The Joe Rogan ExperienceJoe Rogan Experience #1993 - Josh Dubin & Bruce Bryan
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,404 words- 0:00 – 15:00
(drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast,…
- NANarrator
(drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
- JRJoe Rogan
The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (instrumental music plays) What's up?
- JDJosh Dubin
What's up, man?
- JRJoe Rogan
Good to see you, my brother.
- JDJosh Dubin
Great to be here. Thanks for having me.
- JRJoe Rogan
And thank you for bringing Bruce. And thanks for coming out last night. That was a good time.
- BBBruce Bryan
I had a great time, man.
- JRJoe Rogan
For everyone to n- ... Like, guys started realizing while you were there, your story.
- BBBruce Bryan
Okay.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like the word started getting around the green room and, uh, it was one of those things where like, "What? He just got out three weeks ago wrongfully accused for 30 years and here he is having a good time." It was, it was a crazy experience to like be sharing the green room with you, because you could see everybody. Like you became like the celebrity of the green room.
- BBBruce Bryan
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
You know what I'm saying? Like everybody wanted to hear the story, everybody ...
- JDJosh Dubin
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... wanted to talk to you. Everybody was blown away by it, and by the, the grace that you displayed. Like the fact that you could be wrongfully accused, spend 30 years of your young life in, in a cage, and then come out and just be this wonderful, fun guy having a good time. Everyone's laughing, having conversations. It was beautiful.
- JDJosh Dubin
It was beautiful. Um, I ... Look, I'm standing next to him last night, you know, worried most of the night because, you know, we had got on a plane and that was his first time flying in over 30 years, um, (smacks lips) there was a lot of stimulation and, you know, I could tell you that I'm still in shock even sitting here now that we're sitting next to each other, because I spent the last several years visiting him at, at Sing Sing, which is, um, you know, not a great place, Sing Sing Prison in New York. Um, but I don't want to throw cold water (clears throat) on anything, but you know, there w- there's a lot of steeling yourself for the moment last night going on that people didn't see. Uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
From you?
- JDJosh Dubin
Um, I think from Bruce. I mean, there was one point where we were sitting in the balcony, um, watching Attell. And by the way, congratulations on that amazing club.
- JRJoe Rogan
Thank you.
- JDJosh Dubin
It's just an amazing ... The Comedy Mothership is, uh, is really a dream for ... The comedians love it. The crowd was amazing. It was just so awesome to see, so congrats on that but-
- JRJoe Rogan
Thank you very much. How funny is Dave Attell?
- JDJosh Dubin
He's ... Oh, my f-
- JRJoe Rogan
He's a master.
- JDJosh Dubin
My side hurts.
- JRJoe Rogan
He's a master. He's a master.
- JDJosh Dubin
But, um, we were sitting there and some other folks came in and at some point, uh, you know, Bruce kept looking over his shoulder.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JDJosh Dubin
And, you know, I realized that he was uncomfortable and, uh, he switched seats very quickly so that he would be side to si- shoulder to shoulder with them. I know ... I think I know why he did it.
- BBBruce Bryan
Yeah.
- JDJosh Dubin
Why did you do it?
- BBBruce Bryan
Well, y- ... I think in prison you become accustomed to not wanting people behind you. Right? And then I got this scar in prison from behind, so you always conscious of what's behind you.
- 15:00 – 30:00
Did you meet anyone…
- BBBruce Bryan
a sense of humanity, right? You gotta become... You can either do two things, you could become bitter, or you could become better. I chose the latter, because one of the things I did early in my incarceration was make a conscious decision to not serve time, but to have time serve me. I made up my mind that if you were going to have me incarcerated for a crime I did not commit, then I was gonna take this time and use that cell as if it was a office. I was gonna use that school building as if it was a university. And every chance I, I had to just self-reflect and engage in introspection and, and, and, and do the things that I needed to do to, to protect my soul, um, I was gonna do it. You know, and I made it my business to do so, and I started delving into material that I probably would never have read, you know, being in, uh, being a free man. I started reading, you know, everything from, you know, philosophy books to, you know, very, very few novels, but I, I, I tend to learn from the experiences of others. So autobiographies became my thing, you know, from, from Quincy Jones to Miles Davis, and, and just continuously studying, right, and then studying the system, and what drives the system, and, and, and, and why it has become what it is. You know, from education to, you know, to, to the whole system of why educational system looks at a guy in the third grade and determines whether or not he's gonna be caught up in the criminal justice system as early as the third grade, right? Based on your reading level, they can determine how many prison beds that they're going to develop. These are things that most people don't know, right? The, d- like 50% of the incarcerated people in New York state, or probably in the country, are living with dyslexia, so then, so they're unable to, to learn the, you know, the basics of education, like reading. And these guys go home and they commit crimes over and over again, because they were never corrected. And these same systems that were built on the premise of rehabilitation are draconian (clears throat) in that they do nothing but, you know, steal a person's humanity and allow them to become or looked at as nothing more than a number, right? You gotta wake up 6:00 in the morning, and sometimes when they're coming around, they're asking you your name and... They're not asking your name, they're asking you, you know, your numbers, what cell location you in. They're not calling you Mr. Bryan, they're calling you 60 Cell, right? And a lot of people begin to internalize that and lose their sense of self. And so I've, I remained guarded and, um, and tried to maintain a, a sense of humanity through my meditation, right? Through fasting every now and then. And just through deep introspection and reflection. For me, that was the hard part. The easy part was education and learning. The hard part was introspection and fighting a system.... right? Not just a prosecutor or a court, but fighting a system that was premised on, um, you know, o- o- o- o- oppression, right? That was premised on, it's a business, a prison industrial complex. You got cheap labor. You know, the 13th Amendment says you're allowed to be enslaved if you're convicted of a crime. You see? And so, you know, in- in a system like that, you have to find a way. You gotta find it within yourself to- to rise above the fray.
