Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgOgTTQejtE
[Music] gentlemen what's up how are you good to see you man see you bro always and robert very nice to meet you it's a pleasure as well pull this sucker up right to your face it moves around yeah it's very uh it's like the key yeah keep it try to keep it like a fist from your face all right um before we let's just let's just get into let's explain robert why don't you get started with this explain how you came to know robert and what his uh circumstances were yeah um in 2016 2016 right i was speaking in new orleans i was asked to speak at this conference of like hundreds of criminal defense attorneys with barry scheck who founded the innocence project and we were teaching a class essentially um from the national association of criminal defense lawyers and barry and i were giving a presentation in front of hundreds of lawyers about things that they could do to ensure that during jury selection and a trial that you can expose prosecutorial misconduct how you can make stronger legal pleas to get what we call exculpatory evidence or evidence that would tend to show someone's innocence so it was an hour-long speech and barry and i were like going in 15-minute blocks and at some point while we're on the stage and i feel like we're killing it you know i'm like feeling myself like they're really loving this stuff and at some point on stage barry goes to me by the way you know we just had an exoneration here in new orleans and this guy might show up and he and i said when was the exoneration he said just a couple of weeks ago and i said it's kind of a tricky thing to put him in a position to come up and speak in front of hundreds of lawyers and i said how long was he in for he said almost 24 years 23 years seven months for
a vicious rape and murder that he didn't commit so we're wrapping up our speech and all of a sudden i see this man walk in the room and like a lot of heads turn around because it was like a big hotel like ballroom and all the heads swung around because the door opened real loud and slammed so everybody is looking at this guy and i see this very well-dressed man and barry you know says oh and you know we have a very special treat for you this man just a few weeks ago was walked out of angola one of the most violent penitentiaries in the country and i i feel like you know something bad is about to happen because i know what that's like to at least i don't know what it's like but i know what it's like to see somebody in the throes of just getting out and they're usually shell-shocked in a way that is not conducive to public speaking so this guy just strides up on the stage grabs the mic and gives this this galvanizing speech where you know like you could see the jaws dropping open about how important it is to fight while you're in court and to not back down from judges that aren't letting you you know protect your client's constitutional rights and i'm sitting there watching him and i and i'm thinking to myself i've never seen anything like this is special so rob robert and i met right there on the stage and uh we got to talking and then we went across the street to a bar and we had more than a few cocktails and he he told me his whole story um about the crime about this
awful you know set of prosecutors and detectives that covered up evidence and lied and were responsible for his incarceration and i've said this to you before these you know if you've never been in the presence of an exoneree you don't really know um you know really the true strength and like the triumph of the human spirit in a way that is very hard to describe so you know 25 minutes in we're at a very crowded bar in the french quarter and i'm weeping so this woman is sitting at the bar and robert puts his arm on me is like it's all right i'm going to be all right and we had like one of those conversations where it was like we just connected in a way that was um you know really extraordinary and then i went on to help represent him in his his civil rights case and um but that's how we met i don't want to give away too much of his story because i'd rather him tell it but that's how we met and then you know have kept in close contact over the last you know five years or so and um i say this with full confidence that none of it is hyperbole you're in the presence of a miracle i mean this what this man was able to endure overcome um and accomplish since he's been out is nothing short of mind-blowing i mean he's a a force of nature and it's just such a an honor to bring them here how long have you been out robert um five years or so and has it what what has the transition been like from the first day you're out to to now is it uh have you like gradually become accustomed to this idea that they're not gonna drag you back in have you are you like is has freedom changed like the way it feels is it like normal now maybe after after
my charging was dismissed i was released in 2015 but maybe two years after that uh being threatened for a retry after that was over charged was actually dismissed on my 44th birthday right uh which i think i'll never forget uh i started feeling freedom from there in a sense because i wasn't tied into anything no more in the sense of you didn't have it hovering right so yes it have been a transition from the first day i got out until even to now a lot of things i'm getting accustomed to uh and just the way the world is right you know inside of inside of prison um you live under uh a set of rules and guidelines administratively and as a a prisoner right they got their own set of rules you know uh and and one of the things is about respect respect is huge and uh just having that empathy for other other people that's in the situation that you are in right so immediately when i got out uh maybe by the first week i was i was out let me tell you one of the transitional phases uh out with a friend uh in a riverwalk like near the french quarters in new orleans i man that was just was talking and um i seen the old lady crossing the streets uh oh white lady on the on one of those canes like the full the the full stand canes yeah and like a walker yeah like a walker right and it's like she's crossing the streets but these cars kind of like moving kind of fast and a lot of traffic you know and people blowing horns and different things of that nature uh and i'm like looking at everybody like ain't nobody gonna help this old lady like she
she might get hit you know a car might hit her right so i'm not talking to my friend but i'm constantly paying attention to what's going on right pay attention to my surroundings so i said man what the hell i went and helped her make sure that she crossed the street safely and when i got back to the other side people were like clapping and pat me on my back i'm like this is a [ __ ] up world like you're giving me accolades for doing a normal human thing right yeah yeah absolutely so i knew that i was in for a hell of a transition uh just to see that people didn't have uh respect for one another i mean just passing my people into saying excuse me right open the door for women and older people and children [ __ ] like that like so are you saying that there's more of that in prison well in prison is just like it's a lot of respect and because when you don't respect nobody i mean that's consequences for it right right maybe not those particular instance but just that level and that mindset of having that level of respect you know uh if you're in your own space a guy's not going to invade your space and if you invade space that's consequences for that right so just having that level of respect so you know what i said is coming into society and making that transition was it was difficult in that aspect amongst a lot of other things so you were 20 years old when they arrested you 19 19. and can you explain the the circumstances like what happened how you found out about it hop on the other boat how do you find out you were being accused of something that you didn't do uh well actually they uh they came to my mom's house uh knocking on the door banging on the door um the police raided the house pulling out guns and saying they was
looking for uh me for some crimes and i was like i mean knowing i committed no crimes right so like you you had never been in trouble before that little [ __ ] yeah just normal things that people growing up in private they get in trouble for you know uh uh selling drugs and this being basically being a a product your environment and the things that you see and participate in but not no [ __ ] i did was trying to um say i was uh involved in like murder uh robberies rape like what the hell and so now i was thinking in more terms of of okay well i'm just going to go to the station but and i and i told my my mom i could still remember this uh i said i'll be back i'll be right back cause i know i didn't do [ __ ] right right so i left out the house and went down to the station when they went to telling me about this uh murder with y'all where's his own robbers and rape him like man y'all people lost your mind like so me understanding this the system as from what i was i mean for what was known innocent people wasn't it wasn't prevalent during that time in 1992 it wasn't a huge thing where innocent people would get arrested for crimes and get convicted right so i'm thinking that when people commit crime they get arrested they go to jail that's the standard gnome right so i was under that uh uh presumption of assuming that well eventually they'll get their [ __ ] right once they go to talking to folks right right different things of that nature and so uh yeah it was mind-blowing this is to be knowing i our child was aggravated
rape um first-degree murder at the time and a whole slew of armed robberies you know and what they tried to say they had on you as far as evidence well a lot of that stuff kind of came out uh in the proceedings there after they just i mean initially during their arrest they don't really tell you all that you don't find these things out until you aft eventually you're arrested and uh i mean because it was a it was a a british tourist that was involved in the i mean that was a part of the crime so it shipped me national news so i was on television like um internationally this case was like really huge because of publicity so i mean half of the stuff technically i would charge well i didn't even understand as to what was the evidence and i mean what they had against me or what have you until i started going through the uh the court proceedings and you know they say they had eyewitnesses then they didn't and then they said they didn't have eye windows uh so in the orleans parish jail right i stayed in the orleans paris jail four years four years before i was actually convicted and that because the state's case had a lot of difficulties in as relates to the identification procedures that happened and eventually i i was end up convicted because a lot of things was with hell that uh showed that someone else actually committed the crime committed a crime and they knew about this evidence that would have exonerated you they knew about it these [ __ ] that that to me is the craziest thing when i hear about that over and over and over again josh
has brought this up i don't know to me more than a dozen times horrific cases where the prosecutors absolutely knew that they were convicting an innocent person they knew that there was evidence they would withheld that evidence right how the [ __ ] do those people not wind up going to jail that to me wanting to put someone in jail for a crime that they're innocent of is almost as horrific as the crime you're charging the person with because you're ruining a life and you know better you know better willfully holding back innocent people's evidence that would exonerate them that's insanity you know robert and i probably have different perspectives on this i went into this thinking and when i say this i mean this work i went into this thinking these were just a bunch of malicious people that you know were out to frame young people of color i don't think that that's always the case i think subconsciously it's there i think that they become so focused on winning and believing their own hunches and that's what happened in robert's case that they go down a path and you'll never really know what their motivation is unless you could climb into their mind and they tell you but i know in robert's case because i know the case really well that they as they took the i mean i want you to explain them but they took the word of people that claimed they could identify him they knew and had it's not that they had reason to believe they knew that someone else committed this crime um and they had an obligation to turn that evidence over to robert and his attorneys and they affirmatively didn't so you know what their motivation was is for people to figure out on their own but it's infuriating and i think that the only answer we could talk about this probably later about the reform work that robert's doing that we're doing the only answer is that we need to change laws to make people more accountable as law enforcement officers and prosecutors
