Hey, humans. How's it going? Susan Ruth here. Thanks for listening to another episode of Hey, Human podcast. This is episode 427, and my guest is doctor Angela Myers. Angela is a prominent expert in polymathy studies, and polymath is a person with wide ranging knowledge and or studies. She's worked in the White House under the Bush and Obama presidencies, and she has a show on YouTube called Polymath's Place. I've been on her show. There's a link for that on my susanruth.com.
Her work brought her to research polymaths in prison, and after interviewing the incarcerated, one in particular stood out. And now she has taken up another cause, fighting to free a man whose harsh sentencing as a teen has seen him spend decades behind bars. She's the founder of Help Free Shawn Rodriguez and also the Prison Transparency Project. Really interesting conversation. We have gotten together 3 times to interview,
and there were glitches every single time. So fingers are crossed that everything worked out. General stuff. My film, the first, will be showing in various film festivals coming up. I just got back from one in Louisville where it won 3 awards, including best fantasy and best costuming. That's to add to my trompe l'oeil award that I got in Portland. Coming up, there is the Midnight West Fest in Cheyenne, Wyoming, which takes place over October 4th 5th, and tickets are through their Facebook page.
Scream Fest in Los Angeles, California, this festival runs from October 8th through 17th, and my film block is on Sunday, October 13th at 8:45. It's at the famous Chinese theater in Hollywood. You can get tickets at screamfestla.com. The nightmares film festival in Columbus, Ohio is October 17th through 20th. My film block is Friday, October 18th at 10 PM. Tickets are available at nightmares fest.com. Make sure to stick that s in there. And the Rehoboth Beach International Film Festival in
Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. I'm still hoping I'm saying that right. November 6th through 10th. Tickets are available at rehobothfilm.com. That's rehoboth film.com. And I'll put links to all of that on my susanruth.com and post on Facebook. Still applying to festivals all over the place. I'll keep you updated. Susanruth.com, again, is a good place to keep up to date with that. Or if you're on Patreon are you on Patreon? Help keep, hey, human ad free. Yeah. Be a Patreon of Susan Ruth.
It's under Susan Ruthism, s u s r u t wait. How do I spell my name? S u s a n r u t h I s m. Go check that out. I'm on YouTube under official Susan Ruth. TikTok, it's susanruthism. Check out heyhumanpodcast.com for links and to learn more about my guests and the show. Check out susanruth.com, as I mentioned, to learn more about me and my other artistic endeavors, and follow Susan Ruthism on social media. That's basically the the name I use. So if you are poking around on a social media,
that's probably gonna find me. And find my music on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, wherever you get your music under Susan Ruth. Rate, review, and subscribe to Hey Human podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for listening. Be well. Be kind. Be love. Here we go. Angela Myers, welcome to Hey Human. Thank you very much for having me. It's nice to see you. I wanna start with where you grew up. Yes. I grew up in the San Francisco
East Bay Area. I was born in Berkeley and grew up about 10 miles from there. Did you go to school there? I didn't go to college at UC Berkeley. I went to the University of Southern California in Los Angeles for undergrad and for my master's degree. Which was in? Undergrad, I double majored in psychology and communication, and then I got a master's degree in a field called communication management. I also have a doctorate from George Washington University too. Oh, is that all?
And the doctorate is in it's an education degree. The exact, title is human and organizational learning. So you can see from my background, I just really people focused psychology, communication, education. Like, I I just love people, and so all my degrees were people oriented. Were you like that as a kid? Yeah. I think so. I was always, like, someone who liked to engage and talk and, yeah, I just always liked people. It was just innate in me.
Mhmm. Yeah. And did you self study for a lot of things before you entered the world of higher learning? Did you were you one of those people, voracious readers and Yeah. Yeah. My I was raised by my grandparents and my dad. And my grandmother, who I was the closest with, was a voracious reader. She read about a book a day. Mhmm. And so growing up, we had many, many, many hundreds of trips to the bookstore, and she would always let me get any
books I wanted. So I grew up being a reader, and I just self directed my own learning for a long time, and that started pretty early for me. That was the best, to be able to get any book you want. No restrictions. Oh, my gosh. What a dream. Yeah. She was very generous in that way. And, you know, some of those books totally changed my life too. Like, there was one book I got this is pre Internet, mind you. I was born in 1981. So I think sometime in the early nineties,
we were at a bookstore. I remember the exact bookstore in El Sobrante, California. And there was a section called, like, career or college or something like that. And they had these massive books. Imagine, like, a book that's about 8 inches thick. It was a directory. I got this directory of internships. And I took it home. I remember being about 12 and just, like, flipping through the all these listings of internships in the world, and I came across one that said White House.
