and some men in miami sells twenty kilos of cocaine to an undercover agent. you want to ask who is the seller working where does the money go if the money goes back to a drug lord in colombia who's going to keep the proceeds he's in the conspiracy even though he actually wasn't there when this sale took place he's a conspirator and so part of the goal of the conspiracy law is to make sure that the most senior level all of those in the criminal organization are justly punished the problem is when you flip it around and the lowest level people in the criminal organization get punished just like they are the key. and that's the big problem in the way in which the conspiracy laws are being applied. i knitted up in federal prison in dublin california and i realized that i would need to spend

a lot of time in the law library and i needed to film from a arise my sound my case and everything that had gone wrong if you furthered the conspiracy one step you're guilty for everything in the conspiracy no matter when you entered the conspiracy it could have been on the last day. because i had collected some money on a technically was guilty of conspiracy was held responsible for everything that everybody else had done and my sentence my twenty four years was established based on the sum total of all the ecstasy that sandy had manufactured that's where my ears came from my ears did. things that came from three point seven million tablets of ecstasy that he had manufactured puts me on the chart at this lab just twenty four years that's how a judge sentences you based on

a chart the way the sentencing laws apply to conspiracy. being subject to being punished for all the conduct that everybody in the conspiracy has been involved in. the idea of proportional punishment can be lost if this triggers a mandatory sentence to add insult to injury while i'm incarcerated for twenty four years he comes back to the us and goes before the same judge this sent me to twenty four years and he got three years probation because he cooperated and snatched out everybody. the person who comes in early and cooperates usually ends up with a lower sentence than the person in the conspiracy who walks up two days before the trial and tenders a plea that sentence will be different even though they may be situated the same

it's just plain different and those are the yangs and the ngs of the sentencing process that the court has not a whole lot of control over and the u.s. attorneys and the prosecuting attorneys have control over but it does result in a different sentence when you're facing something like twenty or thirty years. you have people that are are doing things they never thought they would do which is turn in their friends testify against friends sometimes they will even make up. false information to testify falsely against people just in order to get themselves out from under the terrible legal situation they are in the pressure to provide information is huge and coercive and un-american. but that's the way mandatory minimums are set up. my mother calls me and she said well i need to tell you something. and i'm thinking the worst just while i may is

featured in our magazine she's been in prison for a number of years and why that was such a catalyst was suddenly we had something tangible to hand to people the community found out and my brother got involved and my father and senator byrd and senator pryor and everyone started actually looking into the case and saying well what could have possibly happened here this just doesn't seem right my story in case started gaining momentum and we got i think up to fifteen politicians wrote letters supporting my clemency when i read it i was i was sympathetic. because i thought. that her husband was the primary driver of the offense she was clearly had a subordinate role needs. and she was caught up in the way of these

conspiracy laws that are extremely broad ranging and you don't have to do very much to be to get yourself stuck in a case like i went to my case managers office and walked in the door and she said she was in a frenzy and she said you know where are you going to release to and i was like what do you mean and she said were you going to live when you get out of prison and i said wow i guess what my parents for a while and she said because i've got to set you up on probation and i said why. i just said you're going home. and. i couldn't process it i was just right. my reaction was are i think i was sitting down so i stood up and i said they're going to start and i sat down and i said what do you mean and she said you've gotten executive clemency president clinton has ordered you out and you have to be out today by five

o'clock the president had granted her petition and she was told that afternoon and evening they let her out that day it was really great because we always got bad news in there nobody ever got. it was really nice to have all the women want me across the compound and there was that moment in the compound of victory but it was really hard to because you have to leave you have to leave so many people but. we can confidently say today that we are finally beginning to win the war against crime now is the time to show drug users that we mean to reach our goal of a drug free generation in the united states you will be put away and put away for good three strikes and you are. removed the truth as stated by the nixon administration is to create a drug free society. that's what it's all about why we spend the billions of

dollars and incarcerate millions of people. is to create a drug free society. we've been asked this now for good marks for forty years trillions of dollars into it no wind in sight really within a reasonable person says how much closer are we to creating a drug free society. you begin to realize that perhaps we've been given a mission here that is impossible to achieve we saw violent crimes go through the roof as these. criminal gangster organizations fought one another so we're seeing that type of phenomenon today in our major metropolitan areas like los angeles the crips against the bloods and of course there are endless filings that we're seeing in mexico and in places like south america as these very rich powerful cartels fight one another it lines up perfectly with alcohol prohibition when you look at

oklahoma prevision the richest man in the country was ok he controlled if you tried to get in his market he would kill you there were also kinds of sub factions they trying to to manufacture it in their bathrooms and still it was once in a teary you didn't know what it was cut with sometimes it in a freeze people would drink this group of people who drink it to get cirrhosis kids would die in the crossfire it sounds all too familiar to this exactly was happening on the streets today in the united states when it comes to getting violence in the drug one of the problems that we have a drug prohibition is so different of a business you make so much money in such little time and the difference between arresting someone for dealing drugs and arresting someone for committing rapes. when you arrest a rainbow for someone committing burglaries you know what the rapes stop. the burglary stop when you arrest someone for dealing drugs dealing drugs doesn't stop on that corner you just create

