#079 Jason Flom with Timothy Tyler

No guns, no weapons, no violence, no no nothing. Actually, and when I tell you, when you learn the story, your head is going to explode. So stay tuned, uned, get comfortable, because this is this is really madness. So Tim, let's turn this to you. This case. I mean, you were in prison for twenty six years, so this case happened a long time.

President Obama ended up giving me a clemency. So without that, or without well support, I would still be in there, and I wouldn't just be like another number, or I couldn't get a message out.

my mentor as I got started on this. You know, lifetime in criminal justice reform, and you are a person that we've spent a lot of time talking about. You are a rallying cry, I think for people in this movement. You're someone who all of us respect so much, and you're someone who we're really proud to have played a

part in helping to win your freedom. But the lens that the government went to to convict you of this crime and sends you to life in prison, which again life, And I've heard your sister talk about this on videos. Is a video free Tim Tyler on the Internet. People want to watch. It's so horrible because, as we say it, fam Let, the punishment fit the crime, right, but your punishment didn't match anything to do with the crime. Yours was a non violent crime. How did this happen? Right?

How could this have gone so wrong? And we know also that they ended up implicating your father, which is so disgusting that it actually just and I think people need to know that part of the story. I'm sure it's tough to talk about it, but anyway, can you take us back to this. So you're on the road with the grateful Dead, you get approached by it turned out to be a government and foremant right.

at that time. And then he recorded me like twenty six audio tapes after that, and like, I sold him like a thousand hits of LSD, you know, And then I sold them three more times another thousand, and all of those were recorded where they could have arrested me. And then I said, well, I was actually in Florida when I did these sales in person to them, and they could have arrested me, but they didn't arrest me.

I told them, I said, I'm leaving Saturday to go on tour, you know, because there was no shows at this particular time, and they could arrested me before I left, but they didn't. They let me go. So I went on to the shows, and actually I went to California first and I bought like twelve five hundred hits of LSD. Now it was like the price for that what I paid was like four thousand dollars, So you're talking about

four thousand dollars of LSD total conspiracy. And I went and I sent they wired me money, like eighteen hundred dollars of their money, and I sent it all in an envelope. But I had sent envelopes that never that never arrived, and I took the loss myself before before this. So this particular envelope, I sent nine thousand hits in this envelope, and I put several different envelopes in it, and one was for a friend of mine, one was for somebody that somebody else that just was with a

blank person. One was for two thousand hits, which was for my father. But my father was he didn't look at it like he was doing anything. It was like an envelope, you know. He never did all the steed, so he was just getting some for a friend of his. So but he knew it was coming, you know. But I sent it all in one big envelope with more with envelopes inside it, and I sent it to this guy's business. Well when it was delivered, the dea or

whoever the officers delivered it. And at this guy's business, and he knew me, says I was a kid, and my father knew him since he was a kid, and he basically cooperated right on the spot. So he called my father and said, hey, come down here. So my father did, and he basically threw the envelope in my father's car, and then he convinced my father to walk around with him at their business, trying to get him to incriminate. I think that's the word himself. So my

father said something, Yeah, I'm just getting that. It's just an envelope. I'm bringing to a friend. That's all my father really said, and that's all he was really doing. So they arrested him as soon as he said that. They came and arrest him.

zero bond. And I also knew that once I was arrested that I was I was going to go away for a long time. This time, see, I had two prior sales of LSD, and when I went to court, they offered me eighteen months in prison or three years for robation. So I took the three years for probation.

