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From Time Served to Voice Heard: Eddie Ellis · Nightmare Success In and Out

• 0:01
  What happens when your worst fear becomes your reality?
• 0:04
  Hi, I'm Brent Cassidy, welcome to the Nightmare Success In and
• 0:07
  Out podcast where we explore how to overcome your fears and
• 0:11
  nightmares that set yourself free.
• 0:13
  We're going to be exploring this topic with guys that was in
• 0:15
  Leavenworth with and others who survived their own nightmare.
• 0:20
  These stories can be inspiring, sometimes sad, there's some
• 0:24
  humor, but hopefully you can come away with a nugget of
• 0:27
  something that'll help you knock down some of the prisons you
• 0:29
  built up in your own mind. All right, welcome back,
• 0:35
  nightmare success, In-n-out listeners, this is where you
• 0:38
  come from. What happens when your worst
• 0:39
  year becomes your reality? How do you adapt, survive,
• 0:41
  overcome? Set yourself free, folks.
• 0:44
  Don't forget, don't forget. Follow, subscribe, share this
• 0:47
  thing out, like it up. It really helps the show.
• 0:48
  And I really absolutely appreciate all that.
• 0:52
  So who are we talking to today? Well, I know people who listen
• 0:57
  to this show love to hear comeback stories.
• 1:00
  And this is a this is a comeback story.
• 1:04
  I'm going to, I'm going to throw out some numbers here.
• 1:09
  And what do these numbers mean? 161531 So my guest, Eddie Ellis,
• 1:19
  he went to prison at 16 years old for manslaughter.
• 1:23
  There was a gun situation, two people had a gun, one person
• 1:26
  died. He served 15 years before coming
• 1:32
  out at the age of 31. During that time, Ellis spent
• 1:37
  most of his years in solitary confinement with six years in
• 1:40
  the ADX Supermax in Florence, Co.
• 1:44
  So 1616 years old in prison, 1515 years in 31 was when he got
• 1:53
  out. Just powerful numbers.
• 1:56
  And what he's done since he's gotten out is remarkable.
• 2:00
  He is a youth activist, he's a mentor, he's a criminal justice
• 2:04
  advocate, trainer and motivational speaker.
• 2:08
  He's dedicated his time and energy and resources to working
• 2:11
  and improving the community at the national and local levels.
• 2:16
  Eddie founded established his own non profit called by 1 by 1
• 2:20
  Inc. He's all over the place,
• 2:22
  speaking in in high schools and colleges and and it's all about
• 2:26
  youth. He's also a subject of the
• 2:28
  documentary out for good. I think he's got something
• 2:31
  behind him there that says change is change is possible,
• 2:36
  which he's he's also an author of a couple of books and he's
• 2:41
  also with, he joined the campaign for the Fair Sentencing
• 2:45
  of Youth team in early 2018. And he's just all around being a
• 2:51
  guy that uses lived experience to help others choose the right
• 2:57
  path. And he's got the lived
• 2:59
  experience to to really bring that about so that people can
• 3:03
  see and hear how to take the right path.
• 3:07
  I can't wait to jump into all this.
• 3:08
  Before we do, I want to recognize our show sponsor, Auto
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  Auto Plaza Direct Telling Brent from nightmare success sent you
• 3:47
  and folks read read this book. It was this is a doctor Rafi was
• 3:53
  a a guest on the show and it's called doctor not guilty by
• 3:57
  exonerated psychiatrist and internist Muhammad Ali Rafi.
• 4:00
  It's the battle cry and blueprint for anyone misjudged
• 4:03
  by a system that should protect the innocent.
• 4:05
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  surrender. This book reveals the truth
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  about how power can distort justice and how resilience can
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  truly set you free. Free.
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• 4:34
  Go out and get that one, folks. And he was.
• 4:37
  I'm not sure what the episode was, but it was about 3 or 4
• 4:39
  episodes back. So check that out, Doctor.
• 4:44
  No, it's not, Doctor. I'm just talking about Doctor
• 4:47
  Rifai. Eddie Ellis.
• 4:49
  How are you my man? I'm going well.
• 4:51
  Let's just throw let's just throw Doctor on the front of
• 4:53
  Doctor Eddie. Eddie Ellis.
• 4:56
  That sounds good. Doctor Eddie Ellis.
• 5:00
  Yeah. Yeah.
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  Eddie, how are you? I'm.
• 5:01
  Going well. Feeling well today.
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  Going well. So we, we just, I wish I would
• 5:07
  have hit the record button before we started.
• 5:09
  We just had some really good conversation, but one of the
• 5:14
  things that really takes your breath away when you're when
• 5:16
  you're talking about what you went through in your life is, is
• 5:20
  that things happen for you so early in your life.
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  And we talk about somebody 16 years old that goes to prison.
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  Can you take us back, Eddie, that time?
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  What was life like for you as a kid growing up before that
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  nightmare happened to you? Yeah.
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  No, I appreciate that as a kid, and I always say this, Brent,
• 5:42
  I've wanted to be a professional football player or basketball
• 5:45
  player. Yeah, and I really wanted to be
• 5:49
  that because we had athletes coming out community as a kid.
• 5:53
  You know, I got a chance to go to Joe Gibbs football camp when
• 5:56
  I was a kid and I got a chance to meet a lot of bullets at the
• 5:59
  time, Nanas, Wizards, You know, I got to meet Cal Ripken as a
• 6:03
  kid, you know, Eddie Murray as a kid.
• 6:05
  So for me, a lot of those people were doing good things for the
• 6:09
  community. And I figured if I can do
• 6:11
  something that I like doing and still make children happy, I'm
• 6:16
  giving back to my community. So that's, that's really what I
• 6:18
  wanted to be. And I, I grew up in Washington,
• 6:21
  DC as a child. I lost my father early on.
• 6:27
  He was shot when I was a child and which affected a a lot of
• 6:31
  the way that I grew up and the way when I saw life, you know,
• 6:35
  going to play football, in basketball, you know, my mom
• 6:39
  will be on the sideline, my grandmother.
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  But my father's not dead, you know, And it bothered me.
• 6:46
  Eddie Howe. For a long time how?
• 6:47
  Old would you have been when he when he was killed?
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  I was 2. You were two years old so you
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  really didn't set from pictures and people telling stories.
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  You wouldn't have known him. Right, right, right, right.
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  But, and, and, and that's what I would think it would be.
• 7:03
  But the impact of it, it was a hole.
• 7:05
  Yeah. Especially, I don't know if it's
• 7:07
  a difference, but my father had a twin, you know, me seeing this
• 7:10
  twin, you know, trying to learn more about my father and.
• 7:15
  But it affected me. What the therapy as a child to
• 7:17
  get support, you know, didn't talk to the therapist because I
• 7:21
  didn't trust the process as a child.
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  Yeah. I didn't have the tools of
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  language that I that I wish I had to really talk to the
• 7:29
  therapist to express what I was feeling.
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  But early on, you know, that's all I wanted to do.
• 7:36
  I love school. I loved outdoors.
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  I always say I was a kid that was born in the city, but with a
• 7:42
  country heart, you know, because I loved outdoors.
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  I love riding horses. I love fishing.
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  You know, I did little hunting with, you know, slingshots with,
• 7:51
  you know, birds and squirrels and I just love that type of
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  stuff. And but I lost my way.
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  I lost my way and started surrounding myself with around
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  people who others would consider, you know, bad people.
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  But to me, these were people I played football with.
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  So to me, they weren't bad people, right?
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  They may have been doing things that should, they should have
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  been doing. But to me, yeah, they weren't.
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  They were selling drugs, you know, smoking weed, drinking
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  beer. But I didn't sell drugs at the
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  time. Or, or drink or, or smoke beer,
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  ugly drink beer, smoke weed. I just hung around him.
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  And at the age of 15, I was arrested with, you know, two
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  other people in a car, in a cab. We were actually going to the
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  movies and the cab driver drove down the street and there was a
• 8:50
  roadblock. I guess it was just a roadblock
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  there. And he jumped out and ran The,
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  the, the, the officers pulled guns on us.
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  Get out. Where's the gun?
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  We don't have a gun. And they said we smell weed in
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  the car. You know, OK, somebody was
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  smoking weed before they got in the car, Searched the car, went
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  through the trunk and found a duffel bag with some weed in.
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  So we're looking at each other like we, we ain't going to
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  trunk. We know it's not ours.
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  We went from a friend's house in the car.
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  And that was my first time being arrested.
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  And the the the police said, you know, this is y'all stuff, you
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  know, y'all was going to rob this guy and go to the, you
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  know, jail, lock us up juvenile facility.
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  And while I was there, I remember my mom, you say, you
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  know, if something wrong, trying to find an adult and tell her,
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  you know, speak to these adults. So that's what I'm trying to do
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  at this time. I'm green.
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  I'm really green little kid, you know.
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  Yeah. And yeah, Miss I, we didn't do
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  anything. We y'all got us here.
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  Well that's what all y'all say and that was the attitude.
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  And from that moment I became frustrated.
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  You know, I cursed them out. They put me in the hole for the
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  first time in my life experiencing or ever hearing
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  what a hole was. And I stayed down there from the
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  15 till I was 16. You know, August 23rd 1991 we
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  were released. None of our fingerprints were on
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  the trunk. None of our fingerprints was on
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  the bag. None of our the person didn't
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  come to court. And I remember the judge saying,
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  you know, Mr. Ellis, I know you happy, you know, to be going
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  home. And I said, not really.
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  And my mother was looking like if you don't shut up.
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  But I was upset because we were here for something that we
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  didn't do. And we said that, but none of
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  the adults wanted to believe us. And that moment started changing
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  me as a person the way that I viewed the system.
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  And like, OK, you got me here anyway.
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  I might as well now start really hanging around people.
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  And that's the, you know, immature attitude that I took as
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  as a 1516 year old. And my mother, she did all she
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  could to keep me and my brother away from the streets.
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  He didn't go on the street. I did.
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  And even moving us from DC to Montgomery County, Maryland,
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  Silver Spring, which supposed to been like a suburban community,
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  which I just kept going back to DC because that's what I was
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  used to. My home, my family is it.
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  My friends are in DC and after coming from the juvenile
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  facility, my mother told me, she said, listen, you can't stand
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  this house without going back to school.
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  And unfortunately, you've been out of school so long, right,
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  You got to re register. So I'm gonna put you on Job
• 12:02
  Corps. Like Job Corps?
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  What is that? So she's telling me what Job
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  Corps is. It's like a trade school with
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  different trades and educational opportunities, and now that I'm
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  old and mature, I wished that I would have had the ability to
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  finish Job Corps. It's funny you bring that up
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  because nowadays that's, that's being talked about more and
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  more. The trade schools that that, you
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  know, we need more electricians, we need more mechanic, we need
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  all this plumbers and all these things.
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  But there was a time period, I'm 58, there was a time period
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  where that was really looked down upon.
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  And I think that's being built back into society to know that's
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  a really good way to go. It's just, you know, kids don't
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  know. It is, it is a good way to go.
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  If you think about a lot of our trades is being you know,
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  outsourced and a lot of other thing.
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  And when you think about community back in the day, in
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  many communities, the stapler, the communities a lot of times
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  was those blue collar workers that did a lot of that hard
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  nosed work. I mean, of course you had, you
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  know, bigger, you know, jobs and Wall Street and people, lawyers
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  and stuff like that. But the people who kept the crux
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  of the community together were those type of jobs, right?
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  You can always find somebody in your community to be able to do
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  one of those trades, right. And that's what I wish I, I
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  would have been able to complete, but unfortunately I
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  wasn't. I go straight from the juvenile
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  facility to the job Corp. And the therapist in the job
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  Corp wasn't able to help me because normally the children
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  were not coming from a facility to their, they were coming from
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  their home. They haven't been in the
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  facility. So it was a different
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  conversation, but I carried the same mentality and attitude to
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  the job Corp. You know, even as a kid, I love
• 14:01
  to fight, you know, and that same attitude I took there, I
• 14:07
  fought, you know, and, and I had an attitude like I was still in
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  this juvenile facility. And I remember being kicked out
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  and our peers, the one who voted back in and I sent the message
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  to my friend, say, hey, these four people is going to be
• 14:24
  judging whether I can come back or not.
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  And the school didn't want me back.
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  But my peers, they just, they, they voted me back in to come
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  back. And I've done that like 2 times
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  and got my friends to bully the my peers to get me back in.
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  And the last time I asked my friends, I said, let me ask you
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  a question. Are y'all are y'all really
• 14:43
  trying to graduate? And they said yes.
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  So I said OK, I won't be coming back.
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  And they was like why? And I said you know, I said I
• 14:54
  see y'all again but I won't be coming back because I knew my
• 15:00
  mind wasn't in the right place and I knew if I stayed, those
• 15:04
  who I consider my friends may have went down the same Rd.
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  I went down and got in trouble because of me.
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  So I decided to stay away from them.
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  So what did you? Do What did you do, Eddie, when
• 15:18
  you checked out of that situation because that's where
• 15:20
  your friends were? Yeah, I, I I went, I went home,
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  back to the city. DC started hanging around people
• 15:27
  who are in the streets right now.
• 15:29
  And one of my friends at the time had taken some drugs and a
• 15:34
  gun from a drug dealer. You know, police came down the
• 15:38
  street. The drug dealer was supposed to
• 15:39
  take it off him and put it down in the in the grass.
