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.
Speaker 3: Everything like everything.
Speaker 2: This isn't supposed to happen this way. I'm innocent. I
Speaker 2: know I'm innocent. I know I had nothing to do
Speaker 2: with this. How is this possible?
Speaker 3: I grew up trusting systems. I grew up believing that
Speaker 3: every human being should do the right thing. And that's why,
Speaker 3: even though I knew I was dealing with corerough people,
Speaker 3: I wasn't going to break anyone to get me out
Speaker 3: of prison because I wouldn't live with the fact that
Speaker 3: I break my way out of my wife's death.
Speaker 1: I'm not innocent, too proven guilty.
Speaker 3: I'm guilty until I prove my innocence. And that's absolutely
Speaker 3: what happened to me.
Speaker 1: Our system. Since I've been out ten years, it's come
Speaker 1: a little ways, but it's still broken.
Speaker 3: I totally lost trusting humanity after what happened to me.
Speaker 4: This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction. With
Speaker 4: Jason Flam Today, I have a very special guest, someone
Speaker 4: who is a change maker in the criminal justice reform
Speaker 4: movement who I'm absolutely delighted to have in the studio.
Speaker 4: So Kim Kardashian. Welcome to Wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 4: So Kim. I'm really amazed at what you've been able
Speaker 4: to accomplish in a short time, and I'm thrilled to
Speaker 4: have you as a public such a public voice and
Speaker 4: face for the criminal justice reform movement. And I'm really
Speaker 4: interested to find out how you got started on this
Speaker 4: mission and what you plan to do going forward, because
Speaker 4: I think the you know, the possibilities are limitless. So
Speaker 4: what got your intention? I know there was an article
Speaker 4: or a video you saw on Twitter, like sort of serendipity, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's how I think. Just because I'm not on my
Speaker 1: phone all the time, I'm not on Twitter all the time.
Speaker 1: It happened to be that exact moment that I saw
Speaker 1: a video of Alice Johnson pop up on my feed
Speaker 1: that someone that I followed retweeted, and I just my
Speaker 1: heart broke for her and her story just I connected
Speaker 1: with it. For whatever reason, I just felt like it
Speaker 1: was so wrong and that if I could do anything,
Speaker 1: then I wanted to try. I truthfully didn't know I
Speaker 1: was going to get that far.
Speaker 4: I was about to ask you that, like, what did
Speaker 4: I mean, because it's such a crazy thing, like the
Speaker 4: idea that you like, getting someone out of prison is
Speaker 4: you know, I mean, like it's like trying to catch
Speaker 4: lightning in a bowl. Right, Yeah, you were like, I
Speaker 4: got you just had to do it, and I had
Speaker 4: that feel to do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it was just a feeling that I
Speaker 1: was like, I have to do it. And so you know,
Speaker 1: she's she's a woman. I figured Evanka would totally understand
Speaker 1: and feel the same thing that I felt. So my
Speaker 1: first call was to Evanka, Well.
Speaker 4: Wait a minut. Let's go back a second, Kim, because
Speaker 4: can you explain the circumstances of this case, because it
Speaker 4: is maddening when you know what happened to Alice, But
Speaker 4: at the same time, it's really scarily typical. I mean,
Speaker 4: she is not a unique case, but you know.
Speaker 1: She wasly about three thousand alices.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, there's so many people that are in her situation.
Speaker 1: It's just in her situation. So yeah, so she was
Speaker 1: a part of a drug conspiracy. She had a great job,
Speaker 1: worked at FedEx for ten years, lost her job, had
Speaker 1: five kids, her youngest son died, had to make money,
Speaker 1: had to feed her kids. Somebody told her, Hey, if
Speaker 1: you're the phone mule, and if you answer the phone
Speaker 1: and be that you know connection, you can make one
Speaker 1: thousand dollars every time you answered the phone. So she
Speaker 1: didn't do it often, but did it enough. She didn't
Speaker 1: know who the people were, she didn't know the quantities,
Speaker 1: she wasn't never touched the drugs.
Speaker 4: What the state was this Tennessee, right, So, and there's
Speaker 4: a I have a lot of experience in Tennessee. But
Speaker 4: so let's just think about this because there's almost an
Speaker 4: element of My favorite book I've ever read was Lem
Speaker 4: As a Rob and it's sort of informed and I
Speaker 4: think influenced me to get started on this life, this
Speaker 4: mission of criminal justice reform, because there's an element of that.
Speaker 4: Right here. You have a mom who had a choice,
Speaker 4: like she was having trouble feeding her family, and that's
Speaker 4: so powerful, right, I mean, there's probably nothing more powerful
Speaker 4: than a mother's love. And I'm not excusing her behavior
Speaker 4: because it was technically illegal, but let's put ourselves in
Speaker 4: her shoes for a second. Right, there's an interesting choice.
Speaker 4: So you're faced with she wasn't a career criminal.
Speaker 1: Never had any nothing in her history of anything criminal.
Speaker 1: Her whole family, no one had a criminal record, really
Speaker 1: good support system, really good team, made some bad choices
Speaker 1: everyone else. Because it was this big conspiracy. Everyone got caught,
Speaker 1: everyone got in trouble. Everyone I think pled guilty in
Speaker 1: and out of jail. She I don't know what their
Speaker 1: exact sentences were, but she pled not guilty, went to
Speaker 1: trial because she was like I just I was just
Speaker 1: answering the phones. I didn't even touch the drugs, see
Speaker 1: the drugs, know the quantity. She knew it was drugs,
Speaker 1: but didn't ask any questions. And she got life in
Speaker 1: prison without the possibility of parole. And it was so crazy.
Speaker 4: And that's an amazing thing too. And there's so many
Speaker 4: interesting parallels right in the way that you and I
Speaker 4: got started on this. And I want to go back
Speaker 4: for a second. We'll come back to Alice. But you
Speaker 4: wouldn't necessarily know this, but both of us have famous
Speaker 4: fathers who were lawyers. Both of us did some crazy
Speaker 4: stuff when we were kids that we know, and I've
Speaker 4: seen you talk about this, which is why I'm referencing it.
Speaker 4: Both of us are aware that we could have gotten
Speaker 4: in real trouble for the things that we did when
Speaker 4: we were kids, but we weren't in that situation, right,
Speaker 4: and we were able to know we had good guardian
Speaker 4: angels or whatever it was, right, So there's, you know,
Speaker 4: there's a little bit of a there but for the
Speaker 4: grace of God go I right type of situation when
Speaker 4: you see somebody like Alice. And both of us got
Speaker 4: involved in this because of cases that we learned about
Speaker 4: in the media. Because the first time I got involved
Speaker 4: in a case was a guy I read about in
Speaker 4: the newspaper. And this is where the media can play
Speaker 4: such an important role. Who was serving fifteen years to
Speaker 4: life for a non violent first offense cocaine possession charge.
Speaker 4: And once again, that's fifteen years life for a nonviolent
Speaker 4: first offense cocaine possession charge, right, And so I ended
Speaker 4: up a long story short sitting in the courtroom holding
Speaker 4: his mother's hand when we got the judge to reverse
Speaker 4: the charges or to reduce the charges, I should say,
Speaker 4: And he was freed after nine years of amandatory fifteen
Speaker 4: but in her case, it's so important what you're saying
Speaker 4: and what you're doing with Alice, and it's so important
Speaker 4: that she's such a wonderful spokesperson because of the fact
Speaker 4: that people need to understand that in these cases, the
Speaker 4: least culpable person, which in this case was her, ends
Speaker 4: up with the longest sentence. Why because a they don't
Speaker 4: have information to trade. They probably went to her and said, Alice,
Speaker 4: tell us who the kingpin is. She had no way
Speaker 4: of knowing, no idea. And they also went to her
Speaker 4: and said, plead guilty. Now then she's sitting there going, well,
Speaker 4: wait a minute, I plead guilty. They probably offer her
Speaker 4: ten years or something, right, and who's wants to make
Speaker 4: that choice. You're sitting there going, but I just answered
Speaker 4: the phone and I have a family to take care
Speaker 4: of it whatever, and so you please, and then they
Speaker 4: throw the book at you. And that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 1: So this is a case that I've looked at from
Speaker 1: like a case about Cinoya Brown, Like so many people
Speaker 1: that I have looked at that have gotten life, It's
Speaker 1: all been in Tennessee. Everything that I've gravitated towards has all.