I pled guilty, took three years probation, and then they took me to the other one and they actually wanted to give me three years in prison, and I told him I was never even in their town, which they can verify, and I'd like to have a speedy trial and go to trial. And then several months later I told him I would be willing to plead guilty if you ran at concurrent probation with the one in Penelos County. Even though I was not the person that would drove

up there. They arrested. It was a friend of mine that drove up there, and they arrested him and he pled guilty in the whole nine yards. So after it was like a week before we were going to go to trial, they said, okay, you can plead guilty today. Matter of fact, the judge was upset that I was going to plead guilty. It was a female judge, and she says, you could plead no contest and I will give you adjudication of guilt withheld and give you three

years probation concurrent to your other three years probation. So I pled no contest, okay. So then within six months at that time, I ended up going to some shows again, and I was really only had a couple of guys, This guy UH named Jeff Rhodes that I sold to on this charge that ended up setting me up, and I had like one or two other guys that I sold to.

own unique viewpoints on these two issues. But for those people, I would ask them to consider the fact that it was a total four thousand dollars involved, right, and we spent as a country to keep you locked up for twenty six years. We spent probably close to a million and a half taxpayer dollars, not to mention the lost income that we might have gotten from being out and getting a job and working, paying taxes, you know, not

to mention your dad's ten years in prison. I mean, the implications of this across the board, it's you know, I guess when you edit all up, it's probably more than a couple million bucks that we spent to lock up a guy who probably needed to go to rehab, which was you. You know, I mean, I don't I can't go back and judge you from back then, but you know, it sounds like you had to you know, you had a drug issue, and at some point you probably would have had to get some help for that.

But I think that's my personal feeling is that that's how we should approach drugs. You should approach them as a medical problem, not a criminal justice problem. And they do that in certain parts of the world, like Portugal, and they have no issues whatsoever right that all drugs

are legal there. Nobody cares. There's no there's no increase in crime, there's no increase in overdoses, there's no Every social scienceist that has studied it has found that when they decriminalized it, which was in two thousand, all those things actually were affected positively. The crime rate went down, you know, drug use went down, overdoses went down, and

it went down not only for small countries. They compared it to European countries and world countries like It's just that all the evidence shows that this is the only saying strategy is to treat drugs as a medical problem.

If you get behind the wheel and your high as a kite and you hurt somebody, then I believed and you have to be punished in some way, right Or if you do anything to hurt somebody, and if you act in a way that's irresponsible to anyone other than yourself, then you know, we have to as a society look at that. But for someone who is not harming anybody else, not you know, selling it to little school children or

doing anything. You know, don't get me started, But anyway, your experience is a is an extreme example of what's wrong with our sentencing laws and with our approach to drugs in general. And it is also an example of something that's such a strange dichotomy because here you were someone who is sort of a free spirit music lover.

I'm a music lover. I never liked the Grateful Dead personally, I was a whole morning to the hard rock stuff, but whatever, and then you end up being put in going from this sort of hippie dippy lifestyle, flower power whatever, into literally some of the most harsh conditions that any

human being can or ever would endure. And I want to talk about that, because it's important for people to understand what that's like and the concept of putting non violent offenders like yourself into maximum security prisons, which is so wrong on so many levels. But before we get to that, tim so there's another problem with your case that we find over and over again in wrongful conviction cases,

which is the lack of adequate counsel. And your attorney actually sold you down the river in a very meaningful way. And can you talk about that because did you have a public defender?

was going to be in prison until then at least. Anyways, but I listened to my father in some levels. In one level and his attorney and his attorney basically said we should plead guilty, and my father was looking at it through another another way too. I wanted I didn't want to go to trial because I actually believed LSD to be a sacrament, you know, which is something that I'm sure there's a lot of argument to go on

both ways on that. But they did take Ayahaska to the Supreme Court in two thousand and six and recognize it as a sacrament to certain people, which is very similar.

that happened with LSD. They don't want it to happen with Ayahuascas, so it's very controlled. You have to really go through a ceremony and prepare yourself for it, you know. But it's very similar, probably more potent in the experience than LSD. And it's legal.

