. >> reporter: for april erdos, the drive to wabash prison is one she knows far too well. >> three years, three months, some-odd days. >> reporter: the many long days this mother's been fighting for the freedom of her 20-year-old son levi. >> you can't explain what it feels like. it comes down to the love you have for your child. that's what makes it hurt so bad. >> reporter: levi was sentenced to 50 years in prison for felony murder, even though he didn't he didn't even have a gun. >> i just want to see his face. that's goingo be a kodak moment right there. >> reporter: more than 250 miles away in elkhart, indiana, levi's life was forever changed on a fall day in 2012. he was hanging out with four of his friends. among them 21-year-old denzel johnson and 16-year-old blake layman. >> got off school that day. we ended up talking. coming up with dumb-ass plans. excuse my language. >> reporter: the plan was to rob an empty house. >> why an empty house? >> it was just a plan to get quick money, it was never a practicen to hurt anyoner confront anyone. >> were any of your armed? >> no. >> rep

. >> our crew got a glimpse of how prevalent self-mutilation is at the wabash correctional facility into go on 11. >> 11. >> 11 range, thank you. >> prison psychologist mary ruth simms conducts group therapy with cutters and other self-mutilators assigned to wabash's secured housing unit. >> if i see my blood, in another world i'm somebody totally different from myself. that's the only time i can actually, you know, feel real, feel alive, feel like everything's going to be okay. >> simms says this particular group does not injure themselves for the typical reasons. >> they self-injured as a way to control their level of pain. that when they're in so much pain they don't know what to do, they are starting to feel like suicide, self-injury cuts their pain down. so it is pain control. >> you give the baby a bottle because he is crying, change his diaper. me you give me something sharp to hurt myself with and i'm fine. >> you're communicating things are not okay for yourself. >> if i don't cut myself at least once a week i'm not right. >> some people here think there's nothing good in them

got in my mouth, my ear and all down my side here. >> wabash valley secured housing unit, or shu, holdsgerous inmates. >> how did you come back to work after that? >> you have to. you absolutely have to. if you let something like that stop you, then they win. if some of them were out on the streets, i would pity anyone they came across. >> but some inmates feel the shu only fuels their violent tendencies. >> the shu is terrible. it is a terrible place. i wouldn't wish this place on my worst enemy. >> as a shu inmate, billy brown is confined to a solitary cell. >> 24 hours i sit in this cell. without communication, without contact from any other human besides officers. >> it's a windowless cell in a pod and he said this incredible thing. he says, do you know how long it's been since i've seen a tree? >> the last time i saw a tree? oh, it's been years. years. it's been years since i saw a tree. when was the last time i interacted with some people? years. >> but some of the staff here believe brown earned his shu term. serving a 40-year sentence for rape, brown landed in the shu when he as

. ♪ z >>> the wabash valley correctional facility in indiana houses a large number of inmates who areime of their crimes. >> come back here. >> when "lockup" visited there, we met two such inmates. they killed after their own minds turned on them. and their murders took on dimensions that were not only shocking, they were unimaginable. >> my name is howard franklin street jr. i'm 38 years old. i've been down since 1993 for shooting my mom. >> during our first day of shooting at wabash, our "lockup" crew met frank street, an inmate housed in the prison's residential treatment unit. at the time of the interview, street was experiencing involuntary tremors due to his medication. >> i started having delusions that people were out to hurt me. and i had this video cassette tape of a party and showed people hurting me, you know. and i showed it to my parents, ain't nothing to it. i thought you guys were crazy. they were thinking sane, they were sane. i was the crazy one. >> a short time later, street's delusions got the better of him. >> i loaded up my dad's 30/30. because i thought these pe

. >> i used to work for a couple of irish house painters, they would say let's wabash this place, itsy. it rains, it's gone. >> the other thing, the other thing that's -- >> you're describing wabash again. >> the pace of politics has picked up so much, a couple of cycles ago, his bounce would have lasted all week. it's not now. so he can't -- i don't think he can cbash. >> it rains on there. >> kasich's hope. >> he has been here. he spechnt sometime and everybo thinks three tickets out of here. i think there may be four. >> from from the republican side. thank you very much. please come back. you're kind of cranky, but you know your -- i shouldn't have said that word. that was a trump word. hillary clinton is looking to make history as the first female president of the united states. i have to say i'm sorry for that word. i heard trump just say it. that's bad. i'm sorry. >>> welcome back to "hardball," live from the university of new hampshire. the only one-on-one debate between hillary clinton and bernie sanders before next tuesday's new hampshire primary in this state. by the way,

they've seen him at wabash.em to have any problems. >> i'm worried about his side effects with involuntary movements and whether the others will perceive him as odd. >> a little bit jerky? >> yeah. >> when i talked to him yesterday, the team -- the team he's on, they're aware of it, and they don't seem to have issues with it. i think he thinks he can succeed out there. >> anything else on mr. street? we can count him as one of our success stories for now. >>> coming up -- >> make sure you know those receipts. you told me you was doing that last week? >> even as he tries to prove the case, nick compton can't escape the wrath of other inmates. >> snitches get killed. [ bleep ]. technology. technology... say, have you seen all the amazing technology in geico's mobile app? mobile app? look. electronic id cards, emergency roadside service, i can even submit a claim. wow... yep, geico's mobile app works like a charm. geico. expect great savings and a whole lot more. i'm here to get the lady of the house back on her fe

six cars left the tracks around wabash avenue. one car was leaking butane and caught fire. families were evacuated for about four hours. >>> police officers were called out to strongsville high this morning. apparently someone e-mailed an anonymous threat last night saying there would be a shooting at the high school. the school remains open. >>> bill cosby appeared in a pennsylvania court today. his attorneys asked a judge to throw out the only charges filed against him for sexually assaulting a woman, despite dozens of accusations over the decades. correspondent brian webb reports. >> reporter: bill cosby was led into the montgomery county sexual-assault case against him. attorneys for the 78-year-old comedian asked the judge to throw out a charge of aggravated indecent assault. in the criminal complaint, cosby's accused of drugging and sexually assaulting former temple university employee 2004. his attorneys say constant was a willing participant. she settled a civil case against cosby in 2006 for an undisclosed sum. cosby's attorneys say his deposition in that case was

