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This episode is sponsored by Transcend, a veteran owned and operated performance optimization company that I introduced recently as a sponsor on this show.

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Well, since then, I have actually been using my products and I've had incredible success.

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There was initial blood work that was extremely detailed and based on that, they offered supplementation.

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So I began taking DHEA, BPC 157 for inflammation based on the fact that I've been a stump man and martial artist and a firefighter my whole life, lots of aches and pains,

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dihexer to help cognition after multiple punches to the head and shift work and peptides.

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Four months later, they did a detailed blood work again and I was actually able to taper off two of the peptides because my body had responded so well to just one of them that it was optimized at that point.

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So I cannot speak highly enough of the immense range of supplementation that they offer, whether it's male health, female health, peptides to boost your own testosterone, which I would argue is needed by a lot of the fire service,

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or whether it's exogenous testosterone needed, especially after TBIs or advanced age.

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Now, as I mentioned before, the other side of this company is an altruistic arm called the Transcend Foundation,

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which is putting veterans and first responders through some of their protocols free of charge.

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Now Transcend are also offering you the audience 10% off their protocols and you can find that on jamesgearing.com under the products tab.

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And if you want to hear more about Transcend and their story, listen to episode 808 with the founder Ernie Colling or go to Transcend company dot com.

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Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast. As always, my name is James Gearing and this week I have an extremely important and powerful conversation with Guy Miles.

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In June 1998, there was a robbery in Orange County, California. Guy himself was in Las Vegas, almost 300 miles away.

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But through a multitude of errors from law enforcement and the prosecution, Guy was not only accused of this crime, but he was incarcerated for 19 years before with the help of the Innocence Project, he was finally able to pursue his own freedom.

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Now, as you will hear, we discuss a host of topics from his own childhood, how gang life had pulled him into the life of crime,

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the dark side of the three strikes law, how he was ultimately able to gain freedom, the jarring transition back into civilian life and so much more.

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Now, before we get to this incredible conversation, as I say every week, please just take a moment. Go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback and leave a rating.

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Every single five star rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making it easier for others to find.

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And this is a free library of almost 1000 episodes now.

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So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories so I can get them to every single person on planet Earth who needs to hear them.

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So with that being said, I introduce to you Guy Myles. Enjoy.

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Well, Guy, I want to start by saying two things.

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Firstly, thank you to Justin Brooks for connecting us who was on the show.

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And secondly, I want to thank you for all the support that you've given us.

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And I'm going to share with you the

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behind the shield podcast today.

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Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

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So where on planet Earth we finding you today?

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I am in Texas, located in Texas, Dallas, Texas.

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Very peaceful state.

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The people are good.

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I just enjoy being out here.

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It's a big difference, a culture shock from being in California.

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Well, let's start there.

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Origin story.

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So tell me where you were born and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic, what your parents did, how many siblings.

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OK, so I was born in Los Angeles.

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I was born in Los Angeles.

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I have four siblings, one brother, two sisters.

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My mother and father were hardworking people.

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They didn't when I was young, they didn't have a steady job, but they had a job.

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My father worked three different jobs, worked at the park, a couple other jobs, you know, just to make ends meet.

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And at that time, we were living in, I believe, Los Angeles, California, in L.A.

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Which part of L.A. did you find yourself?

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So we were living in South Central as a young, young buck.

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My father didn't like the area.

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We ended up moving to Compton, where he still worked three jobs hard.

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Then my father ended up landing a good job at TRW and ended up getting my mom on at TRW, which afforded us to be able to move.

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To Carson, California, which was a better neighborhood for, you know, for us.

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Well, they thought it would be a better neighborhood for us.

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So how old were you in South Central and then Compton?

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I worked for Anaheim Fire, so not too far away from the city of Los Angeles.

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One of my engineer medics was a firefighter medic for the city of Compton back in, I think it was the 90s.

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So he was obviously seeing a lot of the fire.

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Some of the other stuff that was going on. But what age were you in those two areas?

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When I lived in L.A., I was I was young.

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I was about three, maybe four, five years old, moved to Compton all the way till I was about seven or eight.

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And from there, moved to Carson, which I resided the rest of my life.

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So your parents got these good jobs still?

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Obviously, they were hoping that it was going to be a better environment for you and Carson.

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Talk to me about going through the school ages in Carson and the the impact of some of the environments around you.

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So Carson was more known for a middle class neighborhood, upper middle class.

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So by their moving over there, they felt we would get a better education,

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wouldn't be prone to some of the things that goes on in South Central and Compton.

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So I went I end up going to school and Anna Lee, which was in Carson, California.

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That was an elementary got into some trouble already in elementary school.

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Already in elementary, my grandmother still lived in Compton.

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So I end up transferring to Caldwell Elementary and.

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Finished out there, moved back to Carson with my mom.

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Now, while I was still living in Carson, just going back and forth from my grandmother to my parents home,

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end up going back to Curtis Junior High School, which is located in Carson,

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got into some trouble and end up going to enter back to my grandmother's to Enterprise Junior High School.

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And that's where I finished out at and end up coming back to Carson, going to Carson High School.

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What about sports and exercise?

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What were you playing and doing as a young man?

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That's funny because I've always loved football.

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I played football, basketball, baseball, but mostly football.

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Football was my choice, was my choice of sports.

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I played through Junior High School and a little of high school,

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but end up not playing in any other games.

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Just went to a few practices at Carson High, but mostly played through Junior High School at Parkball.

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And then what about career aspirations?

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Were you dreaming of any particular profession when you were in school age?

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I was not.

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I never really had a I want to be a cop or I want to be a firefighter type of dreams.

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I just live day to day.

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I just, you know, my mother and father had so much expectations for me, high expectations for me.

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And I just never, never fulfilled them.

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Never thought about being, you know, nothing more than just me, so to speak.

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Well, we spoke a few weeks ago and you mentioned about being pulled into the gang culture a little bit.

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Talk to me about that environment.

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I mean, I've had people from all over the world, all kinds of backgrounds.

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And this is a really important part of the health and wellness conversation.

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It's very well for someone to say, oh, you have to do is make good choices.

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You know, well, yeah, but if you were born in like a farm in England, like I was, I didn't have sheep and cows influencing me to get into gangs.

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You know what I'm saying?

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So it's a very different environment.

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So what were the positive role models in your community and what was that pull towards that negative side?

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So there really wasn't a whole lot of positive role models.

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The people I chose to be around, well, I can't even say chose to be around, but the people who were in my environment were not positive.

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Again, going back to saying when we moved to Carson, it was considered a upper middle class neighborhood.

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That changed quickly, probably within the year or two I was there.

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Gangs started rising.

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You know, you had other gangs that were already established coming over there, you know, basically trying to take over the neighborhood.

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So the neighborhood where I lived in was tired of it.

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So we were forced to grow up and fight back those neighborhoods.

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And from there, a friendship led into gang banging or what originally started as being, what's a good word, defending our turf ended up being a full fledged gang neighborhood.

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If you look at the origin story of so many of the gangs, some of them were Vietnam vets and some of the biker gangs.

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And some of them obviously were groups of immigrants that were being preyed on initially.

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And then you had, as you said, this kind of strength by numbers element.

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But if you also look at the prohibition of drugs, that, and I saw this obviously through a firefighter paramedics eyes, that seemed to be the underlying issue with a lot of gangs later on that caused so much violence and so much death when it came to turf wars.

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So what were you seeing as far as the drug addiction, therefore selling element of that when it came to the gang culture that you experienced?

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Well, that came on later on.

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Again, I was there in 79 and gangs had already, you know, grew into a major problem in Carson.

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It started being a more and more and more and more gangs or people turning into gangs in that area.

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So in 80 and 81, I was already a full fledged gang member.

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I had already turned my life into the streets, so to speak.

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The dope academic came around 83, 84.

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Again, I was already a full fledged gang member. I was at that time 16, 17.

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So I was already getting in trouble.

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Even though I came from a family who prayed for me, who tried to help me keep my life on track, it didn't matter.

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I was still influenced by the people who I was around every day.

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And I was street members. I mean, I was street people. So gang members. I won't say street people, gang members.

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See, this is the thing that now with a 2024 lens and having been in uniform for 14 years, you kind of question the way things are done.

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And this whole, I'm doing air quotes now, war of drugs. It's been an epic failure.

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And it's incredible how many members of law enforcement say the exact same thing.

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If you make an addict, potentially a prisoner, if you make being an addict illegal,

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then you force them into the underworld to get whatever it is that they're seeking, which then in turn creates a supply and demand.

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And now you've got all these communities with young men and women when that is the most, the biggest industry is selling drugs and the illicit drug trade.

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So, I mean, we've been doing this for almost 100 years now. It was like the 30s when the prohibition of drugs happened.

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And you see, you know, whether it was the crack epidemic and all the violence in Compton and South Central, that obviously was story told on the hip hop albums I listened to as a farm boy in England, which is kind of ironic.

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But then now I find myself on the streets of America in uniform, seeing it, seeing the deaths, seeing the overdoses, the sex workers, you know, the homelessness, all this stuff.

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And I think this is a really important part of this conversation is the prohibition of drugs was really what caused the violence with the gangs to be so rampant.

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Definitely. Although I was a full fledged gang member, a full fledged gang member, I still hadn't committed serious crimes.

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I was just considered a gang member because I hang around, I hung around a group of people who symbolizes the same thing.

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And so we were identified as gang members. Again, when the cocaine academic hit,

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I keep saying academic when the, what is the word I'm looking for?

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When a dope scene hit, that's when things started getting out of control.

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That's when we grew into a more powerhouse because you had money, you had power, you had, you know, all those things to make you a stronger gang.

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So talk me through some of the law enforcement roots that that took you on, because obviously one of the reasons why you had the issue that we're going to talk about in a bit were some of the pre-existing criminal history that you had.

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So you start off as a gang member and you're literally at that point defending your turf. Now the drug war, the drug supply starts to kick up.

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What rose did that take you as far as criminality?

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I got arrested for possession of cocaine. I got arrested for actually possession of cocaine two or three times.

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Got arrested for possession of marijuana. Got arrested for possession of stolen property, you know, not major crimes, but nonetheless, they were crimes.

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I ended up eventually getting arrested for a robbery in 91 and did six years.

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So that may open the door for them to arrest me for this other crime that we're talking about now.

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That's what made it easier for them to arrest me on the new crime.

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So talk to me before we get to that then about the three strikes law. I lived in California for a few years, like I said, that even though obviously each of the crime, if the third crime has been committed, it still needs to be met with a punishment.

