on the alex salmond show and i'll be speaking to guests of the world of politics sports business i'm showbusiness i'll see you then. a grandmother doing a life for murder was released from prison yesterday after 17 years when i judge said she did not do it susan mellon recently filed a lawsuit against the detective who arrested her for hiding evidence that detectives the same one who arrested reggie.

what we know as a society we see the bad guy in the good guy well that's cops and robbers but when the cop becomes the robber the game is over the game is over s. corruption it was a horrific twist of fate that led to reggie's release. was more fortunate his father's death led to an unexpected turn providence was his big thing in any have you know great life insurance and was 184000 my dad left me and i was able to parlay that up to about $236.00 stock market and then it was just 100 percent of my time dedicated to my case and that enabled those to hire a private investigator we had essentially a growing war chest of evidence that i hadn't committed the crime or at least that all the evidence that was presented was it was false evidence i had received a complaint from i flew up to. the state prison where bruce lister was i spoke to

him once somebody is accused of murder and you're arrested for murder it's tape recorded everything is tape recorder i couldn't find his tape 'd it had been. taken out of evidence by detective monsoor and it was never put back into evidence. active months it was said the footprints outside the house matched the footprints on the inside lieutenant gavin found the footprints were actually looked at by a scientist or any qualified expert so we took matters into his own so i contacted our people scientific investigative division so he takes out this big magnifying glass looks at it looks at the other one day goes these 2 don't match see this is a great embarrassment for any large organization that you've convicted somebody for murder and then 51020 years later it's true it turns out that the person is actually aniston. and this is what my lieutenant said that is not in that prison do you understand me sergeant gap and they will do everything they can to stop you

from going forward with the information you have upon a deal in the comprehensive work at the private investigator yeah i p.d. internal affairs department claimed his complaints were unfounded and that no misconduct had occurred you can't have an internal investigation were we all investigate our sales. this guy good job to give the words or anything like that just to give the system that has no checks and balances you who is shaking ya know i believe in internal affairs should be separate from the police department there is no way that a police department can investigate themselves currently there are no independent organizations whose job it is to investigate police misconduct and there's no oversight of prosecutors either. prosecutorial misconduct dizzee major factor of wrongful convictions just a single thread that runs through almost all of the wrongful conviction cases jeff deskovic has a master's in criminal justice specializing in wrongful convictions he's also

a survivor of prosecutorial misconduct i spent 16 years from president. clinton at 17. emerged at 32 jeff eventually won a lawsuit against putnam county new york prison. which enabled him to start his own foundation the founder and executive director of the dust of it but just as there's no deterrent there's no oversight is no punishment for prosecutors so they can break the law they don't face criminal penalties even when they engage in withholding evidence of innocence threatening witnesses coercing witnesses no matter how serious the misconduct does if the prosecutor commits that after an arrest has been made they have what's called prosecutorial immunity they're above the law the prosecutors to really uphold what's become just words which is you know they're there to do justice they're there to do the right thing it becomes more like where they were when expressing the prosecutor's offices actually keep

statistics on conviction rates well you should be credited that you looked at a case where the police thought they had a good case but a good prosecutor looked and said you know what there's some mistakes made here we should drop the charges in this case we should incentivize that but instead we actually incentivize the opposite of getting convictions and getting conviction rates all of a sudden justice gets lost in that process and whether this guy committed the crime or not gets lost in that process because it's all about winning my case immunity that. i meet in the real world you know you suppose we hold accountable for your wrongdoings so therefore if you are a person of authority already the you have to be held at a higher standard than just a lamely i think we actually did step back and kind of rethink the whole system in the way we're approaching it because it's become this game and people's lives are lost as a result of it. if you ever do

find yourself wrongfully convicted odds are you never get now the 1st thing you need to do is in preservation letters to the police department labs and the courts . questing that you want all your evidence. otherwise they may destroy it within 30 days try to find it in the sense project it'll take you case. this process take years. the innocence project estimates conservatively there could easily be 40000 to over 100000 americans only wrongfully convicted the majority of which are people of color. this is a private investigator on this case it is a very. private investigator who made

a complaint. on the desk of an internal affairs investigator who. looked at bruce's claims in a very serious minded fashion. it's the people like the text of the others out there that have made our job very difficult to do day after day because we lose the confidence of the public and with the confidence of the courts we have to have police chief structures of public service that are willing to do the right thing and terminate employees who are doing the wrong thing if you want to say you're the good guy but you're ostracized by everybody that you believe then it's a very difficult situation because i have to continue to work for the same department that the. i don't look at myself as a hero i look at myself as a sort of as a survivor because the system attacked me system one after me and the system did