And I was it blew my mind that, like, the White House accepted lowly interns. This was all pre Monica Lewinsky and stuff, so I did Yeah. So that one book totally changed how my life turned out. I made my goal to be a White House intern when I was 12. And then when I was in my master's degree program and I was 24, half a lifetime later at that point, I applied and I got in. And that totally changed the trajectory of how my life turned out. And what did you
do at the White House? Well, I was an intern in the White House Fellows Office in the summer of 2,005. George Bush was president at the time. And I had a great experience. I got to rub elbows with a couple of people who later became governors and CEOs and big wigs, those White House Fellows really. You know, I mean, they're they're chosen because of their future promise, and a lot of them who I became friends with turned out to be, you know, movers and shakers in the world
for sure. But I had to go back to Los Angeles to finish my master's degree after that White House internship, and I loved DC. So when I finished that master's degree, I didn't really wanna go back home to the Bay Area. So I pretty much just got in my car and drove to Washington DC, and I was in town looking for a job. I just naturally was drawn back to the
White House Fellows office. I had had a really good rapport with Janet Eisenstadt, who was the director of the White House Fellows Program at the time. And I I was like, hey, I moved here. I live here. I'm looking for a job. Here's my resume. And she really did like me. Like, we're still, in periodic touch. She lives in the area. And, yeah, she did forward my resume around, and that led to me being hired at the executive office of the president as a non political career
civil servant. So I was there regardless of who was president, which was great. So I was there for the historic transition to Obama, all of his first term, a bit of his second term. It was such a cool gig. I loved it. But my real passion was learning and self improvement. I worked in the finance office there. Like, a lot of people don't know too that at the executive office the president, it's not just like the White House and
a few people in the West Wing. Like, there's about 3,000 people who work at the White House complex, if you include all the Secret Service and everything. And, I mean, it's a it's a big complex, and it's a big, you know, effort, including people who who stay no matter who's president. So people in finance, HR, IT, like, you gotta keep the office itself running. So I was one of those employees at the office of the president. I got so many
cool experiences. I met presidents and went to cool events, and I'm always super grateful when I think back on my time at the executive office of the president. But my real passion wasn't finance. It was self improvement, learning, growth, evolution.
So after almost 6 years working at the executive office of the president, I ended up moving over to a place called the Center For Leadership Development, and I managed training programs for learners from across the federal government almost for a decade. And while I was there, that's when I got my doctorate in human and organizational learning as well. What was something that surprised you as you spent that time at the White House about
how it functions? Part of what I didn't realize until I worked there was just how big it was. I mean, the executive office of the president has, I think it's, like, 10 or 12 what they called or they still call, I'm sure, components.
So within the executive office of the president, there's the White House, there's the office of the vice president, There's the office of administration, where I worked, the office of management and budget, the council of economic advisors, the office of national drug control policy, and on and on and on. Like, the it's not just the White House. And I guess that was the thing I really learned when I got hired there is, like, it's not just a few people in the West Wing. Like, it's a whole system.
And I was honored. I was really honored to be a part of that. Add you the opportunity to get to walk into the Oval Office. I've heard that that is breathtaking. Yeah. I've I've been in the Oval Office a lot of times, because one of the perks of working there was that I got to take friends and family on West Wing tours. Like, as an employee, I was able you know, and and there's especially under the Obama administration, they really encouraged staff to, like, take friends
and family to see the Oval Office. And it was in evening hours and weekends. Like, it wasn't during work hours. But, yeah, I've seen the Oval Office many times. I've had lunch in the West Wing. I've rubbed elbows with big wigs periodically over there. And it was just a magical life changing experience. Is there a gravitas to it when you walk into a room like that with all the history? Yeah. There's an energy there. You feel I mean, even, like, the physical structures
were impressive. And then some of them were also rinky dinky too. Like, the West Wing itself, you know, it sort of got built over time. So the main part of the White House is like big and stately and presidential. And the West Wing, like the Oval Office is very stately and presidential, but there's also like rinky dinky little offices and, like, rinky dinky little hallways. And, you know, there's in the the a lot of people don't know the press briefing room
used to be an indoor swimming pool. So the press briefing room is built over what the the pool is still there. It's just they covered it up. So, yeah, I learned lots of cool little things about the history of that that building, and the office of administration included people who worked in facilities. So I my colleagues helped maintain the facilities of the West Wing. So I got to see, like, insider stuff from my buddies who worked in facilities, and it was
just yeah. I got such an insider view of the presidency, which was such a cool way to start my career. Your description of the various rooms reminds me of that TikTok that says, look, a strawberry. Look, a strawberry. A strawberry. Where it just gets progressively the dog gets more and more, hilariously. How did you start dipping your toe in the realm of polymathy? I don't even know if that's a word, but I'm gonna say it anyway. Polymathy. I haven't heard that one. I love it. Good.
