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Meet The Real Divine G portrayed in Oscar Nominated Sing Sing Movie · Nightmare Success In and Out

• 0:00
  What happens when your worst fear becomes your reality?
• 0:03
  Hi, I'm Brent Cassidy, welcome to the Nightmare Success in our
• 0:07
  podcast where we explore how to overcome your fears and
• 0:10
  nightmares that set yourself free.
• 0:12
  We're going to be exploring this topic with guys that was in
• 0:15
  Bucklemore and others who survived their own nightmare.
• 0:19
  These stories can be inspiring, sometimes sad.
• 0:23
  There's some humor, but hopefully you can come away with
• 0:26
  a nug or something that'll help you knock down some of the
• 0:28
  prisons you built up in your own mind.
• 0:33
  All right, welcome back, nightmare success in and out.
• 0:37
  Listeners, this is where you come from.
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  What happens when your war is free becomes your reality.
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  How do you adapt, survive, overcome, set yourself free,
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  folks, don't forget to follow, subscribe, share this thing out,
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  like it up. It helps the show.
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  Comment, do all those things. It helps the show.
• 0:52
  So who are we talking to today? I have a treat for the listeners
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  out there for I'm a success in and out people who like to hear
• 1:02
  some incredible stories. So I've got Divine G Whitfield
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  and I've got somebody who's been on the show before.
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  He's episode 124, Jeffrey Deskovic.
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  Let me give you a little background on Divine G Whitfield
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  because you might have heard of him lately.
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  He was just at the Oscars. The guy was just at the Oscars.
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  And you know why he was at the Oscars?
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  Because he was the real life inspiration behind Coleman
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  Domingo's character and the critically acclaimed movie Sing
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  Sing, which I went to. I loved.
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  I never knew that I was going to be talking to Divine G and, and
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  here we are. And it was, it was so good and
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  the movie was so real and made people feel so much that it was
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  recognized by the Academy Awards for three quality categories for
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  best actor for best screenplay Adaption and Best Original Song.
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  And it was, if you haven't gone out to see it, you got to check
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  this movie out it you feel it. I mean, you walk out and this is
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  something that you feel days after.
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  But the divine G was a he was the Co writer and of the and for
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  the Oscar nominated screenplay executive producer.
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  As depicted in the movie, Divine G served 25 years in prison for
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  a crime he didn't commit. He didn't commit.
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  It's in the movie. It's in the movie.
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  While in prison, he Co founded the Rehabilitation through the
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  Arts, which is an incredible, it's it's amazing how these guys
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  were able to come together and put this thing together and and
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  they talk about that, you know, they left the prison walls and
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  they came together and they put on these theater productions and
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  they became something. And it was, it was an incredible
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  feeling, one that I left the theater thinking, my gosh, that
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  was just more than a movie. Divine G has 8 published novels,
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  8 published novels, seven of which have been adapted into
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  screenplays. And he is.
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  He continues to fight for his exoneration and has a conviction
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  review complaint pending in the Kings County D as Conviction
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  Review unit. This case has been lingering for
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  seven years. So this brings in Jeffrey
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  Deskovic. Why would Jeffrey Deskovic be
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  somebody that divine Jesus should be intertwined with?
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  Because Jeffrey was wrongly convicted of a rape and murder
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  and he was finally exonerated on DNA.
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  But he had to serve 16 years in prison from 17 years old until
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  he was 32. He founded the Jeffrey Deskovic
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  Foundation for Justice, which has freed over 14 people and has
• 4:02
  helped pass 6 laws. He is an inspiration.
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  I am so honored to have met him. I'm so honored that he's been on
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  the show. Can't believe he's on the show
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  again. But for us to be able to talk
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  about Divine G, have Jeffrey on here as a full circle, full
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  cycle of what he's been through and now helping someone else's.
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  How do you pay this forward? It's, it's, it's, it's why we,
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  we come all here to listen to these stories.
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  I can't wait to jump into all this.
• 4:31
  Before we do, I want to recognize our show sponsor, Auto
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  concierge. The new hassle freeway, the car
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  abiding experience you deserve. Auto Plaza Direct telling Brent
• 5:07
  from nightmare success sent you. OK, guys, here we are.
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  Welcome in Divine Jeez. And Jeffrey Deskovic, how is
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  everybody? Good, good.
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  Thank you for inviting me. I.
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  Love you as well. Well, it's an honor to have both
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  of you. Devon, I got to tell you, it's
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  it's incredible what you've been through.
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  It's incredible that you've been able to do what you've done when
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  you've gotten out. And I just asked you before you
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  got on, what was it like to you? Just you just went to the
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  Oscars. You had you had a guy that
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  played you in a movie and he's an incredible actor, by the way,
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  Coleman Domingo. And he's up for best actor.
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  What can you just let us all in on this?
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  What? What did that feel like?
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  I mean, obviously it was a feeling of a lifetime.
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  I mean, it's, I mean, it's almost undescribable because
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  when we wrote this movie and we produced it and put it all
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  together, I mean, we didn't even fathom that it would go this
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  far. I mean, you know, so it was not
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  not a total shocker, but it was it was amazing.
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  And Coleman Domingo did a spectacular job at portraying
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  me. I mean and.
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  I mean, he's a cool cat. I mean, this guy Coleman Domingo
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  is I mean, and and you know, you had to have had A and I'm sure
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  you did a connection with him as you were getting started with
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  this movie and and you and him him playing you.
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  I mean, what was that like? Well, we, we did have a lot in
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  common. I kind of noticed once we
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  started getting to know each other and talking and doing all
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  the research into the, the whole writing process is like he's AII
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  consider myself a natural born helper.
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  You know, I you, I go out of my way to help people.
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  I get pleasure out of helping people.
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  And he's the same way. He he, he, he calls himself the
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  equity deputy. I like that.
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  Out of his way to really make sure that anything he gets
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  involved in, it's about showing love and helping and you know,
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  pulling people up. Because our movie in the Raw is
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  all about humanity helping people.
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  Even though the wrongful conviction component is a small
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  little element, but it's a critical element because it
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  shows and proves that no matter what people go through, you
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  know, we can find ways to heal and help and we can take bad
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  situations and take lemons and turn it into lemonades.
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  And one of my missions was that I vowed that I was not going to
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  let that experience make my heart bitter.
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  I was going to do everything in my power to make sure it made me
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  better, which inspired me to write 8 novels as you mentioned
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  and screenplays. Rehabilitation through the yard
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  to actually inspired all that because once we started the
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  program, we they taught us how to write plays.
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  I took it to a whole new level, write plays and writing
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  screenplays. And I've always had a
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  fascination for movies. Like I mentioned earlier, you
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  know, I used to make little karate movies.
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  I danced with a dance group called Realism.
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  Actually, I did a show with Stephanie Mills.