And yet it's totally legal, right, And yet we have other drugs like marijuana which are still which is you know, obviously we're making a lot of progress, and this is something I've been working on for a long time and advocating for, but you know, there's still people serving life in prison in America for marijuana like that. What in the fuck is going on with that? I mean? People, I say that to people and they're like, huh, No,

that doesn't make any sense. Yet we have more than sixty percent of Americans now live in a community where at least some form of medical or recreational marijuana is legal, and yet we have people who are serving life in prison and getting arrested every day. Tens of thousand of people every week, every month get arrested for marijuana. It's

nuts and goes back to what you were talking about before. So, so you came from a place of believing that what you were doing really wasn't wrong because of the fact that you looked at this and granted, you know, okay, you know, people will have I'm sure very different opinions on that, but I can understand where you're coming from.

But I want to fast forward a little bit to the trial itself, because didn't your attorney give you literally the worst advice that any attorney has ever given anybody, which was the please guilty.

I'm like, of course, I'm just telling you. Of course I'm not going to do nothing like that. And yeah, he gave me bad advice. And I was his last case that he was taken on as for the government. He started private practice after my case.

ever see or come close to in their lifetimes. But at the same time, you know, again I'm of the opinion that drugs should be regulated, they should be taxed just like alcohol, and they shouldn't be sold to minors, and we should have safe spaces for people who are heroinauts to to, you know, to do what they need to do and not be in the streets. And you know, it's been shown that these type of safe injection facilities reduce the spread of AIDS and hepatitis drastically, clean needle exchanges.

Things like that, I don't do drugs. I wish, you know, I could wave a magic wand and help every drug addict off of drugs that you know that they could. I believe we should have rehab facilities available to every American who needs it and wants it like a hospital is, and we would be a much better society if that were the case. But instead we lock people like you up for crazy amounts of time. But in your case,

your attorney told you that you could plead guilty. First of all, the idea that he wanted you to testify against your father is something I really have to just process for a little while. I guess he had to offer you that option if it was an option that was available to you. You know, he probably had a legal duty to tell you about it. He didn't have to advise you to do it. But I'm sure he did have some sort of a responsibility to tell you

that that was on the table. You did the only right thing that you could do, of course, and that's the only honorable thing. And then but then he still told you that if you pleaded guilty, you would get what not.

I believed something was going to happen, and maybe I would that date would change, you know, like Jerry mentioned, or Terrence McKenna, an author, he mentioned, like a global shift of consciousness on that date. So I figured, Okay, I'm going to be in until then anyway. So it doesn't matter if they say twenty years, two life sentences, thirty years. It just didn't matter to me at the time.

I just accepted my fate, you know. Like I had a couple of friends also, and I called them up and I said, you're never going to hear from me again. I'm if anybody ever comes to you ask you any questions or anything, just tell them you'll cooperate against me. That's what I told some of the people because I know I was basically the taking it. I was going to jail, you know, I was doing that as a long time.

is what you would get. You were operating under this mistaken assumption that this prophecy was real and that you would that some magical thing was going to happen on that particular date in twenty twelve. Obviously that's not how it worked out. So when you when you were sentenced, I mean that moment, I guess it.

two guys they were officers. They stood up and high fived each other in the middle of the courtroom, and my sister saw that, and I'm looking at my sister and I basically start I broke down right then. I was like, man, this is sad. I'm sad for my sister. It's sad to see my sister here right now like that. And I walked in, you know, with the marshals, into the elevator, and I had some tears going because I've seen my sister. It was more to do with her than it was for myself.

But then, you know, then comes another terrible aspect of your case, which is something that I know you talk about in your speeches, and I know you want to talk about today, and I want to talk about today, which is the fact that you were sent to some of the most dangerous prisons in America as a non

violent hippie. Right, you still look like a hippie. You got you can't hear you can't see him on the radio, but he's got long hair in a braid, and you know, just sort of has the mannerisms of somebody who is just a gentle musical sort of a soul, which I recognized from my day job in the music business. So how did you deal with this? I mean, what was it like when you first went and how did you

manage to survive? I mean, these are places where people are getting stabbed, people are getting beaten, people are getting killed, right, and here you are not not I mean you're not a small guy, but you're not a big bodybuilder type of guy, tough guy whatever. You did grow up in a violent you know, back with the background like.

