Latest / Wrongful Conviction / #044 Jason Flom with Ronald Simpson-Bey

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#044 Jason Flom with Ronald Simpson-Bey · Wrongful Conviction

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: I fell into the hands of a corrupt detective.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: I was naive enough to believe that I would be
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: able to just present all of my proof of actual innocence,
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: that they would investigate adequately, and so that I wouldn't
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: be going to prison because I was a good person.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: I hadn't done anything wrong.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: In the back of your mind, you say, well, when
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: we go to a hearing or we go to court,
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: the truth will come out. The prosecution from day one
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: knew I was innocent and let forced testimony go uncorrected
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: from the lower courts all the way up to the
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: United States Supreme Court.
• 0:36
  Speaker 3: You have someone with a badge with ultimate and really,
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: in that moment, unchecked authority.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: Don't presume that people are guilty when you see them
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: on TV, because it may just be a dirty da
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: that is trying to rise upward.
• 0:57
  Speaker 4: This is wrongful conviction.
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flomm. Today, I
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: have two people who I admire greatly. Ronald Simpson Bay
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: welcome to the show, Thank you, thanks for having me.
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: And Glenn Martin is here. Glenn is a remarkable activist
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: and has an incredible story to tell as well.
• 1:32
  Speaker 4: So Ronald let's start with you.
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: You served almost twenty seven years in prison for a
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: crime and didn't commit. And what you've done with that
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: experience and how it's transformed you is something that I'm
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: honestly in awe of and so I'm looking forward to
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: getting to that. And Glenn, you have a similar story,
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: although you were actually locked up for something you did
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: do and have turned it into an incredible into a movement. Really, Ronald,
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: let's go back to the beginning. You grew up in Michigan.
• 2:02
  Speaker 5: Yes, I did, Flint, Michigan.
• 2:04
  Speaker 4: How is your childhood? What was it like?
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: Let's let's go back like it, you know, back in
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: the day before everything went so horribly wrong.
• 2:12
  Speaker 6: I think I was born in Flint, Michigan, to a
• 2:14
  Speaker 6: two parent family. My dad was a school teacher, my
• 2:16
  Speaker 6: mom was a homemaker, and I thought we lived a
• 2:19
  Speaker 6: fairly normal lifestyle, kind of middle upper class. Because my dad,
• 2:24
  Speaker 6: he was a school teacher. We got to travel all summer,
• 2:27
  Speaker 6: we had a motor home. We did a lot of
• 2:28
  Speaker 6: things that you know, you don't really see in the
• 2:30
  Speaker 6: inner city community. So I was exposed to a lot
• 2:33
  Speaker 6: at a young age. You know, traveled a lot, and
• 2:35
  Speaker 6: you know, my dad made sure we were educated and
• 2:38
  Speaker 6: well learned, but I lived in an abusive home. I
• 2:42
  Speaker 6: was the oldest of five children. My dad would beat me,
• 2:44
  Speaker 6: beat my mom and stuff, and became an untenable situation.
• 2:48
  Speaker 6: As a child, you don't realize how dysfunctional it is.
• 2:51
  Speaker 6: You just feel like it's normal. If you grow up
• 2:53
  Speaker 6: so long like that. You know, you get fifteen, sixteen
• 2:55
  Speaker 6: years old of that, like, well, this must be normal,
• 2:57
  Speaker 6: everybody must go through this.
• 2:59
  Speaker 5: But later on that wasn't the case.
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you don't know any different, right as
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: you get older, and then you sort of look back
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: and you have more experiences to compare it to, and
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: then you realize just how wrong that really is. Right,
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: and it's a horrible thing to hear. But even then,
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: nothing prepared you for what was going to happen, right,
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: because it wasn't like you were growing up in a
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: gang lifestyle or in a type of situation where you
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: were running with a tough crowd and getting mixed up
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: in a bunch of problems.
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: How did it happen? How did you end up in
• 3:33
  Speaker 4: the system in the first place.
• 3:35
  Speaker 6: Well, I mean, it's kind of like I said, I
• 3:38
  Speaker 6: didn't expect this. No one expects us to happen. And
• 3:40
  Speaker 6: I went to high school, I went to cod With
• 3:42
  Speaker 6: to Eastern Michigan. I ran track for Eastern Michigan University
• 3:45
  Speaker 6: in the seventies, and I was a tooling diemaker General
• 3:47
  Speaker 6: Motors before I went to prison. And in nineteen eighty
• 3:51
  Speaker 6: the first really dramatic traumatic event in my life happened.
• 3:55
  Speaker 6: My mom shot and killed my dad in the Marylton
• 3:57
  Speaker 6: home in front of my two younger brothers and sisters.
• 4:00
  Speaker 5: I was like twenty or twenty one at the time.
• 4:02
  Speaker 6: I was married to my first wife and I get
• 4:05
  Speaker 6: a call at work one day. My ex wife called me,
• 4:08
  Speaker 6: say you need to come home right now. And she
• 4:10
  Speaker 6: was pregnant, so I'm thinking that, you know, something's wrong
• 4:12
  Speaker 6: with the baby. So I drive home. Said you need
• 4:15
  Speaker 6: to go to your parents' home. I said, okay, what's
• 4:17
  Speaker 6: going on? So I'd make the two or three miles
• 4:19
  Speaker 6: drive over to mom and Dad's home and I get
• 4:21
  Speaker 6: there and it's like it's pandemonium. Police cars everywhere, Adbulante
• 4:25
  Speaker 6: the cracker can't even get down the street because it's
• 4:27
  Speaker 6: such a big crowd. And when I finally do get
• 4:29
  Speaker 6: to the house, my mom send in the back of
• 4:31
  Speaker 6: the cruiser, police cruiser. You're like, what's going on here exactly?
• 4:34
  Speaker 6: I'm like, what's going on? And they pulled me to
• 4:36
  Speaker 6: the side. They said, well, your dad is in the home.
• 4:39
  Speaker 6: Your mom and shot your dad, and they took her
• 4:42
  Speaker 6: off and I stayed there until the corner came and
• 4:45
  Speaker 6: pronounced him dad and removed the body. And that was
• 4:49
  Speaker 6: July twenty fifth, nineteen eighty and six years to the day,
• 4:55
  Speaker 6: July twenty fifth, nineteen eighty six, I walked into prison.
• 4:59
  Speaker 6: My life took almost a perfect spiral.
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: Wow, that's a that's a very strange and sort of
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: horrible synchronicity, you know. And your case is is troubling
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: for a lot of reasons, but not the least of
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: which is that you were arrested and ultimately convicted for
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: shooting an officer.
• 5:18
  Speaker 4: Yes, but that officer changed.
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: His story over time, right where originally he had said
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: that you weren't the guy exactly, So you got blindsided
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: really when you went to trial, for sure? I mean,
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: how could It's so bizarre, Ronald? I mean, you got
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: I mean, you lived it. But I'm just sitting here
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: looking back out it and going wait a minute. I
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: can understand a witness changing their story, but the victim,
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: I mean going that guy didn't shoot me? Oh yes
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: he did. Yeah, you think you'd remember that. You think
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: how did they get you in their in their crosshairs
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: in the first place.
• 5:53
  Speaker 6: Well, the case happened on a particular day in October
• 5:56
  Speaker 6: nineteen eighty five. My buddies and I were driving around Flinch,
• 6:00
  Speaker 6: you know, being knuckleheads. We weren't boy scouts. We were
• 6:03
  Speaker 6: driving around doing stupid stuff, and I stopped by a
• 6:05
  Speaker 6: place a friend of mine I had sold some drugs
• 6:08
  Speaker 6: to to pick some money up, but he wasn't home
• 6:10
  Speaker 6: at the time, and it was in an apartment building
• 6:13
  Speaker 6: where a lot of drug activity is and it was
• 6:15
  Speaker 6: under surveillance by undercover cops. So they saw us leave
• 6:19
  Speaker 6: the place and thought we had robbed it. So they
• 6:21
  Speaker 6: followed us, and about two blocks away from the scene,
• 6:24
  Speaker 6: my buddy was driving my car, say, somebody's following us.
