Speaker 1: On January twenty third, two thousand seven, in order to
Speaker 1: obtain a search warrant, a narcotics officer claimed to have
Speaker 1: seen Meek mill selling crack out of his home. The
Speaker 1: following day, Meek was stopped on his way to a
Speaker 1: corner store and they found a gun. He was badly beaten,
Speaker 1: arrested for illegal possession of a firearm, and later charged
Speaker 1: with assaulting arresting officers who claimed that he had pointed
Speaker 1: the gun at them. In two thousand eight, due to
Speaker 1: the cost, Meek waved a jury trial, was tried for
Speaker 1: drug and weapons charges and sentenced to two years prison
Speaker 1: plus eight years probation, which kicked off his storied clash
Speaker 1: with Judge Genie Sprinkley. Over the decade that followed, parole
Speaker 1: tight restrictions and his contentious relationship with Brinkley made more
Speaker 1: punishment almost than inevitability. In November of two thousand seventeen,
Speaker 1: she sentenced him to at least two more years in
Speaker 1: prison for alleged violations, including popping a wheelie without a helmet.
Speaker 1: This gained plenty of outrage and public support, largely due
Speaker 1: to a police department whistleblower who exposed Meek's two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven arresting officer as a liar and a thief.
Speaker 1: His two thousand eight conviction was overturned. He was granted
Speaker 1: a new trial under a new judge, bringing his two
Speaker 1: thousand seven criminal case and probation to a long overdue
Speaker 1: close in August of two thousand nineteen. However, his litigation
Speaker 1: was still ongoing at the time of this episode. It's
Speaker 1: original release, Meek Mills Notoriety shines a light on the
Speaker 1: regularity legalized harassment by authorities and the recidivism that results.
Speaker 1: A docuseries chronicling his legal saga called Free Meek, is
Speaker 1: now streaming on Prime Video, and Meek's friend Michael Rubin,
Speaker 1: one of the owners of Philadelphia seventy six, is joined
Speaker 1: us for a discussion that unfortunately is as relevant today
Speaker 1: as it was back then. This is Wrong Contion with
Speaker 1: Jason Flam. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm.
Speaker 1: That's me and today we have an extraordinary show and
Speaker 1: you're about to find out why today's guest is the
Speaker 1: one and only Meek mill Um and Michael Rubin is
Speaker 1: with him and Meek. You need no introduction, but welcome
Speaker 1: to the show. Yeah, thanks for having me Man. I
Speaker 1: appreciate you for bring me on the show. I appreciate
Speaker 1: all the work you're doing, and we're gonna get into
Speaker 1: that right away. But with him is Michael Rubin m
Speaker 1: who is the owner of this Philadelphia seventy sixers and
Speaker 1: has an amazing background as an entrepreneur and businessman, but
Speaker 1: who has become a tremendous advocate for criminal justice reform
Speaker 1: and is about to really shake things up. So Michael,
Speaker 1: I'm thrilled to have you in the movement, and I'm
Speaker 1: glad you're here on the Showy, thanks for everything you're doing.
Speaker 1: I'm glad to be here. So Meek, one of the
Speaker 1: reasons I wanted to have you on the show is
Speaker 1: because your original case was in fact a wrongful conviction,
Speaker 1: and that's something a lot of people don't understand. And
Speaker 1: there's a lot more they don't understand about the circumstances
Speaker 1: in which you were arrested and how this nightmare saga,
Speaker 1: which is now in his second decade in the criminal
Speaker 1: justice system, has unfolded. And it's important to tell this
Speaker 1: story because it shines a light on so many aspects
Speaker 1: of what's wrong with the criminal justice system. And we're
Speaker 1: here in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, not Philadelphia, Mississippi. But even still,
Speaker 1: the system here has been so backwards for so long,
Speaker 1: and you were born right into the thick of it.
Speaker 1: I mean, let's talk about that. Because US seven. So
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 you were born into
Speaker 1: a situation in which black men were being incarcerated at
Speaker 1: rates that were unprecedented actually in the history of the world.
Speaker 1: There's a book that really touches on everything that you
Speaker 1: went through, called On the Run by Alice Goffman, Princeton, PhD.
Speaker 1: Sociologists who went and lived on sixth Streets in Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: She said, in the first eighteen months that I spent
Speaker 1: in the the neighborhood, at least once a day, I watched
Speaker 1: the police stop pedestrians or people in cars, searched them,
Speaker 1: run their name for warrants, asked them to come in
Speaker 1: for questioning or making arrest. In that same eighteen month period,
Speaker 1: I watched the police breakdown doors, search houses and question,
Speaker 1: arrest or chase people through houses fifty two times. Nine
Speaker 1: times police her helicopters circle overhead and beam search lights
Speaker 1: on the local streets. I noticed blocks taped off in
Speaker 1: traffic be directed this police search for evidence fourteen times
Speaker 1: during my first eighteen months of near daily observation, I
Speaker 1: watched the police punch, choke, kick, stomp on, or beat
Speaker 1: young men with their nightsticks. That's what the situation was like.
Speaker 1: It's what it still is like, and that's what has
Speaker 1: to change. Can you talk about that about how you
Speaker 1: grew up and how this you know, it was almost
Speaker 1: almost a faded complete you know. I come from Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: actually the North North Philadelphia which now is like called
Speaker 1: the Temple area, and uh, you know, we grew up
Speaker 1: in an environments where like drug infestive environments where a
Speaker 1: lot of violence, a lot of drugs, a lot of
Speaker 1: things taking place. So it's like you could be standing
Speaker 1: in the wrong place and lose your life, or you
Speaker 1: could be standing in the wrong place and get charged
Speaker 1: with a crime you didn't do. That was just like normal. Actually,
Speaker 1: I've been hanging with my friend p mind probably fifteen
Speaker 1: years and I remember back he went to jail when
Speaker 1: he was probably about fifteen years old. He just turned
Speaker 1: thirty one, and like, yeah, the first time I went
Speaker 1: to prison, he said, a white guy just pulled up
Speaker 1: in the back of a car and just pointing at
Speaker 1: me on the car and said, I arrobbed him for
Speaker 1: seven dollars, but he had three and eighty dollars in
Speaker 1: his pocket, and he went to jail for that. He
Speaker 1: ended up doing I think like two years and that
Speaker 1: in the juvenile facility. But that wasn't the worst part.