to make sure that they can't just do this [ __ ] with impunity well this should be a crime it should be a crime of the highest order if you want to imprison someone for something that you absolutely know they didn't commit if you have the evidence that shows that that person's innocent and you withhold that evidence and still prosecute and convict them that should be a horrific crime you should never work in the criminal justice system again and you should lose your freedom if anything will motivate you motivate your your listeners to to believe what you're saying and to feel the same way i can think of no other way than to take you through this man's journey because even over dinner last night you know i i you know i had to like turn away and not get emotional because i don't know how he did it i don't know how these people can have the where the the mental stability and find the wherewithal to not only survive in prison but to play such a uh instrumental role in their own release he's the smartest lawyer in the room so you know why don't you tell joe about how that how you even became a suspect and what some of the initial problems were with the case yes uh how became an initial suspect is they had a uh what a legend they had a false uh tip it was a false tip that led uh the police uh to arrest me uh for these particular crimes saying that they knew that i was involved in these crimes or what have you um who gave them the false tip uh it was anonymous anonymous was it someone that had a grudge against you do you think is it was it someone that was trying to throw themselves off the case i really don't know that you don't know i really don't know i don't know how that happened
uh but someone someone actually did it right yeah and that is how easy someone life can get thrown away it's gonna show you how things uh can take a different turn um so you know and a lot of these things it didn't and and one way you look at a lot of times that uh i mean growing up in this stress neighborhoods and growing poor neighborhoods young you're black uh a crime happened to a tourist white tourist uh the a lot of people is looking at the city because tourist tourism as i learned i didn't know these things now but as i learned why i was incarcerated you know tourism is a big attraction for the city of new orleans there was a british tourist a lot of news covered nationally like this [ __ ] got to get done somebody got to go to jail for this right right something have to happen and so you know when you take all those things into a account and somebody allegedly called and said that i had something to do with the crime i get arrested uh i mean when i got arrested i said you know i grew up uh and and i can go off into this you know i grew up in in poor neighbors in poor environments uh i come from a single parent household i was a the elder of five other siblings which is one is deceased now because i essentially became a product my environment um in the sense of maybe you know propelling drugs and doing things that normal teens do in those kind of environments um eventually i dropped out of school um and maybe a few years after that i ended up
getting arrested for these crimes right so when i went to prison went to the jail first and then eventually gone to prison only then i was equipped with with a lot of courage street common sense and that's it that's it i mean i can read to the extent to get myself by but i wasn't an excellent reader right right i just had a lot of common sense and a lot of courage so uh i mean going through that process was was was was horrible it was horrific and in uh it was it was really horrific in a sense because in more terms of i went through that system and i tell folks all the time it's like uh standing before a system and they in a whole nother language to me legalese jargon yeah the legal judge and the terminologists that totally didn't understand didn't understand that we're a period right so going from that and being in the parish prison have to use uh my courage and my strength from growing up in poor environments to survive inside this institution uh a jail uh it was horrific i mean did you still have hope that they were going to figure out that you were innocent because you weren't in sin right i i still had a lot of hope because i didn't know in as i said innocent people wasn't into my knowledge until the world knowledge uh in 1992 it wasn't real nothing prevalent that innocent people getting caught i mean uh get found guilty right right so i still had like a submission of hope even in the parish like they're gonna eventually get this [ __ ] right or if i go to try nobody's gonna find me you're because i know i'm innocent just living off just holding on to that right but as the time went on me being in a parish
i started seeing guys that was getting convicted and they actually was saying that it was innocent i'm like he lying because that [ __ ] don't happen you must be lying that [ __ ] don't happen i'm like you know god was more like convincing i'm like okay maybe that can't blame what happened to me right so when the [ __ ] happened to me i'm like so it was like my blog intelligence like man it was crazy robert did they they assigned um a defense attorney for you right a public defender no i i had uh yes and no because what it what happened was i hired a guy but my family was poor they couldn't really afford him and i think he was apparently at some level of the case right uh and yeah so and and and that that was the gist of that but man it's it was so much stacks against me though to the extent of man like i i needed a dream team yeah you needed a serious group of actual actual excellent defenders who could go through all this information and and with a lot of work right find out that you were innocent but did you get you got a public defender eventually no he was a private attorney so you had this private attorney when you had conversations with him initially and you were trying to explain that you had nothing to do with this what was his initial reaction and what was his plan like what how did he did he try to reassure you what was his conversations with you like a lot of his conversation was that um i think i think we can beat this i think we could be just predicated on if i get this information if i get this if i get this and i was like okay if you can get this then you know what was the information they
wanted to get you know different uh reports supplement reports and different things that he kept on fighting for that the the courts were rejecting him on uh he was like man i need that supplement report i need to get this report and it's it's it's weird because a lot of the things that he he was requesting for eventually years later a lot of years later after i was found guilty me litigating my own case uh and and working with the innocent project of new orleans when it was able to provide the resources to investigators some of these same documents that this guy was looking for were some of the documents that has uh uh exculpatory evidence with hell inside these documents and other documents as well but for the most part so i i understood why he was looking for those things but he's always telling me like man we can do this and we maybe can uh do this if if this happened and this happened but a lot of things never happened did you learn law when you were in prison yeah uh and i can tell you about that uh that was a long journey and it was a long it was a fast journey because i was left with no other options uh as i said after being convicted um i'm really about 22 years old and i went to angola um when i first went there uh i looked at a lot of a lot of the guys who was already there when i got there they had guys who was down like 25 30 years 25 40 years you know i'm like what you've been locked up that long and i'm a person that i observe a lot and you know i think a lot right uh and i strategize a lot so when i actually just look at a lot of these guys talking to a lot of them i know i noticed that these guys
was uneducated they didn't know the law and they didn't have a lot of outside resources and connection with their families and and other people you know so i kind of like picked those three things out of like what the hell uh and explain to me why those things happen they've been there so long they lose you know to get out of touch with a lot of family members and different things of that nature and they don't worry about educating themselves because they so they're worried about how they had to defend themselves all those years so all those things kind of like put them in that situation a lot and a lot of them not all of them but most of them was was always angry guys that was bitter there was extremely dangerous uh and i kind of like used those guys as a mirror like i'm not gonna be like that right so i kind of like took the opposite direction but what happened was very interesting that actually changed my life uh me getting found guilty was like one of the most horrific uh traumatizing thing in my entire life right that was at that time but within that same year um i lost uh a brother my younger brother um he was he was he was killing the former street violence and and what happened right uh and i saw it like phil and i can laugh about it now but i used to cry all the time when i talk about it i can laugh about it now because i sort of understand and i was i'm able to accept it right uh but i felt kind of responsible for his debt in a sense even though i was incarcerated and he was he was free uh but the reason why he was killed because he was selling drugs not to justify his means because that's all he knew because the environment he grew up
in he was selling drugs to raise money to hire a turn to get me out of prison and i felt i felt really horrible and bad about that man you know so you know i do it through the two months and weeks or what have you i felt so depressed uh i actually wanted to kill myself because i i couldn't even go to the funeral you know so all these things i really i was thinking about committing suicide and everything but what happened what interestingly what happened was a guy who i met when i first got there one of the guys who uh i got very close with in the sense of because being them had a uh a subject matter that we we can relate to uh when i was seven years old i lost my father my father was killed um yeah my father was killed but my father was was a boxer right and so after my father was killed like for maybe a couple of years after his trainers they wanted like man your daddy was so good we want to keep this bloodline going like you got to go and try to be a boxer so they kind of like ushered me in that move and i started training i started understanding dynamics and the concept of the basics of boxing uh how old are you how what i was doing when they started training maybe eight eight to maybe about 11 or 12 something today in that right it was a couple of years i stayed and going back and forward was this something you wanted to do is there something that you felt like they were just trying to push you into i think that was pushing me towards nothing i actually didn't want to do but that's why i stopped doing it right right eventually i stopped doing it and did something else uh but so me and this guy who i'm i'm speaking
of had this kind of relationship as it relates to because he was a boxing trainer inside the institution and man that means you have discussion about certain things about how you train guys it's like you know if you're training a guy to be uh uh aggressive in a sense don't hit him too much with the mick gloves because you're gonna make them a defensive you know and that kind of just different things like that right so we need to have these kind of discussions and so he was the one that kind of came to my aid when uh i was going through the dramatic uh process with my brother being you know uh killed right uh i was walking to y'alls crying one day and he just walked up to me like man what's going on i'm like man i don't really want to talk about it you know like man just get in my space he was like man no man you my friend i won't i'm gonna help you he said let me tell you this and you might understand this he said that life is life's boxing right he said every time life throw a punch at you you got to do a counter punch and he said if you don't throw a counter punch life will just knock you out just like i'm getting knocked out in the ring and i'm like it ain't dawn on me when you told me when i went back to my cell i'm like you know what this guy [ __ ] right you know i got to fight back i can't just you know uh just sit back and continue on to playing the system oh dude the system is that flow and blame other people for what they ain't doing i got the fight and that conversation sparked something to me it actually changed my life so from there i enrolled myself in a liberty a a literacy program inside the institution uh and it's funny now when i think about it
