be actually good at basketball. You might have
Speaker 2: been in eleventh grade and actually one of the best
Speaker 2: players on the team. And here come you in a
Speaker 2: bad neighborhood. You get arrested for something else, and we
Speaker 2: don't have a lawyer money. You might take a deal,
Speaker 2: and the deal is put this fellow on your record.
Speaker 2: Now you got three felonies on your record, and you're
Speaker 2: not They might call you a career criminal. You're not
Speaker 2: a career criminal. You just was in the wrong mix. Basically,
Speaker 2: Now you might get fifteen years for something small. You
Speaker 2: see how he told you that the guy got fifteen
Speaker 2: Well he had two life sentince for stealing. Now your record,
Speaker 2: your jacket is up. You get fifteen years. So now
Speaker 2: you trapped inside a prison. You will never get a
Speaker 2: real shot at life, and you might be good as
Speaker 2: Ben Simmons, Joe m bib and you know all that
Speaker 2: went down to dream But far us rap is the
Speaker 2: hundreds of it was probably at least fifty guys that
Speaker 2: was actually good. Where I was at, where I was
Speaker 2: locked up at, where if they was on the street.
Speaker 2: We would spend time in the studio and build together
Speaker 2: and make music together. Fifty I would say in that
Speaker 2: one prison that I know of, and rap music.
Speaker 5: And this will surprise probably very few people that are
Speaker 5: listeners of the podcast, But recently, hip hop recently passed
Speaker 5: rock and roll, every rock pop as the most popular
Speaker 5: genre worldwide. Right, and it all comes from almost all
Speaker 5: of it comes from America. Right, Yeah, So when we're
Speaker 5: exporting that, we're bringing tax revenue into this country. When
Speaker 5: we're when guys like you are making records, selling millions
Speaker 5: of records, selling concert tickets, you're paying taxes. All that
Speaker 5: stuff goes back into the system. Everybody is being hurt
Speaker 5: by that, and society is being deprived of geniuses at
Speaker 5: As you said, basketball is another story, right, But when
Speaker 5: you talk about it like that, you have a kid
Speaker 5: as good as whoever you want to talk about, Simmons
Speaker 5: or whatever. They get arrested like that, the college scholarships
Speaker 5: going out the window. They can't play college ball now,
Speaker 5: their whole their whole thing. And let's say that guy
Speaker 5: was going to make one hundred million dollars not unrealistic,
Speaker 5: but one of the seventy six ers year.
Speaker 6: Right, You're what, right, we look forward to writing many
Speaker 6: checks for one hundred million dollars because that we have
Speaker 6: that many great players.
Speaker 5: And let me ask you, do those players pay taxes
Speaker 5: on those checks? Of course, of course they do, right,
Speaker 5: huge amouth back into the city, coming back to the state,
Speaker 5: coming back into the country, because those people were the
Speaker 5: few lucky ones that managed to escape from this, you know,
Speaker 5: sort of trap that society has built.
Speaker 6: But even more than money, if you look at the
Speaker 6: math and you say there's six point seven or six
Speaker 6: point nine million people today in America trapped in the
Speaker 6: criminal justice system, the.
Speaker 1: Question is what's appropriate.
Speaker 6: Like if we just all said, if you got anyone
Speaker 6: together and said, what do you think someone should be
Speaker 6: in prison for? What should someone be on probation for?
Speaker 6: If you said, hey, that person got caught smoking weed?
Speaker 6: Should any of there's people be in prison from sif's
Speaker 6: if someone stole one hundred dollars as a fifteen year
Speaker 6: old kid, should they be stuck in prison? And the
Speaker 6: amount of story, Like I think if you looked at
Speaker 6: the math and just said, let's just take this top down,
Speaker 6: there's six point seven or six nine point nine million
Speaker 6: people in the criminal justice system, I think you could
Speaker 6: say if we just all said what should people be
Speaker 6: in the system for and not being the system. We
Speaker 6: just took a bunch of rational people. The number is
Speaker 6: probably half. And so to me, what's such a travesty
Speaker 6: is you've got millions of people stuck in the criminal
Speaker 6: justice system that don't belong there, and by the way,
Speaker 6: you're ruining their lives, their families, lives, their friends' lives.
Speaker 6: By the way, there's a lot of people that belong
Speaker 6: in prison. We want to live in a safe world.
Speaker 6: We want to have you know, violent offenders, people that
Speaker 6: are murder people or rapists.
Speaker 1: You know, armed robbers.
