I've never been to trouble in my life. I didn't even have a parking ticket, and you know what I mean. I was brought up like cops are the good guys. I didn't know what was going to happen, but I do know that everything was stacked against me. Everything like everything this isn't supposed to happen this way. I'm innocent. I know I'm innocent. I know I had nothing to do with this. How is this possible? I grew up trusting the systems. I grew up believing that every human thing should do the right thing. And that's why, even though I was dealing with corrupt people, I wasn't going to brave anyone to get me out of prison because I wouldn't live with the fact that I braved my way out of my wife's death. I'm not innocent to proven guilty. I'm guilty until I proved my innocence. And that's absolutely what happened to me. Our system. Since I've been out ten years, it's coming little ways, but it's still broken, a totally little trust in humanity after what happened to me. This is a wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrangful conviction with Jason Flamm that's me and today we have an extraordinary show and you're about to find out why. Today's guest is the one and only Meek mill Um and Michael Rubin is with him and Meek, you need no introduction, but welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks for having me. Man. I appreciate you for bring me on the show. I appreciate all the work you're doing, and we're gonna get into that right away. But with him is Michael ruben Um, who is the owner of this Philadelphia seventy sixers and has an amazing background as an entrepreneur and businessman, but who has become a tremendous advocate for criminal justice reform and is about to really take things up. So Michael, I'm thrilled to have you in the movement, and I'm glad you're here on the Showy, thanks for everything you're doing. I'm glad to be here. So welcome. We gotta train in the background night. Okay, that's what's weird in Philadelphia. It's all good people gotta ride the trains. So, Meek, one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the show is because your original case was in fact a wrongful conviction, and that's something a lot of people don't understand. And there's a lot more they don't understand about the circumstances in which you were arrested and how this nightmare saga, which is now in his second decade in the criminal justice system has unfolded. And it's important to tell this story because it shines a light on so many aspects of what's wrong with the criminal justice system. And we're here in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, not Philadelphia, Mississippi. But even still, the system here has been so backwards for so long, and you were born right into the thick of it. Yeah, I mean, let's talk about that because seven so, you know, the the the number of people in cars for the United States stayed relatively constant from nineteen hundred till about nineteen seventy, and then it went crazy. It doubled and tripled and quadrupled, and Philadelphia was a hotspot. And um, and you were born into a situation in which black men were being incarcerated at rates that were unprecedented actually in the history of the world. And your situation actually was the odds was totally stacked against you. But can you talk about that about how you grew up and how this you know, it was almost almost a fatal complete you know. I come from Philadelphia, actually the North North Philadelphia which now is like called the Temple area, and uh, you know, we grew up in an environment as well, like drug infestive environments where a lot of violence, a lot of drugs, a lot of things taking place. So it's like you could be standing in the wrong place and lose your life, or you could be standing in the wrong place and get charged with a crime you didn't do. That was just like normal. Actually, I've been hanging with my friend p Mind Mike. I've been hanging with p Mind probably fifteen years, and I remember back he went to jail when he was probably about fifteen years old. He probably thirty now. He just turned thirty one a few days ago, and I've been hanging with him since he was probably fourteen years old. He said, it's like, yeah, the first time I went to prison, he said, a white guy just pulled up in the back of a car and just pointed at me out the car and said I robbed him for seven dollars, but he had three d and eighty dollars in his pocket and he went to jail for that. He ended up doing I think like two years and that in the juvenile UH facility. But that wasn't the worst part. The worst part was he got a felony on this record for UH arm robbery. And you know, if you know him, he's not like a it's not robbery. He's not robbery. And his system, Uh, he made mistakes in his life. But me being around him, I never knew that, but I witnessed that so many times. I wouldn't have standing on the corner and the cop pull up with a Mexican guy in the back, and I don't know to Sometimes we say and in our world, in the sarcastic way of being funny, we obviously be like, uh, white people look the same to us. Some of my white friends were like all black people were saying to us. But sometimes that is the case with people and they just pull up and they point people out, and you stand there on the cops pull up and this be like, I hope this guy don't point me on. That's just one of the scenarios out of a million scenarios. Being caught in the middle of UH poverty uh where drug infesting neighborhood with people are getting robbed left and right, where uh you know, cops left were locking people have left and right just to get stripes on that record, you know what I'm saying. And we grew up in that and you know, at eight years old, I was caught up in that system. And even though I've been on the path since ever since of doing spectacling in my life from where I come from, that same system is still haunting me and hunking me down, even at the age of thirty one and having a record deal and being being able to uh handle businesses and work, and still haunted me to pull me back to the same system where I just left eleven years ago. And you just brought up two things that I wanted to highlight. I mean, one is you were in very in a very real way of victim of that violence because your father was murdered when you were a child, right, so you had to grow up in that environment. And then on top of that, everybody was murdered. It was like everybody was mad. Yeah, it was. I mean, the violence and that time was was crazy, and and some of it was inflicted by the police, including the violence that they inflicted on you when they arrested you. But on top of that, you brought up a very important point, which is that we know from decades of research now that cross racial identifications are extremely unreliable. Dentifications in general are unreliable because when people witness a crime, their adrenaline, especially violent crime, their adrenaline goes crazy and the perception gets screwy and the brain doesn't function properly, so it almost becomes like guessing, but it gets even worse. And there's a movement now to try to h in various places, to