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Josh Dubin is the Executive Director of the Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice, a criminal justice reform advocate, and civil rights attorney. https://cardozo.yu.edu/directory/josh-dubin
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Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day!
Brother Joe.
Good to see you again.
Nice to see you, man.
What's happening?
Everything's happening.
I got a lot on my mind.
I got notes today and everything.
Beautiful.
So, let's kick it off.
What do you got?
No, I was just, I was thinking that the more you do this work, the more routine
the stories
would get and you would start to see fact patterns and situations repeat.
But I'm starting to think the more you do it, the more nutty and bizarre it
gets and you
find yourself in these situations where you're like, that can't be.
You got to check that out.
So, I have like multiple cases going on where I feel that way.
And they range from wrongful convictions to why was this person charged in the
first place?
Were you seeking clemency?
I mean, yeah, it's a weird world.
Yeah, your world in particular.
The world of wrongfully accused and wrongfully convicted people is one of the
darkest worlds
in the world because you're taking away a person's freedom.
Yeah.
And they do it all the time for corruption.
They do it because they're corrupt.
They do it because they're dirty.
They do it because they want convictions.
They do it because they said someone was guilty and then they just want to
fucking lock them
up anyway.
You know, I started to read this.
Malcolm Gladwell just published a new book called Revenge or the Tipping Point.
And I'm only like 15 pages in.
And the way he starts it out is about, I think, he's going to come back to it
at the end, but
I think it's the opioid scandal.
He's leaving it blank until the end of the book about how when they testified,
the executives
of the company testified before Congress, that they couldn't bring themselves
to apologize
or admit that they were wrong.
And they keep on using the words, our drug has been associated with, associated
with addiction.
And it's almost this.
So I'm starting to think that this inability to admit fault, that you're wrong,
that you're
sorry, it transcends the legal system.
And, you know, I'm starting to believe that the cases where these cops are out
to frame
someone are far more, well, maybe not far more, but they're less common than
the cases where
law enforcement's trying to do the right thing and a detective has a hunch and
they just get
to where they think they need to be on the evidence by following the hunch,
which is often
wrong.
So, yeah, it's a mix of all that shit.
Yeah, and people don't like to admit they're wrong ever, especially when it
comes to something
as crazy as a pharmaceutical drug company releasing some opioid that's going to
kill a million
people.
Like, they can't admit they're wrong.
They almost have to say things like associated with, especially during hearings.
Yeah, during congressional hearings, I guess there's a lot on the line if there's
anything
that smells like an admission.
Yeah, they can't admit it.
They have to not lie, right, because then they can get hit with perjury.
So they come up with different terms, like associated with.
Yeah, I mean, I'm interested to see where he goes with it.
I listen to his podcast a lot.
It's actually really good.
Some of them are good.
Revisionist history, because he's a curious dude, this Malcolm Gladwell.
And, you know, some of his stuff I agree with, some I don't.
But I like that he looks beneath the surface and tries to figure out what is
motivating people
or what they're tricking themselves into believing.
And I just, I was watching this Maniscalco bit the other day, and he was like,
can't you
just say I'm sorry?
He's talking about his wife.
That's all I want.
And him and this dude are going back and forth.
I forget the guy's name on the podcast.
Some other comedian.
And the bit is so fucking funny.
And so I just find myself apologizing all the time.
Because what's wrong with just admitting that you're wrong?
Nothing at all.
Good.
It's actually a show of strength.
And people that don't recognize that, they just believe that they're never
wrong or that
they want people to know they're never wrong or think they're never wrong.
So they just don't admit it.
They just bury it deep inside.
But you find yourself apologizing all the fucking time sometimes when you're
conscious of it.
I'm like, damn, I apologize a lot.
Maybe I didn't do all this shit.
Well, better to apologize for something you didn't do than to not apologize for
something
you did.
Well, I don't know.
As long as you mean it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You got to mean it.
That helps.
Meaning it helps.
Yeah.
Just saying it just to get it out of a fight.
Yeah, that's not good.
It's not good.
It's not worth it.
Yeah, I just finished this trial on a case that was super important to forensic
science.
It was actually the namesake of my center, the Perlmutter's.
The Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice at Cardozo Law.
So Ike and Lori Perlmutter's DNA was stolen by a neighbor.
And, you know, it's a nutty story.
You could read about it online.
I did read about it online.
It's crazy.
It's fucking crazy.
And, but I had a, um, I had an expert, a so-called expert on the stand, and
there was an email
where they, um, it was an unaccredited DNA lab.
And someone that worked for him gets the results of DNA testing, one round of
the results.
And she says, the good news is we have a full profile.
The bad news is it's not associated with the Perlmutter's.
And I, and I said to him in words or substance, um, why would it ever be bad
news for a scientist
if one particular person was implicated in a crime or not?
Aren't they supposed to just give the facts?
And, and in a moment of candor, I think it's one of the few times this has
happened in all my years doing this.
The guy said, you know, I wouldn't have used those words and it had no place.
And it wasn't an email that he wrote.
It was an email that someone that worked for him wrote.
And I almost said right in front of the jury, good for you, man.
That's super rare.
And, um, I mean, the case is, is, um, I think it's an important one for
forensic science because
their DNA was stolen at a deposition over some petty shit.
It was about a tennis dispute in their community and they're lured to this deposition
and their
neighbor takes their DNA without their consent.
How did he do it?
He had, um, he had a former crime scene analyst.
And some retired, um, deputy chief of police from Toronto, cause this guy's
from Canada come down and
And they made sure that they did not handle paper that Ike Perlmutter would
handle.
And they made sure that no one touched this water bottle that Lori Perlmutter
was going to handle.
And they hand him this phony exhibit and they had it worked out before that
they would only touch the bottom corner of it.
And they have, um, they have a water bottle sitting in front of Lori Perlmutter
and they ask questions about this dispute over the tennis center.
And, um, you know, when they leave, it was treated like a crime scene and it
was like some vigilante justice type of shit where they send all this stuff to
an unaccredited lab who then sends it to an accredited lab.
And instead of waiting for the results to come in from this accredited lab, the
unaccredited lab starts interpreting it and they're having pressure put on them
by this man that ultimately accused Ike and Lori of, you know, being involved
in this awful crime.
What was the crime?
All right.
So it doesn't make sense without context.
So here's what happens.
Ike Perlmutter is, you know, the former chairman of Marvel.
He's, um, very reclusive by all accounts.
He and Lori don't have children and they live a very quiet life in Palm Beach.
He was an avid tennis player.
This is about 14 years ago.
Avid tennis player and he, um, became very friendly with the woman that was the
tennis pro.
She was a single mother.
She would set him up with tennis games and he became friends with her.
So she sold real estate on the side.
I mean, this is like a fucking episode of like Seinfeld or curb your enthusiasm
at the beginning.
Then it like goes off the rails and descends into the depths of hell.
So bear with me.
Okay.
So a man moves into, or a man had been living at or moves into their
neighborhood and he, um, becomes friends with this other couple who also sell
real estate.
The wife sells real estate.
And apparently they approached the tennis pro and they're like, we should team
up on a real estate.
And she's like, nah, it's just my side hustle.
I'm going to do it alone.
So this guy from Canada writes this memo and in the memo, there's all these
accusations about this woman that she could go to federal prison and she's
committing, she could be, you know, that, that there's bid rigging going on
because they never sent her, her, um, they never sent her tennis pro contract
out for bid.
It was just kind of like nutty stuff just because she wouldn't go into business
with her.
I mean, that's our theory.
That's my opinion.
And yeah, that was our theory in the case.
So Ike stands up for her.
He's a very loyal guy, stands up for the people that he, you know, is friends
with.
And he thought she was getting bullied.
So she sued the guy for defamation and Ike and another resident in this condo
complex paid for her legal fees.
So about a year later, mail starts to arrive in this community.
And it is the most awful shit you have ever heard.
And it's accusing the Canadian guy of being a child molester, of being a
murderer.
It's horrific, twisted, sick shit.
So it's about a year after this tennis center dispute and there's misspelled
Hebrew words and Jewish stars all over it.
So this guy thinks naturally that Ike and his wife are behind it, like they
have nothing better to do.
All right.
So because he's so convinced that they did it and or that they were involved
and he, you know, initially suspected that other people might be involved, this
guy's going around and swabbing DNA off of with a Q-tip off of cars.
He's digging through trash in the condo community and he's like on this mission
to collect people's DNA.
So he calls them to a deposition about the tennis center case and that's where
this all went down.
So once they collect their DNA, this unaccredited lab claims that DNA taken off
of the hate mail matches Lori Perlmutter's DNA from the water bottle at the deposition.
The problem was that this unaccredited lab didn't wait for the report from the
accredited lab.
And that run of the DNA that this woman was relying on, the accredited lab
discarded it because the man that actually did the test and contaminated the
machine.
And he knew it, so he didn't rely on it.
So years and years and years go by and well after they knew that Lori had
nothing to do with this.
In fact, in 2017, a man got arrested in Canada and he got arrested because a
package got intercepted at the border by Homeland Security.
And it had samples of the hate mail, you know, in the package and it was a
former business associate of this Canadian guy and their relationship went sour.
And I thought the case was over.
You know, in 2019, I believe the guy gets arrested again and there's a detailed
affidavit.
So it's clear that this man is responsible for it.
So in any event, in 2016, the I believe it was 2016, there's an article in the
fucking deal book in the New York Times saying that Lori Perlmutter DNA is on
that hate mail.
And then there's another one in the Globe and Mail, which is a big Canadian
paper.
So it was a defamation case against this guy and against this lawyer for Chubb
because Chubb helped this Chubb lawyer, federal insurance, also known as Chubb,
helps him draw up the blueprints for collecting their DNA at the deposition.
So it was a super gratifying case.
We won a $50 million verdict and, you know, he was found liable for defamation,
abuse of process, which is abuse of the legal process.
And, you know, it's taken Ike and Lori all of these years to have their name
restored in court.
And they'd kill me if I admitted it and it would be a violation of their
confidence and my professional obligation.
But they've spent an untold fortune and, you know, the case is important for
forensic science because DNA is supposed to be the holy grail.
And you can't have private citizens running around trying to collect people's
DNA without knowing what they're doing.
You could be leaning on someone and have good intentions to get results.
But if I told you or if I said to Jamie, here's my suspect.
Take a look at these fingerprints and tell me if they match him or her.
Or here's my suspect.
Here's their genetic profile.
Tell me if it matches.
You don't realize the I mean, sometimes the error rate skyrockets by as much as
50 percent with fingerprints over 80 percent.
And fingerprint analysts will agree and they will say, yeah, I know that that
happens.
And if someone tells me who the suspect is and only who the suspect is and I'm
comparing it, I think the error rate goes up.
But not with me.
Not with me.
I mean, again, it's that phenomenon where you just can't think that you would
be biased.
So, look, the case was super important because I think it beyond restoring
their name and, you know, it's the namesake of the center where we do this work.
It also preserves the integrity of forensic science and especially DNA, which
is really one of the few super reliable forms of forensic science.
But even that, when put in the wrong hands or if it's exposed to subjectivity
and people's belief that they have the right person, it's vulnerable and
science shouldn't be vulnerable.
It should be it's either A or B.
It's either yes or no, especially with DNA.
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Can I ask you a question?
Yeah.
When you said that the evidence against her, the DNA evidence, had to be thrown
out because the machine was contaminated.
Yeah.
How was it contaminated and how did that implicate her DNA?
So, what happens is when you're – I don't want to go too deep into DNA
analysis, but it is actually interesting.
When you're conducting DNA testing, the manufacturer of the machine, I think it's
called the PowerPlex Plus,
they ask you to run what's called a positive control and a negative control to
make sure that the machine is correctly calibrated because it's – what it's
doing through electrophoresis.
It's shooting out what's called an electropharogram on the other end so that
you're able to do what they – what's referred to as calling alleles.
So, you're calling, you know, a chromosome pairing at a specific genetic marker,
right?
So – and they called them – there's various different loci or locations
where there are – you either have two alleles or one.
You get one from your mom, one from your father, one from your mom, one from
your dad.
And sometimes the one from your father might not show, but your mothers will
show, but there'll be two alleles at most at a specific location.
So, they want to make sure that the machine is working properly.
So, the manufacturer has the lab analyst, every time you do it, run a positive
control, meaning that you'll put a solution through the machine and it should,
on the other end, give you very specific results.
And he accidentally pipetted or took the solution from her DNA mixture instead
of from the positive control mixture and put that through the machine.
So, when he was running the test, her DNA is already mixed in there.
But he realized he made a mistake.
So, when he issued his report, he didn't rely on that run because when I say
run, it's another – it's another – you'll run the DNA on different
occasions and sometimes on different dates because you want to make sure that
your genetic profile will never change.
My genetic profile will never change.
So, when you are looking at somebody's genetic profile, it should be consistent.
So, when he saw that, wait a second, the first run of this doesn't match the
second and third or the fourth, he realized he made a mistake.
But without having the lab analyst that's doing the interpretation, you know,
weighing in on the results and you're antsy to get an answer and you're leaning
on an unaccredited lab saying, interpret the results, interpret the results.
Money is no object.
There's an email that said that.
You know, instead of waiting, she relies on this run of the DNA and, you know,
then what happens, happen.
But at some point, this Canadian guy came to learn what actually happened and
kept on going and kept on going and kept on going and kept on going.
And there was evidence that he wanted hundreds of millions of dollars from my
clients.
You know, I think what turned out to be a shitty situation for him because, no
doubt, getting hate mail like that has to be disturbing and upsetting to the
family.
Did it turn out that he had any sort of relationship with the Canadian man who
was sending him the hate mail?
Yeah, that was his former, one of his former business colleagues who he had a
vicious falling out with and he kept it from everyone.
So I think that the inference, in my opinion, the inference is that at some
point, and in fact, there's an allegation in the hate mail where it says you
were involved in the murder of these two people.
He accuses this man in Canada months after the hate mail began to arrive of
spreading that rumor.
So I believe that he knew it was him the whole time.
And at some point, I believe he was trying to shake the Perlmutter's down.
So he wanted money from them.
Otherwise, he was going to go public.
And he went public.
How much did he request?
You know, look, there's an article in the Globe and Mail saying that he wants $600
million.
There was an article, he admitted on the stand that it was $100 million.
His, his, um...
So he was just trying to get paid.
His, well, that's my opinion.
Yeah.
That was the jury's opinion.
What does he do?
He was some embattled, in my opinion, an embattled businessman in Canada.