Speaker 6: There are a lot of people that belong in prison,
Speaker 6: and I want those people in prison. But the problem
Speaker 6: is there's millions of people that shouldn't be in the
Speaker 6: criminal justice system that are. And that's the problem that
Speaker 6: needs to be addressed. And that's what I know. Meek
Speaker 6: is really excited to help make an impact on. I'm
Speaker 6: excited to help make an impact on I think this
Speaker 6: is an enormous problem that's costing tens of billions of
Speaker 6: dollars and is ruined millions of people's lives.
Speaker 5: So, yeah, and Michael, picking up on what you were
Speaker 5: saying thirty thirty five years ago, we had three hundred
Speaker 5: thousand people in prison in America. Right now it's two
Speaker 5: point two million. And I'm sure the numbers on probation
Speaker 5: and parole were proportionately about, you know, seven times less
Speaker 5: like this one is too. And then you look at
Speaker 5: the country like Japan, right, well, we locked If you
Speaker 5: look at Western Europe, we lock people up at five
Speaker 5: to nine times, depending which country you choose, the rate
Speaker 5: of the rest of the countries in Western Europe, the
Speaker 5: lowest is five times as many per capita. Right, And
Speaker 5: then when you look at we have more people in
Speaker 5: prison just for drugs in America than everyone in prison
Speaker 5: of all of Western Europe for everything. And Western Europe
Speaker 5: is much more than many more people in Western Europe
Speaker 5: than the we're in America. And then you get to Japan.
Speaker 5: In Japan they have approximately seventy thousand people in prison.
Speaker 5: We probably have seventy thousand people in prison in a
Speaker 5: mid sized state, yeah, maybe even a smaller state than
Speaker 5: this one, right, yeah, because I mean do the math.
Speaker 5: So we lock people up at fourteen times the rate
Speaker 5: per capita that Japan does. And for anybody listening, going, yeah,
Speaker 5: but that's why we have a lower crime rate than
Speaker 5: they do. No, we don't. Our crimemates are the same,
Speaker 5: and there's no evidence that supports. In fact, I think
Speaker 5: every social scientist that has studied this would agree that
Speaker 5: this system is the worst system in terms of you know,
Speaker 5: in terms of crime and perpetuating the cycle because of
Speaker 5: the fact that when people go to jail or prison,
Speaker 5: as we talked about, growing up in the situation they are,
Speaker 5: they come out, they're unemployable to I'll understanding. That's something
Speaker 5: I talk about on the show a lot, like people
Speaker 5: that are out there that are employers take a shot
Speaker 5: with somebody who was system affected, because those people will
Speaker 5: work harder and better. You know, there's a bakery in
Speaker 5: New York I just found out about I saw Ted
Speaker 5: talk about this that hires anybody who walks in system affected.
Speaker 5: They don't even ask, and they're hugely successful. They make
Speaker 5: all the brownies for Ben and Jerry's ice cream. Right
Speaker 5: they sell a zillion can imagine ay brownie's.
Speaker 1: I want a lot of them right now because we
Speaker 1: have a little weight loss back on us. We can
Speaker 1: get this delivered to.
Speaker 5: Him right now. Last time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, neither is he looks heavier though.
Speaker 5: No, but it's you know, that's something that we really
Speaker 5: need to as a society start to uh be much
Speaker 5: more progressive on and you know, more like empathetic. I mean,
Speaker 5: I don't want to sound like some like touchy feely
Speaker 5: person here. And I'm with you, Michael.
Speaker 6: I believe think that's an easier problem to solve because
Speaker 6: I've actually been thinking, Look, we employ eight thousand people
Speaker 6: between my companies, and you know, I think if you
Speaker 6: got you know, a bunch of business leaders to focus
Speaker 6: on taking big companies and saying what areas in the
Speaker 6: company can start to take people right out of prison
Speaker 6: to help rehabilitate them. I think there's actually I think
Speaker 6: there are I think there are actually.
Speaker 1: Easy ways to make real progress. Scancel.
Speaker 6: I'm actually optimistic with a little bit of focus and
Speaker 6: energy that real.
Speaker 1: Impact can be made there well.
Speaker 6: And another way that I can tell you, I think
Speaker 6: a lot of the time, a lot of those cases,
Speaker 6: you have better employees, as you just indicated as well.
Speaker 6: So if we took we have you know, thousands of
Speaker 6: people that manufacture a power working for filment centers, working
Speaker 6: call centers. You know, I think that So my point
Speaker 6: is there's you know, big opportunities to hire people. And
Speaker 6: I think that you know, again, if you look at
Speaker 6: how many people work in America and then how many
Speaker 6: people coming out of prison or jail each year. If
Speaker 6: there's two point two million people in prison in jail,
Speaker 6: maybe I don't know, five hundred thousand people come out
Speaker 6: a year. I don't think it takes a lot to
Speaker 6: get a set of big companies Joy focus on helping
Speaker 6: solve this problem.
