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Joe Rogan Experience #1993 - Josh Dubin & Bruce Bryan

Josh Dubin is the Executive Director of the Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice, a criminal justice reform advocate, and civil rights attorney. https://tinyurl.com/4kb2y5hm Bruce Bryan was recently released from prison after nearly 30 years and receiving clemency. Follow Bruce : @bruce.bryan24 Donate to Bruce's GoFundMe: https://gofund.me/a1f61da1

Joe RoganhostJosh DubinguestBruce BryanguestGuestguest
Jun 27, 20242h 12mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 3:30

    Bruce Bryan’s first weeks of freedom and adjusting to life outside

    1. NA

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

    2. JR

      The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (instrumental music plays) What's up?

    3. JD

      What's up, man?

    4. JR

      Good to see you, my brother.

    5. JD

      Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

    6. JR

      And thank you for bringing Bruce. And thanks for coming out last night. That was a good time.

    7. BB

      I had a great time, man.

    8. JR

      For everyone to n- ... Like, guys started realizing while you were there, your story.

    9. BB

      Okay.

    10. JR

      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.

    11. BB

      (laughs)

    12. JR

      You know what I'm saying? Like everybody wanted to hear the story, everybody ...

    13. JD

      Yeah.

    14. JR

      ... 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.

    15. JD

      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-

    16. JR

      From you?

    17. JD

      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.

    18. JR

      Thank you.

    19. JD

      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-

    20. JR

      Thank you very much. How funny is Dave Attell?

    21. JD

      He's ... Oh, my f-

    22. JR

      He's a master.

    23. JD

      My side hurts.

    24. JR

      He's a master. He's a master.

    25. JD

      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.

    26. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    27. JD

      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.

    28. BB

      Yeah.

    29. JD

      Why did you do it?

    30. BB

      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.

  2. 3:30 – 5:29

    How Bruce was targeted: wrongful homicide conviction and a corrupt prosecutor

    1. JR

      How old were you when they put you in?

    2. BB

      I was 23 going on ... Just turning 24.

    3. JR

      And tell us the whole story of what happened.

    4. BB

      Well, I was arrested back in 1994 for homicide. I think that everyone knew that I didn't do this case at all. Everyone knew I didn't commit the crime. I mean, I literally woke up that afternoon because my girlfriend wanted to change her niece's costume and she wa- ... She also had a taste for chocolate cake. So just imagine waking up to change a costume for Halloween, a child's costume, and then disappearing for the next 29 years of your life. Right? And being, being charged with a homicide while the prosecutor involved in your conviction has a history of misconduct and it wasn't until some 27, 26 years later that he finally gets arrested and gets convicted, former Queens prosecutor John Scarpa. He gets convicted for the very same misconduct that I've been telling them about, that he's been doing for decades.

    5. JR

      So he would just find someone, pin it on them?

    6. BB

      Yeah, he would concoct a story, a theory, as he did in my situation.

    7. JR

      And he did this just to ju- ... Just to convict someone?

    8. BB

      Yeah.

    9. JR

      Anyone?

    10. BB

      Yeah. Yeah.

    11. JR

      So it wasn't that he was targeting you, he just, he just decided it was you?

    12. BB

      Who ... Anybody that he felt was involved in a criminal lifestyle or in drug dealing. You c- ... It's easier to get someone that has a history of being involved in the streets to put a c- ... A case on them than it is ...

    13. JR

      Right.

    14. BB

      ... someone that doesn't. So, you know, once they find out that you have a record it's easy to say, "All right. Well, he did this homicide."

    15. JR

      What kind of a record did you have at the time?

    16. BB

      I had a drug ... I had a drug sale prior to that. So that's enough for him to say, "Okay, he's a part of a drug crew and, uh, you know, let's arrest him and lock him up."

