Matter of selfdefense in many ways the u. S. Is used the swiss system is kind of a billy club as an instrument of Foreign Policy and i think its only natural that countries that are on the other end of that billy club are going to look for ways to pull themselves out of that type of situation so were seeing this Movement Across the world you could have a very negative effect on the u. S. Economy and i think a lot of people dont understand this the dollars already in a risky position as more and more countries seek to. Eliminate their dependence on the dollar it furthers weakens the currency and you know eventually many people believe that the dollar will not be the reserve currency or at least not the sole reserve currency so i think the u. S. Should be very careful. Thanks for joining us i know its the international and join us again of the top of the hour for the latest. Resists is a sticker from the water bottle phone in the stomach of a fish the brand is spawns of the Cocacola Company which sells millions of bottles of soda every day the idea was that lets 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. And may let. Their plastic. Tank when you dont lose that special projects funding me. On im your best bet is the end of a footy team but for now the mountains of moist only grow higher. And. I was in los angeles it was march of 1901. Of the window here and there they are. Saw how i was arrested that day our father and i wanted her to break bargain. I understand she area is not going to pay somebody and i could prove. She got me but just to save her on the scale thats not my daughter so she wouldnt do this. And as a result they were under. Ready i could not plead guilty to everything that they accused me of. Not guilty about ultimately i was convicted for conspiracy and dire received 24 year sentence. Theres 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 man in miami sells 20 kilos of cocaine to an undercover agent. Do you want to ask who is the seller work and where does the money go if the money goes back to a drug lord in colombia whos going to keep the proceeds hes in the conspiracy even though he actually wasnt there when this sale took place hes 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 thats 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 youre 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 was held responsible for everything that everybody else had done and my sentence my 24 years was established based on the sum total of all the ecstasy that sandy had manufactured thats where my ears came from my ears did. Things that i came from 3700000 tablets of ecstasy but he had manufactured puts me on the chart at this lab just 24 years thats 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. The idea of proportional punishment can be lost if this triggers a mandatory sentence to add insult to injury while im incarcerated for 24 years he comes back to the us and goes before the same judge this sent me to 24 years and he got 3 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 2 days before the trial and tenders a plea that sentence will be different even though they may be situated the same its 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 youre facing Something Like 20 or 30 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 unamerican. But thats the way mandatory minimums are said. My mother calls me and she said well i need to tell you something. And im thinking the worst just while i may is featured in our magazine shes 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 bumpers and senator pryor and everyone started actually looking into the case and saying what could have possibly happened here this just doesnt seem right my story in case started gaining momentum and we got i think up to 15 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 dont 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 ive got to set you up on probation and i said why. I just said youre going home. And. I couldnt process it i was just right. And. My reaction was are i think i was sitting down so i stood up and i said theyre going to start and i sat down and i said what do you mean and she said you gotten executive clemency president clinton has ordered you out and you have to be out today by 5 oclock 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 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 3 strikes and you are. The primary mission of the drug war as stated by the Nixon Administration is to create a drug free society. Thats what its all about thats why we spend the billions of dollars and incarcerate millions of people is to create a drug free society. Weve been at this now for a good mark for 40 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 weve 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 were 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 were 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 into this 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 didnt know what it was cut with sometimes it in a freeze people would drink to some group of people who drink you could cirrhosis kids would die in the crossfire it sounds all too familiar because its exactly was happening on the streets today in the United States going to comes to getting violence of 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 rainbow for someone committing burglaries you know what the rapes stop. The burglary stock when you arrest someone for dealing drugs dealing drugs doesnt stop in 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 dont know what to come out just as well and be like without the war on drugs. My only experience of it has been during the war on drugs. When i started family in 1991 war on drugs really heated up in the eightys kept rolling through the ninetys you know sort of started tapering off and then to thousands but its still alive and well its like pounding funder of anti drug is styria in 1906 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 1989 i started the criminal Justice Policy foundation. And that is been the opportunity for me for the last 25 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 im 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 and 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 jane felt life sentence. Clark 35 years Timothy Tyler life sentence. Sharan 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 chapal guzman you seen the mexican drug lords here no. Crisis metaphysic crisis and they share. As a scale a financial disaster in. Neighboring interest. Here in japan. For the problem of perception says which of the other being so. Governments and International Organizations do not have enough time that. 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 halfway home. So i got the Clinton House already already has some experience and had a roof background. I called my old boss so he was in the Halfway House at the time and i think someone i dont know what company im doing roofing and his mother came to me and next we would like him appear. That he. Needed to do is prove it and he just blossom it just blossomed from there i was so happy to be at work and not 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 their home so in essence i was hungry 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 a mentally dismayed as mine of insane 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 then i had to leave i froze year business i made about 30 some 1000. 00 more for a shit. I remember a vest im back into the business im buying tools a mile ladders some growing the business or take my 2nd year i read about he some. 3rd year i did about one a solo 1000 some story was surely progressing so now i want to have a 1000000. 00 next to normal to say i want to now miles. In the early 2999. 00 or early 2000 my family went over the 1000000. 00 more. That wow wow no i never thought that i would call a 1000000. 00 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 thats 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 dont know how to break to change from the street scene thats saying get a hole do you. Want to get. To be all that bull or. For me is to be that beacon of hope hope no matter where you come from the what youve done you can come out of that because the same 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 door for a number of years inside and out so they have mobility that 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 im now a changed person and im now somebody that they could expire to also. Executive clemency was a bittersweet victory to be honest right there because it didnt 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 arent and. As long as theyre not then im not really so i started a 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 BarbaraMary Richards and theyve all done well over 20 years these are all guys who are serving life these are for pot hes 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 thats happening and in fact i took. All these guys to the front in front of the white house and anyway theres several that i stood out in front of the white house advocating for their clemency when i started practicing law almost 40 years ago there about a half a 1000000 people in prison. And today there are 2300000. 00 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 1990 s. We were building on average a prison a week and as soon as these prisons were built its important to emphasize that they were immediately filled up with 1st 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 5. 00 to 10. 00 times the rate of those other nations its not that we have 5 or 10 times the rate of crime of those other nations but we have consciously chosen to have a much more unity new approach to crime then other comparable nations have the netherlands was only see a massacre as. Kids we go i. Got a job. And. A lot of. The euro. Has over there. And the past from their parents childrens lives and going to. Marry and conditional and. Loving and. Just because. Im ours. Bred jellicoe i want to 63706 my 1st 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 2012 within 3 months i got out they mccourt fives boehm arrests to sion paid. Child support paid everything i. 0. I start 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 worst Case Scenario if i go to probation offices i have to go to a program where id be urine test regularly or go to a meeting well the reality in fact is 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 couldnt believe i had all made all this work on my i have all this to show you look at all this i have ive done it shes that youve done a lot but you still using drugs and its against the law. To get sentenced to 4 years for dirty your analysis. Its a lot watching your children grow up in issue in wave and say by daddy as youre walking out of the business it is just it doesnt get easier you dont stand and as you get older you think you become more customer this but never under any circumstances gets easier. Is how you do on. 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 im proud of you wrestling. Im glad youre sticking with it i know youre going so just like i said try to stick with it and you know why youre the manor house still the best you can take out the trash drive things you manners