They were under. Ready i could not plead guilty to everything that they accuse me of is now. Not guilty and that alternately 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 men in miami cells 20 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. 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 they are 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 and 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. 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 acts the thing that sandy had manufactured thats where my ears came from my ears didnt. Things that i came from 3700000 tablets of x. The thing that 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. So the idea of proportion. 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 is situated the same its just plain different and those are the yangs and the 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 set up. My mother calls me and she said well i need to tell you something. And im thinking the worst just while amy is featured in a 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 well 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. 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. 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 youve 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 why we spend the billions of dollars and incarcerate millions of people is to create a drug free society. Weve been asked this now for good marks 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 a Violent Crimes go through the roof as these. Criminal gangster organisations 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 their rent is 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 prudish and 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 you didnt know what it was cut with sometimes it in a freeze people would drink this 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 in 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 making burglaries you know what the rapes stop. The burglaries stop when you arrest someone for dealing drugs dealing drugs doesnt stop on that corner you just create a job opportunity for someone else to come in and unfortunately when a job is filled viciously some fighting sioux name. People. The emphasis over criminal Justice System should be on violent offenses this is where most people are concerned about. They want murderers and branded they want murders and rapes solved and they want these people. Taken out of the community locked away in prisons or communities can be saved i dont know what the criminal justice one of the be like without the war on drugs. My only experience of it has been during the war on drugs. And i started family in 1991 war on drugs really heated up in the eightys kept rolling through the ninetys you know it 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 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 in my office im still very active with students for sensible drug policy. And with one force really against prohibition. And so a lot of my work is advocacy. Strategizing you know what are the ways to change drug policy that before 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 james life sentence. Clark 35 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. The mexican drug lords here. They put themselves on the line they get accepted or rejected. So when you want to be president and you. Want. To go to the press this is what before. Can people. Interested in the waters and. This. Is a this is a stick for the water bottle phone in the stomach of the 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 theyre the bad ones theyre the litterbugs theyre throwing this away industry should be blamed for all this waste the company has long promised to reuse the plastic. Thats. A special. Objects funding he tells it to also dream on i knew best that is the end of a footy team but for 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 all weve already has some experience or move out of her back row. I called my old boss so he was in a Halfway House at the time and i think someone i dont know what company happy am doing roofing and his mother came to me and next we would out by him appear shoes that he needed to do his roof and and he just blossom he just blossomed from there i was so happy to be at work and be to 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 home going 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 minutes when he does mean is minus insane and he is going to go if you know go into business for some in a salad 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 30 some 1000. 00 or more for. A member vest and back into the business and borrowed tools and while ladders some. Growing the business and i think my 2nd year i read about he some. 3rd year i did about 100000. 00 its almost all he was surely progressing so now im up to half a 1000000. 00 next to normal to say i want to 1000 miles. In early 2999. 00 or early 2000 my family went over the 1000000. 00 more. So while one home 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 if thats what they want. When 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 dont know how to break to change from this unique thing thats saying get ahold to you a single hold you want to you gary to be on that ball of war. For me is to be that beacon of hope oh no matter where you come from the matter what youve done you can come out of that because the same bull i sold drugs on. Directly across the street for my office is used to set a bar called the night light their lives sold drugs out of that war for a number of years inside and out so they have mobility so mallaby came before and then to show people that yes i was that once drove dillard at read up and down a stream sold drugs and did all that stuff there im now a changed person and im now somebody that they can expire to also. Exact i have come to say it was a better sweet victory to be honest right there because it didnt take me very long. After i got out and the excitement the 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 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 BarbaraMary Richardson and theyve all done well over 20 years these are all guys who are serving life these are for pot he is for l. S. D. I have just got back from washington d. C. I was there for 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 of them that i stood out in front of the white house advocating for their clemency when i started practicing law almost 40 years ago there were 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 present 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 nurse 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 are 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 to broach to crime then other comparable nations and have the next was only seen as a cursory. Seems to me though i. Got a job. And. A lot of. Here and. There. 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 for the prison systems are pretty young. Lifestyle of 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 fame arrests to sion paid. Child support paid everything i was thats. 0. 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 id 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 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 youre in the houses. Its a lot watching your children grow up in michoud in wave and say bye daddy as youre walking out of a visit its just it doesnt get easier you dont stand and as you get older you think you become more custom than 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 so 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 i love you so very proud of you both of those wonderful. Friends from 7 to 13 really growing up. And im sorry im not there to guide you. As much as id like. To turn out pretty good and im very very proud. I really am. Now oh i dont know im so right my 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 when. Youre strong so friends. And i. Want to know i love you here i miss you very much oh heres a man i miss you and there is a culture that i went through it is more moments. Any time you hate me you miss me theres a theres a gaping same things mom when she used the word i love you and i miss you all and i hope to see you soon and that he loves you. Its. The 4th of july. Because of the fact that so many of us have lived for 30 years in this box of mandatory sounds 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 youre 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 1st top of my list is the drug laws because i think were in another situat