#044 Jason Flom with Ronald Simpson-Bey

we go to court, the truth will come out. The prosecution from day one knew I was innocent and let forced testimony go uncorrected from the lower courts all way up to the United States Supreme Court. You have someone with a badge with ultimate and really in that moment, unchecked the thority. Don't presume that people are guilty when you see him on TV, because it may just be a dirty d A that is trying to rise upward. This is a wrongful conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction

with Jason Flom. Today, I have two people who I admire greatly. Ronald Simpson Bay welcome to the show, Thank you, thanks for having me. And Glenn Martin is here. Glenn is a remarkable activist and has an incredible story to tell as well. So Ronald let's start with you. You served almost twenty seven years in prison for a crime you didn't commit, and what you've done with that experience and how it's transformed you is something that I'm honestly in awe of and so I'm looking forward to getting

to that. And Glenn, you have a similar story, although you were actually locked up for something you did do and have turned it into an incredible into a movement. Really, but Ron, let's go back to the beginning. You grew up in Michigan. Yes, I did, Flint, Michigan. How was your childhood? What was it like? Let's let's go back like this, you know, back in the day before everything went so horribly wrong. I was born in Flint, Michigan, to a two parent family. My dad was a school teacher.

My mom was a homemaker, and I thought we lived a fairly normal lifestyle, kind of middle upper class because my dad, he was a school teacher. We got to travel last summer, we had a motor home. We did a lot of things that you know, you don't really see in the inner city community. So I was exposed to a lot at a young age, you know, traveling a lot, and you know, my dad made sure we were educated and well learned. But I lived in an

abusive home that was the oldest of five children. My dad would beat me, beat my mom and stuff, and became an untenable situation. As a child, you don't realize how dysfunctional it is. You just feel like it's normal if you grow up so long like that. You know, you get fifteen sixty years old and that like, well, this must be normal. Everybody must go through this. But I and out later on that that wasn't the case. Yeah,

I mean, you don't know any different. Right. Then you get older and then you you sort of looked back and you have more experiences to compare it to, and then you realize just how how wrong that really is, and it's a horrible thing to hear. But even then, nothing prepared you for what was going to happen, right, because it wasn't like you were growing up in a gang lifestyle or in a type of situation where you were running with a tough crowd and getting mixed up

in a bunch of problems. How did it happen? How did you end up in the system in the first place. Well, I mean, it's kind of like I said, I didn't expect that. No one expects this to happen. And I went to high school and with the comment to the Eastern Michigan I ran track for Eastern Michigan University in the seventies and I was a tooling die maker General Motors before I went to prison. And in nineteen eighty the first really dramatic traumatic even in my life happened.

My mom shot to kill my dad in the Marylton home in front of my two younger brothers and sisters. I was like twenty or twenty one at the time. I was married to my first wife and I get a call at work one day. My ex wife called me say you need to come home right now, and she was pregnant, so I'm thinking that you know something wrong with the baby. So I drive home, said you need to go to your parents home. I said, okay,

what's going on? So I had to make the two or three miles drive over the mom and Dad's home and I get there and it's like it's pandemonium. Police cards everywhere, ambulance, the crack didn't get down the street because of such a big crowd. And when I finally do get to the house, my mom sitting the back to the cruiser, police cruiser. You're like, what's going on here exactly? I'm like, what's going on? And they pulled me to the side and said, well, your dad is

in the home. Your mom and shot your dad. And they took her off and I stayed there until the corner came and pronounced him dead and removed the body. And that was July and six years to the day, July six, I walked into prison. Well, my life took almost a perfect spiral. Wow, that's a that's a very strange and sort of horrible synchronicity. You know, and your cases is troubling for a lot of reasons, but not the least of which is that you were arrested and

ultimately convicted for shooting an officer. But that officer changed his story over time, right where originally he had said that you weren't the guy. So you got blindsided? Really when you went to trial, for sure? I mean, how could It's so bizarre? I mean, you got I mean, you lived it. But I'm just sitting here looking back out and going, wait a minute, I can understand a witness changing their story, but the victim, I mean going that guy didn't shoot me. Oh yes, he did. You

think you'd remember that. You think, how did they get you in their in their cross hairs in the first place. Well, the the case happened on a particular day in October. My buddies and I were driving around Flinch, you know,

being knuckleheads. We weren't boy scouts. We were driving around doing stupid stuff, and I stopped by a place a friend of mine I had sold some drugs to to pick some money up, but he wasn't home at the time, and it was in an apartment building where a lot of drug activities, and it was under surveillors, undercover cops. So they saw us leave the place and thought we had robbed it. So they followed us, and about two blocks away from the scene, my buddies was driving my car, say,

somebody's following us. That's what stopped. Is probably the guy that owes me the money. I'm thinking that's who it was. We stopped. I get out of the car. I'm standing and waiting for this car to pull up. But as it pulls up, no one recognized the guy driving the car. One o'clock in the afternoon, z Camaro and guy jumps out with a blue jeans suit on the hed. We all had Jerry Curls back then, that's how far back. And I still had hair. Yeah, I had had a