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  I don't know if y'all recall her.
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  Yeah, somewhat of a famous Oh yeah.
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  I did a show in 1979 with her or a piece called Soap Factory
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  Disco. I was on two episodes of that.
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  So when I was young, I was always just into just doing
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  positive stuff and I I had that entertainment bug in me and I
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  was a DJ. Yeah, well, I it, I want to go,
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  I want to go back divine and and talk about that time period
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  because you were a guy in a neighborhood where there was a
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  lot of bad stuff going on and you were doing other stuff.
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  You know, you were a DJ and you were you were a dancer and you
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  were doing all these different things that let us feel that
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  what what what was all going on back in that neighborhood?
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  It. Was pretty rough, man.
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  It was it was it was definitely rough.
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  And as the movie depict, I went to high school performing arts
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  for ballet and dance. So that was like groundbreaking.
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  That was truly groundbreaking. And I eventually had to move on
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  because it was just I was going through too much backlash from
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  it. You know, in that neighborhood,
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  you know, you know, ballet was it was unacceptable.
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  Like that's unacceptable, but I was always adventurous in the
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  sense that I would take that chance and go out and do some
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  something different from what normal other kids would do from
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  the neighborhood. And one thing that I would
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  always say is that like I told you earlier, natural born helper
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  and as being a natural born helper, I, I always had a thing
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  about, you know, helping people. So that inspired me to take the
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  test to become a New York City police officer.
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  I said, you know what, I would love to be a cop because in my
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  opinion, the ultimate helpers of police officers.
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  Unfortunately, our communities don't always portray that.
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  It gets so rough. You know, we get that old racism
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  thing going on, the abuse and the mistreatment.
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  But I still believed in the system to the extent that, you
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  know, cops are put here to do the right thing, right?
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  So I had a a very interesting life and believe it or not, when
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  I was a DJ it inspired me and I actually laid groundwork to the
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  extent that when I got out of prison, I wind up going on a
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  tour with Little Wayne. I I read that and you had to
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  fight for that too, because you had to file a certain motion to
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  be able to do that and travel all over in Europe.
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  Yeah, they was not going to let me go on that man, my parole
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  officer, he said. Man, you got to be out of your
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  mind. You think we going to let?
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  You get out of prison after serving time for a murder and go
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  all over the tour with a famous rapper.
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  But what really saved that is that based on the overwhelming
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  evidence of my innocence, and as you may know from the movie,
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  Governor Eliot Spitzer had granted me a clemency hearing,
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  and he was considering me for full pardon.
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  So that kind of contributed extensively to the fact that the
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  judge was like, you know, this this guy, you know, it looks,
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  you know, he's innocent. I mean, he's doing all this.
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  He got master's degree, associate's degree, published
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  books. You know, he started
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  rehabilitation through the arts. I mean, what would be the reason
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  not to let a guy like, you know, this?
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  Yeah. Go on a tour like that and it
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  and it pretty worked. And the way I got that job is
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  that little, little. Wayne.
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  Road manager, it was Lil Wayne's road manager.
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  And all I did with him is that when I was a famous DJI just let
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  him come back there and move my records, help me move the
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  equipment and just showed him a little bit of love.
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  And when he, you know, he gave famous, he never forgot that.
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  That's awesome. This is what I used to always
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  kind of share with people, that what you throw out into the
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  universe is what you get back, man.
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  Oh yeah, show love. It comes back and it comes back
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  tenfolds, and it come back in ways that can boggle your mind.
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  Yeah, you find that out in prison too.
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  Divine. I the, the, the story that leads
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  up to your, the craziness that happened.
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  So I know that you you went in and you thought you were going
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  to be a police officer. The family didn't want to lose
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  somebody. They thought that, you know, it
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  might be too dangerous. And so you, you know,
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  recalibrate it and said, OK, I'm not going to do that.
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  And then you fell into a time period of something that you had
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  never gotten into before. You had stayed away from
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  everything. And it was, it sounded to me
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  like from what I read, it was more of, man, I just got to do
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  something to help the family. I got to.
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  It's almost like a desperation of of events that the time at
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  the time and the moment and you get tagged for something right
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  at that time. I was it.
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  What was it a three-year sentence?
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  Is that what the the the IT was a it?
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  Was a one to three sentence and what happened is I got into this
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  severe automobile accident. I woke up in the hospital.
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  I was, you know, badly beat up and I couldn't work.
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  So you know, had a limp. I was, I was a pizza delivery
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  guy and I was limping around. I was beat up, I couldn't work.
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  And I, I that's when I made the biggest mistake of my life.
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  And me being a natural born helper, me seeing my family
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  struggling, you know, the money situation was just crazy.
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  And I, you know, I snuck out and tried to sell some drugs that
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  make a quick little, you know, way of helping the family and
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  that thing just turned into a, a living nightmare turned into.
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  A. You weren't very good at it and.
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  I wasn't good at it. I didn't even last a couple of
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  weeks, man. It was like I was totally.
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  OK, in the wrong place. So yeah, wrong place, wrong
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  time. Not good at it.
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  You're not a pro. OK, so you're from this is where
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  the this this story gets crazy Is, is that you are you are in
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  prison and something goes down in in the neighborhood and all
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  of a sudden you're drawn into a murder that happened.
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  And, and, and, and from what I understand, I, and I've got
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  Jeffrey here who's an attorney. So I am not an attorney.
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  I am just guy that talks. But it sounds like to me that
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  the crazy part of this story is it's just one guy.
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  It's one witness and not a good witness.
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  And that brings you back to serving this trial.
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  And what I, I can't, what were you thinking like?
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  And you're trying to get through this bit that you've got.
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  And then all of a sudden out of nowhere, you get noticed that
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  you've got to be back here into your own place, the old
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  neighborhood that there's been a murder that's happened and
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  they're tagging me for what? What in the world would have
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  been going through your mind at that time?
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  And it, it, it was, it was a 100% nightmare.
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  But you know, for clarification, the individual that actually
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  testified against me, it was like we had a lot of little
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  jealousy things going on. It was a lot of it was a, it was
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  a, a hell of a background story with me and him.
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  And unfortunately, sometimes in black communities, when you are
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  high achiever you, you rack up people that, that come at you in
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  certain ways. And plus I, I was good in the
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  martial arts. So when this guy used to try to
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  bully me, he couldn't do it. So he would get upset because he
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  can't bully me because. You're a karate guy.
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  Yeah, I was a karate guy. So it I think, you know, that's
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  my opinion that I think that just infuriated him even more.
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  He just fabricate this and put this homicide on me and it
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  happened in back of my building where I live.
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  So me being in that area, it it was like it was convenient for
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  them just say, well, it was divine G and all it took was
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  just him fabricating this. And the craziest thing is the
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  guy that actually did it, confessed to the crime, made
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  very clear it was him and Patrick from Queens.