Speaker 1: The worst part was he got a felony on this
Speaker 1: record for arm robbery. And you know, if you know him,
Speaker 1: he's not like, uh, it's not robbery, he's not robbery.
Speaker 1: And his system, Uh, he made mistakes in his life.
Speaker 1: But me being around him, I never knew that. But
Speaker 1: I witnessed that so many times. I wouldn't have standing
Speaker 1: on the corner and the cop pull up with for
Speaker 1: a Mexican guy in the back, and I don't know
Speaker 1: to Sometimes we say in the our world, in the
Speaker 1: sarcastic way of being funny, we always be like, uh,
Speaker 1: white people look the same to us. Some of my
Speaker 1: wife friends were like oh 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 just be like,
Speaker 1: I hope this guy don't point me out. And that's
Speaker 1: just one of the scenarios out of a million scenarios,
Speaker 1: being caught in the middle of poverty, uh, drug infesting
Speaker 1: neighborhood with people are getting robbed left and right where
Speaker 1: you know, cops locking people have left and right just
Speaker 1: to get stripes on that record. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: And we grew up in that and you know, at
Speaker 1: eight years old, I was caught up in that system.
Speaker 1: And even though I've been on the path ever since
Speaker 1: of doing spectacle in my life from where I come from,
Speaker 1: that same system is still haunting me and haunking me down,
Speaker 1: even at the age of thirty one and having a
Speaker 1: record deal and being able to handle business 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 a very important point, which is
Speaker 1: that we know from decades of research now that cross
Speaker 1: racial identifications are extremely unreliable identications in general are unreliable
Speaker 1: because when people witness a crime, especially violent crime, they're
Speaker 1: d don'tly goes crazy and the perception gets screwy and
Speaker 1: the brain doesn't function properly, so it almost becomes like guessing,
Speaker 1: but it gets even worse. And there's a movement now
Speaker 1: in various places to try to put in a system
Speaker 1: where a jury has to be instructed in a case
Speaker 1: in which across racial identification 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 of an identification is the most powerful
Speaker 1: thing in the core roam too. I pointed you and
Speaker 1: goes that to him. You know, it's hard for a
Speaker 1: jury to see past that. Yeah, it's like it's a neighborhood.
Speaker 1: We all wearing white teas of the summer two thousand
Speaker 1: and three, everybody white T shirts is the popular thing
Speaker 1: to wear denim shirts. And you got a guy, he
Speaker 1: might be Asian. He pull up on the corner. We
Speaker 1: all seven of us got braids, and four of us
Speaker 1: got a little cuts, but we all look the same.
Speaker 1: The ones that got braised to him, that's just you
Speaker 1: allow to repick to get caught up in the system,
Speaker 1: like whoever you point out, that's you, and you better
Speaker 1: hope you don't hand no felonies on your record already
Speaker 1: because you might go to jail for a long time.
Speaker 1: And sociologically speaking, and this goes back again to the
Speaker 1: seventies and eighties. Right at the same time that they
Speaker 1: were rolling back welfare and other programs for the urban poor,
Speaker 1: they were ramping up the policing and they were Now
Speaker 1: you created the perfect storm because what was happening was
Speaker 1: you had these these systems coming for tracking arrest You
Speaker 1: had so many more cops in fact, and I think
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia six more police decade over decade than they
Speaker 1: were before, and they had to make arrests. So whereas
Speaker 1: before they were largely ignoring what was going on in
Speaker 1: the community, now there were heightened penalties for not just
Speaker 1: for violent crimes, but also for all kinds of different
Speaker 1: drug crimes, for vagrancy, for trespassing, for anything. And they
Speaker 1: were in a position where they were arresting people left
Speaker 1: and right and creating this permanent underclass. And Michael, you know,
Speaker 1: obviously you grew up here too, right, but your situation
Speaker 1: must have been very different, very different world. I grew
Speaker 1: up maybe twenty minutes from Make, but Make used all
Speaker 1: the said to me, and we used to have this
Speaker 1: argument for years. He'd said to mean, Michael, there is
Speaker 1: two Americans. And I'd be like, like, dude, shut up,
Speaker 1: there's like there's there's one America. Like stop, you know,
Speaker 1: like you're doing great, Like you know, I didn't understand,
Speaker 1: Like what are you telling about these two worlds? We
Speaker 1: live in one great country. And and you know, he
Speaker 1: would argue about all the time. And I remember the
Speaker 1: day that that Meek got sentenced November six, two thousand
Speaker 1: and seventeen, he called me from the Philadelphia job before
Speaker 1: they transferred to a different jail and said, he said,
Speaker 1: you see, I told you this is what happens to
Speaker 1: the black people, right, And I just like that, you
Speaker 1: know what I said, You're right, I was wrong, and
Speaker 1: there is two worlds. And you know, for me, November six,
Speaker 1: two thousand 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 a circumstance he was living in
Speaker 1: because it didn't seem possible until you sat in the courtroom.
Speaker 1: And even people that have come to later court hearings
Speaker 1: 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 diametom. Remember we were at a NBA All
Speaker 1: Star game, and you know, within a few minutes, you know,
Speaker 1: Meek realized I was involved with the Philadephia seventy six ers,
Speaker 1: and I 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. If I pointed, you know, a
Speaker 1: gun of multiple cops, I'd be dead. Like I heard him,
Speaker 1: but I didn't really comprehend it. And then like, if
Speaker 1: I've told that story to people in the last seven months,
Speaker 1: every person from law enforcement to politics to anyone who
Speaker 1: understands anything, they all said the same thing. He's right,
Speaker 1: He beat that no one would pull a gun multiple
Speaker 1: cops and not get shot. And Meek can't obviously talk
Speaker 1: about 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: crimeing 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 than all the slaves at the
Speaker 1: height of slavery in America in the eighteen fifties or
Speaker 1: sixties whatever that was. What are we doing? Well, It's
Speaker 1: like Michael Alexanders is the new Jim Crow. What words
Speaker 1: can't explain, is Meek is still on probation for something
Speaker 1: that we've already said he didn't do, and it's been
Speaker 1: going on for thirteen years from the original wrongful conviction,
Speaker 1: but he can't like, you can't live that way, Like
Speaker 1: I say, I joke with him, I feel like I'm
Speaker 1: on probation because I'm worried about just something going wrong
Speaker 1: with him. If he decides to leave a state day
Speaker 1: early because something changed with the schedule, or he gets
Speaker 1: you know, someone says, hey, I'm gonna pay you to
Speaker 1: go to this concert. I want to go, and I
Speaker 1: have the proper days of permission, the judge will try
Speaker 1: to violate him. I mean, it's the system is chasing
Speaker 1: him and trying to violate and and that's not what
Speaker 1: probation is supposed to be about, rehabilitating somebody, not trying
Speaker 1: to catch them and send that back to prison. And
Speaker 1: something that someone told me recently, and you know, I've
Speaker 1: now become too familiar with this, but seventy people that
Speaker 1: go back to jail once they've been in jail in
Speaker 1: prison are going back for technical probation violations. Like to me,
Speaker 1: virtually none of those people should be you know you
Speaker 1: had a technical probation violation. Right, he didn't commit a crime.
