Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Jason flam Usually I interview extraordinary people who
Speaker 1: have been on the wrong end of Brontel convictions. Now,
Speaker 1: welcome to my new series, Righteous Convictions, where I speak
Speaker 1: with some of today's most prominent and active agents of change.
Speaker 1: Our guest today saw the need for change in a
Speaker 1: city that is ground zero for many of the problems
Speaker 1: that plague our criminal legal system, and he decided to
Speaker 1: stop them right at the source. When you mass produced convictions,
Speaker 1: you compromise on accuracy, and that is what has left
Speaker 1: us the city of New Orleans in the same Louisiana
Speaker 1: with an outside percentage of people who are factually innocent
Speaker 1: ritting away at jail. What do you think that percentage is? God,
Speaker 1: there's no way for us to calculate the number of
Speaker 1: people who are buried at a pine box and ango
Speaker 1: of State penitentiary who are factually innocent, but we will
Speaker 1: never hear their story. Now, as the newly elected d
Speaker 1: A of Orleans Parish, he intends to not only make
Speaker 1: the changes necessary for better outcome in the future, but
Speaker 1: also to make good for the many wrongs of the past.
Speaker 1: Orleans Parish District Attorney, former board member of the Innostance
Speaker 1: Project of New Orleans. Jason Williams right now on Righteous Convictions.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Righteous Convictions today. I'm smiling as I'm
Speaker 1: going to introduce you to one of my favorite people,
Speaker 1: Jason Williams, who is the brand new d a of
Speaker 1: the most incarcerated county in the most incarcerated city and
Speaker 1: the most incarcerated state in the most incarcerated country in
Speaker 1: the world, Orleans Parish in New Orleans, Louisiana. Jason, Welcome
Speaker 1: to Righteous Convictions. Thank you for having me on the show. Man,
Speaker 1: It's going to be with you. Jason is a chronic
Speaker 1: overachiever who has done some really incredible things and I'm
Speaker 1: not exaggerating when I say that. And Jason is one
Speaker 1: of the most progressive da s in the country. Never
Speaker 1: was a prosecutor. But Jason, let's go back to the beginning.
Speaker 1: So you grew up in New Orleans, right, I actually
Speaker 1: grew up in two places, Atlanta, Georgia and New Orleans.
Speaker 1: My parents got divorced and I was about one, and
Speaker 1: so I spent summers in New Orleans and the school
Speaker 1: year in Atlanta. And what was it like growing up?
Speaker 1: But I guess that was what the early nineties, right
Speaker 1: or late eighties, early nineties, But yeah, it was a
Speaker 1: tale of two cities for me. In Atlanta, I went
Speaker 1: to a private school where, you know, my day was
Speaker 1: pretty much filled from morning until almost bedtime because of
Speaker 1: all the extraricular activities. Any police officer I met in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: at least in my neighborhood was generally a planned encounter
Speaker 1: or a good encounter, Whereas in the city of New
Speaker 1: Orleans it was a very, very different scenario because there
Speaker 1: wasn't the same type of organized school activities, organized sports
Speaker 1: the same way that it existed in the city of
Speaker 1: Atlanta for me, and so it was very easy to
Speaker 1: see what the lack of attention to young people combined
Speaker 1: with the over policing of communities could really give folks
Speaker 1: a very different experience. And you mentioned it, Jason, New
Speaker 1: Orleans is ground zero for unfairness in the criminal legal
Speaker 1: system for a variety of different reasons, and I was
Speaker 1: able to kind of see that dichotomy growing up. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about your journey to Lane law, right, and
Speaker 1: then you are now the district attorney, but you never
Speaker 1: were a prosecutor, and that's really unusual. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna just say it's wonderful because we need d a's
Speaker 1: who come from that side of the bar, who have
Speaker 1: a different kind of understanding. And let's not forget you
Speaker 1: about ten years on the board of the Innocence Project
Speaker 1: of New Orleans, an incredible organization, So take us through
Speaker 1: that trajectory. You know. I started off handling cases that
Speaker 1: to in and broad while I was still in law
Speaker 1: school through the Criminal Law Clinic with the supervising attorney.
Speaker 1: She was amazing. She's about four ft tall. Name is
Speaker 1: Betty Cole, and she just was a our house in
Speaker 1: terms of standing up for people's rights, and that stuck
Speaker 1: with me. Soon after graduating, I started my own practice.
