on being applied. i know end 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 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 so 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 to see that sandy had manufactured that's where my ears came from my years dead and things that i came from three point seven million tablets of ecstasy but 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 that sentenced 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. two days before the

trial and tenders a pulley that sentence will be different even though they may be situated the same it's just plain different and those are the yangs and the sayings of the sentencing process that the court has not a whole lot of control over 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 byrd 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 to morning 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 clear. really had

a subordinate role in these. and she was caught up in the. conspiracy. are an 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 well 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 she said you're going home. and. i couldn't process it i was just like. 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 home 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 drug war

estimated 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. and we've been at this now for a good nar 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 you didn't know what it was cut with sometimes at any freeze people would 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 going to 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 of burglaries when you arrest the rainbow's 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 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 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 and the needs 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 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 in my office i'm still very active with students for sensible

drug policy. and with one force me 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. we are these people you know. clark thirty five years timothy tyler life sentence. sure rhonda jones life sentence. this is not an aberration this is the life blood this is the typical case this is

the typical. numerous cases i mean these are all excessively long cases these are. you see colombian drug lords here you see mexico. the mexican drug lords here. we have no political agenda here. if it costs more to get out you get when you get it out that's a loss it's a minus sign that's it you can't figure that out you think there's a political agenda. you're blinded by your. big get accepted or rejected. so when you want to be president. want.

to go right to the press before. people. interested in the water. what is. the new type of digital currency. scarcity chancellor. of second or bank call that got us a. civil disobedience a source of optimism because i. 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 on to the max and stacey. any

head of state to believe your photo. is a. good thing i should have a looks funny that we often see this will mean it will suit us to like he was drinking in the suit somewhere we will use it even though we mostly focus on the little aspects that are. going to discuss the subject side of no interest to us just let it still brings tears and therefore we try to offer something floyd landis' and play joe the flute.

i was so glad to to start to work my way out of the prison. so go in the clinton house was a halfway house you were halfway home but you still. so i got the clint house already already has some experience and or move out of the back row. i call 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 would add by him appear shoes

that he needed to do his roof and and he just bought some he just blossomed from there i was so happy to be at work and be there 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 too to be free. and have the ability to change my life around so all those stains. made me a good employee any mentally dismayed is minus insane and he is 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 had to leave by for a year 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 some growing the business and i think my second year i read about he some. 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 to normal too so i want to now. in the early two thousand nine hundred ninety nine early two thousand my family went over the million dollar more. that while one zero 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 if that's what they want. you lived a certain way for so long and as far as he. became

a way. dad needs to be put out here. because a lot of people don't know how to break to change from the street thing that's saying get a hold of you the single hold you want to give. to be all that bull of war. for me is to be that beacon of hope oh foam no matter where you come from the what you've done you can because the same soul drove. directly across the street for my office is used to set a bar called the night light. sold drugs out of that war 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 drove 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 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 a 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 gone. is they 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 there were 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 to crime then other comparable nations that have announced it was only seen as a cursory. seems to me to go i. got a job will and. a lot of. parents. as are their child and the child has from their parent children's lives and going to. the conditional and. loving in. just because. i'm ours. and spread jellicoe one to six thirty seven zero

six my first encounter with the with the prison systems are pretty young. lifestyle of 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 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 probation offices that i have to go to a program where i'd be urine test regularly or go to a mean well the reality the 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 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 by daddy as you're walking out of the visit it's just it doesn't get easier you don't stand and as you get older you think you become more custom of 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 that thank you 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 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 of those wonderful. little bands from seven to thirteen really growing up. and i'm sorry i'm not there to guide you. as much as i'd like. to turn out pretty good and i'm very very proud. i really am. now oh i don't surrender my baby. i love you no vision very recently you just got. so very boring 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 a man i miss you and there is a culture that i went through it is more moments. any time 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 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 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 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 why does it continue. why are we going to be able to spot. more efficiently on a policy that's been going on since many evenings mom want to know so many lol that

was meant to be his major. that's a very evil stormin indictment in the elite 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 news in the world. are. on the. total room. for my money we did not know. oh you ought to go to. see this move for you. after the previous stage of my career was over everyone wondered what i was going to do next hope the ball different clubs on one hand it is logical to sit in the home field where everything is familiar on the other i wanted a new challenge and

a fresh perspective i'm used to surprising people and i saw what not to give you. i'm going to talk about football not for you or else you can think i was going to go. by the way ways and such like here. oh he had of still seem to believe your photo if there's a. reason. is that i should have a look funny that we all can see this will mean it will soon mystic just like he was drinking in the suit somewhere we will use it even though we mostly focused on the little aspects that are clogged elsewhere i don't discuss subjects i don't like some don't interest to us you just know you're still pranksters you know therefore we tried to do something fundamentally joe to sleep.

they can come and blow our brains out. in any given time we can't really do anything actually america is the only country in the world where you can kill people. war and legally get away with. all of the fire crawls still. all the trouble here's briefly all the points it's hollow flying to k.k.k. exists because america wants it to exist they have the biggest terrorist group to ever operate in this country and they're dead to me they're worse all the people who destroyed the world trade centers are the scroll while.

u.s. attorney general of fuses to testify before the house judiciary committee on his handling of the mother reports the session was labeled a circus with one democrat member brandishing a prop. chicken bar should have shown up today and answered questions think yesterday proves not terrified to sit before anybody still in the circus continues over here to give leaks co-founder joining us on the tenth a court hearing in the u.k. on whether he should be extradited to the u.s. . and hundreds of people are injured in two days of unrest in venezuela after what appears to have been a failed coup we debate what is really happening in the country.