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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.
In June 1998, there was a robbery in Orange County, California. Guy himself was in Las Vegas, almost 300 miles away.
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.
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,
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.
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.
Every single five star rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making it easier for others to find.
And this is a free library of almost 1000 episodes now.
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.
So with that being said, I introduce to you Guy Myles. Enjoy.
Well, Guy, I want to start by saying two things.
Firstly, thank you to Justin Brooks for connecting us who was on the show.
And secondly, I want to thank you for all the support that you've given us.
And I'm going to share with you the
behind the shield podcast today.
Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
So where on planet Earth we finding you today?
I am in Texas, located in Texas, Dallas, Texas.
Very peaceful state.
The people are good.
I just enjoy being out here.
It's a big difference, a culture shock from being in California.
Well, let's start there.
Origin story.
So tell me where you were born and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic, what your parents did, how many siblings.
OK, so I was born in Los Angeles.
I was born in Los Angeles.
I have four siblings, one brother, two sisters.
My mother and father were hardworking people.
They didn't when I was young, they didn't have a steady job, but they had a job.
My father worked three different jobs, worked at the park, a couple other jobs, you know, just to make ends meet.
And at that time, we were living in, I believe, Los Angeles, California, in L.A.
Which part of L.A. did you find yourself?
So we were living in South Central as a young, young buck.
My father didn't like the area.
We ended up moving to Compton, where he still worked three jobs hard.
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.
To Carson, California, which was a better neighborhood for, you know, for us.
Well, they thought it would be a better neighborhood for us.
So how old were you in South Central and then Compton?
I worked for Anaheim Fire, so not too far away from the city of Los Angeles.
One of my engineer medics was a firefighter medic for the city of Compton back in, I think it was the 90s.
So he was obviously seeing a lot of the fire.
Some of the other stuff that was going on. But what age were you in those two areas?
When I lived in L.A., I was I was young.
I was about three, maybe four, five years old, moved to Compton all the way till I was about seven or eight.
And from there, moved to Carson, which I resided the rest of my life.
So your parents got these good jobs still?
Obviously, they were hoping that it was going to be a better environment for you and Carson.
Talk to me about going through the school ages in Carson and the the impact of some of the environments around you.
So Carson was more known for a middle class neighborhood, upper middle class.
So by their moving over there, they felt we would get a better education,
wouldn't be prone to some of the things that goes on in South Central and Compton.
So I went I end up going to school and Anna Lee, which was in Carson, California.
That was an elementary got into some trouble already in elementary school.
Already in elementary, my grandmother still lived in Compton.
So I end up transferring to Caldwell Elementary and.
Finished out there, moved back to Carson with my mom.
Now, while I was still living in Carson, just going back and forth from my grandmother to my parents home,
end up going back to Curtis Junior High School, which is located in Carson,
got into some trouble and end up going to enter back to my grandmother's to Enterprise Junior High School.
And that's where I finished out at and end up coming back to Carson, going to Carson High School.
What about sports and exercise?
What were you playing and doing as a young man?
That's funny because I've always loved football.
I played football, basketball, baseball, but mostly football.
Football was my choice, was my choice of sports.
I played through Junior High School and a little of high school,
but end up not playing in any other games.
Just went to a few practices at Carson High, but mostly played through Junior High School at Parkball.
And then what about career aspirations?
Were you dreaming of any particular profession when you were in school age?
I was not.
I never really had a I want to be a cop or I want to be a firefighter type of dreams.
I just live day to day.
I just, you know, my mother and father had so much expectations for me, high expectations for me.
And I just never, never fulfilled them.
Never thought about being, you know, nothing more than just me, so to speak.
Well, we spoke a few weeks ago and you mentioned about being pulled into the gang culture a little bit.
Talk to me about that environment.
I mean, I've had people from all over the world, all kinds of backgrounds.
And this is a really important part of the health and wellness conversation.
It's very well for someone to say, oh, you have to do is make good choices.
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.
You know what I'm saying?
So it's a very different environment.
So what were the positive role models in your community and what was that pull towards that negative side?
So there really wasn't a whole lot of positive role models.
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.
Again, going back to saying when we moved to Carson, it was considered a upper middle class neighborhood.
That changed quickly, probably within the year or two I was there.
Gangs started rising.
You know, you had other gangs that were already established coming over there, you know, basically trying to take over the neighborhood.
So the neighborhood where I lived in was tired of it.
So we were forced to grow up and fight back those neighborhoods.
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.
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.
And some of them obviously were groups of immigrants that were being preyed on initially.
And then you had, as you said, this kind of strength by numbers element.
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.
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?
Well, that came on later on.
Again, I was there in 79 and gangs had already, you know, grew into a major problem in Carson.