try to uh put in a system where a jury has to be instructed in a case in which across racial identification is a is an important factor that these things are as unreliable as they are because they need to know, but in most cases they don't know. They just think an identification is the most powerful thing in a corrom too, guy pointed you and goes that to him. You know, it's hard for a jury to see past that. Yeah, it's like it's in the neighborhood, we all wearing white Teas of the summer two thousand and three, everybody white T shirts is the probably thing to wear with uh with denim shirts. And you got a guy, he might be Asian. He pull up on the corner. We all seven of us got braids and four of us got a little cause, but we all look the same, the ones that got braised to him. That's just you allow to repick, to get caught up in the system. Like whoever you point out, that's you. And you better hope you don't handle felonies on your record already because you might go to jail for a long time. And sociologically speaking, and this goes back again to the seventies and eighties. Right at the same time that they were rolling back welfare and other programs for the urban poor, they were ramping up the policing and they were Now you created the perfect storm because what was happening was you had these these systems coming for tracking arrest. You had so many more cops in fact, and I think in Philadelphia six more police decade over decade than they were before, and they had to make arrests. So whereas before they were largely ignoring what was going on in the community, now there were heightened penalties for not just for violent crimes, but also for all kinds of different drug crimes, for vagrancy, for trespassing, for anything. And they were in a position where they were arresting people left and right and creating this permanent underclass, which is what you were referring to me and Michael. You know, obviously you grew up here too, right, but your situation must have been very a very different world. I grew up maybe twenty minutes from me. But Mike used always said to me, and we used to have this argument for years. He'd said to mean, Michael, there is two Americans. And I'd be like, like, dude, shut up, there's like there's there's one America. Like stop, you know, like you're doing great, Like you know, I didn't understand, like what are you talking about these two worlds? We live in one great country. And and you know, he would argue about all the time. And I remember the day that that Meek got sentenced November six, two thousand and seventeen, he called me from from the Philadelphia job before they transferred to a different jail and said, he said, you see, I told you this is what happens to the black people, right, And I just like that, you know what I said, you were right, I was wrong, and there is two worlds. And you know, for me, Um, November six, two thousand and seventeen was really a life change in a moment, because I would never have been able to understand. I really believe, and I don't think anybody would be able to believe how crazy circumstance he was living in because it didn't seem possible until you sat in the courtroom. And even people that have come to later UM court hearings of Judge Brinkley have said, I've heard everything about this, but I didn't believe it until I actually saw it, and it's so crazy. So for sure, I grew up in a completely different environment. But Meek always told me from the DIAM met him. Remember we were at a NBA All Star Game and you know, within you know, a few minutes, you know, Meek realized I was involved with the Philadelphia seventy six ers, and um, you know, he was telling me a little bit about his background. He told me he was charged for pointing a gun at multiple cops. And he said to me, like, you know, I didn't do that. Like if you know, if I pointed you know, a gun of multiple cops, I'd be dead, like I heard him, but I didn't really comprehend it. And then like, if I've told that story to people in the last seven months, every person from law enforcement to politics, to anyone who understands anything, they all said the same thing. He's right, he'd be dead. No one would point a you know, pull a gun multiple cops and not get shot. And meet can't obviously talk about the case because the case is still unfortunately going on, which is crazy in itself, right, But I mean, you're talking about a guy who was wrongfully convicted when he was eighteen years old of a crime that he didn't commit. It's been sent back to jail multiple times, never committed a new crime, and he's the perfect example someone who's been stuck in a completely broken criminal justice system for criming and commit and it's now thirteen years later and it's still going on, and that shows how broken the criminal justice system is. It's incredible. You know, we have two point two million people in prison in America and including jail, other four and a half million people in probation and parole. Yeah, I mean the latest figure I heard was four point eight, right, And and when once we accept those figures, you also have to accept the fact that we now have between jail, prison, probation, and parole, we have more black people were mostly men under criminal justice supervision in America then all the slaves at the height of slavery in America in the eighteen fifties or sixties, whatever that was. That that should really mess people's heads up, like what are we doing we actually are It's just well, it's like Michael Alexanderson is the new gym Crow. But what's even you know, let's bring it to current. What you can't what what? What words can't explain? Is Miek is still on probation for something that we've already said he didn't do, and it's been going on for thirteen years from the original wrongful conviction. But he can't like you can't live that way, Like I say, I joke with him, I feel like I'm on probation because I'm worried about just something going wrong with him. If he decides to leave a state day early because something changed with the schedule, or he gets you know, someone says, hey, I'm gonna pay you to go to this concert. I want to go, and I have the proper days of permission the judge will try to violate him. I mean, it's the system is chasing him and trying to violate and and that's not what probation is supposed to be about. Re imlitating somebody, not trying to catch them and send that back to prison. And something that someone told me recently, and you know I've now become too familiar with this, but sev people to go back to jail once they've been in jail in prison, are going back for technical probation violations. Like to me, virtually none of those people should be go You know, you had a technical probation violation, right, you didn't commit a crime. You were late for your probation officers, so you you know, didn't pay a certain amount of money. You you know you had you know something, you know, you traveled out of the state. You know, he went to his son in New Jersey because he lives in Pennsylvania, and he can be violated and sent back to jail. This is lunacy. This is absolute lunacy. And I want, I'm really glad