He had without me realizing the amount of stuff that he did for me, he had like power within the prison system. Let's say, you know, if you're a serious violent person or whatever, and you've done some serious violent acts, then you gained some kind of power more more like people are afraid of you. I guess it boils down to and he took me in as a roommate and he schooled me. And he also had explained to other people where I came from. You know, I'm this deadhead.

I'm you know. He's like, yeah, you're you know. He used to he used to be funny to him in a way as far as seeing me because I'm like this non He's like, you don't belong in here in this prison system. And he personally told people that other people that had power like to look out for me, you know, to like make sure that I don't get in anything I wasn't. I didn't do drugs in there. I didn't do I didn't borrow things from people and

not return them. There's a lot of things they say when you get to prison, not to do gamble and.

would mess with them or maybe their friends. So they by me playing at daily doing exercise with some people that had it was that had a little power in the free world, let's say, or even in prison, some of the other people would think, well they better not you know, approached me in negative ways based on only because I befriended some people and not everybody is able to befriend you know, some people like that. It's just like they kind of like came to me. It's I

don't really know how it all happened. It was more like they they saw somebody. They saw so many they didn't feel like that was a real that was like a I don't know, I like to say the word convict, but in some levels like a criminal. They didn't look at me as like a criminal, and they looked at me like and I had a life sentence, So there they had some compassion for me. I guess yeah, it.

hope in a hopeless place, I suppose. But you were transferred to I mean, you were in a dozen different prisons over the time you were locked up, and so you know, you couldn't have had a dozen different protectors, right And even then, like for you, I know that from having read about you at various times, you were the winemaker or whatever in the prison, and that managed to help you because making a prison hoots or whatever to keep you in the good graces of some of

the other guys who might have you know, been predators or tormentors of yours. And that that does lead to a good point that I want to make, which is that my friend Tony Poppa, who was in prison maxim security prison New York for twelve years for a non violent first defense, he talks a lot about how, you know, there was so much there was so much drugs in

the prisons that he was in. There were so many drugs and as he says, if you can't control the flow of drugs in a maximum security prison, how can

you expect to control it in a free society. And I think that really says a lot about the work that we do, because just think about that, right, there's I don't think there's I mean, for everything, everybody I've spoken to, and as you know, hundreds of people by now that I know who have served time in different prisons around and nobody says that it was hard to get access to drugs, which I find remarkable, but it's true.

And yet we labor under this assumption that if we devote enough resources to trying to stop the flow of drugs or trying to you know, legislate our way out of it or incarcerate our way out of it, that somehow others going to reduce the amount of drugs and society. It's never worked, it never will work, it never can work. So and your your experience is just another example of that.

But back to your experience. So, so you went from prison to prison, you were placed in solitary confinement at various times for either things that you did or did not do right. And how did I mean? You were deprived of basically all almost all the things that a human being needs to survive, aside from the fact that. I mean, were you you were vegetarian the whole time you were in there too.

stuff like that that are vegan. That are the vegetarians. But for the most part, for the most of those years, they serve like soy, just soy, you know, throw some water and some soy and that would be food, you know. But for me, I was fortunate where I would I ate oatmeal and apples mostly every single day for lunch.

That was my lunch, you know. I would eat that in my room because you can buy oatmeal in the commissary and apples sometimes you can get them from the kitchen, you know, or you can have somebody to bring them to you, I guess. And I would just go out and play handball for a lot of years, for like the past twenty years, probably I would skip going to the real lunch because there's mostly nothing there that I

would eat. But yeah, and then in a commissary, they have a comma saries where inmates can buy food, but there's nothing, definitely nothing organic in there. But there's very little that's even healthy, you know, Like they might sell bags of beans, but even those contain like canola oil and other stuff that I don't that I know that's unhealthy for you. So, like I said, it's very very

difficult to eat the way I did. But I I've been a vegan for a long time, mostly for because I karma, Like I don't like to promote death, even of animals, you know, And so you know, that's just my choice, and it was a hard choice. But luckily I was given another chance. And when I come out to the free world here, I cannot believe they have vegan restaurants now. Everywhere they have It's amazing. They have vegan They have whole foods with vegan food, vegan salad bards,