everything they could to keep her in jail and everything to keep me quiet it's been a lot of therapy my wife and i met in 3rd grade we were elementary junior high high school sweethearts who lived on the same street and that's a been it's been a very. if a cold difficult road she is 3rd generation l.a.p.d. and. their survival is day by day and always looking over your shoulder whether you're doing the right thing or not you're constantly looking over your shoulder and every time i get called into the captain's office i wonder what did i do now and i've never had that feeling before i just kept on telling myself they are not going to defeat me they're not going to defeat me it's just when you come across something like this what are you going to do and that's the difficult thing if i had not given the information that i did to the l.a. times bruce lester would still be in prison. a bloody footprint that was attributed

to bruce at his trial had recently been reanalyzed and shown to not been made from bruce issue so they got his interest in the case and we started talking to those that private investigator began the 7 month investigation and at the conclusion of that they filed an article called the case of doubt that eventually one of them in a ward when the times and. i want up sitting between 2005 when the 1st article came out and 2009 in prison for solid years. a widely recognized innocent man we knew back in 20032004 that we had probably a person that was imprisoned for a crime he did not commit and it took 5 years for the courts to work through the the entire system there were a lot of delays because of the conduct of my own police department and the conduct of the california attorney general. reggie kohl spent 16 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit 10 of those years were spent in solitary confinement and

he had to kill another man to get a trial it's a miracle reggie got out of all. thames is a miracle story as well in late 2002. after 26 years he made parole. i signed some papers for the prof's or he said ok see you later. then asked me how i was getting home didn't ask me if i had a home when i realize these people honestly don't give. to survive you know a lot harder than it sounds to me and develop post-traumatic stress disorder. around noya and require immediate treatment you under the food new clothes you're going to need money for transportation to and from your parole officer meeting if

you miss a beating you could run you so back you going to be the judge but there's a lot of discrimination out there for employment and speak you know which you're going to need. i wouldn't have a home if it wasn't for the rescue or life foundation to set up a house or transitional housing. god and that foundation. is what's got me by. a series and i'm sitting here and not back inside. founded by duane mc alway who knows how to challenge it can be to enter society. did 25 years himself for murder asses google we would have to go to moes drish and hang out all day work around the business at that time we had several organizations that would just patrol the area so it was pretty say we have black panthers. gringas organization

90 sleighs we head the nation. it was pretty cool you know you don't have to worry about people coming in holding you up and everything you have to worry about that helps them but it was after the cointelpro when they get pushed on the ground that everything. you know we're crazy all the bugs came out and you know you were you were fair game in the store operators yes once we started having a lot of burglaries my mother she just. she beat up and rob one day while i was there. grabbed the incident running after he got the money did he feel good it was enough money you know look you know it's funny but you know the news over the time you know he had his own issues how to move in just you know with his students kicking her in and demanding more money he got all the money we hate you know. mother wasn't robbed once she was robbed over and over again.

it was sort of amazing country with so many friends. and i'm very excited to be here. i love that idea i think i can. make a lot of money with. millions and hundreds of me. has had. a great wall and nobody feels a lot better than me and. very inexpensive like a great great wall. 'd

and just in case you're worried about who's going to pay for it mexico will pay for . it we'll see what happens. but we'll see i'm still. the success. of my name is stuck. on the old social media system jack see what i don't see it's . up at the border you know if you. want to know we've got. 2 cars is. moving up. from. the speech and i use down 6 each to make any babies here and also to meet school on drugs used to people. who've been in clubs before school clubs because clubs do really he's trying to shift the

life of a music that. i love to jazz because he makes me copy i love to dies because he meets me and stopped playing full time for. and when you get to. be on dialysis because that spot of us who loves to do our. thing. i don't.

i had a good friend he would always come in about you being so tight and he smokes we submit just take this you need to the right medication and lead to the page you not it led to cocaine in the p.c. . we shot in the lead to my crime that happened to me in prison you know into prison for the 2nd degree murder to do is route me they were pows have been the middleman going to get in the end of the you know robbing me because it happened to us in business the family business so much this guy he wasn't just someone that was robbing me all the time he was it was so somebody had been victimized in my family and all these other times you got away with this time you want to go to get away so it was kind of like the previous day retaliation thing for you where you are you going to pay for that is so what i've found is that

which you can't forgive and you end up becoming. what you can't forgive you end up becoming. so i had to learn how to forgive and then to go and i had to learn how to forgive him and then they go because he was also after i got to see his record this guy had a rap sheet you know from here from one side roll into the other you know and i could see you know he needed to same help did i need we are generally to imagine that there is such thing as for example a murderer and then they were in the murder in the public imagination and then most of our minds whether we thought about it or not initially is someone who likes to murder and who would murder given the opportunity i think that's what they think of a case and make that's what murders do they go around murdering mate and that's why you don't let them out of prison out of prison are going to murder again. the reality is that murder is almost always a context of the situation it is statistically speaking very rarely driven by