Jerry Currell man manching that. But so the guy gets out and he just in the car door squashed down and pull the guns. I'm asking the guy, y'all know who this guy is? No one knows who is he is. And all of a sudden fire he's shooting the guys in my car shooting at him. I'm in the crossfire. I'm trying to run and get out of the way. So I get out of line of fires. The guys in my car take off and the undercover car takes off behind them. Wait, you got back in the car. No,

the car took off without me. Okay, that's nice, friends, you got there, but go ahead. Yeah, so anyway, I know honor among thieves. I guess now. I started walking because the car could hear the cars going through the neighborhood, and I can hear the shooting because the guy's panel. They're shooting from my car back at the officers car and I go to the garage. I worked on cars back then. I'll go to the garage I worked at was about a mile away from the shooting scene, and

I get on the phone. I called the guy's girlfriend of driving my car. I say, if the guys come by the apartment, tell him come pick me up at the garage, not knowing that, you know, we didn't shoot out with police officers. About a half hour later, I called her back. She said, they've been arrested by the officers. What officers they were to shoot out with police? I said, oh, my god, so they're wait. So you still didn't realize at this point that the guys that have been shooting

at you were cops. It never announced himself with cops and what had happened during the car chase scene after I had gotten out two miles down the road, the cars run off the road and there's a second shootout, and that's where that's what actually got he got hit in the arm and his second shootout. So you weren't

anywhere near the place, No, I wasn't. I mean, this would have been more believable, easier to understand if it would have happened during the first shootout, because at least you were there, and they might arrested everybody they might arrested you, and they might, you know, the confusion, They might have thought you were the guy doing the shooting, and who the hell knows, But in this case, you weren't even there. Do you look like the other guys? But they say, we all look at like I know,

I leve myself open for that one. But it wasn't like your twin brothers, so not by long shot. So they end up arresting you and charging you with assauliden to commit murder of a police office. Yes, bad, bad. Yeah. You go to jail, yes, awaiting trial. Yes, I got out on bind. I was in jail for about two months and posted sixty dollar buy and got out okay. And how long did it take to get to trial? About six seven months. I got out in December and the trials in June. So you go to trial and

who represented you? I had an attorney. My attorney was he's a former judge in the county in which I had to trial. He usould be a city judge on the circuit court bench. So that sounds like, you know, you were giving yourself a good shot at least you you would think. But the problem with that was and that didn't discovered till later, is that the judge we

were in front of. My attorney and the judge hated each other when he was on the bench, and he didn't bother to tell you that, well, not initially when he tried to get the case moved to another court, because he said, this judge and I have animosity towards each other, and I don't think he gave me a fair trial. Oh my god, that's just what you need to hear, exactly. And then he's not going to make the relationship any better by asking that the trial be

moved to another right. Okay, so now you've got a pretty good idea that things are looking bad exactly as a confluence of crazy events. You know, the prosecutor came over his theory of the case, and the officer himself changed his testimony to fit that theory of the case. There were four of us involved in this crime, myself and three code defenders, and to the co defenders turned

States evidence against me and one other guy. They testified against us, and their testimony fit the theory of the prosecutor's case as well, even though none of the evidence fit. Who had a clear statement from the officer we had his his handwritten police report from the damn the event, saying I hadn't done you know, it wasn't me. Eight months later, when the trial went down, all of a sudden, I'm the one that jumped out of the car shooting

at him. It was it was crazy. So they had everybody at the trial basically telling the story that the prosecutor wanted to be told. The police officer changed his story, the other two witnesses changed their story or or came up with a story that was in line with the prosecutor wanted. And so did you believe that when the jury went out? Did you believe that you were going to be convicted? There is no way I thought I

was gonna be convicted. It was a three week trial, and not a week in to the trial they came and offered me a plea bargain. I said, there's no way I'm taking the polee bark. I got the officers statements saying I didn't shoot at him, so I'm not taking a polee bargain. That's so crazy, right, And Glenn and said, I see Glenn rolling his eyes. So let's just reflect on this particular aspect of because this is not a story I've ever heard before. So they came