  3. 5:29 – 10:01

    Josh Dubin’s new mission: beyond DNA innocence and the Perlmutter Center

    1. JD

      His thi- ... This particular prosecutor, (clears throat) his thing was bribery. Um, he would pay off witnesses and he ended up not only getting convicted but went to federal prison for it. Um, you know, I- I should give some context here because to the extent that Bruce is gonna be, um, guarded about certain details of this case, I wanna explain why. Um, last time I was on with Derrick Hamilton we were ...... you know, sort of previewing the center that we would open. So I left the Innocence Project. I was the ambassador at the Innocence Project, and I think that there was a real n- need for work being done on cases that didn't just involve DNA. So, we deal with cases that involve all manner of what we think is junk forensic science that we've talked about: ballistics, arson, bite marks, and so on. But we also want there to be an aspect that dealt with clemency for people that we think got over-sentenced and deserved a second chance. So, Bruce was our first client, uh, at the Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice at Cardozo Law. And I got a call from a guy named Steve Zeidman that runs a clemency center at CUNY Law, and Steve said, you know, "Congratulations on the new center. I have the perfect guy for you. His name is Bruce Bryant," with a T at the end of his name. Um, that becomes important in a minute. And he said, "I'm gonna send you some information about him." (clears throat) So he emails me this list of accomplishments. Um, it was more than most human beings can accomplish in seven lifetimes. From the, the degrees that he achieved, to starting s- a gun buy-back program from inside, to starting, uh, something called Voices from Within, these community, um, these, these galvanizing sort of community outreach programs. And, um, you know, I went to go visit him with the mindset that I was gonna support his clemency application, and getting clemency in New York i- ain't easy, from the governor. Um, and you know clemency is supposed to be all about rehabilitation and transformation. And historically, especially in New York, you have to express contrition and explain to the parole board, um, if you were granted clemency. And it is a commutation of your sentence, that is a shortening of your sentence. You have to explain to the parole board, "Here's what I have done to transform myself and accept responsibility." Um, so keeping that in mind, I went to visit Bruce for the first time. And I said, "Nice to meet you." He says, "Nice to meet you. You know, I wrote you four years ago," he said to me. And, um, you know, I felt ridiculous. Uh, it was at a time where I didn't have the Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice, and I sort of was doing one-off cases, sometimes with the Innocence Project, sometimes by myself. And, um, I was really struck by, by his presence, by how articulate he was, one of the most well-read human beings. He was telling me about, you know, how he finished the Viktor Frankl, um, book, Man's Search for Meaning, and we had this amazing conversation about meditation and yoga, and w- we turned a half-hour visit into three hours, to the point where they told me I had to, you know, go. So, I went back and I looked for the letter, because I keep all the letters that I get. And I find this beautifully written, super articulate letter, and I'll never forget how he signed it, because it stuck with me. It said, "Oceans of gratitude, Bruce Bryant." And I just got curious. Uh, I agreed to represent him along with Steve Zeidman in connection with his clemency, um, but innocence wasn't on my mind. And then I read the trial transcript, uh, and I realized that this guy wasn't just innocent,

  4. 10:01 – 13:01

    Clemency and a rare parole outcome while maintaining an innocence claim

    1. JD

      but I think what struck me was that, um, the innocence claim was so strong that it didn't make s- you know, it, it was hard for me t- to get behind a clemency petition without him being able to say, "I'm innocent," you know, when he got before the parole board. So he, um, his case is being reinvestigated right now by what's called the Conviction Integrity Unit in Queens, uh, which is a sensational, um, arm of the District Attorney's Office, it's District Attorney Melinda Katz, and we, we have to be respectful of that reinvestigation of the case, because it's pending right now. And that is, you know, to hopefully exonerate Bruce completely. But, you know, and there's a, a great b- guy that runs the unit, and they're involved in an intense reinvestigation of the case. But Bruce got clemency a couple of months ago by Governor Hochul in December, and he got to stand before the parole board, and it was a, a scary moment for me, as one of his lawyers, that when they asked him, "Did you commit this crime?" For him to say, "No, I didn't," and to be granted clemency and to be then granted parole on an innocence claim is extraordinarily rare. So, I think it spoke to both how powerful his innocence claims are and his accomplishments. The only, there's only a few other people, one of them is Derrick Hamilton, that went before the parole board and said, "I'm not gonna, you know, admit to something I didn't do just to get out of here." Um, so I just wanted to give you that context, um, because details of the case, specific details of the case, um, are gonna be difficult to discuss, and I think what, um, what's amazing about Bruce is what he has been able to accomplish from inside...... um, in the face of his innocence is mind-blowing. Um, uh, you know, a lot of times when we're on the show, we get inquiries about how people can help and, um, w- how, how do people overcome this? And I think why people are attracted to these stories of the wrongfully incarcerated, I had to search myself, it's 'cause I like being around this kind of strength. I don't know how, you know, people like him summon the strength to get through it. And, you know, in talking to Bruce the last couple of weeks, he end- what he endured in prison is something we haven't really talked about on this show too much, like, the ingranularity about, like, what it's like in these institutions. And I was hoping we could talk about, among other things, some of that today, because he was in some of the worst penitentiaries in New