Speaker 4: Been in Tennessee and the story I was just telling
Speaker 4: you about Nora Jackson, my you know who's become family
Speaker 4: to me in a very real way. That was a
Speaker 4: Tennessee case. She was actually in the same prison with
Speaker 4: Cintoya for a period of time. Wow. So yeah, Tennessee is,
Speaker 4: but it's not the worst state, believe it or not. Really.
Speaker 4: Oklahoma recently passed Louisiana as the state that incarcerates the
Speaker 4: highest number of people per capita. And let's talk about
Speaker 4: that for a second game. As we were talking in
Speaker 4: the studio earlier, right, America incarcerates five times as many
Speaker 4: people per capita as the rest of the Western world.
Speaker 4: So that means we have twenty five percent of the
Speaker 4: world's prison population, but we only have four point four
Speaker 4: percent of the world's population. So that can only mean
Speaker 4: one of two things. Either Americans are the most evil
Speaker 4: people in the world or we're doing something really wrong
Speaker 4: because these other countries don't have problems with crime rates
Speaker 4: or anything else. It's it's just not a deterrent. It's
Speaker 4: it's just they have a more humane policy towards their
Speaker 4: own people, and we are the incarceration nation. And then
Speaker 4: the numbers get even worse when you get inside of them.
Speaker 4: And now that you've had this experience, I know, we
Speaker 4: went to a woman's prison and spent and then you
Speaker 4: didn't go there and wave and leave. It wasn't a
Speaker 4: photo op, right, you were there.
Speaker 1: I know it for a few hours.
Speaker 4: I know I heard.
Speaker 1: The story, so it was it was fascinating. Honestly, I
Speaker 1: after Alice, I thought to myself, well, if someone murdered someone,
Speaker 1: would I fight hard to get them out? Thinking that,
Speaker 1: you know, to myself and having those conversations with my
Speaker 1: family members and my husband and right violent versus non
Speaker 1: violentce Yeah, and I thought, you know what, probably not
Speaker 1: at first first thought. After going there and hearing these
Speaker 1: women's stories, I was like, you know what, I absolutely would.
Speaker 1: And I know, you know to some people that might
Speaker 1: that might sound crazy, but hearing the circumstances that these
Speaker 1: women have been in that have led them to the
Speaker 1: journey of where they ended up or so many people
Speaker 1: just self defense and being getting life and it was
Speaker 1: so like heartbreaking. I never thought, you know, and I'm
Speaker 1: so glad I went in. I can't wait to go back.
Speaker 4: Wow, what a thing that is to say. Let's just
Speaker 4: think about that for a second. Yeah, here's Kim Kardashian going,
Speaker 4: I can't wait, and you say I can't wait to go,
Speaker 4: And if most people feel that and then go to
Speaker 4: Mikonos to I guess the audience, let's guess the top
Speaker 4: ten guesses win whatever. Right, prison wouldn't be most people's
Speaker 4: guests of where you would want to go. You can
Speaker 4: go anywhere. Yeah, you can be anywhere. You're Kim Kardashian.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I thought, I mean, I text my whole
Speaker 1: family on my way saying, you know, hey, guys, I
Speaker 1: won't have my phone for a few hours, so you know,
Speaker 1: the kids, if anything, if anyone needs anything, you know,
Speaker 1: just whatever, I'll be back in a few hours. And
Speaker 1: they were like, well, where are you going? And I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, I'm going into prison. And they were like,
Speaker 1: what where are you going? And I was like, I'm
Speaker 1: so sorry. I forgot to tell you guys. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to check it out. I want to
Speaker 1: hear these women's stories and I just I'm just going,
Speaker 1: you know. And they were, you know, fascinated, and Chloe
Speaker 1: had said, well, I wish you told me. I would
Speaker 1: have gone with you. And my mom is traveling and
Speaker 1: she was like, you have to fill me in and
Speaker 1: tell me everything, And it was just it was a
Speaker 1: moment when I walked in. I mean to see when
Speaker 1: I would walk down the halls and the women were
Speaker 1: banging on the windows and sticking their heads out of
Speaker 1: the windows, like the place was practically shaking, and everyone
Speaker 1: was screaming, Kim's here, Kim Kardashian's here, are you going
Speaker 1: to get us out? Get us out? You know, because
Speaker 1: after Alice and it was it was a crazy, crazy experience,
Speaker 1: but so it so normalized it for me just sitting
Speaker 1: and talking to these women that I totally understood.
Speaker 4: Them, you know, Kim. Brian Stevenson, who's a hero, a
Speaker 4: great hero of mine, has a saying he says, and
Speaker 4: he said this so powerfully in his Ted talk, which
Speaker 4: I recommend everybody watch. He said, I believe everyone's better
Speaker 4: than the worst thing they've ever done. Now, I'm not
Speaker 4: somebody who believes we should just open the doors and
Speaker 4: everybody should go free. We're a nation of laws. I
Speaker 4: think we have to enforce laws, but we have to
Speaker 4: make the laws humane, we have to make them sensible,
Speaker 4: and we have to reverse this mass incarceration. We had
Speaker 4: three hundred thousand people in prison thirty something years ago.
Speaker 4: Now we have two point two million, like we have.
Speaker 4: And inside the number right you have and you touched
Speaker 4: on this, right, there's so many women in prison. We
Speaker 4: have twenty five percent of the world's prison population. We
Speaker 4: have thirty three percent of the world's female prison population.
Speaker 4: And going back to Oklahoma, they have double that per capita.
Speaker 4: Right have they over indexed the rest of the country
Speaker 4: by double in Oklahoma? And your head's gonna explode when
Speaker 4: I tell you this, right in Oklahoma, And we're working
Speaker 4: on this now, trying to make a big change. But
Speaker 4: in Oklahoma, if you're pregnant and the baby daddy beats
Speaker 4: you up, whether it's a boyfriend, husband, lover, whatever it is,
Speaker 4: you are guilty of endangering the welfare of a child
Speaker 4: and you can go to prison for life.
Speaker 1: So it's crazy for being beat up.
Speaker 4: And you don't have to have instigated it, you don't
Speaker 4: have to do it. You could be stuck in a room,
Speaker 4: it doesn't matter. Like that's how crazy the laws are.
Speaker 4: And then there's all these women who were in prison
Speaker 4: because they were like Alice Johnson, they were the low
Speaker 4: level person on the team in some sort of quote
Speaker 4: unquote conspiracy. Right. These are not big drug dealers or kingpins.
Speaker 4: These are girlfriends who answered the phone like she did,
Speaker 4: or who were in the car when their boyfriend, their
Speaker 4: de other boyfriend got pulled over, like Kembus Smith, who
Speaker 4: I got President Clinton to grant clemency to all those
Speaker 4: years ago, who.
Speaker 1: Just showed it was a woman that was not even
Speaker 1: in the same county when a murder happened and the
Speaker 1: boyfriend blamed it on her. And I don't know her
Speaker 1: exact story, but she got life because he probably rotted
Speaker 1: her out and it was you know, there was no
Speaker 1: physical connection to her being there, and she was pregnant
Speaker 1: and had the baby in prisons, never seen her baby
Speaker 1: was thirty years ago. She wasn't even there the same county, right,
Speaker 1: heard life.
Speaker 4: I've heard those stories before too, and it's it's so
Speaker 4: strange to me why we treat our women this way.