So for anyone who's listening, I let me just explain maybe what what polymathy is, and and I'll tell you how I got into it too. So polymathy means many learnings. It's being a Renaissance person, multi capable. Lifelong life life wide learning. And the reason I got into it is because when I was in my thirties, I
decided to get my doctorate in education. At that point, I had worked in the field of adult education in the federal government, and I wanted to have that union card, that degree, that piece of paper that told me I was super legit, you know? So I I decided to get a doctorate in education. The professors told us, pick something you're really passionate about for your doctoral dissertation topic. It's
not easy to complete a doctoral degree. I mean, you have to do research, you have to write a book, and there are a lot of people who become what they call ABD, all but dissertation, which is heartbreaking because you go through all the classes, the comprehensive exams, and then, like, to not get the degree is heartbreaking. So I really took their advice seriously. Like, I better pick something I care about because I really must finish this.
And when I thought about what I cared about, what I was curious about, what I wanna be in my life, what I wanna understand, I I didn't know what it was called at the time. I thought it was, like, being a Renaissance woman. I thought maybe I could conceptualize it by calling it intrapersonal diversity, like, being diverse within your own personhood. And then eventually, I came across this very ancient and precise word called polymath.
You know, polymath means many learnings. It was a word that was formed in ancient Greece. It's been around for a long time. Modern people don't really know that word, but it is a thing, even for modern living people. It's not just just for dead geniuses from history like Leonardo da Vinci or Benjamin Franklin or, like, the people that we typically have thought of as being polymaths.
Like, modern people can be polymathic, and all of us can choose to lean into that capacity for lifelong and life wide learning. And it comes with a whole host of being alive. It's associated with authenticity and bravery. And, you know, when you have lots of tools in your toolkit and you're dealing with issues, you can often
innovate at the intersection of multiple disciplines. You can do analogical thinking and take tools that work over here and apply them in a new way, and that's really how we get to innovation nowadays, which our world really needs. Like, in order to solve problems, we've gotta learn our way to them. And polymathy is a way of thinking about how we take in all the information, many learnings, rather than putting on the blinders of specialization, which has been the dominant narrative
for my whole life, pretty much. We've lived in an age where the dominant narrative said, pick your one thing and be excellent at that. Get in the cage of specialization. Get in your swim lane. Get in that silo. And I just always felt like, why would I wanna do that with my life? No. I'm not I I refuse. My brain never was such that it could just do one thing. I was always drawn
to something else. And those are the kinds of people I find most fascinating too, the the curious that that walk through all the different fields. Yeah. Exactly. To me, it's the natural way of being. Throughout most of human history, we were, you know, versatile and adaptive. Like, that that was part of what made you more likely to survive, was being multi capable and having safety nets in your multi capacities.
But in the age of specialization, Ford's assembly line and efficiency, and even as back as the Victorian era, we just as what we knew as knowledge grew and grew, humanity's response to that was, well, let's slice and dice it up. Mhmm. But there were unintended consequences of that. If everyone's wearing blinders, well, then who's really seeing the whole system and understanding the interdependencies?
And I really think a lot of the reason we have a meta crisis today is because of the age of specialization, because everyone was thinking about their own little industry and not really considering the unintended consequences of what they were doing professionally or otherwise.