Speaker 1: You were late for your probation officers, so you you know,
Speaker 1: didn't pay a certain amount of money. You you know,
Speaker 1: you traveled out of the state. You know he went
Speaker 1: to his son in New Jersey because he lives in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: And you can be violated and sent back to jail.
Speaker 1: This is lunacy. This is absolute lunacy. And I want,
Speaker 1: I'm really glad you brought that up, Michael, because I
Speaker 1: don't want to get your take on this week because
Speaker 1: in a lot of the reforms that are underway right now,
Speaker 1: there's this hidden caveat or this hidden nightmare i'll call it,
Speaker 1: of enhanced probation and other ways of the government keeping
Speaker 1: people under control. So to me, a true crime reform
Speaker 1: bill should eliminate those problems. And you obviously can speak
Speaker 1: firsthand about just how restrictive that is. And Michael has
Speaker 1: said very eloquently, when you have seventy people going back
Speaker 1: to jail or prison because they have some technical violation,
Speaker 1: that's insane. Right. Can you talk about that, because I'm
Speaker 1: very concerned that they're sneaking these devils into the details
Speaker 1: in these new crime bills that are going to allow
Speaker 1: them to maintain this control. There's no other way to
Speaker 1: look at it over millions of people's lives. And there's
Speaker 1: a profit center in there for a lot of people too. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's more then it's saying to me, I take it
Speaker 1: as deep as like he said, I could go see
Speaker 1: my son in New Jersey and actually be locked in
Speaker 1: a cage and be locked in change check who from
Speaker 1: like angle defeat for the crime of going from Pennsylvania
Speaker 1: to New Jersey. That's what I'm saying, and being facetious
Speaker 1: for the crime and quotes. I'll tell you this right now,
Speaker 1: Judge Brinkley is dying to do that too. She's trying
Speaker 1: to right now today, I promise you she's sitting in
Speaker 1: her house obsessed about how she can figure out how
Speaker 1: to put them back in jail for nothing. And he
Speaker 1: can't talk about that, but I can't. I'm telling you
Speaker 1: straight up, that's what's going on. It's it's really bizarre.
Speaker 1: I mean, as a country, why would we want I mean,
Speaker 1: these are our tax dollars, right and it and it
Speaker 1: hurts the average taxpayer, even if you're somebody who's not
Speaker 1: particularly concerned about criminal justice reform, or you think a
Speaker 1: lot of people or you maybe you think you're tough
Speaker 1: on crime or whatever. It might be. The money that's
Speaker 1: being spent to lock people like you meet up right
Speaker 1: and to keep you under supervision, and it's bloated and
Speaker 1: and draconian system is pure insanity. I mean that money
Speaker 1: could be spent. I mean I know that at one time,
Speaker 1: and 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 than
Speaker 1: they were educating people. And we fact checked that. But
Speaker 1: it's absolutely staggering. And the crazy thing is these are Americans.
Speaker 1: There are fellow people, you know, I say the politicians
Speaker 1: when I talk to him, Like, you know, if another
Speaker 1: country treated our people the way we treat our people,
Speaker 1: we'd invade this stuff. We wouldn't even do to our pets,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, Like you wouldn't lock your
Speaker 1: pet in the medal cell. For sometimes we get locked in.
Speaker 1: And I say we because I've been through this experience
Speaker 1: so many times, and like, sometimes we get locked in
Speaker 1: a room for twenty three hours a day for a month,
Speaker 1: two weeks, some people actually even years. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. It's like they say, when you come home,
Speaker 1: it's a violation to be around felons. And how is
Speaker 1: it a violation to be around felons when you just
Speaker 1: had me locked up amongst thousands of felons? Like what
Speaker 1: rule is this? I'm glad you brought it up too,
Speaker 1: because that's another thing that creates this visious the way
Speaker 1: 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 you don't know. Would you have to
Speaker 1: have a like a database that at all times most
Speaker 1: people can't afford that, I mean, and you're not going
Speaker 1: to do it in the fact is I'm just quoting
Speaker 1: a statistic here. One in four black children born in
Speaker 1: nineteen 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 of black man
Speaker 1: without college educations today we'll have been to prison by
Speaker 1: their men thirties and spent up to a year in prison.
Speaker 1: I mean that's without college educations. And the numbers go
Speaker 1: to sixty when you look at blackmails without high school education,
Speaker 1: sixty of blackmails out high school education was spent a
Speaker 1: year in prison or jail before their thirtieth birthday. What
Speaker 1: are we doing? And the fact is it's actually impossible
Speaker 1: to succeed, which is why I'm always amazed when somebody
Speaker 1: does come from the background that you came from and
Speaker 1: make it, because with that cycle, how do you do it?
Speaker 1: They've created a mind field that you can't walk through. Right,
Speaker 1: once you get arrested, You're gonna get re arrested no
Speaker 1: matter what you do. Pretty much, and like like me
Speaker 1: and Mike, we just been the hour My just teaching
Speaker 1: me about financial stuff and like texts and things that
Speaker 1: like when we're growing up from like age thirteen to
Speaker 1: twenty years old. We probably invest ninety five percent of
Speaker 1: our thinking time and how to SE five and these
Speaker 1: type of conditions because it's like almost impossible to survive.
Speaker 1: So like you gotta put like your all into how
Speaker 1: this even my mind framed now, I still like, even
Speaker 1: though I travel the world, is still installed in my mind.