because they started me out in the third grade i dropped out in the eighth grade but they started me on the third grade literacy program and which i excel uh those programs is screaming the facts because i'm like hell third grade but i was glad i had to take that route right because i wanted to relearn all those things and freshen myself up and eventually i got that to gd school uh and at the same time i was studying the law right because i knew i said man my brother was was gone he technically was my only financial resource that i had or a change that i ever had was of getting a tournament my family couldn't afford it right so that was led him to what he was doing to try to help me so i was like i got to do this [ __ ] myself ain't no way i'm gonna get experience in the lord if i don't know how to if i don't have no academical skills right so i got to master this [ __ ] and they came back to these different things i'm like all these guys that been there all this time they were uneducated they mean i got to get educated uh they didn't know the law i mean i gotta master this [ __ ] right and they didn't have no resources i got to get resources so that's that's all i ever focus on so inside the institution after you know i studied a lot for for years and i went in from the constitution all the way up to uh man i studied everything about the law to the to the partners i started taking corresponding courses and very aspects of laws on different branches criminal civil uh uh and i started studying politics started studying all this stuff and one of the reason why i didn't want to be the smartest person inside it and go to prison but i didn't want to be that same 19 year old kid that stood before the courtroom and they didn't understand [ __ ] that was going on in front of me right
and i wanted to be i wanted to be educated enough to help myself get out of prison and stay out of prison and change the system so that's that that what brought on that that level of education um and so so for many years um and one of the things i maintain a lot of my resources i get got a lot of resources is a lot of people used to spend a lot of their money in the conversation um and which i spend money in the commissary as well but a lot of my money i used to sacrifice i told you i'm a very uh strategic person i used to invest in 100 stops a month and i said if i and i think stamp was maybe 25 cents 20 29 cents during the time so it's more than it was less than 30 dollars a month right for the for the for to get me 100 stamps so if i i said if i can write 100 people in a month and if three people respond from the 100 people i wrote and bring me help that's a that's a third out of investment right for me to actually get the help that i need and uh to get my freedom and who are you writing to everybody i wrote the president united states i wrote the federal government i wrote everybody then i started talking over the period of years i started talking to certain people investigators lawyers then when i started hearing about the innocent projects that were surfacing around the country uh i started writing them and eventually uh it worked out all right uh but prior to those folks coming on and bringing uh
the resources to help me i was litigating my own cases i was litigating cases for other guys inside the institution uh i got so good at litigating to the extent i was winning cases in the ohio state court the circuit courts i was getting guys like hearings uh i had an impeccable prison record as far as rehabilitating myself i didn't completed all the self-help programs i was in charge of three other organizations there that was creating programs for guys i mean uh it was a whole lot of things i was doing i i i didn't have like root infractions for like expand from like 10 to 15 years and which is it's hard to do what do you mean by that rule infractions 10 to 15 years ago but getting the write-up like what do you mean inside when you're in prison it's like a ruling fraction is like they got a set of rules really strict rules and if you violate in any kind of way they call that a write-up or a rule infraction okay and it's hard to get that inside the institution not i mean not to get write-ups right right uh because you got some guards just got animosity towards you they don't like you or whatever they might get you to do something uh that you don't want to do so it's hard to balance those things but i managed to do that right and i was getting all these health for these guys getting reversible for guys and some guys was getting uh less of a sentencing and getting out of prison i'm like i can't help myself i can't win [ __ ] for myself you know and i had all the right things as a matter of fact some of the very same issues that i eventually got out on when i had the resources some of the very same issues that i was litigating myself like years before i got out and like why i couldn't get out then well i just didn't have the resources so yeah that's
that's that's kind of that's all i explained you know um my level of of educating myself to the extent of i've learned all these things man you know you know i was joe last night you know i know robert now for five years and i almost i i told him last night i was like i almost feel ashamed to ask you this because i got this reputation as like this real aggressive hard-charging um attorney when it comes to these innocence cases and then i'll say things that other people may be you know a little bit more reluctant to say to a judge and you know i'm not the traditional attorney but i and i said to robert last night you know but i don't kid myself that when it comes to toughness i can't even wrap my head around trying to get it in your mind space where you're having a ninth grade education you're put in prison for something you didn't do and i know myself and know that i would have been a puddle and i don't know how i would have survived let alone had the wherewithal to overcome what he overcame so he was telling me a story last night about how because i said i know angola is one of the most dangerous penitentiaries in the country um it's a very violent place full of very violent people um it has a long sordid past of not having oversight there's murders there's everything that you think about when you think of nightmares and a penitentiary happens there maybe two-fold that's a guess but it's a very violent play suffice to say so i said well how how did you navigate that um and i'm you know i'm not going to put you on the spot to explain it i mean i love to hear that [ __ ] because you know he very early on he said i got that out of the way right away
so that i could focus on i identified these three things and wanted to do the opposite of what people lacked in other words he said the people that weren't getting out of there had no education didn't know the law and had no support he said i was going to get those three things and i made that decision early and i realized if i don't get respect to be able to focus on those three things and i'm gonna have to worry about violence the whole time and protecting myself so just the contours you could hear these words about people getting out and i just that's why i think this is so important that people understand the contours of the suffering and and the practical considerations of survival that he had to go through i mean if you feel comfortable telling some of those stories you should because i think it helps people understand like what you have to deal with just to stay alive right just to fend off assaults right right and uh yeah it's it's you had to get that out of the way you got to make that a non-issue right you had to concentrate on your all all the things that you needed to concentrate on to get you out of jail so how did you manage to avoid all that violence uh by uh addressing the head-on you know uh and and that became that because of who i am as a person i'm just a very courageous type person but the environment i was raised in it it groomed you to be tough right groom you to be tough and you know as one thing when i got there i was saying okay uh i'm gonna come in i'm gonna leave out just like i can man i came in a man
uh and i'm gonna leave out there like that when it you know if if it's for me to get out of prison i said i'm gonna leave out uh so i'm gonna keep my digging in my pride i'm gonna stand up uh so once i seen how uh that was then i i in any situation that confronted me uh in other words it's like you bring me ignorance i'm gonna bring your ignorance like you've never seen before right no matter how small i am uh how big you are how many of them you are if you you bring me [ __ ] i'm gonna get you a cesspool i'm gonna always go higher than your ignorance right and having that mindset so you know and have i had some instance uh well and like i said i was a good boxer i was a good fighter uh and you know i had a mindset because i understood boxing it's like you know when i'm boxing you know if i'm in the rank i can't hear below the belt right but if i'm fighting you on the street i'm trying to win i mean i'm gonna bite your ass i'mma poke your eyes out i'm a i'm a wrasser you ain't got no damn rules i'm trying to win and me having that mindset of of of of defending myself uh what years later came to i had to use weapon weapons um but so i had a mindset and i have incidentally after incident until uh until guys realize that this guy here need to be [ __ ] with right and he's not afraid because most guys are uh uh afraid like if we in other words like if me and your exchange words i'm give you a primary example like [ __ ] you my [ __ ] you is a is a it's a physical confrontation you'll [ __ ] you is a verbal mind physical competition i'ma always go
higher than your ignorance right and me having that mindset i protected myself to the extent of a lot of [ __ ] staying around from ramen not that guy has feared me but it's like if you're too much danger yeah if you if you cross this [ __ ] one yeah if you cross his pad he gonna he gonna bring you the best he he told me about he's this the second day he was in the parish jail um yep well you tell it because i said how quickly did you have to establish that no well you don't have to tell all the gritty details yeah yeah yeah yeah uh or you can just being in uh you know the second days is being in and arrested for this crimes and uh charges uh i had to i went in a situation of like okay i'm gonna be here so i had to kind of like see how things was moving around so it was a situation where the stronger stronger guys would get more food and the weaker guys would kind of get lesser food and there's certain things that what's happening right uh stronger guys eat first and the weaker guys eat less you know like i ain't either one of these kind of guys so i'm gonna get my [ __ ] straight now you know so occur uh i was able to uh manage to take care of my business in the sense of challenging one of the guys uh and eventually it it it got to a level where guys had respected me from doing that because i was a newcomer that was coming into that and i took it upon myself to actually challenge this guy and confront one of these guys and dominated the the situation into this thing where everybody started giving me a level of respect
you know to extend like you know he's a newcomer but he ain't nothing so i kind of like mimic that same role a concept when i got to angola to establish myself first and like i said it occurred over the period of years over the period of years but eventually [ __ ] just like starts smoothing out you know even though it was still happening around me all around me guys was getting killed um i only seen a lot of stuff you know guys uh you know it's horrible you know but i just was there not there because i was focused man i was trying to get out of prison i know i ain't blown enough for number one uh and i know what i had to do in order for to put myself in the position to win how difficult was it to stay on track you're in there for 24 years for something that you didn't do like was it was it hard not to lose hope yeah it's i wouldn't you it it always and and people can tell you this is as much as stronger strongest as people say i am and other peoples are uh that's that come from wrongful fiction inside of institution and i think that's like one of the most two-feared things that they see and i can i i will agree with it that scientists and other people say that man is too worse as fierce of dying and being terminally ill right that's that's true yeah so me having all the hope and saying man i'm gonna get out of here i'm gonna get out of here didn't really know how how that was gonna happen but it's a it's a it's a level of fake that you gotta hold on to right and but somewhere in your back in your mind because you constantly see it every day and and and that goal the guy has been