He had, like, an executive recruiting company.
But there was all sorts of public information out there that he was...
Worked on the Toronto Harbor Commission and been involved in what the press
called cloak and dagger campaigns,
where he was wasting public funds.
So, you know, he bragged about all the lawsuits he's been involved in.
And so I think the jury saw through it.
And, um, you know, look, again, sometimes you become really close with your
clients, and that's not always a great thing.
Um, I'm guilty of that a lot.
But these are wonderful people, reclusive.
They give most of their money away to charity.
And to watch these people get dragged through the mud for over a decade.
And, you know, there was evidence in the case that this, this is interesting.
Because I initially fought this on the day, the first day of jury selection,
they had been invited to go to Mar-a-Lago and sit at the president's table for
a Halloween party.
It was just prospective jurors filling out questionnaires.
So the defense, and it was really, I think, the attorneys for Chubb, or for the
lawyer that worked for Chubb, wanted to introduce evidence.
They got photos of the party, and they wanted to introduce this evidence.
And there was one day during the trial where they went to the White House
because one of their close friends, um, was appointed to be the ambassador for
India.
And they used that against them during the trial, and I fought it tooth and
nail.
And then I finally said, you know what?
Fuck it.
I'm going to let it come in.
I stopped fighting it.
And I, um, I knew that the jurors on their questionnaire filled out who they
publicly admired most and least.
Two of them wrote they admired the president the most.
One of them said they admire him the least.
So I really had to speak to that juror and say, during my closing argument, you
know,
what they're doing here is they're trying to say that Lori Perlmutter's
reputation doesn't matter.
That she can't emote and suffer humiliation or public ridicule.
And that you should disregard her because of who she's friends with, who she
votes for.
The fact that her husband was, came here and literally with $200 in his pocket
and, you know, ascended.
It's the, the weird paradox about success.
You know, you get there and people are like, oh, these fucking rich people.
But these are like, they represent the best in all of us.
Lori Perlmutter, with her free time, started a work at the gift shop at NYU.
And because she liked the feeling of selling flowers and little gifts to people
that were going through terrible times.
And she ends up becoming a board member at NYU and they give $50 million to
start the Perlmutter Cancer Center.
I mean, who among us wouldn't want to aspire to that?
And they were trying to say, but she doesn't matter.
At one point she was asked the question, you know, because with defamation,
your reputation is on the line, right?
And you have to argue reputational damage.
And they said, well, isn't your reputation bound up in your husband's?
And they said this to a jury of like four or five women.
And I thought, what a dumb fucking thing to say.
In my opinion, at least, it was like, and I was able to say to them during the
closing,
they're saying she doesn't matter and that she doesn't, she's not her own
person.
Her reputation.
So it's like these little victories help restore my faith in the system.
Because if billionaires can get awarded $50 million, which is what they got
awarded,
I think that that's the jury saying her reputation mattered.
And not only did her reputation matter, but it mattered to the point where you
can't just tear somebody down when you know the facts.
Which just seems so insane that he would pursue that.
I mean, the guy literally owns the Ike Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice.
And you're like, yeah, I'm going to test that.
I mean.
I'm going to test that justice.
Just bullshit my way.
I mean, the irony of that is that the center was born out of their experience
in this case.
Really?
Yeah.
The center was born out of, at one point, I was offered this role to start a
new post-conviction center.
Up until four years ago, five years ago, I did work at the Innocence Project.
And when I was offered this position at the same law school at Cardozo Law
where the Innocence Project was born,
they said, if you get that role, the Perlmutter's, we're going to fund it for
the first 10 years
because we realized that if you're wrongfully accused in this country of a
crime you didn't commit,
if you don't have the resources to fight it like we did, that you're really in
trouble.
And for them to have that kind of insight while going through this, you know,
it's remarkable.
I'm indebted to them for life.
I mean, they've become like surrogate family to me.
But, yeah, the center was born out of their experience in this case.
So good came out of it.
Does the guy have the money to pay them?
I don't know.
I don't know, but I'm going to find out.
About, you know, we have post-trial motions that the judge has to decide.
And then, you know, once we get, hopefully we get the judgment entered.
Ike is not the guy to pick a fight with.
He was standing up for his wife's honor, really.
And, look, sometimes you pick a fight with the wrong person and you, what do
they say, you fuck around and find out.
There's a lot of people that fuck around a lot until they find out.
And it sounds like this guy might have been one of those people.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I mean.
Perhaps.
Perhaps.
Allegedly.
It just seems like there's people that are involved in conflict their whole
fucking life, man.
And they never get out of that pattern.
I don't get it.
Yeah.
Unhealthy people.
They develop a pattern.
They develop a pattern of thinking and behaving.
You know.
Well, I don't know if it's the empath in me, but I try to see, like, what are
you thinking?
Why can't you realize I've gone down the wrong path?
Let me course correct.
And you just end up with theories.
I mean, look, I can understand why a former detective might be concerned about
liability so they can't just say, well, here's what I was up to all this time.
I guess I can understand that, but I can understand the thinking and not just
saying I've gone down the wrong path.
And some people start to believe their own lies, I think.
Some people start to believe their own theories.
Human psychology is, like, it's vast and abstract and so complicated.
It varies.
It varies from individual to individual.
What they can justify, what they can sort of rationalize in their head.
Look, I told you at the beginning that there's only been, like, a handful of
cases where I was like, yeah, that can't be.
There's got to be something missing from that story that you're not telling me.
But watch this.
Two officers in 1998 were on patrol in New York City, in Brooklyn, on Pitkin
Avenue.
Gunfire breaks out.
And literally, as they're rolling down the street, the gunfire breaks out.
One of the officers looks to his left and sees the muzzle flash of the gun that
was used to kill this young man, Trevor Vieira.
He exits the patrol car, draws on the man, and says, drop the gun.
The guy's pointing the gun still.
That was used to shoot Trevor Vieira.
And there's a tense moment.
And this officer has testified that there was a 14-year-old girl in the area,
or he otherwise would have just shot the guy.
So, he literally catches the murderer with the gun smoking in his hand.
I've used that expression over the past two decades.
Oh, it's the smoking gun.
This is the fucking smoking gun.
He finally drops the gun.
His name is Eduardo Rodriguez.
He's put in handcuffs.
And, you know, you get documents as you're going through the discovery process
during post-conviction.
You get it from the prosecutor, from the police.
And there's a radio call by a detective that says, perps in custody.
Contemporaneous with the arrest.
They arrest two men.
One guy standing next to him, and the guy that, Eduardo Rodriguez, that shot
the gun.
He's placed under arrest.
He's brought to the precinct, and he is delivered into the arms of no other
than one of the most corrupt, sadistic detectives to ever work homicide in
Brooklyn, in my opinion, Louis Scarcella.
Now, why should that name sound familiar to you or to others?
Because Louis Scarcella is the guy that framed Derek Hamilton.
Who's the deputy director of the Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice at Cardozo.
Louis Scarcella and his partner, I think his name is Schimmel, or Chimmel, Kimmel,
C-H-M-I-L.
These guys were so notorious for framing people for murders they didn't commit.
That there have been 21 cases where people's convictions were vacated, where
they were the lead detectives.
21.
Derek's is one of them.
So Eduardo Rodriguez is delivered to the precinct, smoking gun in his hand.
And a couple of hours later, he's brought to the home of Nelson Cruz, who was
17 years old at the time, 16 turning 17.
So, it's the story of these cops that while he was in the precinct, that he was
yelling and screaming and tearing the place up.
I didn't do it.
Nelson Cruz did it.
He shot him and ran and dropped the gun and I just picked it up.
The officer that arrested him never saw Nelson Cruz.
He didn't see someone shoot and drop a gun.
The story is literally ludicrous.
Nelson Cruz is arrested and charged with murder.
So, when I heard the story, I was like, there's no fucking way that this is
what happened.
You're leaving something out.
And I then read the trial transcript.
There's another guy that shows up at the precinct named Andre Bellinger.
And Andre Bellinger says, yeah, I saw Nelson Cruz do it too.
And he shows up at the precinct and he's told what kind of gun was used.
He's told that Nelson Cruz is the suspect.
And then he picks him out of a lineup after being told we're going to put
Nelson Cruz in a lineup.
All three of those things are gross violations of investigatory practices.
And this has been established for decades.
So, this guy ends up put on trial.
And they somehow claim that they don't have, they can't locate this guy that is
saying that he witnessed the crime.
They can't locate him.
He's not around to be located.
So, the person who had the gun in his hand that is shooting the gun, who they
believe, who says Nelson Cruz did it, and Nelson Cruz's trial, he's nowhere to
be found.
Wouldn't you think that the prosecutors would put that man, Eduardo Rodriguez,
on the stand so he could explain how he picked up the gun?
He could explain, what did you see?
You saw Nelson Cruz do this and he ran and dropped the gun?
And he's never put on the stand.
It's like a three-day trial.
The only person put on the stand that claimed to have been a witness is this
guy, Andre Bellinger.
So, I mean, some people have, like, bad luck, shitty luck, or cataclysmic
fucking apocalyptically bad luck.
And Nelson Cruz just happens to have, you know, won that shit lottery.
Nelson Cruz ends up before a judge about eight years ago and about six years
ago.
And it's a post-conviction hearing.
And this guy, Andre Bellinger, who claims that he watched Nelson Cruz do it, is
outed as a liar.
There are eyewitnesses that were with him that night who said he wasn't at that
murder scene.
He was, like, blocks away with me.
He was outed as a liar on so many different occasions it becomes, like, it
would become laughable if it wasn't so serious.
After these post-conviction proceedings, during which 20-some-odd witnesses
were called, the courtroom is packed on the day of the decision
because the expectation amongst the press and in the legal community is Nelson
Cruz is about to get exonerated.
This judge had exonerated people that had been investigated by Luis Scarcella.
And she's acting kind of weird and erratic.
And she rules against Nelson Cruz.
And contradicts herself on multiple occasions.
And this is in 2019.
And we later, or 2020.
And we later learn she never takes the bench again.
And she resigns because she has advanced stage Alzheimer's disease.
I have an affidavit from an investigator that says her husband said that she
had been suffering from these symptoms for years before.
There was a judicial complaint filed because she wasn't showing up to court.
There's a ProPublica article about it, about this whole debacle.
And, you know, it's stories like this.
And so the Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice is working on the case.
And, you know, thankfully, we're before the conviction integrity unit in
Brooklyn.
And it's led by a really special guy.
Eric Gonzalez is the district attorney in Brooklyn.
And he listens to these cases.
He has a real conviction integrity unit.
So I'm hopeful that once we present the case to them that we'll get him some
relief.
But to think about, he was paroled in 2023.
He's a mess.
He walks around nervous.
He's got terrible anxiety and paranoia.
He's a wonderful guy.
And he's so stone-cold innocent.
And you just wonder how and why this shit can happen to someone.
And, you know, it's like the perfect constellation of, like, you got this,
these crooked detectives who have already been found to have ruined a bunch of
people's lives.
You have the smoking gun found in the hand of the murderer who mysteriously
disappears.
And if you're wondering, so why do they believe this guy?
How does he go to the precinct?
And he raises hell and says, Nelson Cruz did and I picked up the gun, even
though there's no evidence of that.
What would be your guess?
Well, he's probably some sort of a witness in something else.
It was pretty well known back at the time that Louis Scarcella, other detectives
in Brooklyn Homicide and all the boroughs had informants.
I mean, that's my best guess.
Why else would you just believe?
And they've gone as far as to try to discredit their own and say, well, Piotti
must not have seen him drop the gun and run.
This guy has been consistent throughout.
He hears the gunfire, looks, sees the muzzle flash.
He literally witnesses the murder.
So, you know, there was a joint FBI task force with the NYPD going at the time.
So, yeah, they relied on informants.
What's the state of the guy who actually committed the murder currently?
He's out.
Jesus.
He's running around the streets.
Who knows where he is?
So, if your guy gets exonerated, does this guy get tried?
No, that very rarely happens.
That very, I mean.
So, that guy just committed murder and he's free.
Oh, that's happened.
You know how many times that's happened to anyone that's done post-conviction
work?
But you don't even think that's a possibility.
You're just dismissing it.
Like, no, the murderer is going to go free.
Yeah, because in order for me to expect that that would happen would be to defy
logic as I know it in this world.
Because think about what happens.
If a municipality admits we did something horrible and it was a mistake and we
did the wrong thing, there's going to be a civil rights lawsuit.
I mean, look, to Brooklyn's credit, with this DA, they have done that and done
the right thing.
But in terms of then going after the person that they think did it, you know,
it's 2000, almost 26, and this crime happened in 1998.
It's 30 years later.
To be able to reassemble the witnesses, and some of whom are probably dead or
hard to find.
But it's very rare that once there's an exoneration and you're able to point to
who the true killer is, very rare that law enforcement will go after the person
that defense counsel has established actually did it.
That's insane.
Is it?
Yeah.
Because if the defense counsel has ruled that this other guy is innocent and
that the police officer did see the guy execute that person, how do you not try
that person with murder?
Now, you're stumbling into the how could that be of our legal justice system.
It just, it doesn't happen.
I mean, Clemente Aguirre, who I've talked about before, who was exonerated from
death row, you know, if there's any doubt about this phenomenon of children
killing their parents, I think that that was laid to rest a few days ago.
It happens.
It happens a lot more than was recently publicized.
You know, the real killer was the daughter of this, of her mother and her
grandmother.
Clemente Aguirre gets, you know, charged, put on death row.
And in the middle of his retrial, you know, she all but confessed on the stand
to me.
They have her blood mixed with her mother's blood at the crime scene.
And in a trail leading to the bathroom where the killer cleaned up, she
confessed on six or seven different occasions, not under duress, not to law
enforcement, to various people around town.
She's roaming the streets.
The day that Clemente got exonerated, you know, like I said, you know, I think
I might have quoted like Jim Morrison.
I was like, there's a killer on the Rome and she's in Kentucky and you better
go get her, you know.
And they were like, oh, objection, you know.
But yeah, it happens.
I mean, it's my belief that she's, she's stone cold guilty and they haven't
gone after her.
And that happens a lot.
I mean, look, the word exoneration is thrown around, but it's like Derek's case
is rare.
He was declared actually innocent.
Sometimes the conviction gets vacated.
Sometimes it, you know, they decide not to retry the person and agree to time
served.
But you're pushing a massive boulder up a steep hill every time.
Like Nelson Cruz should not have to carry this weight around anymore.
He's had other lawyers that have done a great job representing him.
You know, we've come in now.