- JRJoe Rogan
Did you meet anyone else inside that showed you this path?
- BBBruce Bryan
Yes. Early on in my incarceration, there was a group of guys called the Resurrection Study Group. And it was founded by a guy named Eddie Ellis, who has since passed on. And what the Resurrection Study Group did was they developed this- this program called the Nontraditional Approach to Social and Criminal Justice, and it helped them understand why the vast majority of incarcerated people in New York State came from... at that time, they came from seven basic neighborhoods, right? And these were neighborhoods that were all impoverished, that were all plagued with what we call crime generative factors, from, you know, substance abuse, to dilapidated housing, to, uh, you know, just poverty, right? Um, and so you see- you see violence. And what I've come to realize is that poverty is violence. So, wherever there's poverty, you're- you're going to see violence because poverty itself is violence. And so these neighborhoods, you begin to learn and study, and you begin to see that this is not by accident. These- t- you know, these prisons were built for a purpose. Um, there's a saying, they say, "You build it, they're going to come." That's the same thing with prisons. You build them, they're going to come. Similar to, um, the 1994 Crime Bill that was signed by, uh, Bill Clinton and authored- co-authored by our now president, Joe Biden, um, and incarcerated more people across the country than in any other time. Right? It- it- it perpetuated the three strikes, you're out. Um, you had guys who stole a slice of pizza, third strike, he gets 25 to life. Um, we're looking at cases now where guys just took $200, he'd been in jail for 20 years.
- JRJoe Rogan
(sighs)
- BBBruce Bryan
Some guy's sentenced 70 years for armed robbery. Right? All of these things come under the 1994 Crime Bill. So when you begin to see it as a system that was designed to do certain things, it's a wake-up call for you and you begin to say, "Hold on, man. Um, I've- I fell for the trap. It's time for me to begin taking a different route and- and- and- and begin educating myself more." And so the Resurrection Study Group, these guys steered me in that direction. They steered me in that direction and I began to learn from another gentleman that was a part of it by the name of Dr. Gary Mendez, who also died. And he had a program called the National Trust for the Development of African American Men, and what it did was it helped us restore those values that we strayed away from. So this- this is what got me on the right path early in my incarceration.
- JRJoe Rogan
How difficult was that to stay on that path? 'Cause it seems like obviously you- you did find a way to be very disciplined and- and- and stick to it, and you- you give off this energy of a person who's been on a long voyage in that regard. But how- how difficult was it as a young man?
- BBBruce Bryan
Extremely difficult because the norm is, you know, a microcosm of what takes place in society. Drugs, violence, the hustling, everything that goes on, uh, in society, it happens in prison, right? You know, relationships with staff, um, all of that takes place, right? And so it's extremely difficult. It's- it's almost like a battle because the guys in my age group, they were not doing what I was doing. They were in the yard either gangbanging, selling drugs, getting high. You know, very few of them were in the law library. But I come to realize also that is when you're wrongfully convicted, you fight a little different than a guy that's actually accepted his fate for what he's done.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BBBruce Bryan
I think that your fight and your pursuit of, um, your liberty, but also your pursuit to become- to rise above your, uh, uh, circumstance becomes a little different. You know, um, where I was didn't have to define who I was, uh, and- or who I can become. And once I began writing and putting these things on the cell walls, you know, like affirmations or quotes that I would develop, not that I, you know, would take from anyone, but ones that I would develop myself, right? Um, after reading and studying, and then you have these epiphanies. I used to sleep with a pen and a paper. That's what the guys from Resurrection Study Group taught me. I would sleep with a pen and a pad and... because they say some of your most, uh, uh, pure thoughts come in the midnight hour in the midst of your sleep. And certain things, principles that, uh, that I began to live by would come to me in those late hours and I would write 'em down, and the next day I would wake up and I would stick 'em on the wall. And I would begin to internalize these principles and these morals that I began to develop that reconnected me to, you know, my own humanity, because prison strips you of so much of that, man.