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But this third strike rule seems to be behind not only these insane lengths of incarceration, but also a lot of police officer deaths, because you've got these people that realize it's the third strike and they would rather die than they would go back into prison.

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Right. The three strikes didn't exist when I was out. There was no three strikes.

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Three strikes started in I believe 94. I was already incarcerated on the robbery charge.

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My charge was robbery and assault with a daily weapon. When I got out of jail in 97.

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I then was a candidate for three strikes because they gave me two strikes in one case.

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So, again, before I went to jail, then the three strikes wasn't wasn't in existence. But for a lot of people, they got hit with the three strikes.

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So you come out of jail or prison.

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You know what, at that point, is your mindset? Is there an element of rehabilitation? Are you trying to move away from the area that you got in trouble with before?

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Definitely. I knew then when I heard about the three strikes and all that stuff, I said, OK, you know what, it's time to change my life around.

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And after my father talked to me a few times, a lot of times about just getting my life back on track and getting things back in order.

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That's when I decided when I got out, hey, you know, I can't do this no more. I'm getting older. I have kids.

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And, you know, my son looked up to me at the time. So it was I just had to make some changes.

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So I decided to move to Las Vegas, went to Las Vegas, stand, lived out there.

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I used to get my son, bring him out there with me. And, you know, things were different. Things were better.

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So walk me through June 1998 then. You know, what were you doing at the time? And then let's kind of walk through the arrest and beyond.

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Well, it's kind of funny because, well, I'm not going to say funny. It was ironic that it happened at the time I was going out there to get my son from my mom's house.

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Like I said, every summer I usually go get my son and he comes and spend the summer with me. This particular time, my son wanted to come early.

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So I go spend time with my mom and then come with me. But this particular time, my son wanted to come early.

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So he asked if I can come pick him up. Me and my girlfriend rode down to California, pick him up, picked him up and went back to Orange County, I mean Orange County, went back to Las Vegas.

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I got a call from my parole officer telling me they wanted to see me.

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Came down, went to go see my parole officer and I was arrested for a robbery in Orange County.

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Had never even been in Orange County other than when I was a child going to Disneyland.

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That was about it, but hadn't been in Orange County in years and years.

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And so just to be clear, where were you when this robbery was being, you know, when this robbery actually happened?

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I was in Las Vegas.

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Which is a long way from Orange County.

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A long way from when we didn't go through Orange County. It was a long way from Orange County.

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So yeah.

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So I had Greg Kelly on the show who was wrongfully convicted actually as a sexual assault on a child.

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And the backstory was he was a high school football player. His mother got ill.

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So he ended up staying with one of his teammates because his mother had to go live near one of the hospitals to get a treatment.

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And in this home, there was also a daycare. So there was an outcry.

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One of these children said that Mr. Greg had touched him.

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And what happened next set up this wrongful conviction. And he was in prison, I think it was for a year.

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And then also an additional year or two years until he was actually, you know, because the conviction was overturned.

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But it was only because of one one good lawyer that even happened.

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And it turns out it was the teammate. It was a friend he's staying with.

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He was the one that was doing this. And whilst Greg was in prison, he raped a woman.

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This other guy did what he was free.

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So seeing the sequence of events of poor policing and then all the legal system, you know, can destroy someone's life, especially being in prison labeled as a predator.

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I mean, I can't imagine how he managed to survive for a year. Was absolutely horrendous to listen to.

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So starting at the very beginning now, you were arrested for a robbery that took place hundreds of miles away.

192
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Walk me through, you know, how they all of a sudden chose you to be the person of the crime and then what what the alibis were that they were ignoring.

193
00:21:40,280 --> 00:21:50,280
Well, again, when I went down to see my parole officer, he arrested me and told me that I was being held for a robbery in Orange County.

194
00:21:50,280 --> 00:21:57,280
Well, I knew I had been to Orange County, so I knew this was crazy to me.

195
00:21:57,280 --> 00:22:01,280
Orange County, at least say I did a robbery in Las Vegas.

196
00:22:01,280 --> 00:22:05,280
That would have been better. But the funny thing about that, I was in California.

197
00:22:05,280 --> 00:22:08,280
I wouldn't be in California if it was a robbery in Las Vegas.

198
00:22:08,280 --> 00:22:14,280
So I kept telling him, hey, I was in Las Vegas, so I couldn't have did no robbery in California.

199
00:22:14,280 --> 00:22:17,280
It was like, oh, well, a witness picked you out.

200
00:22:17,280 --> 00:22:23,280
I said, well, how did a witness get my picture to pick me out in Orange County?

201
00:22:23,280 --> 00:22:26,280
He said, well, when you got out of jail, you were on parole.

202
00:22:26,280 --> 00:22:32,280
We got some of your pictures showed the witness and the witness picked you out.

203
00:22:32,280 --> 00:22:44,280
All this was just was really crazy to me because I'm trying to understand how did I even become a suspect in this case.

204
00:22:44,280 --> 00:22:49,280
And so the detective told me one of the guys who did it is from the neighborhood I'm from.

205
00:22:49,280 --> 00:22:58,280
So they decided to get a bunch of pictures and see if the witness can pick one or the other two suspects out who did it.

206
00:22:58,280 --> 00:23:04,280
And my picture, unfortunately, was one of the pictures they picked out.

207
00:23:04,280 --> 00:23:15,280
Talk to me what you've learned about lineups, because, again, as with Greg's case, you saw the police doing the interview, basically grooming all these witnesses and steering their stories.

208
00:23:15,280 --> 00:23:18,280
And obviously, some of these were children, too.

209
00:23:18,280 --> 00:23:29,280
So what was the yeah, the. How fairly was this lineup done or was there a kind of a coaching and a goading element to this as well?

210
00:23:29,280 --> 00:23:34,280
It definitely was a coaching. This witness saw this lineup.

211
00:23:34,280 --> 00:23:40,280
She picked maybe four or five people out. None of them looked alike.

212
00:23:40,280 --> 00:23:42,280
None of the pictures look alike.

213
00:23:42,280 --> 00:23:48,280
She got to my picture supposedly and said, this is the guy I'll never forget this face.

214
00:23:48,280 --> 00:23:52,280
This is him. I mean, it was a hundred percent IDA. This is him.

215
00:23:52,280 --> 00:23:58,280
This is him. So. I'm like, it's nowhere in the world.

216
00:23:58,280 --> 00:24:01,280
She could have picked me out in a picture lineup. They had to be some coercion.

217
00:24:01,280 --> 00:24:09,280
They had to be some type of something had to happen for her to be that strongly sure that it was me.

218
00:24:09,280 --> 00:24:14,280
So walk me through what happens next, then you're falsely identified in the lineup.

219
00:24:14,280 --> 00:24:18,280
You know, what about all the evidence that showed that you were in Vegas?

220
00:24:18,280 --> 00:24:22,280
How is that received? It wasn't received.

221
00:24:22,280 --> 00:24:26,280
I had over 16 witnesses that places me in Las Vegas.

222
00:24:26,280 --> 00:24:30,280
I had the phone records I had.

223
00:24:30,280 --> 00:24:40,280
Even my car was broken into that morning. We presented the receipt from the tow truck coming to pick my car up.

224
00:24:40,280 --> 00:24:48,280
On that day, we had the apartment manager with me making a complaint about my car being broken into.

225
00:24:48,280 --> 00:24:56,280
I mean, we had mountains of evidence to prove that I was actually in Vegas and.

226
00:24:56,280 --> 00:25:06,280
It was rejected. The judge said it was too many witnesses saying the same thing, so they were only going to allow three or four witnesses to testify.

227
00:25:06,280 --> 00:25:15,280
The DA even told me to my face, you know, the pieces of the puzzle doesn't fit, but you're good for it, meaning you've been in trouble before.

228
00:25:15,280 --> 00:25:17,280
So we're going to hang our hat on you.

229
00:25:17,280 --> 00:25:23,280
So there was more of a kind of cry wolf element than actual facts.

230
00:25:23,280 --> 00:25:34,280
Correct. And even the witness that was supposedly 100% sure got on the stand and looked at me and said, that's not him.

231
00:25:34,280 --> 00:25:38,280
The DA takes her outside, talks to her, bring her back in.

232
00:25:38,280 --> 00:25:45,280
And the jury wasn't in at that time. We had taken a break when all this took place, brought the jury back in.

233
00:25:45,280 --> 00:25:48,280
The witness looked at me and said, yeah, that's him.

234
00:25:48,280 --> 00:26:03,280
What about from your legal team side? What were they saying? Were there no ways of appeal, no way to put the some of these law enforcement officers on the stand and show the deficits through questioning?

235
00:26:03,280 --> 00:26:14,280
They did. They did all that. They were outraged about the witness coming down because I asked her to come down and look at me and view me from different points of view.

236
00:26:14,280 --> 00:26:19,280
She reviewed me from different angles. She did and said, no, that's not him.

237
00:26:19,280 --> 00:26:27,280
So my attorney was very upset that they were able to take the witness outside, talk to her, bring her back in.

238
00:26:27,280 --> 00:26:32,280
So on cross-examination, they asked all these things to the witness.

239
00:26:32,280 --> 00:26:39,280
And then the witness explanation was, well, it looks like he changed his appearance. He cut his hair.

240
00:26:39,280 --> 00:26:42,280
Well, I've always been bald. My hair has always been short.

241
00:26:42,280 --> 00:26:49,280
Can't get no shorter than what it was. So we knew at that point that they were working all together.

242
00:26:49,280 --> 00:26:53,280
So, yeah. What was the discussion at that point?

243
00:26:53,280 --> 00:27:02,280
Were they was it just simply that they made their mind up and they were going to just die on that sword at that point, regardless if it was the right person or not?

244
00:27:02,280 --> 00:27:08,280
Yeah, they invested too much time already. At that point, it was, hey, this is him.

245
00:27:08,280 --> 00:27:13,280
It's just like the D.A. told me the pieces to the puzzle don't fit, but you're good for it.

246
00:27:13,280 --> 00:27:18,280
So she was going to make that piece fit. And that's what they did.

247
00:27:18,280 --> 00:27:27,280
They continue to, you know, just just make this story up and keep it going, because at that point they couldn't turn back.

248
00:27:27,280 --> 00:27:30,280
They had invested way too much time.

249
00:27:30,280 --> 00:27:36,280
I know a lot of people are off of plea deals, even people that are are innocent that take them more often than not.