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  And then just with my luck, after this guy confessed, he
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  dies about a week or two later. And what year would that have
• 16:57
  been divine when all that was going on?
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  It was 1988. It was wow and.
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  He dies. He dies after he confesses and.
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  You know, I know you recall that crack era.
• 17:08
  So it was a pretty rough time for the whole country and they
• 17:12
  were just throwing guys in prison left and right.
• 17:15
  They were trying to, I guess they were trying to get a, a
• 17:18
  handle on that crack epidemic because it was, it was.
• 17:22
  It was terrible time. In our in our history in this
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  country, not just New York, it was all over the country.
• 17:28
  And they were putting people away for decades for crack.
• 17:30
  Oh. Yeah, it was.
• 17:31
  It was pretty rough. And I just got caught up in that
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  madness, that whole wave. And, you know, once I was
• 17:39
  upstate, I mean, you know, since I had nothing to do with it, I
• 17:43
  became a jailhouse lawyer. I, you know, I said, there's no
• 17:47
  way I'm not going to fight this. And I lived in those prison law
• 17:51
  libraries, lived in those books for tooth and nail day in, day
• 17:56
  out. And I had one prison official
• 18:00
  said, you know what? You are the only inmate I know
• 18:04
  that's been in the law library every day for like 4 or five
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  years straight. Well, and I I something.
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  They told me. Yeah, and at the other, the
• 18:13
  other interesting part of that I thought was, is that I was
• 18:16
  reading through your stuff. And that's also where I think
• 18:20
  you gained the confidence that you were pretty good at writing,
• 18:24
  you know, writing and, and, and, and getting all this together,
• 18:28
  you know, being in the law library all the time and, and
• 18:31
  having to write motions and having to do the things and do
• 18:33
  the things on your own. It's, it's, it's weird how
• 18:37
  things happen, but it's, it's almost like that was a place
• 18:41
  that you found yourself as someone with your creativity to
• 18:46
  start to think, well, I could be a writer.
• 18:47
  I didn't even know I was a writer.
• 18:49
  No clue I knew how to write. I had no clue I had a gift for
• 18:54
  writing my piece The Whitfield fouls.
• 18:57
  I know you. You may recall that it was a
• 19:00
  memoir about my wrongful conviction that one of a PEN
• 19:04
  award and PEN was pretty big. It's a big international writing
• 19:10
  organization that, you know, they, they focuses on, you know,
• 19:15
  creative components. That's about making the world a
• 19:18
  better place. That's one of the things that I
• 19:20
  loved about Penn. And I won like 5 awards, 5
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  awards wasn't just that one. And once I got bitten by the
• 19:29
  writing bug, it's like, oh, I was loving it.
• 19:32
  Well, I mean, yeah. Like this?
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  This is helpful. It's like.
• 19:35
  You know, if you get through this, it was like, I was able to
• 19:38
  write about things that allowed me to do what I enjoyed most.
• 19:43
  Yeah. It means to help people.
• 19:44
  It was healing. It was like, forget it.
• 19:47
  I I just went. Well, you know, divine in the
• 19:50
  movie. I thought it was really
• 19:53
  interesting because you know, the the rehabilitation through
• 19:57
  the arts, the RTA. I mean, you were such a
• 20:02
  passionate. Founder of that that I mean you
• 20:05
  reached out to people and it's in the movie that you know, even
• 20:09
  someone that someone else didn't think should be in the group.
• 20:12
  You you saw something in people and and brought them in.
• 20:16
  How did all this happen? How did RTA happen?
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  I mean, you were at Sing Sing. In a nutshell, I'm going to try
• 20:25
  to keep it as short as possible. It was that we just wanted to do
• 20:29
  a play. We just wanted to do a play.
• 20:31
  It was a positive play about some of the struggles that we
• 20:34
  going go through in our communities and we did a play
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  and it was a success. Then we said let's do another
• 20:41
  play. It was a success.
• 20:43
  And then finally a group of us said, you know what, man, this,
• 20:47
  this program is really helping us.
• 20:49
  It's helping it it it having a huge impact on the population.
• 20:53
  It's having. Definitely the administration
• 20:55
  was loving it because he kept guys out of trouble.
• 20:58
  And I said, you know what, we can use this as a program to
• 21:01
  teach life skills. And that's how it basically
• 21:04
  started. And one of one of my missions
• 21:08
  was to find like the guys who we can look at and say was the
• 21:12
  worst of the worst, which is I'm so glad they, you know, we, we,
• 21:16
  we had that component in there because when you create programs
• 21:20
  like this, guys become really overprotected.
• 21:23
  So you start looking for the, the guys.
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  That's a easy challenge. I'm like, no, no, no, no, we got
• 21:29
  to we got to find the roughest of the roughest ones that really
• 21:33
  mean this and that movie depict that.
• 21:36
  No, that's what I loved about it.
• 21:37
  It really showed divine that you, you reached out and, and,
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  and then the connection that you made and, and, and the feeling
• 21:45
  that was created. It was, you know, and I don't
• 21:49
  think it's because I went to prison.
• 21:50
  I mean, my wife and, and other people have seen this there.
• 21:53
  There's something in that movie that is so real that it, it,
• 21:58
  it's, it's so, you know, it's just humanity of, of how can
• 22:03
  people help people and, and, and if you're in prison, how can you
• 22:07
  free your mind and, and feel free, even though you're, you're
• 22:12
  contained behind the income fine behind these walls.
• 22:15
  And that's what you guys did. And it was, it was an
• 22:18
  incredible, it was, it's an incredible program and it's
• 22:23
  incredible how you guys came about and did this because it's
• 22:27
  hard to do that kind of stuff in prison.
• 22:28
  It just is. Yeah, it.
• 22:29
  Was it was a struggle? But the other thing divine that
• 22:32
  I want to talk about with all this with RTA and and these
• 22:36
  things that happen and you see people come and go.
• 22:39
  You've got a long sentence and you got you see people go to the
• 22:42
  parole board and they get out and you don't get out.
• 22:46
  But here's the thing that I thought and Jeffrey, you might
• 22:48
  want to time in on this because you made a point.
• 22:52
  It was something that I read is that the guys that have been
• 22:56
  wrongly, wrongfully convicted as you were, when you go to the
• 22:59
  parole board, you, you need to say that you're remorseful, that
• 23:02
  you feel sorry about what happened and feel sorry about
• 23:05
  what you did. And you went out because you
• 23:06
  feel like you've been rehabilitated in divine
• 23:10
  situation. And in your situation, you guys,
• 23:13
  you're, you can't say that because if you say that and you
• 23:17
  get out and then it's all gets overturned, then that can all
• 23:20
  can be used against you, that you use that in a parole hearing
• 23:24
  to say I'm guilty. And then you go out and there's
• 23:27
  evidence that you weren't guilty.