Speaker 1: It's still like something that is like I might come
Speaker 1: into a certain situation in a certain area and I
Speaker 1: go into survival moll and and I have the double back,
Speaker 1: and like this is not even that type of environment
Speaker 1: where I don't live this type of life anymore, but
Speaker 1: it's always installed inside of my head. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying that coming from environments like that, like you
Speaker 1: said sixty, where I come from, it feel like it's ninety.
Speaker 1: Like do that count death probably go up to probably
Speaker 1: young black men being murdered, uh going to prison probably
Speaker 1: sixty plus another thirty 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 it
Speaker 1: have been murdered. That's that's you know, how many I know?
Speaker 1: I'm in zero? You know how many I know they've
Speaker 1: been close? Zero? So you're talking about, yeah, different environments.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's crazy that we have two shepherd systems
Speaker 1: of justice in America, one for people with money and
Speaker 1: one for people without, and one for people who are
Speaker 1: of color and one for people who are not. And
Speaker 1: when and when you hit the reverse jack part of
Speaker 1: being a person of color without being born into a
Speaker 1: wealthy family, which is a huge majority. And you don't
Speaker 1: even have to come from a wealthy family to like
Speaker 1: not be around somebody that was murder. It's really like territorial,
Speaker 1: Like I got one of my songs what I'm talking about,
Speaker 1: like like we've being put in groups in certain areas,
Speaker 1: even with public house and public house, and it's really
Speaker 1: across Philadelphia. So if you grow grow up less fortunate,
Speaker 1: they're sticking people in certain areas if you pay attention
Speaker 1: to it, Like it's North Philadelphia, but not the whole
Speaker 1: North Philadelphia is a certain part in South Philadelphia. It's
Speaker 1: a rich part of South Philadelphia where like houses costs
Speaker 1: a million dollars and then you got some houses that
Speaker 1: cost forty They only move in this cin certain areas.
Speaker 1: And I always say this, like if you take a drone,
Speaker 1: the main line of Philadelphia is like City Line Avenue
Speaker 1: where my apartments used to be. At City Line Avenue,
Speaker 1: you take a drone and then you make the drone
Speaker 1: go high in the sky, and if the drone had
Speaker 1: a zoom and kazoom on this side of the left
Speaker 1: and right, you will see it's quiet as peace here
Speaker 1: and his chaos going here. And you take a kid
Speaker 1: from over here and let him spending three summers in
Speaker 1: this area, he will be less. He won't be the
Speaker 1: way the chaos says. He would turn to be more
Speaker 1: lean like these people in this area. And I witnessed
Speaker 1: that with my family. I used to have a nephew.
Speaker 1: He lived in the projects. He used to cuss, He's
Speaker 1: seen a lot of things. He used to act up
Speaker 1: in school, and you know, he moved to a suburban
Speaker 1: area and his whole life changed within two years. It
Speaker 1: was just that simple. For a long time, I've been pondering,
Speaker 1: thinking about, obsessed with the idea of with the grim
Speaker 1: statistics and scenario that we're painting here, and you're exactly
Speaker 1: I want to ask this question, how many people as
Speaker 1: talented as you are either got shot or got locked
Speaker 1: up in prison and society as a result it's 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 thousands, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I know it's guys in there and locked the way
Speaker 1: as talented as me, you know what I'm saying. And
Speaker 1: they're probably there for felonies on felonies. And when you say,
Speaker 1: like when people label you as a felon, like, how
Speaker 1: it's that 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, Uh, when he do go hang on
Speaker 1: the corner, when he when we come up on the
Speaker 1: corner around drug does everybody sells drugs? Your first step
Speaker 1: is to pick up a drug. So when you get
Speaker 1: your second felony. Uh, you might be actually good at basketball.
Speaker 1: You might have been in eleventh grade and actually one
Speaker 1: of the best players on the team. And here it
Speaker 1: comes you in a bad neighborhood. You get arrested for
Speaker 1: something else and we don't have all your money. You
Speaker 1: might take a deal and the deal was put this
Speaker 1: funoni 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 you 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
Speaker 1: prison wall. You will never get a real shot at life.
Speaker 1: And you might be good as Ben Simmons or Joe
Speaker 1: and BIEB and you know all that went down the dream,
Speaker 1: but for as rapids, the hundreds of it was probably
Speaker 1: at least fifty guys that was actually good where 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 build the other and make music together. Fifty,
Speaker 1: I would say, in that one prison that I know of. Recently,
Speaker 1: hip hop recently passed can roll pop as the most
Speaker 1: popular genre worldwide, right, and it all comes from almost
Speaker 1: all of it comes from America. Right, So when we're
Speaker 1: exporting that, we're bringing tax revenue into this country. When
Speaker 1: guys like you are making records selling millions of records,
Speaker 1: selling concert tickets, you're paying taxes. All that stuff goes
Speaker 1: back into the system. Everybody is being hurt by that,
Speaker 1: and society is being deprived of geniuses. As as you said,
Speaker 1: basketball is another story. Right, But and and when you
Speaker 1: talk about a scenario like that, you have a kid
Speaker 1: as good as whoever you want to talk about, Simmons
Speaker 1: or whatever. Uh, they get arrested like that, the college
Speaker 1: scholarships going out the window. They can't play college ball now,
Speaker 1: the whole thing. And let's say that guy was gonna
Speaker 1: make a hundred billion dollars, not unrealistic. We have the
Speaker 1: one of the seventi six is here, right, you're right.
Speaker 1: We look forward to writing many checks for a hundred
Speaker 1: million dollars because that we have that many great players.
Speaker 1: And let me ask you that those players pay taxes
Speaker 1: on those checks. Of course they do, right, huge amounts
Speaker 1: of money coming back into the city, coming back into
Speaker 1: the state, coming back into the country. Because those people
Speaker 1: were the few lucky ones that managed to escape from this,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of trapped the society has built. But
Speaker 1: by even more than money. If you look at the
Speaker 1: math and you say there's six point seven or six
Speaker 1: point nine million people today in America trapped in the
Speaker 1: criminal justice system. The question is what's appropriate. Like if
Speaker 1: we just all said, if you got anyone together and said,
Speaker 1: what do you think someone should be in prison for?