now uh incarcerated for so long that they die almost every day a lot of people don't know that people die in that institution every day and you seeing this [ __ ] they're dying of old age they've done old murderers of age old age old age you know they've been there for so long how many people are in angola locked up more than 5 000 they have their own tv station radio station magazine it's like a world and you know what what's um well it's hard to you know and the reason why i think that this is so important is because you have to transport yourself and allow yourself to go you know he he gave the story short shrift what happens is the second day he's in there you know the guys that are there for a long time they call him a new jack and they he was first in line he got out of his cell first and he's ready to go get food and he said he saw on the first day that what happened is they come out with loaves of bread the guys that have been there for the longest take all the bread and leave the ends for the new jacks so he was out of his cell and was the third in line and one of the guys was like you need to get your ass to the back of the line and he was like okay and he went to the back of the line and then when it came time to eat the guy that put him to the back of the line didn't end up eating he ended up on the floor and to protect to protect the details you know robert put him on the floor as a way to say okay if you kick me to the back of the line i'm not going to have words with you i'm going to make you feel it so that no one's sending me to the back of the line
because i'm going to eat like everybody else right and that takes a level of ballsiness i think yeah and and to to also interject into the story uh yeah and when you told me to get to the back of the line i actually i didn't go to the back line another guy allowed me to get like maybe three spots behind him because he was like that's bull crap uh but i already had in my mind like i'm gonna kick his ass i'm gonna kick thank god you knew how to fight yeah i'm gonna kick his ass uh dad or either pick up something and use it as a weapon on him um and eventually i did uh to kill my business i put his ass on the ground and pull the blood and i let everybody know on both sides of the tears of terror that was maybe 56 people i let everybody know in the pod that i ain't the one and if you think i'm just talking or i'm just verbally just saying these things if you just give me a fair chance with each one of y'all that feel that way and i kick everybody i kick all y'all ass and i wasn't i mean i i know i can't beat everybody in the world but i damn i damn try right so me doing that that's what it's kind of like hold up man this this little guy yeah it's something something else right so eventually i started getting my little respect i ate just like everybody else the ones who was doing what they was doing and eventually over the period of time uh a lot of that stuff i got upset with because it wasn't right i'm all fair person right so eventually uh i ended up taking a guide job and and what they call like tear reps right you're the rep for this these guys and you know so
i ended up getting into the competition with the guy took his position and from that paranoia i was in the parish i always maintain that kind of position that's being a representative for a lot of these guys because i'm gonna and guys wanted me with that position period because not that i was didn't know i wasn't the side with the administration right they know i'm gonna play it fair across the board like administration was to bring me uh a pan that i know that wasn't gonna feed the 50 people i'm gonna slide that [ __ ] back out the dude i we not eating right we going on band we're going we're going we're going to bang we we're not going to eat because i'm not going to take that and feed all these men it's not enough food and having that kind of it is just get a lot of people a lot of respect for me uh why i was there like i said i still went through [Music] [ __ ] that everybody else go to by being in jail so they gave you like they would give you a plan for how much food everybody would get and then you would you would be able to negotiate with them no in the parish in the paris jail what happened was it you know if like if robert try to talk into the microphone just pull it just pull it up towards you don't move your seat doesn't matter yeah so what happened what happens is they if they get you a panda uh red beans right and a pan of rice uh and it may not be it's not enough they're supposed to have two pans uh and maybe two pans of rice or pan and have a rice and all the feed that in order for to give people a amount of amount of food that's going to make them full now it might be enough for somebody else to serve and give and skim guys on the tree not giving them a lot of food but i'm not going to accept that to feed them guys i'm not going to do
that you might do it with somebody else you're not going so it was you were able to negotiate you were able to get more food yes every time every time uh and guys respected me for that because i was able to play fair across the ball on those different levels there you know uh and that's who i am you know i'm just a fair person so how many years did it take you before you started to see the light at the end of the tunnel how many years did it take you before you were able to get people to review your case and recognize you had been wrongly convicted you know maybe i thought uh no i can tell you this it's what happens and unbelievable uh i got convicted in 1996 i found my first post-conviction as a what they call prosolitic litigant i mean i did it myself and in the year 2000 i received the evidentiary hearing which is a hearing without no attorney and my issue was mainly was about the dna testing uh i was asking the courts to preserve uh the testing if there's any testing that's if there's any testing that's available to preserve the uh the dna testing so i can test it and prove my innocence and i got granted that evidentiary hearing from emotion i did well unbeknownst to me years later that was the first ever of emotion that was granted on that capacity because they end up creating a law for the preserved dna testing that's way after i did this in 2000 in the year 2000 right i was like so ahead of time with this with this with this filing uh and i didn't even know it
um so from there i ended up getting denied in the courts uh and this is a whole lot of as a whole chain of other things but i may be i think in 2000 [Music] 10 or 11 that the innocent project of new orleans came on board to bring their resources to the to help me out and even even after that even after that uh i still was getting deniers with them right we still was getting deniers so uh and i tell i tell people all the time it's like you know throughout the course of 23 years and seven months i had 16 denials from eric court from the lower courts to the middle courts to the highest court and let's think about what's happening here by the way what's happening here just to put this into context is that robert is asking the court to order the prosecutors preserve the biological evidence from the crime scene this was a rape and a murder they had collected evidence and he is saying to them please don't destroy the evidence because i want to prove my innocence and i've talked to you about this before about how prosecutors and state politicians fight this being made a law all over the country and they come up with excuses like well then we're going to have a rash of people that want their evidence preserved and retested there'll be a run on the courts i mean this seems to me to be a fundamental human right okay of somebody that's accused of a crime that on the strength of snitch testimony and hidden evidence which we're going to get to what was hidden from him and his legal team in a minute that he is fighting a seven year battle excuse me a 14-year battle just to try to get somebody to help him get an order from the court to preserve
the dna i would like to say that this is an anomaly and that this only happened in robert's case it happens in in way too many cases that i've handled and that the innocence project handles in the criminal justice reform organizations handle all over the country so a lot of what we of what i get as a result of speaking out is how can i help one of the ways you can help is you know your voice matters when you are voting for elected officials your voice matters when you are writing a letter to a governor your voice matters if you show up at a town hall meeting it really does all matter and we have to keep on pounding the the um beating the drum to make sure that fundamental rights like this uh laws to protect these rights are enacted but i just wanted to make sure i mentioned that before i realized the thought right because by the time the innocence project of new orleans comes along and eventually barry scheck and and my dear friend nina morrison who were you know barriers but nina's uh one of the the leaders at the innocence project in new york um she just got you know put forth as a potential federal judge pick she'd be an amazing choice um really started to take his case on and expose all this evidence that was hidden but prior to that he was you know a one-legged man in a shit-kicking contest to say the least i mean he's fighting this all on his own but go go ahead i don't wanna yeah and well not only did a lot of my pleadings uh was about preserving the evidence it was it was also about all the withheld evidence and all the things that actually pruned it to my innocence so this one pleading there was multiple pleasings that were followed that i was filing throughout the like the span of time so as i said these 16 denials came over the course of the 23 years and seven months and trust me each one of them denials felt like a
guilty verdict all over again every one of them right what well eventually they became numb to like this [ __ ] it's it's all the same right like one did not feel like the same you know even though it hurt because you you better build yourself up to the extent like all right i'm doing all this amazing [ __ ] i re-educated myself i'm doing all this great [ __ ] but what the hell i'm still not out of prison and so when the innocent project of new orleans was able to bring all the resources he still was getting denied still again with denial i'm like god damn i got the facts i got the law on my side like what the hell you know and you know you you hold on to the hope uh but you know it's always in the back of your mind to go get back to this piece it's always in the back of your mind like man it's a possibility i might die here right and something that you dread you know that's one of the worst thing uh for any person incarcerated but especially like when you're innocent like there's a reasonable probability that i might die here how many guys you think you met in jail that were innocent that were probably gonna die there uh i mean a lot of innocent guys uh in there but i also met a lot of guys who actually died right because like and and in some instance when i was in prison um i used to work for this this hospice program right we deal with a lot of the elderly uh the terminally ill uh uh prisoners over there on the hospital or in the hospital wall right you go to you go over there and you care for them and you do these things for these guys and a lot of those guys who right before they die like you know because i shared my story and let them