It started being a more and more and more and more gangs or people turning into gangs in that area.
So in 80 and 81, I was already a full fledged gang member.
I had already turned my life into the streets, so to speak.
The dope academic came around 83, 84.
Again, I was already a full fledged gang member. I was at that time 16, 17.
So I was already getting in trouble.
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.
I was still influenced by the people who I was around every day.
And I was street members. I mean, I was street people. So gang members. I won't say street people, gang members.
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.
And this whole, I'm doing air quotes now, war of drugs. It's been an epic failure.
And it's incredible how many members of law enforcement say the exact same thing.
If you make an addict, potentially a prisoner, if you make being an addict illegal,
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.
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.
So, I mean, we've been doing this for almost 100 years now. It was like the 30s when the prohibition of drugs happened.
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.
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.
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.
Definitely. Although I was a full fledged gang member, a full fledged gang member, I still hadn't committed serious crimes.
I was just considered a gang member because I hang around, I hung around a group of people who symbolizes the same thing.
And so we were identified as gang members. Again, when the cocaine academic hit,
I keep saying academic when the, what is the word I'm looking for?
When a dope scene hit, that's when things started getting out of control.
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.
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.
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.
What rose did that take you as far as criminality?
I got arrested for possession of cocaine. I got arrested for actually possession of cocaine two or three times.
Got arrested for possession of marijuana. Got arrested for possession of stolen property, you know, not major crimes, but nonetheless, they were crimes.
I ended up eventually getting arrested for a robbery in 91 and did six years.
So that may open the door for them to arrest me for this other crime that we're talking about now.
That's what made it easier for them to arrest me on the new crime.
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.
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.
Right. The three strikes didn't exist when I was out. There was no three strikes.
Three strikes started in I believe 94. I was already incarcerated on the robbery charge.
My charge was robbery and assault with a daily weapon. When I got out of jail in 97.
I then was a candidate for three strikes because they gave me two strikes in one case.
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.
So you come out of jail or prison.
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?
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.
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.
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.
And, you know, my son looked up to me at the time. So it was I just had to make some changes.
So I decided to move to Las Vegas, went to Las Vegas, stand, lived out there.
I used to get my son, bring him out there with me. And, you know, things were different. Things were better.
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.
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.
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.
So I go spend time with my mom and then come with me. But this particular time, my son wanted to come early.
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.
I got a call from my parole officer telling me they wanted to see me.
Came down, went to go see my parole officer and I was arrested for a robbery in Orange County.
Had never even been in Orange County other than when I was a child going to Disneyland.
That was about it, but hadn't been in Orange County in years and years.
And so just to be clear, where were you when this robbery was being, you know, when this robbery actually happened?
I was in Las Vegas.
Which is a long way from Orange County.
A long way from when we didn't go through Orange County. It was a long way from Orange County.
So yeah.
So I had Greg Kelly on the show who was wrongfully convicted actually as a sexual assault on a child.
And the backstory was he was a high school football player. His mother got ill.
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.
And in this home, there was also a daycare. So there was an outcry.
One of these children said that Mr. Greg had touched him.
And what happened next set up this wrongful conviction. And he was in prison, I think it was for a year.
And then also an additional year or two years until he was actually, you know, because the conviction was overturned.
But it was only because of one one good lawyer that even happened.
And it turns out it was the teammate. It was a friend he's staying with.
He was the one that was doing this. And whilst Greg was in prison, he raped a woman.
This other guy did what he was free.
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.
I mean, I can't imagine how he managed to survive for a year. Was absolutely horrendous to listen to.
So starting at the very beginning now, you were arrested for a robbery that took place hundreds of miles away.
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.
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.
Well, I knew I had been to Orange County, so I knew this was crazy to me.
Orange County, at least say I did a robbery in Las Vegas.
That would have been better. But the funny thing about that, I was in California.
I wouldn't be in California if it was a robbery in Las Vegas.
So I kept telling him, hey, I was in Las Vegas, so I couldn't have did no robbery in California.
It was like, oh, well, a witness picked you out.
I said, well, how did a witness get my picture to pick me out in Orange County?
He said, well, when you got out of jail, you were on parole.
We got some of your pictures showed the witness and the witness picked you out.
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.
And so the detective told me one of the guys who did it is from the neighborhood I'm from.
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.
And my picture, unfortunately, was one of the pictures they picked out.
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.
And obviously, some of these were children, too.
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?
It definitely was a coaching. This witness saw this lineup.
She picked maybe four or five people out. None of them looked alike.
None of the pictures look alike.
She got to my picture supposedly and said, this is the guy I'll never forget this face.
This is him. I mean, it was a hundred percent IDA. This is him.
This is him. So. I'm like, it's nowhere in the world.