• 23:28
  And I, I can't imagine the restraint that you have to have
• 23:32
  to and the courage really to stand back from that and just
• 23:38
  say, you know what, I could get more time, but I've got to stay
• 23:42
  to where I'm at. The person that I am and divine.
• 23:45
  I mean, they even said to you and it was so like, like it hit
• 23:50
  you to your soul in the movie. Are you acting now?
• 23:54
  Yeah. So they used RTA against me, you
• 23:59
  know, from creating a program in which, you know, we use acting
• 24:03
  skills merely as a life skill, you know, building component and
• 24:08
  to teach people basic skills so that when they got out, they
• 24:11
  stayed out. And that was taken right out of
• 24:14
  my transcripts, right out of there.
• 24:16
  And it was a commissioner named Ferguson.
• 24:19
  And he was brutal. I don't know if you remember
• 24:22
  Ferguson. He people used to fake heart
• 24:25
  attacks before they want to go in front of Ferguson, you know,
• 24:28
  because he was brutal. But for me it worked to my
• 24:31
  advantage because he, they, they would read him Elovitch and
• 24:35
  Brown. They would read things
• 24:37
  thoroughly. And it should be noted that in
• 24:39
  this movie, although it's it's it's about my clemency petition,
• 24:44
  we didn't have the clemency petition transcript.
• 24:46
  So we had to use my original, you know, my transcripts with my
• 24:51
  actual parole release. And we just moved it around a
• 24:54
  little bit. My clemency.
• 24:56
  Obviously I didn't make it. Governor Spitzer didn't grant
• 24:59
  it, but it was, it was considered for full part and
• 25:03
  based on actual innocent. So by the time I got to the
• 25:06
  clemency, excuse me, by the time I got to the parole board
• 25:09
  hearing, it was like there was that we, we, we were talking
• 25:13
  about that evidence of innocence.
• 25:15
  It was a main theme. You know, you got a governor
• 25:19
  that had already looked at this case and said this case is worth
• 25:22
  looking at. So we, we moved a lot around.
• 25:25
  So by the time I got there, it wasn't as hard as some other
• 25:30
  individuals. I will confess about that
• 25:32
  because that was always my position, man.
• 25:36
  I mean, you know, I didn't do this crime and I got evidence
• 25:39
  showing it and I need y'all to read this and they read it.
• 25:43
  But the easy route would have said, Hey, I did this.
• 25:45
  I've I've rehabilitated. I just please let me out.
• 25:48
  And you didn't do that. You kept fighting for what you
• 25:50
  thought was right. Jeffrey, I, I, the, the letters
• 25:54
  that went on and the, and the campaign that went on and and
• 25:58
  the divine was finally released. How did how do?
• 26:01
  What was that connection? Yeah.
• 26:03
  So, you know, the, the the divine had had contacted the
• 26:07
  foundation and, you know, he obviously saw when I launched
• 26:10
  the foundation and we screened this case and we, you know,
• 26:13
  determined we believed this innocence claim and we saw a
• 26:16
  potential route to exoneration, you know, but the road to
• 26:19
  exoneration is long. In the meantime, he was coming
• 26:23
  up for parole, so, you know, we knew he was going to stand on
• 26:26
  his innocence. So, you know, we sent the letter
• 26:29
  to the parole board, you know, outlining what, you know, what
• 26:32
  primary and secondary reasons why we believed in his
• 26:34
  innocence. And we asked the parole board
• 26:36
  not to hold his innocence assertion against him.
• 26:39
  Just evaluate the rest of his application.
• 26:41
  And if you think that he would live and remain at liberty
• 26:44
  without breaking the law, then let him out.
• 26:46
  And you know, it, it, it worked. You know, there was some other
• 26:49
  letters that Divine got sent, but you know, our, our, our
• 26:52
  letter was, was there too. And you know, I do think it
• 26:55
  played a role. And so Divine was actually the
• 26:57
  first person that the foundation freed through through any means,
• 27:00
  because we get people out however we can, you know, and if
• 27:03
  we that means getting someone out of prison, you know, before
• 27:07
  exoneration, we want to do that. Absolutely.
• 27:09
  Work for exonerations. Much better to do it on the
• 27:12
  outside than on the inside. Exactly.
• 27:15
  Yeah. So so that's how that came, came
• 27:17
  about me. You did sum up the issue of the
• 27:19
  parole board, you know, correct. And we had A, at the time, the
• 27:23
  foundation had a 2 bedroom apartment, which, you know,
• 27:26
  which we, you did as a, as a pilot program to do the idea to
• 27:30
  try to get additional funding to continue doing that and, and
• 27:34
  then doing more of it. We never got the funding.
• 27:36
  So after a year and a half, we, we did, we did wind up closing
• 27:39
  it. But you know, divine was, you
• 27:41
  know. And at that, and if I'm not
• 27:43
  wrong, Jeffrey, at that time you had not finished law school and
• 27:46
  were an attorney. You were just, you know, the
• 27:48
  Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation, which is incredible.
• 27:51
  I, I want everybody to kind of absorb that Jeffrey before he
• 27:55
  was an attorney, got somebody out of prison and it was a first
• 27:59
  person and, and his, you know, I, I, I love Jeffrey's story and
• 28:05
  I love your story divine. And the fact that you 2 found
• 28:07
  each other and, and are working on this together is pretty
• 28:10
  incredible in itself. But Jeffrey on on your side of
• 28:15
  things finally and, and, and divine when you finally get out.
• 28:22
  I'm, I'm curious because it's got to be different than like
• 28:25
  for me, I had a finite, you know, I knew six months out that
• 28:30
  I was going to get out. And so I kind of started
• 28:32
  preparing for that. Did you have any preparation for
• 28:36
  I'm getting out after all that time that you were in?
• 28:40
  Well, for me, I mean, I always kind of prepared myself.
• 28:46
  I did a lot of reading, a lot of researching so that when I did
• 28:51
  get home, you know, I, I had some kind of idea of what I
• 28:56
  might want to do, where I want to go.
• 28:59
  And like I used to always teach guys in prison is that, you
• 29:03
  know, when you there, you got to start preparing to go home.
• 29:06
  The minute you walk in prison that that preparation starts
• 29:10
  right there. You got to start, you know,
• 29:12
  getting your, your, your life skills.
• 29:14
  Together, yeah. Yeah, right.
• 29:15
  Skills together because the object is to get out and stay
• 29:19
  out and like you mentioned earlier, guys was coming back
• 29:22
  and forth with the prison and it was painful.
• 29:25
  It was really hurtful to see these guys.
• 29:28
  I'm I'm here trying to get out and these guys are coming back.
• 29:32
  You know, and it it. Was it?