250
00:27:36,280 --> 00:27:41,280
I think the documentary 13th, they articulated it very well in that film.

251
00:27:41,280 --> 00:27:44,280
Were you offered a plea deal at this point?

252
00:27:44,280 --> 00:27:51,280
No, I was never offered a plea deal. I had already made it clear that I wouldn't accept any plea deal.

253
00:27:51,280 --> 00:27:55,280
I didn't want to hear plea deal. I wasn't going to accept any plea deal.

254
00:27:55,280 --> 00:28:02,280
And my lawyer, he delivered that message to him. So no plea deal was was even mentioned.

255
00:28:02,280 --> 00:28:07,280
Brilliant. I think it's important to hear that at the front, because obviously, you know, the way it concluded.

256
00:28:07,280 --> 00:28:12,280
So walk me through. You've been through prison once before, you know, for a lengthy stay.

257
00:28:12,280 --> 00:28:16,280
Now you're walking through the doors, being innocent of what you're charged for.

258
00:28:16,280 --> 00:28:20,280
What were those first few weeks and months like as far as your mindset?

259
00:28:20,280 --> 00:28:24,280
Because last time, obviously, you know, you you were in there because you know, you did something.

260
00:28:24,280 --> 00:28:28,280
This time it's the complete opposite. It was horrific.

261
00:28:28,280 --> 00:28:37,280
I mean, I went through there not knowing if I'll ever walk back out again to be in jail for something you didn't do.

262
00:28:37,280 --> 00:28:45,280
It's just it's a hurting feeling because not only are you hurt and miserable, your family is as well.

263
00:28:45,280 --> 00:28:48,280
This just didn't affect you. It affected them, too.

264
00:28:48,280 --> 00:28:57,280
And to know that. I just received a life sentence and there's a possibility that I would never go home again.

265
00:28:57,280 --> 00:29:03,280
Was mind boggling and to be in jail for something I didn't do.

266
00:29:03,280 --> 00:29:08,280
I just knew I had a fight on my hand. I knew I wasn't going to stop until somebody heard me.

267
00:29:08,280 --> 00:29:15,280
So just to underline that you got a life sentence, even though not not downplaying the crime, but it was a robbery.

268
00:29:15,280 --> 00:29:18,280
It wasn't a murder or anything like that.

269
00:29:18,280 --> 00:29:24,280
I got a life sentence because I got three strikes. I had two strikes in my last case.

270
00:29:24,280 --> 00:29:29,280
So they gave me the third strike on this one, and that's how I received seventy five years to life.

271
00:29:29,280 --> 00:29:33,280
And meanwhile, you've got children and this is, I think, an important part of the conversation.

272
00:29:33,280 --> 00:29:39,280
Again, of course, when someone commits a crime, there needs to be a punishment and that might include incarceration.

273
00:29:39,280 --> 00:29:50,280
But all the people that we've seen in prison, like I said, whether it's addiction or whether it's the more minor crimes and we're using prison as the correction system.

274
00:29:50,280 --> 00:29:58,280
People are missing the part of part where that means that a child is now being robbed of their mother or their father.

275
00:29:58,280 --> 00:30:04,280
And so there's this rhetoric about broken homes. And if we just, you know, marriage to stay together, then everyone be fine.

276
00:30:04,280 --> 00:30:18,280
There's not that conversation of some of these homes being broken because of incarcerations for possession of a marijuana like we saw in the whole cops TV show over and over again, or losing people to addiction or all these other areas.

277
00:30:18,280 --> 00:30:23,280
So what was the impact of you being gone on your family dynamic?

278
00:30:23,280 --> 00:30:34,280
It was hard. My kids, you know, again, I had my son all the time, so he's now, you know, starting to get in trouble.

279
00:30:34,280 --> 00:30:42,280
My mother, she her health diminished dramatically.

280
00:30:42,280 --> 00:30:51,280
It was just it was a bad day for all of us. It was a it was a it was definitely a bad day for us.

281
00:30:51,280 --> 00:30:57,280
So what was that pursuit of getting out of prison that that pursuit of innocence?

282
00:30:57,280 --> 00:31:02,280
What road did that take you as far as studying law and all these other areas?

283
00:31:02,280 --> 00:31:09,280
That was the that was the thing that that that pushed me to really fight.

284
00:31:09,280 --> 00:31:24,280
Again, I went in uneducated, didn't graduate from school, dropped out 11th grade, 10th, 11th grade, really dropped out in seventh grade because I never paid attention to school, went back to school.

285
00:31:24,280 --> 00:31:32,280
Once I got that life sentence, I went back to school, graduated, took a couple of college courses.

286
00:31:32,280 --> 00:31:37,280
I just began to start writing different organizations.

287
00:31:37,280 --> 00:31:42,280
I definitely was a writing fool because I wrote every organization there was out there.

288
00:31:42,280 --> 00:31:50,280
I wrote Barry Shaq, his organization, only to be told that it was out of jurisdiction.

289
00:31:50,280 --> 00:31:57,280
I wrote some place in New York. They told me it was out of their jurisdiction.

290
00:31:57,280 --> 00:32:01,280
I wrote Northern Innocence Project that had just started.

291
00:32:01,280 --> 00:32:11,280
So I wrote them. They told me it's out of their jurisdictions, but they did get they did point me in the right direction, which was California Innocence Project.

292
00:32:11,280 --> 00:32:16,280
And was it Justin Brooks that you spoke to initially or was it other members of the team?

293
00:32:16,280 --> 00:32:20,280
Well, I didn't actually speak to Justin Brooke. I wrote a letter.

294
00:32:20,280 --> 00:32:25,280
They wrote me back. I can still remember like it was yesterday when I received that letter.

295
00:32:25,280 --> 00:32:32,280
I ran around the yard and I was telling everybody, look, look, look. And that's when my hope just really started growing.

296
00:32:32,280 --> 00:32:36,280
It's like I got a letter from Cal because it was hard to get in California Innocence Project.

297
00:32:36,280 --> 00:32:41,280
You had to really be innocent like you had to really be, you know, innocent.

298
00:32:41,280 --> 00:32:49,280
So they told me, we got your letter. Actually, let me go back. I wrote them three times and they denied me three times.

299
00:32:49,280 --> 00:32:56,280
That was the third time. And they told me, didn't we tell you no to the.

300
00:32:56,280 --> 00:33:02,280
I said, yeah, you did. I was going to keep writing. They can tell me no every time. I was going to keep writing.

301
00:33:02,280 --> 00:33:09,280
Once I knew I was in their jurisdiction and I was in the right jurisdiction, they was going to get a letter from me probably every week.

302
00:33:09,280 --> 00:33:20,280
But I even wrote people in the newspaper like what are they calling me? Investigative journalists.

303
00:33:20,280 --> 00:33:29,280
I wrote so many people. But once I got received that letter, I ran around the yard and I showed everybody and looked, they accept my case.

304
00:33:29,280 --> 00:33:37,280
They accepted my case. And in the letter, it said. We're not accepting your case.

305
00:33:37,280 --> 00:33:43,280
Even though I told everybody they were accepting my case, we're not accepting your case, but we will we will look into it.

306
00:33:43,280 --> 00:33:52,280
And they investigated my case. Then it was like six months later, I received another letter and that letter told me we are now accepting your case.

307
00:33:52,280 --> 00:33:58,280
So, you know, you can imagine the joy I had.

308
00:33:58,280 --> 00:34:02,280
I even put that letter on my wall, left the letter on my wall every day.

309
00:34:02,280 --> 00:34:07,280
I would get up and read that letter and from there on, that's when things started rolling.

310
00:34:07,280 --> 00:34:11,280
That was in like two thousand and three.

311
00:34:11,280 --> 00:34:16,280
Brilliant. So that point, you have been in prison for.

312
00:34:16,280 --> 00:34:19,280
Let me see that five years. Is that right? Yes. OK.

313
00:34:19,280 --> 00:34:30,280
So talk to me about that mental conversation you have with yourself every single day, because firstly, you've got this basically unending life sentence.

314
00:34:30,280 --> 00:34:33,280
I mean, you're going to probably die in prison at that age.

315
00:34:33,280 --> 00:34:50,280
Secondly, and educate me, I would assume that there was a potential for people that you were incarcerated with to create scenarios where you might have to defend yourself, which would then become detrimental to your innocence claim.

316
00:34:50,280 --> 00:35:00,280
Well, definitely I had to talk to myself every day, had to pretty much tell myself that and trick my mind to believe in.

317
00:35:00,280 --> 00:35:04,280
I was going to get out tomorrow or I was going to get out next week or next month.

318
00:35:04,280 --> 00:35:15,280
But it was a constant just talking to myself, get myself mentally strong so I can just handle anything that was coming my way.

319
00:35:15,280 --> 00:35:18,280
And I knew a lot was going to come my way, was going to come my way.

320
00:35:18,280 --> 00:35:24,280
But I said the trick my mind a lot to believe, hey, something's going to show up and I'm going to get out next week.

321
00:35:24,280 --> 00:35:29,280
I'm going to get out the week after next. However it happened, I just knew that I was going to get out.

322
00:35:29,280 --> 00:35:32,280
I knew I had to tell myself that.

323
00:35:32,280 --> 00:35:41,280
I also knew I had to keep my nose clean because there was a lot going on around me watching people get stabbed,

324
00:35:41,280 --> 00:35:50,280
watching gangs go against gangs and me being an ex-gang member or at that time still a gang member because you're never really an ex-gang member.

325
00:35:50,280 --> 00:35:57,280
But me not being as active as I was in the gang, I was still known to be from that neighborhood.

326
00:35:57,280 --> 00:36:02,280
So I had to really walk a thin line. So I had to pick sides.

327
00:36:02,280 --> 00:36:06,280
Hey, I'm going to be in a law library or I'm going to be hanging out with gang members.

328
00:36:06,280 --> 00:36:12,280
So I chose to be in a law library every day and learn about my case.

329
00:36:12,280 --> 00:36:22,280
So walk me through the kind of evolution of the preparation to appeal your case.

330
00:36:22,280 --> 00:36:34,280
So I remember I had a couple of what we call yard lawyers telling me, hey, we've got to file this.

331
00:36:34,280 --> 00:36:39,280
You're going to file this. You need to file that.

332
00:36:39,280 --> 00:36:43,280
I just, I just, and actually we filed a couple of things and got denied.

333
00:36:43,280 --> 00:36:52,280
But once the Innocent Project took over, California Innocent Project took over my case, again, the hope was there.