• 6:27
  Speaker 6: That said, what stopped is probably the guy that owes
• 6:29
  Speaker 6: me the money. I'm thinking that's who it was.
• 6:30
  Speaker 5: We stopped.
• 6:31
  Speaker 6: I get out of the car. I'm standing there waiting
• 6:33
  Speaker 6: for this car to pull up. But as he pulls up.
• 6:36
  Speaker 6: No one recognizes the guy driving cart one o'clock in
• 6:38
  Speaker 6: the afternoon, Z twenty eight Camaro. The guy jumps out
• 6:42
  Speaker 6: with a blue jean suit on the hat. We all
• 6:44
  Speaker 6: had Jerry.
• 6:44
  Speaker 5: Curls back then. That's how farther back it was. I
• 6:48
  Speaker 5: still had hair. Yeah, I had had a Jerry curroll. Man,
• 6:52
  Speaker 5: imagine that.
• 6:53
  Speaker 6: But so the guy gets out. He just in the
• 6:56
  Speaker 6: car door, squads down and pulled the gun. So I'm
• 6:58
  Speaker 6: asking the guy, y'all know who this guy is? No
• 7:00
  Speaker 6: one know who he is, And all of a sudden fires,
• 7:03
  Speaker 6: he's shooting. The guys in my car shooting at him.
• 7:05
  Speaker 6: I'm in the crossfire. I'm trying to run and get
• 7:07
  Speaker 6: out of the way. So I get out of line
• 7:09
  Speaker 6: of fires. The guys in my car take off and
• 7:13
  Speaker 6: the undercovered car takes off behind them.
• 7:16
  Speaker 5: Wait, you got back in the car. No, the car
• 7:18
  Speaker 5: took off with out me.
• 7:19
  Speaker 4: Okay, that's nice, friends, you got there, but go ahead.
• 7:23
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 7:23
  Speaker 4: So anyway, I no honor among thieves.
• 7:26
  Speaker 6: I guess I started walking because the car. I can
• 7:29
  Speaker 6: hear the cars going through the neighborhood, and I can
• 7:31
  Speaker 6: hear the shooting because the guys panently, they're shooting.
• 7:33
  Speaker 5: From my car back at the officers car, and I
• 7:38
  Speaker 5: go to the garage I worked on cars back.
• 7:39
  Speaker 6: Then I go to the garage I worked at was
• 7:41
  Speaker 6: about a mile away from the shooting scene, and I
• 7:43
  Speaker 6: get on the phone. I called the guy's girlfriend of
• 7:46
  Speaker 6: driving my car. I say, if the guys come buy
• 7:48
  Speaker 6: the apartment, tell them come pick me up at the garage,
• 7:51
  Speaker 6: not knowing that, you know, we weren to shoot out
• 7:52
  Speaker 6: with police officers. About a half hour later, I called
• 7:55
  Speaker 6: her back. She said, they've been arrested by the officers.
• 7:58
  Speaker 5: What officers? They were to shootout with police? I said,
• 8:01
  Speaker 5: oh my god.
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: So wait, So you still didn't realize at this point
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: that the guys that had been shooting at you were cops.
• 8:07
  Speaker 5: No, it never announce himself with cops.
• 8:09
  Speaker 4: Wow.
• 8:10
  Speaker 6: And what had happened during the car chase scene after
• 8:13
  Speaker 6: I had gotten out two miles down a road, the
• 8:15
  Speaker 6: cars run off the road and there's a second shootout,
• 8:19
  Speaker 6: and that's where that's what actually got he got hit
• 8:21
  Speaker 6: in the arm and the second shootout.
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: So you weren't anywhere near the place, No, it wasn't.
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: I mean, this would have been more believable easier to
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: understand if it would have happened during the first shootout,
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: because at least you were there exactly, and they might
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: arrested everybody. They might arrested you, and they might, you know,
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: the confusion. They might have thought you were the guy
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: doing the shooting.
• 8:38
  Speaker 4: Who the hell knows. But in this case, you weren't
• 8:41
  Speaker 4: even there.
• 8:42
  Speaker 5: No, do you look like the other guys, but they said,
• 8:45
  Speaker 5: we all look a like.
• 8:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I know, I love myself Overen for that one.
• 8:48
  Speaker 5: That's a objective.
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: But it wasn't like your twin brother or god knows what,
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: so not by long shot. So they end up arresting
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: you and charging you with a solid stent to commit
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: murder of a police officer. Yes, bad bad. Yeah, you
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: go to jail, yes, awaiting trial.
• 9:06
  Speaker 5: Yes, I got out on bond.
• 9:08
  Speaker 6: I was in jail for about two months and posted
• 9:11
  Speaker 6: sixty thousand dollars bond and got out okay. And how
• 9:14
  Speaker 6: long did it take to get to trial? About six
• 9:16
  Speaker 6: seven months. I got out in December, the trials in June.
• 9:20
  Speaker 4: So you go to trial and who represented you?
• 9:23
  Speaker 5: Oh, I had an attorney.
• 9:25
  Speaker 6: My attorney was a matth he's a former judge in
• 9:27
  Speaker 6: the county in which I had the trial.
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: He used to be a city judge on the circuit
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: court bench. So that sounds like, you know, you were
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: giving yourself a good shot at least you would think, yeah.
• 9:35
  Speaker 6: But the problem with that was, and I didn't discovered
• 9:37
  Speaker 6: till later, is that the judge we were in front of.
• 9:40
  Speaker 6: My attorney and the judge hated each other when he
• 9:43
  Speaker 6: was on the bench.
• 9:44
  Speaker 4: And he didn't bother to tell you that, well.
• 9:46
  Speaker 5: Not initially.
• 9:49
  Speaker 6: When he tried to get the case moved to another court,
• 9:51
  Speaker 6: because he said, disjudge and I have animosity towards each other,
• 9:54
  Speaker 6: and I don't think he'd give me a fair trial.
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: Oh my god, that's just what you need to hear exactly.
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: And then he's not going to make the relationship any
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: better by asking that the trial be moved to another right. Okay,
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: so now you've got a pretty good idea that things
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: are looking bad.
• 10:10
  Speaker 5: Exactly as a confluence of crazy events.
• 10:13
  Speaker 6: You know, the prosecutor came up with his theory of
• 10:15
  Speaker 6: the case, and the officer himself changed his testimony to
• 10:18
  Speaker 6: fit that theory of the case. There were four of
• 10:21
  Speaker 6: us involved in this crime, myself and three co defenders,
• 10:24
  Speaker 6: and two of the co defenders turned States evidence against
• 10:26
  Speaker 6: me and one other guy. They testified against us, and
• 10:29
  Speaker 6: their testimony fit the theory of the prosecutor's case as well,
• 10:32
  Speaker 6: even though none of the evidence fit. We had a
• 10:34
  Speaker 6: clear statement from the officer. We had his handwritten police
• 10:38
  Speaker 6: report from the day of the event saying I hadn't
• 10:40
  Speaker 6: done you know, it wasn't me. Eight months later when
• 10:43
  Speaker 6: the trial went down, all of a sudden, I'm the
• 10:44
  Speaker 6: one that jumped out of the car shooting at him.
• 10:46
  Speaker 5: It was crazy.
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: So they had everybody at the trial basically telling the
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: story that the prosecutor wanted to be told. The police
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: officer changed his story, right, The other two witnesses changed
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: their story or or came up with a story that was.
• 11:02
  Speaker 5: In line with the prosecutor wanted.
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: And so did you believe that when the jury went out,
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: did you believe that you were going to be convicted?
