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00:00:01
Speaker 1: On January twenty third, two thousand and seven, in order to obtain a search warrant, a narcotics officer claimed to have seen Meek mill selling crack out of his home. The following day, Meek was stopped on his way to a corner store and they found a gun. He was badly beaten, arrested for illegal possession of a firearm, and later charged with assaulting arresting officers who claimed that he had pointed the gun at them. In two thousand and eight, due to the cost, Meek waved a jury trial, was tried for drug and weapons charges and sentenced to two years prison plus eight years probation, which kicked off his storied clash with Judge Denise Sprinkley. Over the decade that followed, parole tight restrictions and his contentious relationship with Brinkley made more punishment almost an inevitability. In November of twenty seventeen, she sentenced him to at least two more years in prison for alleged violations, including popping a wheelie without a helmet. This gained plenty of outrage and public support, largely due to a police department whistleblower who exposed Meeks two thousand and seven arresting officer as a liar and a thief. His two thousand and eight conviction was overturned. He was granted a new trial under a new judge, bringing his two thousand and seven criminal case and probation to a long overdue close in August of twenty nineteen. However, his litigation was still ongoing at the time of this episode's original release. Meek Mills' notoriety shines a light on the regularity legalized harassment by authorities and the recidivism that results. A docuseries chronicling his legal saga called Free Meek, is now streaming on Prime Video, and Meek's friend Michael Rubin, one of the owners of Philadelphia seventy six ers, joined us for a discussion that unfortunately is as relevant.
00:01:57
Speaker 2: Today as it was back then. This is Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm.
00:02:18
Speaker 1: That's me and today we have an extraordinary show and you're about to find out why today's guest is the one and only Meek Milly and Michael Rubin is with him and Meek. You need no introduction, but welcome to the show.
00:02:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks for having me Man. I appreciate you for bringing me on the show.
00:02:37
Speaker 1: I appreciate all the work you're doing, and we're going to get into that right away. But with him is Michael Rubin, who is the owner of this Philadelphia seventy six ers and has an amazing background as an entrepreneur and businessman, but who has become a tremendous advocate for criminal justice reform and is about to really shake things up. Michael, I'm thrilled to have you in the movement, and I'm glad you're here on the show.
00:03:02
Speaker 4: Hey, thanks for everything you're doing. I'm glad to be here.
00:03:05
Speaker 1: So Meek. One of the reasons I wanted to have you on the show is because your original case was in fact a wrongful conviction, and that's something a lot of people don't understand. And there's a lot more they don't understand about the circumstances in which you were arrested and how this nightmare saga, which is now in its second decade in the criminal justice system has unfolded. And it's important to tell this story because it shines a light on so many aspects of what's wrong with the criminal justice system. And we're here in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, not Philadelphia, Mississippi. But even still, the system here has been so backwards for so long, and you were born right into the thick of it. I mean, let's talk about that y nineteen eighty seven. So the number of people incarcerated United States stayed relatively constant from nineteen hundred till about nineteen seventy, and then it went crazy. It doubled and tripled and quadrupled, and Philadelphia was a hot spot. And you were born into a situation in which black men were being incarcerated at rates that were unprecedented actually in the history of the world. There's a book that really touches on everything that you went through, called On the Run by Alice Goffman, a Princeton PhD. Sociologist who went and lived on Sixth Street in Philadelphia. She said, in the first eighteen months that I spent the neighborhood, at least once a day, I watched the police stop pedestrians or people in cars, searched them, run their name for warrants, asked them to come in for questioning or make an arrest. And that same eighteen month period, I watched the police breakdown doors, search houses, and question, arrest or chase people through houses fifty two times. Nine times police her helicopters circled overhead and beam search lights on the local streets. I noticed blocks taped off in traffic directed as police search for evidence fourteen times during my first eighteen months of near daily observation, I watched the police punch, choke, kick, stomp on, or beat young men with their night sticks. That's what the situation was like. It's what it still is like, and that's what has to change. Yeah, can you talk about that about how you grew up and how this, you know, was almost almost a fade of complete Uh.
00:05:24
Speaker 3: You know, I come from Philadelphia, actually North Philadelphia which now is called the Temple Area, and you know, we grew up in environments where like dragonfest environments where a lot of violence, a lot of drugs, a lot of things taking place. So it's like you could be standing in the wrong place and lose your life, or you could be standing in the wrong place and get charged with a crime you didn't do. That was just like normal. Actually, I've been hanging with my friend pe Mind probably fifteen years and I remember back he went to jail when he was probably about fifteen years old. He just turned thirty one, and was like, yeah, the first time I went to prison, he said, a white guy just pulled up in the back of a car and just pointed at me out the car and said, I robbed him for seven dollars,
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but he had three hundred and eighty dollars in his pocket and he went to jail for that. He ended up doing I think like two years and that in the juvenile facility. But that wasn't the worst part. The worst part was he's got a felony on this record for arm robbery. And you know, if you know him, he not like a it's not robbery. He's not robbery. And his system he made mistakes in his life. But me being around him, I never knew that. But I witnessed that so many times. I wouldn't have standing on a corner and the cop pulled up with a Mexican guy in the back, and I don't know. Sometimes we say and then our world in a sycastic way of being funny, we always be like white people look the same to us. Some of my white friends were like all black people were saying to us. But sometimes that is the case with people and they just pull up and they point people out, and you stand there when the cops pull up and like, I hope this guy don't point me out. And that's just one of the scenarios out of a million scenarios, being caught in the middle of poverty, drug infested the neighborhood where people are getting robbed left and right, where you know, cop flocking people who have left and rights just to get stripes on that record. You know what I'm saying. And we grew up in that and you know, at eighteen years old, I was caught up in that system. And even though I've been on the path ever since of doing spectacling in my life from where I come from, that same system is still haunting me and hanking me down. Even at the age of thirty one and having a record deal and being able to handle business and work, it's still haunted me to pull me back to the same system where I just left eleven years ago.