334
00:36:52,280 --> 00:36:58,280
And I had to just, you know, just kind of wait, kick back and wait and let them do their thing.

335
00:36:58,280 --> 00:37:02,280
Well, four or five years passed and I hadn't heard nothing really.

336
00:37:02,280 --> 00:37:06,280
I mean, I would call, check and all that. Well, nothing yet.

337
00:37:06,280 --> 00:37:10,280
We're still investigating. And, you know, again, that time passed.

338
00:37:10,280 --> 00:37:13,280
Nothing happened. So I'm getting a little discouraged.

339
00:37:13,280 --> 00:37:21,280
But I end up transferring to another prison.

340
00:37:21,280 --> 00:37:25,280
And when I transferred to that prison, I was there maybe a year or two.

341
00:37:25,280 --> 00:37:28,280
And I was talking to the Innocent Project.

342
00:37:28,280 --> 00:37:32,280
They assigned Alyssa Burekul to my case at that time.

343
00:37:32,280 --> 00:37:37,280
And, you know, she said nothing new. You know, we're going to investigate the case.

344
00:37:37,280 --> 00:37:45,280
Nothing new. Well, I ended up meeting a guy by the name of Jock.

345
00:37:45,280 --> 00:37:53,280
And he was from another neighborhood. And we were talking and, you know, that we end up becoming close,

346
00:37:53,280 --> 00:37:58,280
even though we were from different neighborhoods that really didn't get along.

347
00:37:58,280 --> 00:38:04,280
We end up talking and, you know, becoming real cool.

348
00:38:04,280 --> 00:38:08,280
Another friend that grew up in my neighborhood ended up coming up there.

349
00:38:08,280 --> 00:38:12,280
His name was Rory Dungey. And he's like, man, I heard about your case, man.

350
00:38:12,280 --> 00:38:15,280
I can't believe you're in jail for that case.

351
00:38:15,280 --> 00:38:20,280
He said, I was up there with the dude who did it. And he told me the dude's name.

352
00:38:20,280 --> 00:38:25,280
And I was like, wow, for real? It's like, yeah. I said, man, I'm telling my lawyer about him.

353
00:38:25,280 --> 00:38:31,280
So I end up telling my lawyer. She said, yeah, we already know about, you know, Harold Bailey.

354
00:38:31,280 --> 00:38:38,280
And we didn't know about Jason Stewart. We didn't know about him.

355
00:38:38,280 --> 00:38:45,280
So I know I'm rambling on and on. This is how it went.

356
00:38:45,280 --> 00:38:54,280
So when Roy came up there, he told me that and I was so happy. I remember calling my lawyer and I told her, I said, hey, I got a name.

357
00:38:54,280 --> 00:38:57,280
You know, the person who did it. And she was like, yeah, we already know about Harold Bailey.

358
00:38:57,280 --> 00:39:01,280
He was already a suspect in the case. Well, a lot of that I didn't know about.

359
00:39:01,280 --> 00:39:08,280
You know, it was in my it was in my discovery, but I still didn't know that he was an original suspect in the case

360
00:39:08,280 --> 00:39:12,280
because he was named after the actual guy who did it.

361
00:39:12,280 --> 00:39:18,280
So I may be forgetting a little place because this happened many, many years ago.

362
00:39:18,280 --> 00:39:25,280
So I end up telling my buddy, Jack, who's from Compton, he's like Jason Stewart.

363
00:39:25,280 --> 00:39:30,280
He's like, man, they call him Wimp. And I said, yeah, that's what he told me.

364
00:39:30,280 --> 00:39:35,280
He said, man, he on the other yard. He's right next door. And I'm like, what?

365
00:39:35,280 --> 00:39:40,280
And so I said, man, I need to talk to him. So he set up a meeting.

366
00:39:40,280 --> 00:39:44,280
I went and talked to him in the kitchen and he told me all about the case.

367
00:39:44,280 --> 00:39:49,280
And he's like, yeah, man, I heard somebody had got, you know, went to jail for that case, but I didn't know him.

368
00:39:49,280 --> 00:39:55,280
So I wasn't tripping. And that's how that's how I started from there.

369
00:39:55,280 --> 00:39:57,280
How did that conversation go?

370
00:39:57,280 --> 00:40:03,280
Because he didn't know, you know, who who was doing time for that particular conviction.

371
00:40:03,280 --> 00:40:06,280
But now the person is standing right in front of him.

372
00:40:06,280 --> 00:40:11,280
It was a it was an awkward it was an awkward conversation.

373
00:40:11,280 --> 00:40:14,280
He's telling me about the whole crime.

374
00:40:14,280 --> 00:40:19,280
He was like, oh, you talking about the one with Harold Bailey and Bernard Timmer?

375
00:40:19,280 --> 00:40:22,280
I was like, yeah, man, that case right there.

376
00:40:22,280 --> 00:40:25,280
And he's given me all everything I heard in trial. He's telling me.

377
00:40:25,280 --> 00:40:28,280
So it was like I was reliving trial again.

378
00:40:28,280 --> 00:40:35,280
And he was like, man, you know, I'm not going to tell on nobody else, but I'll tell my part.

379
00:40:35,280 --> 00:40:39,280
That's what he said. So his buddy was like, yeah, man, you got to do that.

380
00:40:39,280 --> 00:40:43,280
You got to, you know, talk to his lawyers and tell them what happened.

381
00:40:43,280 --> 00:40:49,280
You know, and in jail, you couldn't tell on nobody because that would be like snitching in jail.

382
00:40:49,280 --> 00:40:56,280
So he was like, I'll try to get in contact with them and let them know I'm going to give them my part and see if they can give them that part.

383
00:40:56,280 --> 00:41:00,280
I was like, no, don't talk to nobody. You just talk to my lawyer.

384
00:41:00,280 --> 00:41:03,280
So my lawyer ended up coming down. They talked to him.

385
00:41:03,280 --> 00:41:09,280
He gave him my affidavit. They thought originally like, oh, what kind of plotting plan he got going on?

386
00:41:09,280 --> 00:41:13,280
You know, I was like, hey, this is all facts. You can talk to the guy.

387
00:41:13,280 --> 00:41:17,280
He's over there on the yard next to us. They can pull him out, talk to him.

388
00:41:17,280 --> 00:41:24,280
So they came out and they was like, hey, you know too much about the case for you guys to sit down and plot and plan this and all this stuff.

389
00:41:24,280 --> 00:41:32,280
So they end up getting in contact with Harold Bailey and Bernard Timmer. Bernard Timmer was still in jail.

390
00:41:32,280 --> 00:41:35,280
He went to trial with me originally.

391
00:41:35,280 --> 00:41:44,280
And so they talked to him and he kept saying, hey, I don't want to, you know, I don't have no, I don't know who did it.

392
00:41:44,280 --> 00:41:48,280
He kept sticking to the story he didn't know about the case and all this.

393
00:41:48,280 --> 00:41:53,280
So they talked to Harold Bailey. Harold Bailey told him everything, told him his part.

394
00:41:53,280 --> 00:41:59,280
They must think I'm him, you know, because we're both dark skinned and we're both from the same neighborhood.

395
00:41:59,280 --> 00:42:08,280
And so once they took that information, the affidavit from just Jason Stewart and Harold Bailey and took it to Timmer,

396
00:42:08,280 --> 00:42:15,280
that's when he confessed and was like, yeah, it was us three and blah, blah, blah. That's how it started.

397
00:42:15,280 --> 00:42:22,280
I want to progress forward, but just going back to what you were talking about, trying to avoid trouble and people getting stabbed and there was a gang affiliations.

398
00:42:22,280 --> 00:42:28,280
You were in there for a long time, so you had a pretty powerful lens.

399
00:42:28,280 --> 00:42:34,280
When you look at the way some other countries do prison, like Norway, for example,

400
00:42:34,280 --> 00:42:40,280
that particular example, they're living in a housing community. It's on an island, so they're not free. They're incarcerated.

401
00:42:40,280 --> 00:42:44,280
But they live together. They cook. They clean. They go to work. They go to school.

402
00:42:44,280 --> 00:42:48,280
And the whole philosophy is one day they're going to move back into your neighborhood.

403
00:42:48,280 --> 00:42:54,280
You want that person to be a functioning member of society again, you know, contributing to society.

404
00:42:54,280 --> 00:43:02,280
With your experience, not loading the question, was the prison that you experienced set up for rehabilitation?

405
00:43:02,280 --> 00:43:07,280
Or did you find that people ultimately might be worse when they walk out the back door?

406
00:43:07,280 --> 00:43:10,280
Definitely not for rehabilitation.

407
00:43:10,280 --> 00:43:17,280
They had all the glimmer and the stars and all that stuff to look like it was.

408
00:43:17,280 --> 00:43:28,280
But no, that was definitely a hell hole. That was a place where you was definitely going to be worse when you got out, if you didn't change yourself.

409
00:43:28,280 --> 00:43:34,280
You know, I remember sitting there waiting to play next on the handball court.

410
00:43:34,280 --> 00:43:42,280
We used to play a lot of handball and there was another guy sitting maybe two feet away from me.

411
00:43:42,280 --> 00:43:46,280
And next thing I know what to do, walk up to him and cut his throat.

412
00:43:46,280 --> 00:43:55,280
And if I was any closer, the blood would have got on me. That's how close it was.

413
00:43:55,280 --> 00:44:05,280
Yeah, so I've seen a lot of violence, like violence, real violence, stabbings, fightings, people jumping on people, homosexuality.

414
00:44:05,280 --> 00:44:13,280
I've seen a lot in there. And it was enough for anybody to get out of prison and have PTSD.

415
00:44:13,280 --> 00:44:25,280
Because there was so much going on. They could not expect somebody like me to do 19 years, get out of prison and just get a job.

416
00:44:25,280 --> 00:44:37,280
Or just walk a narrow, walk a straight and narrow. It was just too much going on. But I did do that. I did get out and get a job and started my life over from there.

417
00:44:37,280 --> 00:44:46,280
And what about access to drugs? You hear a lot of the addiction programs actually shut down because of budgeting the last few years.

418
00:44:46,280 --> 00:44:50,280
So how easy was it to access drugs within the prison system?

419
00:44:50,280 --> 00:44:53,280
There was more drugs in prison than there is on the street.

420
00:44:53,280 --> 00:45:01,280
I mean, you can get anything you wanted in there from heroin to cocaine to speed to whatever.

421
00:45:01,280 --> 00:45:10,280
It didn't matter. Whatever you had on the streets, you can get in prison. Phones. It didn't matter. And so it was definitely accessible.