• 11:12
  Speaker 6: Or there is no way I thought I was going
• 11:14
  Speaker 6: to be convicted. It was a three week trial and
• 11:17
  Speaker 6: not a week and two the trial. They came and
• 11:19
  Speaker 6: offered me a plea bargain. I said, there's no way
• 11:21
  Speaker 6: I'm taking the plea bar. I got the officer of
• 11:23
  Speaker 6: statement saying I didn't shoot at him, so I'm not
• 11:25
  Speaker 6: taking a plea bargain.
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: That's so crazy, right, And Glenn, let me see, I
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: see Glenn roll in his eyes. So let's just reflect
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: on this particular aspect of it, because this is not
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: a story I've ever heard before.
• 11:36
  Speaker 4: So they came to you and offered you a plea bargain.
• 11:38
  Speaker 6: What was the plea bargain of seven to ten? The
• 11:42
  Speaker 6: sins was seven to ten years sins? I forgot with
• 11:45
  Speaker 6: the charge some reduced charge, right, assault with great body harm,
• 11:48
  Speaker 6: intention of great body of harm or something like that.
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: And you were facing what life if you lost the trial? Yes,
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: so if you were guilty, that sounds like a pretty
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: good deal, right. And now here is we have Glenn Mark,
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: who's the founder and leader of Just Leadership USA.
• 12:05
  Speaker 4: Glenn himself was.
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: Incarcerated for six years for robbery and has become I
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: could say, probably the most important voice in the deincarceration movement.
• 12:17
  Speaker 4: Was that fair, Glenn?
• 12:19
  Speaker 7: If I wanted to toot my own horn, yeah, that's fair, right.
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: And he's been instrumental in the Clothes Rikers campaign, has
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: done so much incredible advocacy work that It sometimes makes
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: me feel like I'm standing still, and I know that
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: now you guys work together, right, Yes, Glenn, have you
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: ever heard a story like that where the witness, I mean,
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: I don't know, we just heard it.
• 12:40
  Speaker 4: But I'm having trouble processing.
• 12:43
  Speaker 7: I do a ton of public speaking, and I am
• 12:46
  Speaker 7: constantly retelling this story because I am so blown away
• 12:49
  Speaker 7: by it. The fact that the prosecutor even offered that,
• 12:53
  Speaker 7: you know, relatively low number suggested to me that they
• 12:57
  Speaker 7: even thought that they may not win that case, which
• 13:00
  Speaker 7: would be another reason for Ronald to just hold out.
• 13:03
  Speaker 7: You know, if I'm facing life and they offer me
• 13:04
  Speaker 7: seven to ten in the middle of trial, that suggests
• 13:07
  Speaker 7: that they think they may not make it to the
• 13:08
  Speaker 7: finish line. So I would have done the same thing.
• 13:11
  Speaker 7: But having the key witness who got shot not just
• 13:15
  Speaker 7: change his story in the middle, but also the fact
• 13:18
  Speaker 7: that Ronald even wasn't on the scene when he finally
• 13:21
  Speaker 7: got shot, you know, it blows me away, except I
• 13:25
  Speaker 7: got to be honest. I mean, everything about our criminal
• 13:28
  Speaker 7: justice system is just unfair and there's no equity there,
• 13:31
  Speaker 7: and people of color get outcomes like this over and over,
• 13:34
  Speaker 7: maybe not as egregious. But Ronald's story has always riveted
• 13:39
  Speaker 7: me as one that stands out for a number of reasons.
• 13:41
  Speaker 7: And we're just touching on the story now. There's a
• 13:43
  Speaker 7: lot more to tell. But the reason I asked Ronald's
• 13:45
  Speaker 7: permission to tell the story over and over is because
• 13:47
  Speaker 7: I think it gets to the core of what's rotten
• 13:50
  Speaker 7: in our criminal justice system.
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: And I would go even a step further and say
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: that when the prosecutor offered you that deal, what Glenn
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: says is certainly, which is that they must have thought
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: that there was a pretty good chance that they weren't
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: going to win. But also they must have known that
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: you weren't that guy, because if you're a prosecutor, you're
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: not trying to let a guy who shot a cop
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: out after seven to ten years. I mean, when you
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: look at it in comparison, Glenn was convicted of robbery, right,
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: simple robbery, so he got six years. What we're led
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: to believe now is that they're willing to say, all right,
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: this guy's a bad motherfucker, he shot a cop, but
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: we're gonna give him seven to ten.
• 14:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we're just going to be nice people, right.
• 14:27
  Speaker 7: Yeah, most people who shoot cops and end up in prison,
• 14:30
  Speaker 7: never get out, to be honest.
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean we can debate that all day long,
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: but that's a terrible crime. Right. We cannot have people
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: shooting at law enforcements. It's not happening, right, And I
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: can agree that people who are violent, and certainly people
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: who attack law enforcement officers in a way like that,
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: need to be in prison because they're dangerous. But this
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: story is really it's stinks. Honestly, it's stinks, and you.
• 14:53
  Speaker 4: Know it does. So the jury goes out.
• 14:56
  Speaker 5: It was a jury trial, right, yes, jury trial.
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: In three weeks in the courtroom, you develop almost like
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: summer rap poor with them, right, You're in close quarters
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: for three weeks every day, all day, right, except weekends.
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: And then they go out and come back in. And
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: did they even look at you? Did you get that
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: sense when they walked in.
• 15:13
  Speaker 6: When they walked in, I had the sense of, oh shit,
• 15:15
  Speaker 6: I'm in trouble. Because one of the jurors was crying.
• 15:18
  Speaker 6: One of the women, Drews, a young woman was crying. So, oh,
• 15:21
  Speaker 6: that can't be good.
• 15:22
  Speaker 4: What was the makeup of the jury, Because Flint is
• 15:25
  Speaker 4: a very racially diverse city, right.
• 15:28
  Speaker 6: The jury wasn't. Out of the twelve jurors, there were
• 15:32
  Speaker 6: two blacks on my jury.
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: And flint is what sixty uh huh Is that a glint?
• 15:40
  Speaker 4: Do you think that's a coincidence.
• 15:43
  Speaker 7: No, I think that's a stute prosecutor who's managing the
• 15:46
  Speaker 7: jury pool.
• 15:47
  Speaker 6: After I was convicted, you know, you get to speak
• 15:49
  Speaker 6: to the court, and I spoke to that exact point
• 15:52
  Speaker 6: that you know that I didn't have a jury in
• 15:54
  Speaker 6: my peers, it wasn't racially made up, and out of
• 15:57
  Speaker 6: the two black people that were on it were older
• 16:00
  Speaker 6: black people from prior to the Civil rights era, and
• 16:02
  Speaker 6: they were used to bond down to when the white
• 16:05
  Speaker 6: person says something. They were worse than the white people
• 16:08
  Speaker 6: on the jury cause they the people that I thought
• 16:10
  Speaker 6: were holding out with the woman that was crying, and
• 16:13
  Speaker 6: somebody else kind of looked to me like just kind
• 16:14
  Speaker 6: of shook their head, just like this is.
• 16:16
  Speaker 4: The way it is.
• 16:17
  Speaker 5: It's the way it is. Yeah.
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, and we know too that after a
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: three week trial and they're stuck in that jury room,
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: people get angry. Everybody wants to go home, they don't
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: want to be there, and it could get abusive in there.
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: You know, and if they're that old, I mean, I'm
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: I'm not excusing what they did. I could understand it.
• 16:34
  Speaker 6: The last day before I was convicted, when they were deliberating,
• 16:38
  Speaker 6: they had deliberated for over twelve hours, and they told
• 16:40
  Speaker 6: the judge they wanted to go home.
• 16:42
  Speaker 5: He said, no, we're not leaving until you come back
• 16:43
  Speaker 5: with a verdict.
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: There you go.
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: I rest my case so they come back. Can you
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: paint a picture of what that was like? That one
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: probably worst moment of your life.