• 29:34
  Was well, divine. I, I want to, I want to sit on
• 29:36
  that point for a minute because I, I was interviewed today and
• 29:41
  one of the questions was, what do you think the difference is
• 29:44
  between the person who survives and moves forward and the one
• 29:52
  that gives up and, and it just can't get back into society.
• 29:57
  And my answer to that was is that there's a path and a fork
• 30:02
  in the road that you have, you have, you have to decide that
• 30:06
  you want to be a survivor and you're going to take, you're
• 30:09
  going to take whatever comes at you and figure out how to deal
• 30:11
  with it. And then there's the victimhood
• 30:13
  route. And the victimhood route is, is
• 30:15
  that I can't believe this happened to me.
• 30:18
  It was, it was so unfair. I'm so ashamed of being around
• 30:22
  everybody. I went to prison.
• 30:24
  I'm never going to be able to be back to what I used to be, all
• 30:27
  those things. And that, that can be a really
• 30:29
  deep hole victimhood and it, and it can get deeper and wider.
• 30:35
  And she asked me what the difference was of like, why
• 30:37
  people go that way. I'm not really sure what the
• 30:39
  difference. You lived that and you never
• 30:42
  gave up hope. And you were looking at so many
• 30:46
  years. What do you think it was divine
• 30:48
  that that kept you taking that step every time you took the
• 30:54
  step and staying in that library and learning to be a writer and
• 30:56
  writing the books and not, not just laying down and saying,
• 31:00
  holy shit, I can't believe this happened to me.
• 31:03
  Yeah. Because the wrongful conviction
• 31:06
  contributed to me writing those 13 novels and getting actually
• 31:11
  when I was in prison, I was able to get 3 novels published, a
• 31:14
  short story in a play, and it was all really the wrongful
• 31:19
  conviction. I just vowed that I'm going to
• 31:21
  fight this with every energy in my body.
• 31:25
  You know, murder is a very serious crime.
• 31:29
  And you know, I don't even know how this man looks like the cold
• 31:33
  water hearing. I was like, I want to see a
• 31:35
  picture of this guy. Right, exactly.
• 31:37
  Like who is this guy? A picture of a man.
• 31:39
  They would not let let me see a picture of him.
• 31:42
  I said, man, I just did 25 years in prison.
• 31:44
  I don't even know how this guy looks.
• 31:47
  So, you know, it was just that fire, that energy, that.
• 31:50
  Was divine. The other thing I'm really
• 31:53
  curious about is 25 years is a long time.
• 31:55
  It's a quarter of a century, very long.
• 31:58
  What is that like to, to, to, I mean, you did it in the movie.
• 32:02
  I mean, I, I saw it in the movie.
• 32:03
  You can feel it. But what is, what did it feel
• 32:05
  like to you to walk out and, and re enter society in 25 years?
• 32:09
  And what, what changed? Like, I mean, and Jeffrey,
• 32:12
  you're here, you did 16. What, what, what was the biggest
• 32:15
  thing that you noticed that changed?
• 32:18
  Because I, I have a lot of guys that have done a lot of time in
• 32:20
  prison. They say, you know, it's like
• 32:22
  going from black and white to color and all of a sudden you're
• 32:25
  trying to jump in a moving car. But what was it like for you?
• 32:28
  Well, for me, you know, I mean, the cars definitely changed.
• 32:33
  There's all the cars. Yeah.
• 32:36
  Well, I I had a problem. We crossing the street.
• 32:39
  It was like when I got out, when I first came to a crosswalk, it
• 32:43
  was like I was nervous. I couldn't cross the street.
• 32:46
  It was like, oh look, this looked like it's supposed to be
• 32:49
  easy, but the cars actually look like it was going too fast.
• 32:53
  I'm like, and you know, those are these culture shocks that
• 32:57
  you go through after spending all the years in prison.
• 33:00
  I mean, it's physically impossible for you to walk out
• 33:03
  of an environment like that and not be severely impacted.
• 33:08
  I don't care how much you prepare.
• 33:09
  I don't care how much you read and try to get newspapers to
• 33:14
  learn. But once you get there and you
• 33:16
  physically there, it's a whole new world.
• 33:20
  And I mean, it's, it's it, it boils down to resilience.
• 33:24
  Yeah, it does. And.
• 33:26
  Power to go further than others. Some people may not, you know,
• 33:30
  respond with that high intensity of resilience.
• 33:34
  And for me, you know, I'm a I'm a Taurus, the bull.
• 33:37
  I'm kind of like stubborn that stubbornness at me.
• 33:40
  So it was like I just. Well, I, I, I, I've, I know that
• 33:45
  you did all that stuff in prison.
• 33:46
  So getting out and all those things that changed you didn't
• 33:50
  lose yourself with I think is, is inspiring in itself because a
• 33:54
  lot of people can get institutionalized.
• 33:56
  And I want to say institutionalized people get
• 33:58
  institutionalized on the outside.
• 33:59
  You know, they, they, they, they can get into a bad job, bad
• 34:02
  marriage, bad whatever health crisis, whatever.
• 34:04
  They get institutionalized. But people get institutionalized
• 34:07
  with their routines and stuff in prison.
• 34:08
  But by the you didn't lose yourself in prison because you
• 34:11
  were doing things and being productive in prison.
• 34:14
  The the divine G entertainment did and and the and the family
• 34:20
  that you came out to. I I I didn't want to skip over
• 34:22
  that. What all when you came out?
• 34:25
  What? What did you come out to?
• 34:28
  We had a supportive family. My mother was 100% supportive.
• 34:34
  All my sisters were supportive. And you know, I had my aunt, my
• 34:38
  nieces, my cousins, I had, I had a support base, which somewhat
• 34:42
  helps. It's if you don't have that
• 34:45
  support base, it's going to be 1000.
• 34:47
  It's harder. A lot harder.
• 34:48
  So I did have that, OK. And by the time I got out, I
• 34:53
  started Divine G Entertainment. Within six months of getting out
• 34:56
  of prison, I now that I was going to start my own company, I
• 34:59
  always had a dream of having my own company.
• 35:03
  I started publishing my own books and yeah, you know, they
• 35:07
  didn't do expect tactically well, but it was a dream that
• 35:10
  I've always maintained. And to this day, I'm still
• 35:15
  paying taxes on this company. He's not making a whole lot, but
• 35:18
  it's my company and it's still alive, it's up, still running.
• 35:21
  And I will say once again, it's about never giving up.
• 35:26
  And it's about just believing in yourself, believing in the power
• 35:30
  of that dreams come true. And once we started coming up
• 35:34
  with some ideas about possibly doing something for
• 35:37
  rehabilitation through the arts, I was full throttle with that
• 35:41
  because I always believed that that story must be told.
• 35:44
  Because, you know, Dino calls it one of the best kept secrets in
• 35:49
  in prison. That's the best kept secret.