Speaker 2: And especially with long time offenders, like a long time offenders,
Speaker 2: like people who serve over ten years, they spend most
Speaker 2: of their jail time working. In fact, the results working
Speaker 2: for the prison that their mind they have experienced, their
Speaker 2: mind is structured to just work all day. And Member
Speaker 2: Rabbal was telling us he had a program we hired
Speaker 2: like a lot of ex offenders, and he asked me, like,
Speaker 2: how many of them messed up? Was you in that conversation?
Speaker 2: He asked me said how many you think messed up?
Speaker 2: Out of two hundred, I'm probably like I said one
Speaker 2: ninety eight because I knew the number would be high.
Speaker 2: Because I know of long time offenders, people that come
Speaker 2: home doing a lot of time, they don't they don't
Speaker 2: really want to mess up again. He told me nothing
Speaker 2: out of two hundred none.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and that's amazing.
Speaker 1: I was only two of I think this was twenty
Speaker 1: to thirty years ago.
Speaker 6: Robert Craft had a real focus on taking people that
Speaker 6: had come out of prison at hiring them. And the
Speaker 6: point to your point, was there his best employees.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's best employees. And it's interesting too. I mean,
Speaker 5: call it luck, call whatever you want. I've got. I've
Speaker 5: been very fortunate, blessed whatever to be able to help
Speaker 5: advocate successfully for clemency for dozens of people deserving people
Speaker 5: over the years, not just people who are innocent, but
Speaker 5: people who were primarily who are sentenced the mandatory senses,
Speaker 5: crazy mandatory sentences like Lenny Singleton, who you referenced earlier,
Speaker 5: or Travian Blount who was senced just at fifteen years
Speaker 5: old since to six life terms for a robbery in
Speaker 5: which no one was hurt. Fifteen years old, six life terms.
Speaker 5: It made international news, like what it What in the
Speaker 5: world even is that? Like that's it's got to be
Speaker 5: well it is.
Speaker 2: That should be a crown That sentence of minds today
Speaker 2: like why that's and.
Speaker 6: And to me, that's the that should be the easy
Speaker 6: things to get everyone aligned on and fix. And by
Speaker 6: the way, take talk about the state that meek us
Speaker 6: from that I'm from. In Pennsylvania, we're one of three
Speaker 6: states in America that has no cap on probation. So
Speaker 6: an the forty seven states have caps of probation summer,
Speaker 6: three years, two years, four years.
Speaker 1: We have no cap in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2: Yeh.
Speaker 6: So someone like me who I didn't know that was
Speaker 6: separate that he was wrongfully convicted thirteen years ago appointing
Speaker 6: a gun that didn't point a gun and a cop
Speaker 6: by the way, where multiple police officers come forward and
Speaker 6: said it was a lie. So we have affid davits
Speaker 6: from a police officer came for in and said, no,
Speaker 6: I was one of the two resting officers and know
Speaker 6: he didn't.
Speaker 1: Point the gun.
Speaker 6: Okay, Now, after after after that, you've still got you've
Speaker 6: got a system that just come completely completely broken. And
Speaker 6: in Pennsylvania, he gets sentenced to probation and then he
Speaker 6: does a concert in a different state without the proper
Speaker 6: authorization and attack on another five years of probation. And
Speaker 6: now he's got he's still six years of probation left. Right,
Speaker 6: So he's got no chance to actually succeed in that situation.
Speaker 6: And I can tell you if you put me, the
Speaker 6: Jewish kid from suburban Philadelphia on probation, I couldn't make
Speaker 6: a year with what he needs to go through.
Speaker 5: There's not possible.
Speaker 2: In the primetime fuck up years of my life from
Speaker 2: eighteen to thirty one, he's the prime years where you
Speaker 2: make mistakes.
Speaker 1: I still fuck up a forty six.
Speaker 5: By the way, Yeah, breathing while lack is basically a
Speaker 5: probation violation. But what I was going to say before
Speaker 5: is that of the people that I've been involved with,
Speaker 5: that that I've helped to get out of prison, none
Speaker 5: of them have reoffended or offended for the first time
Speaker 5: in the cases of which they were innocent. None but
Speaker 5: hold on, some will.
Speaker 6: And that's okay because you know what, at the end
Speaker 6: of the day, we need to make the world a
Speaker 6: better place. And if we get millions of people out
Speaker 6: of the criminal justice system, and if you make mistakes,
Speaker 6: that's okay because there's a lot of people that aren't
Speaker 6: in the criminal justice system that will also make mistakes.