Speaker 1: The problem for me was the rate that this system
Speaker 1: was churning through black, brown, and beige bodies defending these
Speaker 1: cases one case at a time just was not having
Speaker 1: a significant impact on stopping mass incarceration and wrongful convictions
Speaker 1: here in the city of New Orleans. I started working
Speaker 1: pro bono with the Innocence Project and then I joined
Speaker 1: the board to help grow the organization so that it
Speaker 1: could help more people. And then eventually I was appointed
Speaker 1: to be a judge by the Supreme Court and two
Speaker 1: thousand and three, and then I ran for the City
Speaker 1: Council because I saw an opportunity to change the dynamic
Speaker 1: about what we thought needed policing in the city of
Speaker 1: New Orleans. So we engage the municipal bail reform, reducing
Speaker 1: our pre trial jail population. We endeavored to decriminalize marijuana
Speaker 1: so that now we were writing summons is for folks
Speaker 1: rather than putting people in jail and arresting them. Trying
Speaker 1: to figure out ways that we could combat three hundred
Speaker 1: years of over police and over prosecuting certain people is
Speaker 1: what I've done and others have done in the city.
Speaker 1: And to be honest with you, the one actor that
Speaker 1: was most responsible for architecting this amount of injustice and
Speaker 1: mass incarceration, in my opinion, was a d A. And
Speaker 1: so I began challenging some of the choices that he
Speaker 1: was making, like putting rape victims in jail to make
Speaker 1: them testify against their perpetrator, and putting domestic violence survivors
Speaker 1: in jail to make them testify. What do you mean
Speaker 1: they were locking up victims? Who locks up victims? People
Speaker 1: find it hard to believe until they actually see the case.
Speaker 1: And hear from the person, but rape and domestic abuse
Speaker 1: survivors who had decided that they were too traumatized to
Speaker 1: testify and were reticent to testify. He was asking for
Speaker 1: material witness warrants and actually jailing victims and survivors to
Speaker 1: force and compel their testimony in court. And in one instance,
Speaker 1: in particular, domestic abuse survivor was jailed longer than her
Speaker 1: abuser because even though after he was convicted, he got probation,
Speaker 1: and so she was jailed to compel her testimony at
Speaker 1: his trial. And when he was convicted, he didn't even
Speaker 1: get as much time as she served. So if that's
Speaker 1: not a perverse view of the role of a prosecutor,
Speaker 1: I don't know it is. It's beyond. I don't have
Speaker 1: the right words for that, um, but that ain't that
Speaker 1: ain't gonna be happening under your watch. I took him
Speaker 1: on politically from the City Council, and I've ran on
Speaker 1: a platform of ending mass and crosceration, putting a stake
Speaker 1: in the ground saying this office will no longer be
Speaker 1: a Jim Crow office, and it will treat victims and
Speaker 1: survivors with respect, and it will also treat defendants with respect,
Speaker 1: and that's something that has been missing for a very
Speaker 1: long time. So before you spend time in the bench
Speaker 1: as a judge and served as president of the City Council,
Speaker 1: you had had a winning record as a defense attorney
Speaker 1: and often did pro bono work for the Public Defender's Office,
Speaker 1: which a couple of years back was in a serious
Speaker 1: crisis where they refused to take on any violent felony cases.
Speaker 1: I saw a piece about it at sixty Minutes because
Speaker 1: they simply didn't have the financial or physical bandwidth to
Speaker 1: handle this crazy onslaught of cases right, twenty cases a year.