00:07:45
Speaker 1: And you just brought up a very important point, which is that we know from decades of research now that cross racial identifications are extremely unreliable. Identifications in general are unreliable because people have witness a crime, especially violent crime, goes crazy and the perception gets screwy and the brain doesn't function properly, so it almost becomes like guessing. But it gets even worse. And there's a movement now in various places to try to put in a system where a jury has to be instructed in the case in which across racial identification is an important factor that these things are as unreliable as they are because they need to know, but in most cases they don't know. They just think an identification is the most powerful thing. Going to court room to a guy points at you and goes that to him. You know, it's hard for a jury to see past that.
00:08:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like it's a neighborhood. We all wearing white Teas of the summer of two thousand and three, everybody white T shirts is the popular thing to wear denim shirts. And you got a guy, he might be Asian. He pulled up on the corner. We all seven of us got braids, and four of us got a little cousin. But we all look the same, the ones that got braids to him. It's just you allowed to repick to get caught up in the system like whoever you point at, that's you. And you better hope you don't have no felonies on your record already because you might go to jail for a long time.
00:09:01
Speaker 1: And sociologically speaking, and this goes back again to the seventies and eighties. Right at the same time that they were rolling back welfare and other programs for the urban poor, they were ramping up the policing and they were Now you created the perfect storm because what was happening was you had these systems coming in for tracking arrests. You had so many more cops. In fact, I think in Philadelphia sixty nine percent more police decade over decade than they were before, and they had to make arrests. So whereas before they were largely ignoring what was going on in the community, now there were heightened penalties for not just for violent crimes, but also for all kinds of different drug crimes, for vagrancy, for trespassing, for anything. And they were in a position where they were arresting people left and right and creating this permanent underclass. And Michael, you know, obviously you grew up here too, right, but your situation must have been.
00:09:55
Speaker 5: Very, very different world. I grew up maybe twenty minutes from me. But Mike Ustall said to me, we used to have this argument for years. He'd say to me, Michael, there's two Americans. And I'd be like, like, dude, shut up, there's like there's there's one America. Like stop, you know, like you're doing great, Like you know, I didn't understand, like what are you telling me about these two worlds? We live in one great country and and you know, we'd argue about it all the time. And I remember the day that that meet got sentenced November six, twenty seventeen. He called me from the Philadelphia job before they transferred to a different Jennal and they said, he said, you see, I told you this is what happens to the black people on that oade, right, And I just like that, you know, I said you were right, I was wrong, and there is two worlds. And you know, for me, November six, twenty seventeen was really a life change in moment, because I would never have been able to understand who really believe And I don't think anybody would be able to believe how crazy a circumstance he was living in because it didn't seem possible until you sat in the courtroom. And even people that have come to later court hearings of Judge Brinkley have said, I've heard everything about this, but I didn't believe it until I actually saw it, and it's so crazy. So for sure, I grew up in a completely different environment. But Meek always told me from the day I met him. I remember we were at a NBA All Star game, and you know, within a few minutes, you know, Meek realized I was involved with the Philadelphia seventy six ers and was telling me a little bit about his background. He told me that he was charged for pointing a gun at multiple cops. And he said to me, like, you know, I didn't do
that.
00:11:22
Speaker 4: If I pointed, you know, a.
00:11:23
Speaker 5: Gun at multiple cops, I'd be dead. Like I heard him, but I didn't really comprehend it. And then like, if I've told that story to five hundred people in the last seven months, every person from law enforcement to politics, to anyone who understands anything, they all say the same thing. He's right, he'd be dead. No one would pull a gun on multiple cops and not get shot. And Meek can't obviously talk about the case, because the case is still unfortunately going on, which is crazy in itself sense, right, But I mean you're talking about a guy who was wrongfully convicted when he was eighteen years old of a crime that he didn't commit. It's been sent back to jail multiple times, never committed a new crime, and he's the perfect example of someone who's been stuck in a completely broken criminal justice system for.
00:12:10
Speaker 4: Criming to commit.
00:12:11
Speaker 5: And it's now thirteen years later and it's still going on, and that shows how broken the criminal justice system is.
00:12:17
Speaker 1: It's incredible. You know, we have two point two million people in prison in America and including jail.
00:12:24
Speaker 4: Another four and a half million people on probation in parole.
00:12:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the latest figure I heard was four point eight, right, And once we accept those figures, you also have to accept the fact that we now have, between jail, prison, probation, and parole, we have more black people with mostly men, under criminal justice supervision in America than all the slaves at the height of slavery in America in the eighteen fifties or sixties whatever that was. What are we doing? Well, It's like Michelle Alexander says, is the new Jim Crow.
00:12:53
Speaker 5: What words can't explain is Meek is still on probation for something that we've already said he didn't do, and it's been going on for thirteen years from the original wrongful conviction. But he can't, like you can't live that way. Like I say, I joke with him, I feel like I'm on probation because I'm worried about.
00:13:12
Speaker 4: Just something going wrong with him.
