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 organisation get punished just like they are the key. and that's the big problem and 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 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. 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 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. 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 said you're going home. and. i couldn't process it i was just like. 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 . a letter out that day it was really great because we always got bad news in there nobody ever got. was really nice to have all the women walk me across the come. 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. we can confidently say that we are finally beginning to win the war. 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. 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. to create a drug free society. and we've been at this now for a good nar 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 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 bathtubs and still it was once in a teary he didn't know what it was cut but sometimes it in different people would drink to some group of people who drink it he 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 going to comes to getting violence on 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

a rainbow or someone committing burglaries you know what the rapes stop. the burglaries 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 so fighting sioux name and even greater. the emphasis over from middle 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 i don't know what to come on just as 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 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 and my office i'm stand 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 low. four. minor minor offenders. these are just a handful of you know files from families against mandatory minimums where 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 long cases

these are your you see colombian drug lords here you see mexico. the mexican drug lords here. this is a stick. 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. the litter box they're throwing this away industry should be blamed for all this waste to company has promised to reuse the plastic.

on. the mountains of waste only grow. may never get. well i love. my teenage gang rules here because i go to one of the movie then i let the mind of those who were with us and we but. name me will be. told will come out you. might see a murder scene here that it was. but now it's looking for the yeah. and melanie went up in the food.

you know and you know the mccain who can use all i see. these. all the hot. 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 all but you were still open. so i got the clint house already already has some experience in dorm room at a movie background. 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 in x. we were out by him appear shoes that he needed to do his roof and and he just blossom it just blossomed from there i was so happy to be at work and to be there but 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 in minutes when he dismayed is mine and in saying that he was going to go in for you know go into business for yourself and that's 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 and i believe i froze year business i made about thirty some thousand dollars or more for a share. i remember a vest i'm back into the business i'm buying tools a while ladders so i'm growing the business and i think my second year i read about he's a. third year i did about one a solo thousand some stall he was surely progressing so now i'm up to half a million dollars next in a moment to say i want to now miles in. the early two thousand nine hundred ninety

nine our own two thousand my family went over the million dollar more. so wow wow you know 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. themselves that's what they want. to certain way for so long in his forest. way. that needs to be put out here because a lot of people don't know how to break to change from the street scene that's saying get off only you. want to die to be all that bull of war. for me is to be that beacon of hope. no matter where you come from the what you've done you can because the same they sold drugs. 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 so almost it became before and then to show people that yes i was that once drug dealer that read up and down the street and sold drugs and did all that stuff there i'm now a changed person and i'm now somebody that they could expire to also. 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 and 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 fair 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 that i stood out in front of the white house advocating for their clemency. when i started practicing law almost forty years ago there 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 ners 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 been in this was only see him as a cursory. seems to me to go i. got a job or and. a lot of. parents. that are there. and the child has from their parents children's lives and going to.

the conditional and. loving him. just because. i'm ours. bred jellicoe one two six three seven zero six my first encounter of the of the prison 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 boehm arrests to sion paid. child support paid everything i was that's. i start my own business i got a vehicle 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 fact is 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 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 the business it is just it doesn't get easier you don't stand and as you get older you think you become more custom than this but it never under any circumstances gets easier. is how you do on. 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 i think. how do 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 manor house still the best you can take out the trash drive things you manners i love you so very proud of you and you're both of those wonderful. friends from seven to thirteen really grown up. and i'm sorry i'm not there to guide you as much as. you 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 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 what i miss you and there is a culture that i went through it is more moments or any time you hate me you miss me there's a there's a gaping same thing as mom when she was. i love you and i miss you all and i hope to see you soon and that he loves you. too 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 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 case after another can. blind you to the poor. perspective that they are so many excuses and these are actually the typical this is the system it is broadly unjust to and that is so inefficient one of us to be why just taken in. why are we going to even the smart. money more

efficiently on the policy it's been going on since one easing mom want to know so many of the as many of the as major. that's a very easily distorted influence so much more. and cause so much injustice in a society where our radios are about liberty and justice for all.

those round up our cigarettes they're carcinogenic their money is the same thing as financially carcinogenic and you need to eradicate. what's last by simply getting lighter fluid throwing it in a big pile and sucking on a fire. they all. fell.

so. yes well this is all the good. clothes. i've been saying the numbers mean something they've mastered us with over one trillion dollars in debt more than ten white collar crime families each day. eighty five percent of global wealth he longs to be ultra rich some with four hundred to

five hundred three purchase first churches and this one 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 is one one business shows you know board the mid one and only boom box. office on the more considered and the most city against india encouraging animosity among to its nationals against any one of its neighbors. as opposed skidmore this is the right this is where pakistan is very different then. then india right now if they go on this trajectory unfortunately even not being able to give responsibly is in the speech and the speech in the cell phone for far too long because of this ongoing conflict between these two giants in the region.

an alleged cyber attack on the british institute the six the counter russian disinflation is now being investigated by the u.k.'s private agency but having no forensic evidence the head of the institute already insists russian intelligence was the play. the only thing which makes sense and this is the russian state the path our assessment that it is out because we've gone for him people who think this is the t.r.u. . the last eisel stronghold in serious new schools of suspected just how this fully including foreign fighters also in the principles is advance on the territory.