- JRJoe Rogan
What was it like on day one of your release?
- BBBruce Bryan
Oh (laughs) .
- JRJoe Rogan
What was that... Is it even possible to describe that feeling?
- BBBruce Bryan
It was the best feeling...... that a human being can feel. To see my mother, to see my loved ones, my siblings, um, still breathing, still alive because I lost my father in 2017. So to see love, um, is what I saw. Um, it's indescribable. It was, it was beyond, beyond being elated. You know, joy, it was just a deep, deep sense of, um, of bliss. It was almost like heaven, man. If there was such a thing as heaven on Earth, it was heaven the day that I walked out of prison.
- JDJosh Dubin
I just-
- BBBruce Bryan
It was like I walked out of hell and straight into heaven. There was no, there were no purgatory, right? (laughs)
- JDJosh Dubin
(laughs)
- BBBruce Bryan
There was no purgatory. (laughs) So, so I went straight from hell, straight to heaven.
- JDJosh Dubin
Thi- this one, this one I gotta tell you, um, for me, you know, I've had the fortunate experience of walking, you know, my fair share of people out. This one was like ... this one was what they based the movies on. This was so stunning in the way it happened. Um, the super, uh, the warden of Sing Sing is, is actually a great man. His name is, uh, Mike Capra. Um, he's ... too bad he's retiring soon.
- BBBruce Bryan
Mm-hmm.
- JDJosh Dubin
And, um, he really believed in Bruce and, um, w- you know, he was responsible for making sure that there are a lot of programs in Sing Sing for the people that want 'em and they typically release people out of Sing Sing, which is in Ossining, New York. It's about an hour and a half north of the city on the Hudson. And they usually just take them from a prison van to a bus stop and just drop 'em off. I was outside the prison gate and so was Bruce's family and, and friends and love- other loved ones that, um, had come from around the country. And I called the super, um, about a half hour before he was released because we had got word from another guard that was standing outside, "Oh, they're not gonna release him here. They're gonna ..."
- BBBruce Bryan
Drop him off at a train station.
- JDJosh Dubin
Yeah, yeah.
- BBBruce Bryan
Right.
- JDJosh Dubin
And I called him. I said, "Please, you know, let him have this moment." And he said, "We're gonna, we're gonna do that." And if you picture this 30-foot wall, steel, green wall that all of a sudden just parts and you see this figure, um, a- emerge with a net with his worldly possessions and, uh, you know, it, it was, uh ... and his ... he was walking his sister Justina, who's oddly enough a court officer in the very courthouse where he was convicted. S- they s- were walking to each other and the walk started to turn into a, a fast walk and then they both at the same time just ran to each other and embraced. Um, you know, I'm a crier. I, I just like ... I just stood back and watched and, um, everyone was just weeping, you know? And, and his mother d- had just pulled up. She got, you know, sort of like lost on the way to the prison. It's not easy to find. And, um, I ... tha- that one for me, this one, he ... Bruce and I have a, a deep, special relationship. He had spoken to my children on the phone before he got out. Um, they call him Uncle Bruce and, you know, I'm sitting back. I feel like a, a proud brother, um, listening to him speak. You know, what an im- an impressive human being, just to hear him articulate and his command of the ... of not only, um, you know, his knowledge base, but his understanding of the world around him. Uh, it just ... it always hits me like what, what a weird irony, um, that this man in the face of his innocence still recognized, "I gotta change my life. I didn't commit this crime, but I don't like the way I'm living." And, you know, I mean, we say the words 29 years and you hear of what he overcame, but, you know, it wasn't without incident. You see the scar on his face. There were stretches in solitary confinement that I'd rather him describe because I didn't live it. Um, and, you know, dealing with the violence in prison and, you know, he's explaining to you, like, waking up in the night with a thought and writing it down on a pad and it, and it's like ... it conjures up an image, at least for me, of someone blissfully sleeping. I mean, this is against the backdrop of him living on a, on a tier that is full of people, many of them suffering extraordinary mental illness, screaming, yelling, having rap competitions until 2:00, 3:00 in the morning. I mean, deafening noise on a cellblock for those th- that have never been there. Um-
- BBBruce Bryan
88 men, 88 cells on a gallery in Sing Sing and you have four galleries right on top of each other.
