Latest / Wrongful Conviction / #140 Jason Flom and Michael Rubin with Meek Mill

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#140 Jason Flom and Michael Rubin with Meek Mill · Wrongful Conviction

0:01
Speaker 1: On January twenty third, two thousand and seven, in order
0:04
Speaker 1: to obtain a search warrant, a narcotics officer claimed to
0:07
Speaker 1: have seen Meek mill selling crack out of his home.
0:10
Speaker 1: The following day, Meek was stopped on his way to
0:13
Speaker 1: a corner store and they found a gun. He was
0:16
Speaker 1: badly beaten, arrested for illegal possession of a firearm, and
0:20
Speaker 1: later charged with assaulting arresting officers who claimed that he
0:24
Speaker 1: had pointed the gun at them. In two thousand and eight,
0:28
Speaker 1: due to the cost, Meek waved a jury trial, was
0:31
Speaker 1: tried for drug and weapons charges and sentenced to two
0:34
Speaker 1: years prison plus eight years probation, which kicked off his
0:38
Speaker 1: storied clash with Judge Denise Sprinkley. Over the decade that followed,
0:42
Speaker 1: parole tight restrictions and his contentious relationship with Brinkley made
0:47
Speaker 1: more punishment almost an inevitability. In November of twenty seventeen,
0:52
Speaker 1: she sentenced him to at least two more years in
0:55
Speaker 1: prison for alleged violations, including popping a wheelie without a helmet.
1:01
Speaker 1: This gained plenty of outrage and public support, largely due
1:06
Speaker 1: to a police department whistleblower who exposed Meeks two thousand
1:10
Speaker 1: and seven arresting officer as a liar and a thief.
1:13
Speaker 1: His two thousand and eight conviction was overturned. He was
1:17
Speaker 1: granted a new trial under a new judge, bringing his
1:20
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven criminal case and probation to a
1:23
Speaker 1: long overdue close in August of twenty nineteen. However, his
1:29
Speaker 1: litigation was still ongoing at the time of this episode's
1:32
Speaker 1: original release. Meek Mills' notoriety shines a light on the
1:37
Speaker 1: regularity legalized harassment by authorities and the recidivism that results.
1:43
Speaker 1: A docuseries chronicling his legal saga called Free Meek, is
1:46
Speaker 1: now streaming on Prime Video, and Meek's friend Michael Rubin,
1:50
Speaker 1: one of the owners of Philadelphia seventy six ers, joined
1:53
Speaker 1: us for a discussion that unfortunately is as relevant.
1:57
Speaker 2: Today as it was back then. This is Wrongful Conviction
2:02
Speaker 2: with Jason Flamm. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm.
2:18
Speaker 1: That's me and today we have an extraordinary show and
2:23
Speaker 1: you're about to find out why today's guest is the
2:26
Speaker 1: one and only Meek Milly and Michael Rubin is with
2:31
Speaker 1: him and Meek. You need no introduction, but welcome to
2:34
Speaker 1: the show.
2:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks for having me Man. I appreciate you for
2:36
Speaker 3: bringing me on the show.
2:37
Speaker 1: I appreciate all the work you're doing, and we're going
2:39
Speaker 1: to get into that right away. But with him is
2:41
Speaker 1: Michael Rubin, who is the owner of this Philadelphia seventy
2:46
Speaker 1: six ers and has an amazing background as an entrepreneur
2:50
Speaker 1: and businessman, but who has become a tremendous advocate for
2:55
Speaker 1: criminal justice reform and is about to really shake things up. Michael,
3:00
Speaker 1: I'm thrilled to have you in the movement, and I'm
3:01
Speaker 1: glad you're here on the show.
3:02
Speaker 4: Hey, thanks for everything you're doing. I'm glad to be here.
3:05
Speaker 1: So Meek. One of the reasons I wanted to have
3:08
Speaker 1: you on the show is because your original case was
3:13
Speaker 1: in fact a wrongful conviction, and that's something a lot
3:16
Speaker 1: of people don't understand. And there's a lot more they
3:20
Speaker 1: don't understand about the circumstances in which you were arrested
3:27
Speaker 1: and how this nightmare saga, which is now in its
3:31
Speaker 1: second decade in the criminal justice system has unfolded. And
3:36
Speaker 1: it's important to tell this story because it shines a
3:40
Speaker 1: light on so many aspects of what's wrong with the
3:46
Speaker 1: criminal justice system. And we're here in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, not Philadelphia, Mississippi.
3:52
Speaker 1: But even still, the system here has been so backwards
3:55
Speaker 1: for so long, and you were born right into the
3:57
Speaker 1: thick of it. I mean, let's talk about that y
4:00
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty seven. So the number of people incarcerated United
4:03
Speaker 1: States stayed relatively constant from nineteen hundred till about nineteen seventy,
4:08
Speaker 1: and then it went crazy. It doubled and tripled and quadrupled,
4:12
Speaker 1: and Philadelphia was a hot spot. And you were born
4:16
Speaker 1: into a situation in which black men were being incarcerated
4:20
Speaker 1: at rates that were unprecedented actually in the history of
4:24
Speaker 1: the world. There's a book that really touches on everything
4:28
Speaker 1: that you went through, called On the Run by Alice Goffman,
4:31
Speaker 1: a Princeton PhD. Sociologist who went and lived on Sixth
4:35
Speaker 1: Street in Philadelphia. She said, in the first eighteen months
4:37
Speaker 1: that I spent the neighborhood, at least once a day,
4:39
Speaker 1: I watched the police stop pedestrians or people in cars,
4:42
Speaker 1: searched them, run their name for warrants, asked them to
4:44
Speaker 1: come in for questioning or make an arrest. And that
4:46
Speaker 1: same eighteen month period, I watched the police breakdown doors,
4:49
Speaker 1: search houses, and question, arrest or chase people through houses
4:52
Speaker 1: fifty two times. Nine times police her helicopters circled overhead
4:56
Speaker 1: and beam search lights on the local streets. I noticed
4:58
Speaker 1: blocks taped off in traffic directed as police search for
5:01
Speaker 1: evidence fourteen times during my first eighteen months of near
5:05
Speaker 1: daily observation, I watched the police punch, choke, kick, stomp on,
5:10
Speaker 1: or beat young men with their night sticks. That's what
5:12
Speaker 1: the situation was like. It's what it still is like,
5:16
Speaker 1: and that's what has to change. Yeah, can you talk
5:18
Speaker 1: about that about how you grew up and how this,
5:21
Speaker 1: you know, was almost almost a fade of complete Uh.
5:24
Speaker 3: You know, I come from Philadelphia, actually North Philadelphia which
5:28
Speaker 3: now is called the Temple Area, and you know, we
5:31
Speaker 3: grew up in environments where like dragonfest environments where a
5:36
Speaker 3: lot of violence, a lot of drugs, a lot of
5:38
Speaker 3: things taking place. So it's like you could be standing
5:41
Speaker 3: in the wrong place and lose your life, or you
5:43
Speaker 3: could be standing in the wrong place and get charged
5:46
Speaker 3: with a crime you didn't do. That was just like normal. Actually,
5:49
Speaker 3: I've been hanging with my friend pe Mind probably fifteen
5:52
Speaker 3: years and I remember back he went to jail when
5:55
Speaker 3: he was probably about fifteen years old. He just turned
5:57
Speaker 3: thirty one, and was like, yeah, the first time I
5:59
Speaker 3: went to prison, he said, a white guy just pulled
6:02
Speaker 3: up in the back of a car and just pointed
6:04
Speaker 3: at me out the car and said, I robbed him
6:07
Speaker 3: for seven dollars, but he had three hundred and eighty
6:09
Speaker 3: dollars in his pocket and he went to jail for that.
6:12
Speaker 3: He ended up doing I think like two years and
6:14
Speaker 3: that in the juvenile facility. But that wasn't the worst part.
6:18
Speaker 3: The worst part was he's got a felony on this
6:20
Speaker 3: record for arm robbery. And you know, if you know him,
6:24
Speaker 3: he not like a it's not robbery. He's not robbery.