Speaker 4: And there's there's I mean, we could talk about this
Speaker 4: literally for days. Yeah, there's there's shaken baby syndrome, right,
Speaker 4: which is there's hundreds and hundreds of people, maybe thousands,
Speaker 4: in prison for shaking. Maybe a lot of them are
Speaker 4: women takers they're even babysitters whatever. And these babies died
Speaker 4: of natural causes. It's crib death. There's no such thing
Speaker 4: as shaking baby syndrome. It's a made up thing. You
Speaker 4: cannot shake a baby, and almost every top neurologist agrees
Speaker 4: on this. You can't shake a baby hard enough to
Speaker 4: kill it, to rattle its brain without breaking its neck.
Speaker 4: And now these babies have broken necks. Think about it.
Speaker 4: It's ridiculous. Your brain's not that soft. I mean, babies,
Speaker 4: you know they You ever thought about that? It's crazy, right.
Speaker 4: So there's a whole group of women who people say, well,
Speaker 4: she's a murderer. No, actually, she's a woman who lost
Speaker 4: her child and now she's in prison for life because
Speaker 4: some overzealous prosecutor or some other thing went wrong in
Speaker 4: the system, and now they're stuck in there forever. And
Speaker 4: it's like, and Michelle Murphy, who's who I'm extremely connected to,
Speaker 4: I call her my knee. She calls me uncle. It's
Speaker 4: an Oklahoma case who was convicted of She's been on
Speaker 4: my podcast, on the same podcast that you are sitting
Speaker 4: here like you are now. And we were on the
Speaker 4: Doctors together and Michelle was convicted of murdering her fifteen
Speaker 4: week old baby, and she was a gree shesly framed.
Speaker 4: So she served twenty years of a life sentence, and
Speaker 4: she before her conviction was overturned with prejudice, which is
Speaker 4: like the strongest that a court can say this was wrong.
Speaker 4: And the judge after she was exonerated said that in
Speaker 4: his four decades on the bench it was the worst
Speaker 4: miscarriage of justice he'd ever seen. So, you know, there's
Speaker 4: a huge number of people, and then they're even the ones,
Speaker 4: like you said, who were self defense cases right.
Speaker 1: Where most of what I said, like I understand, I
Speaker 1: obviously don't understand the act of you know, killing someone,
Speaker 1: but the act of if you are getting abused and
Speaker 1: you have children and you're protecting them and you fight
Speaker 1: back and the person dies and you have life because
Speaker 1: you've been beaten for so many years. And I mean
Speaker 1: so many of these cases that of these women that
Speaker 1: were sharing their stories with me, just I felt them
Speaker 1: and that just you know, I feel like even just
Speaker 1: hearing about all the programs in prison and really how
Speaker 1: to get people back on their feet for when they
Speaker 1: get out, there's so many flaws. Like I was like overwhelmed,
Speaker 1: leaving thinking like, well, I don't even know where to start,
Speaker 1: Like there's so much wrong with the system. I don't
Speaker 1: even know where to start.
Speaker 4: But you did start, and you are starting, and you're
Speaker 4: here now, and that is making a huge difference, just
Speaker 4: the fact that you're here and that you're able to
Speaker 4: use your voice.
Speaker 1: I'm learning. That's why I wanted to go, because I
Speaker 1: was like, I don't have any connection to prison. I've
Speaker 1: never been to prison. I don't. I want to go,
Speaker 1: and I want to see what it's like, and I
Speaker 1: want to hear from people that are living it, what
Speaker 1: their experience is like and what could change what you know,
Speaker 1: just I'm learning. I'm learning as I go.
Speaker 4: I think it's so important, you know, to highlight the
Speaker 4: idea that you know, both of us got involved in
Speaker 4: this stuff because of stories you heard about it on
Speaker 4: social media. I heard about it in old media. Right,
Speaker 4: it was just a newspaper article. Right, I was holding
Speaker 4: into my hands. Right. Some people are like, wait, what's that?
Speaker 4: But you know, it's so important. If you know someone
Speaker 4: who was wrongfully convicted or who is serving an unjust sentence,
Speaker 4: you must talk about it. You must call reporters you
Speaker 4: must reach out to whoever you can think of, because
Speaker 4: you never know. Talk about it to your friends and
Speaker 4: a diner, there might be someone at the next table
Speaker 4: who knows someone who knows someone. The world is actually
Speaker 4: small that way, and everybody has the ability to make
Speaker 4: a difference, and you know, and it needs to be done.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's so easy for me to empathize with
Speaker 4: the people who are serving these sentences and to just
Speaker 4: sit there and go I can't. I literally can't think
Speaker 4: of anything worse.
Speaker 1: Than to So it's the worst when I mean, yesterday
Speaker 1: I had a call with a gentleman that's in prison
Speaker 1: for a drug case. Got life. It's so unfair. He's
Speaker 1: thirty years old, he's been in for almost ten years.
Speaker 1: It was a marijuana case, right, yeah, yeah, he had
Speaker 1: his prior conviction to get him to his three strikes
Speaker 1: was marijuana and then marijuana with less than half a
Speaker 1: gram of cocaine possession.
Speaker 4: Half a gram. That's like a sweetened low package for
Speaker 4: people who aren't familiar. That's like, that's literally like how
Speaker 4: much is in a Sweden love like less maybe a
Speaker 4: little less than that?
Speaker 1: Got life. And I was on the phone with the
Speaker 1: judge that sentenced him to life, who resigned because he
Speaker 1: had never been on the side of having to do
Speaker 1: something so unfair, and now he is fighting with us
Speaker 1: to get him out. And it's just, I mean, when
Speaker 1: you see it, at least it gave me like such
Speaker 1: hope that the jet like you think, it was a
Speaker 1: mandatory sentence that he had to deliver, and he knew
Speaker 1: it was so wrong, and he was like, I'm going
Speaker 1: to make this right. I'm going to step down and
Speaker 1: I'm going to help to fight to get him out.
Speaker 1: And I spoke to him on the phone from prison
Speaker 1: and it was, you know, just a really crazy. It's
Speaker 1: just there's so many people like.
Speaker 4: Him, and it's so important what you're saying, and because
Speaker 4: of the fact that these mandatory sentencing laws and I
Speaker 4: got involved. The first organization I ever got involved was
Speaker 4: Families Against Mandatory Minimums. After I got that first guy,
Speaker 4: Stephen Lennon out, I was hooked, like you're hooked now,
Speaker 4: and I love seeing it in you because you're young
Speaker 4: enough to be my own daughter, and so it's so
Speaker 4: exciting to see another generation. And it's this movement is
Speaker 4: growing so fast and we're going to turn it upside down.
Speaker 4: We're going to there's no stopping. And so the first
Speaker 4: thing I did, after having that cathartic experience of sitting
Speaker 4: there holding missus Lennon's hand as her son was as
Speaker 4: a judge, you know, slammed the gavel down and ruled
Speaker 4: that she was going to be free, he was to
Speaker 4: be freed. I did some research and I found out
Speaker 4: about this organization called Families Against Mandatory Minimums, and they
Speaker 4: are a wonderful organization that has done fantastic things. I've
Speaker 4: been on their board now for twenty five years, so
Speaker 4: I'm like a true believer. But they've been we've been
Speaker 4: reversing these mandatory sentencing laws state by state, federally as
Speaker 4: you know, as much as we can, as many as
Speaker 4: we can, and we're never going to stop until there's fairness.
Speaker 4: And it's interesting because, you know, it really struck home
Speaker 4: to me what you said about this judge saying I
Speaker 4: couldn't believe I had to send like that doesn't make
Speaker 4: any you and judge, And so, you know, it's interesting
Speaker 4: because the history of mandatory sensing laws is that originally
Speaker 4: they were minor saying as they were passed because Congress thought, well,
Speaker 4: it's not right that in some cases a different judge
Speaker 4: for the same crime might send somebody more harshly or
Speaker 4: or leniently. And so they were trying to make it,
Speaker 4: you know, more of an even playing field. But then
Speaker 4: they just started going, well, the tough on crime hera,
Speaker 4: let's just make tougher and tougher senses, show how tough
Speaker 4: we are on crime. They started passing mandatory sentences for everything,
Speaker 4: and they made them tougher and tough for without any
Speaker 4: regard for what they were doing to society. And so
Speaker 4: you end up with a situation where in two thousand
Speaker 4: I went to the Senate and I did a presentation
Speaker 4: for the Democratic Policy Committee in the Senate. Twenty four
Speaker 4: senators there, and I went. One of the people I
Speaker 4: went with was I went with Amy Fofolo, was a
Speaker 4: woman who I convinced President Clinton to Grand cromeincy too.
