Latest / The Joe Rogan Recap / Josh Dubin (2026) - DNA Theft, Corruption and Justice Failures

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Josh Dubin (2026) - DNA Theft, Corruption and Justice Failures · The Joe Rogan Recap

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  Welcome to the Joe Rogan recap. And before we get going, please
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  follow us right here on Spotify to make sure you get sight of
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  our latest episodes in your feed.
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  Today, we are doing a deep dive into the, well, they're very
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  complex and often dark machinery of legal justice.
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  Our mission here is to really try and understand why this
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  system fails so often. And it's not just incompetence
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  we're talking about, you know, intentional corruption, systemic
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  bias in this, this really profound inability to just admit
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  error. And the sources we've been
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  looking at, they detail some just incredible high stakes
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  failures. I mean, from these bizarre plots
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  involving DNA theft, yeah, to just deeply frustrating
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  political pardon policies, right.
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  What's immediately clear, I think, when you look at these
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  cases is that the closer you examine the justice system, the
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  stories just get, well, they get more alarming, more nitty, not
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  more routine. These specific incidents we're
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  looking at, they really reveal some kind of universal truths
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  about how institutions resist change and the human cost of
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  that failure. So let's start with that
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  fundamental human thing, the difficulty of admitting when
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  you're wrong. In the justice system, we see
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  sort of two main categories of failure.
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  The 1st is just outright corruption, you know, framing
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  someone. Which is terrifying, but it's
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  it's actually less common. The second type, and this is far
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  more common, is that scenario where, say, law enforcement or a
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  forensic team gets a really powerful hunch.
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  They think they know who did it. They know who did it in their
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  minds, and then they start to either subconsciously or or
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  sometimes overtly force the evidence to match that theory
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  they already have. And that's where the mistakes
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  turn into injustices. That's the pipeline.
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  Yeah, This behavior, it connects so directly to what Malcolm
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  Gladwell was talking about in his book Revenge of the Tipping
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  Point. He analyzed the opioid
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  executives who testified before Congress.
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  Yeah, I remember this. And he noted that they just
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  could not bring themselves to say their drug caused addiction.
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  They used these euphemisms like it was associated with
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  addiction. They just avoided admitting
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  guilt at all costs. And that refusal to apologize,
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  to admit fault, it goes way beyond the corporate world.
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  It becomes absolutely critical in a legal setting.
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  Because if you admit it. Right.
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  If an institution or a person admits fault in, say, an
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  inquiry, that admission can be used against them in a civil or
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  criminal lawsuit later on, you could be looking at perjury,
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  massive financial liability. So the lawyers, they advise
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  using this, this protective language.
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  That makes sense from a legal strategy point of view, but
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  doesn't it just completely undermine public trust?
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  When an institution is more concerned with protecting itself
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  than with accountability, it just feels like they're putting
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  their stability above the truth. It absolutely does.
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  The culture, especially for people in power, is that they
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  have to be infallible, you know, never wrong.
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  So they bury the truth to protect that image.
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  It's a sign of weakness, really. It is, but they see it as
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  strength. You know, we saw this amazing
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  counterpoint to this in a recent trial about an unaccredited DNA
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  lab. A scientist was on the stand and
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  he was being questioned about an internal e-mail.
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  In the e-mail, a negative DNA result for a suspect was
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  labeled. The bad news?
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  Bad news for a scientist, A result is just a result, isn't
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  it? It shouldn't be good or bad.
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  Exactly. It shouldn't have any emotional
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  weight. And in this moment of just
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  remarkable candor and the transcripts note how rare this
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  was, the expert on the stand admitted Quote.
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  I wouldn't have used those words.
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  He acknowledged that language had no place in a real
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  scientific assessment. Wow, that's the kind of
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  transparency you're always fighting for but almost never
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  get. Never.
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  It was a stunning moment speaking.
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  Of science being warped. Let's jump into this Perlmutter
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  DNA case. It resulted in a massive what
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  was it? A $50 million verdict. 50
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  million for defamation and abuse of process.
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  And this case was so important, it actually led to the naming of
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  the Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice at Cardozo Law.
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  So what's the background here? It started over something
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  smaller. Unbelievably small Ike
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  Perlmuter, who was the chairman of Marvel, and his wife Lori,
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  were lured into a deposition over a petty dispute with their
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  neighbor about a tennis pro. A tennis pro.
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  But the neighbor's real motive was much, much darker.
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  He'd been getting this horrific, anonymous hate mail.
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  Terrible stuff, accusing him of being a child molester or a
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  murderer. Just awful.
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  And he was completely convinced the Pearl mutters were behind
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  it. So he sets up this elaborate
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  plot. Yeah, hires people.
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  Hires a former crime scene analyst and a retired Toronto
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  deputy police chief. They turn this deposition room
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  into a trap. They're so careful not to touch
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  anything, the Pearl mutters Touch.