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  My friend took it and I come home from Job Corps.
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  I wasn't wooden what he took it. And my friend, when I come home,
• 15:52
  he said, hey, man, I took the guy drugs and his gun.
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  I'm like, well, OK, cool. We are just selling drugs.
• 15:59
  My first introduction to selling drugs and I was so green.
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  He's like, no, you don't give people that much stuff you miss.
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  I didn't know, right? I'm just becoming a part of this
• 16:11
  crazy environment. And possibly 2 weeks later, the
• 16:17
  guy realized that my friend had taken his stuff because my
• 16:22
  friend had showed the gun to somebody else and said, yeah,
• 16:26
  that's his gun. I know how you know and the guy
• 16:30
  actually pulled a gun on me and my friend and said no y'all
• 16:34
  better return my stuff. And my message to him was I
• 16:37
  don't, I don't owe you enough. I don't know what you're talking
• 16:39
  about. And he left and I asked my
• 16:43
  friend, he's like, that's the guy that I took it from because
• 16:46
  I never saw the guy before so I didn't know who he was.
• 16:51
  Approximately 2 weeks later, I'm going to the cleaners for my
• 16:55
  grandmother to get her clothes out.
• 16:56
  The cleaners, same guy see me and pull the gun.
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  My instinct was it's broad daylight, about 1520 people
• 17:09
  right here. How can I get his attention off
• 17:12
  me? So what, you going to shoot me
• 17:15
  in front of all these people? So now people looking, he left.
• 17:22
  OK. You know my heart beating
• 17:24
  because this before the first time he done.
• 17:27
  That's never happened to me. I never held a gun before, never
• 17:31
  had a gun before in the sense of a real gun.
• 17:33
  I had a pellet gun. Yeah.
• 17:36
  Never had a real gun before and after that day I I got a gun
• 17:44
  because I was told again that not only pulling the gun, he
• 17:47
  told somebody he's going to kill me and my friend and I didn't.
• 17:52
  If I'm being honest, I didn't want to be in a situation, I
• 17:57
  didn't want to be involved in it, but I became involved in it
• 18:03
  because of my friend. And people say, well, why didn't
• 18:08
  you call the police? That's not that's not what we
• 18:11
  did. That was no reality for us.
• 18:15
  And we had to deal with things the way they had to be dealt
• 18:19
  with. And it could even be leave it
• 18:22
  alone. Something happened, somebody
• 18:25
  else do something about it. But I wanted to just be safe and
• 18:31
  safe for me. I felt my mind as a 16 year old
• 18:35
  because this guy poured a gun on us twice and then he tells
• 18:38
  somebody who'll take our life was to have a gun.
• 18:42
  And on December 20th, 1991, my friend and I was going to a
• 18:48
  party in the apartment building. Party was cancelled because some
• 18:53
  people were fighting at the party and we're leaving back out
• 18:57
  the building and the guy and two other people are coming up the
• 19:02
  steps. My friend say, hey, let me give
• 19:09
  you this gun to replace your gun.
• 19:13
  My friend had a gun with no bullets in it.
• 19:15
  It was a old 38 with no bullets in it and the pen was broke.
• 19:18
  But the only way you know, if you open it up and you can see
• 19:21
  the pen is broke. And what?
• 19:23
  And the guy said he had the gun in the palm of his hand, not
• 19:27
  with his finger in the palm. Man, you can have this to
• 19:31
  replace it. The guy said no and went to his
• 19:35
  waist to pull out a gun and we pulled out the gun.
• 19:37
  I pulled out the gun I had and I fired a gun and he was hit.
• 19:44
  At the time I didn't know he was hit.
• 19:45
  I fired a gun a few times. He fell, my friend fell.
• 19:51
  So it happened so fast, I didn't realize what I needed to do
• 19:58
  Should I stay? Should I run?
• 20:00
  And I want to pick my friend up. And I said you shot.
• 20:02
  He's like no. So when he said that, I didn't
• 20:06
  think the guy was shot because why did my friend fall and he
• 20:11
  wasn't shot? They're.
• 20:13
  Both fell down right. Right, we ran to our girlfriends
• 20:17
  apartment. Both our girlfriends share the
• 20:19
  apartment and we're in the apartment and we hear the
• 20:23
  ambulance fire, you know, police sirens going off.
• 20:28
  And I'm smoking weed at this time.
• 20:30
  So I, I, I, I smoked some weed and I'm sitting here like, I
• 20:35
  hope it's not for what just happened because I'm not sure
• 20:40
  if, if, if, if, if it is, but I'm hoping it's not.
• 20:45
  And a knock on the door police is somebody in here by these
• 20:55
  names? So my girlfriend said no because
• 21:01
  they asked for somebody named Eric.
• 21:04
  So she said no. So they come back again, knock
• 21:10
  on the door. But now homicide detectives with
• 21:13
  and when she opened the door, the officer I'd like to talk to
• 21:16
  you. She didn't see the other
• 21:18
  officers on the side of the wall.
• 21:20
  So when she opened the door and said OK, they barged in And as
• 21:24
  they barged in, I'm sitting on the couch.
• 21:29
  The police walk in says your name Eric.
• 21:32
  I said no, my name is Eddie. They say he fit the description
• 21:36
  stand up. So I stood up.
• 21:38
  They went in the bedroom, found my Co defender laying on the bed
• 21:42
  sleep and that moment changed as the officer said somebody was
• 21:50
  killed on 13th and Columbia Rd. Northwest and my insides just
• 22:00
  dropped because I knew that what were.
• 22:03
  You thinking at it when they said that?
• 22:05
  My life is over. I've taken somebody's life.
• 22:09
  I never wanted to be in this situation and with and before I
• 22:13
  continue, I want, I just want to say this with, with all due
• 22:16
  respect that, you know, I take full responsibility for what I,
• 22:20
  I, I did. I, I'm making up no excuses
• 22:24
  about what happened. I'm just telling my story and I
• 22:27
  give honor and respect to the deceit in in his family.
• 22:32
  But but, but yes, I, I was horrified by hearing that.
• 22:37
  You know, I, I, I never wanted to be in a situation like that.
• 22:41
  You know, someone killed my father.
• 22:42
  I know how that felt to me. Even as a child, even as a
• 22:45
  teenager, even as an adult, I know how I feel to not have my
• 22:49
  father. So it was a hard moment for me
• 22:52
  to try to digest and understand. So what happens next?
• 22:59
  They're immediately arrested and taken.
• 23:01
  Yeah, they arrested us, put us in the car.
• 23:05
  And from the car they say, were they transporting us to the
• 23:09
  homicide division? They took us downtown to the
• 23:12
  homicide division, separated us. They tried to play good, good
• 23:17
  cop, bad cop. Well, you know, your friend said
• 23:20
  you've done this, you've done that.
• 23:22
  I said, well, if he said you would believe what you want to
• 23:24
  believe, you know, what are you saying?
• 23:28
  I said, listen, that guy was going to take the life of me and
• 23:33
  my friend. I defended myself and my friend
• 23:37
  in that moment. And I remember the homicide
• 23:40
  detectives say, you know, I don't believe that.
• 23:44
  And I said, well, you can believe what you want to
• 23:45
  believe. And he basically said, well, you
• 23:48
  want to be a smart ass, You know, we don't recommend that
• 23:50
  you be Title 16, which means charged as an adult in
• 23:54
  Washington, DC And at the moment, Title 16 didn't mean
• 23:57
  anything to me because I didn't know anything about Title 16 or
• 24:01
  anything, you know, about these things.
• 24:03
  I'm agreeing to the system other than going to the juvenile
• 24:06
  system. So those things with nothing,
• 24:08
  nothing to me. But when we got down there, like
• 24:12
  I said, they questioned us, said what they said, and I took
• 24:16
  responsibility for trying to protect myself and my friend.
• 24:23
  And then after I say that, I said I have no more to say.
• 24:26
  And then they got mad because they wanted to dig more and to
• 24:29
  find out what was being said, right?
• 24:32
  And I know it was 7 to 10 people out there.
• 24:36
  So the story is being told, but it's what story is being told
• 24:41
  that was important to me, right? My friend didn't do anything.
• 24:46
  It was me. I take responsibility for it.
• 24:49
  I was trying to protect myself and my friend.
• 24:51
  He pulled out a gun, right? And they said we didn't find a
• 24:56
  gun. I said, OK, that don't mean he
• 24:59
  didn't have one. And government witnesses through
• 25:04
  statements said they saw someone turn it back, bend down, take
• 25:08
  something off of them and run. Of course, the police, not going
• 25:12
  to say we think it's a gun, but if there's nothing illegal, why
• 25:17
  would you turn your back to the crowd and take something off him
• 25:21
  and run? Because no matter what, you took
• 25:23
  it, right? Say, if it could have been his
• 25:25
  money, you took it. If it could have been his
• 25:28
  wallet, you took it right. And but and, and then from there
• 25:33
  they said, you know, y'all probably will never come home
• 25:36
  again, you know so. I had some that's some heavy
• 25:40
  stuff happening and at that age would be 15 or 16 when that I
• 25:46
  was. 16 when it happened. 16 years old so you're you got your
• 25:50
  whole life flashing before You've got guys telling you that
• 25:52
  your whole life is flashing before you.
• 25:55
  Are you? When are you able to talk to
• 25:58
  your mom? They let me call my mom at the
• 26:03
  homicide building and I knew through conversations from other
• 26:07
  people who were what people could considered seasoned people
• 26:10
  that was in the street don't talk on those phones.
• 26:15
  And I just said, mom, I'm locked up right now.
• 26:21
  Somebody got killed and she said what?
• 26:24
  I said yeah, somebody lost their life and and that's how I got to
• 26:30
  go. She kept trying to talk and I
• 26:31
  just hung the phone up and then we were transferred to Central
• 26:37
  Cellblock when they hold you overnight before going to the
• 26:40
  court building the next morning. We had arraignment.
• 26:43
  The next morning. We was held without bond.
• 26:50
  My Codafina actually went to a juvenile facility because he was
• 26:55
  using a dummy name. Your fake name for those made it
• 26:59
  a fake name. And I was sent to the adult
• 27:02
  facility, but in the juvenile block, OK, which was N one at
• 27:09
  the time when I went to prison in 1991.
• 27:11
  And that first three days, Brent, I, I slept, I slept, I
• 27:19
  think I smoked so much weed the days leading up to that stuff
• 27:23
  and just the energy behind it that it took from me and, you
• 27:27
  know, running the streets and I slept, it seemed like when I
• 27:32
  woke up, my 72 hour hold was over.
• 27:36
  Now I can come out myself, you know, with everyone else because
• 27:39
  the 1st 72 hours, they do, you know, like evaluation to make
• 27:42
  sure you have no separations, you're not suicide and suicidal
• 27:47
  and things like that. And, but while I'm in the cell,
• 27:50
  you know, people bringing me stuff that I know, here's some
• 27:53
  shower shoes, here's some, you know, some thermals, here's some
• 27:57
  commissary stuff. And you know, things of that
• 28:00
  nature. But it was, it was crazy.
• 28:04
  It sounds and by and by the way, for those listen down the Cayman
• 28:07
  Islands, the shower shoes are absolute must in a prison
• 28:10
  environment. I would have never have known
• 28:12
  that until I got there and and I had a a buck made to my to my
• 28:18
  left that gave me shower shoes. He said you're going to need
• 28:20
  these. You don't look like you've been
• 28:21
  here before, but you're going to need these and you know it.
• 28:27
  It's, it is an interesting deal environment wise because you're
• 28:31
  a young kid, but you've got people reaching out to you,
• 28:36
  trying to kind of help you in that moment.
• 28:41
  Were you scared of everything around you?
• 28:44
  I mean, it's the reason I ask you that.
• 28:47
  Eddie is man, I didn't know what to expect.
• 28:50
  You know, when I was standing at the gates of Leavenworth, I was
• 28:52
  46, getting ready to turn 47. I can't imagine staying in in
• 28:58
  that room and that cell and being 16.
• 29:04
  Yeah, it was, it was, it was frightening in a different way,
• 29:07
  in a sense of what's going to happen.
• 29:10
  Am I going to ever see my family again?
• 29:13
  Am I going to better, you know, play with my little brother, you
• 29:16
  know, with my mother and grandmother's, be alive, You
• 29:19
  know, that's the stuff I was really afraid of.
• 29:22
  And this is unfortunate. When I went there, it was a lot
• 29:25
  of my friends there, yeah, You know, people I hung out with,
• 29:28
  people I played football with, the school with.
• 29:31
  So it wasn't nervousness in that sense.
• 29:35
  But I still didn't know what to expect until I had
• 29:38
  conversations. I come out, I see a group of us
• 29:42
  over here, and there's a group of guys over here, just a group
• 29:44
  of guys over there. So in my mind, what's going on?
• 29:47
  Yeah, we don't deal with them. And matter of fact, the people
• 29:51
  on that side of the tier, we don't deal with them at all.
• 29:54
  If they open the doors at the same time, it's going to be all
• 29:56
  out fighting. So I'm getting the lowdown on
• 29:59
  everything. And that's what I did, you know,
• 30:04
  learn from my environment, made sure that, you know, you got to
• 30:09
  protect yourself at all causes. You got to be willing to fight
• 30:13
  at all causes. If you have to win, lose or
• 30:17
  draw. And I've won some fights, I've
• 30:19
  lost some fights. And, and I always tell people,
• 30:24
  even the ones I lost against, you know, one person we, we see,
• 30:27
  we saw each other. He passed away now when he came
• 30:30
  home, but unfortunately we saw each other.
