she got me but just to save are all a scam. 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 in 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 here the key. and that's the big problem in 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 arise my 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 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 in my sentence my twenty four years it was established based on the sum total of all the ecstasy 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 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 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 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. 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 come. 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 truth as 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. 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 signing 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 a 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 once in a teary you didn't know what it was cut with sometimes that indifference 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 getting violence on 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 the rapists or someone committing burglaries you know what the rapes. 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. people. the emphasis over from middle justice system should be on violent offenses this is what most people are concerned about. the one murderers and britain did they want

murders and rapes solved and they want these people taken out of the community and locked away in prisons or communities can be saved i don't know what to come out just as one of the 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 the from the. justice system. there are. countless numbers of people who are in prison for. 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. 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 clarence aaron whose numerous cases i mean these are all excessively long cases these are you know you see colombian drug lords here you see mexico chop guzman you seen the mexican drug lords here.

with this manufacture consent to public wealth. when the ruling classes protect themselves. the financial merry go round lifts only the one percent of. the time to ignore middle of the room six. million real new.

world. this is a period of sort of little swallow fish flesh blood if. there might be a while to the minute that it was my dog of. the losing is its ability. to get enough of that all you want the solicitor got it would but have an animal that is a liberal still it was god meaning almost all. enough well it was pretty good way to lose a pet. just there too which could go on and on with gentle hug but i come. here to your room very clearly you don't need to storm the lead here so my look down from moods should basher doing the clue a trick of crafters america. i

was so glad to to start to work my way out of prison. so go in the clinton house was a halfway house you were half way old but it was still open. so i got the clint house call we've already has some experience or who've had a rueful 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 company i'm doing roofing and his mother came to me and next we would i buy him appear. that he needed to do his roof and. and he just blossom it 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 their home 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 a mentally dismayed as mine and think that he was going to go in for you know go into business for self. out 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 and i believe i froze 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 so i'm growing the business and i think my second year i read about he some. third year i did about one

a solo thousand almost all it was surely progress and so now i'm up to half a million dollars next in a moment to say i want to thousand miles. in the early two thousand nine hundred ninety nine or 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. when you lived a certain way for so long and came 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 scene that's saying get a hold do you. want to get. to be all that for. me

is to be that beacon of hope. no matter where you come from the what you've done you can because the same they sold drugs or. 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 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 could 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 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 fair 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 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 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 to broach to then other comparable nations that have been in the sewers only see a massacre as original. seems to me to go i. got a job will and. a lot of. care and. as for their child. the child has from their parents children's lives and we're going to. marry and conditional and. loving and. just because. i'm ours. dread jellicoe one two six three seven zero six my first encounter the or the present 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 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 go to the probation office i have to go to a program where i'd be urine test regularly or go to a meeting well the reality in 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 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 a you've done a lot but you're 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 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 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 of house did the best you can take out the trash drive things you manners i love you so very proud of you looks wonderful. varies from seven to thirteen really grown 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 proud i know you worked hard to tell me how you were doing when. you're strong so friends. and now i. want to 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. 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 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 we are so many. indians are actually the typical this is the system it is broadly on your mind 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 fish in the policies it's been going on since man eating is. one of those so many low level was meant to be in his major. that's a very deeply disturbing indictment in the elite don't 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.

what is to call it decline as a man. the new type of digital currency the centralized digital scarcity chancellor bring a second bailout for a bank that's called the genesis block for reason fickling is civil disobedience 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 and 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 moon that's next and stacy. they can come and blow our brains out at any given time and 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 stillbirth all the trouble here's the point it's hollow point to k.k.k. what exists because america wants it to exist they are the biggest terrorist group to ever operate in this country and they're dead to me they're worse off than the people who destroyed the world trade centers of the scroll why. what. what we what you know.

right but. the israeli prime minister abbas to carry on a campaign of airstrikes targeting hamas positions in gaza as a major flare up of cross border violence continues for a second day. in the stories that shape the week venezuelan president nicolas maduro claims he put down an attempted coup by opposition leader one who along with his u.s. backers and a nice plotting a military overthrow our guess debate the issue. was that you didn't.