422
00:45:10,280 --> 00:45:15,280
Yeah, I think these are just important perspectives. And I feel bad also for the people in corrections.

423
00:45:15,280 --> 00:45:23,280
I know not all of them are angels by any means, but you're asking a few people to be completely outnumbered to be basically in prison as well.

424
00:45:23,280 --> 00:45:40,280
They go to work and they may not see daylight for 12 hours at a time. And this whole system just does not seem set up to rehabilitate, to make people obviously take ownership of whatever it was they did wrong, but then try and fix the underlying issue.

425
00:45:40,280 --> 00:45:45,280
What was it that caused this person to join a gang, to sell drugs, whatever it is?

426
00:45:45,280 --> 00:45:54,280
And how can we now train them and forge a career so that when they come out the other end, as you said, now they're on their feet and they're off into the workforce?

427
00:45:54,280 --> 00:46:00,280
And it doesn't help when you get out and you turn down a job because the fact you have been in prison.

428
00:46:00,280 --> 00:46:08,280
So now, you know, after being turned down two or three times, you only have one other option and that's to rob, steal and kill.

429
00:46:08,280 --> 00:46:20,280
You know, and that's what a lot of people do. And that's why the recidivism rate was so high for people when they got out of prison to return because it was nothing out there for them to do.

430
00:46:20,280 --> 00:46:28,280
People looked at them as, you know, lower than the lowest. There was a lot of judgment.

431
00:46:28,280 --> 00:46:38,280
So, you know, a lot of people couldn't deal with it. They knew one thing and that was to rob to make it. And that's what they went back to that one conference.

432
00:46:38,280 --> 00:46:48,280
Well, I mean, even again, if you look at or you imagine that you were incarcerated for X amount of time and then you walk out the door, you've got no housing, you've got no job.

433
00:46:48,280 --> 00:46:56,280
I mean, you've got nothing and you're having to start from scratch. This is what I love about Portugal's approach to addiction.

434
00:46:56,280 --> 00:47:04,280
They didn't just, you know, put up safe injection sites and decriminalize marijuana like we did and we call it our attempt here in America.

435
00:47:04,280 --> 00:47:12,280
They took the money from the war on drugs and they put it into creating addiction counseling, mental health counseling, job creation, housing.

436
00:47:12,280 --> 00:47:22,280
So rather than incarcerating addicts, they treated them as medical patients and they put them to the point where most of most of them, not all because nothing works with everyone.

437
00:47:22,280 --> 00:47:27,280
Most of them went back to work and started paying taxes and were, you know, were contributing to society.

438
00:47:27,280 --> 00:47:40,280
But if we're creating an environment that you have to become more criminal to survive and then one day you just kind of thrown out the door and like, right, go, go, go rejoin society.

439
00:47:40,280 --> 00:47:51,280
Of course, it's not going to work. And so, you know, again, the recidivism rate is ignored, you know, and we just have this, you know, these politicians slamming their fists down on death saying they're tough on crime, which is absolute bullshit.

440
00:47:51,280 --> 00:47:59,280
If you were tough on crime, you'd figure out the cause, the the origin, the root cause and addressing prohibition of drugs would be one, for example.

441
00:47:59,280 --> 00:48:09,280
But having proactive, you know, solutions within prisons, education and work skills and all these other areas, that's where the focus should be.

442
00:48:09,280 --> 00:48:13,280
But if you I mean, I think it's funny when COVID happened, people were complaining.

443
00:48:13,280 --> 00:48:21,280
It's like, oh, you don't like being locked in a room for months at a time, then maybe our prison model isn't working either, you know. Exactly.

444
00:48:21,280 --> 00:48:24,280
Exactly. Because it builds nothing but frustration and anger.

445
00:48:24,280 --> 00:48:30,280
I mean, to be locked up and be told what you and I'm not saying that nothing should happen to a criminal.

446
00:48:30,280 --> 00:48:41,280
But like you said, I think there's better ways that you can attack it, you know, other than just throwing a person in a cell and saying, hey, do a thousand years.

447
00:48:41,280 --> 00:48:44,280
And, you know, hopefully you'll get out and you'll be a citizen.

448
00:48:44,280 --> 00:48:50,280
That's not going to work. You know, you're throwing a person into a lion's den. You're throwing a person into hell.

449
00:48:50,280 --> 00:48:58,280
You know, you have all these different attitudes, personalities, and you're telling everybody to get along.

450
00:48:58,280 --> 00:49:04,280
But if you don't get along, then we're going to throw you in another part of the jail in an even worse environment.

451
00:49:04,280 --> 00:49:14,280
And, you know, let you do two years, three years in there and put you back in a general population and hope that, you know, you're better.

452
00:49:14,280 --> 00:49:20,280
No, no, that's not going to work. So you're definitely right about that.

453
00:49:20,280 --> 00:49:28,280
I think there's a different approach that, you know, we can take to make the system better and to make people better in the whole.

454
00:49:28,280 --> 00:49:39,280
Well, if you look at the parenting conversation, like if you if beating your child made a beautiful angelic, strong, you know, member of community, then we'd all still be smacking our kids.

455
00:49:39,280 --> 00:49:47,280
But there was a realization that if you lay your hands on your child, especially when you're angry, that you're going to create an angry bully ultimately in that next child.

456
00:49:47,280 --> 00:49:54,280
So we figured it out with parenting, but we're not applying the same thing with our adults.

457
00:49:54,280 --> 00:49:59,280
That's right. So I don't know again.

458
00:49:59,280 --> 00:50:07,280
I can think back to when I was doing that time versus when I was doing my first time, the first bit I did, I did it.

459
00:50:07,280 --> 00:50:12,280
So, you know, it it was nothing to cry about. It was nothing to be upset about it.

460
00:50:12,280 --> 00:50:20,280
Hey, went to jail, did my time and came home. But to go to prison for something you didn't do now, you're creating a whole different monster.

461
00:50:20,280 --> 00:50:27,280
You know, you got a person that is telling you, hey, I wasn't in California when this crime happened.

462
00:50:27,280 --> 00:50:33,280
And for you to say, I know you wasn't in California and I know you probably didn't do it, but we're still going to put this on you.

463
00:50:33,280 --> 00:50:40,280
That's frustrating within itself. So now I have to deal with the mentality of these people just don't care.

464
00:50:40,280 --> 00:50:53,280
So I'm not just going to care. And, you know, it becomes frustrating and you get angry and you get, you know, you want to just lash out.

465
00:50:53,280 --> 00:50:58,280
You know, so thank you. Thank you. Thankful to my mother and father.

466
00:50:58,280 --> 00:51:10,280
They continue talking to me, praying for me and just keeping me, you know, cool headed and and and and giving me the hope I need to continue on in life.

467
00:51:10,280 --> 00:51:14,280
So you meet and you said, was it Wim is that what I heard you say?

468
00:51:14,280 --> 00:51:20,280
Yeah, that's what they call it. Was that an ironic name? Was he actually really tough or he I guess he was.

469
00:51:20,280 --> 00:51:28,280
OK, I never got a chance to really, you know, meet him like that. Mine was strictly a get me out of here.

470
00:51:28,280 --> 00:51:34,280
Tell him what you did. Get me out of here. You know, so but from hearing around, yeah, he was a pretty tough guy.

471
00:51:34,280 --> 00:51:38,280
OK, so it's an ironic game name then. Right. Right. All right.

472
00:51:38,280 --> 00:51:46,280
Well, then so you have that confession, you know, now that the lawyers have been hearing, you know, that it's a legitimate, you know,

473
00:51:46,280 --> 00:51:52,280
ownership of the crime, walk me through then, you know, the I'm assuming you're thinking,

474
00:51:52,280 --> 00:51:55,280
OK, well, this is it. All the pieces are here. I'm going to be walking out soon.

475
00:51:55,280 --> 00:52:00,280
But I know it didn't pan out that way. So talk to me about the next few years.

476
00:52:00,280 --> 00:52:11,280
So after Alyssa had received, she went up there and talked to it was just Wim at that time, went up there, talked to him, got his affidavit.

477
00:52:11,280 --> 00:52:18,280
And I can remember she said, oh, that affidavit sounds good and all that. And I asked her, I said, so I should be coming home.

478
00:52:18,280 --> 00:52:23,280
She said, oh, no, that's nothing. You know, you still may not come home.

479
00:52:23,280 --> 00:52:31,280
We need to really, you know, do some more work. And I went home. I went back to my cell and I'm just like,

480
00:52:31,280 --> 00:52:35,280
what else do I mean, what else can I do? It's nothing else I can do.

481
00:52:35,280 --> 00:52:43,280
And so they went and talked to Harold Bailey. He gave him his side of the story, his affidavit, took it to Bernard Timmer.

482
00:52:43,280 --> 00:52:46,280
He gave his side. He finally confessed to it.

483
00:52:46,280 --> 00:52:54,280
So now they have all three affidavits from the from the perpetrators who did it, took it to the DA.

484
00:52:54,280 --> 00:52:58,280
DA was like, hey, whatever, you know, you have to go through the protocol.

485
00:52:58,280 --> 00:53:03,280
So they filed a writ of habeas corpus. We end up getting a hearing.

486
00:53:03,280 --> 00:53:08,280
So we're now going back down to court to have this hearing, evidentiary hearing.

487
00:53:08,280 --> 00:53:14,280
Get there. The judge who originally was on my case retired.

488
00:53:14,280 --> 00:53:17,280
He came back from retirement just to hear this case.

489
00:53:17,280 --> 00:53:22,280
Of course, he denied it. He didn't want to hear nothing. He denied the case.

490
00:53:22,280 --> 00:53:29,280
That was it. Went back heartbroken. Hope crushed.

491
00:53:29,280 --> 00:53:35,280
So my lawyers kept saying, hey, it's not over yet. Don't worry about it. We're going to keep pushing.

492
00:53:35,280 --> 00:53:38,280
We'll keep pushing. So they filed another writ of habeas corpus.

493
00:53:38,280 --> 00:53:43,280
At this time, we had a new judge. We was appointed a new judge.

494
00:53:43,280 --> 00:53:49,280
Went back to court. This judge seemed like he was fair. He was going to listen.

495
00:53:49,280 --> 00:53:53,280
We put on our case. Everybody testified. I testified.

496
00:53:53,280 --> 00:54:01,280
We had specialists come in and explain the lineup and how it was done and how unfair and suggestive it was.