• 30:31
  We laughed about man, we, we, we, we got in each other's
• 30:34
  chest, man, you know, but it was like we are adults.
• 30:37
  You know what? Nothing.
• 30:38
  We, we, we, we went to other jails together.
• 30:41
  We, we socialized together. But just what we went through as
• 30:43
  young people. But the, the, some of the fear
• 30:47
  came from now you in DC jail, you're hearing about the next
• 30:52
  step, which is Lawton at the time when it was open, when we,
• 30:57
  when we had prisons, we no longer have prisons in DC.
• 31:00
  We have the jails. The prisons were closed starting
• 31:04
  in 1997 under the Revitalization Act.
• 31:08
  So Lawton, you hear all these stories and you like, oh, man,
• 31:15
  what's in store, you know? Well, I, I'm curious with, I'm
• 31:21
  trying to think about how these steps happen for you because
• 31:24
  they, they, these detectives have talked to you already.
• 31:30
  You've already admitted that somebody pulled a gun and you
• 31:33
  shot and someone died. They take, they take you, you
• 31:37
  know, away arraignment. What happens next?
• 31:42
  Do you, do you, are you offered a plea?
• 31:45
  Are you, are you going to trial? How does that all play out?
• 31:49
  We went back to the jail. Another hearing was set to try
• 31:55
  to pick a date for trial. OK.
• 31:58
  So we went to court, met our lawyers.
• 32:02
  Hey, they set a date for trial. We're going to go to trial.
• 32:08
  self-defense. I didn't know it was it was a
• 32:12
  law called self-defense for self in others.
• 32:14
  OK, meaning if, if, if you in the situation, if someone's
• 32:18
  trying to harm somebody and you defend yourself and that person,
• 32:21
  it can be self-defense. So we meet our lawyers, go
• 32:26
  through the process. And it was just weird because
• 32:30
  one of my lawyers, I had two lawyers, the lady and the man
• 32:33
  and man was like, man, I never, you know, had a murder trial
• 32:35
  before. I'm like, whoa, yeah, you know,
• 32:38
  stop. Kid you don't want.
• 32:39
  To yeah, that's not good, you know, I mean, what?
• 32:41
  So what's going to happen to me? But what I learned was through
• 32:43
  the process, they were doing their best.
• 32:46
  They were trying their best to help me public defender lawyer.
• 32:49
  My mother didn't they didn't have money to pay for no lawyer.
• 32:52
  You told them a lawyer for, you know, a murder case can run you
• 32:55
  50 this back then 20 to $50,000, you know, for a lawyer.
• 33:01
  And sometimes you got to give them 5 to $10,000 down to retain
• 33:05
  a lawyer for a homicide case back then, you know, especially
• 33:09
  the, the, the lawyers that were known lawyers that was beating
• 33:12
  cases. But you know, we get to learn
• 33:15
  our lawyers go through the process of that, you know, our
• 33:18
  our lawyers strategizing with each other, you know, and we go
• 33:25
  trial set, you know, as trials being set.
• 33:29
  I'm seeing a lot of people around me.
• 33:32
  You know me, I'm getting in fights because you tell more
• 33:34
  months later going into 92 that we time on trial, people losing
• 33:40
  their trials, 50 years, 70 years life, these 16 and 17 year olds.
• 33:49
  So I'm like, wow. So our message there, which I
• 33:52
  know is in most prisons, we're going to hope for the best and
• 33:55
  look for the worst, right? And the 1617 year old, we didn't
• 33:59
  know what that meant. We were saying it because guess
• 34:01
  what? Everybody else was saying it,
• 34:03
  right? We're going to hope for the best
• 34:05
  and look for the worst. And trial was set back.
• 34:11
  Something happened with government witnesses.
• 34:12
  Trials said not nothing, you know, life wise.
• 34:15
  Something else happened. It was set back.
• 34:18
  And so our lawyers filing to get dismissal, get certain things
• 34:23
  dismissed because my lawyers say, you know, your 4th or 5th
• 34:25
  amendment was violated. Unlawful entry, unlawful useful
• 34:29
  photo array. But they put us in a lineup with
• 34:31
  adults. If you say the person 16 and 17
• 34:35
  these people got 4 bids right? And then my here's how horrible
• 34:40
  it was. A witness say I was short and
• 34:44
  stocky with a full bid. I'm 50 years old and don't have
• 34:48
  a full bid now right I don't either so she say short and
• 34:55
  stocky. When I was arrested, I was 110
• 34:58
  lbs. OK.
• 35:00
  When I was arrested and then I realized two of the witnesses
• 35:03
  had charges of their own that they was trying to get dropped
• 35:08
  and that's why they testified. Lady said she knew me since I
• 35:13
  was a child. What's his name?
• 35:15
  Eric? His name.
• 35:17
  She didn't know me. And so it's a lot of things
• 35:21
  happen with motions being filed, things trying to get thrown out
• 35:23
  and dropped. So when we finally hit trial, my
• 35:29
  Co defender was to testify first, right?
• 35:32
  We tried to get a separate trial because we could depend on our
• 35:36
  own evidence, right? Without affecting nobody else.
• 35:41
  My court affinity to say, hey, I didn't shoot nobody, right?
• 35:45
  I was there, right? And I told my lawyer I would
• 35:48
  rather that for him, if he can get out, if he can get off this,
• 35:53
  let's get a separate trial. You know, I pulled the trigger.
• 35:56
  I'm the one who pulled the trigger to take responsibility.
• 35:59
  The judge didn't allow it. So we had a one jury verdict,
• 36:03
  which means that he found guilty, unfound guilty, both of
• 36:06
  us found guilty. He testified and in his
• 36:10
  testimony he says I took this from this person, Eddie didn't
• 36:15
  know about it. Eddie come home from Job Corps
• 36:19
  and then made him hanging out and the guy pulled the gun.
• 36:23
  Other witnesses testified on our behalf.
• 36:26
  The guy telling people he was going to kill them.
• 36:30
  I told them they should be, you know, watch out, be careful.
• 36:34
  Government witness testify. I saw them do it.
• 36:40
  He's the one who shot. So they, they, they saying all
• 36:44
  these things. Eddie, did they, did your
• 36:46
  attorneys when you were talking back and forth and you were
• 36:49
  preparing for this trial, did they feel like, because I mean,
• 36:53
  obviously there is a law on the books that you can protect
• 36:55
  yourself and self-defense. Did you feel like being in that
• 37:00
  trial room that that was going to be the outcome?
• 37:04
  I felt like I was going to walk out the door because if you say
• 37:08
  not really walk out the door because I had an illegal gun,
• 37:11
  OK, so you're going to come up with some.
• 37:14
  Charge. Right, right.
• 37:15
  But can I protect myself? Right.
• 37:19
  Am I allowed to protect myself? So everything is being
• 37:23
  questioned with every witness. Did you really know him?
• 37:27
  What? Did you see him?
• 37:28
  Where did he go? Where did he run?
• 37:29
  What did he have on? I mean, they had everything
• 37:32
  totally just wrong. And I'm just like, how can the
• 37:35
  jurors listen to this? And I hope they don't believe
• 37:38
  this stuff. Whereas my Co defendants
• 37:40
  testifying, he's basically saying what happened.
• 37:45
  You know, he took the stuff. The dude pulled a gun on us.
• 37:49
  So my turn to testify. Same thing.
• 37:52
  You know, I don't know about what was took it from him,
• 37:56
  right? I just know this guy pulled a
• 37:57
  gun on me and my friend, right? I was afraid for me and my
• 38:01
  friend. He pulled a gun on me a second
• 38:03
  time. The third time he had a gun.
• 38:07
  I had a gun when my friend was trying to replace his gun.
• 38:11
  Gun in the palm of his hand. No threat to you, no nothing.
• 38:18
  He went to his waistline to pull out a gun.
• 38:20
  I pulled a gun and fired a gun. And unfortunately he was struck
• 38:25
  in the neck and he and he passed away.
• 38:27
  And as a jury, when we finished trial deliberation, the jury
• 38:34
  came back saying we have a hang up.
• 38:37
  OK. So my lawyers like, oh, we might
• 38:39
  be OK. They might be trying to think
• 38:43
  about the self-defense and how what they need to do.
• 38:47
  So the rules sent back to the jury, they had to deliberate. 1
• 38:50
  juror was saying literally they tired of this.
• 38:53
  They don't believe what happened but the judge made them go back
• 38:56
  in. So my lawyers I do should be
• 38:59
  sending the alternate jury in there because they sitting there
• 39:02
  anyway to if this person don't want to be there.
• 39:04
  So no, they come back with guilty verdict and the guilty
• 39:11
  verdict was this the message from the jurors was this to the
• 39:15
  to the to the lawyers, prosecutors, judge.
• 39:19
  We was conflicted between finding them guilty on murder 2
• 39:24
  because murder one would have been premeditated.
• 39:27
  You thought about this, you thought about you planned this
• 39:30
  and you acted it out. Murder 2 would occur more time.
• 39:37
  Manslaughter carried less time, but they said they felt
• 39:42
  everything happened because the stuff was stolen.
• 39:45
  If the stuff wouldn't have been stolen, Eddie wouldn't have been
• 39:48
  in the situation. You testified that Eddie wasn't
• 39:51
  there. So if we believe that we can't
• 39:58
  find him guilty or murder too, because he still won't get a lot
• 40:00
  of time if we finally get to a manslaughter, it gives them a
• 40:05
  chance. This was their rationale.
• 40:07
  OK. And because we couldn't get the.
• 40:12
  Separate verdicts and one juror stated if Mr. Ellis had a
• 40:16
  separate trial, we'd find him guilty on the gun and not guilty
• 40:21
  on the homicide. But because of that, you know,
• 40:28
  move again, found guilty. Family made statements and the
• 40:34
  decedent's aunt, who was his guardian, asked the judge to
• 40:41
  have leniency on us. Yeah, I read that, that we were
• 40:44
  children like her. Her nephew was 19 years old.
• 40:47
  I learned his name upon his death and through the court
• 40:51
  didn't know his name. And for me, I didn't know what
• 40:58
  to expect. We found guilty.
• 41:00
  What's going to happen? He's 17 years old.
• 41:04
  We will spend the rest of our life.
• 41:05
  And I don't know the difference between manslaughter and murder
• 41:08
  1. So none of that makes sense to
• 41:10
  me as a as a 17 year old child. I'm trying to figure everything
• 41:14
  out. Most of the stuff my lawyers
• 41:15
  were talking about, I didn't understand it.
• 41:18
  The legal terminology, I didn't understand most of the stuff
• 41:21
  they were talking about. And but no ho, before we got
• 41:27
  found guilty, we were offered a plea bargain, OK to 15 years.
• 41:32
  OK. And I told them no.
• 41:35
  And my lawyer went to my mom and said please talk to Eddie.
• 41:40
  And I told my mother. I said, mom, I'm not doing it
• 41:43
  because I didn't mean to do this and he was trying to hurt us.
• 41:46
  Mom, her mother said, baby, I understand she didn't.
• 41:51
  But as a mom, I understand. But 15 years, you have a chance
• 41:57
  to get out. If they give you a whole lot of
• 42:01
  time, you may not make it out. So I'm conflicted with my heart
• 42:07
  saying I know I didn't mean to do this.
• 42:09
  This is not what I set out to do.
• 42:13
  I didn't come outside today thinking about taking no one's
• 42:17
  life or harming no one. And again, the immaturity of a
• 42:24
  16 year old holding a gun, not understanding the impact of a
• 42:29
  gun, right, the consequences of these things right, doesn't
• 42:34
  stick to me like a a person that's more mature.
• 42:37
  It's not sticking to me. And all of these things are
• 42:42
  flashing back. And the judge heard the victim
• 42:46
  impact statement and the judge said, in my 20 some odd years
• 42:52
  have been on the bench, I've never had a case where someone
• 42:55
  lost a loved one and asked for leniency.
• 42:59
  I've only had give them the fullest sentence you can give
• 43:04
  and I always obliged. So because she said this, I
• 43:12
  could have got, we could have got like 35 years.
• 43:14
  The judge said I'm gonna sentence you all to 22 years,
• 43:18
  and to me 22 years sounded like life.
• 43:21
  Well, it would at at that age you were 17 years old now and
• 43:25
  that 22 years in advance. That sounds like old people.
• 43:29
  Yes, I'm like 22. I'm not even 20.
• 43:32
  I'm telling my lawyer, I'm not even 22 years old, right?
• 43:36
  I mean, what, what am I going to do, right?
• 43:38
  And she like, calm down. I'm like, calm down.
• 43:41
  What did you did you hear what these people said 22 years?
• 43:44
  And I'm just like, and I said what I said to the family with
• 43:51
  all sincerity of not trying to pass blame on their loved one.
• 43:58
  But again, with the emotional intelligence that I had at that
• 44:02
  time, the emotional tools that I had, the tools that I had at
• 44:06
  that time to just talk about anything.
• 44:09
  I expressed myself in the most sincere way that I could to
• 44:13
  them, apologizing to them and explaining to them everything.
• 44:18
  I just say I didn't set out to harm my loved one.
• 44:20
  This situation came to me and I'm sorry it happened.