you brought that up, Michael, because I don't want to get your take on this week because in a lot of the reforms that are underway right now, there's this hidden um caveat, or this hidden um um nightmare i'll call it, of of enhanced probation and other ways of the government keeping people under control. So to me, a true crime reform bill should eliminate those problems. And you obviously can speak firsthand about just how restrictive that is. And Michael has said very eloquently, when you have seventy people going back to jail or prison because they have some technical violation, that's insane, right, So, but but can you talk about that, because I'm very concerned that in there they're sneaking these devils into the details in these new crime bills that are going to allow them to maintain this control. There's no other way to look at it. Over millions of people's lives, and there's a profit center in there for a lot of people too. Yeah, it's it's more than insane to me. I take it as deep as like I said, I could go see my son in New Jersey and actually be locked in a cage and be locked and changed check who from like angle defeat for the crime of going from Pennsylvania to New Jerseys your son. That's what I'm saying, I'm being facetious for the crime and quotes. I'll tell you this right now, Judge Brinkley is lie to do that too. She's trying to right now today, I promise you she's sitting in her house obsessed about how she can figure out how to put them back in jail for nothing. That's a fact. He can't talk about that, but I can. I'm telling you straight up, that's what's going on. It's it's really bizarre. I mean, as a country, why would we want I mean, these are our tax dollars, right and it and it hurts the average taxpayer. Even if you're somebody who's not particularly concerned about criminal justice reform, or you think a lot of people or you maybe you think you're tough on crime or whatever, it might be. The money that's being spent to lock people like you meet up right and to keep you under supervision and is bloated and and draconian system is pure insanity. I mean that money could be spent. I mean I know that at one time, all at one time. I don't even know if it's still true. But a few years ago I checked and California, which a lot of people think it was in a progressive state, was spending more money locking people up, then they were educating people. And I'm like, uh, I think that's college but still um and we fact check that, but it's it's that that is absolutely staggering. And the crazy thing is these are Americans. There are fellow people. I say, the politicians when I talk to him, Like, you know, if another country treated our people the way we treat our people, we'd invade this stuff. We wouldn't even do to have pets, you know what I'm saying, Like you wouldn't lock your pet in the metal cell for sometimes we get locked in and I say we because I've been through this experience so many times, and like sometimes we get locked in a room for twenty three hours a day for a month or two weeks, some people actually even years. You know what I'm saying. It's like, uh, they say when you come home, it's a violation to be around felons. And how is it a violation to be around felons when you just had me locked up amongst thousands of felons? Like what rule is this? I'm glad you brought that up too, because that's another thing that creates this visious. It's by the way you think about it, in the environment you grew up, what percentage of people that live on your block have had a felony? Right, So what you're saying is essentially anyone can put you back in prison because there's a rule that says you can't be around felons. But everyone you grew up with has a felony. If somebody really made that an issue, I would probably go to jail any day. Because if I go to the studio with a rapper and we make a song, I don't know his record, but right you don't know. You have to have a like a database that we do at all times, which most people can't afford that, I mean, and you're not going to do it in the fact is and yeah, you know, it's like I'm just quoting a statistic here in nineteen one in four black children born in nineteen ninety had an imprisoned father by the time he or she turned fourteen, Right, and then, and the numbers just get worse and worse. I mean, thirty percent of black men without college educations today we'll have been to prison by their men thirties and spent up to a year in prison thirty. I mean that's what our college as cacations, and the numbers go to sixty. When you look at at blackmails without high school education, sixty of blackmails out high school education was spent a year in prison or jail before their thirtieth birthday. What are we doing? And the fact is it's actually impossible to succeed, which is why I'm always amazed when somebody does come from the background that you came from and make it, because with that cycle, how do you do it? They've created a minefield that you can't walk through. Right, once you get arrested, You're gonna get re arrested no matter what you do, pretty much, right Yea. And like like me and Mike we just been the hour my just teaching me about financial stuff and like texts and things that like when we're growing up, from like age thirteen to twenty years old, we probably invest ninety five percent of our thinking time and how to survive in these type of conditions because it's like almost impossible to survive. So like you gotta put like your ow into how to been my mind framed. Now. I still like, even though I travel the world is still installed in my mind. It's still like something that is like I might come into a certain situation in a certain area and I go into survival more and I have to double back and like this is not even that type of environment where I don't live this type of life anymore, but it's always installed inside of my head, you know what I'm saying that coming from environments like that, like you said, six, when I come from it feels like it's nineties. Likes do that count? Death probably go up to probably n uh people young black men being murdered, uh going to prison probably sixty plus another thirty five make I've heard you talk about this. You know, how many people do you know that you were close with, you had a real relationship with, that have been murdered? That's that's you know, how many I know? I mean zero? Yeah, you know how many I know they've been close? Zero? Right, So you're talking about yeah, different environments, So yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, that's great. We have two Shepherd systems of justice in America, one for people with money and one for people without, and one for people who are of color and one for people who are not. And when and when you hit that jackpot of the reverse jackpot of being a person of color without being born into a wealthy family, which is a huge majority. And you don't even have to come from a wealthy family to like not be around somebody that was murder. It's really like territorial, like I got one of my songs I'm talking about, like like we've being put in groups in certain areas, even with public