497
00:54:01,280 --> 00:54:12,280
I mean, we had all these things. So the judge in this case, you can see he was listening.

498
00:54:12,280 --> 00:54:17,280
He was he was really listening. And he had.

499
00:54:17,280 --> 00:54:21,280
I don't know. Everybody in the courtroom just seemed to be looking at me differently

500
00:54:21,280 --> 00:54:27,280
after hearing all this evidence, even the the DA was looking at me different.

501
00:54:27,280 --> 00:54:32,280
She was talking. It was a different day from the day that was in my original trial.

502
00:54:32,280 --> 00:54:36,280
But not that it was the same day in my first evidentiary hearing.

503
00:54:36,280 --> 00:54:38,280
This is now the second evidentiary hearing.

504
00:54:38,280 --> 00:54:44,280
Even the detective came and apologized to me and said, I hope you get out.

505
00:54:44,280 --> 00:54:48,280
Well, nevertheless, we were denied again.

506
00:54:48,280 --> 00:54:58,280
We were denied again. So I remember going back like just just through just I knew it was over.

507
00:54:58,280 --> 00:55:03,280
I was tired. So we end up the judge made a statement at the end.

508
00:55:03,280 --> 00:55:10,280
He said, well, he could be, in fact, innocent, but it doesn't reach the standards of actual innocence.

509
00:55:10,280 --> 00:55:17,280
And so he denied it on that. So we went back and they filed in

510
00:55:17,280 --> 00:55:22,280
in the appellate court where we was granted a hearing in appellate court.

511
00:55:22,280 --> 00:55:31,280
And that's when they overturned my case and gave the DA 90 days to retry me or let me go.

512
00:55:31,280 --> 00:55:37,280
When you're getting denied before, had this been the initial case with all this information presented,

513
00:55:37,280 --> 00:55:44,280
there's no way it would have been that the whole jury would have agreed on on the the guilty verdict.

514
00:55:44,280 --> 00:55:47,280
So what is it that you have?

515
00:55:47,280 --> 00:55:54,280
Why are you having to fulfill such a different criteria when it when it was the original case with everything that was presented?

516
00:55:54,280 --> 00:56:03,280
There's no way in hell they would, especially with the testimonies, there's no way in hell you would have been convicted of that crime at that point.

517
00:56:03,280 --> 00:56:08,280
Correct. Well, even in the first original trial, I had a hung jury.

518
00:56:08,280 --> 00:56:14,280
So the judge sent them back in, the same judge sent them back in and told them to come with a verdict.

519
00:56:14,280 --> 00:56:17,280
And that's when they came with the guilty verdict.

520
00:56:17,280 --> 00:56:24,280
Well, had I had any other evidence at the time of that original trial, I know for a fact, I wouldn't have got found guilty.

521
00:56:24,280 --> 00:56:37,280
But the reason why I guess the judge denied it because actual innocence to prove is, you know, a standard is set so high.

522
00:56:37,280 --> 00:56:43,280
You have to you have to meet that standard in order to actually get your case overturned.

523
00:56:43,280 --> 00:56:47,280
And for the judge, I didn't meet that standard.

524
00:56:47,280 --> 00:56:49,280
What about the level of desperation?

525
00:56:49,280 --> 00:56:54,280
I can only I mean, I can't even imagine what it must be like to have this glimmer of hope.

526
00:56:54,280 --> 00:57:01,280
Get there, get this new piece of evidence, this confession, think this is it and then get your legs cut from under you.

527
00:57:01,280 --> 00:57:07,280
Did you ever get to a level of desperation, even consider, you know, self harm or taking your own life?

528
00:57:07,280 --> 00:57:16,280
Definitely. It was it was after getting denied the second time I was.

529
00:57:16,280 --> 00:57:24,280
I was just down, depressed, just really going through it, really going through it.

530
00:57:24,280 --> 00:57:28,280
I wouldn't come out myself. I was dealing with a lot.

531
00:57:28,280 --> 00:57:32,280
I'm just talking to my father every day on the phone.

532
00:57:32,280 --> 00:57:38,280
And he's constantly trying to, you know, pick me up and telling me hope is not lost.

533
00:57:38,280 --> 00:57:41,280
You know, we got this far, we'll get further.

534
00:57:41,280 --> 00:57:43,280
And, you know, just keep praying.

535
00:57:43,280 --> 00:57:49,280
And, you know, my father was he was a strong man and he was a good man.

536
00:57:49,280 --> 00:57:51,280
So he taught me all of that.

537
00:57:51,280 --> 00:57:57,280
He instilled a lot of values that I didn't practice, but he had already instilled them in me.

538
00:57:57,280 --> 00:58:03,280
So, you know, I took what he said and I just I just acted on it.

539
00:58:03,280 --> 00:58:11,280
I started praying more. I started even started studying even more in law.

540
00:58:11,280 --> 00:58:16,280
My lawyers end up filing to the appellate court again.

541
00:58:16,280 --> 00:58:20,280
And we was granted a hearing in the appellate court this time.

542
00:58:20,280 --> 00:58:23,280
They say, hey, we're tired of this superior court stuff.

543
00:58:23,280 --> 00:58:30,280
So they brought him to the appellate court, had the hearing at the appellate court and appellate court drilled the D.A.

544
00:58:30,280 --> 00:58:43,280
And that's when they gave me 90 days, reversed my case, gave me 90 days or for them to to them to quit either retry me or let me go.

545
00:58:43,280 --> 00:58:56,280
After that, we end up waiting because the Supreme Court stepped in, the California Supreme Court stepped in and wanted to investigate the case.

546
00:58:56,280 --> 00:58:58,280
That took another six months.

547
00:58:58,280 --> 00:59:02,280
And they said, well, we're going to leave the case like it is.

548
00:59:02,280 --> 00:59:12,280
And so now I'm going back down to court for the we're hoping the D.A. to kick out the case, just dismiss the case and let's go on with our lives.

549
00:59:12,280 --> 00:59:15,280
You guys made a mistake. Hey, you don't have to apologize.

550
00:59:15,280 --> 00:59:17,280
But let me live my life. Let me go on with my life.

551
00:59:17,280 --> 00:59:21,280
We get down there and I just got crushed by the judge.

552
00:59:21,280 --> 00:59:31,280
The judge told me I was a menace. I was I was that this is going on 19 years.

553
00:59:31,280 --> 00:59:36,280
And told me I was a menace, couldn't produce anything I'd done wrong in jail.

554
00:59:36,280 --> 00:59:42,280
No one 15, no violence, no education.

555
00:59:42,280 --> 00:59:47,280
I had a diploma. I had college. I had a couple of certificates from business college.

556
00:59:47,280 --> 00:59:54,280
I had I had all kind of positive stuff in my file.

557
00:59:54,280 --> 00:59:57,280
And she still crushed me and told me you're a menace.

558
00:59:57,280 --> 01:00:00,280
We're going to set your bill at a million.

559
01:00:00,280 --> 01:00:03,280
And my lawyers just couldn't figure out why.

560
01:00:03,280 --> 01:00:06,280
Why was she going so hard on me?

561
01:00:06,280 --> 01:00:10,280
And and it wasn't even the judge that was supposed to hear my case.

562
01:00:10,280 --> 01:00:15,280
It was a substitute judge. And so that was it.

563
01:00:15,280 --> 01:00:19,280
They set my bill at a million dollars, set another court date hearing.

564
01:00:19,280 --> 01:00:24,280
And Justin and Alyssa came to see me that night.

565
01:00:24,280 --> 01:00:36,280
And they said, well, listen, we we talked to the.

566
01:00:36,280 --> 01:00:43,280
Excuse me. She said, we talked to the D.A.

567
01:00:43,280 --> 01:00:49,280
And they're offering a deal and the deal is.

568
01:00:49,280 --> 01:00:52,280
Plead guilty.

569
01:00:52,280 --> 01:00:57,280
And the case will be over. You can go home today, but it is entirely up to you.

570
01:00:57,280 --> 01:01:04,280
We are willing to take this case all the way, all the way.

571
01:01:04,280 --> 01:01:06,280
We're willing to take this case all the way.

572
01:01:06,280 --> 01:01:09,280
So, you know, it is entirely up to you.

573
01:01:09,280 --> 01:01:12,280
And I remember telling Justin, I just don't want to let you guys down.

574
01:01:12,280 --> 01:01:16,280
You guys fought so hard and I don't I don't want to let you guys down.

575
01:01:16,280 --> 01:01:24,280
And Justin said, it's not about me, it's about you being able to return back to your life and and live for your kids.

576
01:01:24,280 --> 01:01:27,280
And and I just went on to the deal.

577
01:01:27,280 --> 01:01:32,280
It was a Wesley Carter Wesley.

578
01:01:32,280 --> 01:01:36,280
And that's what happened. That's how I ended up getting out of prison.

579
01:01:36,280 --> 01:01:42,280
They never wanted to say, hey, we did wrong. We know we did wrong.

580
01:01:42,280 --> 01:01:49,280
It was just the hey, we're going to let you go, but we're going to say, you know, we're going to let you go with with conditions.

581
01:01:49,280 --> 01:01:54,280
You know, so that's how that happened.

582
01:01:54,280 --> 01:02:04,280
Now, as we sit here in twenty twenty four and you've had a few years to kind of unpack what happened, what were the contributing elements

583
01:02:04,280 --> 01:02:13,280
that resisted over and over again, them simply saying we had the wrong person and overturning it, creating an innocence verdict?

584
01:02:13,280 --> 01:02:16,280
It was all about climbing up the corporate ladder. It was for the D.A.

585
01:02:16,280 --> 01:02:20,280
It was no no losing mentality.

586
01:02:20,280 --> 01:02:23,280
We're not going to lose this case. And and that's what happens.

587
01:02:23,280 --> 01:02:25,280
I mean, I watched this case.

588
01:02:25,280 --> 01:02:28,280
Well, of course, I watched it. I was in this case from the very beginning.

589
01:02:28,280 --> 01:02:32,280
And to hear the D.A. tell me she know I didn't do it, but I'm good for it.

590
01:02:32,280 --> 01:02:35,280
I knew then that this was going to be a tough fight.

591
01:02:35,280 --> 01:02:38,280
You know, it was all about not losing.

592
01:02:38,280 --> 01:02:40,280
They didn't care about innocence.

593
01:02:40,280 --> 01:02:43,280
They didn't care about, you know, who did it.

594
01:02:43,280 --> 01:02:46,280
Only thing they cared about was winning.

595
01:02:46,280 --> 01:02:53,280
And they continue to to fight this case as if they didn't know I was innocent.

