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Joe Rogan Experience #1521 - Josh Dubin & Jason Flom

Josh Dubin is an Innocence Project Ambassador Advisor &  President of Dubin Research and Consulting, Inc. He also hosts a podcast called "Wrongful Conviction: Junk Science" available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. https://apple.co/2Q5EtHd Jason Flom is an Innocence Project Board Member, CEO of Lava Media, and host of the "Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom" podcast available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. https://apple.co/2EJxrF3 https://www.innocenceproject.org/ https://famm.org/ https://www.first72plus.org/

Joe RoganhostJosh DubinguestJason Flomguest
Aug 6, 20202h 54mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:0015:00

    Dope. Josh, Jason, (slaps desk)…

    1. JR

      Dope. Josh, Jason, (slaps desk) thank you. Thanks for being here. Try to keep this sucker like a fist from your face. Gentlemen, what's happening? How are you?

    2. JD

      Thanks for having us. Happy to be here.

    3. JR

      My pleasure, my pleasure. Te- let's, let's just start this off, just tell everybody what you guys are here for and what you do.

    4. JD

      Okay. Well, we do a lot of things, um...

    5. JR

      You do a lot of things.

    6. JD

      (laughs) Or I do. I, I guess.

    7. JR

      Shout out to Andre Ward for introducing us.

    8. JD

      Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. One of my, one of my best friends and, and actually personal heroes. But, uh, so Jason and I both work at the Innocence Project. Um, I'm the, I'm the ambassador, the innocence ambassador at the Innocence Project in New York. And, um, we're here to get the word out about wrongful convictions. We have a podcast. Jason has had a long, successful podcast called Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom. I'm the host of a new spinoff of that called Wrongful Conviction: Junk Science, which examines all of these disciplines of forensic sciences that have been proven, um, to be total bullshit, total junk, as the name would suggest. There's-

    9. JR

      Let's, let's get to that.

    10. JD

      Yeah.

    11. JR

      I, I wanna hear what those are. But, um, Jason, can you just tell everybody what you, you were, you were originally in the record business?

    12. JF

      Yeah, um, thanks for bringing that up. I've been in the music business since I was 18 years old. So I've signed acts over the years, everybody from-

    13. JR

      I said record business 'cause I'm old. (laughs)

    14. JF

      Yeah, I still call it-

    15. JD

      (laughs)

    16. JF

      (laughs) I still call it that too.

    17. JD

      You've been in the 8-track game for a while. (laughs)

    18. JF

      It sounds nostalgic a little bit, right?

    19. JD

      Yeah.

    20. JF

      We miss those di- vinyl discs and stuff.

    21. JD

      A little bit, yeah.

    22. JF

      And, uh, they used to be able to clean your weed on and everything else-

    23. JD

      (laughs)

    24. JF

      ... on the, on the album covers. But, um, yeah, I've been in the music business since I was 18. So I've signed acts over the years, everybody from Stone Temple Pilots and Skid Row all the way to Tori Amos and Katy Perry and Kid Rock, and more recently Greta Van Fleet and Lorde. And, you know, it's been an amazing run. At various times I was chairman and CEO of Atlantic Records, Virgin Records, Capitol Records. But my calling in life has been, uh, e- eliminating mandatory sentencing, decriminalizing drugs, uh, basically getting people out of prison that don't belong there and reversing mass incarceration, which I believe to be the worst failed social policy disaster since slavery. And it's really just an extension of slavery. So, I really appreciate you having us here, and I can't wait to tell you the story of how we first met. But, um, anyoo-

    25. JR

      I love that you're doing this. I just, before-

    26. JF

      Thanks.

    27. JR

      ... before we even get started, this makes me excited. When, when successful people go out of their way to do something like this where it's just good, you know, you're, you're, you're just trying to right wrongs. And I couldn't agree with you more. I mean, the, the war on drugs is one of the most disgusting and, and confusing aspects of our enlightened culture. It's just, it's, it's infuriating that we have a gigantic percentage of people that are in prison for n- nonviolent drug offend- offenses, and then a lot of them are wrongly in prison.

    28. JF

      There's that. And, Joe, do you know how many people are still annually locked up for possession of marijuana in this country?