  5. 13:01 – 14:52

    Surviving maximum-security New York prisons: culture, racism, and despair

    1. JD

      York, from Attica to ...

    2. BB

      Clen- I was in Clinton, Great Meadows, Sing Sing, all maximum securities. All maximum security prisons way upstate in, uh, (laughs) in some, uh, m- towns that are e- essentially, you know, some... (sighs) You know, a lot of, a lot of racism is pervasive in those towns. And the prison is the, uh, is the only, uh, economic development in that town, so you've got brother, cousins, aunts, and uncles working in the same prison.

    3. JD

      Mm-hmm.

    4. BB

      So you get into an incident with one officer, you got a problem with the entire system. And that's just how it is when you go deeper upstate, I mean, borderline Canada, you know, Clinton, Dannemora, and Great Meadows, and different prisons like that, so.

    5. JR

      And the economy of the area depends upon the prison.

    6. BB

      Depends upon the prison, because there's really nothing there but snow during the wintertime and farming, so there's nothing else there. So the prison is the driving force behind the economy, so everyone's there, right, siblings... So nepotism is, you know, is prevalent in these prisons. And one of the things that you, you encounter is that, you know, these pr- it's not just f- cold in those areas, if prison is a cold environment, and it's up to you to create your own heat. It's a dark environment, and, uh, somehow you gotta f- find that light, you know, that light within yourself in order to, um, in order to travel, in order to, you know, to do something with your life more meaningful. You know what I mean? Um, and it's difficult. It's not easy. Uh, you watch guys, um, you know, guys you talk to today, and, you know, tomorrow they're swinging from the lights, they're dead, right? Yesterday they were fine. You know, the next morning you wake up, they, they've hung themselves, you know?

  6. 14:52 – 18:38

    ‘Have time serve me’: education, introspection, and mental discipline inside

    1. BB

      And, and these are the things that, that you encounter day in and day out, and you still have to maintain a sense of, uh, 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.

  7. 18:38 – 23:57

    Resurrection Study Group and seeing incarceration as a designed system

    1. JR

      Did you meet anyone else inside that showed you this path?

    2. BB

      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.

    3. JR

      (sighs)

    4. BB

      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.

    5. JR

      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?

    6. BB

      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.

    7. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    8. BB

      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.

  8. 23:57 – 31:37

    Release day and the emotional reality of walking out of Sing Sing

    1. JR

      What was it like on day one of your release?

    2. BB

      Oh (laughs) .

    3. JR

      What was that... Is it even possible to describe that feeling?

    4. BB

      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.

    5. JD

      I just-

    6. BB

      It was like I walked out of hell and straight into heaven. There was no, there were no purgatory, right? (laughs)

    7. JD

      (laughs)

    8. BB

      There was no purgatory. (laughs) So, so I went straight from hell, straight to heaven.

    9. JD

      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.

    10. BB

      Mm-hmm.

    11. JD

      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 ..."

    12. BB

      Drop him off at a train station.

    13. JD

      Yeah, yeah.

    14. BB

      Right.

    15. JD

      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-

    16. BB

      88 men, 88 cells on a gallery in Sing Sing and you have four galleries right on top of each other.

    17. JD

      (whistles)

    18. BB

      The longest 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)

  9. 31:37 – 42:09

    Root causes vs ‘tough on crime’: rebuilding communities and real-world constraints

    1. JR

      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.