Speaker 1: What should someone being on probation for? If you said, hey,
Speaker 1: that person got caught smoking weed? Should any there's people
Speaker 1: be in prison? If if if someone stole a hundred
Speaker 1: dollars is a fifteen year old kitchen, they'd be stuck
Speaker 1: in prison. And the amount of story Like I think
Speaker 1: if you looked at the math and just said, let's
Speaker 1: just take this top down the six point nine million
Speaker 1: people the criminal justice system, I think you could say
Speaker 1: if we just all said what should people be in
Speaker 1: the system for? And not being the system, you just
Speaker 1: took a bunch of rational people, the numbers probably half
Speaker 1: and so to me, what's such a travesty is you've
Speaker 1: got millions of people stuck in the criminal justice system
Speaker 1: that don't belong there, and by the way, you're ruining
Speaker 1: their lives, their families, lives, their friends lives. By the way,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people that belong in prison. We
Speaker 1: want to live in a safe world, we want to
Speaker 1: have you know, violent offenders, people that murder, people are rapists,
Speaker 1: you know, on robbers. There's a lot of people that
Speaker 1: belong in prison, and I want those people in prison.
Speaker 1: But the problem is there's millions of people that shouldn't
Speaker 1: be in the criminal justice system that are. And that's
Speaker 1: the problem that needs to be addressed. And that's what
Speaker 1: I know. Meek is really excited to help make an
Speaker 1: impact on. I'm excited to help make an impact on
Speaker 1: I think this is an enormous problem that's costing tens
Speaker 1: of billions of dollars and it's ruining millions of people's lives.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and Michael, picking up on what you were saying,
Speaker 1: thirty five years ago, we had three hundred thousand people
Speaker 1: in prison in America. Right now it's two point two million.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure the numbers on probation and parole were
Speaker 1: proportionately about, you know, seven times last like this one
Speaker 1: is too And then you look at the country like Japan, right, well,
Speaker 1: we locked and you look at Western Europe, we locked
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: in mestern Uar of in Northern America. And then you
Speaker 1: get to Japan. In Japan they have approximately seventy thousand
Speaker 1: people in prison. We probably have seventy thousand people in
Speaker 1: prison and in the mid size state. Yeah, maybe even
Speaker 1: a smaller state than this one, right, because I mean,
Speaker 1: do the math. So they we lock people up at
Speaker 1: fourteen times the rate per capita that Japan does. And
Speaker 1: for anybody listening, going, yeah, but that's why we have
Speaker 1: a lower crime rate than they do. No, you don't.
Speaker 1: Our crimemates are the same, and there's no evidence that supports.
Speaker 1: In fact, I think every social scientist that has studied
Speaker 1: this would agree that this system is the worst system
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 unemployable to understand. And that's something
Speaker 1: I talked about on the show a lot, like people
Speaker 1: that are out there that are employers take a shot
Speaker 1: with somebody who was system affected, because those people will
Speaker 1: work harder and better. You know, there's a bakery in
Speaker 1: New York I just found out about. I saw Ted
Speaker 1: talk 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. I want to a
Speaker 1: lot of them right now because we have a little
Speaker 1: weight lost pecking on. We can get this brown delivered
Speaker 1: to him right now. If you're looking a little slimmer
Speaker 1: the last time, Yeah no, but it's you know, that's
Speaker 1: something that we really need to as a society start
Speaker 1: to be much more progressive on and more 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 that
Speaker 1: that's an easier problem to solve because I've actually been thinking, Look,
Speaker 1: we employee eight thousand people between my companies, and you know,
Speaker 1: I think if you got a bunch of business leaders
Speaker 1: to focus on taking big companies saying what areas in
Speaker 1: the company could start to take people right out of
Speaker 1: prison to help rehabilitate them. I think they are actually
Speaker 1: easy ways to make real progress against Like I'm actually
Speaker 1: optimistic with a little bit of focus and energy that
Speaker 1: real impact can be made. There a lot of those cases.
Speaker 1: You have better employees, as you just indicated as well.
Speaker 1: So if we we have you know, thousands of people
Speaker 1: that manufacture a power working for film and centers, working
Speaker 1: call centers, my point is there's you know, big opportunities
Speaker 1: to hire people. And I think that again, if you
Speaker 1: look at how many people work in America and then
Speaker 1: how many people are coming out of prisoner jail each year.
Speaker 1: If there's two point two million people in prison and jail,
Speaker 1: maybe I don't know, five thousand people come out of year.
Speaker 1: I don't think it takes a lot to get a
Speaker 1: set of big companies to focus on helping solve this
Speaker 1: problem well, and especially with long time offenders. Like a
Speaker 1: long time offenders, like people who serve over teen years,
Speaker 1: they spend most of the jail time working. In fact,
Speaker 1: the reason working for the prison that their mind, they
Speaker 1: have experience, their mind is structured, uh to just work
Speaker 1: all day and uh memor rival was telling us he
Speaker 1: had a program where hired like a lot of ex offenders,
Speaker 1: and he asked me, like, how many of them messed up?
Speaker 1: Was you in that conversation? He asked me, said, how
Speaker 1: many you thing messed up? Out of two? Probably, like
Speaker 1: I said, because I knew the number would be high,
Speaker 1: because I know of long time offenders, people that come
Speaker 1: home going a lot of time now they don't really
Speaker 1: want to mess up again. He told me none out
Speaker 1: of two. I was only two of I think this
Speaker 1: was years ago. Robert Kraft had a real focus on
Speaker 1: taking people that had come out of prison and hiring them.
Speaker 1: And the point to your point was, there is best employees.
