it was march of one thousand nine. hundred. i understand she areas not somebody and i could prove. she got me but just to save are all a scam not as that's not my daughter so she wouldn't do this. and as a result they were under. i could not plead guilty to everything that they accuse me of is now i said not guilty and that alternately i was convicted for conspiracy and i received twenty four year sentence there's a way in which you have to see the conspiracy law as a very important tool of law enforcement if the crime is selling drugs

and some men in miami cells 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 know end up in federal

prison in dublin california i realized that i would need to spend a lot of time in the law library and i needed to film from a wise man sound my case and everything that had gone wrong if you furthered the conspiracy in 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 a stablished based on the sum total of all the acts the thing that sandy had manufactured that's where my ears came from my years did. things that i came from three point seven million tablets of x. to say 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. so the idea of proportion. 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 the sentence 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 in 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. my mother calls me and she said well i need to tell you something. and i'm thinking the worst just while amy 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 in the community found out and my brother got involved and my father and senator 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 with 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. and. 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 got an 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. was really nice to have all the women what we across the compound and there was that moment in the compound a victory but. we can confidently say today that we are finally beginning to win the war against 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. the primary mission of the drug war as stated by the nixon administration is to create a drug free society. that's what it's all about that's why we spend the billions of

dollars and incarcerate millions of people. is to create a drug free society. we've been at 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 into this market he would kill you there were also kinds of sub factions they trying to to manufacture it in their bathtubs and still it was unseen and terry you didn't know what it was cut with sometimes at any freeze people would drink this group of people who drink it you could 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 is someone committing burglaries you know what the rapes stop. the burglary stock 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 that our communities can be safe i don't know what the come on just as one of them 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 and then he kept rolling through the ninety's you know sort of started tapering off and then to thousands but it's still alive and well it's like pounding funder of anti drug is 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 and 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 and 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 jane felt life sentence. 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 clarence aaron whose numerous pieces i mean these are all excessively long cases these are your you see colombian drug lords here you see mexico guzman

you seen the mexican drug lords here no. more people feed the economy because they buy scratch tickets scratch off lottery tickets 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 liquor stores are open any buy you know more expensive in the ghetto build an economy it's always built on the backs of the poor america was built on the slave market america was built on prison labor. day the good times of america the ne'er do wells it's all very well that's over we got to go back to basics.

i had a great education a good job and a family that loved me. i never got to war about how when we meet somewhere i would speak. i'm facing christmas alone on the streets of london will you look. for you like your own. you know to simulate it to still be about the focus. but you don't really feel like a. he being in it. and then. the guy just came over to me saw me and gave me all change of his pocket. back.

i was so glad to to start to work my way out of the prison alm so going the clint house was a halfway house you were half way all but it was still open. so i got the clint house already already has some experience or move out of the back row. i call 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 roofing and his mother came to me and next we would like him appear seems 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 them to 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 their home so in essence i was hungry i was hungry to work i was hungry to

be free. and had the ability to change my life around so all those stains. made me a good employee in minutes when he dismissed his mind up and seen that he was going to go if you know go into business for yourself in this al it all started 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 and i believe i froze year. as of this i made about thirty some thousand dollars or more for a shit. i remember a vest i'm back into the business i'm buying tools of my own ladders so i'm growing the business and i think my second year party did about he sometimes. third year i did about one a solo thousand some story was surely progressing so now i'm up to half a million dollars next to 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. so while i was known i never thought that i was on 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 if that's what they want. when you lived a certain way for so long and came as far as he. became a mom way. dad needs to be put out here. because a lot of people don't know how to break to change from this unique thing that's saying get a hold the you have single hold you want to you gary to be on that ball of war. for me is to be that beacon of hope oh foam no matter where you come from the

matter what you've done you can come out of that because the same bull i sold both of them. directly across the street for my office is used to set a bar called the night light that i've sold drugs out of that door for a number of years inside and out so they have mobility so mallaby came before then to show people that yes i was that once drove deliberate up and down a street and sold probes and did all this stuff there i'm now a changed person and i'm now so much that they can expire to. executive clemency it was a bittersweet victory to be honest right there because it didn't take me very long . after i got out and the excitement 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 the 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 richardson 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 nurses 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 our citizens at 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 new approach to crime then other comparable nations that have the nets was only see him as a cursory. seems to me to go i.

got a job. and. a lot of. the urine. as it were there shall. pass from their parents children's lives and we're going to. marry and conditional and. loving and. just because. i'm ours. bred jellicoe i want to six thirty seven zero six my first encounter of the for the present systems are pretty young. lifestyle of drugs you know starling 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 fame arrests to sion paid. child support paid everything i. zero. i start my own business i got a vehicle had tags had

a license and everything in october that year i decided smokes weed and i thought worst case scenario if i go to probation offices i have to go to a program where i'd be urine test regularly i go to any a well the reality of fact is a dirty urine is a violation and probation officer i had 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 all 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 issue 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 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 why you're the man of house did the best you can take out the trash drive things you manners i love you so we're very proud of you and of those wonderful. friends from seven to thirteen really growing up. and i'm sorry i'm not there to go. had you as much of a life lived. to turn out pretty good and i'm very very proud.

i really am. now oh i don't surrender my baby. i love you no vision very recently you just got. so very proud and i know you worked hard to tell me how you were 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. any time you hate me you miss me there's a there's a new evening same things mama she was. i love you and i miss you all and i hope to see you soon and that he loves you. and it's. the fourth of july. because of

the fact that so many of us have lived for thirty years in this box of mandatory sentences and 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 to 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 they're danger of looking at one out there. just days after another can. blind you to the broader perspective that there are so many excuses and 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 want us to be why does it continue. why are we going to be able to spot. it more efficiently on the policy it's been going on since man each six month want to know so many lol that is meant to be his major. that is a very deeply disturbing indictment in the ability to 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.

we've got to do is identify the threats that we have it's. crazy even foundation let it be an arms race is on offer and it's very dramatic development only

a silly and dangerous business i don't see how that strategy will be successful very critical time time to sit down and talk. when our mind when the content of our mind is changed there are fees equal out the ratio of the level of the physiology that is at the level of the brain the brain as a form of plasticity can we wire itself and not just the brain but also the rest of our body respond to that.

does. not. make it. thank. really a local superman from him he can see as you know he is by the fact. that you're in the form of a really. almost human with them with the baby one with a number on the nose and the woman he pulls up in this bomoh in few before without difficulty.

shows unique footage from the russian defense ministry as first full public test run of a new hypersonic strategic missile called. britain's the times newspaper interviews of. government forces in eastern ukraine he says there are members of his law make state in his ranks while the leader of his battalion admitted to being part of a terrorist group committing atrocities in russia. and with the imminent departure.