• 35:51
  We were saving lives. Yeah, you guys were save.
• 35:54
  You guys were saving lives. We were saving lives and it was
• 35:58
  really all about people helping people.
• 36:00
  It was about healing and helping, and I mean, look what
• 36:05
  happened man. Miracles come true.
• 36:07
  Well, walk us through how it happened.
• 36:09
  I mean, how you know, Divine G ends up being played by a major
• 36:12
  movie star that ends up being on the the Academy Award Best Actor
• 36:17
  nomination. How does that happen?
• 36:21
  What happened? Divine what?
• 36:22
  What? How did How did that come about?
• 36:24
  Well, what what happened is this, I guess in in my
• 36:28
  situation, I already had an interesting story.
• 36:31
  I was in prison for a crime I didn't commit.
• 36:33
  I had got a governor that agreed to, you know, look at my case.
• 36:38
  I wrote massive novels. I was a published author
• 36:42
  multiple times over. I just, I was doing so much that
• 36:47
  at the point when a person of interest came up about doing the
• 36:52
  program, he was like, well, what about Divine?
• 36:54
  Gee, he's a founding member. You know, the guy definitely
• 36:58
  fights for the underdog. I love the underdog, always
• 37:01
  fight for the underdog. And I was kind of like a rebel
• 37:06
  to some extent because a lot of guys was becoming overprotected
• 37:10
  of of the program, not letting people in.
• 37:12
  And I was always that voice that spoke out.
• 37:15
  Which came across in the movie. Always that voice that spoke out
• 37:18
  and we even had some civilians that, you know, I, I had a
• 37:22
  little tension with them too. But I used to make sure people's
• 37:26
  integrity was real high. My integrity was extremely high.
• 37:30
  So when the movie makers like Craig and Clint and Monique,
• 37:36
  they, you know, when we all got together.
• 37:39
  How'd they reach out to you? How'd they reach out to you?
• 37:42
  How'd you get contact? How did it happen?
• 37:43
  Brit. Brit Buell Brett, you and
• 37:46
  remember this this this breaking the mummies cold had got a lot
• 37:50
  of media attention too. It was an Entertainment Weekly.
• 37:53
  It was a New York Times. And what Greg and Clint was
• 37:58
  doing is they were looking for, you know, a story that they can
• 38:03
  actually do a movie about. And because our movie had not a
• 38:07
  movie I play had got so much media attention.
• 38:10
  New York Times did a major article on us as well as
• 38:14
  Entertainment Weekly. So he saw this zany movie with
• 38:19
  guys that, you know, doing Breaking the Mummies Cold with,
• 38:23
  you know, Freddy Krueger, you know, you know, the Black
• 38:27
  Plague. We was all over the place and we
• 38:29
  actually pulled this off. So, you know, when they decided
• 38:34
  that they wanted to do something like that, they just met us.
• 38:36
  We all came in, we sat down and and it was like a 778 year
• 38:43
  process to write that script. Is that what it was?
• 38:46
  Yeah, it did not happen overnight.
• 38:48
  We had multiple versions of the script that that just wasn't
• 38:53
  working. This this wasn't working.
• 38:55
  You know. Working.
• 38:55
  This wasn't working. Yeah.
• 38:57
  And once we finally got the script that we felt that was
• 39:01
  conducive to where we wanted to take it, I was telling
• 39:05
  everybody. I I told everybody, yo, man, I'm
• 39:07
  telling y'all the stars is open up on this one.
• 39:10
  They just, I'm telling you, we the stars is open up.
• 39:13
  Yeah. And to this day, the old team
• 39:16
  says, divine. You predicted they was calling
• 39:18
  me the Prophet at one time. Yeah, and it's hard to get a
• 39:21
  hit. I mean, what going in?
• 39:23
  There's 85% of the cast that's that's that's either in prison
• 39:27
  or have been in prison there that were part of the program.
• 39:31
  How did that come about? Well, this movie had to be by
• 39:37
  the people that actually. Which I want to just point out,
• 39:40
  that's really cool, by the way, I didn't know that until the end
• 39:42
  of the movie and. Another thing that's historic in
• 39:45
  our movie, everybody on this, this, this movie gets paid a
• 39:51
  equal rating. I saw that.
• 39:52
  Everybody on this movie has equity in this movie.
• 39:56
  Everybody. Has a percentage in this movie,
• 39:59
  which sometime I think we got a lot of pushback from Hollywood
• 40:02
  because we we was coming in here changing with that old payment
• 40:05
  process. You know, you know, sometimes
• 40:09
  those higher ups who was a very small percentage don't want to
• 40:12
  give up that position, but it was groundbreaking in that
• 40:16
  regard and it was. And I think it fitted our movie
• 40:19
  just right because it was all about community, it was all
• 40:22
  about humanity. As well.
• 40:24
  Yeah, it was everything. It's groundbreaking to the point
• 40:28
  of how you did everything divine.
• 40:30
  It fit everything. When I saw that, all those
• 40:32
  people and it made sense. They were actors.
• 40:35
  They were just actors in prison. So of course they they could
• 40:37
  play a role. You made a cameo role of of
• 40:41
  Yeah, a little cameo. Sign in one of.
• 40:44
  My books. Uh huh, that was cool.
• 40:45
  Yeah. So I want to jump into something
• 40:49
  that that I know this has been fantastic for you, but you're
• 40:55
  still, you've got it around your neck trying to get this
• 40:59
  exoneration. Where, Jeffrey, where is where
• 41:03
  do things stand right now with with how this is played out?
• 41:06
  Because it's seven years in the process, about seven years about
• 41:09
  how you took Divine to get that movie made.
• 41:12
  But Jeffrey, what? Where are we?
• 41:16
  Sure. So, you know, some, some a few
• 41:20
  years after Divine got out, you know, we, we parted ways with
• 41:23
  our staff attorney and Divine stayed with the part, with a,
• 41:26
  with a former staff attorney, which, you know, I, I
• 41:29
  understood. I mean, he continued to do
• 41:32
  volunteer work actually for the foundation.
• 41:34
  He was doing videography and taking photos and uploading
• 41:38
  countless videos to our YouTube channel, Deskavik Foundation.
• 41:42
  And he would keep me abreast of how things were going here and
• 41:45
  there. And after about about five years
• 41:48
  of his application, just sitting over there in the Conviction
• 41:52
  Review unit, Kings County DA's office, I got my law license.
• 41:56
  And Divine came back around and said, look, I'd like you guys to
• 41:58
  represent me again. So I was thrilled to do that.
• 42:01
  I always believed in this case. And I said, look, I want to add
• 42:04
  Oscar Michelin to the team. He's an Advisory Board member.
• 42:07
  He's exonerated nine people want to add that experience.