Speaker 6: This is never going to be perfect, and that's someone says, hey,
Speaker 6: we should keep that six point seven or six point
Speaker 6: nine million people stuck in the criminal justice system, the
Speaker 6: few million that shouldn't be there because someone may make
Speaker 6: a mistake. Nothing's perfect like we need. We need to
Speaker 6: get it right overall. And that's the same approach I
Speaker 6: take in business. We want to make good overall decisions.
Speaker 6: We don't go for perfection. If we went for perfection,
Speaker 6: we never get anything done.
Speaker 5: Of course, not. As I said, I've been lucky in
Speaker 5: that sense. And of the people of the Innoc's project,
Speaker 5: of the people that we've gotten out, a tiny percentage of
Speaker 5: them have ever been in any sort of trouble. Again,
Speaker 5: people age Trent and we.
Speaker 2: Were talking about real trouble. Probably zero they got back
Speaker 2: in real trouble.
Speaker 5: We know that people age out of crime. There's a
Speaker 5: couple of other very important topics I want to touch
Speaker 5: on with you, Meek and Michael. One is prisons themselves
Speaker 5: and how barbaric our prison system is when it's supposed
Speaker 5: to be called a correctional institution, and we know that
Speaker 5: that is the farthest thing from the truth in most cases.
Speaker 5: And the other is how important it is for people
Speaker 5: to get out and vote, because I don't think we
Speaker 5: can have this conversation without talking about that. You just
Speaker 5: are in the middle of actually a criminal justice revamp
Speaker 5: slash and some people I've heard somebody say, we don't
Speaker 5: need criminal justice perform, we need a criminal justice revolution. Well,
Speaker 5: in Philadelphia, that's taking place under your eyes because of
Speaker 5: an election, right and an election in which I can
Speaker 5: bet that eighty something to percent of people didn't vote
Speaker 5: at least right because of the DA's race. And so
Speaker 5: I mean, what can you say, which one do you
Speaker 5: want to take on? First of those times we could.
Speaker 2: Talk vote in it. This coming from our on where
Speaker 2: we come from. Wasn't it a few years ago? Could
Speaker 2: you even vote when you was a fela? Did that change?
Speaker 5: I don't know if it's changed. We're trying to change it.
Speaker 5: And well, it was changed in Virginia, Governor McAuliffe, fix
Speaker 5: that reenfranchised two hundred thousand people. In Florida. There's a
Speaker 5: referendum on the ballot. Now, anyone who's listening in Florida,
Speaker 5: you must vote on this referendum. We're going to restore
Speaker 5: the right of x Fellons to vote. There's seven hundred
Speaker 5: thousand people in Florida who can't vote.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this goes, this goes far us back when
Speaker 2: I say, like the other side of America where people
Speaker 2: don't even believe like that world tends to us. And
Speaker 2: I used to think that, but that was that was
Speaker 2: deeply false and part of my campaign this year twenty eighteen,
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen, as I moving around, one of my jobs
Speaker 2: is trying to teach people and teach people the ropes
Speaker 2: of how vootn't go because it's even with a judge
Speaker 2: trying to lock me up for what going on? Nothing
Speaker 2: going over a bridge. Basically, we voted for her district
Speaker 2: attorneys where they enforce mandatory minimums and they enforced locking
Speaker 2: people up for smoking marijuana and things like that. We
Speaker 2: vote for them. We have to be the ones that vote.
Speaker 2: In our culture, the black community, a lot of us
Speaker 2: don't vote. So it's like white community too. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: I don't really know. I know that in our community
Speaker 2: we don't vote at all. I don't even know anybody
Speaker 2: my age. At the age of eighteen, we ever got
Speaker 2: up as a group and everybody wanted to vote. It
Speaker 2: was like never a thing. We didn't believe in it.
Speaker 2: So my new thing is to teach the younger people
Speaker 2: from our culture that come up, well, all younger people
Speaker 2: that come up, that voting is important because you know,
Speaker 2: we have to live under these laws that these people
Speaker 2: are creating, and if we don't vote, we don't have
Speaker 2: a voice at all. It's like you don't even count.
Speaker 2: And a lot of times you look at TV even
Speaker 2: they had a campaign that said voter or yeah. I
Speaker 2: always seen it, but I never really knew what it meant.
Speaker 2: It was that probably was like eighteen years old when
Speaker 2: they did that campaign. I never really understood it. But
Speaker 2: nowadays I understood. It's like you even vote, or you
Speaker 2: get house done a regime which will eventually kill you,
Speaker 2: if not by jail, not by placing you in a
Speaker 2: keeping you in a ruthless environment, it will turn out
Speaker 2: bad for you, basically. And I just believe that if
Speaker 2: we vote, if we make our presence on like justice reform.
Speaker 2: Justice reform right now is the number one topic in America.
