that's where my ears came from my ear is dead. things that i came from. three point seven million tablets of x. the thing that he had manufactured puts me on the chart and this lab is just twenty four years that's how i 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 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 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 tender simply 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 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 bumpers 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 if she was clearly had a subordinate role in these. 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. and. 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 behind. 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 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 a good mark for forty years trillions of dollars into it no wind and some 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 violence 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 he didn't know what it was cut with sometimes that at the end you freeze people who drink this group of people who drink you 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 the rain this is 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 viciously some fighting sioux name and even. 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 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 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 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 and before 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. clark thirty five years timothy tyler life sentence. sharan 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 you you see colombian drug lords here you see mexico guzman you seen the mexican drug lords here. monsanto's around for cigarettes they're carcinogenic money is the same thing as financially carcinogenic and you need to eradicate what's left by simply getting lighter fluid throwing it in a big pile and setting on fire. rockets

on the more considered and the most needy against india and the most you know month it's national into any one of its neighbors as. this is where pakistan is very different. then india right now if they go on this trajectory unfortunately even not being able to be responsible players in this region this meeting has suffered. because of this ongoing conflict between these two giants in the region. the maturity to. go in and you may never get out some sort of. my teenage gang rules here because i don't want to go to move then i let the mind of those who were who were sweet but. named me will be. told will

come out. my last name or i'm going to see here that i. was. sent out looking for the yeah when i knew you as soon as you stand and melanie like that wouldn't. you no one knew about the mccain little communes all i see. i didn't think the numbers mean something they've matter to us with over one trillion dollars in debt more than ten white collar crime happens each day. eighty five percent of global wealth he longs to be ultra rich eight point six percent world market most good percent some with one hundred five hundred three first

second first second and fifth when he rose to twenty thousand dollars. china's building two point one billion dollars a i industrial park but don't let the numbers over. the only number you need to remember one one business show you know bored to miss one and only boom box. after the previous stage of my career was over everyone wondered what i was going to do next the ball different clubs on one hand it is logical to say the home field where everything is familiar on the other i wanted a new challenge and a fresh perspective and i'm used to suppress it. or not seriously. i'm going to talk about football not the moral thing to think i was going to go.

by the way ways of the slide here. i was so glad to to start to work my way out of the prism alm so go in the clinton house was a halfway house you were half way all but you were still open. so i got the clinton house already already has some experience in dorm roof and had a roof background. i called my old boss so he was in the halfway house at the time and i think someone i don't know what company happy i am doing roofing and his mother came to me and next we would not buy him appear shoes that he needed to do his roof 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 unless i was home going 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 dismayed as mine is insane and he is going to go if you know go into business for sam in a salad all starting i just really felt that i had would talk to be entrepreneur and to be successful. so i quit my job and i was fully fledged into business then i had to leave i froze year business i made about thirty some thousand dollars or more for. i remember a vest i'm back into the business and tools of my own ladders so i'm growing the business and i think my second year party did about he some. third year i did about

one hundred thousand so slowly but surely progress and so now i'm up to half a million dollars next to normal too so 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 zero 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 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 a hold of you

a single hold you want to gary to be on that ball of war. for me is to be that beacon of hope oh follow no matter where you come from the matter 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 that i've sold drugs out of that door for a number of years inside and out so they have mobility so model it became before and then to show people that yes i was that once drove dillard at read up and down a street and sold probes and did all this stuff there i'm now a changed person and i'm now somebody that they can expire two also. 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 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 they're 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 to broach. this and other comparable nations and have the next was only see a massacre as. seems to me though i. got a job. and. a lot. of other. tasks from their parents children's lives and 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 of the prison systems are pretty young. lifestyle drugs you know star early the thing with me was i got out february i think it was two thousand and twelve within

three months i got out of a macor fives bamer restitution paid. child support paid everything i. zero. 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 the probation office i have to go to a program where i'd be urine test regularly or go to a meet well the reality fact is 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. for. c.n.n. . i want to say thank you for spending as much time as you do at hal's 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 i think. 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.

friends from seven to thirteen. 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 know i'm so right my baby. i love ya 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 you know i love you here i miss you very much oh here's what i miss you and there is a bunch of moon that i went through it is. anytime you hate me you miss me there's a there's a gaping 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 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 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 there danger of looking at one out we. just days after another can. do to the broader perspective that they 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 wanted us to be outraged why does it continue. why are we going to be able to respond. more efficiently on the policy that's been going on since many edicts. want to know so many low level as manage the major. that's a very deeply disturbing indictment of the elite don't waste so much treasure. and

inflict so much more. and cost so much injustice in a society where our radios are about liberty and justice for all.

this is a sticker from the water bottle phone in the stomach of a fish the brand is part of the coca-cola company which sells millions of bottles of soda every day the idea was that let's tell consumers there are the bad ones there are the litter bugs are trying this way industry should be blamed for all this waste the company has long promised to reuse the plastic. their plastic. on the. teeth but for now the mountains of moist only grow higher.

profits on the more considered and the most needy against india encouraging on the most vehement it's national against any one of its neighbors good morning this is where pakistan is very different. then india right now if they go on this trajectory unfortunately not being able to be responsible players in this region this region has suffered for far too long because of this ongoing conflict between these two giants in the region. yet to all this is how the. load.

a leap.

of also a lot of suffering every time. i know myself.