00:13:13
Speaker 5: If he decides to leave a state a day early because something changed with the schedule, or he gets you know, someone says, hey, I'm going to pay you to go do this contract. I want to go, and I have the proper days of permission, the judge will try to violate him. I mean, it's the system is chasing him and trying to violate and that's not what probation is supposed to be about, rehabilitating somebody, not trying to catch them and send that back to prison. And something that someone told me recently, and you know, I've now become too familiar with this, but seventy percent of people to go back to jail once they've been in jail in prison are going back for technical probation violations. Like to me, virtually none of those people should be going.
00:13:47
Speaker 4: You know, you had a.
00:13:48
Speaker 5: Technical probation violation, right, he didn't commit a crime, You were late for your probation officer. You you know, didn't pay a certain amount of money. You know, you travel out of the state. You know he went to his son in New Jersey because he lives in Pennsylvania. And you can be violated and sent back to jail.
00:14:02
Speaker 4: This is lunacy.
00:14:03
Speaker 1: This is absolute lunacy. And I want, I'm really glad you brought that up, Michael, because I don't want to get your take on this week because in a lot of the reforms that are underway right now, there's this hidden caveat or this hidden nightmare i'll call it, of enhanced probation and other ways of the government keeping people under control. So to me, a true crime reform bill should eliminate those problems. And you obviously can speak firsthand about just how restrictive that is, and Michael has said very eloquently, when you have seventy percent of people going back to jail or prison because they have some technical violation, that's insane. Right. Can you talk about that? Because I'm very concerned that they're sneaking these devils into the details in these new crime bills that are going to allow them to maintain this control. There's no other way to look at it. Over millions of people's lives, and there's a profit center in that for a lot of people too.
00:14:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, is more saying to me, I take it as deep as like he said, I could go see my son in New Jersey and actually be locked in a cage and be locked and changed shackle from like angle to feet.
00:15:10
Speaker 1: For the crime of going from Pennsylvania to New.
00:15:12
Speaker 3: Jersey to see your son.
00:15:14
Speaker 1: That's what I'm saying. I'm being facetious. Yeah, for the crime in quotes.
00:15:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll tell you this right now.
00:15:20
Speaker 5: Judge Brinkley is dying to do that too. She's trying to right now today, I promise you. She's sitting in her house obsessed about how she can figure out how to put them back in jail for nothing. And he can't talk about that, but I can't. I'm telling you straight up, that's what's going on.
00:15:35
Speaker 1: It's it's really bizarre. I mean, as a country, why would we want I mean, these are our tax dollars, right, and it hurts the average taxpayer, even if you're somebody who's not particularly concerned about criminal justice reform, or you think a lot of people or you maybe you think you're tough on crime or whatever. It might be. The money that's being spent to lock people like you meek up right and to keep you under supervision and this bloated and draconian system is pure insanity. I mean that money could be spent. I mean, I know that at one time eight bonaire, eight billionaire at one time. I don't even know if it's still true. But a few years ago I checked in California, which a lot of people think was in a progressive state, was spending more money locking people up than they were educating people. We have fact
check that, but it's absolutely staggering. And the crazy thing is these are Americans. There are fellow people, you know, I say the politicians when I talk to him, Like, you know, if another country treated our people the way we treat our people, we'd invade this stuff.
00:16:38
Speaker 3: We wouldn't even do to our pets, you know what I'm saying, Like you wouldn't lock your pet in the metal cell. For Sometimes we get locked in and I say we because I've been through this experience so many times, and like sometimes we get locked in a room for twenty three hours a day for a month or two weeks, some people actually even years. You know what I'm saying. It's like they say, when you come home, it's a violation to be around felons. How is it a violation to be around felons when you just had me locked up amongst thousands of felons? Like what rule is this?
00:17:10
Speaker 1: I'm glad you brought that up too, because that's another thing that creates this visious story.
00:17:15
Speaker 5: Ex's by the way you think about it. In the environment you grew up, what percentages of people that.
00:17:20
Speaker 4: Live on your block have had a felony?
00:17:22
Speaker 3: Ninety five percent?
00:17:23
Speaker 4: Right, So what you're saying is essential family.
00:17:25
Speaker 5: Anyone can put you back in prison because there's a rule that says you can't be around felons, but everyone you grew up with has a felony.
00:17:32
Speaker 3: If somebody really made that an issue, I would probably go to jail any day. Because if I go to the studio with a rapper and we make a song, I don't know his record, but.
00:17:40
Speaker 1: Right you don't know, how would you know? You have to have a like a database that we do at all times. Most people can't afford that. I mean, you're not going to do it. In the fact is, I'm just quoting a statistic here. One in four black children born in nineteen ninety had an imprisoned father by the time he or she turned fourteen. Yeah, right, And the numbers just get worse and worse. I mean, thirty percent of black man without college educations today will have been to prison by their men thirties and spent up to a year in prison thirty percent. Yeah, I mean that's without college educations. And the numbers go to sixty percent when you look at black males without high school educations. Yeah, sixty percent of black males out a high school education was better a year in prison or jail before their thirtieth birthday? What are we doing? And the fact is it's actually impossible to succeed, which is why I'm always amazed when somebody does come from the background that you came from and make it, because with that cycle, how do you do it? They've created a minefield that you can't walk through. Right, once you get arrested, You're going to get re arrested no matter what you do. Pretty much, Yeah.