6:26
Speaker 3: And his system he made mistakes in his life. But
6:30
Speaker 3: me being around him, I never knew that. But I
6:32
Speaker 3: witnessed that so many times. I wouldn't have standing on
6:34
Speaker 3: a corner and the cop pulled up with a Mexican
6:37
Speaker 3: guy in the back, and I don't know. Sometimes we
6:41
Speaker 3: say and then our world in a sycastic way of
6:45
Speaker 3: being funny, we always be like white people look the
6:48
Speaker 3: same to us. Some of my white friends were like
6:50
Speaker 3: all black people were saying to us. But sometimes that
6:53
Speaker 3: is the case with people and they just pull up
6:56
Speaker 3: and they point people out, and you stand there when
6:58
Speaker 3: the cops pull up and like, I hope this guy
7:01
Speaker 3: don't point me out. And that's just one of the
7:03
Speaker 3: scenarios out of a million scenarios, being caught in the
7:06
Speaker 3: middle of poverty, drug infested the neighborhood where people are
7:10
Speaker 3: getting robbed left and right, where you know, cop flocking
7:14
Speaker 3: people who have left and rights just to get stripes
7:17
Speaker 3: on that record. You know what I'm saying. And we
7:18
Speaker 3: grew up in that and you know, at eighteen years old,
7:20
Speaker 3: I was caught up in that system. And even though
7:24
Speaker 3: I've been on the path ever since of doing spectacling
7:27
Speaker 3: in my life from where I come from, that same
7:30
Speaker 3: system is still haunting me and hanking me down. Even
7:33
Speaker 3: at the age of thirty one and having a record
7:36
Speaker 3: deal and being able to handle business and work, it's
7:39
Speaker 3: still haunted me to pull me back to the same
7:42
Speaker 3: system where I just left eleven years ago.
7:45
Speaker 1: And you just brought up a very important point, which
7:47
Speaker 1: is that we know from decades of research now that
7:50
Speaker 1: cross racial identifications are extremely unreliable. Identifications in general are
7:56
Speaker 1: unreliable because people have witness a crime, especially violent crime,
8:00
Speaker 1: goes crazy and the perception gets screwy and the brain
8:03
Speaker 1: doesn't function properly, so it almost becomes like guessing. But
8:06
Speaker 1: it gets even worse. And there's a movement now in
8:09
Speaker 1: various places to try to put in a system where
8:12
Speaker 1: a jury has to be instructed in the case in
8:15
Speaker 1: which across racial identification is an important factor that these
8:20
Speaker 1: things are as unreliable as they are because they need
8:23
Speaker 1: to know, but in most cases they don't know. They
8:25
Speaker 1: just think an identification is the most powerful thing. Going
8:27
Speaker 1: to court room to a guy points at you and
8:28
Speaker 1: goes that to him. You know, it's hard for a
8:30
Speaker 1: jury to see past that.
8:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like it's a neighborhood. We all wearing white
8:35
Speaker 3: Teas of the summer of two thousand and three, everybody
8:38
Speaker 3: white T shirts is the popular thing to wear denim shirts.
8:41
Speaker 3: And you got a guy, he might be Asian. He
8:43
Speaker 3: pulled up on the corner. We all seven of us
8:46
Speaker 3: got braids, and four of us got a little cousin.
8:48
Speaker 3: But we all look the same, the ones that got
8:50
Speaker 3: braids to him. It's just you allowed to repick to
8:53
Speaker 3: get caught up in the system like whoever you point at,
8:55
Speaker 3: that's you. And you better hope you don't have no
8:58
Speaker 3: felonies on your record already because you might go to
9:00
Speaker 3: jail for a long time.
9:01
Speaker 1: And sociologically speaking, and this goes back again to the
9:04
Speaker 1: seventies and eighties. Right at the same time that they
9:07
Speaker 1: were rolling back welfare and other programs for the urban poor,
9:12
Speaker 1: they were ramping up the policing and they were Now
9:16
Speaker 1: you created the perfect storm because what was happening was
9:20
Speaker 1: you had these systems coming in for tracking arrests. You
9:23
Speaker 1: had so many more cops. In fact, I think in
9:25
Speaker 1: Philadelphia sixty nine percent more police decade over decade than
9:28
Speaker 1: they were before, and they had to make arrests. So
9:31
Speaker 1: whereas before they were largely ignoring what was going on
9:33
Speaker 1: in the community, now there were heightened penalties for not
9:38
Speaker 1: just for violent crimes, but also for all kinds of
9:40
Speaker 1: different drug crimes, for vagrancy, for trespassing, for anything. And
9:44
Speaker 1: they were in a position where they were arresting people
9:47
Speaker 1: left and right and creating this permanent underclass. And Michael,
9:51
Speaker 1: you know, obviously you grew up here too, right, but
9:53
Speaker 1: your situation must have been.
9:55
Speaker 5: Very, very different world. I grew up maybe twenty minutes
9:58
Speaker 5: from me. But Mike Ustall said to me, we used
10:00
Speaker 5: to have this argument for years. He'd say to me, Michael,
10:03
Speaker 5: there's two Americans. And I'd be like, like, dude, shut up,
10:05
Speaker 5: there's like there's there's one America. Like stop, you know,
10:08
Speaker 5: like you're doing great, Like you know, I didn't understand,
10:10
Speaker 5: like what are you telling me about these two worlds?
10:12
Speaker 5: We live in one great country and and you know,
10:14
Speaker 5: we'd argue about it all the time. And I remember
10:16
Speaker 5: the day that that meet got sentenced November six, twenty seventeen.
10:20
Speaker 5: He called me from the Philadelphia job before they transferred
10:22
Speaker 5: to a different Jennal and they said, he said, you see,
10:24
Speaker 5: I told you this is what happens to the black
10:26
Speaker 5: people on that oade, right, And I just like that,
10:28
Speaker 5: you know, I said you were right, I was wrong,
10:30
Speaker 5: and there is two worlds. And you know, for me,
10:33
Speaker 5: November six, twenty seventeen was really a life change in moment,
10:37
Speaker 5: because I would never have been able to understand who
10:41
Speaker 5: really believe And I don't think anybody would be able
10:43
Speaker 5: to believe how crazy a circumstance he was living in
10:47
Speaker 5: because it didn't seem possible until you sat in the courtroom.
10:50
Speaker 5: And even people that have come to later court hearings
10:52
Speaker 5: of Judge Brinkley have said, I've heard everything about this,
10:56
Speaker 5: but I didn't believe it until I actually saw it,
10:58
Speaker 5: and it's so crazy. So for sure, I grew up
11:00
Speaker 5: in a completely different environment. But Meek always told me
11:03
Speaker 5: from the day I met him. I remember we were
11:05
Speaker 5: at a NBA All Star game, and you know, within
11:09
Speaker 5: a few minutes, you know, Meek realized I was involved
11:11
Speaker 5: with the Philadelphia seventy six ers and was telling me
11:14
Speaker 5: a little bit about his background. He told me that
11:16
Speaker 5: he was charged for pointing a gun at multiple cops.
11:19
Speaker 5: And he said to me, like, you know, I didn't
11:21
Speaker 5: do that.
11:22
Speaker 4: If I pointed, you know, a.
11:23
Speaker 5: Gun at multiple cops, I'd be dead. Like I heard him,
11:27
Speaker 5: but I didn't really comprehend it. And then like, if
11:30
Speaker 5: I've told that story to five hundred people in the
11:32
Speaker 5: last seven months, every person from law enforcement to politics,
11:38
Speaker 5: to anyone who understands anything, they all say the same thing.
11:41
Speaker 5: He's right, he'd be dead. No one would pull a
11:43
Speaker 5: gun on multiple cops and not get shot. And Meek
11:46
Speaker 5: can't obviously talk about the case, because the case is
11:48
Speaker 5: still unfortunately going on, which is crazy in itself sense, right,
11:53
Speaker 5: But I mean you're talking about a guy who was
11:56
Speaker 5: wrongfully convicted when he was eighteen years old of a
11:58
Speaker 5: crime that he didn't commit. It's been sent back to
12:01
Speaker 5: jail multiple times, never committed a new crime, and he's
12:05
Speaker 5: the perfect example of someone who's been stuck in a
12:07
Speaker 5: completely broken criminal justice system for.
12:10
Speaker 4: Criming to commit.
12:11
Speaker 5: And it's now thirteen years later and it's still going on,
12:15
Speaker 5: and that shows how broken the criminal justice system is.
12:17
Speaker 1: It's incredible. You know, we have two point two million
12:21
Speaker 1: people in prison in America and including jail.
12:24
Speaker 4: Another four and a half million people on probation in parole.
12:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the latest figure I heard was four
12:29
Speaker 1: point eight, right, And once we accept those figures, you
12:32
Speaker 1: also have to accept the fact that we now have,
12:35
Speaker 1: between jail, prison, probation, and parole, we have more black
12:38
Speaker 1: people with mostly men, under criminal justice supervision in America
12:43
Speaker 1: than all the slaves at the height of slavery in
12:47
Speaker 1: America in the eighteen fifties or sixties whatever that was.
12:50
Speaker 1: What are we doing? Well, It's like Michelle Alexander says,
12:52
Speaker 1: is the new Jim Crow.
12:53
Speaker 5: What words can't explain is Meek is still on probation
12:59
Speaker 5: for something that we've already said he didn't do, and
13:01
Speaker 5: it's been going on for thirteen years from the original
13:04
Speaker 5: wrongful conviction. But he can't, like you can't live that way.