house and public house, and it's really of Cross Philadelphia. So if you grow grow up less fortunate, they're sticking people in certain areas if you pay attention to it, Like it's North Philadelphia, but not the whole North Philadelphia is a certain part in South Philadelphia. It's a rich part of South Philadelphia where like houses cast a million dollars in and you got some houses that cost forty They only moving usin curren areas. And I always say this, like if you take a drone, the main line of Philadelphia is like City Line Avenue where my apartments used to be at City Line Avenue. You take a drone and then you make the drone go high in the sky, and if the drone had a zoom and kazoom on this side of the left and right, you will see it's quiet as piece here and his chaos going here. And you take a kid from over here and let him spending three summers in this area, he will be less. He won't be the way the chaos is. He will turn to be more lean like these people in this area. And I witnessed that with my family. I used to have a nephew. He lived in the projects. He used to cuss, he's seen a lot of things. He used to act up in school, and you know, he moved to a suburban area and his whole life changed within two years. It was just that simple. And I don't want to ask you this me because I come from the music industry. In fact, today's my thirty ninth birthday in the music industry, but later or not, because I started when I was eight teen years old. I know I look younger than that. I don't have to say it, thank you very much anyway, But yeah, I started July nine, nine point on posters and record stores. But that's beside the point. For a long time, and nobody talks about this, But for a long time I've been pondering, thinking about obsessed with the idea of with the grim statistics and and and uh scenario that we're painting here. How many people and you're exactly guy, I want to ask this question. How many people as talented as you are either got shot or got locked up more importantly, got locked up in prison? And and society as a result is being deprived of those talents and all the revenue and all the culture that would have come from that. How many jay zs are there that didn't make it out and ended up in prison doing thus, you know what I'm saying. I know as guys and in locked the wood as talented as me. You know what I'm saying. And they're probably there for felonies on phonies, and when you say, like when people label you as a fellon, like how it's at my friend or a felon he was fifteen for something he didn't do. Now actually when he do make a mistake, when he do go hang on the corner, or when he when we come up on the corner around drug does everybody sells drugs? Your first step is to pick up a drug. So when you get your second felony. Uh, you might be actually good at basketball. You might have been in the eleventh grade and actually one of the best players on the team. And here it comes you in a bad neighborhood. You get arrested for something else and we don't have your money. You might take a deal, and the deal was put this felony on your record. Now you've got three felonies on your record and you're not They might call you a career criminal. You're not a career criminal. This was in the wrong mix. Basically. Now you might get fifteen years for something small. You see how he told you that the guy got fifteen Well he had to life sentence for stilling. Now your your record, your jacket is up. You get fifteen years. So now you trapped inside a prison. You will never get a real shot at life. And you might be good as Ben Simmons, Joe and BIEB and you know all that went down to dream. But for us, rap is the hundreds of it was probably at least fifty guys that was actually good when I was at when I was locked up at where if they was on the street, we would spend time in the studio and ability of them make music together. Fifty I would say in that one prison that I know of, right and rap music, and they're so surprise, probably very few people that are listeners of the podcast. But recently, hip hop recently passed rock and roll every pop as the most popular genre worldwide. Right, and it all comes from almost all of it comes from America. Right, So when we're exporting that, we're bringing tax revenue into this country. When we're when when when guys like you are making records, selling millions of records, selling concert tickets, you're paying taxes. All that stuff goes back into the system. Everybody is being hurt by that, and society is being deprived of geniuses. As as you said, basketball is another story. Right, But and and when you talk about it, s like that you have a kid as good as whoever you want to talk about, Simmons or whatever. Uh, they get arrested like that, the college scholarships going out the window. They can't play college ball. Now their their whole, their whole thing. And let's say that guy was gonna make a hundred billion dollars not unrealistic. We have the one of the seventi six is here, right, We look forward to writing many checks for a hundred billion dollars because that we have that many great players. And let me ask you that those players pay taxes on those checks. Of course, of course they do right coming back into the city, coming back into the state, coming back into the country, because those people were the few lucky ones that managed to escape from this, you know, sort of trapped that society has built. But even more than money, if you look at the math and you say, there's six point seven or six point nine million people today in America trapped in the criminal justice system, the question is what's appropriate. Like if we just all said, if you got anyone together and said, what do you think someone should be in prison for? What should someone be on probation for? If you said, hey, that person got caught smoking weed? Shoulday, there's people be in prison if if ifs if someone stole a hundred dollars, is a fifteen year old kid, should they be stuck in prison? And the amount of story Like I think if you looked at the math and just said, let's just take this top down the six point seven or six nine point nine million people the criminal justice system, I think you could say if we just also what should people be in the system for? And not being the system, we just took a bunch of rational people. The numbers probably half and so to me, what's such a travesty is you've got millions of people stuck in the criminal justice system that don't belong there, and by the way, you're ruining their lives, their families, lives, their friends lives. By the way, there's a lot of people that belong in prison. We want to live in a safe world. We want to have you know, violent offenders, people that murder, people are rapists, you know, armed robbers. There's a lot of people that belong in prison, and I want those people in prison. But the problem is there's millions of people that shouldn't be in the criminal justice system that are. And that's the problem that needs to be addressed. And that's what I know. Meek is really excited to help make an impact on. I'm excited to help me an impact on. I think, um, this is an