I mean, organic food everywhere. It's unbelievable.

of respect for people like you. The been able to do it for so long, and the fact that you were able to do it under those conditions is insane. But I'm not perfect, but I'm I'm trying to minimize, you know, my impact on the on the animals and the oceans and the rest of it. So so I

look up to you for that. But how did I mean, you know, going back to what I was saying before, Tim, you know, the deprivation to someone like you who was really yours addicted, more addicted to music than drugs, right, I mean, and you weren't able to have that experience in prison except on a very limited basis at certain times. You obviously are someone who is a you know, a kind and gentle and loving person, and here it is

everything is the opposite. Right. You're not able to have appropriate forms of physical contact with with with and by that I mean whether hugs or you know, romantic relationships. You're not able to have any of the things that sustained you and sustain you now on the outside, How does a person like you go into an environment like that and with with actually no prospects of ever getting out and maintain sanity, hope, any of it? Like what what you know? You're in this like the darkest hole

that even in solitary confinement, Like, how'd you do that? Well?

a shoe. There's different reasons why. I like, at this particular time, there was a guy that was in the same living quarters that I lived at, and he actually put a knife in not only our room, but like four other people's rooms because he didn't like my roommate and he didn't like you know, in the nineties, and

so they locked you. If they find something in your room and nobody says it's theirs, my roommate would have said it was his if it was his, And if I have something that's wrong that I shouldn't have, I will say it's mine too. So it wasn't either one of ours. And so they took us to the hole. I was there for thirty seven days and then they let me out. And then another time I went for over two months because somebody else was trying to leave

that prison. So he used my name to say that I was like extorting him for to make wine or something. You know. It was extorting. I don't. I would never extort anybody for anything, you know, And I'm thinking, wow, And they shipped the guy I was in the hole for two months and two days. And it's just a coincidence that it was around August ninth of nineteen ninety five. This was right when Jerry Garcia died. I was in

a hole when he died. And they used to never play music, you know, and you could maybe hear one of their songs every so often on the music. But when he died, they started playing all day for the whole day. I was able to listen, you know, I'm listening to music on the radio, you know. And that started the Grateful Dead Hour, and they started to have one hour a week, you know, where I can listen

to it. Where that helped me, really helped me. But at times when I could not listen to it, I actually used to use the telephone and call my sister and she would play me the song called the Days Between It's a Grateful Dead song over the phone, and I would it would help me. It was like, oh, it would help me, Like maybe someday, somehow somebody will help me and I can go back to a show where I can be able to listen to him on

my own, whatever the case may be. So I was, like I said, I was in the hole for two months in two days over somebody saying that I was something to do it whine, But they shipped that guy. He wanted to get shipped, and they they did. They shipped him. They let me back out, and then I was there for seven years, and at the very end they tried to say I was. They didn't know for sure, but they were saying, just in case, they're going to put me in the hole because they thought I was

friends with these guys that were trying to escape. I would never try to leave because it's there's no sense of trying to leave, because you're you can't stay away. It's like it's weird. I wouldn't never try to try to go anywhere. But I had a friend of mine that was actually trying to leave, and he had some friends and they all they were trying, and they locked them all up. And then a month later they came and said, well, we're locking you up just in case,

and they locked me up. And I was in over five months.