• 16:53
  Speaker 6: What did it feel like when the jury come in,
• 16:56
  Speaker 6: the judge said, will the defend the rise? When they
• 16:59
  Speaker 6: get ready to announce the vers I felt like I
• 17:01
  Speaker 6: had five hundred pounds on my shoulder. I could it
• 17:03
  Speaker 6: was so hard to stand up. It was like, you know,
• 17:06
  Speaker 6: I don't know if you ever lifted weight so squatted
• 17:08
  Speaker 6: when you were in prison, we used to squat, and
• 17:10
  Speaker 6: I felt like I.
• 17:11
  Speaker 5: Had five hundred pounds. I could not get up.
• 17:14
  Speaker 6: And then as they announced the verdict, you know, and
• 17:17
  Speaker 6: each person was stating, you know, they agreed with the verdict.
• 17:19
  Speaker 6: It was like every time they said guilty, it was
• 17:23
  Speaker 6: like a death blow boom.
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: It was literally a death blow literally because they're taking
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: your whole life away. Absolutely, And so you go to prison.
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: What prison were you sent to?
• 17:44
  Speaker 6: Jackson in Michigan? Because I was twenty seven years old
• 17:47
  Speaker 6: when I went to prison. I was an older person
• 17:49
  Speaker 6: apparently speaking, so they sent me to the adult prison,
• 17:52
  Speaker 6: not the younger prison.
• 17:54
  Speaker 5: So I went to Jackson Penitentiary in Jackson, Michigan.
• 17:57
  Speaker 4: And is that as bad as I think it is? Oh?
• 17:59
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it used to be.
• 18:00
  Speaker 6: It was built the world's largest wall prison because it
• 18:02
  Speaker 6: was such a huge complex.
• 18:04
  Speaker 5: Over five thousand prisoners were there and it was.
• 18:07
  Speaker 6: Spread out of all his acres and they had you know,
• 18:09
  Speaker 6: maximum security sales and medium security sales.
• 18:12
  Speaker 5: There was a pretty wild place.
• 18:15
  Speaker 4: And when you say that, I mean you want to elaborate.
• 18:17
  Speaker 4: You know, you don't have to, but.
• 18:18
  Speaker 5: Oh man, Jackson was Jackson was crazy. It was. It
• 18:23
  Speaker 5: was insane.
• 18:24
  Speaker 6: And to give you some idea, in nineteen eighty seven,
• 18:27
  Speaker 6: there was so much tension between the officers and the
• 18:30
  Speaker 6: prisoners incarcerated people that they were.
• 18:33
  Speaker 4: Killing each other like literally like bodybacks.
• 18:36
  Speaker 6: In Marsha that year a female officer was killed in
• 18:39
  Speaker 6: all because of that year, they retaliation, They choked and
• 18:42
  Speaker 6: killed acarcerated person over an asset unit, and in December
• 18:46
  Speaker 6: another officer was killed, stabbed at death.
• 18:48
  Speaker 5: It was back and forth.
• 18:50
  Speaker 4: Wow, that sounds it sounds like hell.
• 18:53
  Speaker 5: It was hell. It was suicide.
• 18:54
  Speaker 6: You know, people couldn't cope because of the violence and
• 18:58
  Speaker 6: the conditions of confinement. You know, it was an old prison,
• 19:01
  Speaker 6: you know, roaches, ratchet was one of your new modern
• 19:04
  Speaker 6: college campus type printed It had bars, you know, old school,
• 19:08
  Speaker 6: just like you'd see in the movies.
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: I mean, and then something clicked inside of you, theority man.
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: Unlike a lot of people that we talked to who
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: were literally teenagers, adolescents even when they went to prison,
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: nobody's prepared for this. But you, somehow or other, you
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: found another level of strength.
• 19:28
  Speaker 4: That is out of this world.
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: Not just to survive and keep your spirit up and
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: learn the law and actually end up figuring out a
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: way to get yourself out. You could so easily have
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: been another one of those victims. You could have been
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: a suicide, You could have been killed. You could have
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: also just given up, right, I mean, I think I
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: think there's probably a bunch of people that you left
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: behind who probably as innocent as you are, and just
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: gave up, just couldn't. Yeah, And so my question is
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: where did that come from?
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: For me?
• 20:00
  Speaker 5: I mean, you do prison in stages.
• 20:02
  Speaker 6: Anybody does time, especially a long time, you do it
• 20:04
  Speaker 6: in phases. And the first five years of my InCAR sprations,
• 20:07
  Speaker 6: I was angry and I was a twenty seven year old, aggressive,
• 20:11
  Speaker 6: angry young man in black man in prison. When I
• 20:13
  Speaker 6: got to prison to discover that in Michigan, sixty six
• 20:16
  Speaker 6: percent of the prisoners didn't have GEDs. And I had
• 20:20
  Speaker 6: been to college and I was aggressive, So I'm a
• 20:22
  Speaker 6: run this place. So for the first five years I
• 20:25
  Speaker 6: was part of the problem, or not part of the solution.
• 20:27
  Speaker 6: I was, you know, crea can all kind of havoc
• 20:29
  Speaker 6: on the yard, fight, stabbings, you name it.
• 20:31
  Speaker 5: We were involved in it. And one day in nineteen.
• 20:36
  Speaker 6: Ninety or ninety one, a good friend of mine brought
• 20:38
  Speaker 6: me a book called Visions for Black Men by doctor
• 20:41
  Speaker 6: named Akbar, ninety page paperback, small but easy read, Visions
• 20:45
  Speaker 6: for Black Men. Yes, I read that book and it
• 20:47
  Speaker 6: was like an epiphany. Light came on and I could
• 20:51
  Speaker 6: not believe when I looked at myself differently, I looked
• 20:53
  Speaker 6: at my community differently, I looked at my responsibility to
• 20:56
  Speaker 6: myself and my family and my community a lot differently,
• 20:59
  Speaker 6: and it kind of snapped me out of my anger.
• 21:01
  Speaker 5: I gotta do something different. I'm gonna die in here.
• 21:04
  Speaker 5: I'm gonna kill somebody here and then die.
• 21:07
  Speaker 6: So that book made me be more reflective and introspective,
• 21:11
  Speaker 6: and I kind of turned my attitude around, and I
• 21:13
  Speaker 6: started looking at things differently, stopped not being about me
• 21:16
  Speaker 6: so much by being about other people because I looked
• 21:19
  Speaker 6: up for a chain first five years I had looked
• 21:21
  Speaker 6: up and saw the degradation around me. I saw how
• 21:24
  Speaker 6: people had been dehumanized by the system, and people that
• 21:27
  Speaker 6: couldn't defend themselves because he either had mental issues or
• 21:30
  Speaker 6: just didn't have the faculty to do so. And I
• 21:33
  Speaker 6: had the faculty and the mental capacity to do it.
• 21:35
  Speaker 6: So I turned my life around and started going the
• 21:37
  Speaker 6: direction of trying to help other people.
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: And then another tragedy occurred, as if you hadn't been
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: tested enough, right with the terrible, unimaginable circumstance of your
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: parents and then being wrongfully incarcerated, and then the only
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: other worst thing that can happen to a person happened
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: to you as well.
• 21:56
  Speaker 6: Man Indeed, indeed, it's two thousand and one. I had
• 22:01
  Speaker 6: been in prison about fifteen sixteen years at the time,
• 22:05
  Speaker 6: and Father's Day I was waiting for a visit. I
• 22:07
  Speaker 6: talked to my son and three daughters. I had a
• 22:09
  Speaker 6: son and three daughters at the time, and I talked
• 22:12
  Speaker 6: to my son that morning. His name is Ronald, and
• 22:14
  Speaker 6: I called him. He say, hey, Dad, I'm bringing the
• 22:16
  Speaker 6: girls up to see you and we will be up there.
• 22:18
  Speaker 5: And that was like great.
• 22:19
  Speaker 6: You know on Father's Day, see your children in prison
• 22:21
  Speaker 6: is like nothing is better.