13:08
Speaker 5: Like I say, I joke with him, I feel like
13:10
Speaker 5: I'm on probation because I'm worried about.
13:12
Speaker 4: Just something going wrong with him.
13:13
Speaker 5: If he decides to leave a state a day early
13:16
Speaker 5: because something changed with the schedule, or he gets you know,
13:18
Speaker 5: someone says, hey, I'm going to pay you to go
13:19
Speaker 5: do this contract. I want to go, and I have
13:21
Speaker 5: the proper days of permission, the judge will try to
13:23
Speaker 5: violate him. I mean, it's the system is chasing him
13:26
Speaker 5: and trying to violate and that's not what probation is
13:29
Speaker 5: supposed to be about, rehabilitating somebody, not trying to catch
13:32
Speaker 5: them and send that back to prison. And something that
13:34
Speaker 5: someone told me recently, and you know, I've now become
13:36
Speaker 5: too familiar with this, but seventy percent of people to
13:39
Speaker 5: go back to jail once they've been in jail in
13:40
Speaker 5: prison are going back for technical probation violations. Like to me,
13:45
Speaker 5: virtually none of those people should be going.
13:47
Speaker 4: You know, you had a.
13:48
Speaker 5: Technical probation violation, right, he didn't commit a crime, You
13:50
Speaker 5: were late for your probation officer. You you know, didn't
13:53
Speaker 5: pay a certain amount of money. You know, you travel
13:56
Speaker 5: out of the state. You know he went to his
13:57
Speaker 5: son in New Jersey because he lives in Pennsylvania. And
14:00
Speaker 5: you can be violated and sent back to jail.
14:02
Speaker 4: This is lunacy.
14:03
Speaker 1: This is absolute lunacy. And I want, I'm really glad
14:05
Speaker 1: you brought that up, Michael, because I don't want to
14:07
Speaker 1: get your take on this week because in a lot
14:10
Speaker 1: of the reforms that are underway right now, there's this
14:15
Speaker 1: hidden caveat or this hidden nightmare i'll call it, of
14:19
Speaker 1: enhanced probation and other ways of the government keeping people
14:23
Speaker 1: under control. So to me, a true crime reform bill
14:27
Speaker 1: should eliminate those problems. And you obviously can speak firsthand
14:31
Speaker 1: about just how restrictive that is, and Michael has said
14:33
Speaker 1: very eloquently, when you have seventy percent of people going
14:36
Speaker 1: back to jail or prison because they have some technical violation,
14:40
Speaker 1: that's insane. Right. Can you talk about that? Because I'm
14:43
Speaker 1: very concerned that they're sneaking these devils into the details
14:47
Speaker 1: in these new crime bills that are going to allow
14:50
Speaker 1: them to maintain this control. There's no other way to
14:53
Speaker 1: look at it. Over millions of people's lives, and there's
14:55
Speaker 1: a profit center in that for a lot of people too.
14:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, is more saying to me, I take it as
15:01
Speaker 3: deep as like he said, I could go see my
15:03
Speaker 3: son in New Jersey and actually be locked in a
15:06
Speaker 3: cage and be locked and changed shackle from like angle
15:09
Speaker 3: to feet.
15:10
Speaker 1: For the crime of going from Pennsylvania to New.
15:12
Speaker 3: Jersey to see your son.
15:14
Speaker 1: That's what I'm saying. I'm being facetious. Yeah, for the
15:16
Speaker 1: crime in quotes.
15:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll tell you this right now.
15:20
Speaker 5: Judge Brinkley is dying to do that too. She's trying
15:23
Speaker 5: to right now today, I promise you. She's sitting in
15:26
Speaker 5: her house obsessed about how she can figure out how
15:29
Speaker 5: to put them back in jail for nothing. And he
15:32
Speaker 5: can't talk about that, but I can't. I'm telling you
15:33
Speaker 5: straight up, that's what's going on.
15:35
Speaker 1: It's it's really bizarre. I mean, as a country, why
15:40
Speaker 1: would we want I mean, these are our tax dollars, right,
15:44
Speaker 1: and it hurts the average taxpayer, even if you're somebody
15:47
Speaker 1: who's not particularly concerned about criminal justice reform, or you
15:50
Speaker 1: think a lot of people or you maybe you think
15:52
Speaker 1: you're tough on crime or whatever. It might be. The
15:55
Speaker 1: money that's being spent to lock people like you meek
15:59
Speaker 1: up right and to keep you under supervision and this
16:03
Speaker 1: bloated and draconian system is pure insanity. I mean that
16:10
Speaker 1: money could be spent. I mean, I know that at
16:12
Speaker 1: one time eight bonaire, eight billionaire at one time. I
16:14
Speaker 1: don't even know if it's still true. But a few
16:16
Speaker 1: years ago I checked in California, which a lot of
16:19
Speaker 1: people think was in a progressive state, was spending more
16:21
Speaker 1: money locking people up than they were educating people. We
16:24
Speaker 1: have fact check that, but it's absolutely staggering. And the
16:27
Speaker 1: crazy thing is these are Americans. There are fellow people,
16:30
Speaker 1: you know, I say the politicians when I talk to him, Like,
16:32
Speaker 1: you know, if another country treated our people the way
16:35
Speaker 1: we treat our people, we'd invade this stuff.
16:38
Speaker 3: We wouldn't even do to our pets, you know what
16:40
Speaker 3: I'm saying, Like you wouldn't lock your pet in the
16:42
Speaker 3: metal cell. For Sometimes we get locked in and I
16:46
Speaker 3: say we because I've been through this experience so many times,
16:49
Speaker 3: and like sometimes we get locked in a room for
16:52
Speaker 3: twenty three hours a day for a month or two weeks,
16:55
Speaker 3: some people actually even years. You know what I'm saying.
16:58
Speaker 3: It's like they say, when you come home, it's a
17:02
Speaker 3: violation to be around felons. How is it a violation
17:05
Speaker 3: to be around felons when you just had me locked
17:07
Speaker 3: up amongst thousands of felons? Like what rule is this?
17:10
Speaker 1: I'm glad you brought that up too, because that's another
17:12
Speaker 1: thing that creates this visious story.
17:15
Speaker 5: Ex's by the way you think about it. In the
17:17
Speaker 5: environment you grew up, what percentages of people that.
17:20
Speaker 4: Live on your block have had a felony?
17:22
Speaker 3: Ninety five percent?
17:23
Speaker 4: Right, So what you're saying is essential family.
17:25
Speaker 5: Anyone can put you back in prison because there's a
17:29
Speaker 5: rule that says you can't be around felons, but everyone
17:30
Speaker 5: you grew up with has a felony.
17:32
Speaker 3: If somebody really made that an issue, I would probably
17:34
Speaker 3: go to jail any day. Because if I go to
17:36
Speaker 3: the studio with a rapper and we make a song,
17:39
Speaker 3: I don't know his record, but.
17:40
Speaker 1: Right you don't know, how would you know? You have
17:43
Speaker 1: to have a like a database that we do at
17:45
Speaker 1: all times. Most people can't afford that. I mean, you're
17:48
Speaker 1: not going to do it. In the fact is, I'm just
17:50
Speaker 1: quoting a statistic here. One in four black children born
17:52
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety had an imprisoned father by the time
17:55
Speaker 1: he or she turned fourteen. Yeah, right, And the numbers
17:57
Speaker 1: just get worse and worse. I mean, thirty percent of
17:59
Speaker 1: black man without college educations today will have been to
18:02
Speaker 1: prison by their men thirties and spent up to a
18:04
Speaker 1: year in prison thirty percent. Yeah, I mean that's without
18:08
Speaker 1: college educations. And the numbers go to sixty percent when
18:11
Speaker 1: you look at black males without high school educations. Yeah,
18:13
Speaker 1: sixty percent of black males out a high school education
18:15
Speaker 1: was better a year in prison or jail before their
18:18
Speaker 1: thirtieth birthday? What are we doing? And the fact is
18:21
Speaker 1: it's actually impossible to succeed, which is why I'm always
18:24
Speaker 1: amazed when somebody does come from the background that you
18:27
Speaker 1: came from and make it, because with that cycle, how
18:31
Speaker 1: do you do it? They've created a minefield that you
18:33
Speaker 1: can't walk through. Right, once you get arrested, You're going
18:37
Speaker 1: to get re arrested no matter what you do. Pretty much, Yeah.