fences everywhere inside there. You're never together with a whole prison at one time, so it's very it's still violent even with that. I have a friend of mine there that actually named Ronald Adcocks that was arrested in nineteen eighty and he had a release date in nineteen eighty seven and a guy came to him and heard that he was gay on the street and he got arrested at seventeen years old in nineteen eight. Seventeen years old, this guy came and slapped him and says, shay, if

you're going to be my girl. Basically in prison, so he basically killed a guy. You know, I would have thought he could have used self defense. But there's people in prison that will go to court or trial against you. There's some people that will like if somebody gets hurt, there's somebody else in a whole other unit. That didn't see anything, but they will be willing to testify that

they saw everything. And apparently he had enough people that went against him and they gave him a life sentence, and since then he ended up killing two more people. There's different reasons why that would happen, but if somebody tried you in that manner, you know, he did what he did. And so he has three life sentences now and he he's about six or four. You know, he was a serious person and I ended up befriending him in around two thousand and six and since then been friends.

You know, I've been We've been friends ever since then. I actually still talk to him. He's he's I mean, his story is interesting because he was arrested at seventeen years old. He's never been to seeing a beach in his life, and I'm like, there's anything I could do ever to help him out. You know, I will and I have been, you know, could do whatever I could do for him.

cases of actual innocence. Ironically, paradoxically, those are harder to get clemency on, typically because governor and presidents will often prefer to let the courts deal with those actual innocence claims. It's sort of understandable, but it's easier for them to look at a case like yours or so many other mandatory sense in cases I've been involved with where it's so obviously an affront to justice that someone is serving a sentence that is so wildly mismatched with the crime

that they're convicted of, even if they are guilty. And certainly there's a lot of people serving mandatory senses for crimes they didn't do. But in cases where someone like you actually pleads guilty, or even Lenny Singleton, who I was so thrilled to walk out of prison and we become friends since in several months ago in Virginia, you know who is serving double life for stealing five hundred dollars and a handful of dashing grab robberies in which

no weapon was used and no one was hurt. He's another one who pleaded guilty and just judge was in a bad mood that day, you know so. But in your case, the system it took too long. Justice delayed, but justice wasn't denied because ultimately there were a lot of people who came to your You know, I guess in a certain way, your prayers were answered, right because you had a literally an army of people, four hundred

thousand of them signed petitions. I was one of them, asking the president, Yeah, sure, asking him one of four hundred thousand. It's good. It's a good army to be a part of. So there was an army of people, advocates, lawyers, families against mandatory minimums. Again, that's famm dot Org. I hope people will go and visit the website who were literally begging for your freedom, and those cries were heard

and you were granted clemency. But I want to hear from your perspective what that moment was like and how did you find out? Were you expecting it? How did you Because this is the flip side, right, we know what the misery was of that moment in the courtroom where they were, you know, the high fiving and your sister, and now this was really the opposite, right, So can you explain that scenario.

you if you was going to have one. So I would go and see my note, my name's not on that one. My name's not on it. So one day I'm sitting in my room. I think I just came in from recreation. I'm not sure, but it was that it was like at one forty in the afternoon, and normally when you're in prison, you can only move for ten minute moves, like it's like on the hour. I believe it is some places on the hour or some

and a half hour. So if it's not on the right time, they're not going to open the door, and you're not gonna go anywhere. You're gonna have to wait until the next move, you know, and the next move is either at two or two thirty. So they come to my door, says you need to go out right now and go to R and D. He didn't tell me why or anything, so I s all right, I walked out there. He opened a door, which is not normal.

So and then in the center of the prison there's a it's called a hut where there's a guard standing under there usually. So I walked and he doesn't ask me where I'm going or nothing, so apparently he's in on whatever this is too, so he didn't say nothing to me. It's okay. I walk go to R and D and they put me in this room and then you know, they locked the door here in this room in R and D. So I don't really.