    29. JR

      How many?

    30. JF

      Almost 700,000 last year. Like, that's, that's-

  2. 15:0030:00

    But I have, I…

    1. JF

      in the attic. And the cops went in and came out with the gun like 30, 45 seconds later. So they just magically had, like, radar to figure out where it was? No, the kid had told them where it was 'cause he put it there. And it gets worse from there. Um, this particular case, Joe, is an all-White jury. Um, Julius had a defense lawyer who basically mounted no defense on his behalf in a capital murder case. And the all- not only was it an all-White jury, but one of the jurors, a- and this is probably gonna blow some people's minds, but one of the jurors sent a note to the judge during jury deliberations and said that the other juror had used the N-word and said, "Why don't we just take this..." I won't say the word, "... out behind the courthouse, shoot him and bury him back there and just quit wasting our time with this stupid trial?" Or whatever, I'm paraphrasing, but he used those words. So the other juror reported it to the judge and the judge allowed the juror to continue to stay on the- on the... I mean, i- it gets worse from there. So, eh, the whole concept of a fair trial in this country, unfortunately, is kind of a myth. I mean-

    2. JD

      But I have, I have a different answer to the question though, 'cause-

    3. JF

      Go for it.

    4. JD

      ... the question was, how do you know they're innocent?

    5. JF

      Yeah.

    6. JD

      And- Well, in this case, it seems like you have a lot of evidence. Yeah.

    7. JF

      Or a lot of indicators.

    8. JD

      See, we... It's interesting. We have a different perspec- a slightly different perspective because I'm an attorney that represents these guys and he's a justice advocate. And, but he does get to know the facts of the case. But for me, you know, I have three young kids. And, you know, a lot of the crimes are rapes and murders that these guys are accused of, which is why they get long prison sentences, at least the cases that I deal with for the Innocence Project and that I take on pro bono. And I'll give you two examples, because I take it... You know, a lot of criminal defense lawyers say, "Well, who- you're not supposed to ever ask the question, is the person innocent?" To me, it does matter. Um, and I, I had two cases where I demanded of myself and of the client that I really was convinced they were innocent. And what blows my mind is that science is the truth to me. Good science, DNA is the truth. So here we had a case, and, and this was one where I said, "Well, I wanna be convinced that he's innocent." So it's the case of this guy named Clemente Aguirre. And if I tell you this story, you'll say t- "You gotta be making this shit up. It can't be true." Because, uh, the story from start to finish is, is just mind-bending. He's a Honduran immigrant. He is escaping MS-13 in Honduras. And he wins like, what? It was like the Honduran version of The Voice, right?

    9. JF

      American Idol. It's like-

    10. JD

      American Idol.

    11. JF

      Y- the Honduran Idol, yeah.

    12. JD

      Right, Honduran Idol when he's young, when he's in grade school. So the gang leaves him alone 'cause he's kind of a novelty. And he's nicknamed Shorty because he's only 4'11" as a grown person. He's in his early 20s. And the violence is getting so bad, he says, "I gotta get the fuck out of here." They kill his front friend... They, they kill his best friend and dump him in the street in front of them. So he flees to America. And he does the whole circuitous route through Mexico where he gets- tries to get a Mexican accent. He finds a coyote and he swims across the Rio Grande, almost drowns. Um, and then he's taken... Um, I mean, that whole story I could spend a half hour on. He's put in a, in an escape hatch of a car and driven around the country till he finally lands in Sanford, Florida. All right? And Sanford, Florida is where the Trayvon Martin trial happened. And I end up in front of the same judge that presided originally over the Trayvon Martin trial. So Clemente is accused. He gets to Sanford, Florida on a Saturday. He s- begins working at a golf course on a Monday, climbing trees and cutting down branches. One of the golf, um, members says, "I like this kid's work ethic. You wanna come work at my restaurant?" He goes and begins working at the restaurant. He lives in a trailer. In the back of a trailer, no shit, on Vagabond Way.... and he's got neighbors who are three generations of poor white trash. It's a grandmother, a mother, and a daughter. And he's like a novelty. They call him Little Mexico. He's not even from Mexico. He can't speak English. And he used to go and do coke with the daughter, smoke weed, drink, and it was like a outdoor dorm. You know, they would go to his, um, trailer. He would go to hers. It was like their doors were always unlocked. He's out one day partying with his friends. He does coke. He comes home and it's like 5:00 in the morning, and he wants a beer because he wants to try to come down. So he waits till the sun comes up and he goes to knock on their door, and he sees a bloody shoulder blocking the door. And he goes to push it open and the mother is stabbed 129 times. And he bends down. He, he was no stranger to seeing violence. He bends down to check her, and the dog starts barking. He hears noise and he picks up... He sees a butcher knife, bloody butcher knife sitting on a, on a, uh, box, and he picks it up and he screams in Spanish, says, "Anyone here?"