00:18:41
Speaker 3: One hundred percent, and like me and Mike, we just spend the hour, Mike just teaching me about financial stuff and like texts and things that. Like when we're growing up from like age thirteen to twenty years old, we probably invest ninety five percent of our thinking time in the how to so in these type of conditions because it's like almost impossible to survive. So like you got to put like your awe into how this even my mind frame now, I still like even though I travel the world, it's still installed in my mind. It's still like something that is like I might come into a certain situation in a certain area and I go into survival move and I have to double back, and like this is not even that type of environment. Well, I don't live this type of life anymore, but it's just always installed inside my head, you know what I'm saying. And coming from environments like that, like you said sixty percent where I come from, it feels like it's ninety. Like do that count death death is going to they probably go up to probably ninety five percent young black men being murdered going to prison probably sixty plus another thirty five percent.
00:19:47
Speaker 4: Mick, I've heard you talk about this.
00:19:49
Speaker 5: You know, how many people do you know that you were close with it, you had a real relationship with that have been murdered.
00:19:55
Speaker 3: Twenty twenty five. That's how many?
00:19:58
Speaker 1: I know?
00:19:58
Speaker 3: How many?
00:19:59
Speaker 4: Zero?
00:20:00
Speaker 1: You know?
00:20:00
Speaker 5: You know how many I know that's been close zero? Right, So you're talking about yeah, different environments, So.
00:20:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's crazy.
00:20:06
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's great.
00:20:07
Speaker 1: We have two Shepherd systems of justice in America, one for people with money and one for people without, and one for people who are of color and one for people who are not. And when you hit the reverse jackpot of being a person of color without being born into a wealthy family, which is a huge majority, you.
00:20:22
Speaker 3: Don't even have to come from a wealthy family to like not be around somebody that was murdered. It's really like territorial, Like I got one of my songs where I'm talking about like like we've been put in groups in certain areas, even with public house and public house, and it's really across Philadelphia. So if you grow grow up less fortunate, they're sticking people in certain areas if you pay attention to it, Like it's North Philadelphia, but not the whole North Philadelphia is a certain part in's South Philadelphia. It's a rich part of South Philadelphia where like houses cost a million dollars and then you got some houses that cost forty thousand. They only moving us in certain areas. And I always say this, like, if you take a drone, the main line in Philadelphia is like city Line Avenue where my apartments used to be. At City Line Avenue. You take a drone and then you make the drone go high in the sky, and if the drone had a zoom in ker zoom on this side of the left and right, you will see as quiet his peace here and
this chaos going here. And if you take a kid from over here and let him spend three summers in this area, it will be less. He won't be the way chaos says. He would turn to be more leaning like these people in this area. And I witnessed that with my family. I used to have a nephew. He lived in the projects. He used to cuss, He's seen a lot of things. He used to act up in school, and you know, he moved to a suburban area and his whole life changed within two years. It was just that simple.
00:21:53
Speaker 1: For a long time, I've been pondering thinking about obsessed with the idea of with the grim statistics and scenario that we're painting here, and you're exactly the guy. I want to ask this question, how many people as talented as you are either got shot or got locked up in prison, and society as a result is being deprived of those talents and all the revenue and all the culture that would have come from that. How many jay zs are there that didn't make it out and ended up in prison doing the.
00:22:25
Speaker 3: Back of the life thousands, you know what I'm saying. I know there's guys in there and locked with as talented as me, you know what I'm saying, And they probably there for felonies on felonies. And when you say, like when people label you as a felon, like how it's that my friend called a felony he was fifteen for something he ain't do now actually when he do make a mistake, when he do go hang on the corner. When we come up on the corner around drug doos. Everybody sell drugs. Your first step is to pick up a drug. So when you get your second felony, you might be actually good at basketball. You might have been in eleventh grade actually one of the best players on the team. And here come you in a bad neighborhood. You get arrested for something else, and we don't have a lowyer money. You might take a deal, and the deal is put this fundingly on your record. Now you got three fuling these on your record, and you're not They might call you a career criminal. You're not a career criminal. You just was in the wrong mix. Basically, Now you might get fifteen years for something small. You see how he told you that the guy got fifteen Well he had two life sentence for stealing. Now your record, your jacket is up, you get fifteen years. So now you trapped inside a prison while you never get a real shot at life. And you might be good as Ben Simmons or Joe and Beebe and you know all that went down to dream But far as Rapp is hundreds. So it was probably at least fifty guys that was actually good where I was at, where I was locked up at, where if they was on the street, we would spend time in the studio and build together and make music together. Fifty I would say, in that one prison that I know of.
00:23:58
Speaker 1: Recently, hip hop recently passed and roll and rock and pop as the most popular genre worldwide. Right, and it all comes from almost all of it comes from America. Right. Yeah, So when we're exporting that, we're bringing tax revenue into this country. When guys like you are making records, selling millions of records, selling concert tickets, you're paying taxes. All that stuff goes back into the system. Everybody is being hurt by that, and society is being deprived of geniuses. As you said, basketball is another story, right, And when you talk about a scenario like that, you have a kid as good as whoever you want to talk about, Simmons or whatever. They get arrested like that, the college scholarship's going out the windows. They can't play college ball now their whole thing. And let's say that guy was going to make one hundred million dollars, not unrealistic. We have the owner the seventy six ers year, right, you're the what right those checks?
00:24:44
Speaker 5: We look forward to writing many checks for one hundred million dollars because that we have that many great players.
00:24:48
Speaker 1: And let me ask you, do those players pay taxes on those checks? Of course, of course they do, right, huge amounts of money back into the city. Coming back to the state, coming back into the country, because those people were the few lucky ones that managed to escape from this, you know, sort of trap that society has built.
00:25:03
Speaker 4: But by way even more than money.