• 22:24
  Speaker 5: So I'm waiting. I'm waiting. I'm waiting.
• 22:26
  Speaker 6: One o'clock, two o'clock, three o'clock. They don't show up.
• 22:29
  Speaker 6: Now I'm getting worried, so I get on the phone.
• 22:30
  Speaker 6: I start calling and it's strange. I know thousands of
• 22:34
  Speaker 6: people in Flint, Michigan. I could not catch anyone. I
• 22:37
  Speaker 6: called all my family members and taught no one. I
• 22:40
  Speaker 6: end up dilling my ex mother in laws phone them, Hey, mom,
• 22:43
  Speaker 6: this is.
• 22:44
  Speaker 5: What you doing.
• 22:45
  Speaker 6: Have you seen the kids they're supposed to come visit.
• 22:46
  Speaker 6: She said, you haven't heard. I said, no, what's going on?
• 22:50
  Speaker 6: Said little Ronnied been shot and killed. My twenty one
• 22:53
  Speaker 6: year old son had been shot and killed by fourteen
• 22:55
  Speaker 6: year juvenile in the streets of Flint, Michigan.
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: I mean, that's hard enough to probably get the chills
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: and to be in prison, and again, how could anybody
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: deal with that?
• 23:08
  Speaker 6: By that time, I had been for ten years. I
• 23:10
  Speaker 6: had been you know, I had changed my life around.
• 23:13
  Speaker 6: I had a whole new attitude about life. I had
• 23:15
  Speaker 6: become heads of various organizations, religious organizations, civic organizations. I
• 23:20
  Speaker 6: was I was a name plan off on a class
• 23:22
  Speaker 6: action lawsuit, so I was kind of a you know,
• 23:24
  Speaker 6: I was a high profile person inside. And by that
• 23:28
  Speaker 6: time when my son died, I had been all these years.
• 23:32
  Speaker 6: I had been giving other people counselor when they went,
• 23:34
  Speaker 6: you know, grief counseling, and when things they got bad
• 23:36
  Speaker 6: news from home that their wife left them, or that
• 23:39
  Speaker 6: somebody died or whatever, I would counsel people. So when
• 23:42
  Speaker 6: it came my turn, I had to apply my own
• 23:45
  Speaker 6: counseling to myself, because for me, the worst thing I
• 23:47
  Speaker 6: can be is a hypocrite. I never want to be
• 23:49
  Speaker 6: a hypocrite when anything that I do, so I had
• 23:53
  Speaker 6: to do as I said do in my own Here
• 23:55
  Speaker 6: I could hear my voice of all the counsel I
• 23:56
  Speaker 6: had given people over the years, and I just swallowed
• 23:59
  Speaker 6: and took an for myself. And as a result of that,
• 24:02
  Speaker 6: I forgave that child who killed my son. I advocated
• 24:06
  Speaker 6: for him to be treated as a juvenile, to go
• 24:07
  Speaker 6: through the juvenile system, and not be treated as an adult,
• 24:11
  Speaker 6: because I felt that him serving a life sentence in
• 24:14
  Speaker 6: a Michigan prison would serve no useful purpose. It wasn't
• 24:17
  Speaker 6: gonna bring my son back. It was only going to
• 24:20
  Speaker 6: deteriorate his family. Our community would rode even further. And
• 24:24
  Speaker 6: I felt that that young man was this victim of
• 24:27
  Speaker 6: the same environmental aspects as myself, my son, and many
• 24:31
  Speaker 6: other black men in the community.
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: That is so extraordinary, And it doesn't stop there. You
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: actually went to bat for a person who murdered your son,
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: your namesake. Yes, And it wasn't like you made a
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: phone call, write or wrote a letter. The fact is
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: that when you started to advocate for this young man
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: who had committed this terrible, terrible crime, pacted you so
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: so devastating to you. The prosecutor didn't want to hear
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: from you. I didn't realize that being an inmate makes
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: you not a father, right. I mean there's nothing in
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: the constitution or anywhere else that says that, right. I
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: mean that that should outweigh any other factor. Right, you
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: would think, of course, in our system, we treat people
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: so terribly, even when it comes to trying to visit
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: in other people who've lost close family members behind bars,
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: you know, if they get to go to the funeral,
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: they have to find a way to pay for the
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: guards to take.
• 25:30
  Speaker 4: Them and things like that.
• 25:31
  Speaker 5: I had to do that.
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: Oh you didn't, yes, So it's not even anomaly. So
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: you had to go to extreme measures to try to
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: get justice for this person who had wronged you.
• 25:45
  Speaker 6: Absolutely, I had to contact the judge. I mean I'm
• 25:48
  Speaker 6: ade phone calls. I was in prison, so I wasn't
• 25:51
  Speaker 6: viewed as a traditional victim so to speak. So that's
• 25:55
  Speaker 6: probably why the prosecutor just kind of ignore my calls
• 25:57
  Speaker 6: and letters to them, trying to, you know, advocate half
• 26:00
  Speaker 6: of this child. Ting to write letters to the court. Yeah,
• 26:03
  Speaker 6: I mean a phone call. I had my ex wife,
• 26:05
  Speaker 6: my son's mother, go down and advocate on his behalf,
• 26:08
  Speaker 6: you know, because she could go there in person and
• 26:10
  Speaker 6: talk to him. It was just we just had to
• 26:13
  Speaker 6: keep at until one day they said we're gonna try
• 26:15
  Speaker 6: him as a juvenile.
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: It's interesting, right, Imagine if it had flipped, if you
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: had been writing letters to the prosecutor saying, I demand
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: that this kid get life in prison, they would have
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: been like, yeah, Ronald, come on, yeah, come testify.
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: That's right, we bring a right into the courtroom.
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: They would have put you understand, you know what I mean? Yeah,
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: for sure, I think that's a pretty safe bet. And
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: so what eventually happened to that young fourteen year old boy.
• 26:39
  Speaker 6: He served seven years in the juvenile attentions facility most
• 26:42
  Speaker 6: of us in Pennsylvania. He got released and he's living
• 26:45
  Speaker 6: in Cincinnati right now. And there's still some connection, right Yeah, Well, actually,
• 26:50
  Speaker 6: I mean the connection is the guy that killed my
• 26:53
  Speaker 6: son was my son's girlfriend's younger brother. And the story
• 26:59
  Speaker 6: is lead from she told me that.
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: I just want to repeat that again. So just for
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: my own sake and for the eyes, it was your
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: son's girlfriend's brother.
• 27:07
  Speaker 6: Right, that killed my son. Okay, And at the time
• 27:12
  Speaker 6: he died, his girlfriend was pregnant with my grandson, with
• 27:16
  Speaker 6: his son because he was born two muths later, So
• 27:20
  Speaker 6: my grandson is the nephew of the guy that killed
• 27:23
  Speaker 6: my son.
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: Holy fuck, Yeah, there you go.
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: I mean I knew that because I have read up
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: on you, but hearing you say it.
• 27:34
  Speaker 5: It's convoluted. But yeah, it's strange in fiction.
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: So, during your just about twenty seven years locked up
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: in maximum security prison, did you spend time in solitary confinement?
• 27:56
  Speaker 6: Yes, I spent several stints in solitary in Michigan administrative segregation.
• 28:02
  Speaker 5: But it's the same thing.
• 28:03
  Speaker 6: And the longest single stretch I stayed might have been
• 28:06
  Speaker 6: eight months or so, but I had like four months here,
• 28:09
  Speaker 6: three months there, two months, eight months over the years,
• 28:13
  Speaker 6: probably close to three years total.
• 28:15
  Speaker 4: Eight months. I'm just I mean eight months.
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: I think if you went to your average person out
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: there and said we need you to stay at the
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: holiday inn for eight months and you know, somewhere in
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: Florida or you know whatever, it's a stupid example, but
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: somebody be like, I can't do that. I mean, I'll
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: go crazy. Eight months. You make a baby in eight months?