take a small time dealer and put them in prison. Well, he doesn't have an income, so for him to get by, he might go work for average sixty nine cents an hour in a factory they call Unicorn. Anyways, so these two guys were working in there and they came in the same room as me, so all three of us, and I said, hey, can I ask you guys a question? Are you guys did you happen to put in clemency petitions? And both of them said yes. I said, oh my god, this might be a clemency. So they called one of

them first and they called him into this room. He went to an office and he came back by us and gave a thumbs up like he just got a clemency. And I'm like, this cannot be happened, No way, I can't. I cannot believe this. And they called me next, and I went in there and it was. There was a female a w there assistant warden, and she says, I need to put you on his phone on a speakerphone. So she puts so she hits it, and then Professor Ogilvie at Catholic University gets on the phone. He says,

mister Tyler. He says, we have some good news from you from the parton attorney. President Obama has granted you a clemency. And I was I couldn't believe. I couldn't. Almost just came back through me again right now. I couldn't. I started, uh, like I want to tear up. I said, I'm trying to hold it together right now. I said, this is this is unreal.

was like, wow, I'm trying to hold it together. Well, he gave me, and then he went into the details where I was given a two year date, which with the enrollment in our adap.

like they're gonna go home someday. They know on this date and this time, if they can not hurt somebody, they're gonna go home, or if they can, you know, stay out of mischief trouble, they'll go home. Well, I never had that understanding or comprehension before. So he gave me a two year date. I went back in my room. I couldn't believe it. Actually, I went back in and I tried to call my sister and she didn't answer

the phone. So I called my mother and I caught my mom on the phone and I was like, Mom, you ain't gonna believe this, but I just got a clemency. And my mother was at first, She's like what. And then all of a sudden, she I felt like all this nervous, negative energy, negative depression that she's had for all these years, I felt it like come on her, and she realized, Oh my god, I'm going to come home. I'm not I'm not going to die in prison. I'm

going to make it home. And it was just this feeling that I can I can't even put it down the way it really was. So I ended that conversation with my mom and changed her whole life.

And when she answered her phone, I said, Carrie, I got to clemency in this, But she didn't have that genuine feeling of knowing it that I just told it to her, so I knew, but she did have I think it was NBC at her house or Las Vegas. NBC was at her house actually recording when I called her, So I told her the story about my mom that I just revealed to you. And they actually played that thing over the internet or over the NBC, that news

when I was telling a story about my mom. Because when I called my sisters, she already knew, so they recorded that all this. So that was interesting.

I was mentioned in earlier where Amy and there's in her East Coast affiliate is this guy named Elik King, and he's in Atlanta, and he actually writes like over four hundred people that are in prison daily and he calls it lighting up our Blue there's a blue light you know when we when you have a message, Like

you can walk by these computers in prison. There's like five of them in your unit where you live usually and if you go buy and you type in your number, it'll show it'll be a blue light if you have messages from the free world. So he would actually send messages and he still does to over four hundred people every single day, and I was one of them. And so he would actually send us who who got the clemencies, what they were charged for, their release dates, the whole

nine yards. So I saw my name there that day. You know, that night, there's my name and everybody could see that. But when I walked into the unit, I couldn't help. I was like, oh my god, I just I got out of clemency just now, and everybody was so happy. Oh I'm so happy. Oh man. It wasn't like they hate. They weren't hating on anybody. Anybody that got They were so happy.

course from you now in such a powerful way. So okay, so it's and for anyone listening, please go to can do clemency dot com. It's c A N d O clemency, which is c L E M E n c hy dot com. So it can do clemency dot com and get involved and you know, correspond with some month and you'll be amazed how much of a difference you can really make with a very simple act like sending an email. Whereas Tim is so eloquently explaining right now. So so

that's that's quite a dramatic turn of events. I you know, I hope that we're going to see many, many more clemencies, gubernatorial and presidential. We're going to I'm looking forward to working with can Do on some of these because I've been blabbing about this issue for so long that people that know me are tired of hearing me talk about it. I think clemencies are an absolute responsibility of people in power. That's why they're given those those powers so that they

can right wrongs. Because the justice system, whoever created the clemency. Uh. You know, Protocol was obviously very aware that the criminal justice system is not, cannot be, and never will be perfect, and they're mistakes that are made, and the person who is holding the h highest executive office in the state or the country has an opportunity and responsibility to correct those injustices. And that's why they have that power. Unfortunately, it hasn't been used nearly as much as it should.