18:41
Speaker 3: One hundred percent, and like me and Mike, we just
18:44
Speaker 3: spend the hour, Mike just teaching me about financial stuff
18:47
Speaker 3: and like texts and things that. Like when we're growing
18:50
Speaker 3: up from like age thirteen to twenty years old, we
18:54
Speaker 3: probably invest ninety five percent of our thinking time in
18:59
Speaker 3: the how to so in these type of conditions because
19:01
Speaker 3: it's like almost impossible to survive. So like you got
19:04
Speaker 3: to put like your awe into how this even my
19:07
Speaker 3: mind frame now, I still like even though I travel
19:10
Speaker 3: the world, it's still installed in my mind. It's still
19:12
Speaker 3: like something that is like I might come into a
19:15
Speaker 3: certain situation in a certain area and I go into
19:18
Speaker 3: survival move and I have to double back, and like
19:21
Speaker 3: this is not even that type of environment. Well, I
19:23
Speaker 3: don't live this type of life anymore, but it's just
19:25
Speaker 3: always installed inside my head, you know what I'm saying.
19:28
Speaker 3: And coming from environments like that, like you said sixty
19:31
Speaker 3: percent where I come from, it feels like it's ninety.
19:34
Speaker 3: Like do that count death death is going to they
19:39
Speaker 3: probably go up to probably ninety five percent young black
19:42
Speaker 3: men being murdered going to prison probably sixty plus another
19:46
Speaker 3: thirty five percent.
19:47
Speaker 4: Mick, I've heard you talk about this.
19:49
Speaker 5: You know, how many people do you know that you
19:52
Speaker 5: were close with it, you had a real relationship with
19:54
Speaker 5: that have been murdered.
19:55
Speaker 3: Twenty twenty five. That's how many?
19:58
Speaker 1: I know?
19:58
Speaker 3: How many?
19:59
Speaker 4: Zero?
20:00
Speaker 1: You know?
20:00
Speaker 5: You know how many I know that's been close zero? Right,
20:03
Speaker 5: So you're talking about yeah, different environments, So.
20:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's crazy.
20:06
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's great.
20:07
Speaker 1: We have two Shepherd systems of justice in America, one
20:10
Speaker 1: for people with money and one for people without, and
20:12
Speaker 1: one for people who are of color and one for
20:14
Speaker 1: people who are not. And when you hit the reverse
20:16
Speaker 1: jackpot of being a person of color without being born
20:19
Speaker 1: into a wealthy family, which is a huge majority, you.
20:22
Speaker 3: Don't even have to come from a wealthy family to
20:25
Speaker 3: like not be around somebody that was murdered. It's really
20:27
Speaker 3: like territorial, Like I got one of my songs where
20:30
Speaker 3: I'm talking about like like we've been put in groups
20:33
Speaker 3: in certain areas, even with public house and public house,
20:36
Speaker 3: and it's really across Philadelphia. So if you grow grow
20:39
Speaker 3: up less fortunate, they're sticking people in certain areas if
20:42
Speaker 3: you pay attention to it, Like it's North Philadelphia, but
20:45
Speaker 3: not the whole North Philadelphia is a certain part in's
20:48
Speaker 3: South Philadelphia. It's a rich part of South Philadelphia where
20:51
Speaker 3: like houses cost a million dollars and then you got
20:53
Speaker 3: some houses that cost forty thousand. They only moving us
20:56
Speaker 3: in certain areas. And I always say this, like, if
20:59
Speaker 3: you take a drone, the main line in Philadelphia is
21:02
Speaker 3: like city Line Avenue where my apartments used to be.
21:05
Speaker 3: At City Line Avenue. You take a drone and then
21:08
Speaker 3: you make the drone go high in the sky, and
21:10
Speaker 3: if the drone had a zoom in ker zoom on
21:12
Speaker 3: this side of the left and right, you will see
21:15
Speaker 3: as quiet his peace here and this chaos going here.
21:18
Speaker 3: And if you take a kid from over here and
21:20
Speaker 3: let him spend three summers in this area, it will
21:24
Speaker 3: be less. He won't be the way chaos says. He
21:27
Speaker 3: would turn to be more leaning like these people in
21:30
Speaker 3: this area. And I witnessed that with my family. I
21:33
Speaker 3: used to have a nephew. He lived in the projects.
21:35
Speaker 3: He used to cuss, He's seen a lot of things.
21:37
Speaker 3: He used to act up in school, and you know,
21:40
Speaker 3: he moved to a suburban area and his whole life
21:42
Speaker 3: changed within two years. It was just that simple.
21:53
Speaker 1: For a long time, I've been pondering thinking about obsessed
21:57
Speaker 1: with the idea of with the grim statistics and scenario
22:02
Speaker 1: that we're painting here, and you're exactly the guy. I
22:05
Speaker 1: want to ask this question, how many people as talented
22:08
Speaker 1: as you are either got shot or got locked up
22:11
Speaker 1: in prison, and society as a result is being deprived
22:16
Speaker 1: of those talents and all the revenue and all the
22:19
Speaker 1: culture that would have come from that. How many jay
22:21
Speaker 1: zs are there that didn't make it out and ended
22:24
Speaker 1: up in prison doing the.
22:25
Speaker 3: Back of the life thousands, you know what I'm saying.
22:27
Speaker 3: I know there's guys in there and locked with as
22:29
Speaker 3: talented as me, you know what I'm saying, And they
22:31
Speaker 3: probably there for felonies on felonies. And when you say,
22:36
Speaker 3: like when people label you as a felon, like how
22:38
Speaker 3: it's that my friend called a felony he was fifteen
22:40
Speaker 3: for something he ain't do now actually when he do
22:42
Speaker 3: make a mistake, when he do go hang on the corner.
22:46
Speaker 3: When we come up on the corner around drug doos.
22:49
Speaker 3: Everybody sell drugs. Your first step is to pick up
22:52
Speaker 3: a drug. So when you get your second felony, you
22:56
Speaker 3: might be actually good at basketball. You might have been
22:58
Speaker 3: in eleventh grade actually one of the best players on
23:01
Speaker 3: the team. And here come you in a bad neighborhood.
23:06
Speaker 3: You get arrested for something else, and we don't have
23:09
Speaker 3: a lowyer money. You might take a deal, and the
23:11
Speaker 3: deal is put this fundingly on your record. Now you
23:13
Speaker 3: got three fuling these on your record, and you're not
23:15
Speaker 3: They might call you a career criminal. You're not a
23:18
Speaker 3: career criminal. You just was in the wrong mix. Basically,
23:21
Speaker 3: Now you might get fifteen years for something small. You
23:25
Speaker 3: see how he told you that the guy got fifteen
23:27
Speaker 3: Well he had two life sentence for stealing. Now your record,
23:31
Speaker 3: your jacket is up, you get fifteen years. So now
23:33
Speaker 3: you trapped inside a prison while you never get a
23:36
Speaker 3: real shot at life. And you might be good as
23:39
Speaker 3: Ben Simmons or Joe and Beebe and you know all
23:41
Speaker 3: that went down to dream But far as Rapp is hundreds.
23:45
Speaker 3: So it was probably at least fifty guys that was
23:48
Speaker 3: actually good where I was at, where I was locked
23:50
Speaker 3: up at, where if they was on the street, we
23:52
Speaker 3: would spend time in the studio and build together and
23:54
Speaker 3: make music together. Fifty I would say, in that one
23:56
Speaker 3: prison that I know of.
23:58
Speaker 1: Recently, hip hop recently passed and roll and rock and
24:01
Speaker 1: pop as the most popular genre worldwide. Right, and it
24:04
Speaker 1: all comes from almost all of it comes from America. Right. Yeah,
24:07
Speaker 1: So when we're exporting that, we're bringing tax revenue into
24:10
Speaker 1: this country. When guys like you are making records, selling
24:13
Speaker 1: millions of records, selling concert tickets, you're paying taxes. All
24:16
Speaker 1: that stuff goes back into the system. Everybody is being
24:19
Speaker 1: hurt by that, and society is being deprived of geniuses.
24:22
Speaker 1: As you said, basketball is another story, right, And when
24:27
Speaker 1: you talk about a scenario like that, you have a
24:29
Speaker 1: kid as good as whoever you want to talk about,
24:31
Speaker 1: Simmons or whatever. They get arrested like that, the college
24:34
Speaker 1: scholarship's going out the windows. They can't play college ball
24:37
Speaker 1: now their whole thing. And let's say that guy was
24:39
Speaker 1: going to make one hundred million dollars, not unrealistic. We
24:41
Speaker 1: have the owner the seventy six ers year, right, you're
24:43
Speaker 1: the what right those checks?
24:44
Speaker 5: We look forward to writing many checks for one hundred
24:46
Speaker 5: million dollars because that we have that many great players.
24:48
Speaker 1: And let me ask you, do those players pay taxes
24:49
Speaker 1: on those checks? Of course, of course they do, right,
24:52
Speaker 1: huge amounts of money back into the city. Coming back
24:55
Speaker 1: to the state, coming back into the country, because those
24:57
Speaker 1: people were the few lucky ones that managed to escape
25:00
Speaker 1: from this, you know, sort of trap that society has built.