know i was innocent you know and they're like uh it was in their right mind it's like rob i'm i'm innocent man i'm innocent and i'm like not all of them but i i didn't had that conversation with a lot of them and i'm like okay uh he got no reason to lie he's about to die right yeah there's no reason for him to lie right as nothing that can happen and so i i believed them right so and that was a it was quite a few of them that that came into the junction of expressing that they were innocent i'm glad you're wearing that t-shirt um the death penalty kills innocent people because um i think there's a lot of people that have this sort of hard-nosed idea that the death penalty is a good thing because uh it kills people who do bad things and it's very simplistic but the problem with that is the legal system is very very very flawed very flawed so this idea that the the death penalty kills innocent people is is a very important idea and people need to understand that for your in your your case your situation it's not unusual this this story that you're telling it's unique and it's it's amazing that you went through it and that you you figured out a way to educate yourself and to get yourself out but there's not you're not an unusual case in that there's a lot of innocent people that get locked up that's right look at the back of my shirt those all innocent people who were killed those are all those are all innocent people that were convicted and sentenced to death and have since been exonerated right so clementi aguirre is on the back of this shirt you've heard his story before and um you know we're gonna talk a little bit later about some cases of people that are still on
that are still on death row right now um that there are strong strong cases for innocence for them and you know you touched on something really important which is that when you hear about a horrific crime i think it's human nature eye for now yeah yeah and there's this really fascinating thing that happens during the death penalty case the first phase of jury selection is called death qualification it's a pretty shitty name for it and it's this phase where you are there to gauge people's feelings about the death penalty and having gone through jury selection and death penalty cases it's it's rather fascinating sort of human experiment if you think about it because what the supreme court of the united states not of any particular state has said is that if a state is going to put someone to death you have to have this process by which you cannot have people on the jury this is a bit of an oversimplification but you cannot have people on the jury that feel that if somebody is convicted of a capital case in a capital crime that you will automatically vote for the death penalty and you also can't have people on the jury that are so against the death penalty that they'll never vote for it now during this process of gauging people's feelings about the death penalty you get to have a conversation with them and you can see the the conflict the emotional tumult in their words and their body language in wrestling with well if somebody would you know murder a child or you know they deserve to die but then you also you know see but how but unless i know 100 they did it i don't know if it makes sense to hold and you see this wrestling this existential wrestling going on then there are some people
that come in and say that's right i'm definitely voting for death if i think they did it um and you know it's fraught with so many problems because of the finality of it right and you know people have different philosophical beliefs but if you knew the sheer number of people that you know florida leads the nation in death row exonerations um it's had it would have put 30 people to death that were actually innocent that have been exonerated from florida's death row over what period of time um 30 or so years so that would be you know one person one person a year um innocent person killed on the death so yeah we all we all i think a lot of criminal justice reform is about we live in a society that's so if you're not this you're that you're either on this team or that team it's a very binary simplified yeah zero sum game yeah and you know i think human existence is far more complicated and there are too many layers of gray areas that you know everybody should really stop and pump the breaks in their thought process and not be so wedded to how they were brought up or what their parents believe or what they think their friends believe in really takes stock of you know what am i really about and what do i stand for you know i say often that i stand in awe of these exonerees and even if as i'm listening to it today i'm hearing it and i know the story but to know what what robert had to endure um it's just hard to imagine how a human being could get past it i mean he he told me about the first time he saw people go for food in jail and he said it was like a bunch of [ __ ] savages you know running after food and grabbing it and running away said i thought it
looked to me it was like you know i think what you said it was like paralyzing to me because it was like you know i saw human beings in their most sort of um primitive form and he said well this is this is different you know i'm in i'm in a battle yeah robert can you explain some of the um what you ended up finding out was hidden from you what was the exculpatory evidence uh they would they would have that uh first of all first of all uh maybe i can explain the crimes right that was a spread of crime that happened in the french quarters in new orleans um it was to i think three armed robberies uh a raping and kidnapping and a murder was tied to that so he they it took all these crimes and said it was a part of a spree all right they had um a card that was involved uh in the crime and they eventually over the period well over the couple of weeks after the crime happened maybe um they found out who the car um that was involved and during the time when they was doing the investigation my name came up as the anonymous tip came in right so what they what they did was they eventually arrested me and connected me to the car that was actually used in in early sprees of crime including the the murder the robbery the kidnappings and the rape uh and years later uh it eventually found out that another guy got arrested for the murder uh and was connected he in his possession he had possessed it jury and articles are evidence from each crime spree and from each of the victims he had jewelry from the woman
that was robbed he had clothing from one of the other women i think the woman that was raped um and they never turned this over to him right and so yeah they would they would hail that um from me that was that that how did they connect you with the car that's that's what i'm about to explain they connected me the car how they connected me with the car uh the prosecutor theory was that like when they arrested this guy they got him to say that me and him was friends and he allowed me to use the car right at times to commit the crime but all they ever did suggested uh differently and so at trial what they did was they charge he got convicted of the actual murder right he got convicted of murder and it separated him from the other crimes and it charged me with the other crimes right but um unbeknownst to me uh on the day of trial that i was uh for the rape kidnapping in the armed robberies that uh he told the prosecutor that i had nothing to do with none of crimes that he i never used a car none of that right but when i went to trial the prosecutor said something totally opposite they prosecute me on the third that means guy was best friend he allowed me to use did you know him i didn't know him at all never seen him a day in my life and the short answer to your question joe about what they had connecting him to the car a driver's license you would think a driver's license a registration insurance someone that had seen them in the car the answer is they had
absolutely nothing they had a word they had the word of a guy that had been accused and tied to these murders who was looking to put it on someone else how did he put it on you though he found out that there was a tip right implicating him right right absolutely and so he tried to be a snitch to get the heat off of him and put it on you absolutely and they let that happen yep even though they knew right and it goes deeper this than that uh so after i get convicted uh i'm still charged with the with the murder of the british tourists right still i'm still actually charged with it even though i haven't been going back and forth to court with it at this time after i get convicted and i know i was gonna get a life sentence for the rape uh the kidnapping the three armed robbers uh so the district attorney uh made an offer to my defense attorney um and eventually brought it to me on the day of my sentence and said that okay we could give him 25 years uh 21 years for the murder get him a manslaughter right and i don't know what type of stuff that happens out of my president between my attorney and district attorney but i was scared as [ __ ] i just received a life sentence uh i know i was about to get sentenced to life for the the rape and 25 or whatever maybe 99 years for every on robbery i don't know i was scared that [ __ ] so i took the 21-year plea but i never admitted to anything right and a part of evidence was that the guy who we we we talking about that that was initially trying to involve me he was found guilty of the murder already he was already found guilty so they were
trying you for a crime they already had convicted someone for absolutely how is that possible it happened because that what they're trying to say is that if two people are in a car and you're both out committing crimes right you're both responsible you're both responsible there's something called the felony murder rule and the felony murder rule is that if you're in the commission of a crime and somebody dies so if you and i went and robbed the bank and i go in and start you know shooting up the tellers and kill two tellers you're responsible for the murder also so the theory of robert's prosecution was that they were friends they were on this crime spree together and that even though he was convicted of the murder um you know he was still responsible and guilty of murder it's no different than the james daley case which i've talked about before they convicted one guy jack piercy and then they tried my client after that one guy got sentenced to life one guy got sentenced to death it's crazy they don't have to have any evidence whatsoever that you're even friends with that guy right right it had his word right isn't his word enough and and the the piece of evidence another article evidence that we're held is a report that uh that when he made a statement like the money on my trial as i said that i didn't have anything to do with the murder he never knew me and different things of that nature uh and they withheld that and it and it would held that and that was so important to change the outcome of my trial because they went they took me to trial on the theory that he were friends and that i knew him and i had a connection to him through the car but had i would have had that piece of information the the interject in my trial i would have never probably got found guilty to that extent and they also would held various different um uh
uh statements and evidence as relates to the witnesses that was very inconsistent that was very favorable to me and that could have actually printed back to the to the guy who was actually uh uh convicted of the murder uh and attached to all those other spree of crimes um yeah so it just was a uh a lot of stuff man that they would held that that almost made it impossible um for me to unravel and to uh to obtain my freedom and you know i'd like to say that that's uncommon too but it's not so in other words when prosecutors are working on one theory full steam ahead right and they then are met with you might be wrong we might have been wrong all along the instinct 99 times out of 100 is to plow ahead and rationalize why the true perpetrator in robert's case why did he all of a sudden say robert had nothing to do with it oh well maybe he is making this up because he feels guilty that he implicated his friend who really wasn't his friend i have in clementia gary's case which we've talked about in your listeners know about the true killer confessed she confessed over and over again to friends to neighbors drunk not drunk to police in denying him post-conviction relief now this is a judge the judge chalked it up a survivor's guilt so in other words whether it's a prosecutor's judges they'll make an excuse to protect the prosecution because it's all about winning or losing let's talk about that what is that is that human nature is it like do people just want to confirm their initial suspicions and they rationalize all sorts of reasons why what they initially thought was right