- JDJosh Dubin
(whistles)
- BBBruce Bryan
The longest
- 30:00 – 45:00
What's terrifying is there's…
- BBBruce Bryan
tiers. So you can see a guy getting stabbed in 88 cells and you may be in 10 and the guy's way down there getting stabbed. The guard is by the staircase and this guy's screaming for dear life. No one hears him but, you know he's getting hit and you know the prison culture. Gotta f- you gotta fend for yourself. There's no ... you know?You know what happens in an environment like that. Guys keep quiet. Sometimes a guy gets shoved back in his cell. Either he's left to die or he's, he pr- he prays that an officer comes and, and finds him in there, laying in his blood and he survives. I've watched guys, um, guys that I were close to. You talk to them today, you have coffee with them today, and tonight when they call on the chow, he doesn't move out of his cell. You find out ... What's going on with him? You find out he OD'd off of fentanyl 15 minutes earlier. There's no Narcan in the cell blocks to hit this guy to wake him up. They know that, they know drugs are ubiquitous in prison. They're everywhere. Um, yet, you know, the procedures that are in place are not there. The safeguards are not there to protect lives because they don't see y- that your life is ... It doesn't matter, right? There's a, there's a huge sense of being devalued. Human life is completely devalued in these institutions. You're numbers and once you leave, uh, someone else will take your place. And that's the attitude of the prison industrial complex as a whole, you know? (exhales)
- JRJoe Rogan
What's terrifying is there's been no talk to mitigate all the problems that lead to the prison industrial complex. There's... No one's talking about getting rid of it. No one's, no one's talking about getting rid of private prisons. No one's talking about trying to figure out a way to, other than just policing, to do something about these communities that keep, decade after decade, being a place where no one has hope.
- BBBruce Bryan
And every politician says, "Let's get ..." It's either get tough on crime-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- BBBruce Bryan
... or light on crime.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- BBBruce Bryan
Right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BBBruce Bryan
Right? So, but no one says, "Instead of getting tough on crime, why don't we get tough on the social conditions that produce crime?"
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- BBBruce Bryan
Because no one is born a criminal. These are conditions that people come out of that drive them. Unless you're a nut, right? Unless you have some serious mental health issues and you're just like this ... you know, you're, you're obsessed with, with children, little boys, like we talked about last night in the comedy club-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BBBruce Bryan
... or you're a pedophile or something, and you need some serious mental health work. Um, no one is talking about dealing with the crime generative factors that exist in poor communities across the country. When you look at, in New York City, the Bronx is the poorest community, poorest borough in New York City. Brownsville is the poorest community. Both of these communities, both of these places are ... You know, the, the crime is at ... You know, it, it, it is high. Violence is high, right? Drug use is high s- because the social conditions are that bad, right? And the cycle continues. You know, it's, it's a cycle because people are living in not just poverty, they're living in concentrated poverty, generational poverty. So my family grew up, one family grew up in the projects, their children wind up growing up in the projects, right? Unless someone comes and breaks that cycle, unless there's serious intervention to break the cycle of incarceration or intergenerational incarceration, it, you know, it continues to be perpetuated.
- JRJoe Rogan
And the problem seems to be that every politician is just concerned with getting elected. So they want to say whatever the people want to hear, and if the people want to hear, "Get tough on crime," it's that. But you don't hear, "We need to eliminate all the, all the areas of our country that are creating these issues. We has to fi-" We have to fix that. They have to fix it. It has to be a concentrated effort. It has to be... I've always said, "You want to make America great?"
- BBBruce Bryan
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Have less losers. How do you have less losers? You have more people with opportunity. You figure out where people don't have opportunity, you provide opportunity, and you pour all the money into that. We obviously have billions of dollars to provide to Ukraine. There's always something.
- BBBruce Bryan
That's right.
- JRJoe Rogan
There's always something that they come up with where they need trillions of dollars for this and billions of dollars for that, green energy in this and that. There's no better use of resources than making better human beings, giving human beings opportunity.
- JDJosh Dubin
And may- and maybe it's time to stop relying on the government for it, because it ... Po- politicians, it's almost like when I think of a politician now in, in, in the context of helping solve these problems, it's almost like, you know, wouldn't it be nice for me to be able to fly? Yeah, that'd be nice, but it's not gonna happen.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JDJosh Dubin
You know? Um, so what we're trying to do with the Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice is in ... is to get the word out, um, to even the private sector. If we can create self-driving cars and artificial intelligence and send people into space, this is a solvable problem. I mean, I ... One, one of the things that has been, um ... I mean, I don't know why I needed this as like some epiphany because I've been doing this work for close to 20 years. Um, but lately, I have been struck by the cases that we're working on in a way that I haven't before. And if you ever want to see like (laughs) the, the true, um ... What's the best way to articulate this? (sniffs) How, how fucked up this country is in terms of racial disparity and the mistreatment of minorities in this country, go visit a prison. Sing Sing has a program where we'll talk about it, where they take people from the community in and say, "Here's what is going on here." I have routinely sat across a table like this in a small room, um, in the vis- in the legal visiting room at Sing Sing. Let's just take Sing Sing, for example. We recently, um ...... on one of our new clients, um, was sentenced to 70 years, 70 years for a first offense in which the extent of the victim's injuries were four stitches. This man, Sheldon Johnson, served-
- NANarrator
26 years.
- JDJosh Dubin
... 26 years. And I took a look at this case and I said, "How is this possible?" A few weeks later, I'm, I'm visiting with a man who's serving 25 to life for the alleged robbery of $200, in which the alleged victim has a condition where one eye is shut and the other eye had multiple surgeries that were never disclosed to the defense. Um, you know, and-
- NANarrator
That is an eyewitness account?