a compulsion or a desire to do harm it's a reaction from set of circumstances to a real or perceived threat to extreme emotional. and a propensity basically were confusing. the serial killer with prisoners in general if we as a society and imagine that the people in prison are fully human incredibly diverse have often been through some of the most extreme and difficult situations and conditions some of which many of us couldn't even really begin to imagine then suddenly all of that judgment and all that hostility and all that vindictiveness doesn't have such a natural place anymore many of our students have committed murder and felt horrible about their crime as soon as it happened it's not like they needed to sit

in prison for 15 or 20 years to realise they've done a bad thing or to never want to do it again. there's no human element. to. it. they're not there to help you they're not there to help society they can say they. are all they want. not in california and not in a lot of places. to punish people and they take a bad situation and they usually make it much worse. you know with your. prison is. success rate of 20 percent if we have those requirements of. out of the sky it's a little bit crazy making and that is department of justice that us federal government

research dr michael coyle attended harvard university as a ph d. in just the studies and as a professor of criminal justice at california state university dr coyle says that prison not only increases criminal behavior but as a deleterious effect on society as a whole what happens to a family when the wage earner is removed from society and thrown into prison for 10 years. what happens to those children our very empowered one of their chances of success of life start to go down what will how does that impact the community loss of resources in our community more demands in the community now to help to help this family maybe the other parent maybe the children it's just so clearly a failure by every measure that you look at it but i think we just need to rethink the whole thing and not just keep trying to put lipstick on this bag because that's what don't i think it is difficult for people to imagine a world without prisons now we've become so accustomed to the idea of prisons that

it's hard for people to imagine well what do you do with people if you don't put them in prison when when they've done wrong there are other alternatives to ascii set the degree of civilization and the society could be judged by entering its prisons hebrews 133 remember those who are in chains as if you were in jesus with. we don't we put everybody at risk. my husband dan was a police officer and he was killed in the line of duty and my goal at the trial was to get the man who killed my has been convicted of 1st degree murder and given the death penalty and that's what i got that's what happened i thought ok here it is i got justice i'm going to be free from this and it didn't happen. it was just a. change anything.

for experienced. my oldest son was murdered. from winter break college. and i was shot to death at a party. street in the projects and stuff. so i jumped him our car and i drove over there to the projects and i jumped on the car and i. said man we've. you know it's left us all blind into focus you know and i might win without anybody . in the parents in the loved ones that are left behind like i'm like let's listen to something different there's an opportunity here for us to take the wisdom that we know works what we would do for our own kids or own kids we're in trouble into

a very bodies kids. for all. to police scene and prisons for profit. at least half of the people in there are in there for crimes of addiction or economic desperation or mental health instead of just throwing everybody that we decide if we can help and a prison use the money for restored justice programs. and social services. there has to be citizen oversight and accountability for all our public servants. we have access to all of the data if you have any interest in justice or equal access to opportunity in this country all the data likely is out there matter of. being logical. being smart. love.

for yourself. good monday morning to you how a poignant man finally free after serving 16 years for a crime he didn't commit i don't think he was real and saw so much oh he's invisible. better. to try to describe it. was an unbelievable feeling that was just an emotional roller coaster that you know i mean i cried walking out it was just the magnitude of all these years and my now here it is and then. a moment later i would be too bewildered to cry and i would just be. that that whole day was really scary for a lot of people but i think that it would be like yeah. i was

terrified there were well wishers well wishers there of officers of the new that. i think they knew the truth certainly knew the character you know my character and then i was in the parking lot. the air smelled different. and i wish my mom could have been there and wish my dad could have been there which my stepmom could have been. but i think you know where they were. in a school. like this i got a little bit of this thought i want tourney's i just feel like running like just getting this far away from employees as i possibly could there's. not the answer that everybody would think. that i would have but. it was a. joyous time for me i mean like i literally was scared to death my cousin was

waiting for me my private investor. it was waiting for me and i said. you want to hear what i actually said. and i looked at paul and i said you know. let's get the stuff in the truck out of here. and we could leave fast enough. the 1st place we stopped there was a push to breakfast and. i was like amazed at just the syrup me. is just was overwhelming like it was completely overwhelming. you know. i haven't been in a vehicle without being chained at my feet and with a waist chain and then handcuffs hooked to the waist chain and in a paper jumpsuit for 26 years.

there were just me and i mean. to try to try to figure it out too i have to. use to try to figure i worked out by. how do you would just cut through the planet mars to earth. oh you think the ox is saying look here. i don't think i'm going just. being. me.

well let's talk about tea and crumpets and scones the london bridge and the.

first presidential debate exhibit lots of like not much one could argue neither candidate last night there was a perfect reflection of the nation's politics could the campaign coming to an end do the debates have any meaningful impact is there such a thing as an undecided vote. as the u.s. economy was booming growing numbers of people made homeless. you can work 40 hours 'd in a week and still not have enough to get housing everybody believes america still is the land of opportunity the reality of we're not financially equality and the lack of affordable housing for a living minimum wage give many people no choice. just been a problem with the city the law is time limits on and told to stay way out almost.

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