enormous problem that's costing tens of billions of dollars and it's ruined millions of people's lives. So yeah, and Michael, picking up on what you were saying, five years ago, we had three hundred thousand people in prison in America. Right now it's two point two million, and I'm sure the numbers on probation and parole were proportionately about you know, seven times, lest like this one is too. And then you look at the country like Japan, right, well, we locked and you look at Western Europe, we lock people up at five to nine times, depending which country you choose. The rate of the rest of the countries in Western Europe below US is five times as many per capita. Right, And then when you look at we have more people in prison just for drugs in America that everyone in prison of all of Western Europe for everything, and Western Europe is much more than many more people investern Europe in Northern America. And then you get to Japan. In Japan they have approximately seventy thousand people in prison. We probably have seventy thousand people in prison and in the mid size state. Yeah, maybe even a smaller state than this one, right, because I mean do the math. So they we lock people up at fourteen times the rate per capita that Japan does. And for anybody listening, going, yeah, but that's why we have a lower crime rate than they do. No, we don't. Our crimemates are the same, and there's no evidence that supports In fact, I think every social scientist that has studied this would agree that this system is the worst system in terms of you know, in terms of crime and perpetuating the cycle because of the fact that when people go to jail or prison, as we talked about, growing up in the situation they are, they come out there uneployable to understand. And that's something I talked about the show a lot, like people that are out there that are employers take a shot with somebody who was system affected, because those people will work harder and better. You know, there's a bakery in New York I just found out about. I saw Ted talk about this that hires anybody who walks in system affected. They don't even ask, and there's hugely successful. They make all the brownies for Ben and Jerry's ice cream. Right they sell a zillion imagine brownies them right now because we have a little weight lost back on and we can get this delivered to him right now. If you're looking a little slimmer the last time. Yeah, though, no, but it's you know, that's something that we really need to as a society start to uh be much more progressive on and you know, more like empathetic. I mean, I don't want to sound like some like touchy feely person here, and I'm with you, Michael. I believe you think that's an easier problem to solve because I've actually been thinking, Look, we employ eight thousand people between my companies, and you know, I think, um, if you got you know, a bunch of business leaders to focus on taking big companies saying what areas in the company could start to take people right out of prison to help rehabilitate them. I think there's actually I think there are I think they're actually easy ways to make real progress against I'm actually optimistic with a little bit of focus and energy that real impact can be made there. Well. And another way that I can tell you, I think a lot of those times, a lot of those cases you have better employees as you just indicated as well. So if we took and we have you know, thousands of people that manufacture a power working for film and centers, working call centers. Um, you know, I I think that. So my point is there's you know, big opportunities to hire people. And I think that that, Um, you know, again, if you look at how many people working in America and then how many people are coming out of prisoner jail each year. If there's two point two million people in prison and jail, maybe I don't know, five people come out of year. I don't think it takes a lot to get a set of big companies to focus on helping solve this problem well, and especially with long time offenders. Like a long time offenders, like people who serve over ten years, they spend most of their jail time working. In fact, the reason working for the prison that their mind, they have experience, their mind is structured, uh to just work all day and UH. Member rival was telling us he had a program where you hired like a lot of ex offenders and he asked me, like, how many of them messed up? Was you in that conversation? He asked me, so, how many you think messed up? Out of two? I'm probably, like I said, because I knew the number would be high, because I know of long time offenders, people that come home doing a lot of time now they don't really want to mess up again. He told me none out of Yeah, I was only two of I think this was thirty years ago. Robert Kraft had a um real focus on taking people that had come out of prison and hiring them and the point to your point was, there is best employees. There's best employees. And it's interesting too. I mean, call it luck, call it whatever you want. I've got. I've been very fortunate, blessed whatever to be able to help advocate successfully for clemency for dozens of people deserving people over the years, not just people who are innocent, by people who were primarily who are sentenced the mandatory senses, crazy mandatory sensors like Lenny Singleton who you referenced earlier, um or or Travion Blount who was sentenced at fifteen years old since to six life terms for a robbery in which no one was hurt. Um fifteen years old, six life terms. It made international news like what it? What in the world even is that? Like that's it's got to be. That should be. That should be a crown to send some minds today like why and And to me, that's the that should be the easy things to get everyone aligned on and fix. And by the way, talk about the state the meeks from that I'm from in Pennsylvania. We're one of three states in America that has no cap on probation. So states have caps of probation. Summer three years, two years, four years, We have no cap in Pennsylvania. So someone like me who was separate that he was wrongfully convicted thirteen years ago, appointed a gun that didn't point a gun and a cop by the way, where multiple police officers have come forward and said it was a lie. So we have affidavits from a police officer came forward and said no, I was one of the two resting officers and though he didn't point the gun. Okay, now after after after that, um, you've still got you've got a system that just come completely completely broken. And in Pennsylvania, Um, he gets sentenced to probation and then he does a concert in a different state without the proper authorization and the attack on another five years of probation, and now he's got he still as six years of probation left. He's been right. So so he's got no chance to actually succeed in that situation. I can tell you if you put me, the Jewish kid from suburban Philadelphia on probation, I couldn't make a year with what he needs to go through. There's not possible. And the prime time funk up years of my life from eighteen to thirty one he's the prime years where you make