00:25:05
Speaker 5: If you look at the math and you say there's six point seven or six point nine million people today in America trapped in the criminal justice system, the question is what's appropriate. Like if we just all said, if you got anyone together and said, what do you think someone should be in prison for? What should someone be on probation for? If you said, hey, that person got caught smoking weed, should any of those people be in prison? If someone stole one hundred dollars as a fifteen year old kid, should they be stuck in prison? And the amount of story Like I think if you looked at the math and just said, let's just take this top down to six point nine million people in the criminal justice system, I think you could say if we just all said what should people be in the system for, and not being the system, we just took a bunch of rational people, the number is probably half And so to me, what's such a travesty is you've got millions of people stuck in the criminal justice system that don't belong there, and by the way, you're ruining their lives, their families, lives, their friends' lives. By the way, there's a lot of people that belong in prison. We want to live in a safe world. We want to have you know, violent offenders, people that murder people, or rapists.
00:26:09
Speaker 4: You know, armed robbers.
00:26:10
Speaker 5: There are a lot of people that belong in prison, and I want those people in prison. But the problem is there's millions of people that shouldn't be in the criminal justice system that are and that's the problem that needs to be addressed. And that's what I know. Meek is really excited to help make an impact on. I'm excited to help make an impact on I think this is an
enormous problem that's costing tens of billions of dollars and is ruined millions of people's lives.
00:26:34
Speaker 1: So so, yeah, and Michael, picking up on what you were saying, thirty thirty five years ago, we had three hundred thousand people in prison in America. Right now it's two point two million, and I'm sure the numbers on probation and parole were proportionately about, you know, seven times less like this one is too. And then you look at the country like Japan, right, well, we locked If you look at Western Europe, we lock people up at five to nine times depending which country you choose. The rate of the rest of the countries in Western Europe below US is five times as many per capita. Right, And then when you look at we have more people in prison just for drugs in America than everyone in prison of all of Western Europe for everything in Western Europe is much more. There many more people in Western Europe than we're in America. And then you get to Japan. In Japan they have approximately seventy thousand people in prison. We probably have seventy thousand people in prison in a mid sized state. Yeah, maybe even a smaller state than this one, right, yeah, because I mean do the math. So they we lock people up at fourteen times the rate per capita that Japan does. And for anybody listening, going, yeah, but that's why we have a lower crime rate than they do. No, we don't. Our crime rates are the same, and there's no evidence that supports. In fact, I think every social scientist that has studied this would agree that this system is the worst system in terms of crime and perpetuating the cycle because of the fact that when people go to jail or prison, as we talked about growing up in the situation they are, they come out, they're unemployable to I'll understanding. That's something I talk about on the show a lot, like people that are out out there that are employers take a shot with somebody who was system affected, because those people will work harder and better. You know, there's a bakery in New York I just found out about. I saw Ted talk about this that hires anybody who walks in system affected. They don't even ask, yeah, and they're hugely successful. They make all the brownies for Ben and Jerry's ice cream, right they sell a zillion can imagine me brownie's.
00:28:22
Speaker 4: I want to move to a lot of them right now because we have a little weight loss back on, so we can get this brown delivered to.
00:28:27
Speaker 1: Him right now. If you're looking a little slimmer the last.
00:28:29
Speaker 4: Time, yeah, yeah, neither is heavier.
00:28:32
Speaker 1: Though, no, but it's you know, that's something that we really need to as a society start to be much more progressive on and more empathetic. I mean, I don't want to sound like some like touchy feely person here, and I'm with you, Michael.
00:28:47
Speaker 5: I believe that that's an easier problem to solve because I've actually been thinking, Look, we employ eight thousand
people between my companies, and you know, I think if you got a bunch of business leaders to focus on taking big companies and saying what areas in their company could start to take people right out of prison to help rehabilitate them. I think there are actually easy ways to make real progress acainslight. I'm actually optimistic with a little bit of focus and energy that real impact can be made. There a lot of those cases. You have better employees, as you just indicated as well, so we have, you know, thousands of people that manufacture a power, working fulfillment centers, working call centers. My point is there's you know, big opportunities to hire people. And I think that again, if you look at how many people work in America and then how many people coming out of prison or jail each year. If there's two point two million people in prison in jail, maybe I don't know, five hundred thousand people come.
00:29:34
Speaker 4: Out a year.
00:29:35
Speaker 5: I don't think it takes a lot to get a set of big companies to focus on helping solve this.
00:29:39
Speaker 3: Problem well, and especially with long time offenders. Like a long time offenders, like people who serve over ten years, they spend most of their jail time working. In fact, the result working for the prison that their mind, they have experienced, their mind is structured to just work all day. And member rival was telling us he had a program hired like a lot of ex offenders, and he asked me, like, how many of them messed up? Was you in that conversation? He asked me, said how many you think messed up? Out of two hundred, I'm probably like, I said one ninety eight because I knew the number would be high, because I know of long time offenders, people that come home doing a lot of time. They don't they don't really want to mess up again. He told me nothing out of.
00:30:20
Speaker 1: Two hundred, none. Yeah, and that's amazing.
00:30:22
Speaker 4: I was only two of I think this was twenty or thirty years ago.
00:30:25
Speaker 5: Robert Kraft had a real focus on taking people that had come out of prison at hiring them.
00:30:29
Speaker 4: And the point to your point was they were his best employees.
00:30:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's best employees. And it's interesting too. I mean, call it luck, call it whatever you want. I've got. I've been very fortunate, blessed whatever to be able to help advocate successfully for clemency for dozens of people deserving people over the years, not just people who are innocent, but people who were primarily who are sentenced to mandatory sentences, crazy mandatory sentences like Lenny Singleton, who you referenced earlier, or Travian Blount who was senced just at fifteen years old since the six life terms for a robbery in which no one was hurt. Fifteen years old, six life terms. It made international news like what, what in the world even is that? Like, that's it's got to be what it is.