Speaker 2: Probably so me too. Justice reform. These are like the
Speaker 2: biggest topics of America, And I think if we make
Speaker 2: this topic big enough politically, a lot of people would
Speaker 2: have to lean towards being leaning on these topics and coming.
Speaker 1: To like I want you as leaning, i'd say appropriate.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, I say, I say punishment to fit the crime,
Speaker 6: because by the way, I'm not leaning.
Speaker 1: I want appropriate punishment.
Speaker 2: And that was right.
Speaker 5: That was that was right.
Speaker 2: And and when we even speaking lenient, like I would say,
Speaker 2: like what is lean and this lead into how barbaric
Speaker 2: jail prisons are.
Speaker 5: Right, But before you go there, you know, I've been
Speaker 5: on the board of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, was a
Speaker 5: great organization for over twenty five years now, and our
Speaker 5: motto is let the punishment fit the crime. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 5: nobody's advocating for chaos. Nobody wants a society that is like,
Speaker 5: you know.
Speaker 1: I want to feel I want to feel safe.
Speaker 6: Everybody does want I want my daughter to be safe,
Speaker 6: I want your family to be safe.
Speaker 5: But I want his kids to be safe too.
Speaker 2: In some situations though, that the crimes are so high
Speaker 2: up is like what is lenient? Like if something like basically.
Speaker 6: But I'll make something really simple like two how many
Speaker 6: people I say, how many people are in prison and
Speaker 6: jail today are on probation because they have a drug problem.
Speaker 1: It's more than a million. Yeah, okay, yeah, I'm not
Speaker 1: talking about selling drugs. I'm anyone who smoked weed.
Speaker 6: How could you possibly we just becoming legal everywhere. How
Speaker 6: could you possibly put someone in the criminal trust system
Speaker 6: for joining something that's becoming legal?
Speaker 1: Makes absolutely no sense.
Speaker 6: Someone had a problem with percocet, Why do you send
Speaker 6: them a jail, send to rehab It makes no sense.
Speaker 6: So to me, that's that's where the punishment needs to
Speaker 6: fit the crime.
Speaker 1: I already take everybody who has a drug problem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't get them help so they solve the drug problem.
Speaker 2: But it's like it's deep as this, Like if I
Speaker 2: sell drugs and the cops come to my house and
Speaker 2: I'm not there, my mom get found guilty for these
Speaker 2: drugs in my house and the drugs are in her house.
Speaker 2: She may know these drugs are in her house and
Speaker 2: she gets found guilt. The people moms are getting thirty
Speaker 2: years in prison in federal prison for stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Like your mom got thirty years in prison because she
Speaker 2: didn't get your thirty years. It's like a lot, you
Speaker 2: know what. Thing. So that's a life sentence, that's death, right,
Speaker 2: And you.
Speaker 5: Talked about that earlier and about how people get caught
Speaker 5: up just because there's death.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's deaf, like you don't want to send you
Speaker 2: to prison, even though she might preach to you every
Speaker 2: day that you're selling drugs. You're getting out of my
Speaker 2: house and she knows wrong, but.
Speaker 1: You have son's not going to this.
Speaker 5: Know this that if you're in a car with someone
Speaker 5: who's got drugs and you get pulled over and they
Speaker 5: find the drugs, it belongs to everybody unless somebody takes
Speaker 5: responsibility for it, and nobody ever does. Nobody ever goes,
Speaker 5: oh yeah, those are mine, right. So this is how
Speaker 5: crazy the system is, where you could just be next
Speaker 5: to someone who's doing something wrong and then you get ed.
Speaker 2: I'm not even talking about four innocis. I'm just talking about, like, say,
Speaker 2: if you come from where I come from, like your
Speaker 2: mom on a crack, she's a strung out fiend. You
Speaker 2: thirteen years old, you got a seven year old sister,
Speaker 2: and you coming in the house, it's just baking soda
Speaker 2: and butter and refrigerator. And when you go out look
Speaker 2: out the window, it's people on the corner selling weed, marijuana,
Speaker 2: crack cocaine, and they running in fast cash and your
Speaker 2: little sister don't got none to eat. The first thing
Speaker 2: you're gonna do is go outside and pick up like
Speaker 2: this is like normal, Like, Mike, if you was in
Speaker 2: a situation, I bet a million dollars on it that
Speaker 2: you would go outside and pick out of a drug.
Speaker 2: If Kylie was in the house, you seven, you fourteen.
Speaker 1: Hard have made work for me.
Speaker 2: Do you know what I'm saying. I'm talking about stuff. No,
Speaker 2: I'm talking about if you don't have any of this
Speaker 2: going on, and you're poor, like you don't have any
Speaker 2: family in the house, and you come see Kylie and there,
Speaker 2: but after a while, this is gonna this is going on.