Speaker 4: And Julie Stewart, who runs Families Against Mandatory Men, was
Speaker 4: a founder of Family Against Panetry. Minis and federal Judge
Speaker 4: Castillo came with us and he was the vice chair
Speaker 4: of the US Sentencing Commission. Big powerful guy, a guy
Speaker 4: you really think like, looks an act like you'd cast
Speaker 4: him as a judge. And he said, you guys confirmed
Speaker 4: me unanimously to do the most difficult job that anyone
Speaker 4: can have, which is to sentence another human being to prison,
Speaker 4: and then you took away my ability to do it.
Speaker 4: He goes, I just sit there and look at a chart,
Speaker 4: and then I just have to send people to these
Speaker 4: crazy sentences, regardless of I think it exists.
Speaker 1: Guess what it is. You see, if I got a
Speaker 1: list of some people that I was going to meet
Speaker 1: with and I just read their sentences and would have
Speaker 1: thought that there's not a chance, I, you know, would
Speaker 1: ever think that this in like, not even knowing their circumstances.
Speaker 1: Then you come and you meet these people. What's on
Speaker 1: paper and what's in person is so different, and that
Speaker 1: is the hard part is just I mean, you obviously
Speaker 1: can't get to know everyone and go around to every
Speaker 1: prison and meet people and help everyone. I mean, but like,
Speaker 1: the laws really just have to change. And I do
Speaker 1: know that. I do talk to the White House often
Speaker 1: on this subject with Jared Kushner, and he is really
Speaker 1: passionate about changing some of these laws and getting a
Speaker 1: lot of bills passed and hopefully some things will get past.
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm hopeful.
Speaker 4: Well, I think there's a lot of movement in the States,
Speaker 4: and I was going to say, I think that if
Speaker 4: we could get you involved in isolated cases with state laws, no.
Speaker 4: Ninety percent of people in prison in America and state prisons. Yeah, right,
Speaker 4: So the you know, the federal it's going to move
Speaker 4: much slower in the federal level for the time being.
Speaker 4: And it's very important to work on the micro and
Speaker 4: the macro. Right the micro is is the Alice Johnsons
Speaker 4: of the world, the Stephen Lennon's of the world, the
Speaker 4: Lenny Singleton who I was had the thrilling experience of
Speaker 4: walking out of prison in Virginia a few weeks ago.
Speaker 4: But the macro is changing these laws so it doesn't
Speaker 4: happen to other people. Because if you're listening out there
Speaker 4: and you don't think it can happen to you, it
Speaker 4: can happen to you. And by the way, be aware,
Speaker 4: like if you're riding in a car and someone else
Speaker 4: has drugs and you get pulled over and nobody takes
Speaker 4: responsibility for it, it belongs to everybody. If it's in
Speaker 4: the glove compartment or the trunk or under the seat.
Speaker 4: Absolutely you can be just so you can get caught up.
Speaker 4: If you think this can't happen to you, it can happen.
Speaker 1: I was when I was talking to Chris Young, who's
Speaker 1: who's in prison. He has sickle selenemia, so he's had
Speaker 1: to have a few surgeries, so he's been in a
Speaker 1: medical facility for a few years and he goes back
Speaker 1: into the maximum security prison where lifers have to go,
Speaker 1: and he's so like he's had a perfect record, and
Speaker 1: he was saying, like, I can stay out of trouble
Speaker 1: in here, but going in there, I'm you know, there's stabbings,
Speaker 1: there's this, and if you're near that, you can get
Speaker 1: in trouble so easily. And I you know, he was
Speaker 1: just didn't want to get caught up in a situation
Speaker 1: that had nothing to do with him, but could very
Speaker 1: much have by you know, the close proximity have so
Speaker 1: much to do with him. And it's just, you know,
Speaker 1: it's scary when you, you know, have a minor drug charge,
Speaker 1: but then you get life and you're stuck in this
Speaker 1: crazy maximum security prison with murderers and people that you know,
Speaker 1: just it's a completely different environment than the environment that
Speaker 1: he's so used to.
Speaker 4: Life in prison for a non violent offense. There's no
Speaker 4: other country that does that. I mean, it's so nuts
Speaker 4: the way we treat our own people, you know. And
Speaker 4: I talked to politicians and I'll be like, well, you know,
Speaker 4: if another country treated our people the way we do,
Speaker 4: we'd invade. We'd be like, you're not getting away with that.
Speaker 4: You can't do that to our citizens, are you nuts?
Speaker 4: Put him in these gulags, these violent places where they
Speaker 4: that breed disease, and you know, abuse, all kinds of abuse, physical, sexual,
Speaker 4: where there's stabbings and you you're to basically just try
Speaker 4: to stay alive. And some of them are privatized. Only
Speaker 4: even get me started on that. No other country would
Speaker 4: do this, but we do it to our own citizens,
Speaker 4: who are just regular people until one day they're caught
Speaker 4: up and the next thing you know, there they are,
Speaker 4: and it's like, uh, you know, people just sort of
Speaker 4: forget about them. We can't forget about them. Kim Let
Speaker 4: me ask you something, So, can you describe that feeling
Speaker 4: like when you found out that Alice was going to
Speaker 4: go home and you knew that you had a lot
Speaker 4: to do with it, right that you were really the
Speaker 4: driving force behind giving this woman, this lovely woman by
Speaker 4: all accounts of everything I've heard about her her life back, Like,
Speaker 4: I mean, that's not exaggeration. She was going to die
Speaker 4: in prison? What was that? How'd you find out about it?
Speaker 4: At number one? Where were you? What were you doing?
Speaker 4: Was it hot? Was it cold? What were you sitting down?
Speaker 4: Did you scream? And how did it feel? Can you
Speaker 4: explain that?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I was on a photo shoot with Stephen Klein
Speaker 1: and it was a very racy photo shoot.
Speaker 4: This perfect.
Speaker 1: I'm like practically naked and my phone rings, and I
Speaker 1: knew that I should be. I mean, it would been
Speaker 1: this really long roller coaster of is this going to happen?
Speaker 1: Is it not going to happen? You know, after I'd
Speaker 1: gone to the White House, White House.
Speaker 4: So you let's just say that.
Speaker 1: Yes, and then get a phone. My phone rings and
Speaker 1: it says unknown, and so I'm like, give me a
Speaker 1: you know, get me a robe hold on, stop, you know,
Speaker 1: And I run over and I answer the phone and
Speaker 1: it is the President and he let me know himself
Speaker 1: that he was going to release Alice, and he was
Speaker 1: signing the paper right then and there, and I just
Speaker 1: was like in shock. I was just so happy cry.
Speaker 1: I didn't cry until I called Alice to tell her myself.
Speaker 4: And so you got the news to her.
Speaker 1: Yes, I got to break the news to her, and
Speaker 1: it was just it was crazy because so I spoke,
Speaker 1: you know to the president. He let me know that
Speaker 1: that was what was going to happen, and he was
Speaker 1: going to sign the papers right then and there and
Speaker 1: she could be released that day. And you know, I
Speaker 1: didn't know, does it happen right away? Is there a process?
Speaker 3: Is it?
Speaker 1: You know, what is it? So he was going to
Speaker 1: let her go, you know, he told me she can
Speaker 1: leave today. So I called the attorneys. A woman named
Speaker 1: Brittany was really heading it from Buried Alive the organization
Speaker 1: Buried Alive. So her and I have been in contact
Speaker 1: of how you know, with Chris Young, who I'm you know,
Speaker 1: working with now and all these other people. She really
Speaker 1: brings me people that you know, she really was backing
Speaker 1: Alice for you know, years and helping Alice. So Brittany,
Speaker 1: Brittany Barnett.