- JDJosh Dubin
Yes. There's no-
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- JDJosh Dubin
... evidence. And he's-
- NANarrator
And he's the only eyewitness. (laughs)
- JDJosh Dubin
And he's the only-
- JRJoe Rogan
He only has one eye.
- 45:00 – 1:00:00
Mm-hmm. …
- JDJosh Dubin
DA Pamela Smart and ask her to please release Pierre Rushing. There's a petition called a- a Petition of Habeas Corpus-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JDJosh Dubin
... which I think translates in Latin to the bo- holding of the body-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- JDJosh Dubin
Keep-
- JRJoe Rogan
Can I stop you for real quick?
- JDJosh Dubin
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Uh, spell Fallon. F-A-L-L-O-N? F-A-L-L-O-N.
- JDJosh Dubin
F-A-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) .
- JDJosh Dubin
One ... So it's Alameda District Attorney Pamela Price, 1225 Fallon Street, Oakland, California.
- JRJoe Rogan
Two Ls?
- JDJosh Dubin
Yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
So Fallon with two Ls.
- JDJosh Dubin
And, you know, I know that the case is on her radar. Um, I think that she is ... And read about the case, Pierre Rushing, just how it sounds, and the- the more we let district attorneys, politicians know that the public is paying attention, um, I can tell you from my experience that, o- of being on this show, that the DA's listen. Um, I've had them reference appearances on this show, acting like, "How could you s- you know, say that about, you know, Douglas County, Kansas," you know? But then, you know, they get a thousand letters, and they realize that politically it's not gonna look very good to keep an innocent. What is the holdup? You know, these wheels of justice grind slowly. And for a man like Bruce, who is sitting in there and having to, you know, witness violence on a day-to-day basis, unthinkable conditions where he sleeps in- in- uh, in a room when he's put in- in- in what they call the box or the hole and has rodents crawling across his chest as he sleeps. I'm not making this shit up. This is- this was his day-to-day existence. Pierre Rushing is in similar circumstances. You can make a difference to write a letter, read about the case, the habeas petitions are out there to read them. And, you know, I think that we just need ... All I can do, all I can think of, we could have grandiose ideas. It would be amazing if a big corporation didn't decide to donate a lot of money because they felt guilty about what happened to George Floyd, um, and then all of a sudden it became the summer of- of like corporate guilt and everyone (laughs) starts donating. You don't donate because it's in vogue. You donate because you actually want to make a difference. And take it from little old me, you know, I know that I'm one grain of sand on a massive beach, um, but what Bruce said, and I've said it before, I'll- I'll say it again. Um, I've done my fair share of drugs and mind-altering substances. There is no feeling like helping restore somebody's life and freedom. Nothing. Nothing comes close to it. So if you want to be another grain of sand on that beach, hopefully the grain of sand will form a sand castle, and then there'll be more sand castles and people will start paying more attention. That's all I can think of as just an individual and an organization, um, to- to keep on doing, is to keep banging the drum and the more we bang it and the louder we bang it. So again, I- I thank you for the- for the platform and I want people to be able to see and witness these marvelous human beings. It's such a waste to have them locked away behind prison walls when, you know, you hear him speak-... Bruce just accepted a position with the Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice. He's going to be a criminal justice reform advocate and a student mentor. Not because I feel bad for him, not because I think, you know, "Oh, he's b-" Because he's earned it. Listen to him speak and listen to his command of the issues. Um, you know, so I, I sometimes find myself, like, I feel like I'm, um, trying to climb... I feel like Sisyphus sometimes, right? And the boulder keeps rolling back on me.
- BBBruce Bryan
Keeps rolling back on you.
- JDJosh Dubin
Yeah.
- BBBruce Bryan
Yeah.
- JDJosh Dubin
And then I get a, you know-
- JRJoe Rogan
(clears throat)
- JDJosh Dubin
... you get a, a little taste of what that's like to help, you know, stand ne- next to him last night and watch him watch a comedy show. And then we were walking down the street and just hear, like, hear him inhale a breath of fresh air. Or this morning, before we came here, he saw the pool at the hotel and teared up. And he said, "I, I'm going in." And I, I heard this-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) .
- JDJosh Dubin
... like, with like childlike wonder, the splash. And like, you know, I went over, and he had both arms in the air. He said, "Take a picture of me. I still got it."
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- JDJosh Dubin
And, and I f- I fu- I fucking blanked.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- JDJosh Dubin
And I thought, I thought to myself, "This must be the first time he swam in over 30 years." And, you know, it was just, to be able to watch that and to be even a small part of it, um, it's just, like, makes you feel like getting up the next day and with a smile on your face, with the will to want to do it again and help someone else.