How much time did he wind up doing?
I think 26 years.
Jesus.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's horrifying.
Jesus.
I mean, when you've done so much time that you've paroled out and are still
trying to prove your innocence.
Jesus.
Oh.
I hate to give you indigestion.
I mean, but it's, this is like, I'm past tears.
I'm more like, I'm more like, we just got to keep going and keep fighting.
And when you get these little victories here and there, like we've had a few
releases recently that were super encouraging.
Where you're able to get people to, you know, get it to the point where they
could, even though they didn't do it, plead guilty.
We just had a release.
She was actually my co-counsel in the Clemente Aguirre case, Mari Parmer, and
our client pled guilty.
But we believe he's innocent.
He did it to get out.
He had done 24 years and he'd had enough.
But for her to get it to the place where he could even plead guilty after
serving all that time, you know, innocent people plead guilty all the time.
Yeah, they do, just to get a lighter sentence.
Yeah.
It's a dirty business you're in, buddy.
Filthy.
It's filthy.
And it's got all these tentacles because if you're doing post-conviction work,
it's not just the wrongfully accused and convicted.
It's also, you know, we do clemency work, commutations and pardons.
We, um, you start to wade into the human mess and you see that, like, people
have made mistakes and are worth a second chance.
What they do with it is up to them, but some of the stuff you can't explain,
some of these prosecutions are political.
Look, I'm dealing with a case right now that's, like, at the intersection of
wrongful conviction and what the fuck are we doing with our immigration policy
in this country?
And I don't even want to mention his name because I don't want to, you know, or
the state because I don't want to sacrifice the good work that we're doing to
get him a public hearing.
But I can say this much.
This is a guy from Albania that came to this country in the early 70s and had
to sit in a refugee camp in Italy for damn near a month under horrid conditions
just to come here to try to live a life.
He's in his early 20s.
He's at a gas station.
He has a $100 bill for $5 of gas.
He goes into the gas station.
The guy takes the $100 bill.
He doesn't have change.
He says, when you get $5, come back.
I'm going to hold on to this $100 bill.
And they get into an argument.
He won't give him back the $100 bill.
So, he leaves and goes to get his brother.
And he tells his brother about it.
They return to the gas station.
They have a gun in the backseat of their car.
His brother tells him, you stay here.
I'm going to go in and try to talk some sense into this guy.
Get your money back.
Give him $5.
My client's sitting in the car and gunshots erupt.
He goes in the backseat, gets the gun, goes around to the side, comes into the
gas station.
It comes into the, you know, you remember back in the 80s where you would go in
to pay.
And there would be like a little front desk area.
And the gas station attendant is holding the gun.
And he looks to his left and his brother is bleeding out.
The gas station attendant had shot his brother in the stomach.
Still holding the gun, shaking, he shoots him one time, dead.
Shoots the gas station attendant, dead.
His brother miraculously survives.
And he's put on trial for murder.
And he goes to trial the first time.
Remember, he's in his early 20s.
And it's a hung jury.
Most of them are in favor of acquittal.
Goes to trial a second time and gets convicted.
The judge must have seen that this was damn near as close to self-defense as it
gets.
He got sentenced to like four to seven years.
He was out in just under four years.
He had become an accomplished boxer in prison.
He's lived the last 51 years of his life without so much as a traffic ticket.
He goes to New York.
Joins the union as a super for buildings.
He pays taxes, social security, pays into his pension, builds a life for
himself, has five kids, eight grandchildren, and he's living in upstate New
York.
Leaves the country a couple of years ago to go to Albania to see family.
Comes back and gets stopped at the border.
Somehow is not detained at the border.
Is he a citizen at this point?
No, he's not.
Is he a green card?
Yeah.
He's a green card holder.
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He's exactly who we would want in this country.
A guy that comes here, and by the way, I want to mention the state.
There are self-defense laws that did not exist then.
Many states have stand-your-ground laws.
I think under different circumstances, he doesn't even, and if the laws had
evolved, he doesn't even get charged.
I mean, you see your brother shot, and the facts are not in dispute about this.
I've researched it exhaustively.
You know, isn't that the type of person we want who has contributed to this
society for 51 years and built a family?
What happened with the brother and the attendant?
They got into an argument, and he called, the attendant called him some slur
against Albanians, and they started to argue, and he just shot them in the
stomach.
This isn't even, it's not in dispute at all what happened.
And there's a law that if you committed a violent crime, you're removable.
But for 51 years, he was not removed from this country, and he lived here as a
green card holder, and he paid taxes, and he built a family and a life.
So this removal was all during the Biden administration?
No.
Unfortunately, it was during the Trump administration.
But you said it was two years ago?
It was when he was first asked at the airport, and they flagged him.
I believe it was during the Biden administration, but no enforcement action was
taken.
It was during the current, and this isn't an indictment of the president.
This is just during the current administration that they started removal
proceedings against him to try to have him removed from the country.
So did they just go through all the old cases and find out anybody that had any
sort of a violent offense?
I believe that that's what happened.
Nobody knows, but that's what I believe happened.
So, again, I made the mistake, or maybe it's a virtue at this point, of getting
to know this family.
And I've met every sibling.
There's two boys and three girls, and they're literally, like, some of the most
wonderful people I've ever met.
I wish I didn't like them as much as I did.
And I stay in close contact with one of the—I mean, I guess I could give
first names—with one of the sons, Anthony, and his sister, Joanna.
And to see the love that they have for their father and the fear that they're
living under, that this man could get deported and sent to Montenegro.
Why Montenegro?
Because that's where you get sent if you're Albanian, if you have Albanian
citizenship.
Why there, though?
I think that that's the protectorate of Albania at this point.
Okay.
So, and to watch them—they went to one removal proceeding, and the judge—I
have the transcripts of the proceeding, and the judge is, like, saying to the
prosecutors—at one point, he said, what are you doing here?
He starts speaking Albanian to my client.
And, look, I don't know immigration law that well.
I'm not an immigration lawyer, but I spoke to the immigration lawyer, and he's
like, look, I'm afraid that they're going to take him—I mean, ICE is waiting
outside courthouses.
And they're going to take this guy, he's in his 70s, take him away from his
family and his grandchildren?
So, again, you don't just see these wrongful conviction cases.
You see cases that are like, this man has built a life.
And if you start to get beneath the surface, and you see the pain and agony and
fear that people are living, it's—they're living it day to day.
We were able to get a delay into February for his removal proceeding, so I'm
now trying to get him pardoned.
Because if he gets pardoned, there's no basis upon which to remove him.
And, you know, we have a team in my center that's working on it, and you want—these
are the kind of people you want to fight for once you get to know them.
So, I—there's like—I don't want to just tell nightmare after nightmare, but
the reason why it's important, I think, for people to hear this is it's not
just what you're seeing on TV.
Or what you're hearing about—I mean, what basis do we have to remove a
grandfather who's lived here for 50 years and contributed to this society and
paid his taxes and paid into Social Security and was part of a union and just
like—I'm looking for a flaw.
I really am.
I'm looking for, like, a reason for me not to like them, and I just get drawn
in more and more.
They're just wonderful people, and these are the kinds of things that are, like,
worth fighting for.
I think what's going on with ICE is one of the things that's going on with quotas
for speeding tickets and things along those lines is that they have numbers
that they want to achieve.
And they've openly talked about this, that they want to remove a certain amount
of people per week.
And when they do that, I think everything's on the table.
Then they start showing up at Home Depot.
Instead of, like, looking for gangbangers, looking for criminals and cartel
members, they go to whatever's easiest pickings so they can get numbers up.
There's a—do you know Ed Calderon?
Do you know who he is?
Mm-hmm.
He's a Mexican military guy who now is an American citizen, but he reports
extensively on the cartels and just was telling me some horror stories about
ICE raids.
And one of them was they took this guy who had been brought over here when he
was a baby but didn't have American citizenship.
His family, you know, came over here illegally.
Lived here for 20 years.
Can't speak Spanish.
They deport him.
Send him to Tijuana.
Can't speak Spanish.
Can't speak Spanish.
Does not speak Spanish.
He is essentially an American citizen.
He just never lived anywhere else.
He just doesn't have the paperwork.
He's not a criminal.
They sent him over to Tijuana, and now he has to live in Mexico.
He doesn't know what the fuck to do.
He's on the streets.
He has no idea.
He doesn't have any money.
Yeah, I don't understand.
I wish that there was—it's sort of a black box immigration in terms of what
is—
What the policy exactly is, and why do you want to continue this narrative that
seems to be, again, more of a human rights issue than a political issue?
Like, what is the endgame here?
The endgame is to get as many illegals out as they can because so many were
brought in over the last four years.
Well, that's a fair argument.
I understand that.
But do we want to be getting rid of seven-year-old men that—
No.
Really, I mean, I got to tell you, I have an older brother, and if someone had
did something like that to him, I can't tell you I wouldn't have done the same
fucking thing.
Of course.
Almost anybody who has family would say that.
Go and you see your brother shot, and you know the whole circumstances
surrounding it.
Yeah.
So I just don't—and it's not—these immigration judges, I've come to learn,
don't have much flexibility.
You know, they're hard and fast statutes about whether or not someone is
considered removable.
And, you know, my appeal is really to the prosecutor is like, why are you doing
this?
But then they're following orders from someone above them that's telling them,
this is your case.
You're assigned to it.
Do the best job you can.
So that kind of shit just rolls downhill, unfortunately.
Yeah.
And, you know, I try not to—I try not to wear this—for my own mental health.
I'm trying to keep the empath in me in check a little bit more because—but
sometimes it's difficult.
Like Nelson's case, this case that I'm talking about, and the only reason I'm
not using names in that case is I don't want to alienate.
There's great people in the state that this happened in, which wasn't New York,
that I think actually care and have shown that, yeah, this doesn't seem right.
And we want to make sure that you get a public hearing.
I'm confident that we will before February, and I like my chances if we do
because I think that the story—he's worth pardoning.
He's worth saving.
But, you know, I don't—I don't understand—I mean, that's what I meant by
this human mess.
It's like I wish there was a more transparent process of how and why people get
pardons, certainly on the state and on the federal level.
I don't get it.
Well, I mean, the nuttiest thing is that the president can pardon people.
You could just decide—because you're the president or the governor, you could
just decide, this person, I like him.
It's an amazing responsibility, and it's kind of an awesome power to have, and
how you go about exercising it becomes challenging, right?
Well, it gets real weird.
Like, how about during the Biden administration, when some of them—Biden
clearly didn't even sign the pardons.
It was all auto-pen, and he had the most pardons of any president ever.
So you have political influence.
You have people that would like to get someone pardoned, and you know someone
inside.
You think you can make this happen.
Well, he's pardoning 9,000 people.
Fuck it.
Let's just throw that one in there.
Yeah.
I mean, I don't think he's—I don't really know the auto-pen issue that well.
I don't know if he saw those, didn't see them.
I don't know what—it's like organized chaos for every presidency.
You know, Bill Clinton pardoned people at the end of his terms that—fucking
bananas when you look at them.
Biden did it with his son, you know.
Biden did it with family members that weren't even accused of anything.
Preemptive pardon.
Yeah.
I don't even know that that was a thing before.
It never was.
He did it with Fauci.
Preemptive back to 2014.
Yeah, listen.
I don't—some of the pardons that the current administration issues are, like,
good for him.
Yeah.
Others are, like, head scratchers, and you're like, what the fuck?
Right.
But, like, I—you know, what makes one person deserving and another not is a
difficult thing.
I think it's a difficult thing to understand.
Like, I have—I've been to the White House.
I've advocated for pardons.
It's a frustrating experience because you know that there are thousands of
people doing the same thing, and you try your best to say this is why this case
means something.
But where it goes from there is hard to understand.
I think I have tremendous respect for an admiration of the current pardons are,
Alice Johnson, because she's been there before.
You know, she was actually incarcerated and pardoned by the president, and she's
now in that role as the pardons are.
Who is she pardoned by?
President Trump.
Wow.
During his first prim.
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah, and she's—
What was she wrongfully accused of?
Some drug offense.
And she did a ton of time, and she's gone on to become this amazing—not just
human being, but advocate for people to get second chances.
And he designated her the pardons are.
Now, I think between her and getting to the president and making her case for pardons
is difficult because there's layers of influence in between.
But, you know, I have cases before them right now that have very prominent
people backing them, and, you know, you would hope that they end up, you know,
on his desk and seeing—getting some relief.
I have one client that I know, Mike Tyson, backs him publicly, privately.
He was a childhood friend of his.
His name is Spencer Bowens, and, you know, he's one of many people that were
sentenced under these crazy—
—regimes of, like, let's weigh—let's weigh the drugs.
So what's heavier, crack or cocaine?
Cocaine.
All right.
What's heavier, heroin or crack?
Heroin.
All right.
So they start to weigh—and what's more destructive?
Who fucking knows?
Crack was pretty damn destructive.
Yeah.
And, you know, they—Spencer's been in prison for more than three decades, and
he would have been out if these nutty drug laws didn't exist and if they
applied retroactively since they have been abolished.
And he's a guy that's sitting in there, and I speak to, and I start to lose
hope.
I don't lose hope.
I start to feel his hopelessness over the phone because he should have been
granted relief in the courts, and he's someone that just really, really
deserves to be out.
You know, and I have—there's a bunch of cases like that where we're trying so
hard, and you have to, at the same time—at the same time you express, you
know, confidence in the people that are responsible for this stuff.
But you also want to make sure that you're not offending them by saying, look,
I know you have a bunch of cases.
Emory Jones is another one.
You know, I do a lot of work with Jay-Z's mom, and Jay-Z, we have a—he has a
foundation.
I have one, and we mentor college students together in the summer, pay for
their last year of college.
And Emory is a childhood friend of Jay-Z's and has his full support, Rock
Nation, you know, Jay-Z's company.
They're behind him, and he's another one that was convicted and spent decades
in prison for some drug crime.
And he's come out and checked every box.
He's a mentor.
He's a pillar of the community.
He's done so many amazing things, but he's under the weight of this old
conviction, and he's denied job opportunities.
And, you know, you just—you just got to keep pushing and keep fighting, and
hopefully your timing is right, and you speak to the right person, and you get
good news one day.
Boy.
But the odds are so—the odds are so—I don't want to say stacked against you,
but, yeah, it's who you know.
Who has influence at that particular time, but the right person, the
administration.
What kind of punishments are there for people like the corrupt guy in Brooklyn
that you were talking about?
Whatever happened to him?
He's roaming the streets.