And so now now I think there's a resurgence of wanting to go back to our full, versatile selves because we see that the narrow mindedness and the myopic viewpoints, and if everyone's specialized or even hyper specialized, it kind of makes us dumb in some ways as well. It makes us really smart in one thing and really dumb in a whole bunch of others. Or certainly ignorant. Ignorant. Ignorant is a better way of thinking of
it. Yeah. While you were working on your dissertation, it's my understanding that the professor came to you, or maybe you had it the epiphany on your own that you were studying elite polymaths and realized that there are polymaths in other areas of humanity that don't get talked about or aren't investigated. Talk about that research. Yeah. So when I was working on the dissertation, of course, I was I was under the guidance of a committee and a committee chair.
And, of course, when you're studying a phenomenon, especially at the doctoral level, you wanna find the strongest examples of that phenomenon so you can really understand the essence of it. So I was encouraged for my research to find, like, the most strong, capable, modern polymath, not celebrity level, but, like, real movers and shakers, people who had written books and given TED Talks and started companies and, like, across multiple industries had made contributions.
So it was really cool to hear from them. But then at my dissertation defense, one of my committee members said, you know, well, what about, like, the mechanic who gardens who knows how to change, you know, tile in the bathroom and change their oil? Like, what about those versions of polymathic intelligence? I sort of felt like my work was elitist, and, you know, he was right. Like, my dissertation was looking at highly accomplished elite polymaths
and not the everyday versions of it. So I walked away from my defense feeling like I need to do work on the non elite, not fancy versions of how human polymathic intelligence can show up. So that was my goal. At that time, I didn't know how I would do it at first, but after reflecting on it, like, where's a non elite place where people are working on learning and self development, and maybe that has ties to creativity and
innovation? And, like, I as I wracked my brain, I realized, oh, that's prison. Prison's non elite. It's associated with creativity and innovation under duress, like the kinds of scrappy creative solutions people come up with when they don't have resources are notable in a in a prison context. And yeah. So I I decided at that time, I wanted to understand polymaths in prison and write a book on it. I write books. That's you know, I'm a writer. That's part of what I do. And I didn't know
where to start at first. I was like, well, I've never been in a prison. I don't know anybody in prison. So I did what modern people do, and you go to YouTube. You know? You go to Google. You see what you can find. And I came across a video on YouTube, it's still there, of I think it was filmed in 2016 or so of a prisoner doing tutorials from from a prison cell. And I was really impressed by the articulation, the skills.
This in this one video, for example, Sean Rodriguez, that was the guy in the video, had built a soldering iron. This is a tool that melts metal. He had made it handmade, an electronic tool by hand using random spare parts. And then he had also built a speaker box using cardboard, and I think speakers from old televisions or something, I'm not exactly sure.
He had made a speaker box, wired it, and then he was doing a tutorial of how he was soldering the wires so that he could amplify sound from his boom box television or cell or the cell phone that he had access to at that time. And by the way, it's not proper to have a cell phone in prison. As long as I've known Sean, he never has had it. I did find the videos that he had created from from the time when he did have access to a cell phone. And Well, and they get iPads.
They're what they're like iPads. Yes. Nowadays, prisoners have tablets that are given to them. Yes. Yeah. They're also doubled as as phones. Now that's a part of prison culture, but you have to get the ones that the prison gives you. You can't get the ones that the guards sell to you at a markup to make a bunch of money. If you if they find you with those, then
you get in trouble. Yeah. There's that cycle is so the guards selling you the the iPhone and then rating it, taking it back, and then selling it to you again. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. We talk about that on other shows. Yeah. Just to give insider you guys an insider understanding, prisoners who get caught with a cell phone in prison, it's a 5 year parole denial. And that cost taxpayers of California $132,000 per year.