- BBBruce Bryan
Mm-hmm. I want to touch on something that Joe said. I think investing ... What people don't realize is the huge talent pool that exists behind prison walls. These guys can ... They can help drive the economy outside of just being incarcerated. If you're spending $80 billion a year on, on incarceration across the country, these guys, you have, you know, you got artists, you got guys that, guys will make anything in here, man, out of just, you know, just anything. I've seen guys make statues like this from paper towels and soap. You say, "What the hell?" So the talent pool is broad if we're willing to invest in people, right? If we invest in the social infrastructure and tap into that, that, that, that, that cultural capital that exists behind prison walls and, and, and just start beginning to invest in people instead of things and prisons, right? You know, we got to, we got to learn to, to just really say, "Well, is prison the right answer? Who's cor- who's corrected from prison?" Prison, corrections has never corrected anyone. It's the person that engages in introspection and says, "I want to make a change." But the pr- you know, even in, even when you look at the investments that they make in, in law enforcement, if law enforcement were the answer to crime, we'd be the safest place on planet Earth. America would be the safest place on planet Earth 'cause we've got more cops than anywhere else, right? So we, we, we give so much of our time and we give our money to the police officers, and they granted, they, you know, they're, they're, they're important, right? But they don't solve crime. They don't prevent crime. It's just that simple. They just don't, right? When you invest in people and you provide them with opportunities to create better lives for themselves and to all- and to, you know, a hand up so they can pick their families up out of poverty, that's the change, that's the difference. I mean, incarceration would go down exponentially if people began to feel like they were important, to feel valued because someone's invested in them.
- JRJoe Rogan
This is where it gets dangerous, because the prison industrial complex is a business, and the business protects itself. There's been prison guard unions that have lobbied to keep marijuana illegal in states.
- JDJosh Dubin
Mm-hmm.
- 1:00:00 – 1:15:00
(laughs) …
- JDJosh Dubin
w- do you want me to help, you know, point you in the right direction of how you can help?" I've had so many people take me up on it, so you guys made me feel better. I mean, look, I, I just, there are moments where I feel like, is the problem ever gonna get, you know, solved? It is frustrating to me, so frustrating. And that's why I'm so in your debt because we, Joe and I had this idea, um... Bruce, you don't know this. A couple of years ago where, you know, he v- you know, committed to doing this once a quarter, and I, of course, I thought, "Really? Oh, is he really gonna do it?" And not only has he done it but allowed me to bring, you know, an exoneree on, um, every time. And, you know, first we had Robert Jones and then Derrick Hamilton and now Bruce, and, and I hope that people not only see the humanity in these men, but, um-... see the talent and see the... I mean, think about these three men, right? Robert Jones said, "I'm gonna one day get out of here and put on a suit and come back in and help the people that need help." And he did it. Derrick Hamilton, known the country over as probably the, the, the brightest legal mind in the prison system, um, said, "One day I'm gonna get out of here and I'm gonna help the people inside." And not only has he done it, he's like a, he's like a meteor.
- BBBruce Bryan
(laughs)
- JDJosh Dubin
You know, he's like a, a streaking comet of a human being. I've never seen anything like it. District attorneys, conviction integrity units, when he calls, they pick up the phone and they, they, um, have meetings. The district attorney in Manhattan, um, you know, Alvin Bragg, say what you want about him, my opinion is he picked up the phone when Derrick called about, about Sheldon Johnson and, you know, there was this great group of lawyers called, um, the CAL, the Center for Appellate Litigation, and they had brought the case, you know, right to the goal line and they said, "You know, we need the DA's ear. You know, can you just sort of get this?" And, and there's some great people in that office, Brian Crow, that really wanna make a difference and, you know, we met with the DA in Manhattan and he spoke to Derrick and then, you know, Sheldon gets released. Um, so yeah, it does make a difference and I think that for Bruce, you know, when I heard about some of the programs that he created from on the inside... Can you tell Joe about, and, and the listeners about the gun buyback program and Voices from, from Within?