Speaker 4: And what's the organization as I want.
Speaker 1: To be Buried Alive? Yeah, Buried Alive. So she's been
Speaker 1: amazing and so so great and has brought me people
Speaker 1: that she thinks that I would really connect with, like Chris,
Speaker 1: and she's been great to work with. So she I
Speaker 1: call my attorney, Sean, who connects me with Brittany, and
Speaker 1: they call Alice, and so Alice says that she got,
Speaker 1: you know, on the loud speaker, like Alice, come to
Speaker 1: hear you know, phone call. So she gets on the
Speaker 1: phone and she assumes that it's a regular attorney's call.
Speaker 1: I mean, she obviously knows that I went to the
Speaker 1: White House and we're just waiting, and I filled her
Speaker 1: in right after I was done with a White House
Speaker 1: on how the conversation went. And I said to her,
Speaker 1: you know, it couldn't have gone any better. I know,
Speaker 1: I gave it my all. I feel like we gave
Speaker 1: an amazing pitch and I feel like the President heard
Speaker 1: us and did feel like she had spent her time
Speaker 1: and I felt that, and so I felt really confident.
Speaker 1: And I'm the type of person where like I don't
Speaker 1: like to get excited. I don't overspeak until something is
Speaker 1: done and ready and you know, finished, So I didn't
Speaker 1: want to get her too excited, but I knew it
Speaker 1: went well. So then I didn't know what happened this quick,
Speaker 1: and because it had been about six months of me
Speaker 1: talking to Jared Kushner and getting this all happening. It
Speaker 1: wasn't a quick overnight thing. It wasn't like Kim called,
Speaker 1: she got a meeting, this happened.
Speaker 4: It did not happen like that.
Speaker 1: It was a long time getting her file together and
Speaker 1: a lot of fighting for her. So Alice gets on
Speaker 1: the phone and I thought that the attorneys had told
Speaker 1: her already because I was just jumping in the call
Speaker 1: and I thought we were just going to have the celebrate,
Speaker 1: celebratory call. I had no idea. She didn't know. So
Speaker 1: she wasn't like screaming. She wasn't and I know her,
Speaker 1: I feel like she'd cry and be screaming and thanking me.
Speaker 1: And she just was kind of like, Hey, what's going on?
Speaker 1: What's up? And I was like, oh, it's Kim. I'm
Speaker 1: on the phone. And she was like, hey, how are you?
Speaker 1: And then I said, oh, wait, you don't know, because
Speaker 1: I was so shocked that she was so calm, and
Speaker 1: she said no, no, what And I said, Alice, You're
Speaker 1: going home. And the screams and the cries and that's
Speaker 1: when I cried. It was like three minutes on the
Speaker 1: phone of like tears, no one can speak. And then
Speaker 1: finally she was like, Okay, well what do I do?
Speaker 4: Where do I go?
Speaker 1: Like, and I was like the attorneys jumped in to
Speaker 1: tell her the protocol. But yeah, it was just it
Speaker 1: was such a cool thing, such a cool moment. I
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, this feeling. If I used my resources
Speaker 1: to make this happen for her, what else can we do?
Speaker 4: Was that one of the happiest moments of your life?
Speaker 1: It really was, It really really was. Meeting her was
Speaker 1: another one. Just seeing her family, seeing because you can
Speaker 1: hear about it, and like I was talking about on
Speaker 1: paper and in person. When I saw the video of Alice,
Speaker 1: that's what changed me. If I were to just hear
Speaker 1: the story, I would definitely feel something. But when I
Speaker 1: heard her talk, saw her eyes, felt her soul and
Speaker 1: what her family was missing out on, and her missing
Speaker 1: out on her grandbabies and her parents dying and all
Speaker 1: this stuff, yeah, her great grandchildren, I felt like a connection, Like, well,
Speaker 1: I have all you know, I have a big family,
Speaker 1: and I would be devastated if something like that happened
Speaker 1: in my family. So meeting her family and seeing that
Speaker 1: all come to life, and like what you were saying
Speaker 1: in the studio earlier, she didn't even know how have
Speaker 1: a cell phone before seeing her figure out an iPhone
Speaker 1: and how to you know what an emoji was, and
Speaker 1: like the simple things that was really crazy to just
Speaker 1: she just wanted to do the simplest things.
Speaker 4: So you know, it's interesting too. It's another parallel because
Speaker 4: many years ago, in two thousand, I was fortunate to
Speaker 4: get to have dinner with President Clinton in a group,
Speaker 4: but I was at his table and I got him
Speaker 4: to talk to me about the drug laws, and you know,
Speaker 4: he admitted they were wrong, and he said, you know,
Speaker 4: I think if someone breaks the law, they should they
Speaker 4: should go to jail, but they shouldn't spend the best
Speaker 4: years of their life there for a non violent fence.
Speaker 4: And I was like, okay, so we agree on that.
Speaker 4: And I gave him a letter from a woman who
Speaker 4: he had He had granted a few clemencies up to
Speaker 4: that point, and I gave him a letter from one
Speaker 4: of the women he had granted clemency too, who was
Speaker 4: one of those ones, like a girlfriend of a drug
Speaker 4: dealer and was an Arkansas case and he read it
Speaker 4: and I said to him, mister President, what you did
Speaker 4: for these five people was heroic, wonderful, but I know
Speaker 4: of hundreds of other cases just as bad as those.
Speaker 4: And he said, in front of the whole table, he said,
Speaker 4: you get them to me and I'll sign them. And
Speaker 4: I was like, and well then I was like, wait
Speaker 4: what hold on? Okay, I said, okay, let me just
Speaker 4: get my wits about me. Right. The whole table was like,
Speaker 4: look like, what did you just say? And so I said, well,
Speaker 4: mister President, when you leave here tonight, you're I never
Speaker 4: met him before. I was like, you're not going to
Speaker 4: be the easiest guy for me to get on the phone,
Speaker 4: like how do you reckon? And I do that? And
Speaker 4: he told me the whole proper channels to go through
Speaker 4: the Chief Council, the justice part of the whole thing, right,
Speaker 4: And so then I worked with families against mandatory minimums
Speaker 4: and we found cases that fit the criteria that he
Speaker 4: wanted to see nonviolent first defenders serving these crazy sentences.
Speaker 4: And you just brought this memory back from me. So
Speaker 4: thank you for that, because and it took I had
Speaker 4: to push a lot even from that point, like it wasn't.
Speaker 4: It wasn't like the next day, Hey, everything's great, you know,
Speaker 4: but you know, perseverance is an important part of my story.
Speaker 4: And ultimately that was only if that was only I
Speaker 4: think that was September of his last year in office,
Speaker 4: only had till January. And I think that my dad
Speaker 4: helped me with that. Funny enough, because we ended up
Speaker 4: putting together seventeen cases. Ultimately more we found more. I
Speaker 4: think it was a total twenty three that we ended
Speaker 4: up asking for. These were all families against manatory minimums cases,
Speaker 4: and he granted two. In December, and I was with
Speaker 4: my dad, the famous lawyer dad of mine, who really
Speaker 4: put this justice, this this sense of fairness and ethics
Speaker 4: and morality into me, and who you know, was my
Speaker 4: hero growing up and he's not around anymore. But I said,
Speaker 4: I happen to be having lunch with him on his birthday,
Speaker 4: which was December twentieth. I said, Dad, this is ridiculous.
Speaker 4: He told me he was going he only gave me two.
Speaker 4: And my dad helped me at that point forward. He said,
Speaker 4: I'm going to I have an idea how to help,
Speaker 4: and he got involved and you know, connected me with
Speaker 4: someone else who you know, connected me with the one
Speaker 4: and you know it's just like you, like you, you
Speaker 4: just have to keep pushing. And ultimately President Clim granted
Speaker 4: clemency to seventeen of those people, and you know, many
Speaker 4: of them have gone on to achieve higher degrees of learning.
Speaker 4: Peter Ninmyer got a master's degree from like Kansas State.