mistakes. I still sun up with forty six, by the way, is basically a probation violation. But what I was gonna say before um is that of the people that I've been involved with, that that I've helped to get out of prison, none of them have have re offended or offended for the first time in the cases of which they were innocent. None not, and some will. And that's okay because because you know what, at the end of the day, we need to make the world a better place. And if we get millions of people out of the criminal justice system, and if you make mistakes, that's okay because there's a lot of people that aren't in the criminal justice system that will also make mistakes. This is never gonna be perfect. And that's someone says, hey, we should keep that six point seven or six point nine million people stuck in the criminal justice system, the few millions that shouldn't be there because someone may make a mistake. Nothing's perfect, like we need we need to get it right overall. And that's the same approach I take in business. We want to make good overall decisions. We don't go for perfection. I wen't went for perfection. We never get anything done, of course not. And I said, I've been lucky in that sense. And of the people of the Innocence Project, the people that we've gotten out, a tiny percentage of them have ever been in any sort of trouble. Again, people age we're telling about real trouble, probably zero saying I got back in real travel. We know that people age out of crime. There's a couple of other very important topics I wanna talk touch on with you, Meek and Michael um. One is prisons themselves and how barbaric our prison system is when it's supposed to be called the correctional institution, and we know that that is the farthest thing from the truth in most cases. And the other is how important it is for people to get out and vote, because I don't think we can have this conversation without talking about that. You just are in the middle of actually a criminal justice revamp slash and some people I've heard somebody say we don't need criminal justice before, we need a criminal justice revolution in Philadelphia that's taking place under your eyes because because of an election, right in an election in which I can bet that eighties something percent of people didn't vote at least right because the race. And so I mean, what can you say, which one do you want to take on? First of those? We can talk vote in Uh, this coming from our wotch you on where we come from. Wasn't it a few years ago? Could you even vote when he was the felon? Did that change? I don't know if it's changed. We're trying to change it. And while it was changed in Virginia, UM Governor mcculliff, fix that reenfranchised two thousand people in Florida. There's a referendum on the ballot. Now, anyone who was listening in Florida, you must vote on this referendum. We're going to restore the right of ex felons to vote, the seven hundred thousand people in Pafarida who can't vote here. Yeah, and this goes this goes far us back when I say, like the other side of America where people don't even believe like that world tends to us. And I used to think that, but that that was that was deeply false. And part of my campaign this year two thousand and eighteen, two thousand nineteen, as I'm moving around one of my jobs is trying to teach people and and teach people the routes of how voting go. Because it's even with a judge trying to lock me up for what going to going over a bridge. Basically, uh, we voted for her. Uh district attorneys where they they enforced mandatory minimums and uh they enforced locking people up for smoking marijuana and things like that. We vote for them. We have to be the ones that vote. And and our culture, the black community, a lot of us don't vote. So it's like white community. Yeah, you know, I I don't really know. I knew that in our community we don't vote at all. I don't even know anybody in my age at the age of eighteen, Uh we we ever got up as a group and everybody wanted to vote. It was like never a thing. We didn't believe in it. So my new thing is to teach the younger people from our culture that come up, well all younger people that come up, that voting is important because you know, we have to live under these laws that these people are creating. And if we don't vote, we don't have a voice at all. It's like you don't even count. And a lot of times you look at TV even they had a campaign that's that voter or uh, I always seeing it, but I never really knew what it meant. It was that that problem was like eighteen years old when they did that campaign. I never really understood it. But nowadays I understood. It's like you either a vote or you get housed under the regime which will eventually kill you. If not by jael not by placing you in a keeping you in a ruthless environment, it will turn out bad for you, basically. And I just believe that if we vote, if we make our president don't like justice reform. Justice reform right now is the number one topic in America. Probably so me too. Justice reform. These are like the biggest topics of America. And I think if we make this topic big enough politically, a lot of people would have to lean towards being leaning on these topics and coming to like I want you to leaning, I'd say appropriate, Yeah, I'd say I'd say punishment to fetch the crime, because by the way, I'm not leading. I want to appropriate punishment. And that was right, that was that was right, and and and when we even speaking lenient, like I would say like what is lean and is lead into how barbaric jail prisons are? Right, But before you go there, you know, I've been on the board of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, was a great organization for over twenty five years now, and our motto is let the punishment fit the crime. I mean, nobody's advocating for chaos. Nobody wants a society that is like, you know, I want to feel I want to feel safe everybody I want. I want my daughter to be safe. I want your family to be safe. But I want to kids to be safe in some situations though that the crimes are booths so high up is like what is lenient? Like if something like basically, but I'll make something except like how many people I would saying how many people are in prison and jail today we're on probation because they have a drug problem. Probably it's more than a million. Yeah, okay, yeah, I'm not talking about selling drugs anyone who smoked weed. How could you possibly we just become illegal everywhere? How could possibly put someone in the criminal trust system for joining something that's becoming legal? Make absolutely no sense. Someone had a problem with Perker, Why do you send him to jail something to rehab It makes no sense. So to me, that's that's where the punishment needs to fit the crime. I would take everybody who has a drug problem. Yeah I don't get them help, so get stop the drug problem. But it's like it's deep as this. Like if I sell drugs and the cops come to my house and I'm not there, and my mom get found guilty for these drugs in my house and the drugs are in her house, she may know these drugs are in her house and she