    13. NA

      Oh.

    14. JD

      He then walks into the other room and he sees the grandmother slumped over in her wheelchair, and he freaks out. He goes... He's about to call the police and he says, "Wait a second, I'm illegal. They'll never believe me." Can you imagine this shit?

    15. NA

      Oh.

    16. JD

      On a cocaine bender.

    17. NA

      Oh.

    18. JD

      So he leaves the trailer, he runs back to his, throws the knife in the grass, takes his bloody clothes off. His clothes are bloody because he picked up the mother and... to check her pulse.

    19. NA

      Oh, Jesus.

    20. JD

      Takes off his clothes, throws them in a garbage bag, puts them on top of his trailer. The boyfriend and the daughter slept out that night. All right? So the mother and the grandmother are dead, the daughter slept out that night. He... And bear with me because this will... This is, like, worth waiting for. He... The police show up l- a couple of hours later because the boyfriend is sent by the daughter. The daughter says, "I have a weird feeling about my mother and grandmother. Can you go check on them and get my work clothes?" Because she worked at Subway, the sandwich shop. So the boyfriend of the daughter discovers the dead bodies, calls 911. The police come, they come next door to Clemente's trailer and say, "Did you hear anything last night? You know anything about this?" He says, "No." He's freaked out. He then goes to a friend's house and tells his friend what happened. He said, "I'm just gonna go back and tell the cops what happened. This is America, right?"

    21. NA

      Oh.

    22. JD

      And the friend says, "You don't know America. You need to get the fuck out of town." And he says, "No, I'm going back. I'm gonna tell them." He goes back, walks over there and says... tells them exactly what happened. They put him in handcuffs and they sit him down and they say, "Listen, we know how you Latin guys are. You wanted sex from them, right?" He says, "Are you out of your fucking mind? No. I had nothing to do with this." P.S., long story short, he gets tried, convicted, and put on death row in Florida. The crime scene analyst sat on their hands and knees for days in the stinking Florida heat and scraping blood swabs in the trailer. Okay? 151 blood swabs. And what they're swabbing for is not the victim's blood. They know it's the victim's blood. This woman has been butchered 129 times. The crime scene analyst in his case testified that we were swabbing for evidence of who the perpetrator was, 'cause in a knife fight, the perpetrator often gets nicked and cut, especially when you're stabbing someone that many times. So when the Innocence Project got the case, they said, "Well, what were the results of that blood test?" You know how many drops of blood they tested? Not a single drop of blood. They never tested a single drop of blood because they thought that he was guilty. We had the blood tested and right in the m- in... within inches of the mother's body and in the bathroom where the State argued the killer cleaned up is the daughter's blood. A trail of the daughter's blood going to the bathroom, and then the mother's blood on the outside of the daughter's window. All right?

    23. NA

      Oh.

    24. JD

      We did a... just a minimal investigation into the daughter and it turns out that she had a history of crazy violence. She had a condition called intermittent explosive disorder where you would snap and just go off the rails.

    25. NA

      That, that's a condition?