He's roaming the streets.
And, look, that's the most—you know, the cop, Luis Garcella?
Yeah.
He denies any—I mean, in the face of these 21 cases that have been vacated,
he denies any wrongdoing.
So, 21 different people.
Twenty-one.
He incarcerated them.
Yeah, and, you know, one of the things that I'm thinking might be a good idea,
because we can all go on the Internet and look this shit up.
Like, if you look up Luis Garcella on the Internet, I bet you there's a
Wikipedia page that talks about his corruption and lists all the people.
We could all go on the Internet.
One of the things that I think has been underused and I think should be part of
people's calculus, rather than reading a headline or listening to me or you or
anyone, is read the trial transcripts.
Make your own judgment.
I mean, I don't—I don't know what better way there is if you want to say,
well, what actually happened?
What happened at this person's trial that you're—and why do they deserve a
second chance?
Listen, there's a dear friend of mine who runs an amazing organization called
the Reform Alliance.
Her name is Jessica Jackson.
Fantastic lawyer and, I mean, is in—is in the bowels of the system fighting
for change.
And right now there's a bill that the president's own pollster, forget the guy's
name, has found that 80 percent of MAGA voters support this act.
It's called the Saper Supervision Act.
And it's actually a system that rewards people for when they get out for doing
the right thing so that if you want to make sure that you're—you know, when
you get out, there are terms of your supervision.
How many times you check in with your parole or probation officer?
How often are you being subject to drug tests?
Is there an end in sight?
This act actually is a merit system and it's heavily supported by Republicans,
by Democrats, by everyone in between.
And you would hope that something like that would get passed and get pushed
through because the Saper Supervision Act is a way that we can reward people
for doing the right thing and hold people accountable that aren't doing the
right thing when they get out.
But your question about, like, what happens to the cops or the prosecutors that
do this, they have immunity to one of the most frustrating things in the world
is that most of the time qualified immunity applies.
I mean, I could see immunity for a mistake perhaps, but if there's a pattern
and it's clearly corruption and you have a person that is taking away people's
freedom, how is there not a crime committed?
How are they not convicted or at least charged with crimes?
Well, listen, for those listeners that want to get involved in the process and
actually make a difference, you got to get involved.
This isn't just like activists speak.
You can make a fucking difference.
The person that ends up in a position to actually exercise their executive
authority, executive clemency, whether it's a governor or a president, you
should be a little more invested.
I mean, I had this situation.
I gave this guy every benefit of the doubt.
And I thought I made a breakthrough.
And I mean, this is almost sadistic, I think.
And I'm sure I'll get a bunch of hate mail about this and I could really give a
shit.
I went through this process with Governor DeSantis in Florida and I think he
was actually fucking with me, to be honest with you.
And he listened to the case as a favor.
And there's a public hearing of the clemency board.
And this guy's name is Michael Giles.
And again, read the transcript.
As a matter of fact, I brought a passage to read here.
This is another mind bender.
This guy's in the Air Force.
He is in Tampa.
He ends up taking leave for the weekend and goes up from Tampa to FAMU in Tallahassee.
Never been there before.
He has a firearm that he's licensed to carry.
He actually went into a police station to get his carry license.
Military guy, never been in trouble in his life.
Goes up to Tallahassee and a massive fight breaks out in this club where they're
at.
Literally zero testimony that he has anything to do with this fight.
The fight spills out into the parking lot.
And it's being instigated by one guy.
And this guy that's instigating the fight was thrown out of the club.
And his own friends testified in the trial.
We were afraid he was going to hurt someone bad.
My client, Michael Giles, ends up in a car with the people he came there with
waiting for the person that had the keys to the car to come out and emerge from
this melee.
And this fight is going on all around him.
People testified they were petrified.
And he takes his gun and puts it in his pocket.
He's standing there, like on the outskirts of this fight after he gets out of
the car and goes to look for his friend that has the keys to the car.
The car was left unlocked, but they couldn't leave because there was no
ignition key.
And he gets sucker punched.
And the guy that punched him says, yeah, I looked for the first person I could.
Don't take it from me.
Here's what he said at the trial.
Here's what he said at the trial.
First of all, his friends are testifying.
This is from the trial, right?
That this man was acting, quote, crazy.
That they were afraid he was going to, quote, attack someone.
He was excited and acting crazy and talking and cursing and upset and agitated.
Were you concerned that he was going to attack someone?
Question.
Answer.
Yes, I was.
Or get in a fight?
Answer.
Yes, I was.
That's why I told him to leave.
And that's why he was told to leave the club, because he was wanting to fight
someone.
Isn't that correct?
Witnesses testify.
Question.
You saw Courtney Thrower.
This is the guy that punched my client.
Jump on the individual with the plaid shirt, didn't you?
The guy with the plaid shirt is my client.
Yes, I did.
Your testimony is Courtney Thrower leapt and attacked Mr. Giles from the front.
Yeah, I was.
That was the thing.
Courtney then leaps toward Mr. Giles and takes a swing at his face.
And it goes on and on and on.
That he took a running start, left his feet, and punched my client in the face.
And look, there's a melee going on.
So he's on the ground after getting punched.
And the person that punched him didn't hold back.
He was asked at the trial, question, Mr. Thrower, is it your testimony that you
ran with your
entire body to strike this person?
Answer, yes.
Question.
So you, at a full run or a sprint, use the weight of your body to impact this
person in
the head?
Answer, yes.
Question.
Was it your intention to knock him out?
Answer, yes, it was.
Question.
And is there any doubt in your intention?
Answer, no.
Question.
Had this person actually done anything to you at any time whatsoever?
Answer, physically, directly, no.
Question, was it your intent to hurt this individual?
Answer, yes, that's normally what you do when you punch someone.
So on those facts, as my client is laying on the ground and there's a melee
going on where
people are getting punched and kicked, is he justified at that point to take
his gun out
and shoot in self-defense?
He shoots this guy in the leg and fragments of the bullet hit two other people.
That's the case.
That's it.
He is sentenced under Florida's mandatory minimum to 25 years in prison.
25 years.
He's been in for 15 years.
I have gone to visit him.
He is the only client that I've ever represented that has never got a ticket in
prison.
What is a ticket?
You didn't listen to a corrections officer when they said get against the
fucking wall.
You didn't have, you know, you didn't follow the rules.
You didn't do that.
Not a ticket.
So various powerful people that know the governor finally got him to listen.
Now, before I got involved in the case, the family was told that the governor
was prepared
to grant him clemency and traveled to Tallahassee the day that they thought he
was going to get
released and were told on that day the governor changed his mind.
So I knew this all going in.
I went and I appeared at a clemency hearing.
And I was as, what do they say, you're, the word's escaping me.
When you're not subservient, but you're, I'm trying to think, articulate it the
right way.
I mean, I was not only respectful, but, you know, I understood the gravity of
what I was asking for.
This is a governor that has never granted clemency, commuted a sentence to
someone that was currently incarcerated.
And, you know, he went through a laundry list of things that he would like me
to do.
His parents live, Michael Giles' parents live, he's, that's the name of my
client, Michael Giles.
His parents live in Georgia.
Could you con, the governor, could you get in touch with the state of Georgia?
I mean, this is all at a public hearing, it's online.
And see if their governor has any problem with abiding by the terms of release.
You want me to contact the governor of, okay.
Submit a supervised release plan that is exhaustive and runs all the way
through the term that he would serve out his incarceration
so that he should be on supervised release for another 10 years.
So, contact this one, contact that one.
So, I learned on good information that the governor was like, he'll never be
able to get all that done.
I got it all done.
I had people help me.
Went to the governor, spoke to the governor in Georgia.
He said, yeah, of course, we'll abide by it.
There's something called the interstate compact.
States have to abide by each other's supervision requirements when someone goes
from one state to another.
This had the support of John Ashcroft, Mike Mukherjee, right-wing Republicans
that otherwise wouldn't support this sort of thing.
It was like I had a list of like 40 people, former U.S. attorneys.
It got so much that the head of the Florida Commission of Offender Review,
they gave him a positive recommendation to get out.
Super rare.
The attorney general was in support.
A week before I was told we were going to grant him relief, they actually had
me speaking to the prison to transport him up to the clemency hearing.
We were down to whether he would be able to change into a suit because at the
public hearing, Governor DeSantis said, I want to actually look at him eye to
eye.
And at the last second, for no fucking articulated reason, he said, you know
what?
I've changed my mind.
That's, that is brutal.
It's, it's evil in my opinion.
And it's precisely why, you know, sometimes the king has to show mercy.
And it's precisely why this, this guy is not very popular.
I don't think.
And, and I ask this because it's relevant.
Does Michael Giles get prosecuted if he's not a tall black man?
I don't think so.
The prosecutor that prosecuted him, I'm not calling him anything.
I'm giving you the facts.
The prosecutor that prosecuted him went through a DOJ investigation because
something was found in his office.
Targeting Hispanic residents for harsher punishment.
A whistleblower took a photo of it.
It was a memo hanging over a water cooler.
And it's all over the place.
It's all online.
You can read about it.
And he had to enter into some agreement with the Department of Justice.
How is it phrased?
How is what phrased?
How is this, the, the determination to prosecute?
If prior criminal history or Hispanic, and then it has an arrow.
Oh yeah, you can pull it up.
So prior criminal history is the same as just being innocent in Hispanic?
Oh yeah, this is, this is the South.
Wow.
I mean, it's, it's out there.
His name is, his name is Jack Campbell.
I mean, there's a, there's a, there's a whistleblower that took a picture of it
and then he had to apologize for it.
So should the thought enter my mind?
Hmm.
I mean, I was putting my daughter to bed one night and I just looked up his
name and I stumbled across this and I was like, oh, okay.
Cause I spoke to him one time and I asked if he would give a letter of support
and he said, I won't give a letter of support, but I stand by what I did.
I said, do you want to know what he's done since he's been in?
No, I don't care.
I'm not going to support it.
I just won't.
Oh, there it is.
That's it.
If no criminal history, diversion, if limited criminal history, withhold costs,
if extensive criminal history and or Hispanic.
Adjudicated guilty.
Plus costs and or extensive criminal history and or Hispanic.
And Hispanic is in capital letters.
Yeah, and so this whistleblower takes a picture of this and it leads to a DOJ
investigation where he agrees, he apologizes publicly and he agrees to go into
some training program and have the prosecutors that work for him in a training
program for racial sensitivity.
So you think, you know, I deal with the facts and I deal with what I see every
day.
So should it beg the question, is Michael Giles getting charged with this crime
under the facts, as I just told you, with the testimony that I just read to you?
And they said, well, he ran initially.
And when the police initially spoke to him, he didn't say he shot the gun.
He's a black man in America.
Later that night, he admitted it.
So what does it make it and what does it make a difference anyway?
The guy was attacked with a running start.
Someone leaves their feet and punches him in the face.
Isn't 15 years enough?
15 years?
He's had to go through.
I mean, you read the letters from his kids who have now grown up without him.
Your heart ends up in 50 million pieces.
And, you know, so a guy like Governor DeSantis, I think it's like there's no
humanity there.
And, you know, the craziest part about it is that you never know who you'll
meet and why this is all, to me, human rights issue.
The only person that gave me a sympathetic ear when I would go to Florida,
before I lived there, when I was still living in New York, and talk about clemency
cases was Nikki Freed.
I think she was the commissioner of agriculture.
And she ran against DeSantis in the last gubernatorial election.
And she's like the fascinating part about it is that this is like a woman that's
dedicated herself to public service.
And she's a major marijuana advocate.
Legalizing marijuana has been her mission for so many years.
She's on the board of normal.
She'd be an awesome guest because she became super unpopular in Florida because
of her stance on legalization of marijuana.
And, you know, she was attacked over it, about how weed is a gateway drug.
Somehow in the minds of, you know, people that don't get it, that it's some
like pathway to heroin addiction.
And, you know, medicinal marijuana, you know, cannabis for healing, all of
those things, she's been a major advocate for.
And she told me, you're being strung along.
After she was out of office, she's now the head of the, I think she's the head
of the Democratic Party for Florida.
Wonderful woman.
She's like, you're going to get strung along.
I said, no, watch, watch.
I'm going to be the first one to get a clemency from someone in prison.
And he still can do it.
Why won't he?
Fuck knows.
And it's, you know, I have to talk to Michael's mom.
And I have to talk to him.
And it's like, you know, you run out of words.
And, yeah, it's not just is this a dirty business.
It's heartbreaking, you know.
It's got to be particularly hard for you.
You are a very sensitive guy.
Which is odd.
You're a very empathetic guy, which is odd for a lawyer.
You know, usually lawyers eventually develop some sort of a shell.
Just don't let enough in.
You get hurt too many times.
Even if you start out empathetic, you eventually develop a thick skin.
Listen, I'm a crier.
And I don't hide that.
That's why you're able to do the kind of work you do.
Because you still are sensitive to this.
And you still are empathetic despite all the shit you've seen.
Well, I mean, look, I have to be—I don't think you're—I used to think that
it was something to shrink from.
In other words, that—because it becomes—it becomes a heavy cross to bear
when you start wearing other people's hurt and emotions.
And, you know, I've found myself sometimes inferring that people feel a certain
way when they don't.
And I have to make sure that I'm careful about that.
I mean, my son Carter is like—he's 13.
He's going to be 14 in April.
And I sometimes feel like—I have to be careful with the empathy.
Because sometimes I'll be reliving some traumatic event from my childhood.
And I'll think, oh, he must feel this way at this point in time at 13.
And I'm imputing an emotion to him that isn't there.
And sometimes I'll do that with a client or their family.
And I've gotten better at it.
But when you have to deliver hard news or bad news because there's so many—these
exonerations, the commutations, the pardons,
they're like—each one of them is its own miracle.
Each one of them is—it's so hard, so hard to get it done.
I got to pee.
We'll be right back.
So today, right before we started this, Trump rescheduled marijuana.
So it's now Schedule 3.
So it's in the same category as Tylenol.
Which is interesting.
That's a compromise, right?
It should be legal and regulated.
That's what I think.
Isn't there been a stain on Tylenol, though, under this administration?
Yeah.
Sure.
It's been—acetaminophen is responsible for at least 500 deaths a year.
I read a horrible case about a lady who had COVID, and she was struggling, you
know, in pain, really hurting.
Kept taking Tylenol.
Tylenol is with codeine?
That's with Schedule 3.
Oh, okay.
Tylenol with codeine.
Tylenol 3.
That's Schedule 3.
That's different.
It's different Tylenol.