She could have picked me out in a picture lineup. They had to be some coercion.
They had to be some type of something had to happen for her to be that strongly sure that it was me.
So walk me through what happens next, then you're falsely identified in the lineup.
You know, what about all the evidence that showed that you were in Vegas?
How is that received? It wasn't received.
I had over 16 witnesses that places me in Las Vegas.
I had the phone records I had.
Even my car was broken into that morning. We presented the receipt from the tow truck coming to pick my car up.
On that day, we had the apartment manager with me making a complaint about my car being broken into.
I mean, we had mountains of evidence to prove that I was actually in Vegas and.
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.
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.
So we're going to hang our hat on you.
So there was more of a kind of cry wolf element than actual facts.
Correct. And even the witness that was supposedly 100% sure got on the stand and looked at me and said, that's not him.
The DA takes her outside, talks to her, bring her back in.
And the jury wasn't in at that time. We had taken a break when all this took place, brought the jury back in.
The witness looked at me and said, yeah, that's him.
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?
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.
She reviewed me from different angles. She did and said, no, that's not him.
So my attorney was very upset that they were able to take the witness outside, talk to her, bring her back in.
So on cross-examination, they asked all these things to the witness.
And then the witness explanation was, well, it looks like he changed his appearance. He cut his hair.
Well, I've always been bald. My hair has always been short.
Can't get no shorter than what it was. So we knew at that point that they were working all together.
So, yeah. What was the discussion at that point?
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?
Yeah, they invested too much time already. At that point, it was, hey, this is him.
It's just like the D.A. told me the pieces to the puzzle don't fit, but you're good for it.
So she was going to make that piece fit. And that's what they did.
They continue to, you know, just just make this story up and keep it going, because at that point they couldn't turn back.
They had invested way too much time.
I know a lot of people are off of plea deals, even people that are are innocent that take them more often than not.
I think the documentary 13th, they articulated it very well in that film.
Were you offered a plea deal at this point?
No, I was never offered a plea deal. I had already made it clear that I wouldn't accept any plea deal.
I didn't want to hear plea deal. I wasn't going to accept any plea deal.
And my lawyer, he delivered that message to him. So no plea deal was was even mentioned.
Brilliant. I think it's important to hear that at the front, because obviously, you know, the way it concluded.
So walk me through. You've been through prison once before, you know, for a lengthy stay.
Now you're walking through the doors, being innocent of what you're charged for.
What were those first few weeks and months like as far as your mindset?
Because last time, obviously, you know, you you were in there because you know, you did something.
This time it's the complete opposite. It was horrific.
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.
It's just it's a hurting feeling because not only are you hurt and miserable, your family is as well.
This just didn't affect you. It affected them, too.
And to know that. I just received a life sentence and there's a possibility that I would never go home again.
Was mind boggling and to be in jail for something I didn't do.
I just knew I had a fight on my hand. I knew I wasn't going to stop until somebody heard me.
So just to underline that you got a life sentence, even though not not downplaying the crime, but it was a robbery.
It wasn't a murder or anything like that.
I got a life sentence because I got three strikes. I had two strikes in my last case.
So they gave me the third strike on this one, and that's how I received seventy five years to life.
And meanwhile, you've got children and this is, I think, an important part of the conversation.
Again, of course, when someone commits a crime, there needs to be a punishment and that might include incarceration.
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.
People are missing the part of part where that means that a child is now being robbed of their mother or their father.
And so there's this rhetoric about broken homes. And if we just, you know, marriage to stay together, then everyone be fine.
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.
So what was the impact of you being gone on your family dynamic?
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.
My mother, she her health diminished dramatically.
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.
So what was that pursuit of getting out of prison that that pursuit of innocence?
What road did that take you as far as studying law and all these other areas?
That was the that was the thing that that that pushed me to really fight.
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.
Once I got that life sentence, I went back to school, graduated, took a couple of college courses.
I just began to start writing different organizations.
I definitely was a writing fool because I wrote every organization there was out there.
I wrote Barry Shaq, his organization, only to be told that it was out of jurisdiction.
I wrote some place in New York. They told me it was out of their jurisdiction.
I wrote Northern Innocence Project that had just started.
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.
And was it Justin Brooks that you spoke to initially or was it other members of the team?
Well, I didn't actually speak to Justin Brooke. I wrote a letter.
They wrote me back. I can still remember like it was yesterday when I received that letter.
I ran around the yard and I was telling everybody, look, look, look. And that's when my hope just really started growing.
It's like I got a letter from Cal because it was hard to get in California Innocence Project.
You had to really be innocent like you had to really be, you know, innocent.
So they told me, we got your letter. Actually, let me go back. I wrote them three times and they denied me three times.