So for having a cell phone, which is not a crime, it's just against the prison rules, taxpayers are spending multiple six figures to punish someone for having a cell phone that they got from a staff member. It's tricky. Right? Because some incarcerated individuals shouldn't have phones. They shouldn't because of the damage Isn't that good? They could still monitor, but anyway, that's a whole other topic we can talk about later. So you started so you reached out to
Sean, or how did you develop this? Yeah. Yeah. So the video that was on YouTube of him, like, doing the tutorial with the soldering iron and the speaker box had his inmate ID. And I didn't really know what I was doing, but I did a little bit of research, and I found out, oh, well, I can go to this website and look up him, his name by his prisoner ID or
his name. There was a way to send an electronic message to him at that time, and the way it worked is the prison would print it and give it to him. So I decided to send a message. I was a little bit nervous to reach out to someone in prison because I didn't know this dude. I I will say though, I did quite a bit of reading on Sean Rodriguez before reaching out to him through that electronic message. And I read about his case, and I could see right off the bat that he
was excessively sentenced. Like, he had participated in a robbery, but he was given a 25 to life sentence, and it just seemed like super overblown for what he had done as a 19 year old homeless. I didn't he wasn't a serial killer. That was my check. Like, is this gonna be someone I need to be afraid of? And my conclusion right off the bat was, like, okay, he was a troubled teen who wrong place, wrong time, some bad decisions, but that he was excessively sentenced and over punished
for what he had done. Then when I began talking to him, like, I just I could tell he was just a normal, smart, good person. Sean was the first one I talked to, and I didn't quite know what I was doing. Like, I was figuring out, like, how am I I was also figuring out how to be a a doctor, like, how to do research outside of a university on my own as an independent person. I didn't understand Chris. And so mostly what I was doing in the beginning was just trying to learn who is Sean.
That's a large part of what I've done in my research as a doctor is, like, understand people's lived experiences. Who are you? What have you gone through? So I sort of just extended the type of approach I had done in my doctoral work and just gotten to got to know Shawn as a person before I dove into, like, formal analysis and writing or anything like that. And over the years, I've gotten to know a lot of prisoners. I message on the tablet with prisoners all the time.
And then I eventually, I began going to visit, and I met lots of prison wives and prison moms and all all a bunch of system impacted people. And I got to understand America's prison system from the inside. Did you get a sense that many of the people you spoke with had, as children, they had had they been encouraged to explore their curiosity in a positive way, they would have been this I'm trying to say is it seems like many incarcerated persons are incredibly
bright. Not everyone, but many are incredibly bright who did not have a good focus for their energy and their curiosity and their active mind, and they got into trouble because of it, because they didn't have someone or or something shaping that brain. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what I've seen, just sort of off the cuff, I mean, I haven't, like, formally documented and counted, but the common trends I see amongst who's in prison, well, it's mostly male. It's mostly black men, which is really sad.
And, like, it's clearly an extension of slavery from from our horrible past. You find a lot of people who go to prison, I would say between 18 26, before their brains are even fully developed. You find people from poverty stricken backgrounds mostly, not educated, traumatized. A lot of them were born to young parents who weren't prepared to to raise kids in a a good effective way. A lot of them turned to gangs because daddy wasn't around. Generational trauma. Yeah. It is. It's a it's such
a generational trauma. And I didn't realize when I first began, like, how much, how bad, how widespread incarceration was in our country. Like, now I know that of the 195 countries on planet Earth, America has more prisoners than any of them. America has 25% of planet Earth's incarcerated, even though we're only about 5% of the population. Around 2,000,000 of us, almost 1% of our country is incarcerated. And it's big business.
I've learned so much. Like, I went I went into the prison world to study my doctoral subject in a prison setting to show that non elite people could be highly intelligent and creative and capable and, like, to understand human versatility in a non elite setting.
And that project totally got put on the back burner just indefinitely because there was this other story that needed to be told, which is that America mass incarcerates its citizens, excessively sentences them, forces them to work like slaves, and if they don't, they can stay in prison longer so that private industry and can profit, so that government can have kickbacks and job security. Like and mind you, when I was learning all of this, I myself worked for the federal government.
I went into government service because I wanted to use my life for good, and I thought government was the place you do that. And mind you, I worked in, you know, at the executive office of the president and at the office of personnel management, and especially at OPM, like, there there were frustrations I had with government, the bureaucracy, the slowness, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand's doing.
But when I began to understand the criminal justice system, there there's a section of our government that is actually malevolent, which is victimizing us. That I decided basically to tell the truth about it. So over the years, I I started the Help Free Sean Rodriguez campaign because I learned he had been partly wrongfully convicted. He was guilty of participating in a robbery. But in my view, America has had legalized wrongful convictions. Let me explain.