to you and offered you a polee bargain. What was the plea bargain? Uh? Seven to ten? The sins was seven to seven to ten years sentence. I forgot with the charge some reduced charge assault with great body harm but intentional to great body harm or something like that. And you were facing what life if you lost the trial? So if you were guilty, that sounds like a pretty good deal, right. And now here is we have Glenn Martin,

who's the founder and leader of Just Leadership USA. Glenn himself was incarcerated for six years for robbery and has become I could say, probably the most important voice in the de incarceration movement. Was that fair, Glenn? Uh? If I wanted to toot my own horn, Yeah, that's fair, right.

And he's been instrumental in the Closed Riker's campaign, has done so much incredible advocacy work that it sometimes makes me feel like I'm standing still And I know that now you guys work together, right, Glenn, Have you ever heard a story like that where the witness I mean, I don't know, we just heard it, but I'm having trouble processing I do a ton of public speaking, and I am constantly retelling this story because I am so

blown away by it. The fact that the prosecutor even offered that, you know, relatively low number suggested to me that they even thought that they may not win that case, which would be another reason for Ronald to just hold out. Like if they you know, if I'm facing life and they're offered me seven to ten in the middle of trial, that suggests that they think they may not make it to the finish line. So I would have done the

same thing. But having the key witness who got shot not just change his story in the middle, but also the fact that Ronald even wasn't on the scene when he finally got shot, you know, it blows me away, except I gotta be honest. I mean, everything about our criminal justice system is just unfair and there's no equity there, and people of color get outcomes like this over and over. Maybe not as egregious, but Ronald's story has always riveted me as one that stands out for a number of reasons.

And we're just touching on the story now. There's a lot more to tell. But the reason I asked Ronald's permission to tell the story over and over is because I think it gets to the core of what's rotten in our criminal justice system. And I would go even a step further and say that when the prosecutor offered you that deal, what Glenn says is certainly, which is that they must have thought that there was a pretty

good chance that they weren't gonna win. But also they must have known that you weren't that guy, because if you're a prosecutor, you're not trying to let a guy who shot a cop out after seven to ten years. I mean, when you look at in comparison, Glenn was convicted of robbery, right, simple robbery, so he got six years. What we're led to believe now is that they're willing to say, all right, this guy is a bad motherfucker. He shot a cop, but we're gonna give him seven

to ten. We're just gonna be nice people. Right. Most people who shoot cops and end up in prison never get out to be honest. Yeah, I mean, we can debate that all day long, but that's a terrible crime. Right. We cannot have people shooting at law enforcement. It's not happening, right, And I can agree that people who are violent, and certainly people who attack law enforcement officers in a way like that need to be in prison because they're dangerous.

But this story is really it stinks. Honestly, it stinks, and you know it does. So the jury goes out. It was a jury trial, right, and three weeks of the courtroom you developed almost like some rap poor with them. Right, You're in close quarters for three weeks every day, all day except weekends. And then they go out and come back in And did they even look at you? Did you get that sense when they walked in. When they walked in, I had the sense of, oh, shoot, I'm

in trouble. Because one of the jurors was crying. One of the women, a young woman was crying. I said, that can't be good. What was the makeup of the jury, because Flint is a very racially diverse city, right, the jury wasn't out of the twelve jury. There were two blacks on my jury and Flint is what uh huh that Glenn. Do you think that's a coincidence? No, I think that's a stute prosecutor who's managing the jury pool.

After I was convicted, you know, you get to speak to the court, and I spoke to that exact point that you know that I didn't have a jury of my peers. It wasn't racially made up. And out of the two black people that were on where older black people from prior to the civil rights there, and they were used to bound down to when the white person

says something. They were worse than the white people on the jury because they because the people that I thought were holding out with the woman that was crying, and somebody else kind of looked to me like just kind of shook their head and just like this is the way it is. It's the way it is. Yeah, I mean, and we know too that after a three week trial and they're stuck in that jury room, people get angry. Everybody wants to go home. They don't want to be there,

and it could get abusive in there, you know. And if they're that old, I mean, I'm not I'm not excusing what they did. I could understand it. The last day before I was convicted, when they were deliberating, they had deliberated for over twelve hours, and they told the judge they wanted to go home. He said, no, we're not leaving till you come back. With a D. There you go. I rest my case so they come back. Can you paint the picture of what what that was like?