That was the third time. And they told me, didn't we tell you no to the.
I said, yeah, you did. I was going to keep writing. They can tell me no every time. I was going to keep writing.
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.
But I even wrote people in the newspaper like what are they calling me? Investigative journalists.
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.
They accepted my case. And in the letter, it said. We're not accepting your case.
Even though I told everybody they were accepting my case, we're not accepting your case, but we will we will look into it.
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.
So, you know, you can imagine the joy I had.
I even put that letter on my wall, left the letter on my wall every day.
I would get up and read that letter and from there on, that's when things started rolling.
That was in like two thousand and three.
Brilliant. So that point, you have been in prison for.
Let me see that five years. Is that right? Yes. OK.
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.
I mean, you're going to probably die in prison at that age.
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.
Well, definitely I had to talk to myself every day, had to pretty much tell myself that and trick my mind to believe in.
I was going to get out tomorrow or I was going to get out next week or next month.
But it was a constant just talking to myself, get myself mentally strong so I can just handle anything that was coming my way.
And I knew a lot was going to come my way, was going to come my way.
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.
I'm going to get out the week after next. However it happened, I just knew that I was going to get out.
I knew I had to tell myself that.
I also knew I had to keep my nose clean because there was a lot going on around me watching people get stabbed,
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.
But me not being as active as I was in the gang, I was still known to be from that neighborhood.
So I had to really walk a thin line. So I had to pick sides.
Hey, I'm going to be in a law library or I'm going to be hanging out with gang members.
So I chose to be in a law library every day and learn about my case.
So walk me through the kind of evolution of the preparation to appeal your case.
So I remember I had a couple of what we call yard lawyers telling me, hey, we've got to file this.
You're going to file this. You need to file that.
I just, I just, and actually we filed a couple of things and got denied.
But once the Innocent Project took over, California Innocent Project took over my case, again, the hope was there.
And I had to just, you know, just kind of wait, kick back and wait and let them do their thing.
Well, four or five years passed and I hadn't heard nothing really.
I mean, I would call, check and all that. Well, nothing yet.
We're still investigating. And, you know, again, that time passed.
Nothing happened. So I'm getting a little discouraged.
But I end up transferring to another prison.
And when I transferred to that prison, I was there maybe a year or two.
And I was talking to the Innocent Project.
They assigned Alyssa Burekul to my case at that time.
And, you know, she said nothing new. You know, we're going to investigate the case.
Nothing new. Well, I ended up meeting a guy by the name of Jock.
And he was from another neighborhood. And we were talking and, you know, that we end up becoming close,
even though we were from different neighborhoods that really didn't get along.
We end up talking and, you know, becoming real cool.
Another friend that grew up in my neighborhood ended up coming up there.
His name was Rory Dungey. And he's like, man, I heard about your case, man.
I can't believe you're in jail for that case.
He said, I was up there with the dude who did it. And he told me the dude's name.
And I was like, wow, for real? It's like, yeah. I said, man, I'm telling my lawyer about him.
So I end up telling my lawyer. She said, yeah, we already know about, you know, Harold Bailey.
And we didn't know about Jason Stewart. We didn't know about him.
So I know I'm rambling on and on. This is how it went.
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.
You know, the person who did it. And she was like, yeah, we already know about Harold Bailey.
He was already a suspect in the case. Well, a lot of that I didn't know about.
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
because he was named after the actual guy who did it.
So I may be forgetting a little place because this happened many, many years ago.
So I end up telling my buddy, Jack, who's from Compton, he's like Jason Stewart.
He's like, man, they call him Wimp. And I said, yeah, that's what he told me.
He said, man, he on the other yard. He's right next door. And I'm like, what?
And so I said, man, I need to talk to him. So he set up a meeting.
I went and talked to him in the kitchen and he told me all about the case.
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.
So I wasn't tripping. And that's how that's how I started from there.
How did that conversation go?
Because he didn't know, you know, who who was doing time for that particular conviction.
But now the person is standing right in front of him.
It was a it was an awkward it was an awkward conversation.
He's telling me about the whole crime.
He was like, oh, you talking about the one with Harold Bailey and Bernard Timmer?
I was like, yeah, man, that case right there.
And he's given me all everything I heard in trial. He's telling me.
So it was like I was reliving trial again.
And he was like, man, you know, I'm not going to tell on nobody else, but I'll tell my part.
That's what he said. So his buddy was like, yeah, man, you got to do that.
You got to, you know, talk to his lawyers and tell them what happened.
You know, and in jail, you couldn't tell on nobody because that would be like snitching in jail.
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.
I was like, no, don't talk to nobody. You just talk to my lawyer.
So my lawyer ended up coming down. They talked to him.