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: And what was that like? Because it's a little different everywhere,
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: but it's always the certain things are the same.
• 28:44
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, solitary segregation is it's a prison within
• 28:48
  Speaker 6: a prison, and it's so terrible because the majority of
• 28:53
  Speaker 6: the people over there have mental health issues. Because when
• 28:56
  Speaker 6: you can't follow the rules in prison, this is where
• 28:58
  Speaker 6: they put the people that can't follow the rules.
• 29:00
  Speaker 5: And a lot of people that.
• 29:00
  Speaker 6: Have mental health issues aren't able to follow the rules,
• 29:03
  Speaker 6: so they go over there and they don't get treatment.
• 29:06
  Speaker 5: So it's just it's havoc.
• 29:08
  Speaker 6: You can't sleep all night because they're screaming and hollering
• 29:10
  Speaker 6: and banging all night, banging on the doors, banging on
• 29:12
  Speaker 6: the bar, banging steel lockers, and then they sleep all day.
• 29:16
  Speaker 6: So the first had to get acclimated to that. I
• 29:19
  Speaker 6: had to get see healthcare because I have I was
• 29:21
  Speaker 6: having tension headache. I thought I was having a stroke
• 29:24
  Speaker 6: because it was so bad to smoke because they burned
• 29:26
  Speaker 6: toilet rolls to.
• 29:27
  Speaker 5: Heat water with.
• 29:28
  Speaker 6: And it's just, man, it's just if you ever saw
• 29:32
  Speaker 6: Mad Max be on Thunderdom years and I'm telling my
• 29:34
  Speaker 6: age now back in the eighties, and that whole that
• 29:38
  Speaker 6: sale scene in that movie kind of reminds me of
• 29:41
  Speaker 6: solitary confinement because it was so chaotic and so noisy.
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: And you're locked up in that cell twenty three hours.
• 29:47
  Speaker 5: And twenty three hours a day.
• 29:49
  Speaker 6: You get out for a one hour yard like three
• 29:52
  Speaker 6: days a week, and the other two or three days
• 29:54
  Speaker 6: you get time to get out the shower.
• 29:55
  Speaker 5: You don't get showers every day. You get showered like
• 29:57
  Speaker 5: three days a week.
• 29:59
  Speaker 4: What did you do?
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: I mean, again, I keep coming back to it, but
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: how did you maintain your sanity and your spirit in
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: that prison?
• 30:05
  Speaker 5: Within a prison? I kept busy.
• 30:07
  Speaker 6: I had I had access to my property, and then
• 30:09
  Speaker 6: my property I had. I had my personal library of
• 30:11
  Speaker 6: eight hundred books, so they allowed me to get books
• 30:13
  Speaker 6: out of my property, and I was doing legal work.
• 30:15
  Speaker 5: So I stayed busy while I was in that.
• 30:17
  Speaker 6: I didn't let my mind get off into whatever's going
• 30:20
  Speaker 6: on around me inside the segregation unit. I just stayed
• 30:23
  Speaker 6: busy and kept working until they said we're gonna let
• 30:26
  Speaker 6: you go.
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: And you were able to shut out the noise that
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: way and sort of at least find some sort of sanctuary.
• 30:33
  Speaker 5: And you have to if you don't it to drive
• 30:35
  Speaker 5: you crazy. I see why people go crazy in now.
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: I mean people who are crazy, driving other people crazy
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: and getting crazier while they're doing it. I mean, it
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: really does sound like hell I mean, it's hell inside
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: of hell. So it's like, I don't know what the
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: next thing is that's worse than hell, but that sounds
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: like it. I mean, it's cruel and in human punishment
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: by any stretch of the imagination.
• 30:55
  Speaker 4: And it is an.
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: Added tragedy that we have these people who need mental
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: health treatment who end up in our prisons and then,
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: as you said, can't obey the rules because they can't,
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: not because they don't even necessarily want to, but they can't,
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: and we end up punishing them even more severely and
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: then rendering them completely incapacitated and unable to ever return
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: to society without recidivating and going back to prison because
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: we've made them into what they are. And I keep
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: coming back to it, Glenn said it before.
• 31:25
  Speaker 5: They're human beings, absolutely.
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: I mean that's what gets me, Like, it's so strange
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: how in America we've gotten to a place.
• 31:32
  Speaker 4: Where a switch goes off where the.
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: Minute someone's arrested, they go from being a human being
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: to just being an inmate, and people feel that they
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: can treat them however they want. So let's talk about
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: how you got yourself out and how you ended up
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: working with this guy, Glenn Martin, and what you're doing now.
• 31:52
  Speaker 5: Oh, thank you, thank man.
• 31:54
  Speaker 6: Well, I became a para league about obs inside and
• 31:57
  Speaker 6: I've fought my own case for all those years, and
• 32:00
  Speaker 6: twenty four years into my sentence, I got my conviction overturned.
• 32:03
  Speaker 6: The federal Court's granted habeasts relief on my case. But
• 32:07
  Speaker 6: the crazy thing about that, the state appealed the reversal
• 32:10
  Speaker 6: of my conviction and I sat in prison for three
• 32:12
  Speaker 6: more years without a conviction because the court wouldn't grant
• 32:15
  Speaker 6: me bond.
• 32:15
  Speaker 5: They just they wouldn't even rule on it.
• 32:17
  Speaker 6: They just left me sitting there for three more years,
• 32:20
  Speaker 6: and my case was reversed on prosecutor misconduct.
• 32:23
  Speaker 5: That's the issue in which I got released.
• 32:25
  Speaker 7: On prosecutorial misconduct, and they wait three more years for
• 32:29
  Speaker 7: the same prosecutor's office to figure out what they want
• 32:32
  Speaker 7: to do exactly.
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it's the fox guarding the henhouse. It's
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: a reality in our system, and it's just it's so
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: it's one of the reasons why it's so broken.
• 32:42
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I ended up the court, the federal court, the
• 32:44
  Speaker 6: Federal Peller Court ordered them to either grant me a
• 32:46
  Speaker 6: new trial or release me. So I go back down
• 32:49
  Speaker 6: to the circuit court and the prosecutor they offer me
• 32:52
  Speaker 6: a plea bargain, said well, if you take this plea bargain,
• 32:54
  Speaker 6: you can go home today. I said, if I don't
• 32:57
  Speaker 6: get to go home today, I'm not taking it. So
• 32:59
  Speaker 6: I took the plea bargain. But there was some confusion
• 33:01
  Speaker 6: behind that because that's I agreed to it. And the
• 33:04
  Speaker 6: judge went on the record because the judge wanted me
• 33:06
  Speaker 6: to walk out the courtroom, but the Department of Corrections
• 33:09
  Speaker 6: the officers were saying, well, we got orders to bring
• 33:11
  Speaker 6: him back and they want to recalculate his time, and
• 33:14
  Speaker 6: the judge was like, what I said, he got time served.
• 33:17
  Speaker 6: So the judge adjourned, got off the bench. He went
• 33:21
  Speaker 6: back and called the Department of Corrections himself. He called
• 33:23
  Speaker 6: the central office in Lancy, Michigan, and he's like, I
• 33:26
  Speaker 6: want to let this guy go home now, and they
• 33:28
  Speaker 6: were telling him the same crack, Well, we got a procedure,
• 33:30
  Speaker 6: we have to reclculate that time, make sure they are
• 33:32
  Speaker 6: able to be released, and to just say, okay, I
• 33:34
  Speaker 6: got this. The judge came back out beat red. He
• 33:37
  Speaker 6: went back on the record and he changed the whole
• 33:39
  Speaker 6: plea barging. He said, not only am I sentenced to
• 33:43
  Speaker 6: time served, but I'm going to mend a sentence to
• 33:45
  Speaker 6: fifteen years.