Speaker 6: But five that's also where should that person have no punishment? No,
Speaker 6: should they be set to jail for thirty years? Especial
Speaker 6: ridiculous thing I've ever heard.
Speaker 1: And that's why it said to me.
Speaker 2: But even if you bring it down to ten years,
Speaker 2: it's not even a ten year thing. Ten years will
Speaker 2: ruin your life. So like what they got is leaning,
Speaker 2: is not even leaning, like it's the thing the rates
Speaker 2: of boostep so high, like what they call like I
Speaker 2: watch media and social send them to prison. Like even
Speaker 2: when people be like he should have went to prison,
Speaker 2: he breaks broke probation. Even if I did break probation.
Speaker 2: If I did commit a crime ten years ago and
Speaker 2: I broke probation, people are like, send them back to prison.
Speaker 2: I'm like, do you know what prison is like? When
Speaker 2: I say shackled up in a cage, I mean like
Speaker 2: shack of real change. When you take a baby step
Speaker 2: is cutting your legs and like the same thing you
Speaker 2: see in a slavery movie. It's the same thing. And
Speaker 2: I'm like, do people really understand what they saying, like
Speaker 2: send them to prison. Like Mike came to myself. Mike
Speaker 2: was like, he was like, it's not bad as it
Speaker 2: could be in my head.
Speaker 6: I'm like, oh, but that's because I'm an optimistic person
Speaker 6: and I always want to look at things positively.
Speaker 2: And it's ten degrees. I don't have a tallest seat.
Speaker 2: The water that I'm coming out of my sink is
Speaker 2: the same water connected to the tall is filthy. Like
Speaker 2: it's like there's ten mices in my cell at night
Speaker 2: running around you like is you can't even imagine it?
Speaker 2: And I'm like, I'm here, I didn't hurt anybody. I
Speaker 2: didn't kill anybody.
Speaker 1: I didn't by the way, they think it bothers me
Speaker 1: so much.
Speaker 6: The amount of people I've told about your story and
Speaker 6: everyone it's now proven that you were wrongfully convicted because
Speaker 6: we have a cop who is one of the two
Speaker 6: arresting officers who sign an APPI davit saying no, you
Speaker 6: didn't point the gun, which what you were charged for.
Speaker 6: Yet yeah, and your probation violations where you popped a
Speaker 6: wheelie on a motorcycle, you broke up a fight in
Speaker 6: an airport, yet there are people put them back in
Speaker 6: jail for ten years, which is it shows how backwards
Speaker 6: so many people are in this country as well.
Speaker 2: Just when you speak on jail that is like it's
Speaker 2: just like it's just like a place, a hotel where
Speaker 2: you go to sit at. Nah, it's some shit that
Speaker 2: will ruin your whole train of thought, like you were
Speaker 2: in here, Like the matches sleeping on is probably four
Speaker 2: inches thick, and after that it is metal and cement,
Speaker 2: Like you got eighty minutes. These guys eighty years old
Speaker 2: sleeping on mattresses and stuff, like they didn't kill anybody.
Speaker 2: They may have been on probation and they fell in
Speaker 2: the after felling in. You eighty years old, You you poor,
Speaker 2: You've been in the system so long it's hard to explain.
Speaker 2: You have to see it and be there. Like even
Speaker 2: what they do with juveniles, They got juveniles locked in cages.
Speaker 2: These are cement cages that they had these kids, and
Speaker 2: most of these kids didn't kill anybody.
Speaker 1: Now tell you something. I was so proud of you,
Speaker 1: but it's a scary story.
Speaker 6: So the day that I brought Robert Craft to visit
Speaker 6: make in prison, we were sitting there and we were
Speaker 6: just kind of talking, and I was really just kind
Speaker 6: of listening to Robert Meek talking. And Robert looked at
Speaker 6: me and he said, you know, I don't understand how
Speaker 6: you're handling this. How are you so happy? He said, Like,
Speaker 6: last time I was with you, we were on a
Speaker 6: plane flying to an All Star game and you were
Speaker 6: on the top of the world. Now you're in an
Speaker 6: orange jumpsuit, locked in prison. You've got to smile from
Speaker 6: ear to ear. And Mick, he's generally pretty quick with
Speaker 6: his answer. You thought about it for about thirty seconds,
Speaker 6: and he looked at Robert and he said, you know,
Speaker 6: this has been my entire adult life. I was wrongfully
Speaker 6: convicted for a crime in and commit I've been sent
Speaker 6: back to prison multiple times, never committed a new crime.