Different regular.
So acetaminophen is—
How do you feel about it being rescheduled as a—
Well, it's better.
You know, certainly it's better.
I believe if it's rescheduled, what does that mean?
It could be prescribed now, you know?
And it can be prescribed state by state.
Even in Texas, there's some medical uses.
I feel like it should be like alcohol.
I think you should be of a certain age to be able to use it.
And I think it's not for everybody.
I think that's important, that it isn't for everybody.
There are people that have very particularly vulnerable psychological states,
mental constitutions,
whether they have a history of mental illness or whatever, especially like high-dose
marijuana.
You know, Alex Berenson wrote about this in a book called—I think it's called
Tell Your Children.
And he highlights the instances of people that have schizophrenic breaks from
high doses of THC.
And whether or not they would have had those schizophrenic breaks anyway, you
know, we don't know.
There's a certain percentage of the population that's just schizophrenic.
What causes it, we don't know.
Or we don't know clearly why something can cause it.
But you should be aware of those things, you know?
It's not for everybody.
I know a lot of people don't like it.
But I know a lot of people who do.
A lot of people, it enhances their life.
It makes times more enjoyable.
It makes sex more enjoyable and food more enjoyable and fun times with friends.
It's like anything else.
You can abuse everything, including exercise, you know?
I know a lot of people are addicted to exercise and they overdo it.
And people take CrossFit classes and they go too hard and they wind up getting
rhabdomyelosis.
What is that?
That's some kind of thing with your kidneys or liver or something?
Yeah, yeah.
You literally, your muscle tissue breaks down faster than your body can heal.
Rhabdo's dangerous.
People die of that.
I remember reading about it when I did CrossFit 15 years ago, whatever it was.
And I was like, I'm not going that hard.
Yeah.
It's for psychos.
It's the David Gogginses of the world.
You know, I think he got rhabdo, went to the hospital, got out, and then
completed his race.
He's not human.
Yeah, he's a psycho.
He's amazing.
I wonder how he runs and speaks at the same time.
Well, he's in insane shape.
I mean, he does it every day.
He runs 13 miles every fucking day.
And then on top of that, he does a series of, like, very rigorous workouts.
He does two or three workouts every day.
Yeah.
I mean, he's a fascinating guy.
He's awesome.
But he's a great guy.
Stay hard.
Great human being, though.
He really is.
He's great to talk to.
Great to hang out with.
I love him.
But point is, like, you can get addicted to video games.
You can get addicted to gambling.
The gambling thing is a big argument people use all the time, you know, because
we, one of our sponsors is DraftKings, online gambling.
I think you should be able to gamble.
I don't have a problem with it.
Me, personally.
I don't have a problem with gambling.
But I know a lot of people that do.
They shouldn't fucking gamble.
You know, gambling is an evil addiction.
You watch people get gripped by it.
It's kind of crazy.
I've known quite a few people that have had gambling addictions, especially
from my pool hall days.
I was just always around, hardcore gamblers.
And boy, man, it might as well be heroin.
It might as well be for those fucking people.
But I think you should be able to gamble.
I know it devastates some people's lives, but their choices devastate their
lives.
And there's help.
And there's, you know, you should learn how to manage your mind.
I think you have to learn restraint in anything.
Yes.
You can't nanny state the whole fucking world.
You know, you can't nerf every hard edge on the planet.
It's not how it works.
I love that.
I'm going to steal that.
Nerf it.
You know, listen, I do things that you can get hurt doing.
And I think you should be allowed to do that.
You know, I know people that have been very badly hurt doing martial arts,
including competing.
I did a lot of that.
You should be able to do it.
You should be able to ride bulls.
I don't want to ride a bull.
You should be able to ride a bull.
I think one of the things about being a human being is as much freedom as you
can give people, the better.
And also inform them about the dangers of whatever choices they make.
Give them an informed ability to make a decision for themselves.
This is what it means to be a free human being.
And you're going to make some dumb choices and you're going to make some dumb
decisions.
And that's okay.
That's how we all learn together collectively.
And I think marijuana is far better for you than alcohol.
It has legitimate medical uses, legitimate psychological uses.
It relieves stress for a lot of people.
It's you can't criminalize something for something you don't agree with.
That's crazy.
Also, the LD50 of it is off the fucking charts.
Literally, the only way to die from marijuana is it would take about a 50-pound
package hitting you in the head from a CIA drug plane.
That's how you die.
What's an LD50?
Lethal dose at 50% of the population.
It's very high.
So, if you're saying that marijuana should be illegal because it's dangerous,
okay.
Dangerous how?
When there's so many things that are – like we talked about Tylenol, which I
fully support Tylenol being legal.
You should be able to – if you're in pain, you can go get some Tylenol.
Cetaminophen fucking kills people.
Like I said, she's responsible for about 500 deaths a year, and I was telling
you about the COVID story.
This poor lady, she was hurting because she had COVID.
She kept taking Tylenol and didn't understand that you just – you can't –
there's an amount you can take, and you should never take more than that.
And she had liver failure, and she fucking died of something that is horrible.
But I think you should be able to take Tylenol.
Just don't take enough to fucking kill you.
I think that's – that should be the case with alcohol.
Same thing.
I'm for legalization of alcohol.
When you make things illegal, all you do is prop up illegal people to sell
those things to people that want it.
There is a demand.
They will supply it.
You know, this is the situation that we live in in this country when it – in
regards to heroin, in regards to cocaine, in regards to so many different
things.
They're being supplied, and they're being supplied, and you're propping up
these illegal cartels, and these motherfuckers are killing people,
and they make it – it's ruthless.
And it's what happened during prohibition of alcohol in this country.
What did it do?
It propped up the fucking – the mafia, and that's what they did.
They sold alcohol.
It propped up organized crime.
Yeah.
I mean we could learn something from countries in Europe that decriminalized
not just marijuana but other drugs.
Yeah.
And if you look at the statistics on, you know, the rate of crime, the rate of
– the incidence of overdose, it plummets.
Plummets.
Portugal is an excellent example.
Yeah.
But, you know, the problem is when you all of a sudden make things legal that
didn't used to be – that didn't used to be legal, you're going to have a
bunch of people that abuse it.
They're going to say, oh, it's legal now.
Let's go.
And a bunch of people are going to do it that don't do it.
You'll have problems.
But, you know, you're taking the Band-Aid off.
You put a fucking Band-Aid on this country in the 1930s for something that
doesn't hurt people.
Which is what?
Marijuana.
Oh.
They did that in the 1930s.
And it was a vast conspiracy, by the way.
The marijuana legalization thing, the illegalization of it, is a vast
conspiracy.
I don't know much about this back story.
Okay.
Well, I'll fill you in.
William Randolph Hearst, who owned Hearst Publications, also owned Paper Mills.
So, Popular Science Magazine, on the front page, hemp, the new billion-dollar
crop.
And the reason why hemp was problematic before that was because hemp fibers –
like a friend of mine used to grow marijuana, and he had a hemp stalk on his
desk.
And he's like, pick that up.
And you pick it up, and it's hard.
Like oak.
It's hard like this table.
There's an oak table.
It's hard like that.
But it's light.
Like styrofoam.
Feels like balsa wood.
I was like, this is crazy.
He goes, yeah, it's like an alien plant.
There's nothing like it.
Hemp fiber is incredibly durable.
And it makes superior paper.
It makes superior clothing.
Canvas.
All the great paintings were all made on hemp.
That's what canvas was made out of.
Light, but very strong and durable.
Very strong.
The first draft of Declaration of Independence was written on hemp fiber, on
hemp paper.
So hemp was used to make paper.
It was used to make cloth.
It was used to make so many different things.
But it was very difficult to do.
Then Eli Whitney came out with the cotton gin.
Well, cotton replaced a lot of the things that we made with clothing.
It replaced a lot of that.
It was an easier textile to process.
Well, in the 1930s, they came up with a new invention called the decorticator.
And the decorticator allowed them to effectively process hemp fiber much more
easily.
So then, Popular Science, SS Magazine.
There's a machine?
Yes, it's a machine.
It's like a steel cylinder that has all these protrusions on it.
And that would grind up the hemp fiber more easily.
Because before, it had to be done manually.
And it's very time consuming.
But the process was an incredible and very superior product.
So William Randolph Hearst recognizes this as a threat to his industry.
Because he owns paper mills.
He owns forests that he's using to make paper out of.
Also, you should say that to make paper out of a forest, you have to chop down
all those trees.
It will take 20, 30 years for them to grow back.
With hemp, you get a new crop every year.
The same amount of land, you're processing four times as much paper.
And you can do it every year.
It's way more effective.
So he starts demonizing this plant called marijuana.
This new drug.
Now, marijuana was not a name for cannabis.
Marijuana was a name for a Mexican slang for wild tobacco.
So he just tags this name and starts calling hemp.
Which is just the leaves on the hemp plant.
It's just the flower.
The flower on the hemp plant.
Yes.
But it's also, you can make and grow hemp that has no THC in it as well.
I believe it's, is it the female that contains THC and the male doesn't?
Anyway, point is, so he, they, they sponsor all the reefer madness films, you
know, all those propaganda films, the 1930s.
They start printing these stories about blacks and Mexicans that are raping
white women after they take this new illegal drug.
And so they pass laws on this drug, not even really understanding that they're
making the textile, they're making the commodity hemp illegal or making it very
difficult to regulate.
And so William Randolph Hearst gets together with Harry Anslinger and they,
they do this.
They also take all their police officers that, and all the people that they had
used to process prohibition of alcohol and go after alcohol, you know, illegal
alcohol sales.
And now they turn it into cannabis and that's, we've, we've been stuck in that
same horse shit since the 1930s.
So self-interest plus profit incentive, add a dose of hysteria and you have prehistoric
lobbying that leads to the demonization of, I don't fucking get it.
I mean, it's also nylon. Nylon was involved because, uh, you know, they're
using nylon for ropes because hemp was always used for ropes and now they have
this new product.
So there was a lot of people that were involved in making sure that hemp was
very difficult to acquire so that their, their commodity could thrive.
And then how many people suffered because of that? How many people were jailed?
How many people died? How many, you know, how many people were incarcerated?
You're dealing with literally 90 years at this point, 90 years of bullshit.
I don't, uh, and I, I, I do believe that there are some drugs that are so
addictive that you start to lose your sense of free will.
I don't think weed is one of them.
It's not to me. I wouldn't say it's not, it's one of them. It's not one of them
to everybody.
I don't know. I don't know. I hear horror stories about people that are
addicted to weed and can't get off of it.
You know, I do sober October pretty much every year. I didn't do it last year,
but we take off everything.
We don't do anything. We usually do like a little fitness challenge with it. Uh,
I've never had a problem.
Stopped doing it. Uh, I, I got on these, uh, nicotine pouches. I like nicotine
pouches during podcasts.
Keeps my mind like popping. It's like, it's a, it's a cognitive enhancer. And I
was like, man, maybe I'm addicted to nicotine.
Went on vacation. Didn't bring any nicotine pouches. Had no problem.
You know, I'm happy I smoked a lot of weed in high school. A lot of weed. It
was different though.
For me, it was at least. It wasn't as strong.
Oh yeah.
And I've, I've got scientists involved now.
These botanists know what the fuck they're doing.
Scientists. I one time smoked weed with Lennox in Jamaica.
And, and, uh, that should be the song. That's like, uh, by the time, by the
time that blunt
was being passed around for people, when it came to me the second time I was
like, the room
went sideways on me. I could not fucking cope. The furniture seemed readjusted.
And I've had
other times where for me, it got, I got to a point where I could not function
on it.
Yeah. Uh, the, and the last time where I was like, ah, this isn't just not for
me anymore.
Maybe I smoked too much of it in high school. I mean, almost every day at 15,
but then I
was at a casino. I was at the Aria one time and this must've been 15 years ago
and I was
playing craps and I had, I had taken like one or two tokes and I convinced
myself that the
guy at the other end of the craps table was an undercover officer that was
going to frame
me for something. Fucking the lady next to me was stealing my chips. This guy
was going
to have me fucking hatcheted. And I ended up in the corner of the casino for
literally two
hours trying to collect myself. And I, and so you went too deep. I went, man, I
was, I
was just too strong for someone who doesn't use it. See these, there's a lot of
people like
my friend, be real from Cypress Hill. I can't, I can't, I can't even watch the
podcast because
my blood pressure goes up when I watch how much weed these guys smoke him, him
and, uh,
Everlast. Yeah. Yeah. Well, be real lives in the cloud. There's a lot of those
dudes. They call
it living in the cloud. Like they're just high all the time. Well, be real has
his own weed
business. And I did his show, the hot box where you, you sit in a car. He has
this dope like car
that's set up as a studio. So there's like cameras inside the car and you just
get obliterated because
they're just constantly smoking in the car. I got out of there. I just sit down
for like
two hours afterwards. You were okay or not? I was okay, but I was just like,
geez, boys,
you guys go fucking far. But that's the, but the, but the problem is for me
with weed is that
sometimes I've smoked it and been, I'm talking about as an adult. Yes. Post 30.
Yeah. Sometimes
I've been like, well, that was really great. And other times I've been like, I
don't want to
contemplate my existence tonight. I've done that enough. I've done that enough.
And, and
it's all unanswerable questions and I'm going to have a panic attack. Yeah. Man,
one time I was on
the platform at Penn station and I started to like, you know, you get to that
point when you're thinking
about dying and we could talk death dying and we could say it and talk about it.
But I got to that,
that point where that fifth dimensional wall crumbled. Then I was like, Oh my
God, I'm not
going to exist one day. And I started to have a panic attack where I had to
leave and go up onto
eighth Avenue and get some fresh air. And I'm just like at this stage, I can't,
I would have to be
like, so what kind of weed is this? And how do you know? And I don't want to
interrogate someone that
just wants to get me high. But here's the thing. If you don't get high a lot,
and this is my message
for everyone out there. If you go months and months and months without ever
taking any one hit, a small
one, don't get crazy. Don't get crazy. You don't want to wreck yourself. What
if that one hit leads to
nine hours of being high? It shouldn't. It shouldn't. For me it has. Well, it's
like, how much are you
smoking? Like you must be taking a giant hit. And it also depends on like what
kind of joint you have.
Like there's, there's crazy people like in California, they'll sell you a joint.
That's like a $50 joint.
And this joint has Keef in it. So it has all the resin, all the, you know, you'll
give a grinder at the bottom
of the grinder. There's a filter and you have all this, the sticky Keef. THC
crystals. They take those THC
crystals and they put it inside with the marijuana and then they wrap the
outside of the joint and they
roll it in the THC crystal. It's like, it's on the outside of it. And it's just
a pathway to paranoia.