• 44:24
  I wish it could be different. And I say it to my family.
• 44:27
  I'm sorry. You know, Ma, you did everything
• 44:31
  you could to put me in a situation to be successful.
• 44:34
  Yeah. You know, you spent money that
• 44:36
  you didn't have to make sure we had opportunity.
• 44:41
  You worked 2 jobs to make sure that you had things for us.
• 44:46
  And I just sat down and they put the cuffs on us and took us back
• 44:55
  to the jail. Wow.
• 45:01
  Let's take a break there because I want to talk about when we get
• 45:04
  back, how you as a teenage kid went into what I would assume
• 45:10
  would be a pretty high security prison.
• 45:13
  It's not, I wouldn't think it would be lower security.
• 45:16
  But I want to talk about how you and I talked about this, you
• 45:20
  grew up basically in prison and, and how that happened and how
• 45:24
  you came out and why you've been able to do what you've done
• 45:28
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• 46:06
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• 46:10
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  Eastern Time. And For more information, go to
• 46:27
  prisons.org. If you want to check out more
• 46:29
  information about the White collar support the White Collar
• 46:33
  Conference is on October 11th. Go to prisons.org and all the
• 46:36
  information is there. So, Eddie, deep stuff, man.
• 46:42
  I mean, you get taken back, you finally figure out where you're
• 46:48
  going or you're being sentenced to for 22 years.
• 46:55
  How do you wrap your mind around all this?
• 46:58
  But for real, I, I started crying when I went in the back,
• 47:03
  realizing again the impact that I've had on someone's family,
• 47:10
  the impact I had on my own family, the impact I've now had
• 47:13
  on my life. And I didn't know what to do,
• 47:19
  you know, for the next days, you know, I became sad, angry, you
• 47:26
  know, angry at myself, angry at the system, at the world.
• 47:30
  I just started feeling so many different emotions.
• 47:34
  And I remember person saying, man, listen, they got some loads
• 47:43
  bus coming up in the next week. Be prepared.
• 47:49
  You know, like I said, we heard all the war stories and horrible
• 47:51
  stories about the next step in our prison system down here, how
• 47:56
  at times it could be horrible, violent at times.
• 48:01
  And I still don't know what to do to prepare, you know, But I'm
• 48:07
  preparing myself as much as I can, you know, to go down.
• 48:11
  And week and a half later, I got called, you know, Ellis, bag of
• 48:17
  baggers. It's OK.
• 48:20
  Let me make a few rounds. I went to a few sales.
• 48:24
  Hey, man, I love you. Wish you the best other people.
• 48:28
  Hey, I see you when you come down, you know what I'm saying?
• 48:31
  Be prepared, you know, and I got uncles and other friends.
• 48:38
  That's down in Lawton. But Lawton had multiple
• 48:40
  facilities that you could go to. So you don't know which one you
• 48:43
  may go to. And but because I was sentenced,
• 48:47
  it's a, it's a sentence here in DC called Youth Act, Youth
• 48:51
  Rehabilitation Act. And it was really a sentence
• 48:55
  where a young person can get you go into, it's an adult facility,
• 49:00
  but it allows you after your sentence when you do parole, you
• 49:03
  can seal your case. So they was thinking like on the
• 49:07
  back end, what can we do to possibly help them on the back
• 49:10
  end? And then you sent it as opposed
• 49:12
  to being more programming opportunities for young people.
• 49:15
  It, it's supposed to be all these things to try to uplift
• 49:19
  the young person that's within this facility.
• 49:21
  But unfortunately it wasn't those things.
• 49:23
  It was a, it was a lie. And those things really wasn't
• 49:26
  available for us on the front end.
• 49:29
  But when I went down, I was automatically putting a hold
• 49:32
  because I was still 17. So I had to wait a few months
• 49:36
  until I turned 18 to be able to come out and go on the compound.
• 49:40
  So I'm in the sale with a person for the first time.
• 49:43
  Never been to sale with nobody. It's somebody I know, but still,
• 49:47
  I ain't never been to sale with nobody.
• 49:48
  I got to learn no sale etiquette, you know what does
• 49:51
  that mean? How do you use the bathroom?
• 49:53
  How do you you know, how do you do all these things?
• 49:55
  You know what I'm saying? You brush your teeth, you wash
• 49:58
  your face. What do you washing your
• 49:59
  clothes? What do you hang on?
• 50:00
  What do you do? So I'm learning these things in
• 50:03
  the process of learning like Dang y'all got sweat suits and
• 50:08
  boots and what what, how do I get this stuff?
• 50:13
  Oh your family gotta send you money.
• 50:15
  So now I get to use the phone more, talk to my family, but at
• 50:19
  the time I'm coming out in a cage with everybody in the hole.
• 50:23
  It's just a cage that hold 5 and this 1/5 and that one.
• 50:28
  And we can go to the phone shower at the end of the tear.
• 50:31
  And I remember my first week there, somebody got stabbed in
• 50:35
  the shower and single man, single man shout, it's just two
• 50:38
  showers at the end with curtains on them and somebody was
• 50:41
  stabbed. And I'm like, wow, somebody got
• 50:45
  stabbed. I'm in my head.
• 50:48
  I'm just like, wow, this is serious.
• 50:51
  Yeah, you know, this is serious, you know, and, and my friend was
• 50:56
  telling me, like, Eddie, man, you need to get you something to
• 50:58
  protect yourself, you know, because everybody got it, you
• 51:02
  know, and you don't know when you will need it.
• 51:04
  So my friend sent me, you know, handcuff, key, knife and some
• 51:08
  cigarettes, you know, use the cigarettes to buy stuff you
• 51:11
  need. You know, he sent me two cartons
• 51:13
  of cigarettes. And that's what I did, bought
• 51:16
  sweat suits and no food that I needed and stuff cosmetic stuff
• 51:20
  until I got my money in. And when I turn 18, now I'm able
• 51:24
  to go on a compound where it's, you know, hundreds of people out
• 51:26
  on the compound, you know, access to more violence if, if,
• 51:31
  if you need be. But I got signed up in a
• 51:34
  program. I can go to school.
• 51:36
  At the time I was taking a, a, a typewriter repair, which was
• 51:40
  crazy because I don't who's thinking tight riders will still
• 51:42
  be used, but I was in tight rider repair and in the
• 51:46
  maintenance. So I was cleaning up too and
• 51:49
  going to school. So I just felt good.
• 51:52
  You know, I can go to the gym, play basketball.
• 51:55
  I wasn't in the, you know, working, working out in the
• 51:57
  sense of lifting weights and none of that stuff there.
• 51:59
  I just want to play basketball, you know, walk the compound,
• 52:03
  talk to my friends, go to school, get a visit.
• 52:06
  And that's what I did until one day, you know, it was the older
• 52:11
  guy got into an argument with, and he pulled a knife out on me.
• 52:17
  And young boy, you had to stop. Yeah.
• 52:20
  And I'm like, OK. And that night I thought I said,
• 52:25
  I can't let him get away. You know what I'm saying?
• 52:28
  If I let him get away, he might try anything, you know?
• 52:33
  So the next morning, you know, me and him got into a very bad
• 52:37
  physical altercation and they sent me out of the facility and
• 52:43
  sent me to another facility. And from there I went from that
• 52:48
  facility for a few years, then went to the whole maximum
• 52:52
  facility for a year, and then they started closing our
• 52:56
  prisons. A lot of people don't like to
• 52:59
  use his language, but I do DC Systems sold us off to private
• 53:05
  prisons because I wasn't locked up and put right in the private
• 53:10
  prison. Y'all.
• 53:11
  Y'all created a contract and so inmates to Correctional
• 53:16
  Corporation of America. Yeah, and I, I've had people,
• 53:19
  well, I had people at Leavenworth and, and other
• 53:22
  people that have been on this show and those people who come
• 53:25
  from the private prisons. I almost think it's, you know,
• 53:29
  the Bo, I come from the federal world.
• 53:31
  So the BOP is is got all kinds of broken promises and systems
• 53:36
  and things that need to be fixed.
• 53:38
  But the but when I heard from the people that came from the
• 53:42
  private places, you got people that are trying to make money
• 53:46
  right, hurting and cattling people.
• 53:49
  Right. And and trying to save money on
• 53:51
  feeding them and all this other things that go on to just
• 53:55
  general care. Those two things don't match
• 53:58
  well together. Even though the BOP was really
• 54:00
  broken and these guys said, hey, this is but you, you hear about
• 54:04
  this over here where I came from and it's really bad.
• 54:08
  So I've never really been able to understand how the private
• 54:12
  prison system can work if it's done for a for profit purpose.
• 54:17
  Right. It's it's it's really it's
• 54:20
  really a business that people are buying in stocks in and they
• 54:23
  they build them in states where especially small towns where a
• 54:27
  lot of them were and trying to create quote UN quote jobs for
• 54:30
  people and we need bodies in there.
• 54:33
  Yeah. So state started contracting
• 54:35
  certain, you know, folks that's incarcerated into these
• 54:39
  privatized prison. And when they did us as as as a
• 54:43
  city, you have people went to New Mexico, Arizona, Florida,
• 54:48
  Tennessee, Texas. And I was reading.
• 54:51
  You were in Florence, Co. Yeah, I went to Youngstown, OH
• 54:56
  at the time, OK, and we got into real bad fights and a lot of
• 55:01
  stuff happened up there. When I left guy, I got kicked
• 55:03
  out of Youngstown. And when I got kicked out of
• 55:06
  Youngstown, I was put on maximum security status.
• 55:10
  So when I went back to DC maximum facility, which was the
• 55:16
  last one open, they automatically sent me to Red
• 55:20
  Onion, which is a state ran private prison in Virginia.
• 55:27
  It's a maximum security there. So while there, my custody now
• 55:33
  is Max again, because I'm in this Max facility, they let me
• 55:38
  out the hole to come out. My jacket comes because you
• 55:43
  know, you got a dummy jacket they send which is a smaller
• 55:45
  jacket, but little bit of information, your name, your
• 55:48
  time, if you have any separations.
• 55:52
  So my bigger jacket come. I had assault.
• 55:55
  So officers before fighting and other stuff they took me off the
• 56:00
  compound in a supermax prison because of this and I'm
• 56:06
  ignorance of me. I was supposed to have been on
• 56:08
  the federal load to go to Oklahoma 3 weeks ago but I hurt
• 56:12
  my ankle playing handball so they wouldn't give me a medical
• 56:16
  clearance into my ankle. Was so-called better so that.
• 56:21
  That that's a good point because this, this this show goes into
• 56:25
  1100 prisons. One of the things that you want
• 56:27
  to make sure that you never do when you're getting close to the
• 56:30
  door is get hurt. Yes.
• 56:33
  Because it can be. There was a guy that was in the,
• 56:39
  the D block with us that had seizures and until they were
• 56:42
  able to regulate his seizures, they kept him for an extra 8910
• 56:46
  months. And it was only because they
• 56:49
  couldn't regulate what the medication was, but they they
• 56:52
  wouldn't release him. And like you said, a a sprained
• 56:55
  ankle. I know another guy that's
• 56:56
  playing softball and he was supposed to get out and he got a
• 56:58
  broken wrist. He had to wait a whole nother,
• 57:00
  you know, two or three months. It's a terrible thing to get
• 57:04
  need medical when you're in prison.
• 57:06
  It's even worse if you're trying to get home.
• 57:08
  Yeah, Yeah, yeah, that and that and that's true.
• 57:11
  And, and, you know, through this process now I'm coming from, you
• 57:16
  know, Nexus Capital prisons, right?
• 57:19
  Private prisons, yeah. A state prison # Virginia Red
• 57:25
  Onion. Now I'm going to Oklahoma City.
• 57:29
  Federal hold. On OK, so how does it how does
• 57:32
  that happen Eddie? Because you you it was a state
• 57:35
  charge right for manslaughter. How do you blend into and get a
• 57:39
  crossed over into federal? We have no more prisons.
• 57:44
  So they were just, it was just like it all handed out people.
• 57:47
  Yes, now they started sending people to They kicked all of us
• 57:50
  out private. Room in a federal prison.
• 57:53
  He was gone. You just go.
• 57:55
  Yeah, you, you go in. Bed over here in Florence, you
• 57:57
  can go even though it's federal, OK.
• 57:59
  You, you going and because I'm on Max status when I go to
• 58:03
  Oklahoma City, I don't know the difference between the top floor
• 58:06
  and the bottom floor, right? So I'm asking people I'm like
• 58:11
  food horrible. I'm like, man, we there's the
• 58:13
  whole jail locked down. They was like, Nah, you just
• 58:16
  want to lock down unit. I'm like, what?
• 58:20
  I'm on the Fed. Why you got me on?
• 58:22
  So I'm trying to, you know, get my way out to go to population.
• 58:26
  Right. No, I'm on three manhole so I
• 58:29
  can't go out unless three officers dead to escort me and I
• 58:34
  went out on the yard on like it's not really I was like a
• 58:39
  cage on top of the building with wire around it.
• 58:42
  You know you and there by yourself you can work out put
• 58:45
  your shirt through the cage. The Oklahoma.
• 58:47
  Transport facility, yes. OK.
• 58:49
  All right. I'm working out on the cage with
• 58:51
  my shirt and doing all those things.
• 58:53
  So I stayed there approximately almost a week and no phone call,
• 59:03
  no nothing, no stamp. How many years have gone by,
• 59:06
  Eddie? This was.