That one probably worst moment of your life. What did it feel like when the jury come in and just said with a defended rise When they get ready to announce the I felt like I had five hundred pounds on my should. I couldn't It was so hard to stand up. It was like, you know, I don't know if you ever lifted weights, so squatt when you were in prison. We used to squat and I felt like I had five hundred pounds. I could not get up.

And then as they announced the verdict, you know, and then each person was stating, you know, they agreed with the verdict. It was like every time they said guilty, it was like a death blow. Boom. It was literally a death blow literally, because they're taking your whole life away. And so you go to prison. What prison were you sent to? Jackson in Michigan? Because I was twenty seven years old when I went to prison, I was an older person apparently speaking, so they sent me to the

adult prison, not the younger prison. So I'm with the Jackson Penitentiary in Jackson Michigan. And is that as bad as I think it is. Oh yeah, it used to be. It was built the world's largest war in prison because it was such a huge complex. Over five thousand prisoners were there and it was spread out of all his acres and they had you know, maximum security sales and

medium security sale. There was a pretty wild place. And when you say that, I mean you want to elaborate, you know, you don't have to, but oh man, Jackson was Jackson was crazy. It was it was insane. And to give you some ideal, the nine seven, there was so much tension between the officers and the prisoners incarcerated people that they were killing each other, like literally like and marchha that year, female officer was killed in all because of that year, they in retaliation they choked and

killed a carsprated person over an asset unit. And in December another officer was killed, stabbed at death. It was it was back and forth. Wow, that sounds it sounds like hell. It was hell. It was suicide. You know, people couldn't cope because of the violence and the conditions of confinement. You know, it was the old prison. You know, roaches, ratchet wasn't one of your new modern cottage campus type printed had bars, you know, old school, just like you

see in the movies. Wow. I mean, and then something clicked inside of you, and you're already a man, unlike a lot of people that we talked to who were literally teenagers adolescence even when they went to prison. Nobody's prepared for this. But you, somehow or other, you found another level of strength that is out of this world. Not just to survive and keep your spirit up and and learn the law and actually end up figuring out a way to get yourself out. You could so easily

have been another one of those victims. You could have been a suicide, You could have been killed. You could have also just given up, right, I mean, I think I think there's probably a bunch of people that you left behind who, probably as innocent as you are, just couldn't. Yeah, And so my question is where did that come from? For me? I mean, you do prison in stages. Anybody

does time, especially long time. You're doing in phases. And the first five years of my car spration, I was angry, and I was a twenty seven year old, aggressive, angry young man and black man in prison. When I got the prison and discovered that in Michigan, sixty of the prisoner didn't have g DS. And I had been to college and and I was aggressives. I'm gonna run this place. So for the first five years, I was part of

the problem, not part of the solution. I was, you know, we can all kind of have it on the yard, fights, stabbings, your name, and we were involved in it. And one day in nineteen ninety ninety ninety one, a good friend of mine brought me a book called Visions for Black Men by Dr Named Akbar, ninety page paperback, small but easy read, Visions for Black Men. Yes, I read that book and it was like an epiphany. Light came on and I could not believe what I I looked at

myself differently. I looked at my community differently. I looked at my responsibility to myself and my family in my community a lot differently, and and it kind of snapped me out of my anger. I gotta I gotta do something different. I'm dying here. I'm gonna kill somebody here

and then die. So that book made me be more reflective and introspective, and it kind of turned my attitude around, and I started looking at things differently, stopped not being about me so much by being about other people because I looked up for a chain first five years I had looked up and saw the degradation around me. I saw how people have been dehumanized by the system, and people that couldn't defend them themselves because he either had mental issues or just and had the faculty to do so.

And I had the faculty and the mental capacity to do it. So I turned my life around and started going in the direction of trying to help other people. And then another tragedy occurred, as if you hadn't been tested enough right with the terrible, unimaginable circumstance of your your parents and then being wrongfully incarcerated, and then the only other worst thing that can happen to a person happened to you as well. Man. Indeed, indeed it two

thousand and one. I have been in prison about fifteen sixteen years at the time, and Father's Day, I was waiting for a bit that I talked to my son and three daughters. I had a son and three daughters at the time, and I talked to my son that morning. His name is Ronald, and I called him and Hey, Dad, I'm bringing the girls up to see you and we will be up there. And said that were like great, you know, on Father's Day see your children and prisoners, like,

nothing is better. So I'm waiting. I'm waiting. I'm waiting. One o'clock, two o'clock, three o'clock. They don't show up. Now I'm getting worse. So I get on the phone. I stopped calling. And it's strange. I know thousands of people in Flint, Michigan. I could not catch anyone. I called all my family members and taught no one I ain't up dilling. My ex mother law's phone him, Hey mom, this is Royn you're doing Have you seen the kid they're supposed to come visit? She said, Uh, you haven't heard.