gets found guilt. The people moms are getting thirty years in prison and federal prison for stuff like that. Like your mom got thirty years in prison because she didn't get your thirty years is like a lot, you don't think. So that's a life sentence. That's deaf. And you talked about that earlier. I mean you can and um about how people get caught up just because they that's definitely don't want to extend you to prisident, even though she might preach to you every day that you're selling drugs. You're getting out my house and she know it's wrong, but you her son, You know this that if you're in a car with someone who's got drugs, and you get pulled over and they find the drugs. It belongs to everybody unless somebody takes responsibility for it, and nobody ever does nobodever it goes, oh yeah, those are mine, right. So this is how crazy the system is, where you could just be next to someone who's doing something wrong and then you get wrapped up. I'm not even talking about full in instance. I'm just talking about, like, say, if you come from where I come from, like your mom worn a crack, she's a strung out fan. You're thirteen years old, you got a seven year old sister, and you're coming in the house. It's just baking soda and butter and infrigerated. When you go out and look out the windows, people in the corner selling weed, marijuana, craig cocaine, and they're running in fast cash and your little sister don't got nothing to eat. The first thing you're gonna do is go outside and pick up like this is like normal. Like Mike, if you was in a situation, I bet a million dollars on it that you would go outside and pick out of a drug. If Kylie was in the house, you seven, you fourteen, heart everybody to work for me to doing No I'm saying, I'm talking about no, I'm talking about if you don't have any of this going on, and you're poor, like you don't have any family in the house, and you come see Kylie and it's it's but after a while, this is gonna. This is gonna. But by way, that's also where and that person have no punishment. No, but may be set to jail for thirty years especial ridiculous thing I've ever heard. And that's why I said to me. But even if you bring it down to ten years, it's not even a tenure, then ten years will ruin your life. So like what they got is leaning, is not even leaning, like it's the thing the rates of bootsteps so high, like what they call like I watch media and social send him to prison. Like even when people be like, he should have went to prison, he breaks broke probation. Even if I did break probation, if I did commit a crime ten years ago and I broke probation, people are like, send him back to prison. I'm like, do you know what prison is? And like when I say shackled up in a cage, I mean like shack of real chains. When you take a baby step is cutting your legs and like the same thing you see in the slavery movie. It's the same thing. And I'm like, do people really understand what they're saying, like send him to prison, like Mike Cain to myself. Mike was like, he was like, it's not bad as it could be. I'm gonnahit. I'm like, oh, but that's because I'm an optimistic person and I always want to look at things positively. And it's ten degrees. I don't have a tallest seat. The water that I'm coming out of my sink is the same water connected to the tallt is filthy, Like it's like it's ten mices in my cell and night running around you like is you can't even imagine it? And I'm like, I'm here. I didn't hurt anybody. I didn't kill anybody. I didn't. By the way, the thing that bothers me so much, the amount of people I've told about your story and everyone it's now proven that you were wrongfully convicted because we have a cop who was one of the two arresting officers signed AFFI David say no, you didn't point the gun, which what you were charged for. Yeah, yeah, and and your probation violations where you popped a wheelie on a motorcycle, you broke up a fight in an airport. Yet there are people I put them back in jail for ten years, which is it shows how backwards so many people are in this country as well. Just when you speak on jail that it's like it's just like it's just like a place of hotel where you go to sit that now it's some ship that will warn your whole train of thought, like you went here, Like the match sleeping on is probably four inches thick, and then after that is metal and cement, like you got eighty minutes. These guys eighty years old sleeping on mattress and stuff like, they didn't kill anybody. They may have been on probation and they felling the after felling in you eight years. Oh you you're poorer. You've been in the system so long. It's hard to explain. You have to see it and be there. Like even what they do with juveniles, they got juveniles locked in cages. These are suebment cages that they had these kids and and most of these kids didn't kill anybody tell you something. I was so proud of you. But it's a scary story. So the day that I brought Robert Craft to visit make in prison, UM we were sitting there and UM, we were just kind of talking. I was really just kind of listening to Robert Meek talking. And Robert looked at me and he said, you know, I don't understand how how you're handling this. So how are you so happy? He said, Like, last time I was with you, we were on a plane flying to an All Star game and you were on the top of the world. Now you're in an orange jumpsuit, locked in prison. You've got a smile from me. You're gonna ear to ear and me. He's generally pretty quick with his answer. You thought about it for about thirty seconds, and he looked at Robert. He said, you know, it's been my entire adult life. I was wrongfully convicted for a crime and commit I've been sent back to prison multiple times, never committed a new crime. But this is the first time people actually fighting for me, and that makes me so happy. So for me, I was mortified of the situation, but completely proud of how well he was handling that horrific situation. This is the best situation I've ever been in for as dealing with the system, with having like real credible people stand behind me, because, like Mike said, I'm telling them, like, yo, you really think I should if y'all had guns in here, you're not even police officer. If I came in here and all you'll have firearms and I came in here point a gun nine times out of tenn where would I be? So when the police against the copy cops are trained to neutralize people who calls threat towards their lives, like this is like normal, Like you get away with this, This is what you should do. You're trained to do this, not me one on one with a cop like and you know, one on want anybody could get scared and want to run away. Now this is a group of cops doing a full blown read and me being accused of pointing the gun at all of them and so so me we're down to h we're runn out of time with a time. One more question, which is a hard one for me. There's so many questions I want to ask you, and you might go, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna narrow down to one. Before I do that, I want to remind people who are listening vote, vote and vote voting your local races