Speaker 4: Kenbus Smith is now an attorney in Atlanta. She's a
Speaker 4: public defender, I believe, got a degree from Loddigrief in
Speaker 4: University of Michigan. These are all people who just needed
Speaker 4: a second chance, you know, and my and I hope
Speaker 4: we can really shift the public consciousness on this together, Kim,
Speaker 4: because these people are not dangerous. These are people who
Speaker 4: just want a chance, and they'll work harder. And if
Speaker 4: you're an employer, you're somebody has a business out there.
Speaker 4: Giving somebody like them a chance when they get out
Speaker 4: is the best decision you're going to make, because they
Speaker 4: will work harder and do better because they're so great now.
Speaker 1: They do not want to go back.
Speaker 4: They don't want to go back. They've learned. They didn't
Speaker 4: need these long sentences to learn. They want to have
Speaker 4: a life and have a chance. And I have not.
Speaker 4: I've been knock Wood. I've been very fortunate that of
Speaker 4: all the people, all the clemency cases I've worked on,
Speaker 4: state and federal, none of them have reoffended. Not all
Speaker 4: of them, and not all of them are doing fantastic,
Speaker 4: you know, I mean it doesn't. It's still very challenging
Speaker 4: on the outside. It's what I call the second punishment, right,
Speaker 4: the stigma that's associated with you know, formerly incarcerated people,
Speaker 4: system affected people. But so many of them are doing
Speaker 4: wonderful things, raising families. You know. Stephen Lennon the first guy,
Speaker 4: you know, he ended up having a family call. Oh
Speaker 4: I think so Stephen Lennin six months after he got out,
Speaker 4: I said this. I was doing a ted X talk
Speaker 4: from inside a maximum security prison in Uganda in March,
Speaker 4: and I told this story, So Stephen got out, And
Speaker 4: that one took about six months as well, from the
Speaker 4: time I first read the story in the newspaper, and
Speaker 4: five months later I got a letter in the mail
Speaker 4: from a woman whose name I didn't recognize in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Speaker 4: So I was like, I think her name is Joeyanne Paris.
Speaker 4: I don't know anyway, So I opened the letter and
Speaker 4: it started off, dear Jason, you don't know me, but
Speaker 4: you got me pregnant. And that's what I said. I
Speaker 4: was like, oh, wait what, I'm starting to think my
Speaker 4: mind's racing. Did I go to Cincinnati? Oh my god, right, No, man,
Speaker 4: I don't wants to hear those words. I was like, wait,
Speaker 4: what And so I read on and it says, just
Speaker 4: so you know, my brother Stephen Lennon, and for the
Speaker 4: last five years, my husband and I've been trying to conceive,
Speaker 4: and the doctor told me that the stress of my
Speaker 4: brother's incarceration was preventing us from getting pregnant. And I'm
Speaker 4: pregnant now, just all you want to know. And I
Speaker 4: was like, oh man, this is just the gift that
Speaker 4: just keeps on giving. So it is, you know, it's
Speaker 4: it's such a joy. I saw it in the videos
Speaker 4: and why I really wanted to have you on the
Speaker 4: show was because I saw, you know, I saw an
Speaker 4: interview did with Mike, and I read, you know, various
Speaker 4: stories about your involvement and your your you know, and
Speaker 4: your joy just came through in all of it. And
Speaker 4: it is it's a it's a sense of pure joy
Speaker 4: and it is it is better than anything I know
Speaker 4: in terms of I mean, we both are are lucky
Speaker 4: to be, you know, to have a family and have
Speaker 4: the you know that that's a different category, right. I
Speaker 4: don't think you can compare. That's a you know, anyone
Speaker 4: out there who has kids, you know, can relate to that.
Speaker 4: But if you take that aside, it's hard to think
Speaker 4: of a better feeling. I know for me that day
Speaker 4: when I got that phone call that President Clinton was
Speaker 4: had granted those clemencies, it.
Speaker 1: Was the best feeling in the world because the best
Speaker 1: someone know that you're going to change someone's life forever.
Speaker 4: And I just want to do more than life. I'm
Speaker 4: going to keep doing it until i am it's on
Speaker 4: my last breath. I mean, because it's it's a purpose.
Speaker 4: It's I call it selfish altruism. You know, it makes
Speaker 4: me feel good. Yeah, I love doing it. I love
Speaker 4: talking about it. I love seeing people like you get
Speaker 4: involved with it. I love the movement spreading. I love
Speaker 4: the laws that we're changing, and I'm going to you know, look,
Speaker 4: it's amazing. Thirty years ago if someone said, hey, you know,
Speaker 4: marijuana is going to be legal in most of the America,
Speaker 4: I would have said no, it's not possible. But we fought,
Speaker 4: like so many of us fought for this, you know.
Speaker 4: And there's no reason anyone should go to jail for marijuana.
Speaker 4: And that's changing. There's still people like Chris who are
Speaker 4: in prison for life for marijuana, a plant that's legal.
Speaker 4: And how'd you like to be him or his family? Right?
Speaker 4: Little cocaine, A little cocaine at half a gram? Oh
Speaker 4: my god, a half a gram. Let's think about that.
Speaker 4: A graham is such a small amount. It's like, think
Speaker 4: about that. It's I don't even know, it's like, but yeah,
Speaker 4: So look, we've got a ton of work to do.
Speaker 1: You.
Speaker 4: You know, we need more of you. I think we
Speaker 4: need to. Really. The last point I want to talk
Speaker 4: about is clemencies. You have shown in a very public
Speaker 4: way that this act of mercy, this act of uh,
Speaker 4: it's a responsibility, really, And the reason governors and presidents
Speaker 4: are given that power is because they're supposed to do
Speaker 4: things like this, right, it's there, it's part of their job.
Speaker 4: And over the years it's declined so much. In the
Speaker 4: post Willie Horton era, all of a sudden everyone was
Speaker 4: scared to give clemencies. And that's not right, And I
Speaker 4: know that for me, whether it was working with Governor
Speaker 4: McAuliffe or other governors i've worked with or during the
Speaker 4: Obama administration, or with President Clinton, every single time I've
Speaker 4: had the experience of working with a political leader who
Speaker 4: in a position to give those clemencies. In the aftermath,
Speaker 4: they've come to me and said that it was a
Speaker 4: profound experience for them. In many cases they meet the
Speaker 4: people who they've ranton clemency to. President Clinton told me
Speaker 4: subsequently he wished he would have done more, you know.
Speaker 4: And so for people who are out there listening, who
Speaker 4: may work in the offices of.
Speaker 1: The halls of power, the White House will do more.
Speaker 4: I think. I think with your support and other people
Speaker 4: like you advocating, they will, and I think we can.
Speaker 4: We can do so much better in the States as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm hoping to meet Governor Brown and whoever will
Speaker 1: be the next governor.
Speaker 4: Hopefully. I'm a Newsom fan, so I hope Cavin Nussin's
Speaker 4: the next governor. But the yes, Governor Brown has expressed
Speaker 4: a great deal of interest in this. He's worked, He's
Speaker 4: granted quite a few clemencies already, and I think he
Speaker 4: has his heart in the right place. He wants to.
Speaker 4: You know, he is someone who is on the same
Speaker 4: page as us in terms of life without parole being
Speaker 4: an insane sentence. It's an insane sentence. Yeah, life without parole.
Speaker 4: And you know, and I will I said that was
Speaker 4: gonna be the last pint. But I make more point
Speaker 4: because for people out there listening, you're paying for this, right.
Speaker 4: I mean, you know who's making money the prison. This
Speaker 4: is the prison industrial contlects, the private prisons. There's a
Speaker 4: lot of people making money on these inmates, on these
Speaker 4: these incarcerated people. But you're paying for it. It doesn't
Speaker 4: come from the air, it doesn't come from you know,
Speaker 4: it's not it's like it. And in some states we
Speaker 4: spend more money incarcerating Americans than we do educating them,
Speaker 4: and so and then of course the kids end up
Speaker 4: with no parent and then they're much more likely to
Speaker 4: get in trouble and so, you know, everything from bail reformed,
Speaker 4: there's just so many important things that have to be done,
Speaker 4: but we have to end mass incarcerat We can do it,
Speaker 4: and we will do it together. So for everybody listening
Speaker 4: out there, you know, get involved, go to families, against
Speaker 4: mandatory minimums. FAMM dot org. Go to Buriedlive dot org.