• 59:08
  You did a total of 15 and how many years are you in till you
• 59:11
  get to the Oklahoma place? This was like 7 all.
• 59:14
  Right. So you're about halfway.
• 59:15
  Yeah, more like 7 years. Yeah, this is like 7 years
• 59:18
  because you're going to 2000 and could that.
• 59:23
  No, let me see 91 and 293-9495, 697-899-2000.
• 59:29
  No, it's like 10 years. 10 years.
• 59:31
  Yeah, yeah. So we go to we get on the bus,
• 59:37
  they driving us to Colorado. So we coming out, going to the
• 59:42
  bus, we driving. So I hear people saying, man, we
• 59:46
  going to the Florence complex. I don't know what none of that
• 59:49
  stuff is. So I'm like, OK, so we get up
• 59:53
  there, I hear people talking. Yeah, Super Max man, they're
• 59:58
  going to come get you your feet not don't touch the ground and
• 1:00:01
  all these stories. And so we don't know where we
• 1:00:04
  going because round the Florence complex you got.
• 1:00:06
  The high security got the penitentiary, you got the camp
• 1:00:09
  and you got the Super Max. So we don't know.
• 1:00:12
  We pull up to the camp. They let they took, they took
• 1:00:15
  the cuffs off the person on the bus.
• 1:00:18
  Oh, you can go ahead and walk out.
• 1:00:20
  He went on, walked out and walked through the building.
• 1:00:22
  I guess they did what they did with him.
• 1:00:24
  Penitentiary. They called in names.
• 1:00:28
  I say Marshall, he's like, yeah. I said, man, you ain't called my
• 1:00:30
  name. He said, what's your name?
• 1:00:33
  I said Eddie Ellis. Oh, you're going to the back.
• 1:00:36
  So I don't know what it mean to go to the back.
• 1:00:38
  So everybody like dad, he going to the ADX.
• 1:00:42
  So I'm hearing people say I'm like, OK, it's a prison.
• 1:00:46
  I don't it's another prison. So I'm the only one with the
• 1:00:52
  next 30 or 40 people that got off the bus.
• 1:00:55
  I'm the only one left on the bus drive up the hill.
• 1:01:01
  I'm like the monsters, like, I don't know what you did to get
• 1:01:04
  here, but you know you will probably be here for a while.
• 1:01:09
  What? What, Eddie, did they say you
• 1:01:11
  did to get that? Here's the thing that.
• 1:01:14
  Treatment. Because I still have the Max
• 1:01:17
  status on me from back home from Red Onion.
• 1:01:21
  I still had the Max status on me.
• 1:01:23
  So it was never removed, right? And I got in trouble over the
• 1:01:27
  years, fights, stabbings and all that type of stuff over the
• 1:01:30
  years. But the reality was I never got
• 1:01:33
  my custody changed and when. It just stayed with you all the
• 1:01:36
  way through. OK, right.
• 1:01:37
  And because other people had chances to get their custody
• 1:01:41
  changed when we were sent back from the private prisons, Yeah,
• 1:01:44
  they got sent to open population prisons in the VOP.
• 1:01:48
  All right. And so we're pulling up in.
• 1:01:51
  This adx What in what in the world do you think in?
• 1:01:54
  I ain't know what to think. I ain't know what you think.
• 1:01:58
  But you haven't been 10 years into this.
• 1:02:00
  Yeah, not this, right? So I'm like, wow, OK, that's
• 1:02:06
  what this is the supermax prison.
• 1:02:08
  I'm like I just left for supermax prison.
• 1:02:10
  So in my mind I didn't been locked down, you know, and no,
• 1:02:14
  let me it was nine years. It was nine years at this time
• 1:02:18
  when I went there because I spent six years there and when
• 1:02:23
  the officers came out, it was like 15 officers batons little
• 1:02:31
  like I don't know if it's real shotguns or bean bag shotgun.
• 1:02:35
  The camera, what's your name, you know, what's your number and
• 1:02:41
  all these things. So I answered the question, you
• 1:02:44
  know it. Give me a rundown.
• 1:02:46
  Hey, when you come here, you don't do this, you don't do
• 1:02:48
  that. You know, this is a lockdown
• 1:02:51
  facility, Super Max. I'm like, OK, my mind dealt with
• 1:02:55
  being locked down before. I don't care.
• 1:02:58
  They take me in, put me in the hole.
• 1:03:02
  Would they? Would they consider the whole?
• 1:03:03
  And I'm like, oh, man, these people got me back here and
• 1:03:07
  here. So then you start hearing
• 1:03:08
  stories when you write your family.
• 1:03:10
  Oh, they got all these people up there.
• 1:03:12
  You shouldn't be up there, these people, you know, But to me,
• 1:03:18
  we're all inmates. Right.
• 1:03:22
  If you got, I always tell people I don't care how much money you
• 1:03:24
  made or didn't make. We got the same budget every
• 1:03:26
  month to spend on commerce, Sir, unless you got somebody else
• 1:03:30
  spending for you. Other than that, it didn't make
• 1:03:32
  a difference to me. And I wasn't caught up on, you
• 1:03:36
  know, these guys names that was there.
• 1:03:39
  And I didn't care anything about none of that stuff.
• 1:03:43
  But the feds were different to me than it was back home.
• 1:03:49
  And in the sense of the race breakdown, I've never
• 1:03:53
  experienced that before. And it was different for me
• 1:03:57
  because my spirit didn't allow me to accept what I was seeing.
• 1:04:03
  I want to accept people for who they are.
• 1:04:05
  I ain't no fool, right? But I want to accept people for
• 1:04:09
  who they are. I want to see people for who
• 1:04:10
  they are. And that's my energy.
• 1:04:12
  That's my spirit. And when I went there, I'm
• 1:04:17
  talking to people who talk to me, right?
• 1:04:19
  You know, I don't. I didn't care nothing about this
• 1:04:21
  stuff. But they're part of that.
• 1:04:22
  I'm not a part of none of this stuff.
• 1:04:24
  You know what I'm saying? Hey, speak.
• 1:04:25
  Hey, how you doing? OK.
• 1:04:26
  You want to play handball? Come on, we play handball.
• 1:04:29
  Whatever. That's what it was, but the
• 1:04:32
  energy of that stuff was like toxic to me, right?
• 1:04:38
  I wasn't raised like that. That's not my spirit.
• 1:04:41
  The way I look at people. If that's my friend killer, he's
• 1:04:44
  raised, I don't care where he's stating that's my friend.
• 1:04:47
  And that's what I did, worked out, you know, start working
• 1:04:52
  out. And there was a lot of stuff
• 1:04:55
  happening in the facility where some of us felt like they was
• 1:04:59
  trying to set certain people up. You come out your cell.
• 1:05:05
  Like one day I was coming out my cell.
• 1:05:07
  I'm handcuffed and shackled. So going to the inside cage.
• 1:05:13
  And my friend inside said, hey, no, I don't go on the cage.
• 1:05:16
  So my first instinct, I put my foot to the ground hole, which
• 1:05:20
  pushed back in the correctional officer, The correctional
• 1:05:23
  officer, I said, hold up. I said no, I'm good because I
• 1:05:27
  don't know what my friend so he in his cell.
• 1:05:31
  So when they put me back in the cell, I see a guy jump down from
• 1:05:35
  the top of the cage. I say it's on in my head I say
• 1:05:41
  OK, it's on. So when they get him out of the
• 1:05:46
  cage, officer like Mr. Ellis, we didn't know he was still in the
• 1:05:48
  cage. He was hiding up top In my mind
• 1:05:51
  all y'all together. I don't care what you're saying,
• 1:05:55
  in my mind, if I ever come close to this guy, we're going to see
• 1:05:59
  each other. Because I don't know what you
• 1:06:01
  was trying to do. I don't know what you was trying
• 1:06:04
  to do. So when they finally put me in
• 1:06:06
  the cage, he yelled. Now, Eddie, No, it wasn't.
• 1:06:11
  I was trying to put something up.
• 1:06:12
  I go up there, it's a razor blade.
• 1:06:15
  I take it. I see I'm taking it, ma'am,
• 1:06:18
  Leave. I don't care what it is.
• 1:06:19
  I'm taking it, you know? I'm saying I'm taking it, you
• 1:06:22
  know? So I get my buddy slider, you
• 1:06:24
  know, fishing line across the thing, putting the thing, pull
• 1:06:27
  it out. You ain't getting that back.
• 1:06:28
  You could use that against me or one of my one of my friends.
• 1:06:31
  So that's the type of place that was where it was Seisty the
• 1:06:37
  CLMA. Everything was tense and you you
• 1:06:41
  had to look around. Yes, make.
• 1:06:43
  Sure you didn't have something? Yes, make.
• 1:06:46
  Up on you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:06:48
  So I just. How many years were you like
• 1:06:51
  that? I was, I was in there for six
• 1:06:54
  years in ADX, but my whole time there, it was very tense, very
• 1:07:00
  serious, you know, And. But what I realized was I am
• 1:07:07
  physically locked up. I can't let them control my
• 1:07:11
  mind. Yeah.
• 1:07:13
  And I started to read more, study more, meditate, exercise
• 1:07:18
  more, and fantasy. What came to you on that, Eddie?
• 1:07:23
  Like, was it just someday you said, hey, listen, I'm, I'm what
• 1:07:28
  you just said I've I've, they got me physically, but I'm not
• 1:07:31
  going to let them take me mentally.
• 1:07:32
  Is that what happened? Yeah.
• 1:07:36
  People, a lot of people with what you just described that
• 1:07:40
  will break somebody, right, You know, in that environment.
• 1:07:43
  Right, right. It it, it definitely would what
• 1:07:46
  what I started doing, to be honest, I start reflecting on
• 1:07:51
  life, yeah, conversations I've had in life.
• 1:07:55
  Because some things you can hear and you're not mature enough to
• 1:07:57
  receive. And it's sit there sometimes.
• 1:08:01
  But the other thing too, were you thinking at some point here,
• 1:08:04
  I've been in this, I've been in this sentence now for I don't
• 1:08:08
  know how many years were taught. Did you start thinking about
• 1:08:12
  what was going to happen to you as I'm getting close to the
• 1:08:15
  door, getting out? Like when did that start
• 1:08:18
  happening for you in that environment?
• 1:08:20
  I think when I got to the ADX last year, I was nine years in
• 1:08:23
  when I got to the ADX because I, you know, I spent six days.
• 1:08:27
  I started thinking more about it OK, But I've seen somebody die
• 1:08:32
  in jail that had 30 days left before.
• 1:08:34
  Yeah, yeah. So to me, I ain't free.
• 1:08:37
  And two, I'm free and my thing has always been put your foot on
• 1:08:42
  the pedal until you get through the door.
• 1:08:46
  And that's always been my mindset.
• 1:08:47
  Leave with peace, but be ready to defend yourself at all times.
• 1:08:52
  And that's, that's the way I've done my time.
• 1:08:54
  Respectful to everybody, whether I liked you or didn't like you
• 1:08:58
  or whether wherever somebody feel that you didn't deserve the
• 1:09:00
  respect, I still felt like respecting someone was important
• 1:09:03
  to me because I don't have to disrespect you because I don't
• 1:09:06
  like you. I could just not say anything to
• 1:09:09
  you and you don't say anything to me.
• 1:09:11
  And I just started growing and maturing and looking at life and
• 1:09:14
  situations different, but also again, start reflecting on.
• 1:09:19
  You also, yes, you you are actually growing up in prison.
• 1:09:24
  Yes. Through your teenage and and
• 1:09:26
  then your 20s. Yes.
• 1:09:29
  You begin to think differently, but you were in an environment
• 1:09:32
  where you had to also protect yourself while you're trying to
• 1:09:35
  grow and mature. Right, right.
• 1:09:38
  Because people who don't care if you change, you know, and and
• 1:09:41
  then people will really take a shot at you when they feel like
• 1:09:44
  you changed because they feel like you became weaker and they
• 1:09:47
  take a shot at you, right? So I always kept that in the
• 1:09:50
  back of my mind. I work out hard every day, two
• 1:09:54
  times a day. But I also, like I said, I fade
• 1:09:57
  my spirit. You know, I believe in a higher
• 1:09:59
  power. It got to be something greater
• 1:10:02
  than us. That's here, whatever it's
• 1:10:03
  called, right? It's something that's greater
• 1:10:06
  than us. And I daydreamed a lot, OK
• 1:10:11
  Things I wanted to do, things I wanted to be.
• 1:10:15
  What did you? Think, What were you thinking?
• 1:10:17
  What did you want to do and what did you want to be?
• 1:10:19
  Those at that, that that professional athlete.
• 1:10:22
  But now I'm thinking about now, you know, one of my series of
• 1:10:25
  books I used to love was Louis Lamoure.
• 1:10:26
  I just love, you know, Smokey Jensen books, the Western books.
• 1:10:30
  So I'm thinking I'm a black cowboy, right?
• 1:10:33
  I used to love Ride through the West in my mind, ride through
• 1:10:36
  the mountains. And you know, that was just my
• 1:10:39
  escape because I rode horses as a child when I was in elementary
• 1:10:43
  school. So to read the book with
• 1:10:45
  somebody, riding horses on the trail and doing these things,
• 1:10:48
  that was me. It was freedom.
