i was in los angeles it was march of one nine hundred ninety one. i go over and i look out the window and there they are. i was arrested that day bother and i wanted her to bargain. 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. not guilty alternately i was convicted for conspiracy and dire 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 here 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 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 i technically was guilty of conspiracy. 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 acts the thing that sandy had manufactured that's where my ears came from my ears did. things that

came from three point seven million tablets of x. the thing that he had manufactured puts me on the chart at this lab just twenty four years that is 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 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 in the ng's 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 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. 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 walk 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 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 billions of dollars and incarcerate millions of people. just to create a drug free society. and we've been at this now for good nor for forty years trillions of dollars into it no wind in signing really and when 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 a 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 their rent is 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 prudish and 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 once in a teary he didn't know what it was cut with sometimes at any 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 and such a little time and the difference between arresting someone for dealing drugs and arresting someone for committing rapes. when you arrest the rapists or someone making 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 and even. the emphasis over criminal justice system should be on violent offenses this is what most people are concerned about. the one murderers and britain did they want murders and rapes solved and they want these people taken out of the community and locked away in prisons or communities can be saved i don't know what the criminal justice one of the 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 sort of started tapering off and then to thousands but it's still

alive and well it's like pounding thunder 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 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 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 in the form from the. justice system. there are. countless numbers of people who are in prison for conceivably 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 where these people you know 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 pattern you know clarence aaron whose numerous cases i mean these are all excessively long cases these are you know you see colombian drug lords here you see mexico chapal guzman you see in the mexican drug lords here. that's geysers financial survival and they say money to develop. these if this is a central plank support diagram is going to call them right now say stop to. i had a great education a good job and a family that loved me. i never had to worry about how i would eat and where i

would speak. i'm facing christmas alone on the streets of london well you look. at the glory like you only. you know destroyed it will still get out of this. but you don't really feel like a human being in that. and then. the guy just came over to me saw me and gave me all the change of his pocket. i was so glad to to start to work my way out of the prison alm so

going the clinton house was a halfway house you were halfway all but you were still open. so i got the clinton house all we 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 were out by him appear shoes that he needed to do his group and and he just bought some he just blossomed from there i was so happy to be at work and be then 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 there. so unless 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 in food and he was going to go if you know go into business for yourself in a salad all starting i just really felt that i had what it took to be awesome but know when to be successful. so i quit my job and i was fully fledged into business and i did. i believe i froze year business i made about thirty some thousand dollars or more for a shit that. i remember a vest i'm back into the business and borrowed tools a mile ladders some growing the business and i think my second year i read about he some. third year i did about one hundred some thousand some stall he 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 one home 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 if that's what they want. when you lived a certain way for so long and came as far as he. became a mom the 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 ahold to you a single hold you want to you gary to be on that ball for. for me is to be that beacon of hope oh no matter where you come from the what you've done you can come out of that 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 their lives sold drugs out of that war 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 billy that red up and down a street and sold probes and did all that stuff there i'm now a changed person and i'm now so my. thank you expired two 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 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 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 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 road. to crime then other comparable nations that have the netherlands was only seeing massacres. as we go i. got a job. or and. a lot of. care and.

as another. child has found their parent children's law is going to. marry and conditional and. loving and. just because. mars. bred jellicoe want to six thirty seven zero six my first encounter of the for the prison systems are pretty young. life style 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 boehm arrest to sion paid. child support paid everything i was that's. i start 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 mean well the reality fact is a dirty urine is a violation and 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 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 that 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 bye 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 than this but never under any circumstances gets easier. as you go on. for. zina. 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 a house still the best you can take out the trash drive things your manners i love you so very proud of you and of those wonderful. little varies from seven to thirteen. and i'm sorry i'm not there to guide you. as much as life. turned out pretty good and i'm very very proud. i really am. now oh i don't know surrender my baby.

i love ya vision very recently just got. so very proud and i know you worked hard to tell me how you are doing when. you're strong so friends. and i. want you know i love you here i miss you very much oh here's a man i miss you and there is a bunch of them that i went through it is more moments. any time you hate me you miss me there's a 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 fourth of july. because of the fact that so many of us have lived for thirty years in this box of mandatory

sounds 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 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 they're danger of looking at one outrageous. after another can. do to the broader perspective that they are so many excuses these are actually the typical this is the system it is broadly on jobs

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 vision on the policy between going on six months each six months want to know so many low level is mentally in as major. that's a very deeply disturbing indictment of the elite don't waste so much treasure. and inflict so much more. and cause so much injustice in a society where our credos are about liberty and justice for all.

to. leave it. to.

come to call russia no one's ever no one has ever had a country never even heard about most schools. have. to. join me every day on the alex i'm unsure when i'll be speaking to guests of the world of politics sports i'm sure i'll see that we.

so you will both be in. your last years does do you know that. the people most of. all what i mean. when i make it was not. really a local superman film you can see that in the field where you. if you're in the government in libya. or if you move in with the big one within them what are most most and you will many possibilities but where will you move forward

if you're. just a small experiment democratic party group explain away alleged interference in an alabama state election their best occasions being launched over the group it takes more than a thousand russian social media boards to allegedly discredit ever again and a. theory in france says yellow vests protesters have been out in the streets for seven consecutive weekend in running battles with only. the freedom of information ads that helped expose high level corruption and wandering in the u.s. comes under pressure both parties want the right to with jets requests they think all of them.