Speaker 1: So can you give us any insight into that crisis
Speaker 1: and the role that you played from your seat on
Speaker 1: the City Council. Basically, what you had was a d
Speaker 1: A's office getting funding from the city at a rate
Speaker 1: much higher than the Public Defender's Office was getting, but
Speaker 1: they were handling roughly the same amount of cases. So
Speaker 1: it just meant that you know, they have the investigations
Speaker 1: of the police department. Of course the d A's Office did,
Speaker 1: but you really were setting up people for failure because
Speaker 1: you had lawyers that were overworked out gun from a
Speaker 1: resource perspective, and the Public Defenders Office basically was saying, look,
Speaker 1: we're not going to take more cases because we cannot
Speaker 1: handle them effectively. And that position forced the judges and
Speaker 1: the city and others to figure out how to correct
Speaker 1: the inadequacies of the system. And one of my last
Speaker 1: pieces of work on the City Council was to take
Speaker 1: money away from the office I now sit in and
Speaker 1: to deliver that to the Public Defender's Office to increase
Speaker 1: their budget and to finally try to achieve some degree
Speaker 1: of parity between prosecution and defense. And I'm now working
Speaker 1: within a drastically reduced budget and we're successfully meeting the
Speaker 1: needs of the office. It's extraordinary when you just do
Speaker 1: the math. Right, If if these lawyers were handling four
Speaker 1: cases a year on average, and there's only three or
Speaker 1: sixty five days, and the course aren't open on weekends,
Speaker 1: so they're handling more than one case at day, So
Speaker 1: you don't have to be illegal scholar to understand that
Speaker 1: they can't possibly mount an effective defense for almost any
Speaker 1: of their clients. So that ends up with please and
Speaker 1: and in fact, we know it was not uncommon for
Speaker 1: their lawyers not to even show up, absolutely not because
Speaker 1: they're lazy, but because they're tied up down the hall
Speaker 1: in another section of court, and you can't be too
Speaker 1: places at one time. And when they're finally they're they're
Speaker 1: encouraging a person to plead guilty. And oftentimes it's because
Speaker 1: it just hasn't been enough time to do a thorough investigation,
Speaker 1: and because of the up charging, charging someone with a
Speaker 1: crime that is far more severe than the offense, and
Speaker 1: then the threat of the multiple bill, meaning you're you're
Speaker 1: really facing a year in jail, but because of the
Speaker 1: use of multiple offinder law, you're now facing up to
Speaker 1: twenty years. So people believe that they're doing the right
Speaker 1: thing about telling a client or if you plead guilty today,
Speaker 1: they're not going to file the multiple bill, which puts
Speaker 1: an innocent person in the position of weighing the rest
Speaker 1: of their life versus being exonerated for a crime they
Speaker 1: did not commit. Most people would take the choice of saying,
Speaker 1: you know what, let me just lead guilty, because I
Speaker 1: can't take the chance. I have kids, I have a life,
Speaker 1: I can't spend the rest of my life in prison.
Speaker 1: I don't think we can appropriately or accurately describe the
Speaker 1: magnitude of what you described, because this isn't one person
Speaker 1: in court that is having this conversation, It's multiple people
Speaker 1: in twelve sections of court all day having this conversation.
Speaker 1: And then you can very easily see how we became
Speaker 1: the most incarcerated place in the world. The city of
Speaker 1: New Orleans has been ground zero for the unfairness of
Speaker 1: the American criminal legal system in every way, whether it
Speaker 1: relates to misdemeanors, to traffic, to bail bonds and cash bail,
Speaker 1: and wrongful convictions. It's not just the big cases, it's everything,
Speaker 1: including the school to prison pipeline. What do you say
Speaker 1: to people who say, wow, this is is Jason william Sky
Speaker 1: or Larry Crash. Crime is gonna go crazy? Of course,
Speaker 1: we know, like in San Francisco, where chessa poutine has
Speaker 1: produced the jail population. By and corning to the sfpd
Speaker 1: s own statistics, crime is down in San Francisco thirty
Speaker 1: five point nine percent. So that would certainly fly in
Speaker 1: the face of those arguments. But I'm sure you must
Speaker 1: get hit with that. You know, what are you gonna
Speaker 1: do to protect us? You don't want to lack all
Speaker 1: these people up, do you hear that a lot, and
Speaker 1: what's your answer to that. It came up a lot
Speaker 1: during the campaign that some of the folks running against
Speaker 1: me were really from that school of tough on crime,
Speaker 1: prosecute as many people as you can, arrest as many
Speaker 1: people as you can, and then try to give them
Speaker 1: as much time as you can. But when you look
Speaker 1: at the nineties to today, how many people we've churned
Speaker 1: through the system, we have had the poorest public safety outcomes,
Speaker 1: murder rate sky high, arm robbery rate sky high. When
Speaker 1: you look at those things, there's been a direct correlation
Speaker 1: between the over policing and over prosecuting with increases in crime.