He gave him my affidavit. They thought originally like, oh, what kind of plotting plan he got going on?
You know, I was like, hey, this is all facts. You can talk to the guy.
He's over there on the yard next to us. They can pull him out, talk to him.
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.
So they end up getting in contact with Harold Bailey and Bernard Timmer. Bernard Timmer was still in jail.
He went to trial with me originally.
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.
He kept sticking to the story he didn't know about the case and all this.
So they talked to Harold Bailey. Harold Bailey told him everything, told him his part.
They must think I'm him, you know, because we're both dark skinned and we're both from the same neighborhood.
And so once they took that information, the affidavit from just Jason Stewart and Harold Bailey and took it to Timmer,
that's when he confessed and was like, yeah, it was us three and blah, blah, blah. That's how it started.
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.
You were in there for a long time, so you had a pretty powerful lens.
When you look at the way some other countries do prison, like Norway, for example,
that particular example, they're living in a housing community. It's on an island, so they're not free. They're incarcerated.
But they live together. They cook. They clean. They go to work. They go to school.
And the whole philosophy is one day they're going to move back into your neighborhood.
You want that person to be a functioning member of society again, you know, contributing to society.
With your experience, not loading the question, was the prison that you experienced set up for rehabilitation?
Or did you find that people ultimately might be worse when they walk out the back door?
Definitely not for rehabilitation.
They had all the glimmer and the stars and all that stuff to look like it was.
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.
You know, I remember sitting there waiting to play next on the handball court.
We used to play a lot of handball and there was another guy sitting maybe two feet away from me.
And next thing I know what to do, walk up to him and cut his throat.
And if I was any closer, the blood would have got on me. That's how close it was.
Yeah, so I've seen a lot of violence, like violence, real violence, stabbings, fightings, people jumping on people, homosexuality.
I've seen a lot in there. And it was enough for anybody to get out of prison and have PTSD.
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.
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.
And what about access to drugs? You hear a lot of the addiction programs actually shut down because of budgeting the last few years.
So how easy was it to access drugs within the prison system?
There was more drugs in prison than there is on the street.
I mean, you can get anything you wanted in there from heroin to cocaine to speed to whatever.
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.
Yeah, I think these are just important perspectives. And I feel bad also for the people in corrections.
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.
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.
What was it that caused this person to join a gang, to sell drugs, whatever it is?
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?
And it doesn't help when you get out and you turn down a job because the fact you have been in prison.
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.
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.
People looked at them as, you know, lower than the lowest. There was a lot of judgment.
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.
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.
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.
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.
They took the money from the war on drugs and they put it into creating addiction counseling, mental health counseling, job creation, housing.
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.
Most of them went back to work and started paying taxes and were, you know, were contributing to society.
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.
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.
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.
But having proactive, you know, solutions within prisons, education and work skills and all these other areas, that's where the focus should be.
But if you I mean, I think it's funny when COVID happened, people were complaining.
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.
Exactly. Because it builds nothing but frustration and anger.
I mean, to be locked up and be told what you and I'm not saying that nothing should happen to a criminal.
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.
And, you know, hopefully you'll get out and you'll be a citizen.
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.
You know, you have all these different attitudes, personalities, and you're telling everybody to get along.
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.
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.
No, no, that's not going to work. So you're definitely right about that.
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.
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.
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.
So we figured it out with parenting, but we're not applying the same thing with our adults.
That's right. So I don't know again.
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.
So, you know, it it was nothing to cry about. It was nothing to be upset about it.
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.
You know, you got a person that is telling you, hey, I wasn't in California when this crime happened.
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.
That's frustrating within itself. So now I have to deal with the mentality of these people just don't care.
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.
You know, so thank you. Thank you. Thankful to my mother and father.
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.
So you meet and you said, was it Wim is that what I heard you say?
Yeah, that's what they call it. Was that an ironic name? Was he actually really tough or he I guess he was.
OK, I never got a chance to really, you know, meet him like that. Mine was strictly a get me out of here.
Tell him what you did. Get me out of here. You know, so but from hearing around, yeah, he was a pretty tough guy.
OK, so it's an ironic game name then. Right. Right. All right.
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,
ownership of the crime, walk me through then, you know, the I'm assuming you're thinking,
OK, well, this is it. All the pieces are here. I'm going to be walking out soon.
But I know it didn't pan out that way. So talk to me about the next few years.
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.
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.
She said, oh, no, that's nothing. You know, you still may not come home.
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,
what else do I mean, what else can I do? It's nothing else I can do.
And so they went and talked to Harold Bailey. He gave him his side of the story, his affidavit, took it to Bernard Timmer.
He gave his side. He finally confessed to it.