and this new evidence that shows that it's not right is wrong like what is it is it they don't they don't just don't want to be they don't want to lose i think it's a fundamental flaw that we have as human beings that i share as a taurus i especially share it how dare you bring up astrology [Laughter] but but i um i'm stubborn but i think as i see this time and time again and watching juries deliberate because i do mock trials and focus groups or speaking to people post-verdict but you can apply it to politics i think of one fundamental flaw we have as mammals is our inability to be flexible in our reasoning and i think that once we make a decision about something it's very very difficult to get people to reconsider i see that in really intelligent people too and it makes me sad it's maddening it drives me crazy yeah because it's like you aren't the the part of the problem i think with police with prosecutors with the whole legal system is that it becomes a game and i don't mean a game like it's a joke i mean a game like you're trying to win yes and whenever someone is involved in something where they're trying to win they do whatever the [ __ ] they can people cheat they move golf balls right they they do whatever the [ __ ] they can don't look at jamie whatever i hear people moving those [ __ ] things whatever i hear you do they hear a golf ball well people cheat man they they find ways to pretend that they didn't do something when they did it they find ways to justify the things they did do they find ways to pass the buck and put it on if if they can score that w right and you see cops do it they they they plant evidence on someone they think was probably guilty but they don't have enough evidence on them they find rationalizations and it's because there's a game going on it's a win or lose and it becomes a real problem and
not only that with a lot of cops there's quotas like you literally have to arrest a certain amount of people right which is insanity like what the [ __ ] do they do if no one commits a crime what do they do if no one speeds if you have a quota where you have to arrest a hundred people for speeding what the [ __ ] do you do if everybody makes an agreement we all get on facebook and we say hey let everybody drive the [ __ ] speed limit for the next 60 days and let's crush the legal system because these cops have to they have to make a certain amount of pullovers they have to pull a certain amount of people over and write a certain amount of tickets they have quotas if you don't meet those quotas they get in trouble so what the [ __ ] kind of game is that right i i would say a lot a lot of that a lot of just like we have structural racism right and with when i say structural race i mean like institutional uh uh things that set up through uh regulation rules and policies like redlining right uh and you just have like uh flawlessness in a variety of different systems they got people that work for company they got a lot of flawlessness and they don't really they don't really understand that you're employed in the system that that that treat people unfair calls people home and you can't even see it and some people can be a part of a system of part of a program or part of an organization that uh have that win mentality right that win women by all-cause mentality and they lose the empathy for people right and and when people lose their empathy when you know we did find those things and a lot of people don't like uh they hear hillary this type of [ __ ] but when you lose your empathy for people you become technically a social path that's a real problem with corporations that's like a thing that they say about corporations that corporations technically if you look at the actions behavior corporations particularly ones
that cause harm to the environment or to people or sell products they know are dangerous and harmful and hide the evidence that they're acting like sociopaths and there's a term called the diffusion of responsibility and diffusion of responsibility happens if you have like a large group of people like here's the the the term applies to if you're standing around there's a hundred people in this group and you watch some guy beating the [ __ ] out of somebody you don't step in because you feel like it's not my fault it's not i'm not responsible there's so many people here but if it's just you and one guy beating the [ __ ] out of someone then you feel responsible because no one else is there to help right but the the large number of people you would think would stop someone from doing something like a corporation like there's so many people how could this corporation how could they act in such an unethical way that they know is harmful to a community polluting rivers or harmful to the people that they're selling these products to there's so many people surely someone's gonna tell but it's actually easier for them to get away with it which is how pharmaceutical companies operate it's easier for them to get away with it if it's an enormous amount of people because there is a diffusion of responsibility and there's an overall commitment to keep the profits going for the greater good of the corporation and there's no accountability no accountability well exactly we've stumbled on something very magical here in this moment i'll tell you why but it's no different with a corporation than it is with prosecutors and detectives and i'm going to tell you why my theory at least my humble perspective on this is that when you're a prosecutor or a corporation a case or a person whether they're taking a drug or buying your product is just a a number on a sheet and a name on a sheet on in a spreadsheet or in a program and what they lack and when talking about lack of empathy is that they lack
the ability partly because of how they're positioned to be positioned practically in other words to be able to sit down with the with the person accused and hear from them they're in a position where they they're told they have to win or in a corporations uh in the case of a corporation make money and increase profitability but i think it's the same flavor which is that the lack of human interaction and being able to understand with prosecutors the human toll that is left in the wake of these prosecutions i cannot tell you joe how many former state prosecutors federal prosecutors federal judges who are now criminal defense attorneys have moments where they break down emotionally and and go through years of regret about how callous they were um and how how much they lack sensitivity and some of them and realize sort of i don't know if it's so much the error of their ways but you know i know um and he doesn't fall into any of those categories i know a former federal judge i don't even want to name him who is doing who is a former federal judge who was a former prosecutor i've become very very close with him in new york and he is doing unbelievable things now through a project where he is trying to get clemency for people that were disproportionately sentenced and he is moving mountains to do it and i think some of it is because he feels a sense of obligation because in some instances he was forced to sentence people because of sentencing guidelines disproportionately i think some of some of it is a change in perspective and if we could figure out a way like i have a theory that it's lack of training it's the lack of you know a system whereby prosecutors can really sit down with a criminal defendant the accused and their attorneys and get to know them and understand how damaging this all is
because just getting accused of a crime even if you get acquitted it's life-ruining i've seen it happen in white-collar crimes certainly in crimes where you're you know accused of some violent offense so i think we've you've put your finger on something remarkably relevant and if if we could somehow get across to people in law enforcement prosecutors i have someone that's an expert in a in a civil rights case right now who was a former warden at a prison in florida and at a place where they used to execute people and he's come to the other side and and cannot believe that he was ever you know in a position where he was taking lives and realizes how many mistakes are made so often times it takes them sort of coming to the other side having interaction with someone like robert and seeing the empathy because what he's been able to accomplish in the five short years since he's been out in reforming the system is nothing short of remarkable to me it's both a happy ending and it's it's you know terribly depressing because look what they look what they wasted on taking him through this and we were talking about on the way over here whether or not he ever would have become the force that he's become in criminal justice reform if this all didn't happen to him so maybe that's the silver lining easy for me to say because i wasn't the one you know toiling you know terrible penitentiary for 23 plus a year it's it's a horrible thing that people get a thought in their head and then try to confirm it right like this guy's guilty and then you do your best to try to confirm it instead of looking at it objectively and trying to figure out if you're right or wrong right well that's called confirmation bias yeah it's a very real thing it's a very real thing and that these prosecutors
they're they they're not held accountable for bad mistakes that's what's crazy i can tell you not just mistakes but exon i mean holding back evidence that would exonerate someone right i could tell you another ticket in this thing another thing that they kind of would have uh and this was very important um the detective that the detective detective stuart and i and i i can say that's a he an honorable person and i have a lot of respect for him because what what ended up happening is detective stuart was the detective he was the that he uh detective on the homicide and his job when he did his his investigation was for the murder and he determined from his own investigation in the investigation of teams that he worked with that the the spreea crimes as well as the homicides were all tied into one person who committed the crime and that was the person who uh was convicted of the murder so in other words he did that and he told the prosecutor that he had the wrong man that was the first time he ever did in over 20 something years of him being a police he told the prosecutor that because he was the one that made that rest on me and he felt so bad uh when the innocent project of new orleans uh reached out to him and said hey do you remember the rob jones casey said yes i i do remember the robert jones case he was saying uh hey how you doing he's out huh say hell no he's not he's in prison well how he was in prison i told the discretion that we had the wrong guy and he was his mind was blown uh when i when i met him at court that going through my hearing process you know he brought his wife he met me in court because he went from new orleans detective in new orleans uh to working for the fbi
uh to working in various high level places and this man was blown away he was like i thought that cleared that guy up that case for this guy years ago he felt so bad he felt so relieved when i got out of prison uh uh it it was crazy for the prosecutor to have all this kind of information in there and and in their pocket and it would hold that information now knowing what we know now now you are exonerated that you are out what are the repercussions did they have to compensate you does anything happen to them the people that withheld that evidence are they contin did they continue to work are they punished that's a timely question huh what's going on i think you can might ask that well no you should answer it i mean robert just agreed he filed a federal civil rights claim which is for monetary damages um in term let me answer the first part of it first the people that did this to robert were not held accountable criminally they were not held accountable in any way and that's a huge problem robert just um it made headlines in our world quite a bit he was compensated [Music] it wasn't nearly enough in fact it was it was an amount that i find tragic relative to his experience but it took a lot of it took a change in in leadership in new orleans the new district attorney there's a gentleman by the name of jason williams who's a remarkable guy former defense lawyer who just became district attorney and and knew that robert needed to be compensated but he wasn't compensated nearly enough he did 24 years and how do you put a number on that on 24 years of lost life robert's 48 today right he spent half his life in prison for a crime he didn't commit you know when he got i mean it was public right the amount yeah two million dollars right now though i know intimately well