Speaker 6: But this is the first time people are actually fighting for me,
Speaker 6: and that makes me so happy. So for me, I
Speaker 6: was mortified at the situation, but completely proud of how
Speaker 6: well he was handling that horrific situation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the best situation I've ever been there
Speaker 2: as far as dealing with the system, with having like
Speaker 2: real credible people stand behind me, because, like Mike said,
Speaker 2: I'm telling them, like, yo, you really think I should
Speaker 2: if y'all had guns in here, You're not even police officers.
Speaker 2: If I came in here all y'all had firearms and
Speaker 2: I came in here pointing a gun nine times out
Speaker 2: of ten, where would I be?
Speaker 5: Of course?
Speaker 2: So when the police off guns against a cop Probyn, Yeah,
Speaker 2: cops are trained to neutralize people who cause threat towards
Speaker 2: their lives, Like this is like normal, Like you get
Speaker 2: away with this, This is what you should do. You're
Speaker 2: trained to do this, not me one on one with
Speaker 2: a cop, like and you know, one on one, anybody
Speaker 2: could get scared and want to run away. Now this
Speaker 2: is a group of cops doing a full blown read
Speaker 2: and me being accused of pointing a gun at all
Speaker 2: of them. Man, so so so.
Speaker 5: Me, we're down to uh, we're running out of time
Speaker 5: with one more question, which is a hard one for me.
Speaker 5: There's so many questions I want to ask you and Michael,
Speaker 5: but I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna narrow it down
Speaker 5: to one. Before I do that, I want to remind
Speaker 5: people who are listening vote, vote and vote vote in
Speaker 5: your local races and your DA's races and your judges races.
Speaker 5: Your vote counts. We have votes, we have races that
Speaker 5: actually ended up tied, right, I mean, your vote counts.
Speaker 2: And you, judge, don't have to be white against the
Speaker 2: black to be racist. It could be white on white racism,
Speaker 2: it could be black on black racism. And make sure
Speaker 2: you vote for the right people. And when you vote
Speaker 2: for judges, nobody really knows because you just see a judge.
Speaker 6: On DA you can make good decisions. And people knew
Speaker 6: when they voted for the DA in Pennsylvania that he
Speaker 6: was a more thoughtful person on the criminal justice system.
Speaker 6: And there been lots of new DA's that have had
Speaker 6: much more modern approaches. That approach hasn't been lock everybody
Speaker 6: up and put all black American in prison. It's been
Speaker 6: let's have it accurate punishment for a crime, and that's
Speaker 6: who you should be voting for.
Speaker 5: And I'm going to say one more thing before I
Speaker 5: turned the last question over to you, which is, everybody
Speaker 5: who's out there, at some point you're going to get
Speaker 5: asked to serve on a jury. Nobody likes it. We
Speaker 5: get those things in the mail, We're like, oh my god,
Speaker 5: I got a time for this whatever. It's a big
Speaker 5: paint of you got to go because when you go,
Speaker 5: there might be a meek Mill in front of you,
Speaker 5: there might be somebody else who's meeting and Eric Riddick
Speaker 5: in front of your case that all three of us
Speaker 5: are involved with. Then we're going to get him out
Speaker 5: come hell or high water. So get up, get out,
Speaker 5: and go vote, and go serve on the jury because
Speaker 5: the ask you save could be your own. And now,
Speaker 5: rather than ask a final question, I'm just going to
Speaker 5: do what I do at the end of the show,
Speaker 5: which is I always say it's my favorite part of
Speaker 5: the show, and I think it's probably the audience's favorite
Speaker 5: part of the show too, which is when I stop
Speaker 5: talking and just turn the mic over to you for
Speaker 5: final last words. And Michael, I'm going to let you
Speaker 5: go first and then me can back clean up and
Speaker 5: close out the show. So, Michael, what would you want
Speaker 5: to tell people? How could they get involved? What can
Speaker 5: they do? What's the solution?
Speaker 6: Well, I think we're in a great position because I
Speaker 6: actually think this is a big problem that needs to
Speaker 6: be addressed. I think it's going to be I think
Speaker 6: it would just take common sense to this juice problem.
Speaker 6: We're going to make the world a better place. And
Speaker 6: I'm actually for a guy who had absolutely zero point
Speaker 6: zero exposure to the criminal justice system until I met Meek,
Speaker 6: and I'm still really didn't understand it until November sixth
Speaker 6: of last year. I'm really optimistic because I believe that
Speaker 6: this is a completely broken system that with a lot
Speaker 6: of focus and energy, we can make the country a
Speaker 6: much better place than to me, that's exciting. So you know,
Speaker 6: what I'd say to everybody is make a difference. I
Speaker 6: didn't make any difference until seven months ago. And I'm
Speaker 6: actually you know, I've got three great businesses that I run,
Speaker 6: and I've got a great daughter and great family and friends.