    26. JD

      It's a condition, a psychiatric condition. We look at her medical file. When she's diagnosed with intermittent expres- explosive disorder, they ha- they put her in four points restraints, that's your arms and legs, and there's... in the doctor's notes, few years before this happened, where she says to her mother, "I'm gonna fucking kill you if I ever get out of here. I'll fucking kill all of you." Then we find out that she has confessed all over town. We had people coming in all over the place testifying, affidavits that she said, "I killed my fucking mother and my grandmother. I'll do it to you." And I got her on the witness... So watch this. The State still retries him. His conviction gets overturned, the Florida Supreme Court throws it out, says that he is obviously... there's obviously a real problem here. And the State instead of saying, "You know what, we screwed up here," they doubled down. And it happens in all of our cases. Very rare, not all of them, most of them, where the State comes up with a new theory. They said, "Well, that must have been old blood from her cutting herself," and they had no explanation for why her mother's blood is mixed with her blood in her bedroom, why her mother's blood is outside of her window. I demanded proof there and there was incontrovertible proof. So watch what happens.... there's a blood swipe on her mother's ass. Her mother is struggling to get out of the house and the, the killer m- grabbed at her and pulled her pants down and there's a four-finger blood swipe. And I always thought it was weird. A three-finger blood swipe, excuse me. And I always thought it was weird that there was only three fingers in blood at someone trying to grab at her. So when I had her on the stand, I said, I got a court order to take pictures of her hands, 'cause I wanted to see if there were scars on her hand. And she lifts up her hand and her pinky is bent down like this. And I said, "What happened to your pinky?" She said-

    27. JR

      Severed tendon.

    28. JD

      ... "I cut my finger off when I was 14 'cause I'm a cutter and I severed my tendon." That's exactly right. And I said, "Was your hand like that on the night that your mother and grandmother were killed?" She said, "Yes." And I looked at the prosecutor and I said, "Have you, have you seen enough?" They don't quit. I had-

    29. JR

      They just wanna win.

    30. JD

      ... they just wanna win. They just wanna win. And he, I, um, I'm happy to report that after her examination and then an amazing examination by my co-counsel, Mari Palmer, which explodes a bunch of other lies, the ex-boyfriend, the ex-boyfriend's current wife came in and testified that he told her that the daughter killed her, and that she snuck out of her house that night, his house that night, climbed out of the window, and then returned later in the night. They dropped the charges in the middle of his retrial, and I got to walk him out, um, off of death row. And in Trump's America, they would not ... they put an immigration hold on him. And it was like out of a movie. He got walked out of the prison to immigration, and there's like a mounting crowd outside of immigration. On, s- we still don't know how it happened. I got him an immigration bond and walked him out of the immigration center that night. And to Jason's point, I have nev- other than the birth of my kids, marrying my wife, hitting a home run in Little League, I've never had ...

  3. 30:0045:00

    What happens to a…

    1. JD

      So, I kept, I just kept going at her and she finally had to declare a mistrial (clears throat) b- because a juror came in and said that they were all researching the case in the hallway and that they thought that he was listening to music because he was listening to the translation on the headphones. So, to get these exonerations, it is such a grueling fight. And if you meet Clemente, he is the most gentle, kind human being and is still in immigration limbo. And to tell you what a great man this guy is, I'm in there, in Florida, like, fighting, like, I'm thinking, "There's no fucking way I'm gonna get him off." And he's calling me going, "Listen, when we get him out, I'm gonna get, we'll get him up in an apartment and we'll pay for this and pay for that." I thought he was crazy. I said, "This guy has no fucking clue what I'm up against." And to, you know, I'm, I'm such a, I'm m- so in his debt and I, I, I'm so in awe of him even though he's my friend that, to this day-... he and I have jointly supported Clemente financially, but he pays for his ho- room and board. And to be able to be in a position to help these guys and just help them start a life again. And, you know, this guy still believes in America. After all that's happened to him, he still believes it's the best place to be.

    2. JR

      What happens to a judge like that? How does a judge not go to jail? How, uh, how does someone... I mean, how does someone get away with that? I mean, it's, she's violating the law.

    3. JD

      You know-

    4. JR

      And, uh, and, and clearly, he's innocent, right? So she's trying to kill a man who's innocent.

    5. JD

      You know, the judge that took over the case, she had to recuse herself in a fit of embarrassment.

    6. JR

      (laughs)

    7. JD

      And the judge that took over the case was such a beautiful guy, his name is Judge Galuzo. And all he did was uphold the law. And he... The prosecutors would come in and try to get rid of jurors that said, "I believe that, you know, I'll listen to the facts, and I will only get rid of... You know, I'll, I will consider life instead of death." And he was just so pe-... And, you know, they have immunity is the short answer. These judges and prosecutors, one of the many flaws of our system, right, Jason, is that they all have immunity.