• 1:10:51
  And I created scenes when I got magazines.
• 1:10:56
  You know, we couldn't keep nothing on our wall in the face,
• 1:10:59
  but I picked scenes in magazines like, OK, this is a lake, this
• 1:11:04
  is a house, this is a field, this is some animals.
• 1:11:09
  So in my mind, as I look at it, I put it together.
• 1:11:11
  It's something I wanted to do. I'm at the lake fishing.
• 1:11:14
  I love fishing. I love fishing, right?
• 1:11:18
  Hey, this house, this is my house, right?
• 1:11:21
  I got a wife, I got kids. So this one I'm thinking about,
• 1:11:26
  I got the animals. I love animals.
• 1:11:28
  I got the trees with the grass. And I switched the scenes as
• 1:11:33
  much as I could as I get magazines, right?
• 1:11:37
  And any program I can get, I'm taking it.
• 1:11:40
  Send me books, send me this. So I'm reading, I'm preparing
• 1:11:43
  myself. And then I thought about the
• 1:11:48
  situations we're in as I mature to think about my life.
• 1:11:54
  I'm worth living. I am worthy of my freedom.
• 1:12:00
  I'm worthy of doing something with my life.
• 1:12:04
  And so I challenged some guys around me who had life.
• 1:12:07
  Double life, triple life, man. Let's see who get our GE DS
• 1:12:12
  first. Whoever get it first And 2nd, we
• 1:12:16
  got to buy them five tunas and soups apiece.
• 1:12:19
  OK. Right.
• 1:12:21
  Yeah. Two of them got locked down, one
• 1:12:26
  of them left for to a penitentiary.
• 1:12:28
  I stayed. I'm still there.
• 1:12:33
  Two of them there. Send me a letter.
• 1:12:35
  Eddie, we got our GED. What's up with you?
• 1:12:38
  Where you at? I missed mine by two points.
• 1:12:42
  The math by two points. So I'm frustrated.
• 1:12:46
  I'm like, man, I got to get this now.
• 1:12:48
  I'm in 3rd place already. I got y'all.
• 1:12:50
  When I see y'all, I owe y'all. The one on the compound sent the
• 1:12:53
  message back to his sister. Yeah, he got his GED.
• 1:12:58
  So I said yeah, those two got their GED, too.
• 1:13:01
  I'm the last one. I'm like, Dang, I gotta get my
• 1:13:05
  GED, but I'm taking world religion, you know, calculus
• 1:13:11
  classes, you know, banking skill classes, you know, anger
• 1:13:15
  management, coping skill. I'm taking everything I can
• 1:13:17
  take. That's a bill.
• 1:13:18
  Yeah, anything I can get. So like, it's 2005.
• 1:13:28
  I see the parole board, I give a leave parole early or my Max my
• 1:13:33
  time out and I see the parole board and I remember the lady,
• 1:13:39
  she was judging me off new DC code and I said no, I'm supposed
• 1:13:44
  to be judged off the old DC code and she went back to it.
• 1:13:47
  She said well, you're mandatory lease.
• 1:13:51
  She said you've done everything we asked you to do, you know,
• 1:13:54
  mandatory program, you've done that.
• 1:13:56
  You've been right up free since 1998, right?
• 1:14:00
  It's 2005, you ain't been no trouble, right?
• 1:14:04
  Superior programming. So she asked me plans and all
• 1:14:08
  that stuff. So I'm giving her everything I
• 1:14:10
  think she want to hear. Parole board returned my parole
• 1:14:14
  thing and said denied. Based on institutional history,
• 1:14:19
  we don't think you're prepared to go home.
• 1:14:23
  So what I understood is this, the politics of this is this.
• 1:14:28
  If I go home, you parole me and I get in trouble and it don't
• 1:14:33
  stick. You can only hold me for that
• 1:14:37
  few months I have left on my Max out.
• 1:14:39
  So what they want to do really say Mr. Ellis, now we're going
• 1:14:42
  to let you go. Now we're going to take you to
• 1:14:43
  your Max out date. So you have to go into that
• 1:14:46
  seven-year parole anyway instead of still on that few months of
• 1:14:52
  parole option, right. And the horrible part is I lost
• 1:14:59
  my uncle months later and I would have been home to be at
• 1:15:02
  least seeing. And it really made me frustrated
• 1:15:07
  again, you know, or, or, or what's happening and how the
• 1:15:12
  system plays games with people. And so they tell me you, you
• 1:15:15
  have to get in reentry program. I said, OK, where are they?
• 1:15:19
  They said banking skills. I said, man, I don't have no
• 1:15:21
  money. Will you tell me banking where's
• 1:15:24
  the programs at? What do I need to do?
• 1:15:26
  I I never been in no prison for this and had learned what to do
• 1:15:29
  when you come home. And I just studied myself, wrote
• 1:15:35
  people, Hey, what is re entry program?
• 1:15:37
  What is these things? And people sent me information
• 1:15:40
  by I shared the information with other people who had life.
• 1:15:46
  I said give yourself hope. Give yourself hope.
• 1:15:50
  Don't never give up on your life, you know, and and I became
• 1:15:53
  a guy in ADX with some of the guys I dealt with, like let's
• 1:15:58
  exchange books. Let's let's let's talk about the
• 1:16:01
  books. Let's talk about what we read
• 1:16:03
  and let's talk about what it is to be a man.
• 1:16:07
  What that what that feel like to you?
• 1:16:08
  What are the choices we can make as men?
• 1:16:10
  That's good choices, right? Let's start speaking up against
• 1:16:14
  some things that we don't believe in, you know, and that's
• 1:16:18
  what we started doing. These were guys from different
• 1:16:20
  races, you know, different cities and we come out, have
• 1:16:24
  conversation. Of course you had people who
• 1:16:26
  were separated by gangs and all that other stuff.
• 1:16:29
  We ain't got gangs here, you know what I'm saying?
• 1:16:31
  So I don't know about gang life other than what I'm seeing it in
• 1:16:35
  this stuff. So but we wanted people who
• 1:16:38
  wanted to be there to have conversation, to grow and learn.
• 1:16:42
  And, you know, we had a little book club, you know, we had a
• 1:16:45
  few guys that was Muslim, you know, Jewish and Christian,
• 1:16:48
  where they sit and read their books together and not compare
• 1:16:51
  in a way of putting one down, but to see what we can find that
• 1:16:55
  was in common, right? So that was this growth and
• 1:17:00
  people trying to learn about each other, you know, and, and,
• 1:17:03
  and, and that's what I continue to do until I walked out the
• 1:17:07
  door. Well, tell, tell me about that.
• 1:17:10
  So you, you finally get to that point you've been in for 15
• 1:17:14
  years. What is it like walking out?
• 1:17:20
  I was bag of baggage again leaving.
• 1:17:25
  It's OK going to Lewisburg and haven't been out in population
• 1:17:33
  10 years. I am so just excited at the
• 1:17:38
  moment. Y'all got to be in a hole for at
• 1:17:41
  least three days. Mind you I've been to sale by
• 1:17:44
  myself for 10 years. They put me in the sale with two
• 1:17:48
  other people. I said he's trying to set me up.
• 1:17:53
  They trying to set me up. Yeah, I know.
• 1:17:54
  I just came out of solitary confinement for the last 10
• 1:17:57
  years and you put me in a cell on the whole with two other
• 1:18:02
  people I knew. One of them, he knew of me.
• 1:18:06
  The other one I didn't know. They knew each other.
• 1:18:09
  My anxiety is on 1000. I had nobody moving around in my
• 1:18:14
  cell. They moving.
• 1:18:16
  I'm jumping up, man. What you doing?
• 1:18:18
  I was just walking through the door right and I'm just like we
• 1:18:23
  got to come to a consensus. You know what I'm saying?
• 1:18:27
  Y'all going to bathroom? Tap me man.
• 1:18:29
  I'm about to go to the bathroom. That's for my nerves.
• 1:18:34
  I appreciate it right? I'm ready to go through the
• 1:18:38
  door. I said I don't care if I'm sleep
• 1:18:40
  tap me because I don't want to get in the mind say I jump up
• 1:18:44
  not realize you. What am I saying?
• 1:18:49
  Who is I don't I don't even know what to feel and they went out
• 1:18:53
  the whole 2 days before me. But because I'm coming from the
• 1:18:59
  ADX and a lot of people coming to the defense talking to me.
• 1:19:06
  The warden say who is who is this person?
• 1:19:09
  Where he coming from the ADX? Why is all these people coming
• 1:19:13
  to the gate talking to him? So when I go through orientation
• 1:19:17
  again, they said why is all these people coming to the gate?
• 1:19:19
  You're coming from ADX, you was there for a reason.
• 1:19:23
  Why is all these people coming to talk to you?
• 1:19:25
  I said, though, those are people I grew up with, whether in the
• 1:19:27
  street or in the system, these are people that I ain't seen in
• 1:19:31
  years. Yeah, we don't know if we
• 1:19:35
  letting you out. I said, Sir, let me say this to
• 1:19:36
  you. I go home in less than 90 days.
• 1:19:41
  Oh, I didn't know that. I said yes.
• 1:19:45
  I said I ain't. I hung up.
• 1:19:47
  Everything that y'all might think is about trouble,
• 1:19:50
  negativity, that's not who I am. The next day they let me out.
• 1:19:57
  So I go this J Block, you know, got my celly, you know, put my
• 1:20:02
  little stuff in there, go around the compound, find some people,
• 1:20:06
  get some, you know, get some stuff together and I'm walking
• 1:20:10
  around and people like Eddie be great.
• 1:20:12
  Go ahead. I'm like, alright, go ahead.
• 1:20:15
  It'd be great. Go in.
• 1:20:16
  All right, go ahead. I see you tomorrow.
• 1:20:18
  So about four of them lingering around and like, listen man, we
• 1:20:22
  don't be out here all day. You know, we hit the yard, go to
• 1:20:25
  Unicorn, eat, talk for a little while.
• 1:20:27
  We back in because they've been out of population for the last
• 1:20:31
  five, 1015 years. I've been locked down.
• 1:20:34
  I don't want to go in till they make me go in.
• 1:20:37
  Right. So some guys, man, look at it
• 1:20:39
  could be a safety thing, you know, we want you to be
• 1:20:43
  prepared, you know, because there's a lot of things happened
• 1:20:45
  before I got there while I was dead.
• 1:20:47
  So I understood where he was coming from, you know what I'm
• 1:20:49
  saying? Be mindful about, you know,
• 1:20:51
  what's going on. Cool.
• 1:20:54
  So got on the basketball team in my NJ block, play some
• 1:20:58
  basketball. I've been playing handball and
• 1:21:03
  preparing to go home. And my preparation was staying
• 1:21:07
  focused on the mission, staying positive, right?
• 1:21:12
  Stay in communication with the people that support you on the
• 1:21:14
  outside. Try to encourage some of the men
• 1:21:16
  around you to stay positive, to keep fighting for their freedom.
• 1:21:20
  And the day of, the day before, August 23rd, 2006, officer came
• 1:21:28
  to my cell on the 4:00 to 12:00 shift.
• 1:21:33
  He said we're going to ask you whatever you want to take home,
• 1:21:37
  give it to us now so we can process it, go through a search
• 1:21:42
  and rest of the stuff you won't be able to take.
• 1:21:45
  So I said OK, I gave him my stuff and it became real and me
• 1:21:51
  and my celly sat there and made wraps and we ate, ate some
• 1:21:55
  wraps, some tuna wraps and everything.
• 1:21:57
  We sit there. We made us a vegetarian pizza,
• 1:22:01
  play some Domino's. He said, man, I don't know if
• 1:22:06
  I'm ever make it home but don't come back, man.
• 1:22:13
  And I sit there and got emotional because I thought
• 1:22:18
  about the people I'm leaving behind who don't really have
• 1:22:24
  dates. They have letters.
• 1:22:26
  And the ones who do have dates, it's 100 years, 150 years, 200
• 1:22:30
  years. And but I took my GED before I
• 1:22:38
  left, before I was totally. I took my GED, the math section.
• 1:22:42
  And that morning they came and got me.
• 1:22:45
  You'll keep me up, man. Eddie, stay strong, man.
• 1:22:47
  Stay out there. Connect my mother, man, my
• 1:22:50
  sister. I'm like, OK, OK, I'm gonna do
• 1:22:52
  that. And I go to R&D.
• 1:22:55
  Put me in a cage. My brother, he had drove up here
• 1:23:00
  with his girlfriend in Lewisburg, gave me some clothes
• 1:23:03
  and shoes. I put that stuff on and I walked
• 1:23:07
  out to the gate. Yeah.
• 1:23:09
  I walked out the door and the officer say, what's your name
• 1:23:12
  and your number? And I gave him my name and
• 1:23:15
  number. He said, I hope you don't see.
• 1:23:16
  I hope I don't see you no more. I said, I hope I don't see you
• 1:23:18
  anymore either. And I walked out and gave my
• 1:23:21
  brother a hug. And and I cried because again,
• 1:23:25
  the people I'm leaving behind, most of them may never have a
• 1:23:28
  chance to come home. And I met a lot of good people,
• 1:23:32
  all races, all religions that I was really close to from across
• 1:23:37
  the world. Yeah.
• 1:23:39
  And now remember getting in the car, I'm so nervous because I
• 1:23:44
  hadn't been in the vehicle. And so, you know, like a car.