    2. BB

      And every politician says, "Let's get ..." It's either get tough on crime-

    3. JR

      Yes.

    4. BB

      ... or light on crime.

    5. JR

      Yes.

    6. BB

      Right?

    7. JR

      Right.

    8. BB

      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?"

    9. JR

      Yes.

    10. BB

      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-

    11. JR

      Yeah.

    12. BB

      ... 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.

    13. JR

      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?"

    14. BB

      Mm-hmm.

    15. JR

      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.

    16. BB

      That's right.

    17. JR

      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.

    18. JD

      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.

    19. JR

      Right.

    20. JD

      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-

    21. NA

      26 years.

    22. JD

      ... 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-

    23. NA

      That is an eyewitness account?

    24. JD

      Yes. There's no-

    25. NA

      (laughs)

    26. JD

      ... evidence. And he's-

    27. NA

      And he's the only eyewitness. (laughs)

    28. JD

      And he's the only-

    29. JR

      He only has one eye.

    30. JD

      ... no pun, no pun intended.

  10. 42:09 – 1:02:23

    How listeners can help: Pierre Rushing case, letter-writing, and public pressure

    1. JD

      But that's how... that's why we're continuing to do this show. I cannot tell you... I say it every time I'm on here, you'll get tired of it maybe and maybe it sounds like, um, you know, ass kissing, and I will kiss whatever ass there is to kiss. This show has become such an important platform for us because watch this. Ready?I spoke about this before. There's a case, um, in California right now, a case of this guy Pierre Rushing, all right? The attorney that's handling it is from a big law firm named Greenberg Traurig. His name is Jordan Grotzinger. He is ... This- this kid really, was accused of, um, murder in 2011. He's sentenced 50 years to life. There's one witness, this guy's name is Robert Green. He's, um, a serial felon, a seven-time felon. He doesn't identify Pierre Rushing until three weeks after the crime. He, um, is a crack addict who admitted that he was high at the time the crime was committed. No physical evidence implicating Pierre Rushing. Um, two other witnesses at the scene when the shooting took place say it was not Pierre Rushing. So Jordan Grotzinger sends me a direct message on Instagram because he heard this podcast. Now, here is a- a global law firm that has vast resources, and he said, "I just want to do something. How do I get involved?" And, you know, he learns about this case and gets the pro bono department at his law firm to take it up. He now has declarations from the only witness, this guy Robert Green, who has totally recanted and said he made it all up. He has another declaration, um, from, you know, another witness saying that Pierre Rushing, the- the ... Actually, the other guy that was convicted of this crime said Pierre Rushing had nothing to do with it. So the question becomes now, what can you d- ... So look, it's a testament to the power of this show and this platform that this guy is hopefully on the precipice of getting out or saving a life. But the question becomes, well, what can you do as a listener? Grab your pens. All right. You can write to the Alameda District Attorney, Pamela Price at 1225 Fallon Street in Oakland, California 94612. And I know you can just rewind it if you miss the address. Write DA Pamela Smart and ask her to please release Pierre Rushing. There's a petition called a- a Petition of Habeas Corpus-

    2. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    3. JD

      ... which I think translates in Latin to the bo- holding of the body-

    4. JR

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    5. JD

      Keep-

    6. JR

      Can I stop you for real quick?

    7. JD

      Yeah.

    8. JR

      Uh, spell Fallon. F-A-L-L-O-N? F-A-L-L-O-N.

    9. JD

      F-A-

    10. JR

      (laughs) .

    11. JD

      One ... So it's Alameda District Attorney Pamela Price, 1225 Fallon Street, Oakland, California.

    12. JR

      Two Ls?

    13. JD

      Yes.

    14. JR

      So Fallon with two Ls.

    15. JD

      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.

    16. BB

      Keeps rolling back on you.

    17. JD

      Yeah.

    18. BB

      Yeah.

    19. JD

      And then I get a, you know-

    20. JR

      (clears throat)

    21. JD

      ... 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-

    22. JR

      (laughs) .

    23. JD

      ... 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."