- BBBruce Bryan
Yeah. Voices from Within, I'll start there. Um, there's a group of men that founded it prior to me coming into Sing Sing. Uh, Lawrence Bartley, John Najian-Velasquez, they started this program. And it was a progressive program that was designed to, um... they wa- they wanted to, uh, redefine what it means to pay a debt to society. Um, and they've been doing just that. So they began doing this progressive work inside and, and, and created this event called CHOICES, which is Choosing Healthy Options and Confronting Every situation. And what they do with these CHOICES events is they bring in children whose parents are incarcerated and then begin, you know, um, having what they call playback theater, which is they'll have a, a, a, a young person talk about a dilemma in their life and then they'll have, uh, two of the guys incarcerated actually play it out so the person can actually visualize what it is that they went through and see the opportunities to make better choices. Um, so that's one of them and, but also the Civic Duty Initiative we founded in Sullivan, myself and a guy named Joseph Robinson and Stanley Bellamy who was also just granted clemency. Uh, he had 62 years, he did 37. Um, what we did when we begin, you know, finding these poor impo- impoverished communities and whether they've been upstate or in the inner cities and decided that what we're going to do is we're going to do uh, uh, uh, book drives, we're going to raise money in prison through these, uh, prison organizations to buy, uh, backpacks and school supplies for children of incarcerated parents. And we did just that. We gave, you know, we gave thousands of books away. We raised tons of money to, uh, to contribute to a gun buyback, hopefully, but through a church, um, in Albany with a reverend by the name of Charles Muller who had a program. Albany was, was being ravaged by violence and his program had run out of money and so I reached out to him and we collaborated in Sullivan c- you know, Correctional Facility, and decided that we're gonna put our, pull our resources and see how we can come together. We also had them bring in some young guys so that we can talk to about youth violence. Um, and this has been going... This continues to go on, right? The Youth Assistance Program, YAP, that they have both in Sing Sing and in a few other prisons in New York State. I was on the YAP team in Sing Sing where they bring in, uh, 30 at-risk youth. Uh, in my group I had, you know, I had some young kids that were, uh, from El Salvador who were dealing with, um, you know, MS-13s and, uh, I had one young guy and one young girl tell me that they had to leave El Salvador because where they lived, you know, their, their, their friends were all in gangs and what they did was they would play soccer with the heads of the rival gangs. Um, and I had... That, that, that had made me cringe. I had never heard anything like that until this and this ki- these kids were like 18, 19. And they had to literally leave the country because their family was like, "If they stay there, they have to be in a gang." I mean, these, these kids said that their friends would literally play soccer with the heads, the decapitated heads of rival gangs. So these are some of the kids that we've, you know, we've been able to reach and talk to through the YAP program. Um, it's never enough because sometimes they bring in kids that'll never be at risk. Sometimes they bring in kids from high-end society that have no business coming in there. (laughs) They're gonna, they're gonna be successful, right? So, you know, sometimes we have a little issue with that, but the other program is, uh, Children of Promise NYC, where I've been working with them for the past decade. They have- Can, can I stop you there? Yes. Why are they bringing children from privileged society into that program? I- It makes absolutely no sense. I think that... I- for me, if you, you want my- Yeah. ... personal opinion, I think that they bring them in to show them what they can do and what they can control, right? You can possibly one day be in control of a prison or a, or a corporation because you're bringing these kids from high society that they're literally never going to come, they're never going to see the inside of a jail cell, so- So they're bringing them in so they get the inner workings of prison so they can enter into the prison industrial complex? On some level.... on some level, but not become a... W- we know they're never gonna be incarcerated, some of these people.
- JRJoe Rogan
Because it's a viable business, it's not going away.
- BBBruce Bryan
It's never going away.
- JRJoe Rogan
And you have... If you decide to go down that road, you have a guaranteed source of income.
- BBBruce Bryan
I mean, we... The product that we made in New York State prisons go by, um, it's called Corcraft. This is on the stock market, Corcraft. You know, Corcraft is making upholstery in one prison. In Green Haven, they make couches, tables like this. It got-
- JRJoe Rogan
How, how much do guys get paid?
- BBBruce Bryan
Oh, they make, make 16 cents an hour.
- JRJoe Rogan
(inhales deeply)
- BBBruce Bryan
10 cents an hour.
- JRJoe Rogan
(exhales deeply)
- BBBruce Bryan
Literally.
- JRJoe Rogan
And they have to do it?
- BBBruce Bryan
Oh, yeah. You don't go to program, you, um, you go into the box. In 2000, guys refused to go to, uh, to Corcraft because they didn't wanna, uh, build cells. They had a group of guys that found out that there was steel coming off of the van. They unloaded a truck. A group of prisoners were forced to unload a truck and they realized what they were unloading were bars. Bars and doors and they said, "Hold on, man. They, they opening up a shop, uh, where we have to build cells." So a few days later these guys says, "We're not doing that. We're not building cells for our kids." All these guys went to the box and they shipped them from a close... A prison that's close to their family, Green Haven, they shipped them to Clinton. To-
- JDJosh Dubin
And the box, for the listeners-
- BBBruce Bryan
The box is solitary confinement. SHU, solitary housing.
- JRJoe Rogan
So if you don't do labor-
- BBBruce Bryan
(coughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... for 16 cents an hour, you get confined to solitary confinement?
- BBBruce Bryan
Yeah, you get a misbehavior report. You, you... And nine times out of ten, when you go for that misbehavior report, you're found guilty and you're penalized for not engaging in slave wages, slave labor. That is a fact. This has gone... Every prison, uh, when COVID started, a lot of people don't know where the hand sanitizer was coming from. It was coming from Great Meadows, right? It was coming from Great Meadows and at one point, you know, Governor Cuomo (laughs) was... He had it on the news. "We got a san- hand sanitizer the guys are making and..." And this is... This was for sale at one point. I mean, any-
- JRJoe Rogan
And so that's another-
- BBBruce Bryan
... any, anybody can make it.