I said, know what's going on? Said little Ronnie been shot and killed? My twenty one year old son had been shot and killed by fourteen year juvenile in the streets of Flint, Michigan. Um, I mean that's hard enough to prova, get the shows and to be in president and again, how could anybody deal with that? By that time, I had been for ten years. I had been you know, I had changed my life around. I had a whole new aptitude about life. I had become heads of various organizations,

religious organizations, civic organizations. I was I was a name playing up on a class action lawsuits, so I was kind of a you know, I'm a high profile person inside. And by that time when my son died, I had been all these years. They had been given other people counsel when they when you know, grief counseling, and when think they got bad news from home that their wife left them, all that somebody died or whatever, I would

counsel people. So when it came my turn, I had to apply my own constant to myself, because for me, the worst thing I can be as a hypocrite. I never want to be a hypocrite when anything that I do, so I had to do as I said do in my own Here I can hear my voice of all the consolat giving people over the years, and I just swallowed and took an in for myself. And as a result of that, I forgave that child who killed my son.

I advocated for him to be treated as a juvenile, to go through the juvenile system and not be treated as an adult, because I felt that him serving a life sentence in a Michigan prison would serve no useful purpose. It wasn't gonna bring my son back. It was only going to deteriorate his family. Our community would rode even further. And I felt that that young man was this victim of the same environmental aspects as myself, my son, and

many other black men in the community. That is so extraordinary. And it doesn't stop there. You actually went to bat for a person who murdered your son, your namesake. And it wasn't like you made a phone call right or wrote a letter. The fact is that when you started to advocate for this young man who had committed this terrible, terrible crime that in pacted you so so devastating to you.

The prosecutor don't want to hear from you. I didn't realize that being an inmate makes you not a father, right. I mean that there's nothing in the Constitution or anywhere else it says that, right. I mean that that should outweigh any other factor. Right, you would think, of course, in our system we treat people so terribly, even when it comes to trying to visit it in other people

who have lost close family members behind bars. You know, if they get to go to the funeral, they have to find a way to pay for the guards to take them and things like that. I had to do that. Oh you didn't, so it's not even anomaly. So you had to go to extreme measures to try to get justice for this person who had wronged you. Absolutely, I had to contact the judge. I mean, I'm a phone calls. I was. I was in prison, so I wasn't viewed

as a traditional victim, so to speak. So that's probably why the prosecutor just kind of ignore my calls and letters to them, try to, you know, advocate on half of this child funding writing letters to the court. You know, I'm a phone call that had my ex wife, my son's mother go down and advocate on his behalf, you know, because she could go there in person and talk to him. It was just we just had to keep at until one day they said we're gonna try him as a juvenile.

It's interesting, right, imagine if it had flipped, if you had been writing letters to the prosecutors saying I demand that this kid get life in prison, they would have been like, yeah, Ronald, come on, ye testify that's right. We bring him right into the court room they would have put you understand, you know what I mean. I think that's a pretty safe bet. And so what eventually happened to that young fourteen year old boy. He served seven years in the juvenile attention facility most of us

in Pennsylvania. He got released and he's living in Cincinnati right now. And there's still some connection, right Yeah, well, actually, I mean the connection is the guy that killed my son was my son's girlfriend's younger brother. And the story is lead from she told me that. I just want to repeat that again, So just for my own sake and for the eyes, who was your son's girlfriend's brother

that killed my son? Okay? And at the time he died, his girlfriend was pregnant with my grandson, with his son because he was born too much later. So my grandson is the nephew the guy to kill my son. Holy fuck. Yeah, I mean I knew that because I have read up on you but here and you say it it's convoluted, but yeah, it's it's strange in fiction. Yeah. So, during your just about twenty seven years locked up in maximum

security prison, did you spend time in solitary confinement? Yes, I spent several stints in solitary um in Michigan and administrative segregation. But it's the same thing. And the longest single stretch I stayed might have been eight months or so, but I had like four months here, three months there, two months, eight months over the years, probably close to three years total. Eight months. I'm just I mean eight months.