    24. JR

      (laughs)

    25. JD

      And, and I f- I fu- I fucking blanked.

    26. JR

      (laughs)

    27. JD

      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.

    28. BB

      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.

    29. JR

      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.

    30. JD

      Mm-hmm.

  11. 1:02:23 – 1:20:12

    Programs built from behind bars—and the prison labor economy

    1. JD

      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?

    2. BB

      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.

    3. JR

      Because it's a viable business, it's not going away.

    4. BB

      It's never going away.

    5. JR

      And you have... If you decide to go down that road, you have a guaranteed source of income.

    6. BB

      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-

    7. JR

      How, how much do guys get paid?

    8. BB

      Oh, they make, make 16 cents an hour.

    9. JR

      (inhales deeply)

    10. BB

      10 cents an hour.

    11. JR

      (exhales deeply)

    12. BB

      Literally.

    13. JR

      And they have to do it?

    14. BB

      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-

    15. JD

      And the box, for the listeners-

    16. BB

      The box is solitary confinement. SHU, solitary housing.

    17. JR

      So if you don't do labor-

    18. BB

      (coughs)

    19. JR

      ... for 16 cents an hour, you get confined to solitary confinement?

    20. BB

      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-

    21. JR

      And so that's another-

    22. BB

      ... any, anybody can make it.

    23. JR

      ... form of extraordinary profit.

    24. BB

      Oh, of course.

    25. JR

      Even more profitable-

    26. BB

      It-

    27. JR

      ... than making iPhones in China.

    28. BB

      iPhone. (laughs)

    29. JR

      Which is wild 'cause it's already-

    30. BB

      (laughs) Which is-

  12. 1:20:12 – 1:41:08

    Abuse of power: prison brutality, the Stanford experiment, and changing culture

    1. JD

      others, like the COs that find out he got granted clemency and don't wanna see him go home.

    2. BB

      That's right.

    3. JD

      And all of a sudden, he starts getting fucked with by one corrections officer that is baiting him on a constant basis, calling him the worst names that you could possibly think of, trying to get Bruce to do something so that it would somehow, um-

    4. BB

      Keep him in jail.

    5. JD

      Yeah, keep him in jail.

    6. BB

      That's right.

    7. JD

      And it was happening so often that one time, you know, there was a lot of people involved in the effort to get Bruce out on clemency and legal aid, and a great attorney named Elizabeth Felber working on his exoneration case as my co-counsel. But there were also s- students of mine, right? Part of our Legal Justice Center is that we have a clinical program where Derrick and I teach these students. We get 10 a semester. They have a- a seminar where they come in for two hours a week, th- that we teach in the law school, and we teach them about all disciplines of forensic science, how it goes wrong, um, what to do if you spot it, whether you're a prosecutor or a defense attorney, how to, if you're a prosecutor, um, rely on it in a way that does it justice in the name of science, right? There are certain conclusions you can draw about blood spatter. You just can't make ridiculous conclusions, like saying what instrument and from what angle and the manner in which it was swung, right? So, you get my point. But then they also have 10 hours a week of field work, where they come to my office and do work on actual cases. So, they worked on Bruce's case, as did, you know, I have a- a partnership with Jay-Z, um, and- and his mother. They have the Shawn Carter Foundation, and we have the Josh Duben Fellows at the Shawn Carter Foundation. They worked on Bruce's case, and they wanted to meet Bruce. So they came in and met Bruce, some of them, um, and some of my students came in. I hadn't really ever seen Bruce mad, exacerbated. Um, I'd seen him emotional, but never losing his cool. And I came in one day and, um ... (clears throat) When you go to visit someone in a maximum security prison, it's a- it's a real ordeal getting in. Um, and it's really sad. You see families coming in and it's very emotional. Sometimes there's kids with them. And, you know, you would think as an attorney, um, or as law students, you might get treated a little different. But you come across the wrong CO, the wrong corrections officer, "Um, yeah, I don't like the way your shirt-"

    8. BB

      (clears throat) Mm-hmm.

    9. JD

      "... saying to a female student, is a little bit too low."

    10. BB

      Mm-hmm.