25:03
Speaker 4: But by way even more than money.
25:05
Speaker 5: If you look at the math and you say there's
25:06
Speaker 5: six point seven or six point nine million people today
25:09
Speaker 5: in America trapped in the criminal justice system, the question
25:12
Speaker 5: is what's appropriate. Like if we just all said, if
25:14
Speaker 5: you got anyone together and said, what do you think
25:16
Speaker 5: someone should be in prison for? What should someone be
25:18
Speaker 5: on probation for? If you said, hey, that person got
25:21
Speaker 5: caught smoking weed, should any of those people be in prison?
25:26
Speaker 5: If someone stole one hundred dollars as a fifteen year
25:29
Speaker 5: old kid, should they be stuck in prison? And the
25:31
Speaker 5: amount of story Like I think if you looked at
25:33
Speaker 5: the math and just said, let's just take this top
25:35
Speaker 5: down to six point nine million people in the criminal
25:39
Speaker 5: justice system, I think you could say if we just
25:42
Speaker 5: all said what should people be in the system for,
25:44
Speaker 5: and not being the system, we just took a bunch
25:46
Speaker 5: of rational people, the number is probably half And so
25:49
Speaker 5: to me, what's such a travesty is you've got millions
25:53
Speaker 5: of people stuck in the criminal justice system that don't
25:56
Speaker 5: belong there, and by the way, you're ruining their lives,
25:59
Speaker 5: their families, lives, their friends' lives. By the way, there's
26:02
Speaker 5: a lot of people that belong in prison. We want
26:04
Speaker 5: to live in a safe world. We want to have
26:06
Speaker 5: you know, violent offenders, people that murder people, or rapists.
26:09
Speaker 4: You know, armed robbers.
26:10
Speaker 5: There are a lot of people that belong in prison,
26:12
Speaker 5: and I want those people in prison. But the problem
26:14
Speaker 5: is there's millions of people that shouldn't be in the
26:17
Speaker 5: criminal justice system that are and that's the problem that
26:20
Speaker 5: needs to be addressed. And that's what I know. Meek
26:22
Speaker 5: is really excited to help make an impact on. I'm
26:25
Speaker 5: excited to help make an impact on I think this
26:28
Speaker 5: is an enormous problem that's costing tens of billions of
26:31
Speaker 5: dollars and is ruined millions of people's lives.
26:34
Speaker 1: So so, yeah, and Michael, picking up on what you
26:36
Speaker 1: were saying, thirty thirty five years ago, we had three
26:38
Speaker 1: hundred thousand people in prison in America. Right now it's
26:41
Speaker 1: two point two million, and I'm sure the numbers on
26:43
Speaker 1: probation and parole were proportionately about, you know, seven times
26:47
Speaker 1: less like this one is too. And then you look
26:49
Speaker 1: at the country like Japan, right, well, we locked If
26:51
Speaker 1: you look at Western Europe, we lock people up at
26:54
Speaker 1: five to nine times depending which country you choose. The
26:57
Speaker 1: rate of the rest of the countries in Western Europe
26:58
Speaker 1: below US is five times as many per capita. Right,
27:02
Speaker 1: And then when you look at we have more people
27:03
Speaker 1: in prison just for drugs in America than everyone in
27:06
Speaker 1: prison of all of Western Europe for everything in Western
27:09
Speaker 1: Europe is much more. There many more people in Western
27:10
Speaker 1: Europe than we're in America. And then you get to Japan.
27:13
Speaker 1: In Japan they have approximately seventy thousand people in prison.
27:17
Speaker 1: We probably have seventy thousand people in prison in a
27:21
Speaker 1: mid sized state. Yeah, maybe even a smaller state than
27:23
Speaker 1: this one, right, yeah, because I mean do the math.
27:25
Speaker 1: So they we lock people up at fourteen times the
27:29
Speaker 1: rate per capita that Japan does. And for anybody listening, going, yeah,
27:32
Speaker 1: but that's why we have a lower crime rate than
27:34
Speaker 1: they do. No, we don't. Our crime rates are the same,
27:37
Speaker 1: and there's no evidence that supports. In fact, I think
27:40
Speaker 1: every social scientist that has studied this would agree that
27:44
Speaker 1: this system is the worst system in terms of crime
27:47
Speaker 1: and perpetuating the cycle because of the fact that when
27:50
Speaker 1: people go to jail or prison, as we talked about
27:53
Speaker 1: growing up in the situation they are, they come out,
27:55
Speaker 1: they're unemployable to I'll understanding. That's something I talk about
27:58
Speaker 1: on the show a lot, like people that are out
28:00
Speaker 1: out there that are employers take a shot with somebody
28:03
Speaker 1: who was system affected, because those people will work harder
28:06
Speaker 1: and better. You know, there's a bakery in New York
28:08
Speaker 1: I just found out about. I saw Ted talk about
28:10
Speaker 1: this that hires anybody who walks in system affected. They
28:14
Speaker 1: don't even ask, yeah, and they're hugely successful. They make
28:17
Speaker 1: all the brownies for Ben and Jerry's ice cream, right
28:19
Speaker 1: they sell a zillion can imagine me brownie's.
28:22
Speaker 4: I want to move to a lot of them right
28:23
Speaker 4: now because we have a little weight loss back on,
28:24
Speaker 4: so we can get this brown delivered to.
28:27
Speaker 1: Him right now. If you're looking a little slimmer the last.
28:29
Speaker 4: Time, yeah, yeah, neither is heavier.
28:32
Speaker 1: Though, no, but it's you know, that's something that we
28:36
Speaker 1: really need to as a society start to be much
28:39
Speaker 1: more progressive on and more empathetic. I mean, I don't
28:43
Speaker 1: want to sound like some like touchy feely person here,
28:46
Speaker 1: and I'm with you, Michael.
28:47
Speaker 5: I believe that that's an easier problem to solve because
28:49
Speaker 5: I've actually been thinking, Look, we employ eight thousand people
28:52
Speaker 5: between my companies, and you know, I think if you
28:54
Speaker 5: got a bunch of business leaders to focus on taking
28:58
Speaker 5: big companies and saying what areas in their company could
29:01
Speaker 5: start to take people right out of prison to help
29:03
Speaker 5: rehabilitate them. I think there are actually easy ways to
29:06
Speaker 5: make real progress acainslight. I'm actually optimistic with a little
29:09
Speaker 5: bit of focus and energy that real impact can be made.
29:11
Speaker 5: There a lot of those cases. You have better employees,
29:14
Speaker 5: as you just indicated as well, so we have, you know,
29:17
Speaker 5: thousands of people that manufacture a power, working fulfillment centers,
29:20
Speaker 5: working call centers. My point is there's you know, big
29:23
Speaker 5: opportunities to hire people. And I think that again, if
29:26
Speaker 5: you look at how many people work in America and
29:28
Speaker 5: then how many people coming out of prison or jail
29:30
Speaker 5: each year. If there's two point two million people in
29:32
Speaker 5: prison in jail, maybe I don't know, five hundred thousand
29:34
Speaker 5: people come.
29:34
Speaker 4: Out a year.
29:35
Speaker 5: I don't think it takes a lot to get a
29:37
Speaker 5: set of big companies to focus on helping solve this.
29:39
Speaker 3: Problem well, and especially with long time offenders. Like a
29:43
Speaker 3: long time offenders, like people who serve over ten years,
29:46
Speaker 3: they spend most of their jail time working. In fact,
29:48
Speaker 3: the result working for the prison that their mind, they
29:51
Speaker 3: have experienced, their mind is structured to just work all day.
29:56
Speaker 3: And member rival was telling us he had a program
30:00
Speaker 3: hired like a lot of ex offenders, and he asked me, like,
30:03
Speaker 3: how many of them messed up? Was you in that conversation?
30:05
Speaker 3: He asked me, said how many you think messed up?
30:06
Speaker 3: Out of two hundred, I'm probably like, I said one
30:10
Speaker 3: ninety eight because I knew the number would be high,
30:13
Speaker 3: because I know of long time offenders, people that come
30:15
Speaker 3: home doing a lot of time. They don't they don't
30:17
Speaker 3: really want to mess up again. He told me nothing
30:19
Speaker 3: out of.
30:20
Speaker 1: Two hundred, none. Yeah, and that's amazing.
30:22
Speaker 4: I was only two of I think this was twenty
30:24
Speaker 4: or thirty years ago.
30:25
Speaker 5: Robert Kraft had a real focus on taking people that
30:28
Speaker 5: had come out of prison at hiring them.
30:29
Speaker 4: And the point to your point was they were his
30:31
Speaker 4: best employees.
30:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's best employees. And it's interesting too. I mean,
30:34
Speaker 1: call it luck, call it whatever you want. I've got.