So now they have all three affidavits from the from the perpetrators who did it, took it to the DA.
DA was like, hey, whatever, you know, you have to go through the protocol.
So they filed a writ of habeas corpus. We end up getting a hearing.
So we're now going back down to court to have this hearing, evidentiary hearing.
Get there. The judge who originally was on my case retired.
He came back from retirement just to hear this case.
Of course, he denied it. He didn't want to hear nothing. He denied the case.
That was it. Went back heartbroken. Hope crushed.
So my lawyers kept saying, hey, it's not over yet. Don't worry about it. We're going to keep pushing.
We'll keep pushing. So they filed another writ of habeas corpus.
At this time, we had a new judge. We was appointed a new judge.
Went back to court. This judge seemed like he was fair. He was going to listen.
We put on our case. Everybody testified. I testified.
We had specialists come in and explain the lineup and how it was done and how unfair and suggestive it was.
I mean, we had all these things. So the judge in this case, you can see he was listening.
He was he was really listening. And he had.
I don't know. Everybody in the courtroom just seemed to be looking at me differently
after hearing all this evidence, even the the DA was looking at me different.
She was talking. It was a different day from the day that was in my original trial.
But not that it was the same day in my first evidentiary hearing.
This is now the second evidentiary hearing.
Even the detective came and apologized to me and said, I hope you get out.
Well, nevertheless, we were denied again.
We were denied again. So I remember going back like just just through just I knew it was over.
I was tired. So we end up the judge made a statement at the end.
He said, well, he could be, in fact, innocent, but it doesn't reach the standards of actual innocence.
And so he denied it on that. So we went back and they filed in
in the appellate court where we was granted a hearing in appellate court.
And that's when they overturned my case and gave the DA 90 days to retry me or let me go.
When you're getting denied before, had this been the initial case with all this information presented,
there's no way it would have been that the whole jury would have agreed on on the the guilty verdict.
So what is it that you have?
Why are you having to fulfill such a different criteria when it when it was the original case with everything that was presented?
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.
Correct. Well, even in the first original trial, I had a hung jury.
So the judge sent them back in, the same judge sent them back in and told them to come with a verdict.
And that's when they came with the guilty verdict.
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.
But the reason why I guess the judge denied it because actual innocence to prove is, you know, a standard is set so high.
You have to you have to meet that standard in order to actually get your case overturned.
And for the judge, I didn't meet that standard.
What about the level of desperation?
I can only I mean, I can't even imagine what it must be like to have this glimmer of hope.
Get there, get this new piece of evidence, this confession, think this is it and then get your legs cut from under you.
Did you ever get to a level of desperation, even consider, you know, self harm or taking your own life?
Definitely. It was it was after getting denied the second time I was.
I was just down, depressed, just really going through it, really going through it.
I wouldn't come out myself. I was dealing with a lot.
I'm just talking to my father every day on the phone.
And he's constantly trying to, you know, pick me up and telling me hope is not lost.
You know, we got this far, we'll get further.
And, you know, just keep praying.
And, you know, my father was he was a strong man and he was a good man.
So he taught me all of that.
He instilled a lot of values that I didn't practice, but he had already instilled them in me.
So, you know, I took what he said and I just I just acted on it.
I started praying more. I started even started studying even more in law.
My lawyers end up filing to the appellate court again.
And we was granted a hearing in the appellate court this time.
They say, hey, we're tired of this superior court stuff.
So they brought him to the appellate court, had the hearing at the appellate court and appellate court drilled the D.A.
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.
After that, we end up waiting because the Supreme Court stepped in, the California Supreme Court stepped in and wanted to investigate the case.
That took another six months.
And they said, well, we're going to leave the case like it is.
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.
You guys made a mistake. Hey, you don't have to apologize.
But let me live my life. Let me go on with my life.
We get down there and I just got crushed by the judge.
The judge told me I was a menace. I was I was that this is going on 19 years.
And told me I was a menace, couldn't produce anything I'd done wrong in jail.
No one 15, no violence, no education.
I had a diploma. I had college. I had a couple of certificates from business college.
I had I had all kind of positive stuff in my file.
And she still crushed me and told me you're a menace.
We're going to set your bill at a million.
And my lawyers just couldn't figure out why.
Why was she going so hard on me?
And and it wasn't even the judge that was supposed to hear my case.
It was a substitute judge. And so that was it.
They set my bill at a million dollars, set another court date hearing.
And Justin and Alyssa came to see me that night.
And they said, well, listen, we we talked to the.
Excuse me. She said, we talked to the D.A.
And they're offering a deal and the deal is.
Plead guilty.
And the case will be over. You can go home today, but it is entirely up to you.
We are willing to take this case all the way, all the way.
We're willing to take this case all the way.