. >> a wabash employee is wanted for killing a mother and her young son and has been found dead in an indianapolis hotel. police say they' ve found 61-year-old vicious hamilton with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. he was the subject of a deadly manhunt after the bodies of his knees and son were found in the upscale home. investigators are working to learn what led up to the shooting. he checked out a college man just this morning on campus. mike: apple is vowing to take on the government in the fight over a terrorist iphone. a locked phone used by one of has respond. the federal government is tracking this lead to isis. the order could in danger phone of law-abiding citizens around the world. apple says it will fight a federal magistrate to help the fbi crack and iphone used by one of the shooters in the december terror attack in san bernardino california. it is a simple, narrow request. >> they are not asking them to create a new backdoor. this one device. sheree: mike: tim cook says the tool can but it is simply not true. could be used over and over again on a number of devices. >>

that appeared to be the case with an articulate young inmate we met at wabash correctional facility in indiana. but before our crew could really get to know 23-year-old jonathan richardson, they had to get past his appearance. >> seeing jonathan richardson for the first time was kind of shocking. you had to wonder what was going through that guy's head to do that to himself. he stood out. >> when i first saw jonathan walking down the corridor it was like, whoa, i've seen some -- some odd-looking dudes in prison, but i think he was one of the oddest. >> richardson is serving a 55-year sentence for a murder he committed at the age of 19. when we met him, he was assigned to the secured housing unit or shu for the violence he committed behind bars. in this never before seen interview, he explains what happened. >> i got into an altercation with my bunky, i ended up stabbing him. he had wanted certain sexual favors. i wasn't that way. so i ended up stabbing him, basically to defend myself. >> the inmate survived but richardson has not only directed violence towards others, he has turned it

when we visited indiana's wabash valley correctional facility, officers in the security housing unite dealing with the latest in a string of violent incidents involving convicted burglar, douglas mccombs. >> since he's been inside the shu, he's been on strip cell. when you see the offender coming out of his cell only wearing his underwear, at that time he was on a strip cell. i think at that time it was for resisting staff or trying to assault staff before. we have had trouble with him on about every range we've put him on so far. >> i can't get along with people too much. especially when they're evil. >> one of the people mccombs claims was evil, officer sachen. >> an average day in the shu can be pretty mundane. you have recs and showers to do. chow to serve, md sick call, so on and so forth. some days like today get a little more exciting. we had an offender who became belligerent in the shower. >> the offender was mccombs who told us he had good reason to be upset. >> try to get me to take a shower. but they don't have no soap or nothing. i said, ma'am, i just came from the other

. >> when we visited the shu at indiana's wabash valley correctional facility, the staff made it clearietest day in the shu can be the worst day in the shu in about two seconds. some of the challenges we face are the threat of being gunned down, as we say in here, having feces or urine thrown on you, spit, blood, semen, anything you can think of has happened in this building. >> but for inmates in the shu, the monotony brings a horror of its own. they told us what it was like to spend 23 hours a day in a windowless concrete cell, sometimes for years at a time. >> it's like you're always trying to find a way to come up for air. this place suffocates you. you know what i'm saying? >> it's a tomb for me. you know? it's like a tomb. it's like a tomb, a concrete tomb. what if they would have sent these punk ass dudes to -- and he would have succeeded in killing them, right? >> during our first day on the shu, we walked into a heated exchange about murder. >> what you saying about the killer? you saying both killer. >> but it wasn't about prison violence. >> showed up, saying that macbeth se

on the evening of november 3, sinclair makes encampment on --t he thinks is the bank exactly the wabash river. he does not know where he is. thatorry is the same worry custer had at the little bighorn. he is afraid that the indians will scatter and run before he gets there. before he finds them and kills them. there standing around a campfire and warming the hands. the plan is, the next day we will get up early, march the next however many miles it is -- he's actually 44 miles away from -- will thinks he has get up early, march, will get this done. the indian army has come to meet him. they are lying in wait to have miles away. they are ready for the battle that they know is going to happen next morning. the next morning when the troops get up, suddenly all hell breaks loose. the group of militia camp across are engulfed by this indian attack. they run across the river, run into the american cap meant, people are still eating breakfast. the indians do what indians were not supposed to be able to do. their leaders have formulated an effective battle plan, and they have their warriors exe

he graduated from wabash college and earned his law degree from vanderbilt university where he served on the law review. he and his wife jennifer, who is here today, jennifer? there you go. they are the parents of two daughters, one son, some of those are here, right? who's here? okay. and he likes to add, i assume both of you like to add two dogs. and what are their names? >> karlie and moose. >> okay. and -- okay. and luke and his wife are also the author and illustrator of a children's book about indiana entitled hoosier heart. an ex-middle linebacker, he remains a youth sports coach. the policy chair event as tommy, president tommy burke said, is part of governing on major issues. in addition, tomorrow, three national leading speakers will be addressing at 10:00 a.m. in this very same room at the national press club. the polarized politics of autism. we wanted to make sure everyone is aware of that. i'd like to do some introductions. first, the chairman of the news makers committee. and thanks for your support on all of the news makers committee does. national press club interns a