596
01:02:53,280 --> 01:03:01,280
You know, to hear the detective come and apologize to me, to hear the detective saying, I just want you know, I really hope you go home.

597
01:03:01,280 --> 01:03:04,280
You know, but nobody stood up to say this guy didn't do this.

598
01:03:04,280 --> 01:03:08,280
You know, everybody would seem like they were scared to say stuff.

599
01:03:08,280 --> 01:03:11,280
They didn't want the D.A.'s office to say nothing.

600
01:03:11,280 --> 01:03:15,280
It was just it was it was it was chaos from the beginning.

601
01:03:15,280 --> 01:03:22,280
And they knew it. Well, as we sit here now recording, I think it was two days ago now.

602
01:03:22,280 --> 01:03:26,280
The Innocence Project was fighting for a man on death row and he was executed.

603
01:03:26,280 --> 01:03:35,280
And that, I mean, it's bad enough that you spent 19 years to think that we lose people even on death row that are executed, that have a story like yours.

604
01:03:35,280 --> 01:03:39,280
I mean, it just this is an issue that needs to be pulled out in the forefront.

605
01:03:39,280 --> 01:03:43,280
And we see this this cowardice and the self-serving even in the fire service.

606
01:03:43,280 --> 01:03:52,280
I mean, just smaller things like firefighter health, opposing fitness standards, opposing making a workweek that's healthy for first responders.

607
01:03:52,280 --> 01:03:57,280
It sounds trivial compared to what we've talked about, but this contributes to a lot of deaths in my profession.

608
01:03:57,280 --> 01:04:00,280
And I see such cowardice as far as approaching that.

609
01:04:00,280 --> 01:04:11,280
And I see, you know, people just just totally unwilling to address things that need to be because they want to make sure they look good so they can climb their promotional ladder, too.

610
01:04:11,280 --> 01:04:21,280
So, you know, I see the same issues in my profession that are also contributing to all these wrongful convictions in the law enforcement and legal side.

611
01:04:21,280 --> 01:04:37,280
Yeah, it's amazing that they get away with the stuff they get away with to watch a witness get off the stand and say it's not you and the DA willing to go as far as taking a witness outside and coerce her into saying whatever it is.

612
01:04:37,280 --> 01:04:43,280
They want her to say, I don't know what they had on her or what the problem was.

613
01:04:43,280 --> 01:04:51,280
But for her to even get back on the stand and go along with that is, you know, that should have been a crime within itself. But we know nothing was going to happen.

614
01:04:51,280 --> 01:05:03,280
I was a black kid that was a gang member in a predominantly all white neighborhood. So I knew I couldn't stand a chance, you know, and, you know, it is what it is.

615
01:05:03,280 --> 01:05:11,280
I've come home, got my life together. So, you know, it's it's it is what it is.

616
01:05:11,280 --> 01:05:14,280
Well, you were in there for almost two decades.

617
01:05:14,280 --> 01:05:17,280
Obviously, that's a lot of time spent away from your children.

618
01:05:17,280 --> 01:05:23,280
But, you know, our parents, they're the ones that are a real issue because, you know, we only get so much time with them being older.

619
01:05:23,280 --> 01:05:31,280
So talk to me about that. You know, you've obviously through this whole conversation adored your parents and they've been incredible mentors throughout this.

620
01:05:31,280 --> 01:05:37,280
Talk to me about getting out and then the small amount of time that you got to spend with them.

621
01:05:37,280 --> 01:05:45,280
Well, I remember getting out and I wanted to surprise my mom and I had called my father and I told him, I said, hey, dad, I'm out.

622
01:05:45,280 --> 01:05:53,280
He said, what? I said, I'm out because last time they came to court earlier that day, we had already set a court date for me to go back to court.

623
01:05:53,280 --> 01:05:58,280
And I remember calling him and I said, hey, dad, first, I called my daughter and let her know I was home.

624
01:05:58,280 --> 01:06:01,280
And it was all just crazy.

625
01:06:01,280 --> 01:06:04,280
And then I called my dad. I said, hey, I'm on my way home.

626
01:06:04,280 --> 01:06:08,280
You know, I want to surprise mom and let her know, but I don't want to give her a heart attack.

627
01:06:08,280 --> 01:06:16,280
So prep her and get her ready. So I remember my dad, man, he just can't hold water.

628
01:06:16,280 --> 01:06:22,280
As soon as I pull in the driveway, I see my uncle running in. I see my sisters running in. I see everybody.

629
01:06:22,280 --> 01:06:26,280
I said, dad, you weren't supposed to tell nobody.

630
01:06:26,280 --> 01:06:41,280
So my mom, she came, gave her a hug and I think everybody got out about 11 o'clock that night and everybody came over and we stayed there talking and laughing until about probably about eight o'clock the next day.

631
01:06:41,280 --> 01:06:51,280
And it was just it was it was it was joyful. And that's a day I'll never forget.

632
01:06:51,280 --> 01:06:59,280
I stayed with him for a while. I end up going to work like a month later. I got a job at the railroad, started working there.

633
01:06:59,280 --> 01:07:09,280
And I see myself just not hanging out, but being around certain people that I was hanging around with before I went in.

634
01:07:09,280 --> 01:07:16,280
So I didn't even want that life no more. I was completely done with that. So I had ended up moving to Texas.

635
01:07:16,280 --> 01:07:22,280
I moved there two years after I got out, moved to Texas, got a job out here, which is where I'm at now.

636
01:07:22,280 --> 01:07:28,280
Got a job out here. Actually, I had two jobs out here and that is where I've been ever since.

637
01:07:28,280 --> 01:07:38,280
My father just passed about a month ago and I was just glad to be here for this bit.

638
01:07:38,280 --> 01:07:42,280
The little time I had with him since I've been on.

639
01:07:42,280 --> 01:07:49,280
Well, I think this again, this is important for people to understand when this happens, especially within an innocent conviction like this,

640
01:07:49,280 --> 01:07:55,280
that it's not just the person spent time in a prison or a jail, but they're taken from their family.

641
01:07:55,280 --> 01:07:59,280
And there's a lot of people that their loved ones die while they're still in prison.

642
01:07:59,280 --> 01:08:03,280
And by the time they get out, the family they adored aren't even there anymore.

643
01:08:03,280 --> 01:08:09,280
And people think once you out, everything is done with the D.A. can say, hey, at least we let him out.

644
01:08:09,280 --> 01:08:13,280
Everything goes back to normal. No, everything doesn't go back to normal.

645
01:08:13,280 --> 01:08:21,280
Every time I give a podcast, every time I'm talking to somebody, every time I'm witness to somebody about what happened or or helped them out.

646
01:08:21,280 --> 01:08:24,280
I'm reliving all this all over again.

647
01:08:24,280 --> 01:08:30,280
There's a psyche in me that's that's that's just getting crushed every time I talk about it.

648
01:08:30,280 --> 01:08:34,280
But I know it's something that needs to be done. It's something that has to be done.

649
01:08:34,280 --> 01:08:39,280
But nevertheless, it's still I mean, every time I talk about it, I'm reliving this.

650
01:08:39,280 --> 01:08:43,280
I mean, it was a nightmare. It's not something that was pleasant.

651
01:08:43,280 --> 01:08:49,280
It's not something I want to keep talking about, but it's something that has to continue to be talked about.

652
01:08:49,280 --> 01:08:54,280
And that's why I'm here. And I will continue talking about it no matter what it does to me.

653
01:08:54,280 --> 01:09:01,280
I want to make sure I educate everybody on, you know, wrongful convictions and misidentification, how the system works.

654
01:09:01,280 --> 01:09:09,280
You know, this needs to be talked about. A lot of people that are innocent, get out of jail, don't want to talk about it no more because they have to relive it.

655
01:09:09,280 --> 01:09:17,280
And, you know, it's not that fun. Once once this computer goes off, once we're off or once I finished talking to you, I have to go back in the bed.

656
01:09:17,280 --> 01:09:20,280
My girlfriend has to, you know, rock me back to sleep.

657
01:09:20,280 --> 01:09:28,280
She has to she has to talk to me and mellow me out because I'm going through it all over again.

658
01:09:28,280 --> 01:09:36,280
So, yeah, people don't understand that that part of they think is just it's over with.

659
01:09:36,280 --> 01:09:42,280
And that's it. You're going your merry way. And that's it. But that's not it. That's not it.

660
01:09:42,280 --> 01:09:50,280
What about the mental health side? I mean, as you mentioned, 19 years wrongfully convicted in a very violent prison.

661
01:09:50,280 --> 01:09:55,280
How have you been able to process have been any tools that you found that have helped?

662
01:09:55,280 --> 01:10:02,280
Compartmentalize, just say, hey, you know, just put it away. It's not going to, you know, hey, that nothing happened.

663
01:10:02,280 --> 01:10:11,280
You know, I just tried not think about it. I remember my lawyers used to tell me just go to, you know, go to some counseling or I just don't want to talk about it.

664
01:10:11,280 --> 01:10:19,280
I don't want to, you know, if I'm talking about it and it's not doing nothing for nobody, there's no reason for me to talk.

665
01:10:19,280 --> 01:10:26,280
I'm here to talk about it only because I want to educate people on what's going on. That's it.

666
01:10:26,280 --> 01:10:33,280
I don't want to talk about it to a stranger. I don't want to talk about it just to talk about it. I wanted to me. I wanted to have purpose.

667
01:10:33,280 --> 01:10:41,280
And that's it. So a mental health doctor for me is is it just, you know, reliving that all over again, over and over.

668
01:10:41,280 --> 01:10:47,280
And I know they say this therapeutic or whatever. I just I just rather deal with it my own way.

669
01:10:47,280 --> 01:10:55,280
What's interesting, I've had so many people on the show, some of which are special operations, you know, military members and firefighters and police officers.

670
01:10:55,280 --> 01:11:07,280
And a lot of them don't want to talk about it either. And what's not really discussed and ironically goes back to prohibition of drugs is a lot of them are actually finding success with psychedelics.

671
01:11:07,280 --> 01:11:13,280
So the very things that were still are illegal are now helping the very men and women that fought for this country.

672
01:11:13,280 --> 01:11:21,280
But they have to go overseas to get it. But the psilocybin and ketamine and MDMA, you know, is now healing.

673
01:11:21,280 --> 01:11:30,280
So some of these that you saw in cops that people were being chased and cuffed and incarcerated for those very chemicals and plant medicines are now healing.