00:31:11
Speaker 3: That should be a crown that sentce of minds today Like why that's.
00:31:16
Speaker 5: And and to me, that's the that should be the easy things to get everyone aligned on and fix. And by the way, take talk about the state that meek us from, that I'm from. In Pennsylvania, we're one of three states in America that has no cap on probation. So another forty seven states have caps of probation summer.
00:31:36
Speaker 4: Three years, two years, four years, we have no cap in Pennsylvania.
00:31:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, so someone like me who I didn't know that was.
00:31:44
Speaker 5: Separate that he was wrongfully convicted thirteen years ago appointing a gun that didn't point a gun and a cop by the way, where multiple police officers come forward and said it was a lie. So we have Affid davits from a police officer came for in and said no, I was one of the two resting officers.
00:31:58
Speaker 4: I know he didn't point the gun.
00:32:00
Speaker 5: Okay, Now after that, you've still got as system that's just completely broken in Pennsylvania. He gets sentenced to probation, and then he does a concert in a different state without the proper authorization and attack on another five years of probation. And now he's got he's still six years of probation left, right, So he's got no chance to actually succeed in that situation.
00:32:27
Speaker 4: And I can tell you if you put me, the Jewish kid from.
00:32:30
Speaker 5: Suburban Philadelphia on probation, I couldn't make a year with what he needs to go through.
00:32:36
Speaker 1: There's not possible.
00:32:37
Speaker 3: In the primetime fuck up years of my life from eighteen to thirty one, you.
00:32:41
Speaker 1: Know, of all the people that I've been involved with and helped get out of prison, none of them have reoffended or offended for the first time. If they were innocent, it's probably a better way of saying it. And again, none.
00:32:52
Speaker 5: But hold on, some will and that's okay because you know what, at the end of the day, we need to make the world a better place. And if we get millions of people out of the criminal justice system, and if you make mistakes, that's okay because there's a lot of people that aren't in the criminal justice system that will also make mistakes.
00:33:06
Speaker 4: This is never going to be perfect.
00:33:08
Speaker 5: And that's someone says, hey, we should keep that six point seven or six point nine million people stuck in the criminal justice system the few million that shouldn't be there because someone may make a mistake. Nothing's perfect, like we need we need to get it right overall. And that's the same approach I take in business. We want to make good overall decisions. We don't go for perfection. We went for perfection, we never get anything done, of course not.
00:33:30
Speaker 1: And as I said, I've been lucky in that sense. And of the people of the interest is project. Of the people that we've gotten out, a tiny percentage of them have ever been in any sort of trouble. Again, people age truck and.
00:33:41
Speaker 3: We were talking about real trouble, probably zero pens and got back in real travel.
00:33:54
Speaker 1: A couple of other very important topics I want to talk touch on with you, Meek and Michael is prisons themselves and how barbaric our prison system is when it's supposed to be called a correctional institution and we know that that is the farthest thing from the truth in most cases. And the other is how important it is for people to get out and vote yeah, because I don't think we can have this conversation without talking about that. And some people I've heard somebody say we don't need criminal justice before, we need a criminal justice revolution. So which one do you want to take on first?
00:34:28
Speaker 3: So we could talk voting it. This coming from my coach on where we come from. This goes for us back when I say, like the other side of America where people don't even believe like that world tends to us. And I used to think that, but that was deeply false. And one of my jobs is trying to teach people the ropes of how volten go because it's even with a judge trying to lock me up for what nothing, going over a bridge. Basically, we voted for her district attorneys where they enforce mandatory minimums and they enforced locking people up for smoking marijuana and things like that. We vote for them. We have to be the ones that vote. In our culture, the black community, a lot of us don't vote.
00:35:11
Speaker 1: So it's like white community too.
00:35:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I don't really know. I know that in our community we don't vote at all. I don't even know anybody my age. At the age of eighteen, we ever got up as a group and everybody wanted to vote. It was like never a thing. We didn't believe in it. So my new thing is to teach the younger people from our culture that come up, well all younger people that come up, that voting is important because you know, we have to live under these laws that these people are creating, and if we don't vote, we don't have a voice at all. It's like you don't even count. And a lot of times you look at TV. They had a campaign that said vote or die. I always seen it, but I never really knew what it meant. It was that probably was like eighteen years old when they did that campaign. I never really understood it, But nowadays I understood. It's like you eve a vote, or you get housed done at a regime which will eventually league kill you, if not by jail, not by keeping you in a ruthless environment, it will turn out bad for you, basically. And I just believe that if we vote, if we make our present on like justice reform, just reform right now is the number one topic in America. Probably if we make this topic big enough politically, a lot of people would have to lean towards being leaning on these topics.
00:36:25
Speaker 5: And I want you as leaning, I'd say appropriate, Yeah, yeah, I'd say I'd say punishment that fits the crime, because by the way, I'm not leaning.
00:36:32
Speaker
4: I want appropriate punishment.
00:36:34
Speaker 3: And that was right, That was that was definitely right.
00:36:36
Speaker 1: You know, I've been on the board of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, was a great organization for over twenty five years now, and our motto is let the punishment fit the crime.
00:36:44
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:36:44
Speaker 1: I mean, nobody's advocating for chaos. Nobody wants a society that is like, you know.
00:36:50
Speaker 4: I want to feel I want to feel safe.
00:36:51
Speaker 1: Everybody does.