It's just a rocket ship to your, your inner monologue screaming in your, your
ear.
I can't talk about it. It's scaring me, but it doesn't have to be like that.
Have you ever got paranoid smoking weed?
Oh yeah. It's part of the fun. I don't mind it. I like it. Cause there's always
some sort of a
revelation that I get on the other end of it. Like if I'm paranoid, there's
always like a reason
that there's a thing that's bothering me. Like what is that thing that fucked
with you during that
time? And maybe there's a thing in your head that you need to address. But
generally if I'm in a good
place and I get high, I feel great. I must've been in a great place at like 15,
16 years old,
because getting high back then and listening to Zeppelin and Pink Floyd and
hearing the lyrics for
the first time being like, Oh my God, someone else had that thought that I'm
afraid to say,
and they put it down in lyrics and I'm not alone.
And you feel profound. You say profound things that aren't really profound.
There's benefit to it.
And I think that when you're young, also you don't have bills, you don't have
obligations. You just
have to go to school. Your burden is so much lighter. When, when you're an
adult and you have
a family and you have business and you have things you have to do all the time
and you have conflicts
and all this stuff that's in your life, like kick and fuck with you. But I
think generally like
for a lot of people, not for everybody, but for a lot of people, those moments
of paranoia,
of just dropping the veil, it's probably beneficial.
Oh, I think that, I think that in the long run, it opened the third eye of my
mind at a time when,
and fostered creativity. And I think changed my perspective on the world,
smoking that much weed.
I just got to a point where I was like, I can't parent on it.
Right.
For me.
Yeah.
You just have to know, you have to be mature enough and introspective enough
and self-aware enough to
know yourself. For me, it just didn't work anymore. Just like drinking. At some
point I was like,
it's not worth the fucking pain. Right. It just got too painful. Right. But
that's the decision that
you should be able to make as a man or as a woman, as an adult. Make that
decision for yourself.
Decide what you want to take into your life or not, including all sorts of
other things that are bad
for you, like fucking processed food and sugar. Do whatever you want to do, as
long as you know what
you're doing. And so we should educate people on what these things are. And the
problem is with marijuana,
there were so many years of lies. There were so many years of misinformation
and it was just
constantly put out there as propaganda. And you know, this is your brain on
drugs. Like,
shut the fuck up.
Well, listen, I remember those commercials from being a kid. And I remember one
in particular where
there's a father that finds weed. I'm dating myself in his son's room. And he
said,
where did you learn to do this shit? And he goes, I learned from you, dad. And
I remember thinking,
man, my dad's a motherfucker. He's a bad guy. Cause my dad was a big weed smoker.
And I would find it all the time. And I'm telling you, I think in my mind, that
commercial led me to
thinking, dad, you're a moral and you know, they poisoned a lot of people with
those commercials.
But, but you know, meanwhile, your dad could be sitting there watching TV with
a cocktail.
He wouldn't think a damn thing about it.
Yeah. My dad on weed was like an alcoholic with, with a, with a whiskey bottle.
Oh my God. That's it dancing. Do this stuff.
You, all right. I learned it by watching you.
Parents who use drugs have children who use drugs.
Jamie is a fucking wizard.
Yeah. He's the best. You know, my favorite one though, is the girl who comes
home from school
and the girl starts, and the dog starts talking to her.
Wait, before we get to that, you know how a song or a smell can have you tumbling
back in time?
Oh yeah.
I'm like, I'm drunk on nostalgia right now. Like in the wrong. Oh my God.
This is my favorite.
I wish you didn't smoke weed.
You're not the same when you smoke and I miss my friend. I'll be outside.
How would you tell a friend like who fucking, who signed off on that commercial?
First of all, that girl is not on marijuana. Cause if you were on weed and your
dog started talking,
you'd be like, what the fuck? You can talk.
The first thing I thought when that started to roll, I looked at Jamie all wide-eyed
and what
did you put in my drink? The dog is talking. The only other time I saw that was
Mr. Ed.
Yeah. Right. Well, or, um, what's that movie? Zookeeper. All the animals talked.
Well, it's like, come on, this is fucking ridiculous.
You know, when you peel the layer back, I had never known, um, that one slipped
through the cracks
on me. The criminalization of weed and the backstory.
The backstory is really crazy.
It's crazy. And I remember, I remember a, um, a science teacher in high school
telling me
you don't think that they can make a tire that doesn't wear. And they, he told
me the story
about how all the big tire companies bought the patent for a tire that can't
wear. Right. It has the
same, um, composition as, as, uh, same give and composition as rubber when it
came to handling,
but, um, um, it was a material that doesn't wear. And I just thought he was
fucking crazy.
And now I believe that that's probably true. It's probably locked in a vault
somewhere because
what would happen to Goodyear and Firestone and the rest of those tires? You're
telling me we can put
a man on the moon and hear conversations behind the walls of the Kremlin, but
we can't make a
tire that doesn't wear? Well, I think one of those is true. But the other one,
the thing about tires
is that a tire has to have a certain amount of softness to it in order for it
to have traction.
When you have softness and then you have a rigid surface like asphalt, you're
going to have some of
that tire is going to rub off on that rigid surface because one is hard and one
is soft. Just like when you
take a file and you rub wood, you're going to make sawdust. You know, you would
know. Yeah. About
fucking tires. Here I go giving an example of something that I think is so out
there that there's
no way this guy's going to, and you know about tire weight. I know a lot about
tires because the
softer the tire, the more traction you get on a racetrack. So, uh, with a
really good tire, you know,
you only have a certain amount of laps on a racetrack. So the science teacher
was bullshitting me,
basically. The scientist teacher probably was right directionally that there
are things like that
where they would hide patents to certain things and hide certain compounds. If
they found out these
compounds would compromise, like if you had something that people had to buy
all the time,
like light bulbs, here's a better example, light bulbs. So there are light
bulbs that have been in
continuous use, like on continuously for 50, 60 years. And they don't burn out
because these are
your original light bulbs. The original light bulbs, they made the filaments
much more durable.
And then they realized like, why would we do this? Well, we could have these
light bulbs just burn
out and then you have to get a new light bulb. And the filament would pop.
Exactly. Yeah. I have read about this. See if you can find those old light
bulbs. I think there's one
that's been on continually for an extraordinary amount of time, decades. 120
years. 120 years.
Let's see that light bulb. So if you look at the light bulb, and you see the
filaments of that light
bulb, you realize, oh, they could have just built light bulbs like this from
the beginning. And instead of
paying $5 for a light bulb, or whatever a light bulb costs, maybe it would cost
10 bucks.
I've got a firehouse in California.
Interesting. The Centennial Light, 1901.
That light bulb. Look at that. Look at that beautiful filament.
Yeah. See how thick those filaments are? So that's a light bulb that's built to
last.
These motherfuckers, they figured out, well, we'll just make it real skinny and
eventually it'll wear out
and pop. That tire patent is sitting in a fucking vault somewhere. It might be,
but the problem is,
it doesn't make sense because it has to be softer than the ground. And whenever
you have something
that's softer than a very rough, hard surface, the softer thing is going to
give. Something has to
give. Like if you have metal and you drive around with metal wheels on the
asphalt, you know what gives?
The asphalt gives. You have scratches on the asphalt. Let me ask you this. So
going back to the weed.
Okay. Because I got us on this diversion tires. I want to find out about the
tires eventually.
Well, I got something for it, but not exactly. Let me just do it now.
What do you got? It's not full on Navarro. Oh, but this is different.
Yeah, no. It does last way longer. There's no air in this fucking tire.
Yeah, this is an airless tire, but this is something that people have said
forever. Like,
why would you have to fill up tires? Can't they come up with something where,
you know,
it just gives? And so Michelin has done this.
You're telling me that there's nothing out there about tires that don't wear.
I don't think so. It doesn't make sense.
But watch this. I have a question.
All right.
So weed is criminalized by some self-interested industrialist, right?
Right. Before that, ubiquitous use for centuries, including in churches.
So cocaine, you can make the same argument for.
You could.
And then you have the Clinton administration comes along and dubs people. So in
other words,
what is the moral inequivalency between someone that is selling cocaine,
a lot of it, and someone that's selling a lot of weed? Now, I understand the
common retort as well.
Cocaine is a lot more addictive, destructive.
There's a physical pathway to addiction.
There's a physical pathway to addiction.
Yeah. It's a different kind of addiction. I think there is an addictive quality
to marijuana,
but I have a feeling it's same or similar to the addictive quality of a lot of
other behavioral
addictions.
But I guess my, my bigger question is, so the, the, with the advent of the
quote unquote,
super criminal, I think it was, who was it? Hillary, Hillary Clinton or Bill
Clinton,
that came up with this term or Biden. You know, I know he's a big supporter of
that bill as a
senator. And, you know, without going down the rabbit hole of private prisons
and the prison
industrial complex, what bothers me about these old drug convictions that we
were talking about
earlier is it's just a, um, a perspective shift that somehow has in the psyche
of, of America
writ large that you hear cocaine or crack equals someone that should be locked
away and forgotten
about. That was why I mentioned Spencer, uh, Bowen and, um, you know, other
folks that I've mentioned,
because I just, I feel like, um, um, there's no, um, what's the, the, the right
way to explain
it? There's no rhyme or reason to why we're leaving old people that have not
much left locked up,
you know? And, you know, I don't look, Larry Hoover is a good example. Larry
Hoover was, uh,
pardoned, uh, or a sentence was commuted by a president Trump. And he was then
put in,
he was in the side of a mountain for decades. The man is 75 years old. He's
been in prison for over
50 years. He has renounced gang life. He has renounced any affiliation with it.
And then he was,
his sentence is commuted and he's put in state custody on some old tenuous, uh,
homicide charge
where the person that actually pulled the trigger is out, has been out for like
30 years. So Larry
Hoover is sitting there in Colorado because he was in the side of that super
max facility, the side of
that mountain in Chicago. And since Colorado or Chicago, no, in Colorado, he
was in Chicago.
Well, he was, then I misspoke. He's from Chicago. He was the leader of the
gangster disciples. You're
familiar with Larry Hoover, right? Sure. Leader of the gangster disciples in
Chicago. He gets, um,
he's in prison and state prison. Then he goes into, while he's in state prison,
they have a CCE
conspiracy against him and he gets, um, uh, continuing criminal enterprise. I'm
talking
lawyer speak. And then he, he goes into federal custody and he's put in the
side of a mountain
where he's on lockdown 23 hours a day for decades. The man's 75 years old now,
since he's been put in
state custody, he's had three heart attacks doing prison work. And what is the,
what is the, um,
utility in keeping someone like that in? Because, you know, governor Pritzker
could just say, you know
what, enough's enough. Um, there's, there's interesting stuff out there about
what they call C criminals.
So it was like before February of 1978, I believe it was 1998, where people
would get indeterminate
sentences in the state system in Illinois. You know, you'd hear these sentences
of like 100 years,
200 years where there's no hope. And there were like thousands and thousands of
them. There's only
30 of them left and he's one of them. He's got an indeterminate sentence. Isn't
50 years enough?
So like, that's another one of those cases that bothers me because,
you know, if we're a, if we're a society of, of, um, reform, deterrence,
rehabilitation, he's it.
And what better message is there to say, you know what, you've done enough. And
now let's see what
positive you can do. The proposed terms of his release are like the strictest
supervision.
He just wants to live out his life with his, his family. He's got a great
lawyer backing him
named Justin Moore. I've helped, you know, advocate for his part in the
president.
So he's, he was pardoned. His sentence was commuted
by president Trump, his federal sentence. Right. But he had some crazy 200 year
sentence
in state court. Right. Oh, look at this is it. So it was 1978. He's one of just
35 people still
incarcerated under Illinois pre 78 indeterminate sentencing system. So the case
was from 73.
Oh yeah. He's been in prison for 50 some odd years. And you know, I just feel
like at this point,
isn't enough enough. And you know, they didn't even do the killing. No. And the
person that did it is
out that the allegation was that he ordered it. And I don't even believe that.
And Andrew Howard,
the guy who killed him was paroled more than 30 years ago. Yeah. It just doesn't,
I don't understand.
And what, what, what's going on? I think is that someone like governor Pritzker
is just,
they don't want the political cost. Right. Of, of taking a chance like this.
And you know,
this is another one that keeps me up. You know, some people would say, why care
about that guy?
Because I know his wife. I know his son. I, James Prince, um, knows the family
so well and has
supported them on this journey for over a decade. There's so much public
support for this. The guy's
75. So why are we wasting taxpayer money? And why are we keeping someone
incarcerated? I mean,
in the most, I don't understand if they commuted his sentence, how he's not,
how he's not out.
He was, his federal sentence was commuted. So as soon as he was released from
federal custody,
he was taken into state custody and they didn't even take him from Chicago,
Chicago, excuse me,
from Colorado. His state sentence is in Chicago where he could be at least
closer to his family. And
Colorado state system said, we'll keep him here. So he was transferred from
federal to state custody.
So that's one that just like, oh, you know, there's one heartbreak to the next.
And I, and look,
I'm super, super, super careful. Um, you can help people with second chances.
You can't help them with
what they do with it. But I, I'm now at a point where I really want to think
long and hard about
what people do with their second chances. And, you know, I just wouldn't get
behind someone that I
didn't think was, I just, it's an indictment of society that we have these
disparate sentences
that are doled out. And, and a lot of it is driven by what is considered worse
behavior.
Is it worse behavior that you sold cocaine or marijuana? I guess the argument
is that cocaine
was more destructive, more addictive. You could die from it. Well, same thing
with alcohol and
alcohol is legal. So I just don't, I have a hard time grappling with what is
considered a controlled
substance because alcohol, if abused, if put in the wrong hands, it's highly
addictive,
it's highly destructive to your body. If you abuse it ruins people's lives. I
mean, how is it that
alcohol is legal? It is weird. It is weird. And, um, the real problem is
history. So we have a long
history of all these drugs being illegal now. So you have a long history of
people that are criminals
selling this, these drugs. So it's got this criminal history attached to it. If
you were to make cocaine
legal in the United States, you'd essentially put the cartels out of business,
right? Because that's
probably their main business is probably either fentanyl and heroin or heroin
pills, you know, oxy pills
or cocaine. And you would have way less accidental overdose deaths because a
lot of it is not people
overdosing from actual cocaine. It's getting fentanyl or whatever, or whatever
else they're
fucking mixing. Well, all sorts of different amphetamines. Um, we have a long
history now
dating back to the thirties of alcohol being legal. People are accustomed to it.