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  But they make sure they deliberately ensure that Lori
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  handles one specific water bottle.
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  So they can get her DNA. As soon as the perlmutters
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  leave, they bag that bottle like it's evidence from a murder
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  scene. All to collect her DNA without
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  consent. It's just wild.
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  And then that stolen DNA goes to an unaccredited lab, which then
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  claims what? That her DNA from the bottle
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  matches the DNA on the hate mail.
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  Exactly. And this is where the science
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  gets completely corrupted by the desired outcome, because the
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  accredited lab, the one that initially handled the testing
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  they had actually discarded an entire run of DNA tests.
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  They threw it out. What?
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  They realized their own technician had contaminated the
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  test. He'd accidentally mixed Laurie's
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  DNA sample into the positive control mixture.
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  Oh wow, so that means the entire test run is just.
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  It's fundamentally unreliable. It's useless.
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  Totally compromised. The accredited lab did the right
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  thing integrity wise and threw out the data, but the neighbors
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  unaccredited lab which was under pressure to get a result.
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  They used the bad data. They relied on that known bad
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  compromised run to fabricate a match.
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  Unbelievable. The lesson here is that DNA
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  isn't magic. The human chain of custody, the
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  interpretation, that's always the weakest link.
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  It is thankfully, the real person sending the letters.
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  A former business associate of the neighbor, was eventually
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  caught. Homeland Security intercepted a
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  package and the Pearl mutters won their $50 million verdict,
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  which helped restore their name. And you know, it put a spotlight
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  on these vulnerabilities and forensics.
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  Let's pivot from there to the world of just intentional
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  framing with the case of Nelson Cruz.
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  It's devastating. This case is just it's a perfect
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  storm of corruption. It was a 1998 murder in
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  Brooklyn. The police were on the scene.
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  They literally saw the muzzle flash.
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  And they arrested a guy named Eduardo Rodriguez holding the
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  smoking gun. So case closed.
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  They got him red handed. You would think, but Rodriguez
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  was handed over to Detective Louis Garcella and that name is
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  now notorious. Right.
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  How many cases connected to him have been thrown out?
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  21 convictions have been vacated because of his involvement.
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  He is the definition of institutional corruption.
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  So what did he do here? His team just manufactured a
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  story. Rodriguez, the guy holding the
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  gun, suddenly claims that 16 year old Nelson Cruz fired the
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  shot, dropped the gun, and he, Rodriguez, just happened to pick
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  it up. But the arresting officer who
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  saw the flash never saw Cruz. Never saw him.
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  The story was a complete fabrication.
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  But Cruz was charged and convicted.
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  Rodriguez, the actual killer, was never even put on the stand.
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  The prosecution's whole case rested on this one dodgy witness
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  who was later outed as a liar. It's a total failure of duty
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  from Tom to bottom. And what just compounds the
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  tragedy is what happened years later during a post conviction
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  hearing. Everyone expected Cruz to
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  finally be exonerated, but the judge ruled against him, just
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  inexplicably. Why?
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  It was discovered later that the judge resigned immediately after
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  that ruling. He never took the bench again.
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  He had advanced stage Alzheimer's disease.
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  Wait. A man's freedom, his life hinged
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  on a ruling from a judge suffering from severe cognitive
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  decline that just that breaks the entire system it.
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  Does Cruz was finally paroled in 2023 after 26 years.
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  He's deeply scarred, and he is still, to this day, wrongfully
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  convicted on paper. And the guy who actually did it?
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  Rodriguez. He's out.
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  And here's the ultimate systemic failure.
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  It is shockingly rare for the actual perpetrator to be
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  prosecuted after an exoneration. It defies all logic, but the
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  agencies, they're worried about massive civil rights lawsuits if
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  they admit their mistake. So the original mistake protects
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  the real criminal. Decades later, it's almost
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  impossible to reassemble the case.
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  So yeah, the mistake protects the killer.
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  This indifference. It just bleeds into policy too,
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  creating this human mess around things like immigration and
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  clemency. I was reading about the Albanian
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  green card holder. Oh that case is heartbreaking.
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  This is a man who came to the US in the 70s, survived A refugee
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  camp, built a whole life. 5 kids, 8 grandkids in 51 years.
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  He didn't have so much as a traffic ticket. 51 years.
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  And he gets flagged for deportation proceedings after a
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  trip abroad because of an old conviction from when he was a
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  young. Man, and that original crime, it
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  was self-defense, wasn't? It it was a gas station
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  attendant shot his brother over $100 bill and A and he shot the
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  attendant. He was sentenced to four to
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  seven years and got out in under 4.
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  This is exactly the kind of person who should be an American
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  success story. He contributed for five decades.