you know what robert has been through i i don't i can't empathize i can sympathize i can't empathize because i didn't go through it but i've seen how he's struggled financially since he's been out and how do you pick up the pieces of of a lost life you know i once heard a civil rights attorney ask for 36 million dollars in a um in a case where two guys were both spent 18 years in prison for crimes they didn't commit and he said it and and it brought me to tears i was his co-counsel in the case but i give him the credit because it was a remarkable line he said 36 million dollars a lot of money ladies and gentlemen that's not nearly enough so he was compensated but um is it enough i don't know you know i don't um unless you sit in a prison cell and know what it's like for a day a week a month and you know your lifetime starts passing by it's hard to put a dollar value on well here's a good way to judge it ask any of those people that wrongfully put him in prison if they'd be willing to go to prison for 24 years for two million dollars yeah i guarantee you none of them would say yes it's not nearly enough it's not it's a lot of money for a regular person to consider like oh my god two million dollars it's not enough for 24 years in prison for a crime you didn't commit and you know a lot of a lot of your listeners have reached out to me asking what can i do there's a lot of states in in this country right now and you know we can provide you with the information to put in the notes of the episode that have limits or no compensation for people that were wrongfully incarcerated that's crazy and that's a big reform effort that not only the innocence project has undertaken but people all over the country in criminal justice reform organizations that there should be minimum amounts set and they they jump through trap doors all the time watch what happens in florida
in clementi geary's case the state of florida owes him a lot of money for his wrongful incarceration and there is a statute in the state of florida to show you how fraught this is and so he applied for the compensation after his exoneration and what the state of florida did was they said you know what the statute of limitations has passed because when we overturned the verdict when the state overturned the verdict in 2017 whatever it was he went from being incarcerated to being in custody and what the statute says is that you have to file within whatever the lim the whatever the time frame was two years from being from from being released from incarceration so the state's argument was that well when the supreme court threw out his conviction the same day the same day that the supreme court unanimously reversed his conviction the state announced we are retrying him nobody came to clementia geary's cell and said by the way you're no longer incarcerated you're just in custody now just so you know all right so what they would have you think is that or have the court thing is that at that moment when his conviction is thrown out and they say we're going to try you again and try to put you to death that you should have filed the wrongful compensation claim when you're trying to save your own life and get out of this mess yet again so they jumped through this trap door and the the judge who was a the magnificent man his name is judge john galuzzo who i credit with saving clementi's life because in his retrial he let the jury selection process play out like it should and he at one point said to the prosecutors you know what you think is the truth may not be the truth after all and he let me put the real killer on the stand because i was afraid she was going to leave town as a material witness to preserve her testimony and she all but confessed on the stand and the state dropped the case he wrote an opinion denying clementi post-conviction relief
and apologized essentially in the conviction and he said that basically the florida legislator wrote this statute in a way that ties my hands because he wasn't incarcerated anymore he was in custody awaiting trial so even when you get these laws on the books it's like you know your mind starts to spin like where does the [ __ ] end so that's why you know you know the way that robert has not only and he should tell the story of how he finally got out and and but he you know can you tell me what's happening with clemente though before we do that yeah so clementi right now is i'm in the process of representing him in his uh federal civil rights case um i can't talk too much about it because there's a law or there's a rule about not speaking out but we are holding the people accountable civilly i was able to i've taken some of the depositions so far and um where you know excited to be able to get him some measure of compensation but um he is you know he's in a tough place he's he's here he can't work um he's in immigration limbo um and he is doing the best he can you know to survive and hopefully the civil rights case works out i have a great team of people working you know how long does something like that usually take yeah i mean the wheels of justice grind slow and getting both exonerated and compensated i mean the case has been going on for a couple years or a year and a half it'll probably go on for a couple more and then you know there's more hoops to jump through to finally get them to write the check they can appeal and sometimes it can drag on for many many years absolutely robert what are you doing with your time these days oh that's that's a good question uh i'm doing a lot uh right now right now i'm um um coming into the director
um of community outreach and lead organizer and client advocate for orleans public defender's office and that's public defenders as you know is attorneys who represent people who can't afford attorneys generally poor people i work in that office and uh so i kind of like worked in the same criminal justice system on the same court system that actually uh sent me to prison wow you know it was it was more in terms of like uh like when i when i got the job and i sort of worked my way into position um because some of the things i used to tell guys like when i was in prison um anticipating getting out when i started seeing things was going to work i was like okay increasing my hope i was going to get out i should tell guys in prison uh because i was an emmy council when i was in prison right i should tell guys that one day um you're gonna you're gonna see me come back inside the prison in suit and tire i'm not gonna be a prisoner so i had that experience like several times uh i have more than like 50 something clients in angola wow wow houses so i actually walked back into the same prison that i was actually housing with a suit and tire it was a great feeling right uh so and i i take that i share that same uh uh level of inspiration and uh gratitude when i go back in the same courtrooms that i was actually uh prosecuted in uh just a court building and able to uh to establish uh a working relationship of a respectful relationship with a lot of the judges and now that we have a new district attorney and a district attorney so we have a a a beautiful work and relationship and understanding uh both aspects of of the criminal justice
system from you know from the prosecutor perspective from a defense perspective uh which all surround fairness to me right injustice uh so i see it so uh i do that i run a non-profit organization uh that meant to the youth uh [Music] that sort of like to help them make a transition from childhood to adulthood which is a is it's a huge thing for a lot of you i'm called freedom foundations and i'll give you information where people can actually go and check it out uh me and another guy who was former incarcerated who also is a designeree you know i do some public speaking in different [Music] places and help change different laws and because of the position i am i have a lot of influence in the community um amongst a lot of our state representatives uh city councilmans uh and i sit on a lot of boards and committees for the city of new orleans so i have a lot of influence and a lot of respect in the city of new orleans not just because of my experience because of my skill set um of of bringing everybody on one accord not not being afraid to speak truth to power in which a lot of people don't like me for it but they respect me for it uh as well um and yeah so that that's what i'm doing you know and um and we can get we can get off until later but it's another book that i'm writing that's going to try to tie everything in you know and because of your platform and what you're doing to uplift the voice of people who have been in this type of situation and also to uh uh to affect change and that's one of the reasons why i respect you your podcast
and what you do and people that's in your position like people like uh because i can go on and on about this guy uh johnson jason uh how they use their position to help people and i'm gonna be really asking for your help to push this book down by the dude because i i i i want to be on a platform right i want to create my own platform of fairness and and and using the influence i have to expand these type of things and to change the concept you know change the mindset of a lot of people man because they need more people like yourself you know at using their platforms to to uh to change things man to to break this system that we have uh that's that's destroying people i think there's a problem in that a lot of people have no idea how the system works until they get entrapped by it absolutely so there's a lot of people that until they hear a story like yours or some of the other stories that josh and jason have brought to us and explained and until you see the horrific details of it there's a lot of people that just don't know how these things work and they assumed like you assumed when you got arrested that innocent people don't go to jail for crimes they didn't commit and then having a person like yourself who can explain what happened to you and all the horrific details when we have a few of these conversations then people realize like oh this system is [ __ ] up and then absolutely when josh can explain just this human nature that's involved in this confirmation bias and then trying to confirm your initial suspicions and ignore all evidence of the contrary and all that this is some sort of a weird flaw in human nature will get these conversations going and people can sort of have a different perspective so when they hear about someone getting convicted they hear about someone getting arrested instead
of just immediately assuming that they're guilty instead it's going to bring up a conversation like this is a flawed system a very flawed system in so many different ways and now that if i if i'm injured uh a lot of a lot of people look at uh the individual that have been impact like myself right uh by the system but wrongful convictions of putting people through the system is it's beyond me this stuff impact the lives of family members your children your mother it changes a lot of things there's a lot of things that i experienced inside the prison of losing family members losing relationships losing connections with family members and have the to be released out of prison to rebuild those relationships right to rebuild those relationships some relationships i had to cut off some relationship uh that just got lost and don't know how and try to mend a lot of those things but uh and in my in my state the state of louisiana uh as he said yes i have been in the you know how many years it took for me to actually get to this burden of being compensated to to extend i had to fight for that right and my state the state of louisiana they have a compensation law uh it was 25 000 for a cap of 10 years so no matter how many years you stayed in prison there was 25 000 per year that you stayed that's crazy yes that is [ __ ] crazy that increases to 40 000 right whatever still crazy what a 10 a 10-year cap give someone a year in jail tell them like for every year in jail you get to keep 40 000 who the [ __ ] is gonna say yes to that right so and we have been and that's a part of my refund working working with the enterprise in new orleans and a variety of other uh organizations and working with a state legislator to keep on fighting for that change right that's some of the things
that i also uh participated but uh the thing is even even in that conversation you still gotta fight for that it's not automatically given to him and i i like to for the dispel of the uh the myth that when a lot of guys get out of prison and get exonerated that a big fat check is waiting on them and they're gonna ride off into the sunset we need to dispel that people need to get that out of their mind that don't happen because when when i came home uh i didn't have jack nothing right outside of of of the innocent practice of new orleans and the innocent project in new york uh helping me uh financially and this this guy and jason flum like you know and man if i would have had that i don't know what type of situations that i would be in right now you know uh because i eventually got a job i wasn't paying much of nothing but it was a job right uh i worked up um and i got good at what i do i work at a meal shop um i respect that uh the owner of so much for giving me an opportunity because i learned a lot and i was able to um to build myself into the capacity of of where i'm working now uh but financially morally uh to surround myself with guys like josh and jason flum is is huge because you know uh these guys have a platform they're famous right you don't like to call it so that i mean you know a lot of people you you're in position uh and i mean to be real friends with these guys and the the and allow me uh the opportunity and and don't look at you like you know just because they may be at a certain level that's why i respect about them