I think if you went to your average person out there and said we need you to stay at the holiday inn for eight months and you know, somewhere in Florida or you know whatever, that's a stupid example. But somebody be like, I can't do that. I mean, that's I'll go crazy. Eight months. You make a baby in eight months? And what was that like? Because it's a little different everywhere, but it's always the certain things are

the same. Yeah, I mean solitary segregation is it's a prison within the prison, and it's so terrible because the majority of the people over there have mental health issues. Because when you can't follow the rules in prison, this is where they put the people that can't follow the rules, and a lot of people that have mental health issues aren't able to follow the rules, so they go over there and and they don't get treatment. So it's just

it's havoc. You can't sleep all night because they're screaming and holling and banging all night, banging on the doors, banging on the bar, banging steal lockers, and then they sleep all day. So the first had to get acclimated to that. I had to get see healthcare because I was haveing attention headache. I thought I was having a stroke because it was so bad to smoke because they

burned toilet rolls to heat water with. And it's just, man, it's just if you ever saw Mad Max me on Thunderdome years and I'm telling my age now back in the eighties and that whole that sales. Seeing in that movie kind of reminded me. Solitary confined me because it was so chaotic and so noisy, and you're locked up in that cell twenty three hours, and twenty three hours a day you get out for one hour yard like three days a week, and the other two or three

days you get time to get out the shower. You don't get showers every day. You get showers like three days a week. What did you do? I mean again, I keep coming back to it, but how did you maintain your sanity and your spirit, and in that prison. Within the prison, I kept busy. I had had access to my property, and then my property I had. I had my personal library of eight hundred books, so they allowed me to get books out of my property, and I was doing legal work, so I stayed busy while

I was in that. I didn't let my mind get off into whatever's going on around me inside of the segregation unit. I just stayed busy and kept working until they said we're gonna let you go and you're able to shut out the noise that way and sort of at least find some sort of sanctuary, and you're you have to if you don't it to drive you crazy. I see why people go crazy. And now I mean people who are crazy, driving other people crazy and getting crazier while they're doing it. I mean, it really does

sound like hell. I mean, it's hell inside of hell. So it's like, I don't know what the next thing is that's worse than hell, but that sounds like it. I mean, it's cruel and in human punishment by any

stretch of the imagination. And it is an added tragedy that we have these people who mental health treatment who end up in our prisons, and then, as you said, you can't obey the rules because they can't, not because they don't even necessarily want to, but they can't, and then they and we end up punishing them even more severely and then rendering them completely incapacitated and unable to ever return to society without reciervating and going back to

prison because we've made them into what they are. And I keep coming back to what Glenn said it before. They're human beings. I mean, that's what gets me, like, it's so strange how in America we've gotten to a place where a switch goes off where the minute someone's arrested, they go from being a human being to just being an inmate, and people feel that they can treat them however they want. So let's talk about how you got yourself out and how you ended up working with this guy,

Glenn Martin, and what you're doing now. Oh, thank you, thank man. Well. I I became a paralegal while obs inside, and I fought more on case for all those years, and twenty four years into my sentence, I got my conviction overturn. The federal courts granted habeas relief on my case. The crazy thing about that the state appealed the reversal of my conviction, and I sat in prison for three more years without a conviction because the court wouldn't grant

me buying. They just they wouldn't even rule on it. They just left me sitting there. But three more years and my case was reversed on prosecutor misconduct. That's the issue in which I got back. I got released on prosecutorial misconduct, and they wait three more years for the same prosecutor's office to forgot what they want to do. Yeah, I mean, it's the fox guarding the handhouse. It's it's a reality in our system, and it's just it's so it's one of the reasons why it's so broken. Yeah.

I ended up the court, the federal court and the Federal Peller Court to order them to either grant me a new trial and released me. So I go back down to the circuit court and the prosecutor they offer me a plea bargain, said well, if you take this police bargain, you can go home today. I said, if I don't get to go home today, I'm not taking it.

So I took the polee bargain, but There was some confusion behind that because as I agreed to it, and the judge went on the record, because the judge wanted me to walk out the courtroom, but the Department of Corrections the officers were saying, well, we got ordered to bring him back and they want to recalculate his time, and the judge was like, what I said, he got time served. So the judge adjourn got off the bench. He went back and called the Department of Corrections himself.