    8. JR

      So what about these cops, where you're talking about the cop beat the guy in the, in, in the confession? Uh, how does a cop like that not go to jail? How does... If you know that, what, where is that cop now?

    9. JD

      One of them got promoted. Um, one of them got promoted. One of them got, um-

    10. JR

      Does the cop know that the kid was innocent and that they did this?

    11. JF

      Many times they do, Joe.

    12. JR

      (sniffs)

    13. JF

      And, you know, we can't say, make a blanket statement that they all do, and none of us believe that all of them are bad, but there are a lot of really bad actors throughout the system, and they don't face repercussions. And as a-

    14. JR

      Right.

    15. JF

      ... result of that... And it's so important for people to know this. I talk about it on my podcast all the time. And, and Clemente's episode is so wonderful because in, in that episode, you really feel his humanity. He still has a great sense of humor. He still has a joy of life. And all the exonerees I find have this sort of incredible s- I, I can only describe it as grace, right, after literally being to hell. Like, death row on Florida, it doesn't get closer to hell than that, right? And he was there for 14 years. And he talks about on the podcast-

    16. JR

      Clemente was on death row for 14 years?

    17. JD

      Yeah.

    18. JF

      Yeah. Listen, there's a lot, a lot worse than that too, you know. Don't get me started on Anthony Panovich, which is a current case in Ohio. You, you'll... Your fucking head will explode.

    19. JD

      Oh, yeah, I got him off after he, he had... It was actually 10 of the 14 years, he was on Florida's death row. The other four years were in jails. Not to be technical, but yeah, he was on death row.

    20. JF

      Right.

    21. JD

      Yep.

    22. JF

      But he, he's funny, Joe, because we got to inject a little humor into this, right? So in, in, on the podcast, on Wrongful Conviction, he talks about how when he went to prison, he didn't speak English, and he figured he ne- Do you remember this, Josh? And he said, "I needed to learn how to speak English. I figured I'm never gonna get out of here if I can't, you know, help in my own defense." So he asked the guard for a Bible, and the bi- guard said, "There's no, no Bible." To which he goes, "This is hell. There's no Bibles here." So he gave him instead a letter of pe- a book of Penthouse Letters, like, porn. He gave him porn. And so what Clemente says, he, he read this thing 17 times, and he says the 17th time, he finally (laughs) got a hard on, he says. But not-

    23. JR

      (laughs)

    24. JD

      ... not because of the porn, because I realized I could speak English, right?

    25. JR

      (laughs)

    26. JF

      (laughs)

    27. JD

      And when you hear him say this, and you just, you wanna hug the motherfucker.

    28. JR

      Oh.

    29. JF

      He's such a good and decent guy, and he just loves life, and he appreciates everything. But imagine that it took Josh Dubin, right, one of the great lawyers in, in our country-

    30. JD

      Oh.

  4. 45:001:00:00

    Now, why are they…

    1. JF

      telling you the truth, that you respect because they're authority figures, right? I grew up res- respecting uniforms and, and everything else, and I still do. But the fact is, they may not be telling the truth. And the... Just because somebody says they're an expert, that's what Josh talks about on his podcast, doesn't mean they're really an expert. They may be talking about things that are actually junk science. And furthermore, they're allowed to lie in the interrogation room, and this is something, if we get nothing else across today, I, I, I always tell people when I go... Do talks and, on my show. I talk about the fact that if you get picked up and brought in for questioning and y-... You know, people who are innocent waive their Miranda rights. 85% of people waive their Miranda rights anyway, but people who are innocent almost always do because they don't think they have anything to hide. They think, "I'll just go in. I'll tell them what, what... You know? Like, "I wasn't there," or, "I was with my mom," whatever it was, "and I can go home." And they may not say that you're a suspect at all. They may say, "We just wanna ask you a few ques-" So the answer is, if that happens to you, the only thing you should say is, "This is my... I'm Joe Rogan, and I want a lawyer," or whatever your name is, whoever's listening. Those are the only words you should say because they're not your friends, and you can get talked... In that interrogation room, crazy shit happens. They don't always beat people up. They don't need to. They can use coercive, psychological tactics that can get people to confess to crimes that they didn't commit, and once you start talking and you're in that little airless room. You've seen it on TV, right? And they start the good cop, bad cop, and they intimidate you, and they threaten you with the death penalty, and they're allowed to lie. Now-

    2. JR

      Now, why are they allowed to lie?