a job opportunity for someone else to come in and unfortunately when a job is filled with usually some fighting sioux name people. the emphasis over criminal justice system should be on violent offenses this is where most people are concerned about. they won murderers and branded they want murders and rapes solved and they want these people taken out of the community and locked away in prison so the communities can be safe i don't know what to come out just as well to be like without the war on drugs. my only experience of it has been during the war on drugs. and i started family in one thousand nine hundred ninety one war on drugs really heated up in the eighty's kept rolling through the ninety's you know it sort of started tapering off and then to thousands but it's still alive and well it's like a pounding funder of anti drug as styria in one thousand nine hundred six we

must do something anything and that meant grasping at straws and not looking ahead at what the costs are going to be or what might be effective while i was on the hill i increasingly became convinced that the war on drugs was a mistake it was. counterproductive and i wanted to put my energy into ending it and so in january one thousand nine hundred eighty nine i started the criminal justice policy foundation. and that is been the opportunity for me for the last twenty five years to. mobilize different kinds of strategies to end drug prohibition a lot of it has been through other organizations i helped start families against mandatory minimums in my office i'm still very active with students for sensible drug policy. and with law enforcement against prohibition. and so

a lot of my work is advocacy. strategizing you know what are the ways to change drug policy to reform from the justice system. there are. countless numbers of people who are in prison for inconceivably long sentences for being minor minor offenders in the drug trade these are just a handful of you know files from families against mandatory minimums. we are these people you know james life sentence. fidel clark thirty five years timothy tyler life sentence. sure on the jones life sentence. this is not an aberration this is the life blood this is the typical case this is the typical you know clarence aaron who's out numerous cases i mean these are all

excessively long cases these are you know you see colombian drug lords here you see mexico guzman you see in the mexican drug lords here. through. the. whole make this manufacture consent to public wealth. when the ruling

classes protect themselves. when the crime and larry go round lifts only the one percent so. we can all middle of the room sick. well i think it's certainly. makes sense for for moscow to think both strong in its contacts with the united states i just fear that the dominant view in this city is that it is merely impossible until the united states kind of settle this domestic divide the environment and in these seas you know i hate to see these bonds work toxic but that's exactly what it is and then i think it's in

a way you know you're damned if you do and you're down to film. i had a great education a good job and a family that loved me. i never had to worry about how i would eat somewhere i would sleep. but i'm facing christmas alone out on the streets of london. well you look to be a little bit cold on. the floor you like going to. the you know to simulate it to still give up food for the homeless. because you don't really feel like a human being you know. and then. the guy just came over to me so me and gave me a change of this book. which

. i was so glad to to start to work my way out of the prison. so going the clinton house was a halfway house you were halfway home. but there was still open. so i got the clint house already already has some experience or move out of the back row. i called my old boss so he was in a halfway house at the time and i think someone i don't know what company happy i'm doing rufus and his mother came to me and next we would out by him appear shoes

that he needed to do his group and and he just blossom he just blossomed from there i was so happy to be at work and be to be have the ability to work again that i never missed a day i was always there i was always there hour early before anybody else get there. so in essence i was hungry i was hungry to work i was hungry to be free. and have the ability to change my life around so all those stains. made me a good employee any mentally dismayed is minor in food and he was going to go if you know go into business for yourself. out all starting i just really felt that i had what it took to be entrepreneur and to be successful. so i quit my job and i was fully fledged into business then i had to leave my for here business i made about thirty some thousand dollars of our first year that. i remember

a vest i'm back into the business i'm buying tools a mile ladders some growing the business or take my second year i read about he summed our. third year i did about one hundred thousand homes told he was surely progressing so now i want to have a million dollars next year normal to say i want to thousand miles. in the early two thousand nine hundred ninety nine or early two thousand my family went over the million dollar more. that while one zero i never thought. that i would call a million dollar business. a person has to have a dream. you know they have to want to do better for themselves you can bring a person out of prison. and they can have nothing and they can make something of themselves and that's what they want. when you lived a certain way for so long and as far as he. became a way. dad needs to be put out here because

a lot of people don't know how to break to change from new street saying that's saying get off only you a single hold you want to you. to be on the ball of war. for me is to be that beacon of hope oh foam no matter where you come from no matter what you've done you can because the same bull i sold drugs on. directly across the street for my office is used to set a bar called the night light. sold drugs out that door for a number of years inside and out so they have mobility almost it became before and then to show people that yes i was that once drove billy that red up and down the street and sold drugs and did all that stuff there i'm now a changed person and i'm now on somebody that they can expire to also. executive clemency was

a bittersweet victory to be honest right there because it didn't take me very long . after i got out and the excitement may exhilaration wore off that i realized that that. i may be free. so many of my friends and other people aren't and. as long as they're not then i'm not really so i started a can do foundation which is clemency for all nonviolent drug offenders to try to continue to help some of the women i left behind i did time with danielle barbara mary richards and they've all. done well over twenty years these are all guys who are serving life these are for pot he's for l.s.d. . i have just got back from washington d.c. i was there for a on a fundraiser about the whole clemency project that's happening and in fact i took. all these guys to the front in front of the white house and anyway there's several