• 42:09
  So we began representing Divine. So that meant we had a meeting
• 42:15
  with the that the head of the conviction review unit and the
• 42:18
  line attorney and start the meeting.
• 42:20
  The the unit chief said, look, I haven't read things, but I'm
• 42:24
  just giving you the meeting out of courtesy.
• 42:26
  So the line attorney started talking and she's was going in
• 42:30
  the direction of wanting to close, saying that she wanted to
• 42:32
  close his case, you know, and I knew it was important for her
• 42:36
  not to be able to actually say that because then it record
• 42:39
  politically for the boss not to. So I so you know, I said, well,
• 42:43
  what about this witness? Did you interview that person?
• 42:45
  No, how about this one, that one, this one, that one?
• 42:48
  No, no, no. So then I said, well, how can
• 42:51
  you say that the case is hitting a wall and all these witnesses
• 42:53
  you haven't spoken to? So then ignoring her, I go to
• 42:57
  the unit. I, I say to the unit chief,
• 42:59
  well, look, can, can we submit a memo to you?
• 43:02
  We'd like to summarize all the evidence of divine innocence and
• 43:06
  we're going to juxtapose that with this one in, in informant,
• 43:10
  you know, and so we ultimately submitted a 12-13 pages of, you
• 43:14
  know, outlining the, the evidence of divine innocence,
• 43:17
  which I'd like to just briefly recount here.
• 43:19
  So the actual perpetrator confessed, you know, and said
• 43:22
  that he committed the crime with a, with a man named Patrick from
• 43:24
  Queens. You know, divine as a Brooklyn
• 43:26
  knight has never lived in Queens and his name is not Patrick.
• 43:31
  He confessed to his brother as well.
• 43:34
  Then the then there was a alibi witness which you know,
• 43:37
  foundation found Brian Devery and Marjorie Shack, who knew
• 43:41
  Divine from the neighborhood, said she heard the gunshot and
• 43:43
  people, two people running, they ran past her that it was not
• 43:47
  divine. That story was corroborated by
• 43:50
  by two other people. We found an alternative suspect
• 43:54
  that had been in a in a love triangle with the with the with
• 43:57
  the perpetrator whose car had been, you know, set set on fire,
• 44:01
  who that was suspiciously left out when he was interviewed
• 44:05
  counselor at this, you know, Mount mountain of mountain of
• 44:08
  evidence. And he did nothing with it for a
• 44:11
  year. And then I got wind that he was
• 44:14
  speaking at a panel discussion on lawful conviction in
• 44:18
  Brooklyn. So I went there so I could
• 44:20
  button hole him on the side and just, you know, remind him, you
• 44:23
  know, you know, you got to do something here.
• 44:25
  We've sent you this memo. So when I spoke to him on the
• 44:29
  side, he said, look, yeah, I've just got a tickle on that
• 44:32
  because he's got some kind of device that gives, like a
• 44:35
  tickler a reminder to get to Divine's case, you know, and
• 44:40
  another six months go by and he doesn't do anything.
• 44:43
  And then we get word that he's going to be leaving the unit,
• 44:47
  going into a privacy's practice. And you know, we reach out to
• 44:50
  him again several times. Look, just read it.
• 44:53
  I mean, how, you know, you can decide everything based on the
• 44:55
  papers. And you know, he, he never did.
• 44:58
  The most he did was he, he made sure the case was assigned to a
• 45:01
  different prosecutor. That line attorney left the
• 45:04
  unit. He assigned it to someone else,
• 45:06
  but that's it. And we've been, we've been
• 45:08
  stuck. And since then, Oscar emailed
• 45:10
  the line attorney. I did.
• 45:11
  I piggybacked and emailed also. And you know, the we're, we're,
• 45:16
  we're, we're stuck. So our latest tactic, what we're
• 45:18
  doing is this is that, you know, we have a petition we're calling
• 45:22
  on for amassing petition signatures.
• 45:24
  You know, asking the petition calls on the Brooklyn DA Eric
• 45:28
  Gonzalez to order his conviction review unit just to make A, to
• 45:31
  make a decision. Right.
• 45:33
  Let us know something. Just do something.
• 45:36
  It's going to be incredibly frustrating.
• 45:38
  We've been doing media, new media in order to facilitate
• 45:41
  that using, using social media and, and getting media
• 45:44
  appearances, you know, and so we're, we're doing that as a
• 45:47
  tactic right now. And look, at some point we're
• 45:49
  not going to wait anymore. We're going to just pull the
• 45:51
  case from there and just file and litigate.
• 45:54
  But we're hesitant to do that. Because it takes time.
• 45:57
  It'll it'll be two years. And we don't want Devine to walk
• 46:00
  around the conviction. Look, he did 25 years want
• 46:04
  parole. You know, he's not on.
• 46:06
  This is just about clearing his name.
• 46:09
  And it's been over there for for seven.
• 46:10
  We don't want him to wait another two years, you know?
• 46:12
  But the big contrast is that, you know, while Coleman Domingo
• 46:16
  rightfully gets accolades, you know, for playing Divine G and
• 46:20
  sing, Sing. Yeah.
• 46:22
  Well, the real Divine G is struggling still.
• 46:25
  We know conviction. Yeah, in.
• 46:27
  Fact you you you wanted to go to an awards a different awards.
• 46:30
  Event over in Europe, right, Couldn't go because of his
• 46:33
  felony conviction. BAFTA yeah, a lot of people
• 46:36
  don't know that there's yeah, a lot of people don't know that
• 46:39
  there's countries that won't let you in if you have a felony
• 46:42
  conviction and and that it's a lifetime sentence.
• 46:44
  You can't get in. I want to take a break here.
• 46:47
  And when we get back, I want Jeffrey you to give us where we
• 46:51
  can go to help this out. And I also divine want to go
• 46:56
  back to you and, and really get your your take away through all
• 47:02
  this that you've been through so that these guys that are
• 47:04
  listening and then they're what's your biggest take away
• 47:07
  through all this that you've you've survived and been
• 47:10
  through. Before we do that, I want to
• 47:12
  recognize, you know, a lot of people don't like how they look
• 47:15
  online. Many individuals think there's
• 47:18
  no hope when it comes to manage your reputation on Google
• 47:20
  Online. Well, there's hope.
• 47:22
  It's called Discoverability Company, and they can help you
• 47:25
  whether you're building a reputation from scratch or
• 47:27
  you're repairing search results after a negative news story.
• 47:30
  Discoverability Company can also help you how you're portrayed on
• 47:33
  popular AI services like ChatGPT.
• 47:36
  To learn more, visitordiscoverability.co.
• 47:41
  They're even launching a Do it yourself SEO option.