30:37
Speaker 1: I've been very fortunate, blessed whatever to be able to
30:41
Speaker 1: help advocate successfully for clemency for dozens of people deserving
30:46
Speaker 1: people over the years, not just people who are innocent,
30:48
Speaker 1: but people who were primarily who are sentenced to mandatory sentences,
30:51
Speaker 1: crazy mandatory sentences like Lenny Singleton, who you referenced earlier,
30:55
Speaker 1: or Travian Blount who was senced just at fifteen years
30:58
Speaker 1: old since the six life terms for a robbery in
31:01
Speaker 1: which no one was hurt. Fifteen years old, six life terms.
31:05
Speaker 1: It made international news like what, what in the world
31:08
Speaker 1: even is that? Like, that's it's got to be what
31:11
Speaker 1: it is.
31:11
Speaker 3: That should be a crown that sentce of minds today
31:14
Speaker 3: Like why that's.
31:16
Speaker 5: And and to me, that's the that should be the
31:19
Speaker 5: easy things to get everyone aligned on and fix. And
31:22
Speaker 5: by the way, take talk about the state that meek
31:24
Speaker 5: us from, that I'm from. In Pennsylvania, we're one of
31:28
Speaker 5: three states in America that has no cap on probation.
31:31
Speaker 5: So another forty seven states have caps of probation summer.
31:36
Speaker 4: Three years, two years, four years, we have no cap
31:39
Speaker 4: in Pennsylvania.
31:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, so someone like me who I didn't know that was.
31:44
Speaker 5: Separate that he was wrongfully convicted thirteen years ago appointing
31:47
Speaker 5: a gun that didn't point a gun and a cop
31:49
Speaker 5: by the way, where multiple police officers come forward and
31:52
Speaker 5: said it was a lie. So we have Affid davits
31:55
Speaker 5: from a police officer came for in and said no,
31:57
Speaker 5: I was one of the two resting officers.
31:58
Speaker 4: I know he didn't point the gun.
32:00
Speaker 5: Okay, Now after that, you've still got as system that's
32:04
Speaker 5: just completely broken in Pennsylvania. He gets sentenced to probation,
32:08
Speaker 5: and then he does a concert in a different state
32:12
Speaker 5: without the proper authorization and attack on another five years
32:14
Speaker 5: of probation. And now he's got he's still six years
32:17
Speaker 5: of probation left, right, So he's got no chance to
32:25
Speaker 5: actually succeed in that situation.
32:27
Speaker 4: And I can tell you if you put me, the
32:30
Speaker 4: Jewish kid from.
32:30
Speaker 5: Suburban Philadelphia on probation, I couldn't make a year with
32:35
Speaker 5: what he needs to go through.
32:36
Speaker 1: There's not possible.
32:37
Speaker 3: In the primetime fuck up years of my life from
32:39
Speaker 3: eighteen to thirty one, you.
32:41
Speaker 1: Know, of all the people that I've been involved with
32:43
Speaker 1: and helped get out of prison, none of them have
32:45
Speaker 1: reoffended or offended for the first time. If they were innocent,
32:49
Speaker 1: it's probably a better way of saying it. And again, none.
32:52
Speaker 5: But hold on, some will and that's okay because you
32:55
Speaker 5: know what, at the end of the day, we need
32:56
Speaker 5: to make the world a better place. And if we
32:58
Speaker 5: get millions of people out of the criminal justice system,
33:01
Speaker 5: and if you make mistakes, that's okay because there's a
33:03
Speaker 5: lot of people that aren't in the criminal justice system
33:05
Speaker 5: that will also make mistakes.
33:06
Speaker 4: This is never going to be perfect.
33:08
Speaker 5: And that's someone says, hey, we should keep that six
33:11
Speaker 5: point seven or six point nine million people stuck in
33:13
Speaker 5: the criminal justice system the few million that shouldn't be
33:16
Speaker 5: there because someone may make a mistake. Nothing's perfect, like
33:21
Speaker 5: we need we need to get it right overall. And
33:23
Speaker 5: that's the same approach I take in business. We want
33:25
Speaker 5: to make good overall decisions. We don't go for perfection.
33:28
Speaker 5: We went for perfection, we never get anything done, of
33:30
Speaker 5: course not.
33:30
Speaker 1: And as I said, I've been lucky in that sense.
33:32
Speaker 1: And of the people of the interest is project. Of
33:34
Speaker 1: the people that we've gotten out, a tiny percentage of
33:38
Speaker 1: them have ever been in any sort of trouble. Again,
33:40
Speaker 1: people age truck and.
33:41
Speaker 3: We were talking about real trouble, probably zero pens and
33:44
Speaker 3: got back in real travel.
33:54
Speaker 1: A couple of other very important topics I want to
33:56
Speaker 1: talk touch on with you, Meek and Michael is prisons
34:01
Speaker 1: themselves and how barbaric our prison system is when it's
34:06
Speaker 1: supposed to be called a correctional institution and we know
34:09
Speaker 1: that that is the farthest thing from the truth in
34:12
Speaker 1: most cases. And the other is how important it is
34:16
Speaker 1: for people to get out and vote yeah, because I
34:18
Speaker 1: don't think we can have this conversation without talking about that.
34:22
Speaker 1: And some people I've heard somebody say we don't need
34:24
Speaker 1: criminal justice before, we need a criminal justice revolution. So
34:27
Speaker 1: which one do you want to take on first?
34:28
Speaker 3: So we could talk voting it. This coming from my
34:31
Speaker 3: coach on where we come from. This goes for us
34:33
Speaker 3: back when I say, like the other side of America
34:36
Speaker 3: where people don't even believe like that world tends to us.
34:39
Speaker 3: And I used to think that, but that was deeply false.
34:42
Speaker 3: And one of my jobs is trying to teach people
34:46
Speaker 3: the ropes of how volten go because it's even with
34:50
Speaker 3: a judge trying to lock me up for what nothing,
34:53
Speaker 3: going over a bridge. Basically, we voted for her district
34:58
Speaker 3: attorneys where they enforce mandatory minimums and they enforced locking
35:03
Speaker 3: people up for smoking marijuana and things like that. We
35:06
Speaker 3: vote for them. We have to be the ones that vote.
35:08
Speaker 3: In our culture, the black community, a lot of us
35:11
Speaker 3: don't vote.
35:11
Speaker 1: So it's like white community too.
35:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I don't really know. I know that
35:16
Speaker 3: in our community we don't vote at all. I don't
35:18
Speaker 3: even know anybody my age. At the age of eighteen,
35:21
Speaker 3: we ever got up as a group and everybody wanted
35:23
Speaker 3: to vote. It was like never a thing. We didn't
35:24
Speaker 3: believe in it. So my new thing is to teach
35:27
Speaker 3: the younger people from our culture that come up, well
35:30
Speaker 3: all younger people that come up, that voting is important
35:33
Speaker 3: because you know, we have to live under these laws
35:35
Speaker 3: that these people are creating, and if we don't vote,
35:38
Speaker 3: we don't have a voice at all. It's like you
35:39
Speaker 3: don't even count. And a lot of times you look
35:41
Speaker 3: at TV. They had a campaign that said vote or die.
35:45
Speaker 3: I always seen it, but I never really knew what
35:47
Speaker 3: it meant. It was that probably was like eighteen years
35:49
Speaker 3: old when they did that campaign. I never really understood it,
35:53
Speaker 3: But nowadays I understood. It's like you eve a vote,
35:56
Speaker 3: or you get housed done at a regime which will
35:59
Speaker 3: eventually league kill you, if not by jail, not by
36:03
Speaker 3: keeping you in a ruthless environment, it will turn out
36:06
Speaker 3: bad for you, basically. And I just believe that if
36:10
Speaker 3: we vote, if we make our present on like justice reform,
36:13
Speaker 3: just reform right now is the number one topic in America.
36:18
Speaker 3: Probably if we make this topic big enough politically, a
36:22
Speaker 3: lot of people would have to lean towards being leaning
36:24
Speaker 3: on these topics.
36:25
Speaker 5: And I want you as leaning, I'd say appropriate, Yeah, yeah,
36:28
Speaker 5: I'd say I'd say punishment that fits the crime, because
36:31
Speaker 5: by the way, I'm not leaning.
36:32
Speaker 4: I want appropriate punishment.
36:34
Speaker 3: And that was right, That was that was definitely right.
36:36
Speaker 1: You know, I've been on the board of Families Against
36:38
Speaker 1: Mandatory Minimums, was a great organization for over twenty five
36:41
Speaker 1: years now, and our motto is let the punishment fit
36:43
Speaker 1: the crime.
36:44
Speaker 4: Yeah.
36:44
Speaker 1: I mean, nobody's advocating for chaos. Nobody wants a society
36:48
Speaker 1: that is like, you know.