because they're gonna see you equal you know what i mean and and i would not only assume but just maybe doing my own research on y'all i will uh presume you are the same way you know to have that tight that type of humility for for people that maybe have been in bad circumstance a situation that you may haven't been in but to still to be able to look a person in the eye and extend uh uh the opportunity uh uh for that person is huge to me that's that's real humanity you know what i mean because it's like he don't have to do what he have to do jason from help do them do i mean you don't have to do what you have to do you don't have to raise your voice about certain things but to to do that it's huge to me you know what i mean that's that's really huge and that's real that's humankind because most people we all human but some people don't act like human people they think about their own problems you know and everybody's got their own problems it's easy to ignore other people's problems absolutely here's here's the point you know when we and robert and i have the opportunity to speak to lawmakers that are have different political views this type of conversation is extraordinarily rare i spoke to the governor of florida about the james daley case he literally has a a snapshot view of it gave me less than 35 seconds after having me wait for several hours to meet with him and is the on there's a clemency mechanism in the state of florida all that means is that you listen you just listen you can deny it you can say sorry not granting you it but what point is there in having it if you're not going to listen right and the problem is that you know like julius jones is about to be executed in oklahoma richard glossop is sitting on oklahoma's death row stone cold innocent
and you know these it becomes a political thing with protecting the the um the win you know we talked about this hurting this this tribal tribal mentality now you got me unheard heard immunity tribal mentality and it becomes you know rather than just sitting and having the conversation and listen and being able to break through and saying okay i've heard you now hear me hear what i have to say about the reasons why you might want to you know did you hesitate at all if you hesitated a little bit are you sure you want to take a life you know and that in the case of robert and so many others it took it took an army of people it's really easy to throw someone in jail it took a literal army of people fighting and clawing and kicking and scratching to get him out and why i think he's such an extraordinary story is that you know to be able to get out and now basically create a position for himself at the public defender's office it's a miracle to get out in the first place it's more of a miracle to find the i mean to find the sort of emotional physical fortitude to want to stay in the system that imprisoned you a lot of people that get exonerated run and they have every reason to california florida just get the [ __ ] away get the [ __ ] away they don't want to see their lawyers again they send them a postcard well robert what you bring to this is uh you have a peace and composure about you that's very unusual you know because of the horrific horrific thing that you went through and to to have to educate yourself about law and to try to figure out your case while you're locked up in a jail dealing with all the other stresses of that environment you have a composure about you like you have a you have a character that's literally built under fire i mean you you were forged under horrible conditions and because of that you are uniquely
uniquely qualified to discuss this and to have these kind of conversations and to open people's eyes because of who you are and how you've gone through it and who you what kind of man you are now and the way you can describe it so calmly and serenely which is so it's very impressive most people who would have gone through what you've gone through would be a broken husk of a person after all those years but you're not but you're not and in the fact that you continue to help and work with the innocence project and and try to help people and actually go do what you said go back to angola with a suit on and help people right absolutely it's an amazing thing it's an amazing thing and you you've literally turned i mean there's no way to completely turn that negative into a positive but you've made the most out of it for sure right that's all like my motto you know um in the sense of turning all of my negatives everything that that that happened bad in my life i try to make it out of positive for the most part uh from working at the uh public defender's office i also uh was in charge of along with two attorneys that i worked with like currently right now we created like a re-sentencing program about a new law that changed and convolent we i was a part of a team that uh maybe 60 60 guys that got out of prison helped 60 guys that got out of prison it and it's not about it it's a joy to me in the sense of of of seeing those guys get out of being reunited with their family guys who maybe would have thought they would never get out of prison to to have that type of thing is is uh i mean it's a joyous it's it's a thing uh and because of my experience and because of the education i have about the system not just the criminal justice system about the entire system because that's what i studied right me understand that it's hard to stay inside
it's like you know it's like if you was a doctor that that knew a cure uh something that'll bring someone relief from pain and you see this person they're paying you just like uh you know how to help them but you don't don't do it that's that's in the sense that's what it is to me you know me having educated myself and and putting myself in position it's hard for me to stay inside there's no way i can have a knowledge of these things and not help someone i mean i wouldn't be a uh the person who i am that speaks to your character it's a absolutely it's very inspiring it's very inspiring i'm sure other people that are listening to this too right absolutely uh and it's all right bring me to the partner if one of the things that uh outside the things that i do and the relationship i build inside the community and uh like i said i'm working towards this this book i'm working towards it's power of endurance are you writing it right now it's almost complete yes when do you think it'll be done uh maybe maybe maybe two more weeks i should have it all edited out do you have a publisher already um you can help me with it we'll do what we can we'll do what we can to get it out there for sure and we'll do what we can to promote it once it's actually finished yeah absolutely absolutely and it's dealing with the power of endurance and i and the book came about uh because i get this question all the time like people always ask me like alba how the hell can you do it how you can keep your composure how you can do these things uh how you can be grew up in in distressed neighborhoods all your life poor come from singapore household uneducated to all this how you do these things are still not wearing a pandemic you're not scared you're not afraid you know like man how you keep a smile on your face
and i just always joke i say one time one day i'm gonna put it in the book i'm gonna show you how and i created like well it's four easy steps and and i actually tell them like through my own experiences and how i was able to maintain uh a build a a tough mentality and i mean josh was talking about it last night and i think that what i want to do uh is sort of different from people with that inspire people like motivational speakers uh got a million of them right uh i'm not a motivational speaker i'm a transformative speaker right it's like because anybody anything can basically inspire you like i can inspire you right now you can leave out of here and soon you face adversity it's like a deflated bloom that inspiration leave right but if you've got a tough mentality i can maintain i can teach you how to maintain your inspiration right how when you face difficulties that you're able to overcome you can still keep your inspiration and keep on scribing but the difference is also you're coming from a place that you've actually had to overcome something absolutely horrific there's a lot of people that are what you would call motivational speakers but if you try to find the actual adversity that they had to overcome like where what are they doing well they're taking advantage of a thing that people desire they desire external motivation they desire people that have said that say something to them that gets them fired up and there's benefit in that i'm not knocking it but there's a big difference between that kind of motivation and the kind of motivation that someone like you could bring absolutely absolutely should we wrap this up sure all right um let us know when your book comes out we'll definitely let the world know and uh we'll try to get you in touch with publishers and i'm sure josh can help with that too and um
anything else on your end no i just uh i know that i i do this as much as i can but i want to thank you for giving us this platform um you know i i'm eternally grateful to you for your your humility your empathy your compassion because if we don't get these stories told and make people realize that this is not a political thing this is not anything but a human thing and you know all it really takes is being able to sit down and realize that you're dealing with a person of of mind body and flesh and that you know they're worthy of of being listened to and certainly of redemption and i think robert's just a living breathing example of of the miracles that can happen when people come together to try to help i think it's important to uh have as many of these people on it as we can whether it's uh as many cases that you could describe when you come on or have people like robert come on and talk about this so people can get a more nuanced understanding of what's actually going on that these this is these aren't this isn't some [ __ ] thing that you know may or may not exist this is a real human being they're right in front of you right now and they're telling you their story and it's real right and there's dna evidence and there's evidence that the prosecutors withheld evidence and there's evidence that you were you were innocent the entire time that they knew it this is important yeah i'll say this in closing i can't that's why we're so grateful that we're like you know we can't express it enough because we have seen the difference that it's already making thousands of emails instagram messages of people that are are writing to me and jason you know you've changed my path in life i want to now become a criminal defense attorney i want to become a legislator and enact new laws you know the the amazing reach of this podcast has been transformative talk about transformative speakers been
transformative in in our approach to this and if we didn't have this platform through you it wouldn't be possible so you have uh you know my eternal thanks well you have my eternal thanks for your hard work and what you've done is exceptional and extraordinary and selfless and humbling and i think you know i i as a friend i'm i'm honored to be your friend i think i feel the same way i think what you do is amazing and thank you robert for coming on here and telling your story and i think i think these stories make a difference i i think you know having people on here to discuss these things i think it can make a difference thank you brother thank you thank you uh thank you thank you for uh giving me the opportunity for the share my story and um hopefully to build from it you know here from it and continue on to uh reach out to to folks in and a lot of people that have that conversation allows them to see different perspectives sometimes that we can grow up with if it's a uh ideology or perception that's passed down from our family and for friends and or just our own experiences and they keep our mind closed right to the real perspectives of like the so i just thank you for giving us this opportunity and i think that uh it's going to change some people's lives it's going to inspire some folks uh start looking at things differently you know so i think so thank you all right thank you thank you thank you everybody [Music] you