- JRJoe Rogan
... form of extraordinary profit.
- BBBruce Bryan
Oh, of course.
- JRJoe Rogan
Even more profitable-
- BBBruce Bryan
It-
- JRJoe Rogan
... than making iPhones in China.
- BBBruce Bryan
iPhone. (laughs)
- 1:15:00 – 1:28:02
Mm-hmm. …
- JDJosh Dubin
like this is the current district attorney, um, in Queens is a woman by the name of Melinda Katz. Um, and she did something pretty extraordinary in this case, which, uh, which, you know, you have to recognize it when it happens. When the governor is considering someone for clemency, they check with the District Attorney's Office where they were convicted. And, um, the Queens County District Attorney's Office, who is also reinvestigating Bruce's case, its Conviction Integrity Unit is, you know, I mentioned earlier, is reinvestigating his case, did not oppose Bruce's grant of clemency. Extremely rare, um, in a murder case where an 11-year-old boy was murdered-
- GUGuest
Mm-hmm.
- JDJosh Dubin
... um, for them to not oppose. So, that's, you know, what I think, that she deserves recognition for that, her office deserves recognition for that. And what we can hope is that we keep on making, um, believers out of them by presenting cases like Bruce's. Uh, you know, people like to make broad generalizations, whether it's police officers, prosecutors, I thi- I hate it when people do that-
- GUGuest
Mm-hmm.
- JDJosh Dubin
... about anything. Um, there's good and bad in all professions. And I just think that, you know, when you see people trying to make change happen, even if it doesn't go sometimes at the pace you want it to happen at, as long as it's m- moving in the right direction, um, it deserves to be recognized and applauded. So, I just wanted to make sure because it's easy to, like, see this guy, who was a former Queens prosecutor and then, you know, make a dangerous leap that therefore all prosecutors in Queens are bad, which is not the case.
- GUGuest
Exactly.
- JDJosh Dubin
Not the case.
- GUGuest
He just, he just happened to be a bad one, um, that finally got caught. And it was interesting. He didn't get caught until he was a defense lawyer. He became a criminal defense attorney, and he got caught bribing witnesses in connection with a defense case. It's kind of ironic, right, because the other cases that, where he was a prosecutor and it got overturned, he was doing the same shit. Um, he didn't just come down with a, like a, like you come down with a cold, like a case of the bribes one day, you know?
- JDJosh Dubin
(laughs)
- GUGuest
Mm-hmm.
- JDJosh Dubin
He wasn't like, "Oh, this sounds like a good fucking idea."
- GUGuest
(clears throat)
- JDJosh Dubin
This is learned behavior. This is the way he learned to work the system, in my humble opinion. Um ...
- GUGuest
And you think there's others like that?
- JDJosh Dubin
Oh, absolutely.
- GUGuest
I mean, this goes back to the '80s. Yeah, yeah.
- JDJosh Dubin
Absolutely, absolutely. There's, there's others like that.
- GUGuest
It's just-
- JDJosh Dubin
And, and it happened in New York with the so-called mob cops, right?
- GUGuest
Yeah, yeah.
- JDJosh Dubin
Scarsella, and ...
- GUGuest
Or how about that guy in Pennsylvania that was, uh, sending foster kids to jail? Oh, you're talking about the, um, um, um, Kids for Cash- Yes. ... with the private prisons? Yes. Until the young kid killed himself. Yes. They, th- he, he was a young up-and-coming wrestler, and he was, he was sent to jail for, uh, for, uh, I think pushing his stepfather and cutting school. So, they sent him to juvenile. But what happened was, in the private prisons, you had to maintain a certain capacity. It had to be filled to, like, 80% capacity. And what happened was these judges, if they were, they were charged with keeping these jails filled, right? So, as long as they kept them filled, they got a kickback. It's called Kids for Cash. There's a documentary on it.
- JDJosh Dubin
Yeah, I know-
- GUGuest
Several judges.
- JDJosh Dubin
Yeah, I know about it. You know, it, it just, when, when Joe asked me, um, and this happens and there's others like it, I, I think it goes down, it comes down to, um, this ugly part of, of human nature where, you know, I love the quote, "Absolute power corrupts absolutely." But I also think even a little bit of power can be super dangerous.
- GUGuest
Sure.
- JDJosh Dubin
And, you know, you see it in, you know, all facets of life. People get a little bit of fame, they get a little bit of notoriety, or they get the ability to have influence over someone else. And I'll give you an example as it relates to Bruce for people that don't, that think that this doesn't happen. As soon as Bruce was granted clemency-... all over the papers. You know, when a governor grants clemency, it's news. There's people that oppose it because they get, you know, the 60,000-foot, um, news headline view of it and don't know shit about the facts of the case. "How could she have done that?" You know, letting a killer out.
- BBBruce Bryan
(clears throat)
- JDJosh Dubin
They have no idea-
- BBBruce Bryan
Of course.
Episode duration: 2:12:09
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