Speaker 1: There's best employees. And it's interesting too. I mean, call
Speaker 1: it luck, call it whatever you want, but I've got
Speaker 1: I've been very fortunate, blessed whatever to be able to
Speaker 1: help advocate successfully for clemency for dozens of people deserving
Speaker 1: people over the years, not just people who are innocent,
Speaker 1: but people who were primarily who are sentenced the mandatory senses,
Speaker 1: crazy mandatory sensors like Lenny Singleton who you referenced earlier,
Speaker 1: um or or Travion Blount who was sentenced to at
Speaker 1: fifteen years old, sense to six life terms for a
Speaker 1: robbery in which no one was hurt. Um fifteen years old,
Speaker 1: six life terms. It made international news, like what what
Speaker 1: in the world even is that? Like, that's it's got
Speaker 1: to be. That should be, that should be a crown
Speaker 1: to send some minds today like why and and to me,
Speaker 1: that's the that should be the easy things to get
Speaker 1: everyone aligned on and fix. And by the way, talk
Speaker 1: about the state. The meek us from that I'm from
Speaker 1: in Pennsylvania were one of three states in America that
Speaker 1: has no cap on probation. So states have caps of
Speaker 1: probation summer, three years, two years, four years. We have
Speaker 1: no cap in Pennsylvania. So someone like me who was
Speaker 1: separate that he was wrongfully convicted thirteen years ago appointed
Speaker 1: a gun that didn't point a gun that cop by
Speaker 1: the way, where multiple police officers have come for and
Speaker 1: said it was a lie. So we have affidavits from
Speaker 1: a police officer came for and said no, I was
Speaker 1: one of the two resting officers and though he didn't
Speaker 1: point the one. Okay, Now after that, you've still got
Speaker 1: a system that's just completely broken. And in Pennsylvania he
Speaker 1: gets sentenced to probation and then he does a concert
Speaker 1: in a different state without the proper authorization and the
Speaker 1: attack on another five years of probation, and now he's
Speaker 1: got he's still a six years of probation left. He's
Speaker 1: been operations right, so so he's got no chance to
Speaker 1: actually succeed in that situation. I can tell you if
Speaker 1: you put me, the Jewish kid from suburban Philadelphia on probation,
Speaker 1: I couldn't make a year with what he needs to
Speaker 1: go through. There's not possible. And the time funk up
Speaker 1: years of my life from eighteen to thirty one. You know,
Speaker 1: of all the people that I've been involved with and
Speaker 1: helped get out of prison, none of them have re
Speaker 1: offended or offended for the first time. If they were innocent,
Speaker 1: it's probably a better way of saying it. And again
Speaker 1: none but some will. And that's okay because because you
Speaker 1: know what, at the end of the day, we need
Speaker 1: to make the world a better place. And if we
Speaker 1: get millions of people out of the criminal justice system,
Speaker 1: and if you make mistakes, that's okay because there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people that aren't in the criminal justice system
Speaker 1: that will also make mistakes. This is never gonna be
Speaker 1: perfect and that's someone says, hey, we should keep that
Speaker 1: six point seven or six point nine million people stuck
Speaker 1: in the criminal justice system. The few millions that shouldn't
Speaker 1: be there because someone may make a mistake. Nothing's perfect
Speaker 1: like we need we need to get it right overall.
Speaker 1: And that's the same approach I take in business. We
Speaker 1: want to make good overall decisions. We don't go for perfection.
Speaker 1: We went for perfection. We never get anything done, of
Speaker 1: course not. And I said, I've been lucky in that sense.
Speaker 1: And of the people, uh of the Inncence Project, the
Speaker 1: people that we've gotten out of a tiny percentage of
Speaker 1: them have ever been in any sort of trouble again,
Speaker 1: people age we're talking about real trouble, probably zero. But
Speaker 1: then I got back in real trouble. A couple of
Speaker 1: other very important topics I wanna talk touch on with you,
Speaker 1: Meek and Michael um. One is prisons themselves and how
Speaker 1: barbaric our prison system is when it's supposed to be
Speaker 1: called the correctional institution and we know that that is
Speaker 1: the farthest thing from the truth in most cases. And
Speaker 1: the other is how important it is for people to
Speaker 1: get out and vote, because I don't think we can
Speaker 1: have this conversation without talking about that, and some people.
Speaker 1: I've heard somebody say, we don't need criminal justice before,
Speaker 1: we need a criminal justice revolution. So which one do
Speaker 1: you want to take on first of those? So we
Speaker 1: could talk voting in UH. This coming from my coach
Speaker 1: on where we come from. This goes far us back
Speaker 1: when I say, like the other side of America where
Speaker 1: people don't even believe like that world tends to us.
Speaker 1: And I used to think that, but that was deeply false.
Speaker 1: And one of my jobs is trying to teach people
Speaker 1: the ropes of how voting go because it's even with
Speaker 1: a judge trying to lock me up for what going
Speaker 1: over a bridge. Basically, we voted for her UH district
Speaker 1: attorneys where they enforced mandatory minimums and they enforced locking
Speaker 1: people up for smoking marijuana and things like that. We
Speaker 1: vote for them. We have to be the ones that vote.
Speaker 1: And in our culture, the black community, a lot of
Speaker 1: us don't vote. So it's like community, Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I I don't really know. I knew that in our
Speaker 1: community we don't vote at all. I don't even know
Speaker 1: anybody in my age at the age of eighteen, we
Speaker 1: ever got up as a group and everybody wanted to vote.
Speaker 1: It was like never a thing we didn't believe in it.
Speaker 1: So my new thing is to teach the younger people
Speaker 1: from our culture that come up, well all younger people
Speaker 1: that come up, that voting is important because you know,
Speaker 1: we have to live under these laws that these people
Speaker 1: are creating, and if we don't vote, we don't have
Speaker 1: a voice at all. It's like you don't even count.
Speaker 1: And a lot of times you look at TV. They
Speaker 1: had a campaign that said vote or die. I always
Speaker 1: see any but I never really knew what it meant.
Speaker 1: It was that that problem is like eighteen years old.
Speaker 1: When they did that campaign, I never really understood it.
Speaker 1: But nowadays I understood. It's like you either a vote,
Speaker 1: are you get housed under regime which will eventually league
Speaker 1: kill you if not by Jael not by keeping you
Speaker 1: in a 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 if
Speaker 1: we make this topic big enough politically, a lot of
Speaker 1: people would have to lean towards being leaning on these
Speaker 1: topics in but I want you as leaning, I'd say appropriate, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd say I'd say punishment that fits the crime, because
Speaker 1: by the way, I'm not leaning. I want to appropriate punishment.
Speaker 1: And that was right. That was that was definitely right.
Speaker 1: And you know, I've been on the board of Families
Speaker 1: Against Mandatory Minimums, which a great organization, for over twenty
Speaker 1: five years now, and our motto is let the punishment
Speaker 1: fit the crime. Yeah. I mean, nobody's advocating for chaos.
Speaker 1: Nobody wants a society that is like, you know, I
Speaker 1: want to feel I want to feel safe everybody. I
Speaker 1: want my daughter to be safe. I want your family
Speaker 1: sat kids to be safe. Situations though that the crimes
Speaker 1: are boots so high up, it's like, what is lenient?