    3. JF

      That's a great question, Joe. I mean, in other Western countries, they're not, but here they are. So they can sit there, especially... And you know the people that are most likely to falsely confess are people... Adolescents, right? Anyone whose brain is not fully formed, and we know that your brain's not fully formed till you're 25, and military veterans, interestingly enough. And they're disproportionately affected by this 'cause they're used to obeying authority figures, right? And following orders. And so the Norfolk Four, a classic case of that, um. For- Four guys confessed to a crime they didn't commit, um, and none of them did it, and this act-

    4. JD

      The Central Park Five is another good example.

    5. JF

      Right. Those were just kids. They were just young teenage kids, and, you know, they, they can sit there and they can threaten you with the death pen- And they can sit there and go, "Joe, listen, we got your buddy in the next room." He's not even there. "And he says he saw you do it. We got your fingerprints on the, on the knife, Joe. What are you talking about?"

    6. JD

      You, you-

    7. JF

      "The best thing for you is to confess."

    8. JD

      And Joe asks, you asked the, the, the critical question, which is, why are they allowed to do it? Because there's not a law. No one has the balls. All these blowhard politicians have the balls to introduce le- 'Cause, you know, they're afraid to piss off the police union because they'll lose that vote, right? To in- introduce legis-

    9. JR

      Goddamn it. The police union should be the ones who are clamoring for that.

    10. JD

      Right? That, that introduce legis-

    11. JR

      Especially now, right?

    12. JD

      Introduce legislation. Right, especially now. Introduce legislation that makes it a crime, right? To lie to a suspect. Think about the mindfuck that's going on here. And remember, the psychology is, we're gonna deprive you of sleep, we're gonna deprive you of food, we're gonna scare the living shit out of you, and we're gonna lie to you. We're gonna lie to you and make you... You ever see that Chris Rock bit where he's like, "Cop pulled me over, and after a while, I'm like, 'Damn, maybe I fucking did do it'" (laughs) ?

    13. JR

      Right. Yeah.

    14. JD

      You know? It's like that shit-

    15. JR

      Yeah.

    16. JD

      ... is going on. And it's like... You know, you're like, "Maybe I did something and didn't remember it." That's what they start getting you to believe because if they're telling me, they're saying, "Joe, listen. We have... How the fuck do you explain how your DNA is on the victim? How do you explain that?" And you're thinking to yourself, "I can't fucking explain that. A, I didn't do it, but maybe... I don't, I don't know. Maybe I did something and don't remember it." And then there's, there's this, which is, you'll hear from a lot of people that are victims of coercive interrogations, is, um, "I figured I would just tell them what they wanted to hear, get out of the room, and then sort it out."

    17. JR

      ... right, where you can't.

    18. JF

      Right. And they- and they'll- and they'll say to you, "Listen, y- you're just a kid."

    19. JR

      Right.

    20. JF

      "No one's gonna believe that you committed this gruesome murder, right? You just gotta... And my partner's crazy. I don't know what he's gonna do to you. But while he's out of the room, let me tell you, kid, the best thing for you to do is just sign the piece of paper and, you know, we'll sort this out later. You'll be fine." But now you've just signed your own death warrant because juries can't understand. When you ask people, "Would you ever confess to a crime you didn't commit?"

    21. JR

      They all say no.

    22. JF

      You'll ask the first 100 people you see. They'll all say, "No, no, no. I'm t- I'm smart. I would never do that." Ri- but the thing is, they don't realize 25% of the DNA exonerations, approximately 25%, Joe, o- involve false confessions. So just process that, right? That's how many people confess because they-

    23. JR

      'Cause they're good at it.

    24. JF

      ... and some of them are-

    25. JD

      Yeah, that's right.

    26. JF

      ... uh...

    27. JD

      The cops are great at it.