It's normal. You're
accustomed to growing up, being able to have a couple of beers with your
friends, going to a party
when you're a kid, there's a keg party. People know how to handle it. It's been
around. Cocaine has not.
You get scared. What's in it. How do I know where it came from? You know, you
get a fucking beer,
you know, it's a beer and you crack open a Bud Light. It's a Bud Light. It's
what it is.
Cocaine is unregulated. It's crazy.
And if you think about it, if you're, if you're someone doing cocaine these
days and you're trying
to think like, am I going to die? Right.
You dip a, what are they? Fentanyl strips that you can test it and see what's
in it. But
if it was regulated and if people want to do it, you know, let them go bang
their head against the
wall and do it. Yeah. And then the problem is people would be profiting off of
that. And then
so you'd have, instead of, you know, no one has a problem with Anheuser-Busch
selling beer. Right.
But meanwhile, there's alcoholics and it's going to ruin their life. But if Anheuser-Busch
all of
a sudden started selling cocaine, the social stigma that's attached to it
because of all the years of
it being illegal would be a real problem. Um, we would have, like I said, it
would be like ripping
the bandaid off. You're going to have a lot of problems initially for quite a
while. I would
imagine there's going to be a lot of people that do cocaine that would never do
it previously because
it was illegal. But if they find out that there's, you can go to the cocaine
store and buy a certain
amount of cocaine and go do it. But you also would be getting pure cocaine. So
you would be getting
this experience that people have used way back to the fucking, you know, who
knows what time,
I mean, there, there's Egyptian mummies that have tested positive for cocaine.
I mean, look, I don't, I'm not, yeah, I'm not advocating for it one way or
another. It just seems
like anything that I've looked into and read about in countries that have, um,
legalized
or decriminalized or decriminalized it at least. And you could get it and not
have to worry about
it being adulterated in some way. It seems like the statistics are
overwhelmingly
yes. Pointing in one direction. A hundred percent. But those are smaller
countries,
you know, and it don't have the, the consumption problem that America has. We
were, we uniquely
love to consume drugs and, um, we are propping up the cartel by doing that. And
that, you know,
if you want to go to war with the cartel, if you want to really stop the flood
of illegal drugs in this
country, unfortunately, one of the only ways to do it, to really do that
accurately is to
both stop them from bringing in illegal drugs and then give people access to
legal air quotes,
safer drugs. It seems like a, it's a problem. It's a, politically it's a, it's
a suicide.
I was going to say, you got to swim uphill through or upstream through a river
of
shit. Yeah. Yeah. In order to pull that one off. Yeah. For a long time.
Yeah. And I, I just, um, this, this has struck me more lately in dealing with
these old drug cases
where these people have spent decades and decades in prison and, you know, you,
you know, you hear
them on the other end of the phone and he's like, look, I was a, I was a kid. I
was in my twenties.
I'm 50, I'm 60 years old. Isn't it enough? It's getting to the point where it's
putative to the
point of, of harmful and barbaric. Yeah. And then they don't want to let
those people back out on the street. It's more convenient for them to keep the
person locked up
forever. You know, and you gotta, if you saw like what's behind it, you know, I
did, this is a
interesting update on the Ohio four case. And we don't have to go back into the
whole thing again,
because people could watch the last time. But you remember we had the former
prosecutor,
JD Tomlinson on at one point with the case in Ohio. Yes. Where these guys did
not need to assume the
burden of being demonstrably innocent, but we were able to prove it. And, you
know, JD Tomlinson agreed
to vacate their convictions. And then when he left office, you know, a few
weeks later, the new,
the incoming, their equivalent of the district attorney overturned it, right?
Since coming on
this show, JD Tomlinson has been under attack for a previous exoneration that
he granted by this same
sitting Lorain County prosecutor who just filed a 300 page brief saying that he
committed fraud on
the court and all kinds of nonsense over a crime that never happened. And this
is why he was so
reluctant to ever speak to me in the first place, because he knew he'd be
talking, he knew he'd be
targeted. And they're trying to undo an exoneration for this poor woman that's
already been exonerated.
And I thought, you know, I would talk about it publicly and say, I trust him. I
made a presentation
to this new prosecutor. I got myself, along with the Ohio Innocence Project,
public defenders. I got a
bar complaint filed against me by the original prosecutor for standing up to exonerate
someone
that was summarily dismissed in Ohio. But, you know, and what, and the question
becomes like,
what can you do? So Derek Hamilton and I are trying to, we go to the city
council and raise awareness.
Don't you care that you have a prosecutor that is seemingly more interested in
settling personal
scores and vendettas than he is about letting innocent people go free. And I
have this guy,
you know, John Edwards is one of the Ohio four. And I'm, I'm, I feel like when
I see him calling from
prison, I'm running out of things to say to him, like, I'm so desperate for
help. And, you know,
if anyone is living in Lorain, Ohio, or Elyria, I mean, you got to take your,
take a look at your local
elected officials. I mean, demand to know what happened in the Ohio four case.
I mean, we have it
online. You can read about it. You could read the trial transcripts. I just don't
get why people can't
let go and say, maybe I made a mistake. Maybe I was wrong. I mean, these guys
are, are so demonstrably
innocent where you have the person that claims he witnessed the whole thing,
you know, came,
went to the FBI and said, I made the whole thing up. You know, it's just a
horrible case. It's horrible.
Nobody wants to admit it. Nobody. The problem is, I think if they do admit it,
someone's going to start
digging into their past and they're going to find out these motherfuckers have
been wrong a bunch of
times. Well, I'll tell you what, one thing that's different about me and why I
hang around Derek so
much, um, is I want his superpowers to rub off on me because I realized that if
you don't get,
stay aggressive and keep the pressure on the truth will eventually, what, what
did, uh, what, what was
the old truth crushed to earth shall rise again? Was that like an MLK quote? I
always think about that
because at some point, at some point, um, the truth comes out. It's a stubborn
thing. And whether it's
old files of an old case and who you used to hang out with, um, and if you have
photos sitting in a
vault, some, whatever it is, it's going to come out and it just seems like you're
doing so much more
damage to hold on to these old beliefs rather than, and because one thing is
for sure, I'm stubborn
and I'm growing more stubborn as I, as it, as time goes by to, you have to have
the resolve and the
wherewithal that every time you get a no and every time you get rejected, you're
like, all right,
all right, I see you. I'm gonna get my beast on now and keep coming back and I'm
going to bring people
with me and we're going to make as much noise. One thing that, that, that
people don't like
is to have the light on them. And, you know, we, we now have the ability to, to
do that, not only
through this platform, but, you know, I was talking to someone before I came
here today that works at
the center. And I said, you can't be afraid to speak to, um, the press. And I
said, as long as,
you know, you have some control, some control over what you're saying. And then
I like quickly
stuffed the words back in my mouth. And I said, forget about that. You got to
be very careful
when speaking to the press because it gets edited and chopped up. You know, I
just, I did an article
with the New York times about something recently, man. I, I told that reporter,
lose my fucking phone
number because you took one sentence of a throwaway quote and disregarded
everything else, you know?
And that's why I'm really careful about it. That's why nobody wants to talk to
them. I mean,
everybody knows the game now. Like they're, it's just, they have a long history
doing that. What
they care about is a juicy story. That's all they care about. Yeah. And
suffering cells and human tragedy
cells. And, and I would really love to be able to tell like the, the, the triumphant
stories that
a prosecutor did the right thing on the front end, right on the front end,
rather than after 20, 30,
40, 50 years. So, you know, all of these cases that we talk about, we're going
to do something a
little bit different is I'm going to set up a repository where people can go in
and look at the
public records. No one's really ever done that this way. You don't have to rely
on my word,
a headline, a clip from, from a video where, you know, there were people that
started to consume
the Ohio four case and a writing in and are saying like, how are you letting
this stand? Eventually
enough drips of water fills the bucket and the bucket overflows. And at some
point something's got
to give. Right. Yeah. I mean, if you believe in what good over evil. Yeah. I
don't know. I mean,
something's got to give. Well, I mean, if you really believe in good over evil,
I mean, we all believe in good over evil, but sometimes it doesn't work. And is
it for lack
of trying or is it just the world's not fair? I think it's both. Well, you know,
and I think there's,
there's a lot of people that have a lot of power that will keep good from
winning because
it would somehow or another derail their life or their career because they have
done something evil.
But this is a sick, this is a sick trait that we possess as, as mammals, as
humans,
whether you're a safety patrol as a fourth or fifth grader or a bouncer outside
of a club or a TSA agent,
there's something about that authority, something about that power that people
get drunk on and they
get, they get, it, it, it's almost like it courses through their veins to the
point where they're like,
well, I like this, I'm going to exert this. And it's, it's like, I just, um, I
understand it,
but I don't, um, I don't understand how at some point your conscience doesn't
kick in and say,
all right, devil on this shoulder, let's do the right thing. Because I always
feel like bound by some
sort of social contract, right? Did it ever feel good to harm someone? I don't
know. Never did for
me as a kid. No. I mean, I could look back at my childhood and be like, that
was a shitty thing you
did. You know, I still feel guilty about things I did as an elementary school
student. It's like,
because you're a good person. No, no, I don't think that I really don't.
You are a good person. No, I don't think that that's what it is.
Part of being a good person is when you do make a mistake or do something bad,
you feel something.
I don't actually, I appreciate that, but I don't actually think that's what it
is. I think that,
that, um, we all know when we're saying something hurtful or harmful at some
point,
you know it, or you're doing something harmful. And it's just, I don't
understand, I guess,
the disconnect between having that realization and just saying, "Fuck it," or
actually taking
like a pause. Right. And I guess if I could solve that, I'd have the key to
many of the world's
problems. But I guess I'm just dealing with these in the meantime. Well, you
would have to completely
rewire the way people think. And there's ways to do that. And all those ways
are illegal.
That's where psychedelics comes in. You know, it's one of the things I had a
conversation with my
friend Jesse Michaels the other day. And one of the things I said is, one of
the things that's
really interesting about psychedelics is there's no criminal cartel that sells
them, even though
they're illegal. That's true. There's no criminal mushroom industry where there's
a bunch of like evil
assassins selling kids mushrooms. It's such a uniquely beautiful experience
that it's really only connected
to like kind people who sell it for the most part. Well, let me ask you the
same thing.
Let me ask you something in reference to what you said earlier. Do you think
you have to have a
particular mental constitution to take psychedelics? I think you should. Yeah.
I don't think it's for
people that are very vulnerable. I think there's a lot of people that those
regular reality is
difficult enough to manage. You know, I'm, you know, I'm saying this, uh,
objectively,
right? Because it's not me. And then, but I don't want to be arrogant and say,
I can do it. You could
do it too. That's ridiculous. There's a lot of people that shouldn't be doing
anything. They
shouldn't be drinking. They shouldn't be, there's, there's people out there
that shouldn't do caffeine.
It's people have very different biological vulnerabilities. There's some people
that I
believe are biologically vulnerable to alcoholism. Their whole family's
alcoholic. It might be a genetic
trait. It seems to be like some, there's something wrong with them and their
ability. And then there's
also genes that, uh, like this was the, the issue with native Americans. When
we introduced alcohol to
them, they didn't have a history of alcohol. They didn't know how to handle it.
They got wrecked. Like
there's alcoholism to this day is an enormous problem in native American tribes
and in reservations.
It's a major problem in Canada. Yeah. You know, my first nation people. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Because they were given reparations and my experience with it up there is that
they,
you know, there's a serious problem, especially in Western Canada with it. But
I, um, the reason I
ask about it with psychedelics is that I, at the, probably the lowest point in
my life, um, you know,
I was with you and, um, I remember you recommending ketamine therapy and, or
thinking that might be
something I should look into. Yeah. This is something that I've never done, but,
uh, I do know quite a few
people. My friend, Neil, uh, Neil Brennan, he went to a doctor to get ketamine
therapy. Yeah. So when I,
I raised it with my therapist at the time and she was like, the, the body of
research on this is so
overwhelming that I would be remiss if I told you don't try it. Something we
should talk about and think
about. And, you know, it helped me tremendously in a way that very, very low
dose, but it's like,
you know, I mean, I thank you for even like suggesting it because it was
something that
I had always associated with like my roommate in college in a, in the fetal
position in his bed.
And I was like, yo, what's wrong with him? And someone said, he's in a K hole.
I was like,
what the fuck is that? He's, he's in a, in a K hole. Yeah. And it was always
like, oh man,
I'm staying away from that. He looks like, he looks like he could expire any
moment.
He was not a lighter shade of pale. He was like translucent. And I was like,
but then, you know,
it's a, it's a, it's under supervision. That's the key under supervision. And
then with the correct
dose. And I think that would probably be the case with most psychedelics.
And it turned, it, it would turn the field of psychiatry on its head. And there
would be
such a lobby against it. And the drug companies that make all these great drugs
that rewire your
brain would hate that. Yep. Yeah, they would. Yeah, they would. And I think
they're wrong.
Yeah. I mean, I think humans throughout history have been using it and, you
know,
to various degrees of success. I think, uh, for some people it's not good. It's
like a lot of other
things, but it's up to us to figure out what's good for you and what's not good
for you. This is part of
the freedom of being a person, you know? I mean, there's a lot of things that
you could easily
protect people from that we allow people to do. Here's the one that, um, I saw
a documentary about this,
and I'm the one that I can make a decision on. What's the one where you take it
and you're
fucking puking, you're retching to the point where you're like puking out of
your eyeballs?
Ayahuasca? Ayahuasca. Yeah.
And people are like fucking, how can that be good?
Well, the reason why you pu... Well, here's what ayahuasca is, first of all. Ayahuasca
is orally
active dimethyltryptamine. Dimethyltryptamine is an endogenous drug that your
body produces,
your brain produces. It's produced in the liver, in the lungs. It's a natural
component of the human
body. Terence McKenna had a great line about it. He said the thing about DMT is
everyone's holding.
Meaning like you're, everyone has, if it's illegal, it's, it's like making
blood illegal.
So what does ayahuasca do chemically?
So ayahuasca, so dimethyltryptamine, which is the active drug, the active
compound,
dimethyltryptamine exists in thousands of different plants. It's in a bunch of
different grasses and
plants. It's not orally active because your body produces something called monoamine
oxidase.
