sponsible 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 years came from my years did. things that idea came from three point seven million tablets of ecstasy 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. 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 offense she was clearly had a subordinate role needs. and she was caught up in the way of these conspiracy laws. 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 going to 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

and she said you're going home. and. i couldn't process it i was just right. my reaction was there 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 that's 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 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 treat 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 going to comes to getting violence from the drug one of the problems

that we have a drug prohibition is so different of a business who makes 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 viciously some fighting sioux name. 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. when 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 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 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. where

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 you know you see colombian drug lords here you see mexico chapal guzman you see in the mexican drug lords here. 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 sort of go from

fields where everything is familiar on the other i wanted a new challenge and the fresh perspective i'm used to suppressing. or not. i'm going to talk about football not for you or else you think i was going to go. by the way ways of. yes to all this is out of.

thank. you. for your. focus on the come from up there and i don't think i want to. speak up because

a couple of i. think he just got time he. focused case on. what you know full well for you i think i think you know how to. keep looking. for from you. nothing. to fear from. one i feel as if the united. states of financial survival. money laundering first visit this issue this week difference. is a good start well we have our three banks all set up for something to do something in america something over the cayman island to do all these banks are complicit in the progresses we just have to say to do some serious. ok let's see how we did

while we have. watch for max and for. jewelry how about. for max do you know what money laundering is highly illegal for a watch guys record. i mean. 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 it was still open. so i got the clinton house already already has some experience and or moved out of 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'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 blossom he just blossomed from the air 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 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 saying that he was going to go in for you know go into business for sam and 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 had to leave my fro here business i made about thirty some thousand dollars or more for a c.e.o. . i remember a vest i'm back into the business i'm buying tools a mile ladders so i'm growing the business and i think my second year party did about he's on. third year i did about one a solo thousand some slowly but surely progress and so now i'm up to half a million dollars next to normal to so i want to go out. 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 and that's what they want. when you lived a certain way for so long in case 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 mission creep thing that's saying get ahold to 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 foam no matter where you come from no 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 and 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 deliberate up and down a stream sold drugs and did all that stuff there i'm now

a changed person and i'm now on so much that they can expire to also. exact i have come to say it was a better sweet victory to be honest right there because it didn't take me very long . after i got out and the excitement the exam. ration wore off that i realized 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 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 prison 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 production. then other comparable nations have announced it was only see him as a cursory. seems to me to go i. got a job. and. a lot of. care and. as it were there was. a task under me aaron children's lives and going to. the conditional and. loving him. just because.

i'm ours. dread jellicoe one two six thirty seven zero six my first encounter the or the present systems are pretty young. life salad 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 of a macor fives fame arrest to sion paid. child support paid everything i was that's . i started 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 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 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 made all this work i'm like 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 bye 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 accustomed to 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 i just want to start off by saying that thank you 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 we're very proud of you and you're going to those wonderful. friends from seven to thirteen really growing up. 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. surrender 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 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. names i'm afraid of me you miss me there's a there's a gaping same things mom when 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 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 to 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 outrageous. 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 outraged 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 eating his mom one of those so many lolo is mentally beneath his major. that is a very evil stormin indictment the ability to waste so much treasure. and conflict so much more. and cause so much injustice in a society where our credos are about liberty and justice for all.

the maternity town the slums go in and you may never get out so those are the. teenage gang rules here. don't want to move they're not going to be my. mother. but. the navy will be very cool. minus seeing her. but now it's looking for

the yeah when i do use that as an alibi when. i'm looking in the room. i see. there was no to trade or labor there's an environment standouts in the original enough that the five years ago those were kicked out because relations were more punitive but now the relation is very very close intertwined so i think it's ok to have a new treaty and you negotiation. during the great depression which i'm old enough to remember there was most of my family were unemployed people

and there wasn't it was bed you know much worse objective listen today but there was an expectation the things were going to get better. there was a real sense of hopefulness there isn't today today's america was shaded by the turn principles of concentration of wealth and power. reduced democracy attack solo doubt. engineer elections manufacture consent another prince holds according to no i'm jones to one set of rules for the rich opposite. that's what happens when you put her into the hands of the narrow sector of will switch will is dedicated to increasing power for chills just as you'd expect one of the most influential intellectuals of our time speaks about the modern civilization of america.

today the solution is intervention to suddenly do is a clone. of any criminal rival protests script but as a way to while the us resorts the sanctions on threats and of bids to oust president maduro reports of washington's approach to the crisis in the latin american country. also this hour more families are evacuated from the last pockets of islamic state resistance in syria treating the wives of us will find his who refuse to believe that kind of food is through. an ethiopian airlines plane with a one hundred.