• 47:43
  Of course, for individuals who want to take on their search
• 47:45
  results on their own budget and speed, listeners of Nightmare
• 47:49
  Success can take $100 off the DIYSEO course with coupon code
• 47:53
  Not My Success. I also want to recognize that
• 47:56
  Nightmare Success podcast is sponsored by the White Collar
• 47:58
  Support Group. It's the world's first group
• 48:00
  support group devoted to people navigating the white collar
• 48:03
  criminal justice system. I'm a member of the White Collar
• 48:06
  Support Group and I can tell you this is a bunch of people who
• 48:09
  can help each other through the criminal this journey for free.
• 48:12
  Whether you're just starting your journey or you made it
• 48:14
  through to the other side, this is great space for you.
• 48:18
  You can join us on Zoom Monday, 7:00 PM Eastern Time.
• 48:21
  For information, go to prisoners.org.
• 48:23
  That's prisoners.org. Start here.
• 48:26
  So, Jeffrey, if somebody is listening to this and there'll
• 48:30
  be a lot of people listening to this for a lot of reasons, how,
• 48:34
  how, how can we reach out and, and, and do something to help
• 48:39
  move this forward? Sure.
• 48:41
  So first and foremost, sign the petition www.freedivineg.org.
• 48:47
  Very easy to remember. I'll put in the show notes.
• 48:50
  Free divineg.org That's the most important thing sign it and next
• 48:55
  most important thing is encourage other people to do
• 48:57
  that, whether that's to. Share it.
• 49:00
  Whether that whether that's whether it's social media, you
• 49:02
  know, if you know people that are into, you know, new media or
• 49:05
  otherwise have a have a big platform, please connect us with
• 49:08
  us. We'd love to come on, come come
• 49:10
  on those other platforms as well as a way of reaching people and
• 49:14
  look for the incarcerated population.
• 49:15
  Encourage your encourage your friends, your family to sign
• 49:18
  plenty of people that are not incarcerated.
• 49:21
  But you know, we need everybody to we need everybody to to sign
• 49:24
  this. And I do think that it will.
• 49:26
  Make a difference, Jeffrey, you're a good man.
• 49:28
  You're, you're a good man. You're doing great things.
• 49:31
  You have lived through a nightmare of your own and now
• 49:33
  helping people coming full circle.
• 49:35
  It's got to make you feel good because you're paying it
• 49:37
  forward, doing the things and, and, and you know, you got out
• 49:41
  and, and became an attorney. You're an attorney, Jeffrey.
• 49:44
  I mean, you're doing an incredible thing.
• 49:47
  Incredibly proud of you. And whenever I get a chance, I,
• 49:50
  I Share your story because I think it's just an incredible
• 49:52
  story. Divine you've been through so
• 49:55
  much and and you you know the way that you're portrayed in the
• 50:01
  movie, you can't help but like what you did, how you did it,
• 50:05
  how you reached out to people, how you didn't give up, how you
• 50:09
  stayed resilient. What do you think's your biggest
• 50:12
  take away through this whole life that you've lived my.
• 50:16
  Biggest take is I'm a sum it up kind of, and I think I said it a
• 50:21
  little earlier, is what you throw out into the universe is
• 50:24
  what you get back, man. I'm convinced of that.
• 50:27
  It's if you throw out love and compassion and working and
• 50:32
  having an open mind and healing, it comes back and it comes back
• 50:37
  10 folds. I think that's kind of sums up
• 50:39
  my life. It's crazy like that.
• 50:42
  And I mean, it's easy for people to say, yeah, I was a good guy.
• 50:46
  I did this and I did that. But you could just talk to the
• 50:49
  people that know me and they'll, you know, tell you that I went
• 50:53
  on Lil Wayne's tour solely because I just showed a little
• 50:56
  bit of love to his Rd. manager. That's it.
• 50:59
  It was just plain and simple. And he contributes to his
• 51:02
  success, to my success. Yo, it wasn't for you and how
• 51:06
  you was helping. I was helping him and his and
• 51:08
  his little sister. I used to have them moving my
• 51:11
  records and stuff like that, and I've always had that mission
• 51:17
  about trying to reach back to help other people.
• 51:21
  Yeah, it was always about trying to help other people, which is
• 51:24
  why I call myself a natural born helper.
• 51:26
  Yeah. And that's why I think me and
• 51:28
  Coleman Domingo had that in common.
• 51:30
  He played you so he played that so well in the movie.
• 51:34
  He played that so well in the movie.
• 51:36
  And it sums up my journey, man. I don't.
• 51:38
  I mean, you know, it just sums it up.
• 51:40
  What you throw out is what you get.
• 51:42
  What you got to get back 10? Folds.
• 51:45
  Man, if that's not wisdom, if that's not something to live by,
• 51:51
  you know, guys, I appreciate you guys being on it and it's an
• 51:56
  both of you are very inspiring for people to listen to because
• 51:59
  you know, it's all this show is about.
• 52:01
  Hope, you know, when when I got started this show, you know,
• 52:03
  we're in our fourth season. It's about hope.
• 52:06
  It's not a prison show. It's it's it's people who are
• 52:08
  getting through their nightmares and they're surviving.
• 52:10
  And both of you have done that. Both of you have shown, you
• 52:15
  know, you can get knocked down and lay down, but you get back
• 52:18
  up because you got a reason to get back up.
• 52:20
  And both of you have done that. And I think it's I can't wait
• 52:23
  for these guys to hear this inside the prisons.
• 52:25
  I can't wait for the listeners to hear it out there because if
• 52:27
  they're stuck on their own prison in their mind, you guys,
• 52:30
  what you've talked about tonight will will help.
• 52:33
  Talking about gratitude. I want to give a shout out to
• 52:37
  Homestead Financial home mortgage.
• 52:39
  If you've got home mortgage needs, Greg FDF is your guy.
• 52:43
  He knows it all. I want.
• 52:45
  You know, they let me use this podcast room, all this fancy
• 52:48
  stuff, the lights and everything.
• 52:49
  So thank you so much. If you're looking for a book out
• 52:52
  there, I know that there's a lot of books that Divine's got go to
• 52:56
  Divine G Whitfield and they're all there.
• 53:01
  They're all I looked at it today.
• 53:03
  It's all lined up across the bottom there.
• 53:05
  And if you're if you're on Amazon, go ahead and buy my book
• 53:08
  too. Nightmare success.
• 53:10
  So there you go on Amazon. So, and if you're looking for
• 53:17
  anything else that I'm doing, go to brentcassidy.com.
• 53:20
  I spell it wrong. I spell it with a Ty, not a DY.
• 53:24
  And as I used to say to my people when I was writing my
• 53:27
  emails back and forth from 11 was stay strong.
• 53:30
  I'll do the same. Divine G Jeffrey Vescovic, thank
• 53:35
  you so much. Thank you so much.
• 53:37
  Thank you. Man, thank you.
• 53:38
  Very much pleasure being here. Now I'm your success in and out.
• 53:41
  All right. Thank you.