And this applies to Sean. This is why I fought so hard for Sean because he was legally wrongfully convicted of crimes he he's factually innocent of that he did not commit. It's important to note that in Sean's case as well that witnesses recanted. And in this country, an excessive sentence for some people have been retroactively they'll get released based on time served because of their constitutional rights being aggrieved
by extensive sentences. So I just sort of wanna give that a little bit of backing for the listeners. In California and many other states, there's a a legal philosophy. It wasn't passed by the legislature. It's just something that the courts began implementing through precedent. It's called the natural and probable consequences doctrine in California. It's called other things in some
other locations. But the natural and probable consequences doctrine said, if a group of 2 or more people participate in a felony crime, for example, robbery, that anything anyone does becomes a charge that everyone involved can get charged with and found guilty of even if they themselves did not do it. So there are many, many, many hundreds of thousands of people in America's prisons largely for murder crimes they did not do, which comes with very excessive
sentencing. Like, there are people with life who have life without parole sentences for a murder crime they did not commit themselves. But because they had agreed to a robbery, they're given the murder charge. And that was or still is largely in the United States. In California, it's not. But it was seen as an acceptable practice to give someone charges for a crime someone else did. Sean did not commit murder nor was
he around anyone that committed murder. I just wanna make that clear that sometimes these things get a little blurry as we're talking. And in the foster care system that when you hit 18, you age out, and you age out without any kind of care, meaning there's no job waiting for you, there's no money waiting for you, clearly there's no family
there to support you. They just sort of release these kids onto the street, and many, statistically speaking, many of these kids turn to crime in order to live and exist. Yeah. So Sean was a teenager released from the state's custody directly into homelessness. They they didn't even give him a jacket or a sleeping bag, and he had no family. He was an orphan. He had no money. And so he was just immediately homeless and cold and hungry with no resources.
Fast forward, he participated in a robbery with another homeless teenager. And she, in my view, was severely mentally ill, like, probably a psychopath. Like, just no empathy, no compassion, no concern for the rights or perspectives or lives of other human beings. And Sean was kind of afraid of her, to be honest. She was physically bigger than him. And how many years ago was this? This was in 2003. Okay. Placer County, California was the location as well. No it's a county just northeast of
Sacramento, the state capital. So, yeah, Sean was a homeless teen. He found another homeless teen. They were sort of surviving together. And she had a boyfriend, 39 years old, schizophrenic, and a known child molester. Also problematic. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And he was hanging out with teenagers. Yeah. And But, again, if I'm a teenage child you know, if I'm a child, I don't have a lot of prospects. Those types of people prey on these kids also.
Yeah. And Sean had seen Nick Hammond make unwanted sexual advances at Anna, and Anna wanted to rob him. Like, she she knew he had a little bit of money, and so and Anna had also told Sean that Nick Hammond had physically harmed her, that he had burned her with a cigarette, and, like, who knows if there was some sort of, like, molestation thing happening. And and she asked if Sean would be around just to make sure that Nick Hammond wouldn't,
like, beat her up. Learning about Sean's case and really getting to know him and knowing that he was excessively sentenced and that he's now been incarcerated for 20 years of his life plus and that he was so young when he went into prison. Knowing all of this, what what was your next step? What made you decide to put everything else you were doing on hold and found this free Sean Rodriguez project?
Yeah. Well, just the more I learned about his case and he had he had sent me letters and copies of information from the trial transcript. In fact, eventually he sent me the entire trial transcript. It was more than 2,000 pages, which I read in its entirety. And, like, the jurors said things like, no one was hurt. Where is the justice? Another juror said, I believe Sean deserved, at most, 1 year of confinement. Another juror begged the judge to reconsider the
25 to life sentence. Like, jurors just ex just wrote so much showing that they knew Sean was not there for the kidnapping. He was in a different part of the building with his girlfriend, Erin, and they knew that Sean had no intent to kill. Because Sean, by the way, was repeatedly protecting Nick Hammond. Like, Sean was fine to participate in a robbery and sorta egg him on and and go along with Anna to, like, get get money from him.
But Sean was not cool with trapping him in a room or hurting him or beating him up or killing him. In fact, Sean repeatedly tried to get Nick Hammond out of the room where Anna entrapped him. And he did not die also. He did get out. Yeah. He was cold and he had had wet wet feet because he set water off the fire sprinkler on him when he was trapped in that room. And PTSD, I imagine. Yeah. I'm sure there was, like, definite, like,
emotional trauma and, like, being scared. And he has schizophrenia, so that sort of experience was probably extra scary for for mister Hammond. But, yeah, Sean was given a 7 to life sentence for a kidnapping he didn't know would happen and wasn't present for when the entrapment occurred. Anna did that by herself, and everyone knew that.