Speaker 4: Go to Innocenceproject dot org. Get online learn about it.
Speaker 4: All these websites have pages where you can get involved,
Speaker 4: host an event, raise money, write letters to inmates. So important,
Speaker 4: I mean, give a little hope to That's my reading now.
Speaker 1: I don't read books anymore. I read letters. I get
Speaker 1: stacks of letters daily that inmates write me. So I
Speaker 1: love to read them and go through them and hear
Speaker 1: their stories, and I hope it all you know changes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Well, it's those people are you know, those people
Speaker 4: are smart because they're reaching out. I mean, there's there's tragically,
Speaker 4: there's so many people inside who've given up hope. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and you know, and at the same time we've both
Speaker 4: had the experience of seeing what it's like when they
Speaker 4: get out. These people are so full of grace and
Speaker 4: so full of you know. The amazing thing is for
Speaker 4: everyone I've met whose system effected formally incarcerated, there's not
Speaker 4: one of them who's bitter. They all have the same
Speaker 4: thing that I saw with Alice, you know, when she
Speaker 4: was speaking. They're just optimistic and there they have, like
Speaker 4: I said, this state of grace and that puts so
Speaker 4: much gratitude in my attitude when I see these people
Speaker 4: who are like they've just been through this ordeal that
Speaker 4: no one can even imagine that hasn't been through it.
Speaker 4: I can't, and I've been around it for twenty five years,
Speaker 4: and yet they come out like, hey man, let's go.
Speaker 4: Like you know, I was actually talking to my friend,
Speaker 4: the artist I was talking to my friend, the artist
Speaker 4: Peter Tunney today about a guy named Keith Allen Harvard
Speaker 4: who's been on the same podcast, who was in prison
Speaker 4: for thirty four years for crime didn't commit, and he
Speaker 4: has nothing but just that'ctivity.
Speaker 1: I don't know. There's so many cases that I've been
Speaker 1: reading about that lately, just completely innocent and just people
Speaker 1: that have been in for thirty plus years when just
Speaker 1: DNA testing is so different. Like Kevin Cooper.
Speaker 4: Oh, Kevin Cooper, I know.
Speaker 1: I tweeted for Governor Brown. I'm like, please just DNA test. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's good, you got to do.
Speaker 4: It's like the most let's just find out whether he's
Speaker 4: guilty or innocent. The DNA doesn't lie. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 4: that's what.
Speaker 1: That there should just that is what literally kills me
Speaker 1: stories like his that it's so simple and.
Speaker 4: He could have been executed too. I mean, there's so
Speaker 4: many innocent people on death row. We know that approximately
Speaker 4: the best estimates are the four percent of people on
Speaker 4: death row are innocent. So imagine that. When I talk
Speaker 4: to people who are in favor of the death penalty,
Speaker 4: I'm like, well, okay, how many innocent people is it
Speaker 4: okay to execute? Yeah? And people go no, no, no, But
Speaker 4: I mean you can't actually, but you know the system.
Speaker 1: Is, how can you be on death row without DNA evidence,
Speaker 1: with nothing linking you, like to the It's so crazy
Speaker 1: to me, that's just crazy.
Speaker 4: There was there have been executions where we've been fighting
Speaker 4: to get the DNA tested and they've refused right up
Speaker 4: until the day of the execution. And God had to
Speaker 4: execute somebody anyway. I mean, it's it's just it is.
Speaker 4: There was one in Kansas. It was Kansas last year
Speaker 4: that we were fighting like hell to get this the
Speaker 4: DNA tested and they just wouldn't do it. It was a
Speaker 4: guy named Liddell Lee and he's gone now. And it's
Speaker 4: like the state should not be in the business of
Speaker 4: killing people because we the system is never going to
Speaker 4: be perfect. Even if everybody's well intentioned, it's not going
Speaker 4: to be perfect. And for people listening out there, and
Speaker 4: they've heard me say this on the show before, when
Speaker 4: we convict an innocent person and we keep them in prison,
Speaker 4: even when the authorities know they're innocent, that means that
Speaker 4: the guilty person is free. Just like in Kevin Cooper's case,
Speaker 4: everybody knows it was the three white guys that did it.
Speaker 4: There's overwhelming evidence of that, and those guys were free
Speaker 4: to go out, and.
Speaker 1: There's like, I mean, the guy's girlfriend called and said,
Speaker 1: I mean everyone that makes no sense, Like, wouldn't the
Speaker 1: community be more scared knowing that there is like some
Speaker 1: multiple people said it was three white guys and then
Speaker 1: just to know that they're not locked up and they
Speaker 1: have a black guy locked up instead, like that fear
Speaker 1: to me? Would I don't know. It is so so twisted, so.
Speaker 4: Twisted, and it's not It's very common you know, in
Speaker 4: so many of the cases the Innocence Project, when we
Speaker 4: exonerate an innocent person with DNA, we then put the
Speaker 4: DNA in the national database and we often get a hit.
Speaker 4: I don't know if it's fifty percent of the time,
Speaker 4: and we were able to show who the actual perpetrator was.
Speaker 4: And in an overwhelming percentage of those cases, that person
Speaker 4: has gone on and raped and murdered other people, innocent people,
Speaker 4: because they were free because the authorities didn't do their job.
Speaker 4: And sometimes there's a mistake. I understand nobody's prayer picked that.
Speaker 4: You know, everyone makes mistakes. I makes mistakes in my job.
Speaker 4: But there's a not a lot of these cases like
Speaker 4: Kevin Cooper, where it was obvious from the beginning that
Speaker 4: he didn't do it, and they had that case came
Speaker 4: with instructions, just like the Central Park five did the
Speaker 4: Central Park five And I Interviewedduceef Salama last week in
Speaker 4: New York on this show. You know, in that case,
Speaker 4: they had every reason to suspect that it was this guy,
Speaker 4: Matthias Rayis. They were already watching him. He was a
Speaker 4: suspect in another similar rape and beating where the Central
Speaker 4: Park Joggra was almost beaten to death. She lost seventy
Speaker 4: five percent of her blood. They knew it had to
Speaker 4: be him, they knew it was a single perpetrator, and
Speaker 4: they rested these five black kids just because black and hispanic,
Speaker 4: just because they could, and then the testing came back
Speaker 4: and they saw that none of the blood matched the
Speaker 4: blood of the perpetrator was there the seamen. It didn't
Speaker 4: match any of those kids, and they went ahead and
Speaker 4: prosecuted them anyway. And then this Matthias Rayis guy went
Speaker 4: out and raped four other women and killed one of
Speaker 4: them in the apartment with her three children there. She
Speaker 4: was pregnant. I mean, it doesn't get worse, and she said,
Speaker 4: can I please just put my kids in the other
Speaker 4: room before you kill me? And then he did and
Speaker 4: he went ahead and killed her. And like that woman
Speaker 4: should be alive today, and I believe that the authority
Speaker 4: should be held responsible for her death because they knew
Speaker 4: who it was. But they had so much media on
Speaker 4: that case. And that's another thing for people to be
Speaker 4: aware of when you're on a jury, when there's so
Speaker 4: much media around a case, and making a murderer made
Speaker 4: this point very well too, right, And you know, we
Speaker 4: can have a debate about that all day long. But
Speaker 4: Brendan Dacy is innocent, right, He's totally is he still
Speaker 4: in prison, But and that that I wanted to jump
Speaker 4: through the screen and that watched that movie and strangle somebody.
Speaker 4: I was like, if I could jump, I mean so,
Speaker 4: but yeah, so in those cases, and Kevin Cooper is
Speaker 4: one of those cases where it's abundance thirty something years. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and he could have very well been executed. And there's
Speaker 4: so many Kevin Cooper's out there, and it had I mean,
Speaker 4: it has to change.