    28. JF

      Some of them- some of them may be mentally challenged, right. The cops are-

    29. JR

      And it's also a game. It's- it's a game to get you.

    30. JD

      Oh, that's a game.

  5. 1:00:001:14:34

    (groans) …

    1. JD

      are you doing?" He said, "You think I'm gonna let someone take my DNA and frame me again?"

    2. JR

      (groans)

    3. JD

      You know, and I-

    4. JR

      (groans)

    5. JD

      ... you know, that's how bad it is. So think about that in the context of Kamala Harris.

    6. JR

      (sighs)

    7. JD

      To block access to DNA, once you get the fucking DNA, you're still sometimes in a crazy uphill battle because there's prosecutors, in my opinion, just like Kamala Harris-

    8. JR

      That wanna win.

    9. JD

      ... that wanna win and wanna protect that conviction.

    10. JF

      And we, we have so many cases, Joe. I mean, last year, uh, uh, this year or last year, the Innocence Project was representing a guy in Arkansas named Ledell Lee, was it Kansas or Arkansas? I think it was Arkansas.

    11. JD

      It was Arkansas.

    12. JF

      And we were just, just wanted the DNA tested. I mean, we had a lot of evidence that he was innocent and the state refused to let us test it and they went ahead and executed him anyway. We also have cases like the Sedley Alley case, which ironically is the same prosecutor that prosecuted my d- my adopted daughter, Nora, uh, Nora Jackson, but in, in Sedley Alley's case, he was executed and the state denied him access to DNA. It was a horrible crime, a young cadet, um, girl was jogging and she was, uh, brutally, I think raped and murdered, and he was, uh, executed for this crime asking for the DNA to be tested. And the state refused, and five years later, the higher court said, "Oh, you guys made a mistake, you should have allowed the DNA testing." Now his daughter has come forward and said, "I wanna know, I want my dad's DNA tested, I wanna prove his innocence." And we now have evidence of who we think it might've been 'cause there was another guy who was a serial, uh, um, you know, murderer and, and rapist who was i- in that area at that time. We don't know that it was him, but until we test the DNA, we can't know. And the state has refused to let us te- let her test it, even posthumously. So this goes on all over the country, and it's crazy. Of course we want the DNA tested. Everybody should want the DNA tested. And, but, you know, one thing I, I do wanna point out is that it's, it's gratifying to see attention being brought by, by you and by others, uh, people who are so prominent in society. And it's also become such a hot button issue that if you look at... for instance, Amy Klobuchar, right? I mean, her campaign was derailed because people were going, "Hey, what about Myon Burrell?" Which was a 16-year-old kid that she prosecuted. There was evidence of his innocence. She ignored all of it. He's still in prison 20 years later. And she chou- she touted this as, as a, you know, like she, she bragged about it in her campaign.

    13. JD

      Like it was a, like it was an accomplishment.

    14. JF

      As an accomplishment, right. And now-

    15. JR

      Well, wasn't she also part of the problem why Derek Chauvin was still out? W- what, was still acting as a police officer?

    16. JF

      I'm not familiar with that, Joe.

    17. JR

      I believe she was... Yeah. She, I mean, she's-

    18. JD

      I hadn't heard that. Tell us about it.

    19. JR

      She's from Minneapolis, right?

    20. JD

      Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    21. JR

      No, there's, there's a connection because there's, it had something to do with him and his, uh, the, the prior, uh, cases where he had, uh, exhibited police brutality and that she, they had done nothing about it. Uh, she was connected to that in some f-

    22. JD

      Mm-hmm. Yeah.

    23. JR

      And it, it, it, in many people's eyes was eliminating her as being a, uh, possible candidate for Vice President because they thought it was gonna come up.

    24. JF

      And, and-

    25. JR

      I, I read that very briefly a, a few months ago. Jamie'll find something if it's...

    26. JD

      And-

    27. NA

      She says she denied the charge that she didn't charge him, but I don't know if-

    28. JR

      She denied they didn't charge him? What does that mean? Does that mean-

    29. NA

      She says she denied reports that she failed to bring charges on a 2006 case. She says it's a flat out lie-

    30. JD

      Sounds like a double negative.

Episode duration: 2:54:26

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