    11. JD

      "Or you're not wearing a bra." I mean, it's kinda like, like, "Really? That's what you're sa-" And, "Take your pockets, pull 'em out, I wanna see the bottom of your feet." S- you know, um ... In any event, we're waiting to get into the visiting room, and all of a sudden there's this loud crash against the door. Um, it's behind bars and, you know, all of a sudden there's a lockdown because o- an inmate punched a female visitor in the face. And, you know, and it was the person that was visiting him.

    12. BB

      Mm-hmm.

    13. JD

      And they were rewinding it on the surveillance as we were waiting. So, it w- the students were already like, "Wow, this is- this is some crazy shit." And then we get- go in the visiting room after they sort of cleared that situation out after 40 minutes or so, and Bruce came down. And, you know, he's- he's as cordial, um, as he is intelligent, which is to say he's always just super, you know, warm and comforting. And two of the students that had worked on his case for quite a while were in the- the visiting room with me, and he sort of, like, blew past them and said, "I can't take it anymore. Everywhere I go, every time I see this corrections officer, he is trying to goad me, he is trying to get me to do something." And I- it- it was the- the closest I had seen him to tears because of the prison experience. Um, you know-

    14. BB

      This guy still works there? Absolutely. And it was at- it was during a major lockdown, um, where, uh, over 200 incarcerated people at Sing Sing were brutalized. It was so bad that day, they locked the prison down for about a week to bring in a special search team. So when we were called for visits, what they would do was, they would have a officer come to your cell, get you, handcuff you, and bring you to the visiting room. I get called for a legal visit. Who decides that they want to be the officer to come and escort me?... this Officer John, right? That's had a hard-on for me for some reason, he comes. So I'm like, "Oh, man, I got a visit. Now, this guy's gonna handcuff me and take me so I can't even defend myself." Because the prison was locked down, and in fact, th- that was a major New York Times article as well. Um, the abuse that took place at Sing Sing in November of last year when they locked the whole prais- prison down. That's the case that Bruce Barquet-

    15. JD

      Yeah.

    16. BB

      ... and Epstein and, uh, Marty Tankleff took on. B- big article. They came into the prison, shut it down, and began picking certain guys out, cracking ribs, cracking heads open, um, just abusing guys. So here this guy comes to get me. I had no idea it was you that was on the visit, but in my mind, I'm saying, "I swear I hope it's my lawyer coming to visit me, man, because this guy is taking me..." So he's antagonizing me. "Hurry up or you won't go on your visit," and just jooking at me, jooking at me. So I'm handcuffed and I'm maintaining my composure. I see a sergeant there. I tell him, "Listen, man. Get your dog off me, man." Um, so the sergeant knew me and he tried to say something to the guy, but the guy, he listened right then and there. W- in route to the visiting room, he's steady tr- trying to goad me. Trying to pull me out of my character, you know? Um, so it just became so dis- (laughs) so stressful, man. That's why I came that day. I was like, "Man, I- I was so glad that it was you that came that day." But I was just glad that he didn't actually put his... 'cause he was on the verge of putting his hands on me. If it was in a i- 'cause I was handcuffed. If it was an isolated area, he would have definitely jumped on me because it was open season in November during that, during that lockdown. It was open season on guys in the joint at Sing Sing that day. For whatever reason, that special team came in and just started, like, crushing people. And some of these guys, I'm talking about are 6'8", 6'9". They're from different prisons. So they come in with their military uniforms and they're stomping, they're stomping the floor like they're doing a, um, like a walk, like they're v- like on a military run. And they're pulling guys out the cell, man, and they're crushing them. So, uh, it was, it was a, it was a moment for me because I had no idea how this guy was gonna respond or how I was going to be able to, you know, defend myself. And I know I'm on the verge of getting out, right? And I know what he's trying to do. So my mind was just focused on getting out, trying my best not to pay this guy no mind, but it's hard. It's hard dealing with them in those situations because they got the upper hand and a lot of them are abusive because you, you can do that with them b- and like you talked about power when, when, when you can do things knowing that there'll be no repercussions.

Episode duration: 2:12:09

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