was arrested and that day our father and i wanted her to bargain. i understand she area is not going to pay somebody scammed 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 outs mccoy 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 is a very important tool of law enforcement if the crime is selling drugs and some man in miami sells 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 knitted up in federal prison in dublin california and 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. 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 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 ecstasy that sandy had manufactured that's where my ears came from my ears didn't. things that i came from three point seven million 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 every buy. he 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 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 said. 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 burris 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. 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 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 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. 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. and we've been at this now for a good nard for forty years trillions of dollars into it no wind in sight 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 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 he didn't know what it was cut with sometimes that any freeze people would drink to

some 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 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 for someone committing burglaries you know what the rapes stop. the burglary stock when you arrest someone for dealing drugs dealing drugs doesn't stop in that corner you just create a job opportunity for someone else to come in and unfortunately when a job is filled with flea 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 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 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 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 james life sentence. didn't. 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 see colombian drug lords here you see mexico guzman you see in the mexican drug lords here know. what politicians do. they put themselves on the line to get accepted or rejected.

so when you want to be president and she. wanted. to go right to the press it's like that before three in the morning can't be good. i'm interested always in the waters in the. first sip. and someone. bought their you know what they cost. on the fourth and out of the still think i want to. have a couple because a couple of i have. got on me.

case i. think i think i'll go to. fishing to go to. for fun. nothing. to fucking. so what if i don't want to pull the united as. 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 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 a halfway house at the time and i think someone i don't know what companies do in roofing and his mother came to me and next we would add by him appear shoes that he needed to do his roof and and he just bought some he just blossomed from the air i was so happy to be at work in the air 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 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 dismayed as mine and 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 full thirty some thousand dollars or more for his. i remember a vest i'm back into the business of tools and while ladders. third year i did about one hundred or so thousand almost all it was surely progress and so now i'm up to half a million dollars next to normal two so i want to now. in the early two thousand nine hundred ninety nine or early two thousand my family won over the million dollar more. so while we're at 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 and came as far as you became a mom way. that 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 bull for. for me is to be that beacon of hope oh no matter where you come from the what you've done you can go out 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. sold drugs out that door for a number of years inside and out so they have mobility so model it became before and then to be sold drugs and did all that stuff there i'm now a changed person and i'm now on somebody that they can expire to also.

exact a common fate 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 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 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 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. then other comparable nations that have the notice was only see a massacre as. me go i. will and. a lot of. the year and. as it were there. in the past when american children's lives and going to. marry and conditional and. loving and. just because. mars. bred jellicoe one to six thirty seven zero six my first encounter of the for

the prison systems are pretty young. lifestyle 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 restitution paid. child support paid everything i was that's. 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 the 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 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 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 your analysis. it's a lot watching your children grow up in issue in waves 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 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 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 we're very proud of you and of those wonderful. friends from seven and 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 you know a 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 had. once you know i love you here i miss you very much oh here's what i miss you and there is

a bunch of women that i went through it is. anything to be afraid of me and you miss me there's a there's a new meaning the same things mom would choose were i love you and i miss you all and i hope to see you soon and that i love 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 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 flawed the unjust to understand 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. on more issues of the policy to be going on since ninety eight is it's. one of those so many low

level is meant to be as major. that's a very evil stormin indictment the elite always 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.

so what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have it's crazy. let it be an arms race. theory dramatic developments only. i don't see how. you sit down and talk. those that you can. quite easily. to keep in mind no as a place. where.

they all. please yes to all this is all the good.

i like. u.s. backed forces bombard islamic states the last stronghold in syria people are fleeing the area including the wives of the fighters some of whom remain loyal to the so-called caliphate.

venezuela's self-proclaimed leader says that he will ask of the national assembly to the greater a state of emergency it comes after one point zero called for u.s. intervention. today the sick room. and ethiopian airlines plane with one hundred feet.