• 33:47
  Speaker 5: I had already been out over my sentence by twelve me.
• 33:49
  Speaker 6: He gave me a ten to fifteen year sentence, which
• 33:52
  Speaker 6: made me pass my out date by twelve years to
• 33:54
  Speaker 6: make sure I went home right there.
• 33:56
  Speaker 4: Good for him. Yeah, it's nice to hear those stories.
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: We spent so much time talking about prosecutoring misconduct and
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: other misdeeds in the system that it's important to highlight
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: people like that judge who.
• 34:08
  Speaker 5: Yeah, he had courage and he did what was right.
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: That courage and those people can make a huge difference,
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: and we need more of them, and more power to
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: you too as well. I mean the idea that you
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: figured out a way to represent yourself and overturn this
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: crazy conviction, which I'm sure they made it as difficult
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: as they could. They always do, but when there's a
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: case of a police officer being shot, they're going to
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: make it extra extra hard if they can. So you
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: figured it out and then you come out and the
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: world looks a lot different.
• 34:42
  Speaker 6: Huh, oh man, I was compared to our the feeling
• 34:45
  Speaker 6: I had. I felt like Fred Finstone stepping onto the
• 34:48
  Speaker 6: set of the j Justsons.
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: Of the Justons. Yeah, exactly right. I mean almost twenty seven.
• 34:57
  Speaker 5: Years that it felt like coming out.
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: I mean change, yeah, I mean even imagine if somebody
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: going in today comes out twenty seven years from now,
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: God knows what everything's gonna be, it really will.
• 35:06
  Speaker 4: Be the Jetsons by then.
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: Exactly how did you end up linking up with Glenn
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: and his organization?
• 35:11
  Speaker 4: And Glenn, can you.
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: Talk a little bit about what it is that you're
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: doing a Just Leadership. There's so much that it's hard
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: for me to get it into a sound bite.
• 35:18
  Speaker 4: Sure.
• 35:19
  Speaker 7: At Just Leadership, we have the goal of cutting the
• 35:21
  Speaker 7: number of people under correctional supervision in America in half
• 35:24
  Speaker 7: by twenty thirty. So that means probation, parole, correction, prison, jails,
• 35:29
  Speaker 7: you name it. And the reason we have this ambitious
• 35:31
  Speaker 7: goal is because we have a criminal justice system that
• 35:34
  Speaker 7: is just off the charts. That's just a jugging out
• 35:36
  Speaker 7: of a system that's locking up so many people. And
• 35:40
  Speaker 7: we do that by investing in the leadership of people
• 35:43
  Speaker 7: like Ronald And it's counterintuitive, but the truth is that's
• 35:46
  Speaker 7: how you build movements, that's how you undo systems that
• 35:49
  Speaker 7: dehumanize people, is to invest in the very.
• 35:52
  Speaker 5: People who have been dehumanized.
• 35:54
  Speaker 7: And you listen to Ronald's case, and you realize that
• 35:57
  Speaker 7: we have a criminal justice system that just labels people
• 35:59
  Speaker 7: and put them on a conveyor belt and sends them
• 36:01
  Speaker 7: on their way, and you can never shake off the label,
• 36:03
  Speaker 7: except when you listen to Ronald's story, it's not just riveting.
• 36:08
  Speaker 7: You recognize his humanity in the middle of that story.
• 36:12
  Speaker 7: And so here you have Ronald who's a sophisticated advocate
• 36:16
  Speaker 7: by any stretch of imagination, but also he has this
• 36:19
  Speaker 7: story that is not just compelling, but it works as
• 36:23
  Speaker 7: a way to help other people rehumanize people who are
• 36:26
  Speaker 7: in the system. And I think that for us to
• 36:28
  Speaker 7: start treating people differently, we have to recognize that they're
• 36:30
  Speaker 7: people that their fathers and uncles and brothers and sisters.
• 36:34
  Speaker 7: And Ronald's story, as difficult as it is to listen to,
• 36:38
  Speaker 7: because the criminal justice system and all of its perverse
• 36:40
  Speaker 7: incentives led to all of those tragedies. In the end,
• 36:44
  Speaker 7: I think what's most compelling is the story of a
• 36:47
  Speaker 7: father who, while suffering in this system, found a way
• 36:51
  Speaker 7: to be compassionate for a child who he didn't want
• 36:54
  Speaker 7: to see end up facing the same sort of human
• 36:57
  Speaker 7: carnage that comes out of our system now.
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: And in fact, this same sentence that you were facing.
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: That's just another irony of the whole situation. You had
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: to come out and navigate this new world, figure out
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: why everybody's walking around with some sort of a gadget
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: glued to their face, right, and everything else that goes
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: with the technology, everything, everything is completely upside down from
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: when you went in, for sure, because that let's facing
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: that's almost three decades. I'm sure some people that are
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: listening haven't even been alive that long, right, And so, well,
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: how'd you end up connecting with Glenn and just leadership
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: because you're you're in Michigan. I mean, it's not you know,
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: it's sort of I mean, it's not the easiest thing
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: in the world, is exactly.
• 37:35
  Speaker 7: I think I met him sitting in the trailer.
• 37:39
  Speaker 6: Well before that, we met me when you came to
• 37:41
  Speaker 6: my job at the trailer. What happened was in twenty fourteen,
• 37:44
  Speaker 6: I was a Pamiliss at University of Michigan at a
• 37:46
  Speaker 6: conference or convention there and Glenn was the keynot speaker
• 37:49
  Speaker 6: for the student group had some kind of meet and
• 37:51
  Speaker 6: going criminal justice reform conference going, so Glenn was the
• 37:54
  Speaker 6: keynot speaking.
• 37:55
  Speaker 5: I was a PAMILSS and afterward we met.
• 37:57
  Speaker 6: He came to I worked at American France Service Committee
• 38:00
  Speaker 6: and our office was in a garage in Anna Aburt, Michigan,
• 38:04
  Speaker 6: and Glenn came to the garage and I met him
• 38:07
  Speaker 6: there and we talked and he told me this vision
• 38:10
  Speaker 6: that he had for starting this organization. He was working
• 38:12
  Speaker 6: on it at that time, and he was telling me that,
• 38:14
  Speaker 6: you know, he wanted me to apply for it when
• 38:16
  Speaker 6: the application went live, and he explained to me that, you know,
• 38:19
  Speaker 6: his theory of those closest to the problem of being
• 38:21
  Speaker 6: closest to the solution. And I always get a kick
• 38:24
  Speaker 6: out when I think that, because I teased Messa, if
• 38:26
  Speaker 6: I getting any closest to the problem, it's going to
• 38:27
  Speaker 6: kill me after spending twenty seven years in prison, So
• 38:32
  Speaker 6: I was. He offered me this opportunity to join his organization.
• 38:36
  Speaker 6: So end of twenty fourteen, I did the application and
• 38:39
  Speaker 6: got accepted to the first cohort for twenty fifteen, and
• 38:42
  Speaker 6: I went through the Just Leadership year long Leading with
• 38:45
  Speaker 6: Conviction training and it was an amazing experience and a
• 38:49
  Speaker 6: life changing the experience with Glenn and the guys he
• 38:52
  Speaker 6: had training us. And at the end of that process
• 38:55
  Speaker 6: and the end of twenty fifteen, Glenn was in the
• 38:57
  Speaker 6: process of hiring his staff, his first staff people for
• 39:00
  Speaker 6: Just Leadership, and he offered me a position, which I took.
• 39:04
  Speaker 4: And what is your job?
• 39:05
  Speaker 5: Now?
• 39:05
  Speaker 4: What do you do every day?
• 39:07
  Speaker 6: I'm the alumni associate for the organization. I'm the point
• 39:10
  Speaker 6: of engagement for our three hundred and sixty six leaders
• 39:13
  Speaker 6: in twenty nine states plus Washington, DC. We just added
• 39:17
  Speaker 6: thirty six more leaders, so we're gonna have four hundred
• 39:19
  Speaker 6: and two leaders in thirty one states.