674
01:11:30,280 --> 01:11:34,280
Literally the police officers that were arresting them in cops.

675
01:11:34,280 --> 01:11:46,280
That's right. That's right. It's just I mean, I can't stress enough the pain and anger I have.

676
01:11:46,280 --> 01:11:58,280
For not the system, but just for this particular case, because I watched how they manipulated, how they call my mom a lie.

677
01:11:58,280 --> 01:12:06,280
If they knew the temperament of my mother, they would have never called her a liar. She has never been a person to if I done wrong, you know, I done wrong.

678
01:12:06,280 --> 01:12:12,280
She's not going to stand up for you. I mean, she's going to stand up for you, but she's not going to, you know, she's not going to condone it.

679
01:12:12,280 --> 01:12:15,280
She's not going to do any that she's going to let you know you're wrong.

680
01:12:15,280 --> 01:12:25,280
And to put her through that, to watch her get on a stand and for them to call her liars, to call my father basically a fake a fake minister because he's a minister.

681
01:12:25,280 --> 01:12:33,280
I mean, to say all those things to them and not even know them was just crazy all to win a case, you know.

682
01:12:33,280 --> 01:12:40,280
So, yeah, I'm not mad at the system because the system is what it is, but it can be better.

683
01:12:40,280 --> 01:12:47,280
I'm more mad at what happened at that trial and how they presented themselves.

684
01:12:47,280 --> 01:12:53,280
So, you know, all that work for the people. I see nothing for the people they done.

685
01:12:53,280 --> 01:12:58,280
You know, so now you got the two people that still out there, but you convict the person that didn't do it.

686
01:12:58,280 --> 01:13:05,280
I'm not saying I'm an angel or, you know, I've never done wrong, but we're talking about this case right here.

687
01:13:05,280 --> 01:13:10,280
So the two people who actually did the key, I mean, who did the crime, you actually let go.

688
01:13:10,280 --> 01:13:15,280
So how did that help the people? Absolutely. And the same with Greg Kelly's case.

689
01:13:15,280 --> 01:13:19,280
And like I said, a woman was raped because the wrong person was convicted of that.

690
01:13:19,280 --> 01:13:26,280
The difference was he got an innocence verdict when it was overturned and therefore ultimately was able to get a lawsuit.

691
01:13:26,280 --> 01:13:39,280
Now, because you had to take the guilty plea, talk to me about, you know, the the ability to get any sort of kind of compensation after a set of 19 years of being wrongfully convicted.

692
01:13:39,280 --> 01:13:41,280
Well, let me say this before I get to that.

693
01:13:41,280 --> 01:13:52,280
That one guy, Jason Stewart, is now in prison for a triple murder. He killed a mother and two kids and he is now incarcerated for the rest of his life.

694
01:13:52,280 --> 01:13:57,280
Now, had he been in jail for the crime I did, that wouldn't have happened.

695
01:13:57,280 --> 01:14:01,280
But I'm getting to the compensation because I took the West plea.

696
01:14:01,280 --> 01:14:08,280
I wasn't eligible to sue the state of California or the prison.

697
01:14:08,280 --> 01:14:12,280
See, that's horrendous. So talk to me then about, you know, you walk out, you've got your freedom.

698
01:14:12,280 --> 01:14:16,280
You have this amazing all night party with your family.

699
01:14:16,280 --> 01:14:25,280
What are the how easy is it for you then to get on your own two feet to get a good job, to get housing?

700
01:14:25,280 --> 01:14:31,280
Talk to me about the barriers, because again, you've you've you've pled guilty on something that you never, ever did.

701
01:14:31,280 --> 01:14:46,280
Yes, as you mentioned, prior to that, there was some some criminality. But, you know, what were the barriers to pursuing that that healthy community life that you had been living within in the jail when you were trying to get your innocence?

702
01:14:46,280 --> 01:14:55,280
What's so great about them is they never left me. They didn't get me out of prison and move on to the next case.

703
01:14:55,280 --> 01:15:04,280
They continue fighting for us. They continue being there for us mentally and physically.

704
01:15:04,280 --> 01:15:12,280
They invited us to a lot of private events, their families.

705
01:15:12,280 --> 01:15:19,280
I remember getting a job. I remember going to parset when that's where I was working at when I first got out the railroads.

706
01:15:19,280 --> 01:15:28,280
And they told me that I had a prior conviction, which is what I got out of prison for.

707
01:15:28,280 --> 01:15:32,280
And but I explained to them what happened.

708
01:15:32,280 --> 01:15:35,280
And I said, OK, well, do you have any paperwork or whatever?

709
01:15:35,280 --> 01:15:39,280
And I remember calling Lissa and she said, oh, yeah, don't worry about it.

710
01:15:39,280 --> 01:15:44,280
She faxed them over so much paperwork. And they was like, oh, wow.

711
01:15:44,280 --> 01:15:51,280
Not only did they give me the job, but they were like, I'm so sorry.

712
01:15:51,280 --> 01:15:55,280
What happened to you? You know, I really apologize for the system.

713
01:15:55,280 --> 01:16:01,280
And, you know, it was like that on a couple of jobs, not just that job, but on a couple of jobs.

714
01:16:01,280 --> 01:16:05,280
The list that would give them all the paperwork, I mean, step took them step by step. What happened?

715
01:16:05,280 --> 01:16:08,280
She even sent them videos of when I got out of prison.

716
01:16:08,280 --> 01:16:18,280
So I got the jobs and, you know, I worked there. And like I said, for parsec, I worked a month, 30 days after I got out, I was working.

717
01:16:18,280 --> 01:16:22,280
I was working 12 to 15 hour shifts. Then I ended up getting another job.

718
01:16:22,280 --> 01:16:27,280
So I had two jobs at that time. And again, I started, you know, seeing the same people.

719
01:16:27,280 --> 01:16:32,280
It's like I'm not even taking that chance again. Moved out to Texas.

720
01:16:32,280 --> 01:16:39,280
Me and my girlfriend moved to Texas and I had two jobs. She had two jobs.

721
01:16:39,280 --> 01:16:44,280
And if the same thing applied, had to call Alyssa, she had to send them paperwork.

722
01:16:44,280 --> 01:16:52,280
And I ended up getting the job. I stayed at that job for like four years, five years.

723
01:16:52,280 --> 01:17:01,280
Then I end up investing into a bike shop, which was a Harley-Davidson shop where we customize bikes, fix them up.

724
01:17:01,280 --> 01:17:08,280
And I end up opening that up, open that shop up, made some pretty decent money.

725
01:17:08,280 --> 01:17:16,280
And then I end up buying box trucks. And that's what I currently do now on box trucks.

726
01:17:16,280 --> 01:17:21,280
Beautiful. Well, I just want to be mindful of your time.

727
01:17:21,280 --> 01:17:29,280
Is there any areas that you want to make sure, any things that you want to put out there as far as areas that we can affect change?

728
01:17:29,280 --> 01:17:34,280
Maybe the law enforcement officers listening, how we can prevent this happening?

729
01:17:34,280 --> 01:17:38,280
Anything that you want to address to the audience before we round this up?

730
01:17:38,280 --> 01:17:41,280
Definitely. It all starts with us. It starts with the citizens.

731
01:17:41,280 --> 01:17:51,280
I mean, we elect, we're the one in charge of convicting and not convicting.

732
01:17:51,280 --> 01:18:02,280
We can't listen to what the prosecutor always says and the police department says. We have to investigate with our own intelligence.

733
01:18:02,280 --> 01:18:10,280
We have to be able to see what's really going on. We can't just take their word for it.

734
01:18:10,280 --> 01:18:16,280
And everybody have, the society have this thing is, well, if he went to jail, he must have did it. No, no.

735
01:18:16,280 --> 01:18:21,280
If that's the case, then we're going to continue having wrongful convictions.

736
01:18:21,280 --> 01:18:26,280
We can't live by that standard anymore. We can't say, we have a different type of police station.

737
01:18:26,280 --> 01:18:33,280
I mean, police force. We have a different kind of DAs. Not all bad, but there are some that's bad.

738
01:18:33,280 --> 01:18:38,280
So we can no longer just take their word and say if they went to prison, then they must have did something wrong.

739
01:18:38,280 --> 01:18:45,280
We have to investigate. We have a duty to investigate ourselves and find out the real cause and the real truth of what's going on.

740
01:18:45,280 --> 01:18:51,280
So with that, that's all I really have to say. Let's just be accountable for our own actions.

741
01:18:51,280 --> 01:18:56,280
And I think the system would be a whole lot better.

742
01:18:56,280 --> 01:19:02,280
So for people listening, if they want to reach out to you or learn more, where are the best places online?

743
01:19:02,280 --> 01:19:14,280
They can reach me on my email, miles2milestruckin.gmail.com, or they can reach me on Facebook, GuyMiles4.

744
01:19:14,280 --> 01:19:24,280
That's our Instagram. And you will see the title, Breaking the Chain of What is My...

745
01:19:24,280 --> 01:19:37,280
I am so that I'm hardly on there. So I really never know. But it's, it's, it's, I still don't know how to work these things like everybody else.

746
01:19:37,280 --> 01:19:42,280
I'm still learning. She has to do everything because I don't know how to do this stuff.

747
01:19:42,280 --> 01:19:48,280
You're not missing that much. I promise you. I just use it to promote the show. That's it.

748
01:19:48,280 --> 01:19:56,280
Okay. It's called Breaking the Chain of Mentioned Slavery. Yes, Guy Miles. You could just look up Guy Miles.

749
01:19:56,280 --> 01:20:01,280
You'll see a blue motorcycle. And that's my Instagram. Beautiful.

750
01:20:01,280 --> 01:20:08,280
Well, Guy, I want to say thank you. And you touched on it before. And I say this a lot with anyone that kind of relives some of their trauma.

751
01:20:08,280 --> 01:20:14,280
There is, as you said, so much value to sharing, especially, you know, on a recording where hopefully thousands of people will hear this.

752
01:20:14,280 --> 01:20:20,280
But I also want to acknowledge that it does take a piece of you that it is kind of pulling the wound back open again.

753
01:20:20,280 --> 01:20:30,280
So I want to thank you so much for that courageous vulnerability, but also for you being so generous with your time and coming on the Behind the Shield podcast today.

754
01:20:30,280 --> 01:20:41,280
No problem. You're welcome. And I appreciate you having me on here, being able to share my story. And hopefully I've touched somebody out there or, you know, just help somebody out there.

755
01:20:41,280 --> 01:21:00,280
That's my goal.