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 for mayor eyes 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 ecstasy that sandy had manufactured

that's where my ears came from my years did. things that i came from three point seven million tablets of x. to say that he had manufactured puts me on the chart at this lab 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 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 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 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. and. i couldn't process it i was just right. and. 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 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 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 at this now for a good mark 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 prudish you know 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 it in a freeze people would drink this 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 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 are

. when you arrest the rain because 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 usually some fighting to 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 to come out 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 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 felt life sentence. to now 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 or you know clarence aaron who's out numerous cases i mean these are all excessively long cases these are you know you see colombian drug lords here you see mexico chapal guzman you seen the mexican drug lords here no.

money you know more of. them there were a. total. lot of money we didn't. owe you ought to go to post peace is this move for you. this is a period of sort of. it's just first let it. begin. so i might. add that it was and i go to. them is its ability. to get rid of that all you want so let's let it go to the banana of that it's

a liberal still it was. enough well it was pretty but the way it was a. kind of what is there to which could go a dumbing down but i. mirrored to you. you're going to go did you have stormed the lead you sort of my looked a mood subversion or did in the courage your coke i've heard some record. during the great depression which i'm old enough to remember there was and most of my family were unemployed. and it wasn't it was bed you know much worse objective listen today but there was an expectation that things were going to get better. there was a real sense of hopefulness there isn't today today's america where shaped by the

turn principles of concentration of wealth and power. reduced democracy attack solo doubt engineer elections manufacture consent and other principles according to no on chomsky one set of rules for the rich opposite set of rules for you. that's what happens when you put her into the. narrow circle of wilf which 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. 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 clint house already already has some experience and or who've had a roof background. 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 am doing roofing and his mother came to me and next we would like 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 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 home growing 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 informed that he was going

to go if you know go into business for sound. out all starting i just really felt that i had what it took to be awesome but no way to be successful. so i quit my job and i was fully fledged into business then i had to leave by for here business i made about thirty some thousand dollars or more for a shit. i member vest i'm back into the business i'm buying tools of my own ladders so i'm growing the business and i think my second year i read about he some. third year i did about one assault thousand some slowly but surely progressing so now i want to have a million dollars next year normal to say i want to now miles. in the early two thousand nine hundred ninety nine or early two thousand my family went over the million dollar more. so while we're at home i never thought that i would hold

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 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 a hold to you a single hold you want to you. to be on that ball 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 war 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 now on somebody that they can expire to also. executive clemency 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 exhilaration wore off that i realized at that time 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. they 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 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 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 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 are 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 that have the notice was only seen as a cursory. as we go i. got a job. and. a lot of. parents. as

are their child and the child has from their parents children's lives and are going to. be 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. 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 they mccourt fives fame arrests to sion paid. child support paid everything. zero. 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 i have to go to a program where i'd be urine test regularly or go to

a mean well the reality fact is a dirty urine is a violation and probation officer i have 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 michoud in wave and say by day 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 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 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 man a house still the best you can take out the trash drive things you manners i love you so very proud of you both of those wonderful. little varies from seven to thirteen really growing up. and i'm sorry i'm not there to go. had you as much of a life lived. 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 proud 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 you hate me you miss me there's a there's a new evening same things mama 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 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 out real. just days after another can. blind you to the broader perspective that there are so many of. 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. more of this should be on the policy to been going on since man each six months want to know so many lol that was meant to be his major. that is a very deeply disturbing indictment the waste so much treasure. and inflict so much more. and cause so much injustice in a society where our radios are about liberty and justice for all.

after the previous stage of my career was over every. on one of what i was going to do next the multiple different clubs on one hand it is logical to sort of know from fields 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 one not if you think.

i'm going to talk about football not the or else you think i was going to go. by the way what is it that slide in here. they can come and blow our brains out at any given time if we can't really do anything actually america is the only country in the world where you can kill people outside of war and legally get away with. all of the fire crawls stillbirth all the trouble here is pretty fail the point it's hollow flying to k.k.k. exists because america wants it to exist the of the biggest terrorist group to ever operate in this country and they're dead to media war saul's in the people who

destroyed the world trade centers of those cro white. banks guys or financial survival guys ecstacy just like all the stars simply travel all the service. be sure it's still there you don't get it back. oh no it says a replace nation's king look at the rest of seventy years. bill of the seventy year olds guys are for. peter but. oh. he. may.

be. the. president nicolas maduro says he called an attempted coup by venezuelan opposition leader. who along with his u.s. backed his denies of plotting a minute. i'll guess debate reading happened. our. national committee six million people voted for nicolas maduro last may in a free and fair election that i observe you know how many people voted for one boy . the u.s. attorney general is grilled in the senate over his handling of the ripple.