So, you know, it is entirely up to you.
And I remember telling Justin, I just don't want to let you guys down.
You guys fought so hard and I don't I don't want to let you guys down.
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.
And and I just went on to the deal.
It was a Wesley Carter Wesley.
And that's what happened. That's how I ended up getting out of prison.
They never wanted to say, hey, we did wrong. We know we did wrong.
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.
You know, so that's how that happened.
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
that resisted over and over again, them simply saying we had the wrong person and overturning it, creating an innocence verdict?
It was all about climbing up the corporate ladder. It was for the D.A.
It was no no losing mentality.
We're not going to lose this case. And and that's what happens.
I mean, I watched this case.
Well, of course, I watched it. I was in this case from the very beginning.
And to hear the D.A. tell me she know I didn't do it, but I'm good for it.
I knew then that this was going to be a tough fight.
You know, it was all about not losing.
They didn't care about innocence.
They didn't care about, you know, who did it.
Only thing they cared about was winning.
And they continue to to fight this case as if they didn't know I was innocent.
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.
You know, but nobody stood up to say this guy didn't do this.
You know, everybody would seem like they were scared to say stuff.
They didn't want the D.A.'s office to say nothing.
It was just it was it was it was chaos from the beginning.
And they knew it. Well, as we sit here now recording, I think it was two days ago now.
The Innocence Project was fighting for a man on death row and he was executed.
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.
I mean, it just this is an issue that needs to be pulled out in the forefront.
And we see this this cowardice and the self-serving even in the fire service.
I mean, just smaller things like firefighter health, opposing fitness standards, opposing making a workweek that's healthy for first responders.
It sounds trivial compared to what we've talked about, but this contributes to a lot of deaths in my profession.
And I see such cowardice as far as approaching that.
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.
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.
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.
They want her to say, I don't know what they had on her or what the problem was.
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.
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.
I've come home, got my life together. So, you know, it's it's it is what it is.
Well, you were in there for almost two decades.
Obviously, that's a lot of time spent away from your children.
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.
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.
Talk to me about getting out and then the small amount of time that you got to spend with them.
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.
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.
And I remember calling him and I said, hey, dad, first, I called my daughter and let her know I was home.
And it was all just crazy.
And then I called my dad. I said, hey, I'm on my way home.
You know, I want to surprise mom and let her know, but I don't want to give her a heart attack.
So prep her and get her ready. So I remember my dad, man, he just can't hold water.
As soon as I pull in the driveway, I see my uncle running in. I see my sisters running in. I see everybody.
I said, dad, you weren't supposed to tell nobody.
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.
And it was just it was it was it was joyful. And that's a day I'll never forget.
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.
And I see myself just not hanging out, but being around certain people that I was hanging around with before I went in.
So I didn't even want that life no more. I was completely done with that. So I had ended up moving to Texas.
I moved there two years after I got out, moved to Texas, got a job out here, which is where I'm at now.
Got a job out here. Actually, I had two jobs out here and that is where I've been ever since.
My father just passed about a month ago and I was just glad to be here for this bit.
The little time I had with him since I've been on.
Well, I think this again, this is important for people to understand when this happens, especially within an innocent conviction like this,
that it's not just the person spent time in a prison or a jail, but they're taken from their family.
And there's a lot of people that their loved ones die while they're still in prison.
And by the time they get out, the family they adored aren't even there anymore.
And people think once you out, everything is done with the D.A. can say, hey, at least we let him out.
Everything goes back to normal. No, everything doesn't go back to normal.
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.
I'm reliving all this all over again.
There's a psyche in me that's that's that's just getting crushed every time I talk about it.
But I know it's something that needs to be done. It's something that has to be done.
But nevertheless, it's still I mean, every time I talk about it, I'm reliving this.
I mean, it was a nightmare. It's not something that was pleasant.
It's not something I want to keep talking about, but it's something that has to continue to be talked about.
And that's why I'm here. And I will continue talking about it no matter what it does to me.
I want to make sure I educate everybody on, you know, wrongful convictions and misidentification, how the system works.
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.
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.
My girlfriend has to, you know, rock me back to sleep.
She has to she has to talk to me and mellow me out because I'm going through it all over again.
So, yeah, people don't understand that that part of they think is just it's over with.
And that's it. You're going your merry way. And that's it. But that's not it. That's not it.
What about the mental health side? I mean, as you mentioned, 19 years wrongfully convicted in a very violent prison.
How have you been able to process have been any tools that you found that have helped?
Compartmentalize, just say, hey, you know, just put it away. It's not going to, you know, hey, that nothing happened.
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.
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.
I'm here to talk about it only because I want to educate people on what's going on. That's it.
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.
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.