Speaker 1: And when you talk to sociologists the scientists, it is
Speaker 1: clear that you do not make your city safer by
Speaker 1: putting more bodies in jail. You actually make it less safe,
Speaker 1: and you reduce trust in the system. Then witnesses don't
Speaker 1: want to come forward and they don't want to participate
Speaker 1: when that trust is severed with the public, and this
Speaker 1: has been shown again and again, they will not call
Speaker 1: the police because they have every reason to fear that
Speaker 1: if they do, the situation is going to deteriorate further
Speaker 1: and faster. So crime goes up, you start looking at
Speaker 1: retaliatory crime because people are not using the legal system
Speaker 1: to resolve these issues. They take it upon themselves, and
Speaker 1: so you have retaliation going back and forth from family
Speaker 1: to family or block to block. But it happens throughout
Speaker 1: this country. I think the public made it very clear
Speaker 1: in my election that they agree that the things that
Speaker 1: have been tried in the past weren't working, and they
Speaker 1: are prepared and ready for us to finally be smart
Speaker 1: on crime, right, to confront the sins of the past,
Speaker 1: to maybe invest in people in the front end, and
Speaker 1: our young people get better outcomes out of them before
Speaker 1: there is ever a victim. So now, by some sort
Speaker 1: of miracle of the universe organizing itself in the correct way,
Speaker 1: you now are the man right. What's your plan in
Speaker 1: order to create real reform. It's important that we bring
Speaker 1: the best and brightest local and national talent into this office.
Speaker 1: My first appointment was Emily Mall as chief of our
Speaker 1: Civil Rights Division. She's a former lawyer in the Louisiana
Speaker 1: Supreme Court Chief Justice Johnson's office, former director of our
Speaker 1: Innocence Project here in New Orleans. I've appointed Ben Cohen
Speaker 1: as the Chief of Appeals. Coming in from Ohio, Ben
Speaker 1: is one of the most respected appellate litigators. He's brought
Speaker 1: four cases to the United States Supreme Court. He's won
Speaker 1: three of those. He has served as a lead attorney,
Speaker 1: and Ramos versus Louisiana toppling Jim pro era laws that
Speaker 1: have been on the books in this state for far
Speaker 1: too long. Appointed to Nay Felix as chief of our
Speaker 1: Juvenile Division. To Nay is a former attorney with LCCR
Speaker 1: Louisana Center for Children's Rights. I'm not the only person
Speaker 1: who has worked on the other side of the aisle.
Speaker 1: It gives you a very unique perspective about what a
Speaker 1: good case is, what a bad case is, how to
Speaker 1: build stronger cases. One of our first areas that that
Speaker 1: we're standing up is this Civil Rights Division so that
Speaker 1: we can correct the sins of the past. First, I
Speaker 1: recognize the previous administration absolutely have calls harm to this community,
Speaker 1: whether it was on our watch or not. It's certainly
Speaker 1: our job to address the harm and injustices so that
Speaker 1: we can instill some trust in the system in our
Speaker 1: office and respect back into the office. When you mass
Speaker 1: produced convictions, you compromise on accuracy, and that is what
Speaker 1: has left us the city of New Orleans in the St.
Speaker 1: Louisiana with an outside percentage of people who are factually
Speaker 1: innocent riding away in jail. What do you think that
Speaker 1: percentage is? God, it's high. The accurate number is far
Speaker 1: higher than anything we can calculate. We because there's no
Speaker 1: way for us to calculate the number of people who
Speaker 1: are buried in a pine box and then go state
Speaker 1: penitentiary who are factually innocent, but we will never hear
Speaker 1: their story. I often tell our listeners on our other podcast,
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction, that if they're ever picked up and brought
Speaker 1: to the police station for whatever reason, the only thing
Speaker 1: they should say is their name and I want a
Speaker 1: lawyer and then stop talking. Is there some piece of
Speaker 1: useful advice you could give? Yeah? I mean you're given
Speaker 1: um graded advice, Jason. I have never seen anyone successfully
Speaker 1: talked their way out of an arrest. That's an urban myth,
Speaker 1: so there's no reason to even try. Right, it is
Speaker 1: a job that is best left up to competent council. Right.