36:50
Speaker 4: I want to feel I want to feel safe.
36:51
Speaker 1: Everybody does.
36:52
Speaker 4: I want my daughter to be safe. I want your
36:54
Speaker 4: family to be safe, but.
36:55
Speaker 1: I want his kids to be saved too.
36:57
Speaker 3: Some situations, though, that the crimes are bousou high up
37:00
Speaker 3: is like, what is lenient?
37:02
Speaker 4: But I'll make something really simple.
37:03
Speaker 5: I would just say, how many people are in prison
37:04
Speaker 5: in jail today are on probation because they have a
37:07
Speaker 5: drug problem.
37:09
Speaker 4: It's more than a million.
37:10
Speaker 5: Yeah, okay, yeah, I'm not talking about selling drugs. I'm
37:13
Speaker 5: going about anyone who smoked weed. How could you possibly
37:17
Speaker 5: weed just becoming legal everywhere? How could you possibly put
37:20
Speaker 5: someone in the criminal trust system for doing something that's
37:22
Speaker 5: becoming legal? It makes absolutely no sense. Someone had a
37:24
Speaker 5: problem with perkoson, why do you send them in jail?
37:26
Speaker 4: Send them to rehab? Makes no sense.
37:28
Speaker 5: So to me, that's where the punishment needs to fit
37:30
Speaker 5: the crime. I al would take everybody who has a
37:32
Speaker 5: drug problem. Yeah, I would get them help, so get
37:35
Speaker 5: they solve the drug problem.
37:36
Speaker 3: But it's like as deep as this, Like if I
37:39
Speaker 3: sell drugs and the cops come to my house and
37:41
Speaker 3: I'm not there, my mom get found guilty for these
37:43
Speaker 3: drugs in my house. People moms are getting thirty years
37:47
Speaker 3: in prison in federal prison for stuff like that. Like
37:49
Speaker 3: your mom got thirty years in prison. That's a life sentence,
37:52
Speaker 3: that's death.
37:53
Speaker 4: That's death.
37:53
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's deaf like you. I don't want to send
37:56
Speaker 3: you to prison, even though she might preach to you
37:58
Speaker 3: every day that you're selling drug. You're getting out of
38:00
Speaker 3: my house and she knows wrong. But you have a son.
38:03
Speaker 1: If you're in a car with someone who's got drugs
38:06
Speaker 1: and you get pulled over and they find the drugs,
38:08
Speaker 1: it belongs to everybody unless somebody takes responsibility for it,
38:11
Speaker 1: and nobody ever does. Nobody ever goes, oh yeah, those
38:13
Speaker 1: are mine, right. So this is how crazy the system is,
38:16
Speaker 1: where you could just be next to someone who's doing
38:18
Speaker 1: something wrong and then.
38:21
Speaker 3: I'm not even talking about full innocis. I'm just talking about, like, say,
38:23
Speaker 3: if you come from where I come from, like your
38:25
Speaker 3: mom on a crack, she's a strung out feeding you
38:28
Speaker 3: thirteen years old. You got a seven year old sister,
38:32
Speaker 3: and you coming in the house, it's just baking, soda
38:34
Speaker 3: and butter and refrigerator. And when you go out look
38:36
Speaker 3: out the window, it's people on the corner selling weed, marijuana, crack, cocaine,
38:40
Speaker 3: and they running in fast cash, and your little sister
38:43
Speaker 3: don't got none to eat. The first thing you're gonna
38:45
Speaker 3: do is go outside and pick up like this is
38:48
Speaker 3: like normal. Like Mike, if you was in a situation,
38:51
Speaker 3: I bet a million dollars on it that you would
38:54
Speaker 3: go outside and pick out of a drug. If Collie
38:56
Speaker 3: was in the house.
38:57
Speaker 4: You fourteen heart, have made work for me to do.
39:00
Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying.
39:00
Speaker 4: I'm talking about stuff.
39:02
Speaker 3: No, I'm talking about if you don't have any of
39:03
Speaker 3: this going on, and you're poor, like you don't have
39:06
Speaker 3: any family in the house, and you come see Kylie
39:08
Speaker 3: and there I do.
39:09
Speaker 4: But that's also where should that person have no punishment? No,
39:14
Speaker 4: should they.
39:14
Speaker 5: Be set to jail for thirty years? It's much ridiculous
39:16
Speaker 5: thing I've ever heard, and that's why I said to me.
39:18
Speaker 3: But even if you bring it down to ten years,
39:20
Speaker 3: ten years will ruin your life. So like what they
39:23
Speaker 3: got is leaning, is not even leaning, Like it's the
39:26
Speaker 3: rates of boos step so high, like what they call
39:28
Speaker 3: like I watch media and social send them to prison.
39:31
Speaker 3: Like even when people be like he should have went
39:34
Speaker 3: to prison, he broke probation. Even if I did break probation.
39:38
Speaker 3: If I did commit a crime ten years ago and
39:41
Speaker 3: I broke probation, people are like send them back to prison.
39:44
Speaker 3: I'm like, do you know what prison is like. When
39:46
Speaker 3: I say shackled up in a cage, I mean like
39:49
Speaker 3: shack of real change. When you take a baby step
39:51
Speaker 3: is cutting your legs and like the same thing you
39:54
Speaker 3: see in a slavery movie. It's the same thing. And
39:56
Speaker 3: I'm like, do people really understand what they're saying, like
39:59
Speaker 3: send them to prison? Like Mike came to myself. Mike
40:02
Speaker 3: was like, he was like, it's not bad as it
40:04
Speaker 3: could be in my head.
40:04
Speaker 5: I'm like, oh, but that's because I'm an optimistic person
40:07
Speaker 5: and I always want to look at things positively.
40:09
Speaker 3: And it's ten degrees. I don't have a tallest seat.
40:12
Speaker 3: The water that I'm coming out of my sink is
40:14
Speaker 3: the same water connected to the tall is filthy. Like
40:18
Speaker 3: it's like there's ten mices in my cell at night
40:21
Speaker 3: running around you like is you can't even imagine it?
40:25
Speaker 3: And I'm like, I'm here. I didn't hurt anybody. I
40:27
Speaker 3: didn't kill anybody. I didn't by the.
40:29
Speaker 5: Way they think, it bothers me so much, the amount
40:31
Speaker 5: of people I've told about your story and everyone it's
40:34
Speaker 5: now proven that you were wrongfully convicted because we have
40:37
Speaker 5: a cop who is one of the two restaurant officersho
40:40
Speaker 5: signed app davit saying no, you didn't point the gun,
40:42
Speaker 5: which what you were charged for. Yet and your probation
40:45
Speaker 5: violations where you popped a wheelie on a motorcycle, you
40:49
Speaker 5: broke up a fight in an airport, Yet there are
40:51
Speaker 5: people say, yeah, put them back in jail for ten years,
40:54
Speaker 5: which is it shows how backwards so many people are
40:56
Speaker 5: in this country as well.
40:57
Speaker 3: There when you speak in jail, that is like it's
40:59
Speaker 3: just like a place, a hotel where you go to
41:02
Speaker 3: sit at. Nah, it's some shit that will ruin your
41:05
Speaker 3: whole train of thought, like you were in here, Like
41:07
Speaker 3: the matches sleeping on is probably four inches thick, and
41:11
Speaker 3: after that it is metal and cement. Like you got
41:14
Speaker 3: these guys eighty years old sleeping on mattresses and stuff
41:17
Speaker 3: like they didn't kill anybody. They may have been on
41:20
Speaker 3: probation and they fell in the after felling in. You
41:23
Speaker 3: eighty years old, you you poor. You've been in the
41:25
Speaker 3: system so long it's hard to explain. You have to
41:29
Speaker 3: see it and be there. Like even what they do
41:31
Speaker 3: with juveniles, they got juveniles locked in cages. These are
41:34
Speaker 3: cement cages that they had these kids and most of
41:37
Speaker 3: these kids didn't kill you anybody.
41:39
Speaker 4: Now tell you something. I was so proud of you.
41:41
Speaker 4: But it's a scary story.
41:43
Speaker 5: So the day that I brought Robert Kraft to visit
41:46
Speaker 5: make in prison, we were sitting there and we were
41:49
Speaker 5: just kind of talking, and I was really just kind
41:51
Speaker 5: of listening to Robert Meek talking. Robert looked at me
41:54
Speaker 5: and he said, you know, I don't understand how how
41:58
Speaker 5: you're handling this.
41:58
Speaker 4: So how are you so happy?
42:00
Speaker 5: He said, Like, last time I was with you, we
42:02
Speaker 5: were on a plane flying to an All Star game
42:06
Speaker 5: and you were on the top of the world. Now
42:08
Speaker 5: you're in an orange jumpsuit, locked in prison. You've got
42:12
Speaker 5: to smile from me. You ear to ear and Mick,
42:15
Speaker 5: he's generally pretty quick with his answer. You thought about
42:17
Speaker 5: it for about thirty seconds, and he looked at Robbery.