of them that i stood out in front of the white house advocating for their clemency when i started practicing law almost forty years ago there were about a half a million people in prison. and today there are two point three million people in prison billions of dollars have been poured into the prison expansion not only of the federal prison capacity but billions have been sent to sate local governments to expand their present capacity and during the one nine hundred ninety s. we were building on average a prison a week and as soon as these prisons were built it's important to emphasize that they were immediately filled up with first nurse and even today many of our prison facilities are operating beyond their design capacity if you compare in the u.s. with other industrialized nations canada or western europe we lock up are citizens of five to ten times the rate of those other nations it's not that we have five or

ten times the rate of crime of those other nations but we have consciously chosen to have a much more unity to broach to crime then other comparable nations that have been in this was only seeing as a cursory. seems to me though i. got a job. and. a lot of. parents. as either a child. of the past from their parents children's life is going to. be conditional and. loving and. just because. i'm ours. bred jellicoe i want to six thirty seven zero six my first encounter with the for the prison systems are pretty young. lifestyle of drugs you know start

early the thing with me was i got out february i think it was two thousand and twelve within three months i got out they mccourt fives boehm arrest to sion paid. child support paid everything i. zero. i started my own business i got a vehicle had tags had a license and. in october that year i decided smokes weed and i thought the worst case scenario if i go to probation offices i have to go to a program where i'd be urine test regularly or go to a meeting well the reality the fact is dirty urine is a violation in the probation officer i have was new and she was a stickler for the law and she violated me their own spot i wept like a little child i couldn't believe i had made all this work on my i have all this to show you look at all this i have i've done it she's a you've done a lot but you still using drugs and it's against the law. to get sentenced to four

years for dirty you're in the houses. it's a lot watching your children grow up in michoud in wave and say by daddy as you're walking out of a visit it's just it doesn't get easier you don't stand and as you get older you think you become more custom of this but it never under any circumstances gets easier. for. c.n.n. . i want to say thank you for spending as much time as you do at the halles watching everybody all moms at work i know you miss out on playtime i know you miss out on a lot of banks so i just want to start off by saying that thank you i'm proud of you wrestling. i'm glad you're sticking with it i know you're going so just like i said try to stick with it and you know by year the manor house did the best you can

take out the trash drive things your manners i love you so we're very proud of you of those wonderful. little varies from seven to thirteen really grown up. and i'm sorry i'm not there to go. and you know as much as i'd like. to turn out pretty good and i'm very very proud. i really am. now oh i don't know i'm so right my baby. i love ya vision very recently you just got. so very boring i know you worked hard to tell me how you are doing when. you're strong so friends. and i. want to know i love you here i miss you very much oh here's a man i miss you and there is a culture that i went through it is more moments. any time you hate me you miss me

there's a gaping same things mom when she used the word i love you and i miss you all and i hope to see you soon and that he loves you. it's. the four of them. because of the fact that so many of us have lived for thirty years in this box of mandatory sounds federal sentencing guidelines and you know the drug war we have to start breaking out of that box and thinking about a world away that out the outside of those confines if you're interested in reducing the injustice and do see mass incarceration you have to go to the root of the problem which is too many laws on the books and what is the primary problem there as far as prioritizing which was ought to go first top of my list is the drug

laws because i think we're in another situation where it's very similar to the days of alcohol prohibition where the government has just declared millions and millions of people to be criminals and that's what they've done with the stroke laws there danger of looking at one out. just days after another can. blind you to the broader perspective that there are so many excuses these are actually the typical this is the system it is broadly unjust and that it is so wasteful it's so counterproductive it's so inefficient wanted us to be why does it continue. why are we going to be able to spot. more efficiently on the policy that's been going on since man eighty six. want to know so many low

level as many as major. that's a very deeply disturbing in i mean the elite don't waste so much treasure. and inflict so much more. and cause so much injustice in a society where our radios are about liberty and justice for all.

our people feed the economy because they buy scratch ticket scratch off lottery. it's you know when i was living in the ghetto in new york you know the red apple grocery store uptown had the highest prices in town and in the liquor stores are open and you buy you know more expensive in the ghetto and that's how you build an economy it's almost built on the backs of the poor america was built on the slave market america was built on prison labor to give them a look at the good times of america the ne'er do wells it's all very squishy and swell that's over we got to go back to to basics .

so you. being. used does. not. make. you lose your local superman film he can see that in the future is. what you're going to formally leave you. alone if you move in with the big one was in the bottom of most and even many possibilities but when you moved over to the

field. with the imminent departure of u.s. defense secretary james mattis fears grow that natori. blackwater is making a comeback full page ads published in its name warning that we are telling. us congress has criticised the cooperation deal between the associated press and china's news agency saying beijing might exploit it for propaganda. and as another year goes to an end to media analyst lionel shares his personal look back at the winners and losers of twenty eighteen. the initial screeching clamor of revolution and the truth hurts.