Speaker 1: So the only advice I would ever give it the
Speaker 1: same advice I give to my fourteen year old, my
Speaker 1: fifteen year old now I just had a birthday. Is
Speaker 1: to be respectful, to not make any sudden moves and
Speaker 1: allow the fate to be handled in a court of
Speaker 1: law rather than a police station or on a street court. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's good advice too, and I know it's it's it
Speaker 1: makes me sick to think about how many fathers, Black
Speaker 1: fathers have to have that same conversation with their children.
Speaker 1: I feel like people are starting to understand the gravity
Speaker 1: of the problem that we are on the virtual change
Speaker 1: and it's it's obviously true because there you are, against
Speaker 1: all odds. A defense lawyer is now the District Attorney
Speaker 1: of Orleans Parish in New Orleans, which is just fucking great.
Speaker 1: But I have to say so, it's just fucking great
Speaker 1: because this is top of the funnel ship, right, We've
Speaker 1: got to stop it at the top of the funnel,
Speaker 1: and people like you are going to be such an
Speaker 1: important part of that solutionist. So you're diverting more cases,
Speaker 1: you're keeping juveniles out of adult court, ending the use
Speaker 1: of the pitual offender statute that allow for sense increases.
Speaker 1: There's so many more. We can talk about it all day.
Speaker 1: For people who are listening and inspired by your words
Speaker 1: and your course of action. How can they join you?
Speaker 1: What can they do to be part of the change.
Speaker 1: I encourage people to follow us at Run with Jason,
Speaker 1: follow us with O. P. D A on social media,
Speaker 1: Listen to podcasts like yours, get involved. Realize that it
Speaker 1: is your tax dollars that are being misspent to achieve
Speaker 1: perverse goals. Right Locking people up is not making you safer,
Speaker 1: And get involved in how money is spent in your
Speaker 1: town so that we can spend it on prevention, investing
Speaker 1: in young people rather than trying to repair them after
Speaker 1: twenty or thirty years of hurt. Everyone has a role
Speaker 1: to play. Your tax dollars are involved in this thing.
Speaker 1: So now return to our closing. First of all, thank
Speaker 1: you again for you know taking the time, I know
Speaker 1: it visit you are to be here on righteous convictions.
Speaker 1: The mic is yours, Jason Williams, this parish district attorney
Speaker 1: and Paul around. Thank you again Jason for for doing
Speaker 1: what you do. It is changing people's minds, and it's
Speaker 1: changing people's hearts, and it's gonna make the country a
Speaker 1: safer and more equitable place. We are building the best
Speaker 1: team and putting them in this office, to correct the
Speaker 1: sins of the past, to disrupt the school to prison pipeline,
Speaker 1: and really laying a foundation that will allow us to
Speaker 1: be laser focus on violent crime, on domestic violence, on
Speaker 1: unsolved murders, on sexual assault cases. So a lot of
Speaker 1: people will tell you that criminal justice reform is an
Speaker 1: experiment and that it is antithetical with public safety. And
Speaker 1: the truth of the matter is when you realize that
Speaker 1: you're focusing on people who are actually hurting people and
Speaker 1: creating the space and resources to do that better. The
Speaker 1: only way you do that is by getting rid of
Speaker 1: the riff raft and the overuse of the virtual finder
Speaker 1: law and the failed war on drugs. That is what
Speaker 1: I call and that is what is being smart on
Speaker 1: crime using taxpayer dollars the way that you've heard people
Speaker 1: crying out for this past summer, right, investing in people,
Speaker 1: investing in better outcomes, and really going after the people
Speaker 1: that have hurt people. But we can't just do that
Speaker 1: from today on. You've got to look back at all
Speaker 1: the harm that's been caused and make sure that we're
Speaker 1: correcting those things and making sure that anybody that was
Speaker 1: convicted with a Jim pro era. Jury gets a fair shot,
Speaker 1: and fairness will take us where we need to be.
Speaker 1: It is not antithetical to public safety. It will make
Speaker 1: us safety. Thank you for listening to Righteous Convictions. I'd
Speaker 1: like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Clyburne
Speaker 1: and Kevin Awards. The music in this production was supplied
Speaker 1: by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Follow us
Speaker 1: on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Twitter at wrong Conviction,
Speaker 1: and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast. Righteous Convictions is
Speaker 1: a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with
Speaker 1: Signal Company Number one