The jurors knew that. And then Sean was given a 25 to life sentence because according to the natural and probable consequences doctrine, if he agreed to if he did participate in a robbery, then he was guilty of all the things Anna did. And Anna had intent to kill. She wanted to kill. Sean repeatedly acted to stop a murder. Anna wanted to throw Nick Hammond off a bridge, so he died. Sean talked her out of it. Then she wanted to beat Nick to death with poles wrapped in barbed wire. Sean talked her
out of it. Sean was afraid of her. Anna had a knife. And so at some point, stupid teenage boy thinking, Sean went, okay. I can't get out of this situation. I'm afraid of her. Erin's pregnant. I'm worried for her safety. I don't want Hammond to get physically injured. I was just here, you know, to, like, make sure Anna didn't get beat up during the robbery, and now this has turned into a potential murder scene. Like, no. This is not cool.
So in addition to trying to, like, turn off the water and break the plexiglass and remove the screws, Sean also repeatedly acted to stop Anna from killing Nick Hammond. But the stupid thing the stupid teenage boy thing Sean decided to do was to pretend to gas Nick Hammond using the car exhaust from his vehicle and some hoses, but Sean did not let the gas get to Nick.
He feigned and faked and and tried to get Anna to believe Nick Hammond was gone, and so we can leave, and you don't need to try to kill him anymore because it's taken care of, and let like, let's just go. And Sean's plan was to talk to the the police. Obviously, that was a stupid decision to participate in a fake thing, but he didn't know what else to do. It's definitely wrong place, wrong time, wrong choices, just a lot of bad doorways to walk through, for sure.
I do think people should have consequences for their actions. I think he should have had consequences for those choices he made. He still has choices. However, not to the excess of of a lifetime incarceration for when nobody died and nobody really got again, emotional hurt. Yes. That's probably severe. But in other words, there should have been a period of time where he was brought before parole long, long time ago and said, look,
you know, you've done really well. You haven't done anything bad while you've been incarcerated. You haven't gotten into fights. You're doing the things you're supposed to be doing. Let's reevaluate this time served sort of situation. It's not the reality, I know, but that's seems like that's what should have been done. Yeah. And by the way, Sean will be the first like, Sean has always admitted what he did do. Like, he did participate in trying to get Nick Hammond's ATM
card, which Anna used. And he did drive around in Nick's car. And he'll he'll admit it. He did. He did. But that's not a life sentence. That's not a life sentence. It should have been a few years. And that's you know, that would have been fair. He should have gotten a few years prison time. But instead of that, they used the natural and probable consequences doctrine to legally wrongfully convict him for crimes Anna did for which Sean was factually innocent.
So you've started the free Sean Rodriguez project? Yes. I started I originally started, like, the very beginnings of that effort. Like, Sean sent me the box of his legal paperwork, and I began sort of out of my home office beginning to support him the best I could back in 2020. We've got a website. We've got our logo. We have a social media following on 4
different platforms. Like, I made it a thing to just try to bring attention to his his case in particular, but I think there's also lessons to be learned for the larger collective about, like, this is one story, but there are many stories like this where people are sent to prison for crimes that someone else committed because they were associated with a lesser crime, like robbery. And what's your ultimate goal? He's up for parole in July. Your ultimate goal is to make sure that that happens.
Well Are you worried about blowback with you being an advocate for him? Yeah. I so I actually would prefer that Sean get out not through parole. Because what what it means when Sean gets out through parole is that the crimes that he's factually innocent of will will haunt him for the rest of his
life. What I'm really advocating for through the Help Free Sean Rodriguez campaign is for a resentencing or a retrial or exoneration for the crimes for which he's factually innocent, for commutation, for pardon. That and and those are all things that I've requested to authorities. It's a slow moving machine. Who knows how that will go? Placer County doesn't seem all that, warm or responsive to do something about Sean's legal wrongful convictions.
So if Sean has to get out through the parole board, it will at least he can get out, but the sad part about that is that he's gonna have the kidnapping and the conspiracy to commit murder charges on his record for all of time. And that's not really fair in my view. Right. It's pretty hard to get a job with that on your record, I imagine. Yeah. Exactly. And that was another realization too, like, how this system
fails to rehabilitate many offenders. I mean, I would say Sean is highly rehabilitated, very self aware, done a lot of work on himself, read over a 1000 books. I can't even count the many dozens of certificates and programs he's completed. He's an electrician. Like, cognitive behavioral therapy he's done. Like, he's just so self aware, and he really used the decades he spent in prison to work on himself. He's been proudly gang free and drug free the whole time.
