just to savor all the scam that's not my daughter so she wouldn't do this. as a result they were under. i could not plead guilty to everything that they accuse me of. not guilty and out 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 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 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 wise man sound my case and everything that had gone wrong if you furthered the conspiracy in 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 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'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 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 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 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 are 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 not hard 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 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 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 new group of people who drink it to get cirrhosis kids would die in the

crossfire it sounds all too familiar because this exactly was happening on the streets today in the united states when it comes to getting violence and 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 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 so 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 to 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 it 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 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 james 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 guzman you seen the mexican drug lords here no.

one else seemed wrong. to me. yet to shape out this day because educated and engagement equals betrayal. when so many find themselves worlds apart. just to look for common ground. desists is a sticker from the water bottle phone in the stomach of a fish the brand is spawns of the coca-cola company which sells millions of bottles of soda every day the idea was that let's tell consumers they're in the bad ones they're the litter box they're throwing this away industry should be blamed for all this waste the company has long promised to reuse the plastic.

that seems cool sets their classes chris takes a close ally and i need to stay in your own hands at a special projects funding me. close all agree on the new best that is the end of a footy team fun now the mountains of waste only grow higher. you know world of big new laws and conspiracies it's time to wake up to dig deeper to hit the stories that mainstream media refuses to tell more than ever we need to be smarter we need to stop slamming the door. and shouting past each other it's time for critical thinking it's time to fight for the middle for the truth the time is now for watching closely watching the hawks.

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 home but you were still open. so i got the clinton house. already already has some experience in dorm roof and had to move back row. 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 roofing and his mother came to me and next we were out by 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 there 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 have the ability to change my life around so all those stains. made me a good employee in a mentally dismayed as minor incident he was going to go in for you know go into business for yourself in a salad 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 then i believe i froze year business i made about thirty some thousand dollars more for a c.e.o. . i remember a vest i'm back into the business i'm buying tools a mile ladders some growing the business are they my second year party did about he some. third year i did about one

a solo thousand some story was surely progress and so now i'm up to half a million dollars next in a moment to say i want to now miles. in early two thousand nine hundred ninety nine or early two thousand my family went over the million dollar more. so wow wow no 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. and 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 as far as he. became a way. that needs to be put out here. because a lot of people don't know how to break to change from the street saying that's saying get off only you a single hold you want to die to be all that bull of war. for

me is to be that beacon of hope oh no matter where you come from the what you've done you can 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 of that door for a number of years inside and out so they have mobility almost it became before and then to show people that yes i was that once drove deliberate up and down a street and sold drugs and did all that stuff there i'm now a changed person and i'm that somebody that they can expire to 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 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. 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 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 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. then other comparable nations that have the

nets was only see a mass incarceration. as we go i. got a job. and. here and. there shall. pass from their parents children's lives and we're 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 for 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 they mccourt fives fame arrests 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 get a probation officer 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 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 there i 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. since the 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 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 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 very proud of you know those wonderful. varies 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 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 had. once you know i love you here i miss you very much oh here when i miss you when there is a culture that i went through it is more moments or any time i'm afraid of 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. 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 they're

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 one of us to be why does it continue. why are we going to be able to spot. on the more efficient policy it's been going on since man eating is. one of the so many low level is meant to be a major. that is a very easily distorted in time in the ability to waste so much treasure. and

inflict so much money. and cause so much injustice in a society where our credos are about liberty and justice for all.

this is a prius or the other the fifth flood. but if. somebody would believe that it was and i go to the. moon isn't because its appeal is a couple of a good enough that all you want to go to but you have an enemy that is that liberal still it was god mean that you all know paul. enough well it was pretty good way to lose a room but you still do which could be oh i would only done one but i come any. nearer do you believe ruth you're learning you know did you observe the storm in the lead you sort of my looked up from moods or bears or did in the clue which are coconspirators some are going to be. good politicians do something to. put themselves on the line to get accepted or

rejected. so when you want to be president. some who want to be rich. have to go right to be cross which is what before three in the morning can't be good. i'm interested always in the waters in the house. first sip. so what is it calling the coin is magic internet money the new type of digital currency the centralized digital scarcity chancellor i'm bringing a second bailout for a bank that's called the genesis blog for reason because being a civil disobedience is a source of optimism because i can control my own financial destiny it's just a new way of coming to consensus it's a game changer in the human history this is columbus discovering a new world this paradigm shifting technology that transforms economics and finance

in a heartbeat. the apollo eleven landing. to the max and stacey. breaking news on our international of venice waylays self-proclaimed interim president one receives the bucking of the u.s. . military all prizing of the government itself its who attends. the russian national jailed in the us for working on the registry of foreign agent who has been fielding reporters' questions. she was quizzed by the moeller investigation on how she coped with.