Speaker 6: Yet I'm as energized about this as anything because I
Speaker 6: see how broken it is, and I see how much
Speaker 6: fixing it needs.
Speaker 5: Meek last words, and before you even go, I want
Speaker 5: to thank you and Michael. Thank you not just for
Speaker 5: being on the show, but for lending your voice and
Speaker 5: your energy and your money and your time to this movement.
Speaker 6: Thank you for your focus. What you're doing is in credible.
Speaker 6: Well you've been at this for twenty five years. Mek's
Speaker 6: been stucking the system for thirteen years, and I've been
Speaker 6: at this for seven months.
Speaker 1: So thank you.
Speaker 5: Well I'm older than yours. I've had more time question
Speaker 5: Nonethe last time. But yeah, it's a very it's a
Speaker 5: you know, it's an obsession and I'm not going to
Speaker 5: stop until we fix it together. So but anyway, so
Speaker 5: thank you both again for being here and sharing your
Speaker 5: thoughts and your energy, your collective wisdom. So, Meek, what
Speaker 5: are your last words for the audience that's out there?
Speaker 2: My last words to the audience, just know I'm dedicated.
Speaker 2: This is a life mission. I actually suffer from the
Speaker 2: criminal justice system for over ten years. And you know,
Speaker 2: I actually walked the walk on the other side of
Speaker 2: the wall with some innocent men who I know are
Speaker 2: basically suffering and families are suffering. So you know, I
Speaker 2: felt the pain firsthand, and you know, I'm gonna continue
Speaker 2: to do what I need to do to help make
Speaker 2: change and not fix the system, but break the system
Speaker 2: completely and rebuild it again. Because the way we lived
Speaker 2: and the things we've been through with the system, it
Speaker 2: doesn't even take crime or take being a villain to
Speaker 2: go to jail, you know what I'm saying. And you know,
Speaker 2: it's thousands of millions of people trapped inside on the
Speaker 2: other side of the wall that actually need help. And
Speaker 2: you know, I think this is the right season to
Speaker 2: make change and putting all my efforts onto it, and hopefully,
Speaker 2: you know, we make change within the next few years
Speaker 2: and free a lot of people from the prison system.
Speaker 5: We're going We're going to do it. We're going to
Speaker 5: do it together, and we need everybody's help. I did
Speaker 5: want to say that there's a book that really touches
Speaker 5: on everything that you went through called On the Run
Speaker 5: by Alice Goffman, where she chronicles life in a Princeton
Speaker 5: PhD sociologist who went and lived on Sixth Street in
Speaker 5: Philadelphia for eighteen months, and just one thing I wanted
Speaker 5: to read from here, which I think, really we'll give
Speaker 5: people an insight into what goes on and then will
Speaker 5: wrap up. But she said, in the first eighteen months
Speaker 5: that I spent the neighborhood at least once a day,
Speaker 5: I watched the police stop pedestrians or people in cars,
Speaker 5: search them, run their name for warrants, ask them to
Speaker 5: come in for questioning, or make an arrest. And that
Speaker 5: same eighteen month period, I watched the police breakdown doors,
Speaker 5: search houses and question arrest or chase people through houses
Speaker 5: fifty two times. Nine times, police her helicopters circle overhead
Speaker 5: and beam search slights on the local streets. I noticed
Speaker 5: blocks taped off in traffic redirected as police search for
Speaker 5: evidence fourteen times. During my first eighteen months of near
Speaker 5: daily observation, I watched the police punch, choke, kick, stomp on,
Speaker 5: or beat young men with their night sticks. That's what
Speaker 5: the situation was like, It's what it still is like,
Speaker 5: and that's what has to change. So please check out
Speaker 5: the book Too on the Run Future of Life in
Speaker 5: American City by Alice Goffman. And thank you everyone for listening.
Speaker 5: This has been an amazing experience for me, and once
Speaker 5: again you've been listening to Michael Rubin, best known as
Speaker 5: the owner of the Philadelphia seventy six ers. Yeah, one
Speaker 5: of the owners, but the one who's going to bring
Speaker 5: the championship back to Philadelphia. And Meek Mill again, no
Speaker 5: need for any further introduction. Thank you again for being here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you for having us.
Speaker 5: Man, don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever
Speaker 5: you get your podcasts, it really helps. And I'm a
Speaker 5: proud donor to the Innocence Project and I really hope
Speaker 5: you'll join me in supporting this very important cause and
Speaker 5: helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocenceproject dot
Speaker 5: org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd
Speaker 5: like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis.
Speaker 5: The music in the show is by three time OSCAR
Speaker 5: nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on
Speaker 5: Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast.
Speaker 5: Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a production of Lava
Speaker 5: for Good Podcast in association with Signal Company Number one