He called the central office at Lansing, Michigan, and it's like, I want to let this guy go home now, and they were telling him the same crap, but we got a procedure we have to recalculate their time make sure they was able to be released. And it just said, okay, I got this. The judge came back out beat red. He went back on the record and he changed the whole plea bargain. He said, not only am I sense him to time served, but I'm gonna amend a sentence

to fifteen years. I had already been out over my sentence by twelve. He gave me a ten to fifteen year sentence, which made me pass my outdate by twelve years to make sure I went home right there. Good

for him. It's nice to hear those stories. We've spent so much time talking about prosecutor our misconduct and other misdeeds in the system, that it's important to highlight people like that judge who he had courage and he he did what was right, had courage and and those people can make a huge difference, and we need more of them, and more power to you too as well. I mean the idea that you figured out a way to represent yourself and overturn this crazy conviction, which I'm sure they

made it as difficult as they could. They always do, but when when there's a case of a police officer being shot, they're gonna make an extra extra hard if they can. So you figured it out and then you come out and the world looks a lot different. Uh oh man, I was compared to the feeling I had. I felt like free offensed on stepping onto the set of The Jetsons. Of the Jetsons, Yeah, exactly right. I mean almost twenty seven years coming out, I mean we're

to change. Yeah. I mean even imagine if somebody going in today it comes out twenty seven years or now. God knows what everything is. It really will be the Jetsons by then. Exactly how did you end up linking up with Glenn and his organization? And Glenn, can you talk a little bit about what it is that you're doing. Just leadership. There's so much that it's hard for me to get it into a sound bite. Sure, just leadership.

We have the goal of cutting the number of people under correctional supervision and American and half by so that means probation, parole, correction, prison, jails, you name it. And the reason we have this ambitious goal is because we have a criminal justice system that is just off the charts. That's just a jugging out of a system that's locking up so many people. And we do that by investing

in the leadership of people like Ronald. And it's counterintuitive, but the truth is, that's how you build movements, that's how you undo systems that dehumanize people, is to invest in the very people who have been dehumanized. And you listen to Ronald's case and you realize that we have a criminal justice system that just labels people and put someone to convey a belt and send them on their way, and you can never shake off the label. Except when

you listen to Ronald's story, it's not just riveting. You recognize his humanity in the middle of that story. And so here you have Ronald who's a sophisticated advocate by any stretch of imagination, but also he has this story that is not just compelling, but it works as a way to help other people rehumanize people who are in the system. And I think that for us to start treating people differently, we have to recognize that they're people

that their fathers and uncles and brothers and sisters. And Ronald's story, as difficult as it is to listen to, because the criminal justice system and all of its perverse incentives lead to all of those tragedies, in the end, I think what's most compelling is the story of a father who, while suffering in this system, found a way to be compassionate for a child who he didn't want to see end up facing the same sort of human carnage that comes out of our system now, and in fact,

this same sentence that you were facing just another irony of the whole situation. You had to come out and navigate this new world, figure out why everybody's walking around with some sort of a gadget glued to their face, right, and and everything else that goes with the technology. Everything, everything is completely upside down from when you went in,

because that's that's facing that's almost three decades. I'm sure some people that are listening haven't even been alive that long, right, And so, well, how did you end up connecting with Glenn and just leadership because you're you're in Michigan. I mean, it's not you know, it's your sort of I mean, it's not the easiest thing in the world exactly. I think I met him sitting in the trailer. Before that we met, maybe would you came to my job at

the trailer? What happened in I was a pailist at the University of Michigan at a conference or convention there and Glen was the keyno speaker for the student group had some kind of meet and going criminal justice reform conference going. So Glen was the keyno speaking. I was

a pamalist and afterwards we met. He came to I worked at American Friend Service Committee and our office in a garage and Olbur Michigan and Glenn came to to the garage and I met him there and we talked and he told me this vision that he had for

Starlish organization. He was working on it at that time, and he was telling me that, you know, he wanted me to apply for when the application went live, and he explained to me that, you know, his theory of those closer to the problem of being closest to the solution. And I always get a kick out. And I think that because I teased myself, if I get any closer to the problem, is gonna kill me after spending twenty seven years in prison, So so I was he offered

me this opportunity to join this organization. So I did the application and got accepted to the first cohort for and I went through the Just Leadership year long leading with conviction training and it was an amazing experience and a life changing the experience with Glenn and and and the guys he had trained in US. And at the end of that process and the end of Glenn was in the process of hiring it his staff, his first staff people for Just Leadership, and he offered me a position,

which I took And what is your job? Now? What do you what do you do every day. I'm the alumni associate for the organization. I'm the point of engagement for our three hundred and sixty six leaders in twenty nine states plus Washington, d C. We just added thirty six more leaders, so we're gonna have four hundred and two leaders in thirty one states. What is the leader formally?