President Obama certainly went farther than other presidents have in modern times, but not nearly far enough. In my view, I think there are just too many thousands and thousands of people in the federal system and of course hundreds of thousands of state systems that belong on the outside that deserve clemency, that can be productive members of society

as you are now. And that's you know, with the limited time we have left, tim you know, I want to ask you about that because we were speaking earlier about some of the people you left behind, and if there were you know, you know, a couple two or three, you know, people that really stick in your heart that that you want to bring attention to their cases, this would be a good time to do it, because you never know who's listening. Someone might be listening. They can make a difference.

any drugs. There's no drugs actually involved. But that's the most Uh, that's probably the worst case I've I've ran across that I personally knew, you know, I've played the music with him in there a couple of times, and you know, that's somebody that I could bring awareness to. I had some other friends that were doing life for marijuana, like Billy Deco, but he ended up getting a clemency.

Luckily I knew. I knew him for the hold for twenty five years probably in prison, and he got a clemency in two thouy I think fifteen before me, you know. But he was in there for marijuana, and he had life, and he was into like sprouting food like i'm, you know, into health like I was. He was into like sprouting beans and stuff. He even tried to do some of that in prison, which is nearly impot I actually did some prison like that, which is nearly impossible to do.

That's Families Against Mandatory Minimum, So it's fa MM like Marymary dot org and learn and go ahead. So what's you say?

would talk about me. So you know, I feel like I'm indebted to her, and in some respects I went to visit her, and you know, I have a lot of thankful to go to her, you know, specifically because she introduced me to Catholic University that ended up doing my clemency petition, and she has introduced me to many people throughout the years. You know, that brought a light to my case. And I'm actually very lucky to be

free right now. And that's a big tribute to her, you know, a big much of that is attributed to her, because without her and many other people, of course, and all the people that sign a petition at change dot org. Without all those people and her, and never mind President Obama, I wouldn't even be able to be here right now to speak to maybe help somebody else in the future. So I appreciate that.

is there, so a change is definitely in the air. So, Tim, this is the part of the show that I like the best because as we get towards the end, I get the opportunity, since it's my show, to do what I want, and what I want to do at the end of each show is to stop talking and listen.

And so before we before I turn the microphone over to you for final thoughts, I just want to thank you for coming in here, taking your time, doing all the advocacy work that you're doing, inspiring other people, including me, and sharing your story with us listeners. So, Tim, the mic is yours. Please feel free to talk about whatever's on your mind for the last few minutes that we have.

in the future somehow. You know, as soon as I walked like past that gate, you know, I had to go through all these gates and give your name and all this stuff. And as soon as I walked past that gate, I just broke down. I could not believe it. Like the sunshine, looking at the sun, it looked so different from walking when I walked through that gate, then it does inside them gates, the sun was like real again. And when I walked out of there, you know, we

recorded walking out of there. And I have this friend of mine named Wes Brewer. Well, Wes Brewer decided to come. He's like a grateful dead fan or a fish fan or you know, similar fans jam band music fan, and he decided to come and take a bus with me. I was released from Jessup, Georgia, and I elected to take a bus ride all the way to Las Vegas because it gave me three days on of freedom before I had to go to the halfway house. And if you would have went on an airplane, then you would

only have like eight hours of freedom. So I was like, I'll I'd rather see the country on a bus. And Wes decided to come, not only come, but to the video recorded me the whole way and interview me, you know, and asked me different, you know, coming right out of prison. So one of the things that he did do was he surprised me with a trip to the beach and

recorded me. And as soon as I just touched the sand, I just broke down, like broke down, and he recorded all this and recorded me going into this water, and I mean I broke down, literally broke.

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