• 1:23:46
  We was in vans with cages so. Oh yeah.
• 1:23:49
  Yeah, so I'm like, man, what a seat there to put the seat belt
• 1:23:53
  on. My brother's like, man, you in
• 1:23:55
  the back seat you and I were on no seat belt.
• 1:23:56
  I'm like, no, I'm putting the seat belt on.
• 1:23:58
  I put the seat belt on and I heard a phone ring and he say
• 1:24:05
  somebody want to talk to you. So he gave me the phone and I'm
• 1:24:08
  like, hello? And he was like, hold the button
• 1:24:11
  on the side. I'm like, hold the button.
• 1:24:14
  Hello. So at the time they were still
• 1:24:17
  as guest chirping what they call at the time, like a
• 1:24:20
  walkie-talkie. Yeah.
• 1:24:21
  Yeah. So I'm like, man, I don't want
• 1:24:23
  to talk to them like that. You know, when I left the
• 1:24:26
  streets, you the people had the big cell phones, but it was like
• 1:24:30
  a battery or 5 LB five, yeah, right on the bag, you know.
• 1:24:34
  And I'm like, man, I don't, I don't know how to use.
• 1:24:37
  And it's so small in my hand. I'm like, it's weird.
• 1:24:41
  So he said, you want to get something to eat?
• 1:24:42
  And I said, no, let's just get away.
• 1:24:45
  I don't want them to say it was a mistake.
• 1:24:47
  You got to come back, let's get away.
• 1:24:50
  And we got miles and miles down the road.
• 1:24:52
  Now, I remember I said, man, let's stop.
• 1:24:55
  I want some bubble gum of all things.
• 1:24:57
  It's some double mint bubble gum.
• 1:25:00
  And I ate that bubble gum like it was AT Bone State all the way
• 1:25:04
  back to DC. And we talked, you know, about
• 1:25:09
  life. You happy?
• 1:25:10
  I'm home, my family. And he's like, what you gonna
• 1:25:15
  do, Eddie? I said, I don't know.
• 1:25:19
  I said I've never had a real job before, so I'm not sure I said.
• 1:25:23
  But what I am sure about is the way that I want to live my life,
• 1:25:27
  you know, and, and I could tell you for the first 120 days I was
• 1:25:38
  in two programs, a 28 day program and a 90 day program,
• 1:25:42
  OK. And when I left the 98 program,
• 1:25:46
  I want to live with my mom and my mom help me put job
• 1:25:53
  applications in my friends help me put job applications.
• 1:25:56
  I remember literally like 100 jobs.
• 1:26:00
  So my mother, like what you want?
• 1:26:01
  I said anything that's easy. And they were like, no, you
• 1:26:05
  don't want nothing easy, my brothers.
• 1:26:06
  I said no, understand this. I haven't worked out here.
• 1:26:12
  If I get something that's too challenging, I might fold.
• 1:26:15
  Yeah, I might walk away from it. Don't want to go.
• 1:26:18
  Let me start somewhere where it's comfortable for me.
• 1:26:21
  Yeah, and go from there. And that's what I did.
• 1:26:24
  I got a cleaning job. You know, I thought I tried a
• 1:26:28
  job at Home Depot. They gave me the job, took a
• 1:26:32
  year and passed it, right? Did a background check.
• 1:26:36
  Even though their things say 7 years, they took the job back
• 1:26:41
  and I'm like, man, damn, what do they want us to do?
• 1:26:44
  I can't get a job. I want to work.
• 1:26:47
  Yeah, right. You took the opportunity away
• 1:26:49
  from me and I remember a class action lawyer called me said
• 1:26:55
  we're doing a class action Shoot, your name came up.
• 1:26:57
  That's my own kidding about this stuff, man, you know, and I was
• 1:27:01
  in the mindset I almost gave up. I'm doing everything I can to
• 1:27:05
  get a job to work. I'm not being lazy.
• 1:27:08
  I'm getting off my butt. I'm going to job temp agency,
• 1:27:11
  I'm going to program. I'm doing all this stuff to show
• 1:27:14
  that I want to do it. Then when you give it to me, you
• 1:27:17
  take it back. So I'm like this how this the
• 1:27:20
  world want this is the community want us to do to just throw
• 1:27:24
  everything away. And I remember my mom asked her
• 1:27:27
  coworker who had just created a cleaning.
• 1:27:29
  He he bought into a franchise cleaning company and he say she
• 1:27:35
  say, you know, my son looking for a job and he was like, if he
• 1:27:39
  want to work, he can work. My mother called me shit, I got
• 1:27:42
  you a job. I'm like what where he said he
• 1:27:45
  could come get you today. I said I'll be ready.
• 1:27:48
  He's come and give me a five. I was ready at 2:00, you know,
• 1:27:52
  my headphones on. You know I'm ready now.
• 1:27:56
  Yeah. So.
• 1:27:57
  But I'm going to tell you, we get stuck in time somewhat.
• 1:28:02
  Yeah. When I when I'm waiting for him,
• 1:28:06
  I remember going to work out. I got my headphones on my
• 1:28:11
  bandana, right Sony's my clear Walkman and a battery pack
• 1:28:20
  hooked up. Got my tape.
• 1:28:21
  I'm running my my baby brother was born a year later after I
• 1:28:26
  went in. He come over there.
• 1:28:28
  Hey, Eddie, Calvin call you on the way to get you.
• 1:28:32
  That's OK. How long you'll be here by the
• 1:28:34
  hour. OK, I can go wash you up.
• 1:28:37
  And my little brother, look, he say, what is that right there?
• 1:28:42
  I said what he said on your hip. I said that's a Walkman with a
• 1:28:46
  battery pack. He said, man, they don't wear
• 1:28:49
  walk Man's out here no more. And I said what he's like.
• 1:28:53
  No, he said they got MP3 players.
• 1:28:56
  I said I don't know nothing about that.
• 1:28:58
  I got a Walkman with a cassette tape.
• 1:29:00
  That's right. I know that.
• 1:29:02
  I know how to work that and he's shamed me so much.
• 1:29:05
  I donated to the Salvation Army and but the work, I cleaned up
• 1:29:14
  the building. He had four or five contracts.
• 1:29:17
  I cleaned up, I cleaned up. I cleaned up.
• 1:29:19
  And I remember my first check. You pay every two weeks, 350.
• 1:29:27
  I told my mother. I said, Mom, I got, I got paid.
• 1:29:31
  I'm gonna give you half soon as I cash it.
• 1:29:33
  She said how much you get paid? I said 350.
• 1:29:37
  She was $3500. I said no, $350.00.
• 1:29:43
  She bust out laughing. She said, boy, I'm gonna use
• 1:29:47
  someone $3500. She keep your money.
• 1:29:49
  I said, Nah, I'm going to give you something.
• 1:29:51
  So I gave her $100. She said give her a hundred.
• 1:29:54
  I gave her $100. But to me, it wasn't about how
• 1:29:58
  much I was getting paid at the time.
• 1:30:00
  It was getting used to being responsible out here in the
• 1:30:03
  community. Right, getting into your groove.
• 1:30:05
  Right. And working.
• 1:30:07
  And while doing that, I started doing community advocacy work
• 1:30:15
  while I was on parole, speaking up for people in the parole
• 1:30:19
  office, having meetings with people.
• 1:30:22
  Then, you know, sitting with folks is on parole trying to
• 1:30:24
  empower us to understand how we can control our destiny while on
• 1:30:29
  parole. Here's our rights, right?
• 1:30:33
  And that's what I did. That's what I did for for
• 1:30:37
  cleaned up and done that for many years.
• 1:30:40
  Got connected with National League Wade to be on their board
• 1:30:45
  from being on their board. I created a resource book two
• 1:30:48
  years later to go inside the BOP from folks that was blocked up
• 1:30:53
  from DC and that hit the Washington Post.
• 1:30:58
  People saw it and I was just I remember GI Joe was a cartoon I
• 1:31:02
  should love. Now remember message knowing is
• 1:31:05
  half the battle. So I say if I create the
• 1:31:09
  resource for people to see it, that's half the battle for them.
• 1:31:13
  That's right. And, and that's what I did.
• 1:31:15
  And I started speaking at different schools and, you know,
• 1:31:18
  at different political venues and being honest about myself
• 1:31:24
  and not trying to just discourage the system.
• 1:31:27
  There's a lot of things about the system I don't like, but
• 1:31:30
  being responsible for what sent me to prison and.
• 1:31:33
  Yeah, I I saw some of that. You can see somewhat of it on
• 1:31:36
  YouTube and I, there was a professor that had you in to
• 1:31:40
  speak to his class and I thought you did such a good job, Eddie,
• 1:31:46
  at just being real, just raw, real.
• 1:31:51
  And, and I, I could see those students, they had a like a
• 1:31:56
  guard up. And as you spoke, it started to
• 1:31:59
  loosen and to where these, these kids started getting really
• 1:32:03
  comfortable and asking you questions.
• 1:32:06
  And I, I just know that when you walked in, when he left, there
• 1:32:10
  was an impact made of how they felt.
• 1:32:13
  And I think they even spoke to some of the kids before they
• 1:32:15
  went into that room and then after.
• 1:32:18
  And it's those type of things of, and I don't even know really
• 1:32:23
  what got you into that. I guess it's probably you were
• 1:32:25
  doing some of that when you were in prison.
• 1:32:27
  You know, you had the book club, you're, you're trying to keep
• 1:32:29
  people hopeful. And so you started doing that on
• 1:32:32
  the outside, but being where you've been and then going into
• 1:32:38
  a room like that, that's where barriers can be broken down
• 1:32:44
  because because people have a perception that this is all bad.
• 1:32:48
  People are never redeemable. They probably deserve to be in
• 1:32:52
  prison for the rest of life if they have a conviction.
• 1:32:55
  And while you going and speaking and being there and being right
• 1:32:59
  there, letting them converse back and forth and ask their
• 1:33:02
  questions and you being able to answer those in a way that they
• 1:33:05
  can understand, steps forward and makes that impact.
• 1:33:09
  It it, you know, it might be one person, it might be 10 people,
• 1:33:12
  it might be the whole room, but you're affecting change.
• 1:33:16
  And I, I, that's what I love about what you're doing and what
• 1:33:19
  you've done with your story, because those are the things
• 1:33:22
  that make things move. It is.
• 1:33:24
  It is. And like the professor you spoke
• 1:33:26
  about, he's a peace advocate. Coleman McCarthy.
• 1:33:30
  Yeah. I love Coleman.
• 1:33:32
  Awesome person. And two of his students came.
• 1:33:36
  I was in AI, was in a play that I'm not promoting.
• 1:33:39
  But two of his students met me at the play and was like, you
• 1:33:44
  got to meet my professor. They talked about him like, you
• 1:33:47
  know, sliced bread, like he's the best thing since, like I
• 1:33:51
  said, he can't be that much of a good person.
• 1:33:53
  And when I met Coleman, I said, man, y'all was right on time.
• 1:33:55
  Yeah. And who he is and and.
• 1:33:58
  He's an older guy. He's it's not like he's a young
• 1:34:01
  activist. He's an older.
• 1:34:02
  Guy Coleman, his old activist, has been fighting for a long, I
• 1:34:05
  mean, a long, long time. He's true to who he is.
• 1:34:10
  He's true to his message of peace.
• 1:34:12
  He's true to the humanity of people.
• 1:34:15
  Yeah. And it was an honor for me to be
• 1:34:18
  able to come in that think tank with his students and not only
• 1:34:23
  speak with them, but learn from them as well.
• 1:34:25
  And I tell them, listen, I'm not coming here to convince you one
• 1:34:28
  way or another. I'm coming here to have a
• 1:34:30
  dialogue with you. You could agree to disagree,
• 1:34:33
  right? And we can have conversation
• 1:34:35
  about how that look. And I've done that.
• 1:34:38
  And I can tell you this, I had young students from his class
• 1:34:42
  that asked me write letters for them when they was going to law
• 1:34:45
  school, right? I got some now that I'm still in
• 1:34:50
  contact with that are partners in law firms, yeah, that were
• 1:34:54
  international prosecutors. And Eddie, that's what I'm
• 1:34:57
  talking about. If you're not there and if
• 1:35:00
  you're not speaking and if they don't make that connection, then
• 1:35:04
  they don't have that in their file memory.
• 1:35:07
  And and it doesn't change them when they're going to be now in
• 1:35:10
  law school and they're going to be an attorney.
• 1:35:11
  But by that moment and when you're all together, those are
• 1:35:16
  the things that that I'm repeating myself, but those are
• 1:35:19
  the things that make change happen, right?
• 1:35:22
  And, and, and I and I love that you're not a lot of people for
• 1:35:28
  whatever reason, they, they, it could be shame, it could be
• 1:35:33
  whatever these things are that surround us and we, you know,
• 1:35:35
  imprison our own mind. But I think when you get to the
• 1:35:39
  point where you're comfortable talking about yourself, your
• 1:35:43
  story, and you own it, people then can relate.
• 1:35:48
  And if you can get people to relate, that's where that's
• 1:35:52
  where things meet in the middle. It's, it's that meeting, that
• 1:35:56
  meeting of the minds. And, and I think that's what
• 1:35:58
  you're doing is so effective. And you, I mean, you're out now.
• 1:36:03
  Let's see 2619 years. Yes, all 19 years, Sir, it was
• 1:36:08
  19 years. 19 years. Yeah, 19 years and done a.