He's a good guy. You know? And he he was excessively sentenced for the crimes of another person in addition to the crimes he did commit and should have received punishment for. Well, in time served at that point. Yeah. I mean, 20 what is that? 24 years almost? Well, he's been in since 2003, so it's been over 21 years. And by the time he's eligible for parole next year, it would be over 22 years. And mind you, there's no guarantee he'll ever get out
through the parole board. One thing I will mention to you as well is that Sean has been a whistleblower against correctional officer abuses in prison. Year many years ago, he was at RJ Donovan Prison in San Diego, and there were severe abuses taking place at that prison. Sean that's where Sean had the cell phone, and he filmed correctional officers beating inmates and got it out to an attorney's
office. And so he's received a lot of fake write ups, you know, out of retaliation from from correctional officers. You can't believe the correctional officers. I can. I can believe it because I've interviewed other guards who are whistleblowers, and the stories are mind boggling. Yeah. But very true. Yeah. Yeah. Horrifying. Horrifying. Horrifying. Yeah. There are beatings, murders, fraudulent paperwork to get people trapped in like, some Human trafficking. I mean, it's the list
goes on. Sure. The list goes on and on. And the heartbreaking part is that this is done to us by badge wearers, by members of our government who we pay to serve and protect and rehabilitate. And instead of doing that, they're engaging in criminal activities while on the clock themselves, some of them. So Right. Part of why I speak out for Sean and for criminal justice reform more largely is because that's not what government should be. I know. Like, government is here to
help us. It should be here to make our lives better. One other thing I'll mention too, because of everything I learned, I realized I wanted to make systemic change beyond just Sean's case. Like, Sean's case obviously matters a lot to me. I've invested heavily to, like, make a difference in his one case. But I've learned so much about the system that I started the prison transparency project as well. So I've been creating informational reports,
slide decks. I have a survey. I'm getting ready to launch nationwide in the process of getting supportive partners. And I really have, on a voluntary basis, like, taken on, you know, a lot of work to bring attention to the humanitarian crisis that we have in America. So Prison Transparency Project also is on social media.
I really wanna bring attention to this because it feels to me like not enough people are talking about it, especially given how many families and lives are ruined by the malevolence and injustice and ineptitude of a system that's really antiquated and harming us. By the way, eventually, some of these folks get out and they become your neighbors.
And would you rather they come out rehabilitated knowing that they were treated humanely, or would you rather they come out having been treated viciously and inhumanely? Which is the better neighbor to have in the long run? And I think that's something that people really need to start wrapping their head around for sure. Tell people how they can find you. You can find me at doctordrangela, angela, meyers, m e y e r s. So doctorangelameyers.com.
You can find help free sean@helpfree, s h a w n.com. You can also check out prison transparency.com. Am I missing anything? If you go to Pauli Maas' Place, you'll you'll get redirected to doctor Angel. But, yeah, I've got a bunch of different websites. I'm all over the place. I at the end of the day, why I do what I do is because my mission in life, like, what I wanna do with my existence, is make a difference in the world to reduce human suffering and enhance human thriving.
And so I've done that through criminal justice reform to reduce suffering, and I've done what I could to promote human potential and self actualization and lifelong, life wide learning through the lens of polymathy. Yeah. It's lovely. And I will put all the information and links on heyhumanpodcast dotcom as well so people can find them easily if they have any kind of issues trying to remember or whatever. They just go
right there, and it'll all be there. And thank you so much for for your time and, you know, good work on you for getting out there and and trying to make a difference in this world. It's tough to fight for people who historically have been deemed not worth the fight. Prisoners are the voiceless. They're easy to forget. Like, if you're not impacted, like, you just have no clue what's going on. There's bars and fences and gates
and locks. And so there's a lot, there's a real lack of awareness for what the reality is here. So I'm just doing what I can to tell the truth. Yeah. Well, thank you for listening, everybody. Bye. Thanks, Angela. Thank you. Rate, review, and subscribe to Hey Human Podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Iheart, wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks. Bye.