Speaker 1: But I'll make something really simple. I would saying, how
Speaker 1: many people are in prison and jail today, we're on
Speaker 1: probation because they have a drug problem. Probably it's more
Speaker 1: than a million. Yeah, okay, yeah, I'm not talking about
Speaker 1: selling drugs anyone who smoked weed. How could you possibly
Speaker 1: we just become illegal everywhere? How could you possibly put
Speaker 1: someone in the criminal trust system for doing something that's
Speaker 1: becoming legal? Absolutely? No sense. Someone had a problem with perkison,
Speaker 1: why do you send him to jail? Sending the rehab
Speaker 1: makes no sense. So to me, that's where the punishment
Speaker 1: needs to fit the crime. I would take everybody who
Speaker 1: has a drug problem, would get them help, so get
Speaker 1: stop the drug problem. But it's like it's deep as this.
Speaker 1: Like if I sell drugs and the cops come to
Speaker 1: my house and I'm not there, my mom get found
Speaker 1: guilty for these drugs in my house. People moms are
Speaker 1: getting thirty years in prison and federal prison for stuff
Speaker 1: like that. Like your mom got thirty years in prison.
Speaker 1: That's a life sentence. That's death. Yeah, that's defin. Don't
Speaker 1: want to extend you to prison. Even though she might
Speaker 1: preach to you every day that you're selling drugs, you're
Speaker 1: getting out of my house and she knows it's wrong,
Speaker 1: but you her son. If you're in a car with
Speaker 1: someone who's got drugs and you get pulled over and
Speaker 1: they find the drugs, it belongs to everybody unless somebody
Speaker 1: takes responsibility for it, and nobody ever does. Nobody ever 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 I'm not
Speaker 1: even talking about full in instance, I'm just talking about like, say,
Speaker 1: if you come from where I come from, like your
Speaker 1: mom on a crack, she's a strung out fan. You're
Speaker 1: thirteen years old, you got a seven year old sister,
Speaker 1: and you're coming in the house. It's just baking soda
Speaker 1: and butter and infrigerating. When you go out and look
Speaker 1: out the windows, people in the corner selling weed, marijuana,
Speaker 1: craig cocaine, and they're running in fast cash, and your
Speaker 1: little sister don't got nothing to eat. The first thing
Speaker 1: you're gonna do is go outside and pick up like
Speaker 1: this is like normal, Like Mike, if you was in
Speaker 1: a situation, I bet a million dollars on it that
Speaker 1: you would go outside and pick out of a drug.
Speaker 1: If Kylie was in the house, you fourteen, my heart
Speaker 1: everybody to work for me to do I'm saying I'm
Speaker 1: talking about you know, I'm talking about it if you
Speaker 1: don't have any of this going on, and you're poor,
Speaker 1: like you don't have any family in the house, and
Speaker 1: you come see Kylie and it is but by that
Speaker 1: that's also where and that person have no punishment. No,
Speaker 1: but may be set to jail for thirty years, especially
Speaker 1: ridiculous thing I've ever heard. And that's why I said
Speaker 1: to me, but even if you bring it down to
Speaker 1: ten years, ten years will ruin your life. So like
Speaker 1: what they got is leaning is not even leaning, Like
Speaker 1: it's the rates of bootsteps so high, like what they
Speaker 1: call like I watch media and social send him to prison.
Speaker 1: Like even when people be like, he should have went
Speaker 1: to prison, broke probation, even if I did break probation.
Speaker 1: If I did commit a crime ten years ago and
Speaker 1: I broke probation, people are like, send them back to prison.
Speaker 1: I'm like, do you know what prison is? And like
Speaker 1: when I say shackled up in a cage, I mean
Speaker 1: like shack of real chains. When you take a baby
Speaker 1: step is cutting your legs and like the same thing
Speaker 1: you see in the slavery movie. It's the same thing.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, do people really understand what they're saying,
Speaker 1: like send him to prison, Like Mike Cain to myself,
Speaker 1: Mike was like, he was like, it's not bad as
Speaker 1: it could be. I'm gonna hit I'm like, oh, but
Speaker 1: that's because I'm an optimistic person and I always want
Speaker 1: to look at things positively. And it's ten degrees. I
Speaker 1: don't have a tallest seat. The water that I'm coming
Speaker 1: out of my sink is the same water connected to
Speaker 1: the tallt is filthy, like it's like it's ten mices
Speaker 1: in my cell and night running around you like is
Speaker 1: you can't even imagine it? And I'm like, I'm here.
Speaker 1: I didn't hurt anybody. I didn't kill anybody. I didn't.
Speaker 1: By the way, the thing that bothers me so much,
Speaker 1: the amount of people I've told about your story and
Speaker 1: everyone it's now proven that you were wrongfully convicted because
Speaker 1: we have a cop who was one of the two
Speaker 1: arresting officers who signed Appa David saying no, you didn't
Speaker 1: point the gun, which what you were charged for. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and your probation violations where you popped a wheelie on
Speaker 1: a motorcycle, you broke up a fight in an airport.
Speaker 1: Yet there are people say put them back in jail
Speaker 1: for ten years, which is it shows how backwards so
Speaker 1: many people are in this country as well. Just when
Speaker 1: you speak in jail that is like it's just like
Speaker 1: a place of hotel where you go to sit that
Speaker 1: now it's some ship that will waring your whole train
Speaker 1: of thought, Like you went here, like the matchs sleeping
Speaker 1: on is probably four inches thick, and then after that
Speaker 1: is metal and cement, like you got this guy's eighty
Speaker 1: years old sleeping on mattress and stuff. Like they didn't
Speaker 1: kill anybody. They may have been on im probation, and
Speaker 1: they felling the after felling in you eight years. Oh
Speaker 1: you you're poor. You've been in the system so long.
Speaker 1: It's hard to explain. You have to see it and
Speaker 1: be there. Like even what they do with juveniles, they
Speaker 1: got juveniles locked in cages. These are submit cages that
Speaker 1: they had these kids and and most of these kids
Speaker 1: didn't kill anybody 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, we were
Speaker 1: sitting there and we were just kind of talking. I
Speaker 1: was really just kind of listening to Robert Meek talking.