• 1:36:11
  Whole lot. And personally, was it being in
• 1:36:16
  that amount of time for you? Was it just everyday life?
• 1:36:21
  Did you feel like you'd gotten institutionalized to where?
• 1:36:25
  How long did it take for that to wear off?
• 1:36:27
  Or do you still have a little bit of that?
• 1:36:29
  Oh, you always have that. I tell people what I've learned
• 1:36:31
  about being institutionalized is this my mother who worked for
• 1:36:34
  federal government for almost 30 years, she's institutionalized.
• 1:36:37
  Yeah. If you was a teacher for 20-30
• 1:36:39
  years, you're. Institutionalized.
• 1:36:41
  But it's what you do with those moments that make it matter at
• 1:36:44
  the end of the day. And I've decided to not let
• 1:36:46
  those things destroy my life. Yeah.
• 1:36:50
  Even when I came home and was hand washing my clothes and
• 1:36:53
  hanging them in the in my bathroom, my mother, like, what
• 1:36:55
  are you doing? We got to wash and dry.
• 1:36:57
  And she said, you know what, don't worry about it.
• 1:36:59
  Do what's comfortable for you. Right.
• 1:37:01
  I get in the shower with my slippers on.
• 1:37:03
  That's right. Right, all type of stuff, but I
• 1:37:05
  learned to laugh at myself and not look down on myself because
• 1:37:09
  of those things. And and right now, you know,
• 1:37:13
  working for the campaign for the first sentencing of Youth, which
• 1:37:16
  we fights to ban life without parole nationally for children.
• 1:37:19
  I can say this, I've learned more about the brain science in
• 1:37:24
  children and the importance of protecting children.
• 1:37:27
  And I just want to say this to listeners, a child will always
• 1:37:31
  be a child, no matter what choices they make, good or bad.
• 1:37:36
  It's not a choice that a child can make that makes them an
• 1:37:39
  adult. It makes it a horrible decision
• 1:37:42
  if that's what it was, but it doesn't make them an adult.
• 1:37:45
  I'm an adult. And as a country, we have
• 1:37:48
  protection bumpers in place to protect children.
• 1:37:53
  Can't sign a contract, you can't vote, you can't smoke
• 1:37:56
  cigarettes, you can't drink, you can't drive a certain age,
• 1:37:58
  right? But if that same child make a
• 1:38:02
  bad decision, we are now saying that our children are adults.
• 1:38:08
  Right. We're just going to bump that
• 1:38:09
  up. Everything else that we're
• 1:38:11
  putting the perimeters around or drinking and graduating and
• 1:38:17
  going to war and all those things, we're just going to bump
• 1:38:19
  that up and make it to where it doesn't matter.
• 1:38:21
  And, and you and I were talking, Eddie, before this.
• 1:38:23
  There's been a lot of studies on this.
• 1:38:25
  And you know, the, I think the, the full maturity of the brain
• 1:38:30
  is around 24. And there's a lot of people like
• 1:38:35
  you. Until 2012, they said you can't
• 1:38:38
  give somebody life in prison without parole as a teenager.
• 1:38:42
  Right. Because it's not, it's not
• 1:38:45
  science. You, you, you've got to, you've
• 1:38:48
  got to understand the science of the body And, and thank God that
• 1:38:52
  happened because there's a lot of people that were in life
• 1:38:54
  without parole and that that ruling changed a lot of people's
• 1:38:59
  lives. And there's a lot of those
• 1:39:00
  people that are out that are actually changing lives for
• 1:39:02
  people because. I work with a lot of them across
• 1:39:05
  the country, a lot of man, I, you know, I'm under CFS Y, my
• 1:39:11
  organization I work for, it's also a subset organization
• 1:39:15
  called I Can Incarcerated Children's Advocacy Network.
• 1:39:19
  But we are adults and we have 320 members across the country,
• 1:39:25
  right? But it's thousands of people who
• 1:39:28
  are home who had life and de facto life.
• 1:39:32
  Yeah, but it's like 15 to 1700 who actually had natural life.
• 1:39:37
  That's home. But de facto life look like
• 1:39:40
  this. 40503060, a hundred years life with parole.
• 1:39:45
  Those are de facto life sentences for children.
• 1:39:48
  Yeah. And I work with people who
• 1:39:51
  actually, you know, my coworker, she lasted 13 when she went to
• 1:39:54
  jail. She's done 17 years.
• 1:39:56
  Her brother was 12. So, but I work with people
• 1:40:00
  across the country that are doing awesome things in their
• 1:40:03
  community to give back, to change the narrative.
• 1:40:06
  That children need to be thrown away.
• 1:40:09
  We're fighting those, but we're fighting those negative things.
• 1:40:11
  Oh, and, and I tell you what, Eddie, I, This is why I, I love
• 1:40:15
  doing this show. These type of stories re inspire
• 1:40:18
  me. You know, I get to sit in this
• 1:40:20
  chair, but I get to hear someone who was, you know, an ADX and,
• 1:40:25
  and, and was basically locked in for years and they didn't expect
• 1:40:32
  you to come out and do anything. They didn't expect you to take
• 1:40:35
  any opportunities and you made that happen for yourself.
• 1:40:38
  I, I want to ask you, Eddie, going through everything that
• 1:40:43
  you've gone through. I mean, we've talked about a lot
• 1:40:45
  of yours, your life here and being from, you know, that 16
• 1:40:50
  year old kid. And now, what do you think's
• 1:40:55
  your biggest take away through all of this?
• 1:40:58
  My biggest take away from all of this is access to opportunity
• 1:41:01
  for children, resources for it's children across the board,
• 1:41:05
  right? And me learning that resilience,
• 1:41:11
  resiliency can be a good thing, but we shouldn't have to put
• 1:41:15
  children through these things to make them be resilient.
• 1:41:18
  It should be all but alternative things that we can do to help
• 1:41:21
  support children, right? And like the work we do
• 1:41:24
  organizationally, we not only work with people come home, we
• 1:41:27
  work with their family members and we work with victims of, of
• 1:41:30
  youth violence. Survivors of youth violence have
• 1:41:33
  been a part of the staple, the staple of this organization,
• 1:41:38
  right. So this organization was first
• 1:41:40
  built 2009, the start we had family members and survivors of
• 1:41:46
  youth violence at the helm of this.
• 1:41:49
  So it was woven into the fabric of the organization.
• 1:41:53
  And we are doing new work around transformative healing, justice
• 1:41:58
  work, restorative justice work. And I've helped create a, a
• 1:42:02
  space where I coined, you know, community care space, where once
• 1:42:06
  a year we get a lot of us that go to a space where there's
• 1:42:10
  water for two or three days with a social worker and there's no,
• 1:42:13
  no expensive dance. We pay for everything.
• 1:42:16
  This come and we have a lot of laughter, we have a lot of
• 1:42:19
  tears. We have a lot of growth and
• 1:42:21
  we're helping people go back into the community to be
• 1:42:24
  mentally healthy, to do the work because it's draining work when
• 1:42:28
  you go in, go in the field and you give yourself right.
• 1:42:31
  But I can tell you if we want to talk about people who are doing
• 1:42:34
  things in the community, and I call these people and again,
• 1:42:37
  they have all races and, and, and, and, and and religious
• 1:42:41
  different states. I call them my brothers and
• 1:42:43
  sisters. If you name someone doing work
• 1:42:45
  in the community, I can name one of my brothers and sisters who
• 1:42:48
  doing work, doing the site, same type of work.
• 1:42:50
  And their business owners, their artists, their teachers, their
• 1:42:55
  grandparents, their parents, you know, they're, they're
• 1:42:58
  everything that we want to be when we want to see a community
• 1:43:02
  thriving, You know? And and I tell people I take
• 1:43:06
  this work so serious because most people think that we don't
• 1:43:10
  care about safety. My wife and my children, I want
• 1:43:14
  them to always be safe. Yeah, that's very important to
• 1:43:17
  me, right. And that's for a lot of us who
• 1:43:19
  have spouses, who have family members who are there for us,
• 1:43:23
  that's the source of our strength when we not doing the
• 1:43:25
  work, right? That's the source of that
• 1:43:27
  strength to say, hey, you need to slow down, right?
• 1:43:30
  So that's the stuff that I tell people.
• 1:43:33
  I'm not proud of going to jail. I'm not proud of what happened.
• 1:43:37
  And like again, I take full responsibility for what took
• 1:43:39
  place. But in my in my time now, I had
• 1:43:43
  to find the time to forgive myself.
• 1:43:47
  How old are your kids? Well I my older kids 2927 my
• 1:43:52
  baby is 12 my older 2. I married into them when they
• 1:43:55
  were young. OK, so those are my children as
• 1:43:58
  well. Yeah.
• 1:43:59
  My daughter's the oldest two boys, the youngest.
• 1:44:02
  And, and I've been blessed to have a wonderful wife who I
• 1:44:07
  love. It gave me the privilege to
• 1:44:09
  marry into my children. I love that.
• 1:44:11
  And, and, and to take her hand in marriage.
• 1:44:13
  And she's been such a support to me throughout the field, you
• 1:44:18
  know, throughout this work, I mean, just in my life in
• 1:44:21
  general. And that's why I tell people for
• 1:44:23
  me, I'm seeking happiness and peace for myself.
• 1:44:27
  And that's how I live my life. I don't subscribe to the
• 1:44:30
  streets. I don't subscribe to the street
• 1:44:33
  rules, right? I'm a person that's living life,
• 1:44:36
  right? I'm a supportive of the
• 1:44:39
  community. I'm a supportive of what's
• 1:44:41
  right. And the brothers and sisters I
• 1:44:43
  work with, that's what they stand on, all right?
• 1:44:46
  And we on the front line doing the work, whether it's
• 1:44:49
  physically on the front line, emotionally and mentally on the
• 1:44:51
  front line, we on the front line making changes in the community,
• 1:44:55
  you know, and, and for me when I can, this happened to me in
• 1:45:02
  Montgomery, AL at Bryan Stevenson's museum at the Legacy
• 1:45:05
  Museum. We went there a few years ago
• 1:45:09
  and there was a young white gentleman at top of the steps.
• 1:45:11
  And he said, hey, do you work for CFSYI said, yes, my name is
• 1:45:14
  Eddie Ellis. He said, I know you.
• 1:45:16
  I said, you don't know me. He said you spoke with a class
• 1:45:20
  at Middlebury University in Vermont 10 years ago.
• 1:45:25
  I said yeah. I said matter of fact, I was
• 1:45:27
  just looking at that picture in my phone.
• 1:45:30
  I opened up the phone and show him the picture.
• 1:45:32
  He says that's me right there sitting right on the couch with
• 1:45:34
  you. Your conversation helped guy
• 1:45:37
  where I wanted to go in my career.
• 1:45:39
  Yeah, that's what I'm talking. How much that meant to me to
• 1:45:42
  have an impact on this young person, huge when he was in
• 1:45:46
  school. Yeah, just huge.
• 1:45:48
  If and if people want to get a holder and and be a part of
• 1:45:51
  anything, it's it's the the campaign for the fair sentencing
• 1:45:55
  of the youth. And there's also the your
• 1:46:00
  nonprofit one-on-one. 1 by 1. Inc I mean one by one Inc Eddie
• 1:46:06
  man on. Instagram Find me on Facebook
• 1:46:09
  Eddie Ellis. LinkedIn.
• 1:46:12
  Yes, LinkedIn, I'm there. I'm in the communities.
• 1:46:15
  My when we come speak, talk, whatever.
• 1:46:17
  I, I, I just want to be a part of the community in the United
• 1:46:20
  States is my community. There you go.
• 1:46:22
  That that's my community and and wherever I've stepped my feet in
• 1:46:25
  to do work, that that place will be my community and I would love
• 1:46:28
  it and support it and respect it as such.
• 1:46:30
  I love it, man. What a great comeback.
• 1:46:32
  What a great crime back story. I love these kind of stories.
• 1:46:37
  Speaking of gratitude and everything else that goes with
• 1:46:39
  it, I want to give a shout out to Homestead Financial.
• 1:46:41
  Let's me use this podcast room and all the fancy lights and
• 1:46:44
  stuff. If you got home mortgage needs
• 1:46:46
  out there, Greg Afdev is your guy.
• 1:46:49
  If you're looking for a book, I've got one nightmare success,
• 1:46:51
  loyalty, betrayal, life behind bars, adapting, finally breaking
• 1:46:54
  free. And if you got time, leave me a
• 1:46:57
  review on Apple it. It really helps show.
• 1:47:00
  And if you want to know what I'm doing, go to brentcassidy.com.
• 1:47:02
  I spell it wrong. I spell it with ATY, not a DY.
• 1:47:05
  They used to say to my people when I was writing my emails
• 1:47:08
  back and forth from Leavenworth. Stay strong.
• 1:47:10
  I'll do the same. Eddie Ellis, man, thank you so
• 1:47:13
  much for being and doing and keep doing all the stuff you're
• 1:47:16
  doing. And thank you, Brent, for what
• 1:47:18
  you're doing, putting the message out there and doing what
• 1:47:20
  you're doing. This is very important.
• 1:47:22
  This is about their proximity, and you're bringing people
• 1:47:24
  proximate to these stories and let people see that change is
• 1:47:27
  actually possible. I appreciate that man dimer
• 1:47:30
  success in and out. Thank you.