42:20
Speaker 5: He said, you know, this has been my entire adult life.
42:23
Speaker 5: I was wrongfully convicted for a crime and commit I've
42:26
Speaker 5: been sent back to prison multiple times, never committed a
42:29
Speaker 5: new crime. But this is the first time people actually
42:32
Speaker 5: fighting for me, and that makes me so happy. So
42:34
Speaker 5: for me, I was mortified at the situation, but completely
42:38
Speaker 5: proud of how well he was handling that horrific situation.
42:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is the best situation I've ever been there
42:43
Speaker 3: as far as dealing with the system. We're having like
42:46
Speaker 3: real credible people standing behind me because, like Mike said,
42:49
Speaker 3: I'm telling him, like, Yo, if y'all had guns in here,
42:52
Speaker 3: y'are not even police officers. If I came in here
42:54
Speaker 3: all y'all had firearms and I came in here a
42:56
Speaker 3: point a gun nine times out of ten, where would
42:58
Speaker 3: I be?
43:00
Speaker 1: Of course, the police.
43:01
Speaker 4: Off against a cop.
43:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, cops are trained to neutralize people who cause threat
43:07
Speaker 3: towards their lives. Like this is like normal, Like, you
43:10
Speaker 3: get away with this, This is what you should do.
43:12
Speaker 3: You're trained to do this, not me one on one
43:15
Speaker 3: with a cop, like and you know, one on one,
43:17
Speaker 3: anybody could get scared and want to run away. Now
43:20
Speaker 3: this is a group of cops doing a full blown
43:23
Speaker 3: read and me being accused of pointing a gun at
43:26
Speaker 3: all of them, and.
43:27
Speaker 1: To me one more question Before I do that, I
43:30
Speaker 1: want to remind people who are listening vote, vote and
43:34
Speaker 1: vote and vote in your local races. And your DA's
43:37
Speaker 1: racist and your judges racist, your vote counts. We have
43:40
Speaker 1: races that actually ended up tied. I mean, your vote counts.
43:43
Speaker 3: And you, judge, don't have to be white against the
43:46
Speaker 3: black to be racist. It could be white on white racism,
43:49
Speaker 3: it could be black on black racism. Make sure you
43:52
Speaker 3: vote for the right people. And when you vote for judges,
43:55
Speaker 3: nobody really knows because you just see a judge d you.
44:00
Speaker 4: Can make good decisions.
44:01
Speaker 5: And people knew when they vote it for the DA
44:03
Speaker 5: in Pennsylvania that he was a more thoughtful person on
44:05
Speaker 5: the criminal justice system. And there been lots of new
44:07
Speaker 5: DA's that have had much more modern approaches. The approach
44:10
Speaker 5: hasn't been lock everybody up and put all Black American
44:13
Speaker 5: in prison. It's been let's have an accurate punishment for
44:16
Speaker 5: a crime. And that's who you should be voting for.
44:19
Speaker 1: And I'm going to say one more thing before I
44:21
Speaker 1: turned the last question over to you, which is everybody
44:24
Speaker 1: who's out there, at some point you're going to get
44:26
Speaker 1: asked to serve on a jury and nobody likes it.
44:28
Speaker 1: We get those things in the mail, we're like, oh
44:30
Speaker 1: my god, I got on a time for this. Whatever.
44:32
Speaker 1: It's a big pain of you got to go because
44:36
Speaker 1: when you go, there might be a meek mill in
44:38
Speaker 1: front of you, there might be somebody else who's meeting
44:42
Speaker 1: and Eric RIDDI get fun of you. In case that
44:44
Speaker 1: all three of us are involved with and we're going
44:45
Speaker 1: to get him out, well, come hell or high water.
44:48
Speaker 1: So get up, get out and go vote, and go
44:51
Speaker 1: serve on the jury, because the ask you save could
44:54
Speaker 1: be your own. And now, rather than ask a final question,
44:58
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna do what I do at the end
45:00
Speaker 1: of the show, which is I always say it's my
45:02
Speaker 1: favorite part of the show, and I think it's probably
45:03
Speaker 1: the audience's favorite part of the show too, which is when
45:05
Speaker 1: I stopped talking and just turned the mic over to
45:09
Speaker 1: you for final last words. And Michael, I'm going to
45:13
Speaker 1: let you go first and then me can back clean
45:16
Speaker 1: up and close out the show. So, Michael, what would
45:18
Speaker 1: you want to tell people? How could they get involved?
45:20
Speaker 1: What can they do? What's the solution?
45:23
Speaker 5: Well, I think we're in a great position because I
45:26
Speaker 5: actually think this is a big problem that needs to
45:29
Speaker 5: be addressed. I think it's going to be I think
45:31
Speaker 5: it would just take common sense to this juicy problem.
45:34
Speaker 4: We're going to make the world a better place.
45:35
Speaker 5: And I'm actually for a guy who had absolutely zero
45:39
Speaker 5: point zero exposure to the criminal justice system until I
45:43
Speaker 5: met Meek and them still really didn't understand it until
45:45
Speaker 5: November sixth of last year. I'm really optimistic because I
45:49
Speaker 5: believe that this is a completely broken system that with
45:53
Speaker 5: a lot of focus and energy, we can make the
45:55
Speaker 5: country a much better place than To me, that's exciting.
45:57
Speaker 5: So you know what I'd say to everybody is make
45:59
Speaker 5: a difference. I didn't make any difference until seven months ago.
46:02
Speaker 5: And I'm actually you know, I've got three great businesses
46:05
Speaker 5: that I run, and I've got a great daughter and
46:07
Speaker 5: great family and friends. Yet I'm as energized about this
46:09
Speaker 5: as anything because I see how broken it is and
46:12
Speaker 5: I see how much fixing it needs.
46:13
Speaker 1: Meek last words, and before you even go, I want
46:17
Speaker 1: to thank you and Michael and thank you not just
46:20
Speaker 1: for being on the show, but for lending your voice
46:22
Speaker 1: and your energy and your money and your time to
46:26
Speaker 1: this movement.
46:27
Speaker 4: Thank you for your focus. What you're doing is incredible.
46:30
Speaker 5: You've been at this for twenty five years, Meek's been
46:32
Speaker 5: sucking the system for thirteen years, and I've been at
46:34
Speaker 5: this for seven months.
46:34
Speaker 4: So thank you.
46:35
Speaker 1: Well, I'm older than yours, I've had more time question nonetheles,
46:39
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's an obsession and I'm not going to
46:41
Speaker 1: stop until we fix it together. So but anyway, so
46:44
Speaker 1: thank you both again for being here and sharing your
46:47
Speaker 1: thoughts and your energy, your collective wisdom. So, Meek, what
46:51
Speaker 1: are your last words for the audience that's out there?
46:54
Speaker 3: My last words to the audience is this, No, I'm dedicated.
46:57
Speaker 3: This is a life mission. I actually suffer from the
47:01
Speaker 3: criminal justice system for over ten years, and you know,
47:06
Speaker 3: I actually walked the walk on the other side of
47:08
Speaker 3: the wall with some innocent men who I know are
47:11
Speaker 3: basically suffering and families are suffering, So you know, I
47:15
Speaker 3: felt the pain firsthand. And you know, I'm gonna continue
47:17
Speaker 3: to do what I need to do to help make
47:19
Speaker 3: change and not fix the system, but break the system
47:23
Speaker 3: completely and rebuild it again. Because the way we lived
47:28
Speaker 3: and the things we've been through with the system, it
47:30
Speaker 3: doesn't even take crime or take being a villain to
47:33
Speaker 3: go to jail, you know what I'm saying. And you
47:35
Speaker 3: know it's thousands of millions of people trapped inside on
47:38
Speaker 3: the other side of the wall that actually need help.
47:40
Speaker 3: And you know, I think this is the right season
47:43
Speaker 3: to make change. And putting all my efforts onto it
47:47
Speaker 3: and hopefully, you know, we make change within the next
47:49
Speaker 3: few years and free a lot of people from the
47:51
Speaker 3: prison system.
47:58
Speaker 1: Don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you
48:00
Speaker 1: get your podcasts, it really helps. And I'm a proud
48:04
Speaker 1: donor to the Innocence Project and I really hope you'll
48:07
Speaker 1: join me in supporting this very important cause and helping
48:10
Speaker 1: to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocenceproject dot org
48:14
Speaker 1: to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like
48:17
Speaker 1: to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis.
48:20
Speaker 1: The music in the show is by three time OSCAR
48:23
Speaker 1: nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on
48:26
Speaker 1: Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast.
48:31
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a production of Lava
48:34
Speaker 1: for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one