00:36:52
Speaker 4: I want my daughter to be safe. I want your family to be safe, but.
00:36:55
Speaker 1: I want his kids to be saved too.
00:36:57
Speaker 3: Some situations, though, that the crimes are bousou high up is like, what is lenient?
00:37:02
Speaker 4: But I'll make something really simple.
00:37:03
Speaker 5: I would just say, how many people are in prison in jail today are on probation because they have a drug problem.
00:37:09
Speaker 4: It's more than a million.
00:37:10
Speaker 5: Yeah, okay, yeah, I'm not talking about selling drugs. I'm going about anyone who smoked weed. How could you possibly weed just becoming legal everywhere? How could you possibly put someone in the criminal trust system for doing something that's becoming legal? It makes absolutely no sense. Someone had a problem with perkoson, why do you send them in jail?
00:37:26
Speaker 4: Send them to rehab? Makes no sense.
00:37:28
Speaker 5: So to me, that's where the punishment needs to fit the crime. I al would take everybody who has a drug problem. Yeah, I would get them help, so get they solve the drug problem.
00:37:36
Speaker 3: But it's like as deep as this, Like if I sell drugs and the cops come to my house and I'm not there, my mom get found guilty for these drugs in my house. People moms are getting thirty years in prison in federal prison for stuff like that. Like your mom got thirty years in prison. That's a life sentence, that's death.
00:37:53
Speaker 4: That's death.
00:37:53
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's deaf like you. I don't want to send you to prison, even though she might preach to you every day that you're selling drug. You're getting out of my house and she knows wrong. But you have a son.
00:38:03
Speaker 1: If you're in a car with someone who's got drugs and you get pulled over and they find the drugs, it belongs to everybody unless somebody takes responsibility for it, and nobody ever does. Nobody ever goes, oh yeah, those are mine, right. So this is how crazy the system is, where you could just be next to someone who's doing something wrong and then.
00:38:21
Speaker 3: I'm not even talking about full innocis. I'm just talking about, like, say, if you come from where I come from, like your mom on a crack, she's a strung out feeding you thirteen years old. You got a seven year old sister, and you coming in the house, it's just baking, soda and butter and refrigerator. And when you go out look out the window, it's people
on the corner selling weed, marijuana, crack, cocaine, and they running in fast cash, and your little sister don't got none to eat. The first thing you're gonna do is go outside and pick up like this is like normal. Like Mike, if you was in a situation, I bet a million dollars on it that you would go outside and pick out of a drug. If Collie was in the house.
00:38:57
Speaker 4: You fourteen heart, have made work for me to do.
00:39:00
Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying.
00:39:00
Speaker 4: I'm talking about stuff.
00:39:02
Speaker 3: No, I'm talking about if you don't have any of this going on, and you're poor, like you don't have any family in the house, and you come see Kylie and there I do.
00:39:09
Speaker 4: But that's also where should that person have no punishment? No, should they.
00:39:14
Speaker 5: Be set to jail for thirty years? It's much ridiculous thing I've ever heard, and that's why I said to me.
00:39:18
Speaker 3: But even if you bring it down to ten years, ten years will ruin your life. So like what they got is leaning, is not even leaning, Like it's the rates of boos step so high, like what they call like I watch media and social send them to prison. Like even when people be like he should have went to prison, he broke probation. Even if I did break probation. If I did commit a crime ten years ago and I broke probation, people are like send them back to prison. I'm like, do you know what prison is like. When I say shackled up in a cage, I mean like shack of real change. When you take a baby step is cutting your legs and like the same thing you see in a slavery movie. It's the same thing. And I'm like, do people really understand what they're saying, like send them to prison? Like Mike came to myself. Mike was like, he was like, it's not bad as it could be in my head.
00:40:04
Speaker 5: I'm like, oh, but that's because I'm an optimistic person and I always want to look at things positively.
00:40:09
Speaker 3: And it's ten degrees. I don't have a tallest seat. The water that I'm coming out of my sink is the same water connected to the tall is filthy. Like it's like there's ten mices in my cell at night running around you like is you can't even imagine it? And I'm like, I'm here. I didn't hurt anybody. I didn't kill anybody. I didn't by the.
00:40:29
Speaker 5: Way they think, it bothers me so much, the amount of people I've told about your story and everyone it's now proven that you were wrongfully convicted because we have a cop who is one of the two restaurant officersho signed app davit saying no, you didn't point the gun, which what you were charged for. Yet and your probation violations where you popped a wheelie on a motorcycle, you broke up a fight in an airport, Yet there are people say, yeah, put them back in jail for ten years, which is it shows how backwards so many people are in this country as well.
00:40:57
Speaker 3: There when you speak in jail, that is like it's just like a place, a hotel where you go to sit at. Nah, it's some shit that will ruin your whole train of thought, like you were in here, Like the matches sleeping on is probably four inches thick, and after that it is metal and cement. Like you got these guys eighty years old sleeping on mattresses and stuff like they didn't kill anybody. They may have been on probation and they fell in the after felling in. You eighty years old, you you poor. You've been in the system so long it's hard to explain. You have to see it and be there. Like even what they do with juveniles, they got juveniles locked in cages. These are cement cages that they had these kids and most of these kids didn't kill you anybody.
00:41:39
Speaker 4: Now tell you something. I was so proud of you. But it's a scary story.
00:41:43
Speaker 5: So the day that I brought Robert Kraft to visit make in prison, we were sitting there and we were just kind of talking, and I was really just kind of listening to Robert Meek talking. Robert looked at me and he said, you know, I don't understand how how you're handling this.
00:41:58
Speaker 4: So how are you so happy?