• 39:20
  Speaker 4: What is a leader.
• 39:22
  Speaker 6: Formally encarcerated people that go through our training process. We
• 39:25
  Speaker 6: have a year long Leading with Conviction training that we
• 39:27
  Speaker 6: do here in New York City, and we have a
• 39:29
  Speaker 6: one day snapshot of that training called Emerging leaders Training
• 39:32
  Speaker 6: that we do. We do travel around the country doing
• 39:35
  Speaker 6: at various locations, and the people that go through the
• 39:37
  Speaker 6: programs become part of our network of leaders.
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: And what do those leaders do on a daily basis?
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: So what's their job. Oh, they have their own job.
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: Lot of them run nonprofit organizations. One of them work
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: for the Department of Justice.
• 39:49
  Speaker 6: Some do policy in Alaska, some do reentry in Florida,
• 39:53
  Speaker 6: some do re entry in California, the some of the
• 39:55
  Speaker 6: drug counselors. They do a wide range of things dealing
• 39:59
  Speaker 6: with criminal justice reform.
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: I mean, now I see why you're smiling so much,
• 40:03
  Speaker 3: because you're now able to do something that is causing.
• 40:07
  Speaker 4: A ripple effect.
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, because everybody that you help is helping dozens of
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: other people and then training them to go on and
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: you know, and then all of this leads to twenty
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: thirty when me and Glenn are probably could have finally
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: take a vac case.
• 40:21
  Speaker 4: That's right, that's right, I'm with you, that's probably. That's
• 40:24
  Speaker 4: probably as soon as we can hope for. But you know,
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: it's okay.
• 40:28
  Speaker 6: It's funny because Glenn like carved out the perfect spot
• 40:30
  Speaker 6: for me, I mean, for my talents, for this job.
• 40:32
  Speaker 6: I mean, I'm like the point of engagement for this
• 40:35
  Speaker 6: for all our cohort, and I leaded. I have such
• 40:37
  Speaker 6: a relationship with him. Lot them call me Uncle Ronald.
• 40:39
  Speaker 6: They come to the core. Hey, Cole Ronald, It's like
• 40:42
  Speaker 6: we have a lot of fun.
• 40:43
  Speaker 7: The most personable men I've ever met in my life
• 40:45
  Speaker 7: did twenty seven years in prison. Seriously, Ronald's attitude is.
• 40:49
  Speaker 7: I mean, you find people that have vast amounts of
• 40:53
  Speaker 7: other sorts of wealth and don't have the spirit that
• 40:56
  Speaker 7: Ronald has.
• 40:57
  Speaker 4: No, no, and he's charming, you know what I mean.
• 40:59
  Speaker 4: I can say that I may start. I don't know
• 41:04
  Speaker 4: if I.
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: Can call you, but this is really what a story,
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: what a full circle, and what an incredible spirit you have.
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: I mean, I'm just uh, and you know it's amazing
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: because I feel so I don't know. The only word
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: I can think of is blessed to be able to
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: be in a position to be around people like yourself,
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: and to be able to do my part in helping
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: to change the conversation around this issue and to help
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: individuals both in getting themselves out of prison when they
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: don't belong there and returning to life, reintegrating it to
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: society and excelling as you've done. It's an amazing process
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: and it's you know, like I said, it just every time.
• 41:54
  Speaker 4: It never ceases to amaze me.
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: And you are as good of an example, and as
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: good of an ambassador or as anybody could ever hope
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: to have. So, Ronald, this has been an experience I'm
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: not going to forget, and I'm looking forward to having
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: more great experiences with you and working together in this fight.
• 42:16
  Speaker 5: Looking forward to it.
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: But we have a tradition here on wrongful Conviction. I
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: like to turn the microphone over to our futured guest,
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: well you and Glenn, and give you each an opportunity
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: to just say whatever it is it's on your mind,
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: anything that we haven't covered, or anything you want to
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: say about anything.
• 42:34
  Speaker 6: I think in a nutshell for me, I mean, you
• 42:35
  Speaker 6: kind of hit on it about the humanity. I think
• 42:38
  Speaker 6: my whole mission in life at this point is to
• 42:42
  Speaker 6: put the humanity back into being human. We've gotten away
• 42:44
  Speaker 6: from that. And can you see how crass our society is,
• 42:48
  Speaker 6: you know, all these shooting, how crazy it is because
• 42:50
  Speaker 6: everyone's mad at each other and.
• 42:51
  Speaker 5: For what usually superficial reasons.
• 42:54
  Speaker 6: If we took time to look at each other as humans,
• 42:57
  Speaker 6: to treat each other as humans, just to follow the
• 42:59
  Speaker 6: simple golden rule treat the other people how you want
• 43:01
  Speaker 6: to be treated, you know, learn develop a measure of empathy,
• 43:04
  Speaker 6: not sympathy, but empathy putting yourself in the other person's shoes,
• 43:08
  Speaker 6: And for me, that would go a long way and
• 43:10
  Speaker 6: resolving a lot of issues that we had because in
• 43:13
  Speaker 6: order for us to make some type of sustainable reform,
• 43:16
  Speaker 6: especially for criminal justice reform, we need hardened mind change,
• 43:19
  Speaker 6: and that comes through putting the humanity back into being human.
• 43:24
  Speaker 7: You know, Jason, I went from exiting prison owing one
• 43:28
  Speaker 7: hundred thousand dollars in fines, fees, restitution, find myself in
• 43:32
  Speaker 7: midtown Manhattan, trying to figure out what's next, unable to
• 43:34
  Speaker 7: find a job, to meeting one on one with the
• 43:37
  Speaker 7: President of the United States thirteen years later. And the
• 43:41
  Speaker 7: more I emerged as the exception is, the more I
• 43:44
  Speaker 7: realized that it was reinforcing the existing narrative about everyone else.
• 43:48
  Speaker 7: And so the question was, how can I one help
• 43:51
  Speaker 7: people understand that I'm not the exception, that I was
• 43:54
  Speaker 7: exposed to exceptional opportunities, and to expose other formerly acclustrated
• 43:59
  Speaker 7: leaders Ronald to the sort of opportunities that I've been
• 44:02
  Speaker 7: exposed to. And you know, we tend to think that
• 44:04
  Speaker 7: there's some voiceless people out there. I don't think they
• 44:07
  Speaker 7: are voiceless people. I think there are people who've been
• 44:08
  Speaker 7: deliberately silenced, and it just leadership USA. We create a
• 44:12
  Speaker 7: space for people who've been silenced to not just have voice,
• 44:15
  Speaker 7: but to end up in much closer proximity with the
• 44:17
  Speaker 7: people I think need to hear these messages. And Ronald
• 44:20
  Speaker 7: is just one of our hundreds of ambassadors at this point,
• 44:24
  Speaker 7: but I appreciate the opportunity to be on here and
• 44:26
  Speaker 7: create space for Ronald to tell his story. I just
• 44:29
  Speaker 7: think it's hugely important for people who try to find
• 44:32
  Speaker 7: compassion day to day in the world that we live
• 44:35
  Speaker 7: in to recognize that there are people who have been
• 44:38
  Speaker 7: through a tremendous amount of tragedy and still exercise humanity.
• 44:42
  Speaker 7: And I think it challenges the rest of us to
• 44:44
  Speaker 7: step up and be bolder and to lead with our values.
• 44:54
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• 44:57
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• 44:58
  Speaker 4: It really helps.
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project, and I
• 45:02
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• 45:05
  Speaker 3: cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: Innocence Project dot org to learn how to donate.
• 45:12
  Speaker 4: And get involved.
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall and
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: Kevin Wartis. The music in the show is by three
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: time OSCAR nominatede composer Jay Ralph.
• 45:21
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• 45:27
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• 45:30
  Speaker 3: for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one