Speaker 1: Robert looked at me and he said, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't understand how how you're handling this. So how are
Speaker 1: you so hot? He said, Like, last time I was
Speaker 1: with you, we were on a plane flying to an
Speaker 1: All Star game and you were on the top of
Speaker 1: the world. Now you're in an orange jumpsuit, locked in prison.
Speaker 1: You've got a smile from me. You're gonna ear to
Speaker 1: ear and make. He's generally pretty quick with his answer.
Speaker 1: You thought about it for about thirty seconds, and he
Speaker 1: looked at Robert. He said, you know, it's been my
Speaker 1: entire adult life. I was wrongfully convicted for a crime
Speaker 1: in and commit I've been sent back to prison multiple times,
Speaker 1: never committed a new crime. But this is the first
Speaker 1: time people actually fighting for me, and that makes me
Speaker 1: so happy. So for me, I was mortified at the situation,
Speaker 1: but completely proud of how well he was handling that
Speaker 1: horrific situation. This is the best situation I've ever been
Speaker 1: in far as dealing with the system, with having like
Speaker 1: real credible people stand behind me, because, like Mike said,
Speaker 1: I'm telling him, like, yo, if y'all had guns in here,
Speaker 1: you're not even police officers. If I came in here, oh,
Speaker 1: you'll have firearms. And I came in here point of
Speaker 1: gun nine times out of tim where would I be that?
Speaker 1: Of course against the cops are trained to neutralize people
Speaker 1: who calls threat towards their lives, like this is like normal,
Speaker 1: Like you get away with this, this is what you
Speaker 1: should do. You're trained to do this, not me one
Speaker 1: on one with a cop like and you know, one
Speaker 1: on want anybody could get scared and want to run away. No,
Speaker 1: this is a group of cops doing a full blown
Speaker 1: read and me being accused of pointing the gun at
Speaker 1: all of them. And so me one more question before
Speaker 1: I do that. I want to remind people who are
Speaker 1: listening vote, vote and vote and voting your local races
Speaker 1: and your d as racist and your judges racist. Your
Speaker 1: vote counts. We have racist that actually ended up tied.
Speaker 1: I mean your vote counts. And judge don't have to
Speaker 1: be white against the black to be racist. It could
Speaker 1: be white on white racism. It could be black on
Speaker 1: black racism. And make sure you vote for the right people.
Speaker 1: When when you're vote for judges, nobody really knows because
Speaker 1: you just see a judge on the d you can
Speaker 1: make good decisions and people knew when they vote it
Speaker 1: for the d A in Pennsylvania that he was a
Speaker 1: more thoughtful person on the criminal justice system and been
Speaker 1: lots of new das that have had much more modern approaches.
Speaker 1: That approach hasn't been locked everybody up and put all
Speaker 1: black American prison. It's been let's have an accurate punishment
Speaker 1: for a crime. And that's who you should be voting for.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna say one more thing before I turned
Speaker 1: the last question over to you, which is, everybody who's
Speaker 1: out there, at some point you're gonna get asked to
Speaker 1: serve on a jury and nobody likes it. We get
Speaker 1: those things in the mail, We're like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I got a time for this. Whatever is a big pay.
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 I ask you save could
Speaker 1: be your own. And now, rather than ask a final question,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna do what I at the end of
Speaker 1: the show, which is I always say it's my favorite
Speaker 1: part of the show, and I think it's probably the
Speaker 1: audiences favorite part of the show too, which is when
Speaker 1: I stop talking and just turned the Mica over to
Speaker 1: you for final last words, and Michael, I'm gonna let
Speaker 1: you go first and then Meeke and back clean up
Speaker 1: and close out the show. So, Michael, what would you
Speaker 1: want to tell people? How could they get involved? What
Speaker 1: can they do? What's what's the solution? Well, I think
Speaker 1: we're in a great position because I actually think this
Speaker 1: is a big problem that needs to be addressed. I
Speaker 1: think it's gonna be I think it would just take
Speaker 1: common sense to this juicy problem. We're gonna make the
Speaker 1: world a better place. And I'm actually for a guy
Speaker 1: who had absolutely zero point zero exposure to the criminal
Speaker 1: justice system until I met Meek, and then still really
Speaker 1: didn't understand it until November six of last year. I'm
Speaker 1: really optimistic because I believe that this is a completely
Speaker 1: broken system that with a lot of focus and energy,
Speaker 1: we can make the country a much better place than
Speaker 1: to me, that's exciting. So you know what I would say,
Speaker 1: everybody is make a difference. I didn't make any difference
Speaker 1: until seven months ago. And I'm actually you know, I've
Speaker 1: got three great businesses that I run, and I've got
Speaker 1: a great daughter and great family and friends. Yet I'm
Speaker 1: as energized about this as anything because I see how
Speaker 1: broken it is and I see how much fixing it needs.
Speaker 1: Mieke last words and before you even go, I want
Speaker 1: to thank you and Michael. Thank you for not just
Speaker 1: for being on the show, but for lending your voice
Speaker 1: and your energy and your your money and your time
Speaker 1: to this movement. Thank you for your focus. What you're
Speaker 1: doing is incredible. You've been at this for twenty five years.
Speaker 1: Week's been sucking the system for thirteen years, and I've
Speaker 1: been at this for seven months. So thank you. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm older than yours, I've had more time none but yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's an obsession and I'm not going to stop
Speaker 1: until we fix it together. So but anyway, so thank
Speaker 1: you both again for being here and sharing your your
Speaker 1: thoughts and your and your energy, your collective wisdom. Sonick,
Speaker 1: what are your last words for the audiences out there?
Speaker 1: My last words to the audience just now, I'm dedicated. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is a live mission. Actually suffer from the criminal
Speaker 1: 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 and not fix the system, but break the
Speaker 1: system completely and rebuild it again. Because the way we
Speaker 1: lived and the things we've been through with the system,
Speaker 1: it doesn't even take crime or or take being a
Speaker 1: villain to go to jail, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: And you know it's it's thousands of millions of people
Speaker 1: trapped inside on the other side of the wall, that
Speaker 1: actually need help. And you know, I think this is
Speaker 1: the right season to make changing, putting all my efforts
Speaker 1: into it, and hopefully, you know, we make change within
Speaker 1: the next few years and a free a lot of
Speaker 1: people from the prison system. 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 Podcasts and
Speaker 1: association with Signal Company Number one