to stop slamming the door on the back 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 in los angeles and it was march of one thousand nine hundred one. i got over and i look out the window and there they are. i was arrested and that day our father and i wanted her to pray bargain. i understand she area is not going to implicate somebody and i could promise. she got me but just to save are all a scam 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 pled not guilty and ultimately 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 men 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 give the keys. 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 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. 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 didn't. 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 want 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. remission of the drug war 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. is to create a drug free society. we've been at this now for good marks 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 prove issue the richest man in the country was ok he controlled if you tried to get into this market he would kill you there were also kinds of sub factions they trying to to manufacture it in their bathrooms and still it was once in a teary he didn't know what it was cut with sometimes that at the end you freeze people who 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 when it 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 and such little time and the difference between

arresting someone for dealing drugs and arresting someone for committing rapes are . when you arrest the re-invest 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 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 and even. 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. 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 in the form 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 jane felt life sentence. danielle clarke thirty five years

timothy tyler life set. 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 who's out to 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. during the great depression which i'm old enough to remember there was most of my

family were poor working. there wasn't it was bed you know much worse objective listen today but there was an expectation of the things were going to get better. there was a real sense of hopefulness there isn't today today's america was shaped by the ten principles of concentration of wealth and power. reduced democracy attack solo doubt engineer elections manufacture consent and other principles according to know on. one set of rules for the rich opposite. that's what happens when you put her into the sort of narrow sector of will 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.

as this is a sticker from the water bottle phone in the stomach of a fish the brand is part of the coca-cola company which sells millions of bottles of soda every day the idea was that let's tell consumers there are the bad ones there the litterbugs are throwing this away industry should be blamed for all this waste the company has long promised to reuse the plastic. that seems lost their plastic. stay in your own hands at a special projects funded he tells it depends. on the new best that is the end of. the fun now the mountains of waste only grow higher. 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 indoor move at a move back row. i called my old boss he was in the 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 not buy him appear. that he needed to do his group and he just blossom he just blossomed from there i was so happy to be at work and 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. never had the ability to change my life around so all those stains.

made me a good employee in a match when he dismissed his mind up and saying that he was going to go in for you know go into business for yourself. 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 then i had to leave i froze year business i made about thirty some thousand dollars more for a share. i remember a vest i'm back into the business and borrowed tools and while ladders so i'm growing the business and i think my second year party did about he some. third year i did about one hundred thousand some story bush surely progress and so now i'm up to half a million dollars next in a normal two so i want to go miles. in early two thousand nine hundred ninety nine

or early two thousand my family went over the million dollar more. so wow wow you know 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. well you lived a certain way for so long and came as far as he. became a mom the 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 of you a single hold you want to you gary to be on the ball for. for me is to be that beacon of hope oh follow no matter where you go from there what you've done you can. because the same bull they 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 bar for a number of years inside and out so they have mobility almost became before and then to show people that yes i was that once the drug dealer that read up and down the street and sold drugs and did all that stuff they're. a changed person and i don't know somebody that they could 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 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 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 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 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 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. this and other comparable nations and have the next was only see him as a cursory. seems to me though i.

got a job. and. a lot. here and. as it were there was. the best friend american children's lives and going to. marry and conditional and. loving him. just because. i'm ours. bred jellicoe one to six thirty seven zero six my first encounter of the of 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 they mccourt fives boehm arrest to sion paid. child support paid everything i. zero. i start my own business i got a vehicle had tags had a license and. 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 you're in the houses. it's a lot watching your children grow up in michoud in wave 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 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 hal's 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 thank you how 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 man a house still the best you can take out the trash drive things you manners i love you so very proud of you to those wonderful. varies from seven to thirteen. 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 know i'm sorry baby. i

love ya vision very recently you just got. so very proud of him i know he worked hard to tell me how you were doing one. thing in your strong so friends. and i. want to know i love you here i miss you very much oh here when i miss you and when there is a puncture wound i went through it is. anytime you hate me you miss me there's a there's a gaping same things mom when 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 do 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 out we. just days after another can. launch you to the broader perspective that they are so many excuses and these are

actually the typical this is the system it is broadly unjust to and that it is so wasteful it's so counterproductive it's so inefficient want us to be why does it continue. why are we going to be able to spot. more fish in the policy to be going on since man eating is. one of those so many low level is meant to be eaten as major. that's a very evil stormin in the elite always 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.

one else seems. wrong. to make you believe to shape out just to become educated and engagement equals

betrayal. when so many find themselves worlds apart we choose to look for common ground. so what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have it's crazy going from day shouldn't let it be an arms race to move his arms off and spearing dramatic development only personally i'm going to resist i don't see how that strategy will be successful very critical time time to sit down and talk. to you know more of the. underwater. total room. over my money we didn't know. oh you ought to go to post due to the

move for your. book the life to be on the move yet not. breaking news on t.v. forty one people were killed off the plane bus into flames during an emergency landing in moscow it was seventy eight passengers and crew on board. the russian president and prime minister expressed condolences to the families of the victims are all thirty seven survivors most of whom audiences.