and your DA's races and your judges races. Your vote counts. We have votes, we have races that actually ended up tied, right, I mean, your vote counts. And they have to be white against the black to be racist. It could be white on white racism, it could be black on black racism. And make sure you vote for the right people. When when you're vote for judges, nobody really knows because you just see a judge on the DA you can make good decisions. And people knew when they voted for the d A in Pennsylvania that he was a more thoughtful person on the criminal justice system and been lots of new d as that have had much more modern approaches. That approach hasn't been locked everybody up and put all black American prison. It's been let's have it accurate punishment for a crime. And that's who you should be voting for. And I'm gonna say one more thing before I turned the last question over to you, which is everybody who's out there, at some point you're gonna get asked to serve on a jury and nobody likes it. We get those things in the mail, We're like, oh my god, I gotta time for this whatever, it's a big pay I gotta go. You gotta go because when you go, there might be a meek Mill in front of you. There might be somebody else who's making and Eric Ritta get fund of your case that all three of us are involved with, and we're gonna get him out come hell or high water. So get up, get out, and go vote, and go serve on the jury because as you saved, could be your own. And now, rather than ask a final question, I'm just gonna do what I do at the end of the show, which is I always say it's my favorite part of the show. I think it's probably audiences favorite part of the show too, which is when I stop talking and just turned the mica over to you for final last words, and Michael, I'm gonna let you go first and then Meeke and back clean up and close out the show. So, Michael, what would you want to tell people? How could they get involved? What can they do? What's what's the solution? Well, I think we're in a great position because I actually think this is a big problem that needs to be addressed. I think it's gonna be I think it would just take common sense to this juice problem. We're gonna make the world a better place. And I'm actually for a guy who had absolutely zero points your exposure until to the criminal justice system until I met Meek, and I'm still really didn't understand it until November six of last year. I'm really optimistic because I believe that UM, this is a completely broken system that UM, with a lot of focus and energy, we can make the country a much better place than to me. That's exciting. So you know what, I would say that everybody is make a difference. I didn't make any difference until seven months ago. And I'm actually you know, I've got three great businesses that I run, and I've got a great daughter and a great family and friends. Get almost energized about this as anything because I see how broken it is it is, and I see how much fixing it needs. Meek last words, and before you even go, I want to thank you and Michael, thank you for not just for being on the show, but for lending your voice and your energy and your your money and your time to this movement. Thank you for your focus. What you're doing is incredible. But you've been at this for twenty five years. Um, he's been sucking the system for thirteen years, and I've been at this for seven months. So thank you. Well, I'm older than yours, I've had more time. But yeah, it's it's a it's a very it's it's a you know, it's an obsession and I'm not gonna stop until we fix it together. So but anyway, so thank you both again for being here and sharing your your thoughts and your and your energy, your collective wisdom. So, Mike, what are your last words for the audiences out there? My last words to the audience that just now, I'm dedicated. Uh, this is a life mission. I actually suffer from the criminal justice system for over ten years. And you know, uh, I actually walked the walk on the other side of the wall with some innocent men who I know are basically suffering and families are suffering. So you know, I felt the pain first hand, and you know, I'm gonna continue to do what I need to do to help make change. Uh, not fixed the system, but break the system completely and rebuild it again. Because um, the way we lived and the things we've been through with the system. It doesn't even take crime or take being a villain to go to jail, you know what I'm saying. And you know it's it's thousands of millions of people trapped inside on the other side of the wall that actually need help. And you know, I think this is the right season to make change and uh UM putting all my efforts onto it and hopefully, you know, we make change within the next few years and a free a lot of people from the prison system. We're going we're gonna do it. We're gonna do it together, and we need everybody's help. I did want to say that there's a book that really touches on everything that you went through called On the Run by Alice Goffman, where she chronicles life in you know, a Princeton PhD sociologist, um who went and lived on sixth Streets in Philadelphia, uh for eighteen months, and just one thing I wanted to read from here, which I think really will will give people an insight into what goes on and then will wrap up. But she said, in the first eighteen months that I spent the neighborhood, at least once a day, I watched the police stop pedestrians or people in cars, searched them, run their name for warrants, asked them to come in for questioning or making arrest. In that same eighteen month period, I watched the police breakdown doors, search houses and question, arrest or chase people through houses fifty two times. Nine times, police her helicopters circle overhead and beam search lights on the local streets. I noticed blocks taped off and traffic redirected. This police search for evidence fourteen times. During my first eighteen months of near daily observation, I watched the police punch, choke, kick, stomp on, or beat young men with their nightsticks. That's what the situation was like. It's what it still is like, and that's what has to change. So please check out the book Too On the Run Fugitive Life in American City by Alice Coffman. And thank you everyone for listening. This has been an amazing experience for me. And once again you've been listening to Michael Rubin, best known as the owner of the Philadelphia seventy. Yeah, one of the owners, but the one who's gonna bring the championship back to Philadelphia and uh and and Meek Mill Again, no need for any further introduction. Thank you again for being here, Thank you for having us man, don't forget to give us a fantastic review. Wherever you get your podcasts, it really helps. And I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project and I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence Project dot org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wardis. The music on the show is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason flam Is a production of Lava for Good. Podcast in association was Signal Company Number one