And I know they say this therapeutic or whatever. I just I just rather deal with it my own way.
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.
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.
So the very things that were still are illegal are now helping the very men and women that fought for this country.
But they have to go overseas to get it. But the psilocybin and ketamine and MDMA, you know, is now healing.
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.
Literally the police officers that were arresting them in cops.
That's right. That's right. It's just I mean, I can't stress enough the pain and anger I have.
For not the system, but just for this particular case, because I watched how they manipulated, how they call my mom a lie.
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.
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.
She's not going to do any that she's going to let you know you're wrong.
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.
I mean, to say all those things to them and not even know them was just crazy all to win a case, you know.
So, yeah, I'm not mad at the system because the system is what it is, but it can be better.
I'm more mad at what happened at that trial and how they presented themselves.
So, you know, all that work for the people. I see nothing for the people they done.
You know, so now you got the two people that still out there, but you convict the person that didn't do it.
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.
So the two people who actually did the key, I mean, who did the crime, you actually let go.
So how did that help the people? Absolutely. And the same with Greg Kelly's case.
And like I said, a woman was raped because the wrong person was convicted of that.
The difference was he got an innocence verdict when it was overturned and therefore ultimately was able to get a lawsuit.
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.
Well, let me say this before I get to that.
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.
Now, had he been in jail for the crime I did, that wouldn't have happened.
But I'm getting to the compensation because I took the West plea.
I wasn't eligible to sue the state of California or the prison.
See, that's horrendous. So talk to me then about, you know, you walk out, you've got your freedom.
You have this amazing all night party with your family.
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?
Talk to me about the barriers, because again, you've you've you've pled guilty on something that you never, ever did.
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?
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.
They continue fighting for us. They continue being there for us mentally and physically.
They invited us to a lot of private events, their families.
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.
And they told me that I had a prior conviction, which is what I got out of prison for.
And but I explained to them what happened.
And I said, OK, well, do you have any paperwork or whatever?
And I remember calling Lissa and she said, oh, yeah, don't worry about it.
She faxed them over so much paperwork. And they was like, oh, wow.
Not only did they give me the job, but they were like, I'm so sorry.
What happened to you? You know, I really apologize for the system.
And, you know, it was like that on a couple of jobs, not just that job, but on a couple of jobs.
The list that would give them all the paperwork, I mean, step took them step by step. What happened?
She even sent them videos of when I got out of prison.
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.
I was working 12 to 15 hour shifts. Then I ended up getting another job.
So I had two jobs at that time. And again, I started, you know, seeing the same people.
It's like I'm not even taking that chance again. Moved out to Texas.
Me and my girlfriend moved to Texas and I had two jobs. She had two jobs.
And if the same thing applied, had to call Alyssa, she had to send them paperwork.
And I ended up getting the job. I stayed at that job for like four years, five years.
Then I end up investing into a bike shop, which was a Harley-Davidson shop where we customize bikes, fix them up.
And I end up opening that up, open that shop up, made some pretty decent money.
And then I end up buying box trucks. And that's what I currently do now on box trucks.
Beautiful. Well, I just want to be mindful of your time.
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?
Maybe the law enforcement officers listening, how we can prevent this happening?
Anything that you want to address to the audience before we round this up?
Definitely. It all starts with us. It starts with the citizens.
I mean, we elect, we're the one in charge of convicting and not convicting.
We can't listen to what the prosecutor always says and the police department says. We have to investigate with our own intelligence.
We have to be able to see what's really going on. We can't just take their word for it.
And everybody have, the society have this thing is, well, if he went to jail, he must have did it. No, no.
If that's the case, then we're going to continue having wrongful convictions.
We can't live by that standard anymore. We can't say, we have a different type of police station.
I mean, police force. We have a different kind of DAs. Not all bad, but there are some that's bad.
So we can no longer just take their word and say if they went to prison, then they must have did something wrong.
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.
So with that, that's all I really have to say. Let's just be accountable for our own actions.
And I think the system would be a whole lot better.
So for people listening, if they want to reach out to you or learn more, where are the best places online?
They can reach me on my email, miles2milestruckin.gmail.com, or they can reach me on Facebook, GuyMiles4.
That's our Instagram. And you will see the title, Breaking the Chain of What is My...
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.
I'm still learning. She has to do everything because I don't know how to do this stuff.
You're not missing that much. I promise you. I just use it to promote the show. That's it.
Okay. It's called Breaking the Chain of Mentioned Slavery. Yes, Guy Miles. You could just look up Guy Miles.
You'll see a blue motorcycle. And that's my Instagram. Beautiful.
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.
There is, as you said, so much value to sharing, especially, you know, on a recording where hopefully thousands of people will hear this.
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.
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.
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.
That's my goal.