00:42:00
Speaker 5: He said, Like, last time I was with you, we were on a plane flying to an All Star game and you were on the top of the world. Now you're in an orange jumpsuit, locked in prison. You've got to smile from me. You ear to ear and Mick, he's generally pretty quick with his answer. You thought about it for about thirty seconds, and he looked at Robbery. He said, you know, this has been my entire adult life. I was wrongfully convicted for a crime and commit I've been sent back to prison multiple times, never committed a new crime. But this is the first time people actually fighting for me, and that makes me so happy. So for me, I was mortified at the situation, but completely proud of how well he was handling that horrific situation.
00:42:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is the best situation I've ever been there as far as dealing with the system. We're having like real credible people standing behind me because, like Mike said, I'm telling him, like, Yo, if y'all had guns in here, y'are not even police officers. If I came in here all y'all had firearms and I came in here a point a gun nine times out of ten, where would I be?
00:43:00
Speaker 1: Of course, the police.
00:43:01
Speaker 4: Off against a cop.
00:43:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, cops are trained to neutralize people who cause threat towards their lives. Like this is like normal, Like, you get away with this, This is what you should do. You're trained to do this, not me one on one with a cop, like and you know, one on one, anybody could get scared and want to run away. Now this is a group of cops doing a full blown read and me being accused of pointing a gun at all of them, and.
00:43:27
Speaker 1: To me one more question Before I do that, I want to remind people who are listening vote, vote and vote and vote in your local races. And your DA's racist and your judges racist, your vote counts. We have races that
actually ended up tied. I mean, your vote counts.
00:43:43
Speaker 3: And you, judge, don't have to be white against the black to be racist. It could be white on white racism, it could be black on black racism. Make sure you vote for the right people. And when you vote for judges, nobody really knows because you just see a judge d you.
00:44:00
Speaker 4: Can make good decisions.
00:44:01
Speaker 5: And people knew when they vote it for the DA in Pennsylvania that he was a more thoughtful person on the criminal justice system. And there been lots of new DA's that have had much more modern approaches. The approach hasn't been lock everybody up and put all Black American in prison. It's been let's have an accurate punishment for a crime. And that's who you should be voting for.
00:44:19
Speaker 1: And I'm going to say one more thing before I turned the last question over to you, which is everybody who's out there, at some point you're going to get asked to serve on a jury and nobody likes it. We get those things in the mail, we're like, oh my god, I got on a time for this. Whatever. It's a big pain of you got to go because when you go, there might be a meek mill in front of you, there might be somebody else who's meeting and Eric RIDDI get fun of you. In case that all three of us are involved with and we're going to get him out, well, come hell or high water. So get up, get out and go vote, and go serve on the jury, because the ask you save could be your own. And now, rather than ask a final question, I'm just gonna do what I do at the end of the show, which is I always say it's my favorite part of the show, and I think it's probably the audience's favorite part of the show too, which is when I stopped talking and just turned the mic over to you for final last words. And Michael, I'm going to let you go first and then me can back clean up and close out the show. So, Michael, what would you want to tell people? How could they get involved? What can they do? What's the solution?
00:45:23
Speaker 5: Well, I think we're in a great position because I actually think this is a big problem that needs to be addressed. I think it's going to be I think it would just take common sense to this juicy problem.
00:45:34
Speaker 4: We're going to make the world a better place.
00:45:35
Speaker 5: And I'm actually for a guy who had absolutely zero point zero exposure to the criminal justice system until I met Meek and them still really didn't understand it until November sixth of last year. I'm really optimistic because I believe that this is a completely broken system that with a lot of focus and energy, we can make the country a much better place than To me, that's exciting. So you know what I'd say to everybody is make a difference. I didn't make any difference until seven months ago. And I'm actually you know, I've got three great businesses that I run, and I've got a great daughter and great family and friends. Yet I'm as energized about this as anything because I see how broken it is and I see how much fixing it needs.
00:46:13
Speaker 1: Meek last words, and before you even go, I want to thank you and Michael and thank you not just for being on the show, but for lending your voice and your energy and your money and your time to this movement.
00:46:27
Speaker 4: Thank you for your focus. What you're doing is incredible.
00:46:30
Speaker 5: You've been at this for twenty five years, Meek's been sucking the system for thirteen years, and I've been at this for seven months.
00:46:34
Speaker 4: So thank you.
00:46:35
Speaker 1: Well, I'm older than yours, I've had more time question nonetheles, But yeah, it's an obsession and I'm not going to stop until we fix it together. So but anyway, so thank you both again for being here and sharing your thoughts and your energy, your collective wisdom. So, Meek, what are your last words for the audience that's out there?
00:46:54
Speaker 3: My last words to the audience is this, No, I'm dedicated. This is a life mission. I actually suffer from the criminal justice system for over ten years, and you know, I actually walked the walk on the other side of the wall with some innocent men who I know are basically suffering and families are suffering, So you know, I felt the pain firsthand. And you know, I'm gonna continue to do what I need to do to help make change and not fix the system, but break the system completely and rebuild it again. Because the way we lived and the things we've been through with the system, it doesn't even take crime or take being a villain to go to jail, you know what I'm saying. And you know it's thousands of millions of people trapped inside on the other side of the wall that actually need help. And you know, I think this is the right season to make change. And putting all my efforts onto it and hopefully, you know, we make change within the next few years and free a lot of people from the prison system.
00:47:58
Speaker 1: Don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you get your podcasts, it really helps. And I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project and I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocenceproject dot org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wartis. The music in the show is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flamm is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one