Speaker 1: I heard the their DNA testing it though. I think
Speaker 1: that's finally I saw online.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's it's like it's it's a it's a massive problem. Look,
Speaker 4: I mean we were going to fix it. It's a huge challenge.
Speaker 4: But you know, nothing comes easy. I mean, here it is.
Speaker 4: Isn't today like Mandela's hundredth birthday or something like that.
Speaker 4: So what a way to celebrate by bringing attention to
Speaker 4: this amazing cause. And you know, I could literally sit
Speaker 4: here and talk to you all day. I see you're
Speaker 4: like a sponge. You're learning so much and such a
Speaker 4: sure you're not.
Speaker 1: I don't know everything, And I love to ask questions.
Speaker 1: I love to listen to stories and just soak it
Speaker 1: all in and see what I can do next.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well we're going to We're going to do big
Speaker 4: things together. I can see it now. I'm I'm just
Speaker 4: as you can tell I'm so excited that I can't
Speaker 4: stop talking because I just this is what gets me.
Speaker 4: As you can tell, I'm most excited like the thrill
Speaker 4: of being able to help, you know, Honora Jackson or
Speaker 4: Michelle Murphy, and to make a difference in the lives
Speaker 4: of those people who are just people like you and me,
Speaker 4: who one day we're just living their life and then
Speaker 4: the justice system just collapsed on them. And well, first
Speaker 4: of all, my listeners know, if you get arrested for
Speaker 4: something and you didn't do it, don't say anything. The
Speaker 4: cops are not your friends. They're going to bring you
Speaker 4: in and they say, Kim, we just want to ask
Speaker 4: a few questions. The only thing you say is my
Speaker 4: name is Kim Dashian, here's my address, and I want
Speaker 4: a lawyer. That's it. And then shut up. After you
Speaker 4: say I want a lawyer. They're not allowed to talk
Speaker 4: to you anymore. But if you start talking, they'll eventually
Speaker 4: get you to say almost anything. They'll say. You'll say
Speaker 4: you kidnap the Lindberg baby if they keep you in
Speaker 4: there long enough, you know what I mean. So, but
Speaker 4: so for people out there listening, you know, get involved,
Speaker 4: be woke, right serve on jury duty because it's so
Speaker 4: important someone else's life will be in your hands. And vote.
Speaker 4: I mean you have to vote. You have to to
Speaker 4: learn about these cases. Look at the DA's races, right,
Speaker 4: there's such low turnout of these races. Get out there
Speaker 4: and vote for the progressive candidate because there are people
Speaker 4: like Larry Krasner who just got elected in Philadelphia, who's
Speaker 4: going to turn the system upside down, right, because he
Speaker 4: comes in and he goes, look, I'm not going to
Speaker 4: tolerate this, Like we're not going to lock up in
Speaker 4: and people, We're not going to prosecute people for these
Speaker 4: ridiculous low level non violent crimes, pod offenses, things like that,
Speaker 4: Like we need progressive prosecutors because they hold all the power.
Speaker 4: And that goes back to what it was saying, which
Speaker 4: is that criminal defense attorneys' it's such a tilted system, right.
Speaker 4: You know, the scales of justice are supposed to be even.
Speaker 4: But if you're poor and you get caught in the
Speaker 4: system and you have a public defender who's overworked, underpaid,
Speaker 4: maybe doesn't even know what they're doing. I mean we've
Speaker 4: had cases death penalty cases where the divorce lawyer did
Speaker 4: it or something like that, or like somebody or people
Speaker 4: who are drunk, or even in Texas, there was a
Speaker 4: case where the lawyer was asleep and the Court of
Speaker 4: Appeals in Texas the lawyer slept and the Court of
Speaker 4: Appeals ruled that because the guy appealed and said he
Speaker 4: was entitled to an attorney that was awake, and they said, no, no,
Speaker 4: you're entitled to attorney, but not necessarily one that's awake.
Speaker 4: So we've seen cases where the attorney was drunk, where
Speaker 4: the attorney didn't show up. But even in the best case,
Speaker 4: public defenders are overworked, underpaid. They don't have the resources.
Speaker 4: In some states you have five hundred dollars to defend
Speaker 4: even a capital case. You can't hire investigators. Going back
Speaker 4: to what you said before, whereas the prosecutors, I didn't
Speaker 4: know that. Yeah, And the prosecutors have all this power.
Speaker 4: They're able to decide, They're able to go to you
Speaker 4: and say listen. Ninety six percent of all felony convictions
Speaker 4: of America are the result of guilty please because the
Speaker 4: prosecutors have so much power, because they can go to
Speaker 4: an Alice Johnson they say listen, we're going to give
Speaker 4: you life. In prison unless you plead guilty and you
Speaker 4: may not have even done anything, but your public defender
Speaker 4: you're looking, You're going that guy doesn't look like, oh,
Speaker 4: that woman doesn't look like they know what they're doing.
Speaker 4: I'm in big trouble here, Like they're stacked against me.
Speaker 4: You've got all these you know, and a jury comes
Speaker 4: in with an inherent bias thinking that if you're up
Speaker 4: on the stand, you must have done something. This has
Speaker 4: been proven in the study that was done by my
Speaker 4: friend Josh Dubin. So you have a really like a
Speaker 4: Sophie's choice or a Hobson's choice, because you know you're
Speaker 4: facing these prosecutors and they have a reverse incentive, which
Speaker 4: is that they want convictions. They don't necessarily want justice
Speaker 4: for them, to me, it is right.
Speaker 1: They'd rather have a guilty person out there then and
Speaker 1: just to get a.
Speaker 4: Conviction and get it off their desk, and then they
Speaker 4: go home and then go home and have a nice
Speaker 4: dinner and go to sleep, watch a little TV. And
Speaker 4: it's like, I don't understand the lack of humanity, that
Speaker 4: that's inherent and that so Kim, like I said, I
Speaker 4: could literally talk to you all day. I really enjoy it,
Speaker 4: but I don't want to keep you here all day,
Speaker 4: and but I do want to. I have a tradition
Speaker 4: here on Ralph Convictions, and listeners know they're used to this,
Speaker 4: and this is my favorite part of the show. Usually
Speaker 4: it's an EXONNAI sitting where you are, or someone who
Speaker 4: is incarcerated, but this part of the show is where
Speaker 4: I shut up and I say to you, first of all, Kim,
Speaker 4: thank you for being here and taking your time. I
Speaker 4: know you could be doing a million other things, but
Speaker 4: for having and lending your voice to the movement. And
Speaker 4: now I just want to say, turn the mic over
Speaker 4: to you and say what if you want to leave
Speaker 4: our audience with any thoughts at all? What would they be?
Speaker 1: Just that I didn't know anything going into this, and
Speaker 1: I still don't know everything. I'm learning so much as
Speaker 1: I go, but I know that I have a voice,
Speaker 1: and so I am happy to use it. So if
Speaker 1: you feel passionate about this at all, to anyone just
Speaker 1: out there listening, there's so much you can do to help,
Speaker 1: and I just encourage.
Speaker 4: You to do that. Wise words, and I want to
Speaker 4: once again thank you. That's been a real pleasure for
Speaker 4: me today.
Speaker 1: It was nice to meet you.
Speaker 4: Thank you yeah, and thanks for being here. And once
Speaker 4: again you've been listening to a very special episode of
Speaker 4: Wrongful Conviction with Kim Kardashian and Jason Flamm don't forget
Speaker 4: to give us a fantastic review. Wherever you get your podcasts,
Speaker 4: it really helps. And I'm a proud donor to the
Speaker 4: Innocence Project and I really hope you'll join me in
Speaker 4: supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future
Speaker 4: wrongful convictions. Go to Innocenceproject dot org to learn how
Speaker 4: to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank our
Speaker 4: production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis. The music in
Speaker 4: the show is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
Speaker 4: Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction
Speaker 4: and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with
Speaker 4: Jason Flahm is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts
Speaker 4: and association with Signal Company Number one