Incostrated people that go through our training process. We have a year long leading with conviction training that we do here in New York City, and we have a one day snapshot of that train and called Emergent Leaders training that we do. We do travel around the country during that various locations, and the people that go through the programs become part of our network of leaders. And what do those leaders do on a daily basis? So what's their job? Oh, they they have their own job. A

lot of run nonprofit organizations. One of them work for the Problement Justice, some new policy in Alaska, some do re entry in Florida, some do re entry in California. And some of the drug counselers what they do a

wide range of things dealing with criminal justice. This reform, I mean, now I see why you're smiling so much, because you're now able to do something that is causing a ripple effect, absolutely, because everybody that you help is helping dozens of other people and then training them to go on and you know, and then all of this leads to when me and Glenn are probably you could finally take a bad case. That's right, I'm with you, that's probably. That's probably the soonest we can hope for.

But you know, it's okay. This is it's funny because Glenn like carved out the perfect spot for me for I mean, for my challenge for this job. I mean, I'm like the point of engagement for the for this for all our cohort, and I leaded. I have such a relationship with him. A lot of him call me uncle round, they come to the co Hey, I'll go round, just like we have a lot of fun. The most personable man I've ever met in my life did twenty

seven years in prison. Seriously, Ronald's attitude is. I mean, you find people that have vast amounts of other sorts of wealth and don't have the spirit that Ronald has. No no, and he's charming, you know what I mean. I can say that, um, I may have I may start, Yeah, I don't know if I can call you um, but the this is really what a story, what a full circle, and what an incredible spirit you have. I mean, I'm just uh, and you know it's amazing because I feel

so I don't know. The only word I could think of is blessed to be able to be in a position to be around people like yourself, and to be able to do my part in helping to change the conversation around this issue and to help individuals both in getting themselves out of prison when they don't belong there and returning to life, reintegrating into society and excelling as you've done. It's an amazing process and it's you know, like I said, it's just every time, it never ceases

to amaze me. And you are as good as an example and as good as an ambassador or as anybody could ever hope to have. So, Ronald, this has been an experience I'm not going to forget, and I'm looking forward to having more great experiences with you and working together in this fight. Looking forward to it. But we have a tradition here on wrong for Conviction. I'd like

to turn the microphone over to our featured guests. Well, you and Glenn, and give you each an opportunity to just say whatever it is it's on your mind, anything that we haven't covered, or anything you want to say about anything. I think, and in a nutshell for me, I mean, you kind of hit on it about about the humanity. I think my whole mission in life at this point is to put the humanity back into being human. We've gotten away from that. And you see how crash

our society is. You know, all these shooting, how crazy it is because everyone's mad at each other, and for what usually superficial reason. If we took time to look at each other as humans, to treat each other as humans, just to follow the simple golden rule treat other people you want to be treated, you know, learn to develop a measure of empathy, not sympathy, but empathy, putting yourself

into other person's shoes. And for me, that would go a long way and resolving a lot of issues that we had, because in order for us to make some type of sustainable reform, especially for criminal justice reform, we need harden mind change, and that comes through putting the

humanity back into being human. You know, Jason, I went from exiting prison owing a hundred thousand dollars and find fees, restitution, find myself in midtown Manhattan, trying to figure out what's next, unable to find a job, to meeting one on one with the President of the United States thirteen years later. And the more I emerged as the exception is, the more I realized that it was reinforcing the existing narrative

about everyone else. And so the question was, how can I one help people understand that I'm not the exception, that I was exposed to exceptional opportunities, and to uh expose other formally acustrated leaders, Ronald to the sort of opportunities that I've been exposed to. And you know, we tend to think that there's some voiceless people out there. I don't think they're voiceless people. I think there are people who have been deliberately silenced. And it just leadership USA.

We create a space for people who have been silenced to not just have voice, but to end up in much closer proximity with the people I think need to hear these messages. And Ronald is just one of our hundreds of ambassadors at this point. But I appreciate the opportunity to be on here and create space for Ronald

to tell his story. I just think it's hugely important for people who try to find compassion day to day in the world that we live in, to recognize that there are people who have been through a tremendous amount of tragedy and still exercise humanity. And I think it challenges the rest of us to step up and be bolder and to lead without values. Don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you get your podcasts. It

really helps. And I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project and I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence Project dot org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wardis. The music in the show is by three time OSCAR nomine composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and

on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one