Monoamine oxidase breaks down dimethyltryptamine in the gut so that if you
consume things like these
grasses or different plants that have high levels of dimethyltryptamine in it,
your body breaks it
down so it doesn't become active. What ayahuasca is, is the one plant that
contains dimethyltryptamine and
another plant that contains harmine, uh, harmine, which is a monoamine oxidase
inhibitor. So you
take the MAO inhibitor and then the dimethyltryptamine, they brew it all
together and then you have a slow
release orally active dimethyltryptamine. That's that motherfucker with the or.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
He's working on the stew.
All right, you know, and so there's, that is what it is. So you, you take it orally.
It takes a long
time because it has to go through your digestive process. It gets in your bloodstream.
You have this trip.
And, um, you know, when you're, you know, puking and shitting and all that
stuff, it's like
your, your body is like, whatever the fuck this is, is not good. But the result
of it, the end of it is this
extremely impactful experience that leads many people to quit alcohol. Many
people quit cigarettes
from it. They quit destructive behavior. They release trauma and learn to get
over things that
have happened in their life and move on. It's, uh, you have these experiences
where you are in contact
with what seems like entities and incredibly wise, loving entities that connect
you to nature and to the earth.
It, you know, and I'm sure people have bad experiences. I'm sure it's a very
powerful psychedelic.
You shit yourself too.
Yeah. You could shit yourself. You could throw up. Yeah. I mean, some, it doesn't
happen with everybody,
but it happens with a lot of people that do it. Um, but that's not the case
with smoking dimethyltryptamine
or with, uh, IV drip dimethyltryptamine. We had a guy on recently that they're
doing an, uh,
a clinic. Where was that island? They're doing that. They do it. They got it
legal in some place.
And so you could fly to this place and do, uh, an IV dimethyltryptamine
experience without the
shitting, without the vomiting. And it's even more intense than ayahuasca,
unless you'd have like a
really high dose of ayahuasca. But like this, the pure smoking of DMT is much
more powerful,
but very short experience. Your body brings it back to baseline very quickly
because your body
knows how to process it, right? Your body doesn't know how to process alcohol
nearly as
well as it knows how to process DMT because DMT is natural in the body.
Yeah. But you don't shit yourself and puke. Well, no, that's not true. But you
don't with the IV.
With the IV, you don't. You don't with smoking it. You don't shit yourself and
puke.
It's just when you drink that fucking witch's brew in the jungle.
That witch's brew in the jungle.
Yeah. You know, you know, you know, you know, you know what's interesting
hanging out with hippies.
You could do the, all of these forms of psychedelics that, um, lead to some
sort of
resolution or peace on the other side. Um, you have to still, even if you do it
in modern psychiatry,
like I did something called EMDR. Are you familiar with that? I think it stands
for eye movement,
desensitization, um, EMDR. Yeah. I don't know what the R stands for. Um, but it
is something that,
um, I mean, you have to go through the, a similar amount of suffering and it's
to deal with past
traumas. Eye movement, desensitization and reprocessing. All right. So I went
through this
and it helps you, you could do it. There's some, sometimes you're doing it with
your eyes,
but you, you ever, um, you ever, you ever use Flonase? No. You know what it is?
Yeah. All right.
And it has like a green cover on it. So you hold onto these two paddles the way
I did it. And they're
hooked up to this little transistors, little box. And it's like, it buzzes your
hand, you hold onto them
and it'll buzz your hands. No more than like the buzz of a cell phone and this
rhythmic,
this rhythmic, um, pattern. And before you do it, you really set up what the
trauma is.
So I, I went through months of trying to identify like, what were the things
from my childhood that
that were haunting me. Um, and once you do, you then relive those moments with
this rhythmic buzzing
and you do it again and again and again. And after each session, which could
last anywhere between
a minute to 10 minutes where your eyes are shut and you're getting this
rhythmic pattern
and you open your eyes and you explain what just happened.
But you start in that place, you're 12 here. And I have to tell you, it was, it
was one of the most
painful, um, agonizing things I had ever done. And it was the most religious
experience I had ever had
because you're almost in a, you're almost in a trance-like state and your mind
is going
and you then explain what happened. And it's almost like a, it's almost like a
guided daydream.
And then when you explain it, you then go back again and start.
And I, and when I was first doing it, I was like, this is just torture, just
straight up torture.
But then you start to see, uh, an improvement in your mood and an improvement
dealing with that
particular. And I learned more about myself, my childhood, my, my, my behaviors
than I,
than I did doing any drug, any psychedelic, any, which I did in my youth. Um,
and it, it literally
saved me. Interesting. Yeah. And it, and it, and it sounds to me, I just had
this revelation as you're
talking about, like, you know, it's almost like you have to purge the pain. You
have to relive it almost
in order to get rid of it. And you're the theory behind EMDR, as I understand
it, is that you don't
have the same physiological response at recalling the trauma. You know, you
could think of something
that happened to you 10 years ago, and you can still get the heart palpitation
and the adrenaline
rush and the, uh, you know, the other, whatever is being released in your body,
um, whatever hormones
get activated and it doesn't happen anymore. I mean, it's, uh, the way that it
was introduced to me was
that my therapist did it with, um, combat veterans who could get triggered by a
grain of sand on the
beach because they were in desert storm and spiral. So I find it interesting
because it seems like the same
methodology is at play, but it's just a different way of getting there than
psychedelics.
Well, there's other ways that they do it without the psychedelic drug that induces
psychedelic experience, like holotropic breathing.
What is that?
Uh, put that into perplexity, young Jamie.
Uh, it's a particular style of breathing that, um, allows you to achieve an
altered state.
Um, I don't want to misspeak on exactly how to do it. It's an intense
structured breathing
technique designed to induce an altered non-ordinary state of consciousness for
emotional healing and
self-exploration. Typically involves prolonged, deep, rapid breathing while
lying down accompanied by
evocative music and guidance from a trained facilitator. Um, developed in 1970
by psychiatrist
Stanislav Grof and his wife, Christina, after LSD assisted psychotherapy became
restricted as a way to
reach similar therapeutic states without drugs. Wow.
Yeah. So there's a bunch of different styles of breathing that, um, like James
Nestor writes about
some of these in his book, breath. Um, is it breath or breathe?
Spelled the same way, man.
Is it? Doesn't one have an E?
One has an E.
I don't know what country you're from, I think.
I think breathe has an E. Uh, but the point is like, there's ways of inducing,
uh, a psychedelic
state without drugs. Uh, obviously the best one is the sensory deprivation tank.
That takes you to a very psychedelic place and it's completely natural and safe.
A float tank.
Yeah. Float tank.
Yeah.
Done that.
Which is invented by John Lilly, who, uh, also was a ketamine guy. He was
really into ketamine.
Oh, I got, I got, you got me into that float tank. I was in there one time and
I was like,
I didn't know if I was facing North or South. I didn't know if I was submerged
in the fucking water.
You feel like you're flying through the universe.
There's so much, the salt content keeps you so buoyant that you go into this trance-like
state.
I highly recommend that. Yeah.
I have a question for you on off topic.
Who the fuck wins this fight Friday night?
Oh God. Okay. If you have money to bet on it, you're betting on the Olympic
gold medalist.
Who's a multiple time heavyweight world champion, who's one of the greatest
knockout artists
in the history of the heavyweight division. That's Anthony Joshua.
What's fun is you don't think Jake Paul can win. And so the underdog rooter in
you is like,
well, let's see, let's order this. Let's see. I mean, the size difference is
insane.
Anthony Joshua is 245 pounds was the weight limit that he had to reach. He had
to drop down to 245 pounds.
He's probably a little heavier, but that's normal for him. That's fine. It's
not like he's going to be
dehydrated or anything. He weighed 243 and Jake Paul weighed 216. So, I mean,
that's a big gap.
It's a big gap in weight. It's a big gap in experience. I mean, you're talking
about a guy who
fought Usyk twice and wasn't stopped by Usyk. He's one of the greatest heavyweights,
if not the
greatest of all time, one of the greatest boxers of all time. You're talking
about a guy who beat
Vladimir Klitschko, again, fantastic. In a great fight.
Great fight. You're talking about a guy who, I mean, just knocked out Francis
Ngannou like it was
nothing. I mean, he's fucking dangerous. Anthony Joshua's still in his prime.
He's still one of the
best of the best. And Jake Paul is a guy who's been fighting guys like Ben Askren
and Tyron Woodley,
who was a great MMA fighter. But, you know, fought Nate Diaz and had a tough
fight with Nate Diaz.
And now he's going to fight Anthony fucking Joshua. Yeah. I mean, I got to say,
the reason I asked...
He's got balls. He's got balls. You know, Shakur just went and sparred with him
recently.
Yeah. And all these kids, I don't think I've ever wanted two people that are
fighting each other to
lose more. So I don't know which one I want to lose more. Because Anthony
Joshua, as great as he is,
I don't know. He beefed with Lennox. So I got to kind of like be with my guy.
Of course.
And then the other guy is just like so smart in the way he's playing this from
a marketing
standpoint, I think. Brilliant. Listen, he was supposed to fight Gervonta Davis,
who's 135 pounder,
who's tiny in comparison to him. And then he flip-flops.
And then he flips it. But he's taking a lot of heat for almost fighting Gervonta,
right? But Gervonta
had some legal troubles, so he got out of that. And then his response to that
is, "Okay, I'll fight
the biggest, baddest fucking heavyweight alive." Or one of them.
Yeah. And it's almost like a parallel universe. Because two guys that I manage
in their professional career are both calling the fight. So Lennox and Andre
are both there.
And I was talking to them last night, because they were at dinner together. I
said, "How are you taking
this? Isn't this fucking nutty to you?" It's definitely nutty, but that's the
Jake Paul show.
It's a side show. And all the young kids, like Shakur, they want to be around
him. They think he's
brilliant. And they're right in a way, right? Oh, yeah. No, he's brilliant in
his marketing,
for sure. Look, he's made an extraordinary amount of money, right? So he's
doing great. And he's young.
And he's super dedicated to boxing. I mean, you watch him train. I've watched
many
highlight reels of his training. He's very dedicated to boxing. But he keeps
getting better with every
fight. If you're Anthony Joshua, and you don't knock that fucking kid out, how
do you show your
face again in the UK? Right. And look, he might knock him out. I mean, and that
would probably just
show that Jake Paul is legitimate in his ability to take a very difficult fight.
You know, that he's
willing to not just fight guys that he could beat, like Ben Askren, but fight
guys that no experts
picking him to beat Anthony Joshua. I mean, I'm, I'm, I think I'm going to go.
I think I'm going to go and this is the first time that I'm like, I want to see
this show.
I want to say, I mean, these are two, I mean, Anthony Joshua for all,
all bullshit aside for all his shit talk with legs, a big moose of a man.
He's fast as fuck. He's built like an Adonis. I mean, you got to like, if you're
betting,
I mean, I don't know what the odds are, but the odds have to be heavily in
Anthony Joshua's favor.
Are they?
They have to be. He's an Olympic gold medalist.
What are the odds right now?
He's a two-time heavyweight world champion. I mean.
Let's both get hooked on gambling right now.
Yeah. Let's put that in DraftKings. Find out what the odds are if you bet on to
win.
Let me guess. 10 to one. 10 to one seems reasonable.
I'm going to guess it's 17 to one.
Yeah. That's even more reasonable. I'm, I'm trying to be polite.
Maybe it should be 30 to one. I mean, what was, uh,
Buster Douglas when he beat Mike Tyson, I think it was 42 to one.
Jamie, Jamie doesn't gamble.
I definitely don't sound loud in Texas.
Uh, he is a minus 1,000 favorite.
You're right.
Yeah.
So it's a 10 to one.
10 to one, right?
Yeah.
Holy shit. That's a great bet. You got to bet a thousand to win a hundred.
Yeah. But you got to feel like you're going to win if everything is normal.
But Joshua's chinny though, man.
Is he that chinny though? I mean, he fought in Gano.
There was a minus 10,000 favorite on that card also.
Who's the minus 10,000?
Chino Marley versus, it's the very first fight, but minus 10,000 is an insane
number.
Well, listen, my feeling is who knows what's going to happen. It's a fight. Fights
are crazy.
But if I had to guess, I mean, you got to lean towards the guy who's a two-time
heavyweight champion.
Is that on that card too?
Yeah.
Anderson Silva versus Tyron Wilber. Interesting.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I got to kind of respect this, this, uh, Jake Paul kid.
As much as it pains me to say that he takes two guys that he beat and puts them
on the card together.
Oh, he's right back.
Listen, he also supported, uh, Ben Askren.
Ben Askren needed, uh, multiple or double lung transplant and his insurance
didn't cover it.
He footed part of the bill for that.
Um, I'll tell you what's going to be a great fight.
What?
Shakur against Tiafimo Lopez.
That's a very good fight.
Yeah.
It was a very good fight.
Uh, Jay, Prince, and I were, he, you know, here's a kid that'll fight anyone.
Literally.
The only other, the only other fighter that we've managed over all these years
that was like, I don't care who it is.
Put him in front of me.
I want the best.
It was Andre Ward.
Everyone else is chess playing.
Shakur is like, I want Javante Davis, Tiafimo.
Give me the biggest name you can.
And, uh, I just think that's going to be an awesome fight.
That's a phenomenal fight.
That's at the Garden.
When is that?
January 31st.
I would love for you to be there.
That'll be great.
That's an exciting fight.
Yeah.
I'm super excited about that.
We were just up there for the press conference, me and Jay.
And, uh, yeah, it's going to be a good one.
Yeah.
Two guys in their prime.
I love it.
I have a, one more thing I want to throw in here.
Jelly Roll received a full pardon today.
Wow.
Governor of Tennessee.
Fuck yeah.
Good.
That's amazing.
Yo, man, that moment on the show, what was it, last week?
Mm-hmm.
Man, I was a puddle.
Yeah.
That was so cool.
He's an amazing person.
That dude's lost 300 pounds.
He's amazing.
Let me see that picture of him again.
Look at him.
He looks, he looks like a different fucking person.
Bro, he has different hands.
He's got a different face, different body.
And we worked out together, man.
He's, he ran 2.6 miles on the treadmill out there.
And then we got in the sauna together.
He's fucking great.
He's, uh, that, that moment when he said, can I hug you?
Yeah.
That was beautiful.
He's a beautiful person.
He really is.
And you are too, brother.
Good for him.
Thank you, Brian.
Thank you.
Love you to death.
Thank you as always for having me.
Thanks for being here.
We're awesome.
Appreciate you, brother.
Appreciate you too.
Uh, goodbye.
Bye.