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  But under the current immigration laws, there's just
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  there's no flexibility because of the technical definition of
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  that old crime. He becomes what they call an
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  easy picking for removal, maybe to meet some internal quota,
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  regardless of his half century of being a model resident.
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  The arbitrary nature of it all. It's even worse in the political
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  world of pardons. The Michael Giles case in
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  Florida. This one is just awful.
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  Michael Giles, an Air Force veteran licensed to carry a
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  weapon. A man takes a full Sprint at his
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  head, clearly intending to knock him out cold.
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  The Giles defends himself. He's on the ground, he shoots
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  the attacker in the leg to stop the assault.
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  It's a textbook self-defense case.
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  But Florida has those mandatory minimum laws.
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  Exactly rules that strip judges of their discretion.
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  So despite the facts, Giles was sentenced to 25 years.
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  He served 15, was a model inmate, never got a single
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  ticket. So he applies for clemency and.
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  Everyone expects it to happen. He gets overwhelming support
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  even from US Attorneys. Governor DeSantis demands this
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  exhaustive, detailed release plan, which they complete and
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  then at the very last second. He changes his mind.
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  Changes his mind for and I quote.
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  No fucking articulated reason. Just no.
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  And there's a racial component to this, isn't there, with the
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  original prosecutor? A huge 1.
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  The prosecutor, Jack Campbell, was the subject of a DOJ
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  investigation. They found a memo in his office.
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  What did they? It listed extensive criminal
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  history and or Hispanic as reasons for harsher judgement.
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  It suggests a clear potential for racial motivation in
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  charging Giles, a black man, so aggressively in what was a clear
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  self-defense case. All of this, it all connects
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  back to our first point about institutional lies, which brings
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  us to marijuana. We just saw it rescheduled to
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  Schedule 3. Right.
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  Same as Tylenol with codeine. It's a step towards sanity,
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  toward legalization, based on the principle that adults should
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  be free to make informed choices.
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  But it's. Critical to remember that the
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  whole reason it was criminalized in the 1st place was built on a
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  massive. Lie An industrial and political
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  lie. It's the ultimate example of
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  self-interest creating decades of systemic harm.
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  Right. I mean, the history is pretty
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  clear. Hemp was this superior renewable
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  commodity. They called it the new billion
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  dollar crop used for everything, paper canvas.
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  But then in the 30s they invent the decorticator, which makes
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  processing hemp super easy and that threatens some very
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  powerful people. William Randolph Hearst to own
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  paper mills and Harry Anslinger at the Treasury Department.
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  And they launch a propaganda campaign.
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  Reefer Madness. They used racial hysteria to
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  demonize marijuana, which was just a slang term to effectively
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  make the entire cannabis plant illegal.
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  And 90 years later, we are still dealing with the fallout.
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  People serving these barbaric sentences under laws we now know
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  we're based on fabricated hysteria.
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  Which raises a paradox, right? If pot prohibition was just
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  about industrial self-interest, why do we view a drug like
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  cocaine so differently? It's more addictive, sure, but
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  alcohol is perfectly legal and incredibly destructive.
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  The logical extension that argument is that if you
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  legalized and regulated these substances, you'd put the
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  cartels out of business overnight.
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  You'd reduce overdose deaths because the product would be
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  pure tested. But the political will for that
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  kind of shift in the US is just it's non existent.
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  So it's the same cycle we keep seeing.
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  The refusal to admit a mistake, protecting A corrupt cop,
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  denying clemency for political reasons, the historical lie
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  about a plant. The system just resists
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  accountability at every single turn.
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  Because the political and career cost of doing the right thing is
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  just too high for most officials.
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  We saw that Ohio prosecutor JD Tomlinson.
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  He vacated A conviction and the incoming prosecutor immediately
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  targeted him with a fraud claim. The system attacks its own who
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  try to fix it. But we have to rely on that
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  external pressure, that old quote, truth crush to earth,
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  shall rise again. Officials do not like operating
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  under the light. Exactly.
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  And to help with that, there's a plan to create a public
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  repository of trial transcripts and public records.
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  It's so vital so that you, the listener, can actually look at
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  the source material and make your own judgement instead of
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  just relying on headlines. If we bring all this back to the
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  core theme, it forces you to wonder about the source of all
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  this. Why is it so hard to break this
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  cycle? That's the big question.
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  I mean, think about it, if there's something inherent in
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  authority that makes people I don't know get drunk on power
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  and ignore their conscience? Or is the world just unfair and
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  this is the result of the constant fight it takes to make
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  good win out over what's easy? That is the question every
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  single one of these cases raises.
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  But you know, let's end this deep dive on a rare positive
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  note. Jelly Roll, the rapper and
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  advocate. He just received a full pardon
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  from the governor of Tennessee, a small but moving sign that
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  sometimes, sometimes, justice can find a way.