This call is from a correction facility, and it's subject to monitoring and recording exactly a hundred years. That's manly. I'm a kid. I didn't do anything, you know, and uh, you know that was that was real payingful man, No, because my life was discarded as if you know, like I was a piece of trash or something, you know, a hundred years and I had dreams and I wanted to do things. I wouldn't commit me crimes. You know. That was a very good young man. That is what happened in so many cases. The cops have a hunch because they're so smart at the scene, they have a hunch, and once they act on that hunch, they sort of developed tunnel vision and they take off marching in the wrong direction. And that happens in so many of these wrongful convictions. The opening, uh the cell door, and I'll walk down stairs. And I actually walked down stairs to to be outside. It felt very strange to be, like I said, to be walking without no shackles on my feet. I thought it was a dream. But then again, it wasn't a dream. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction with Jason flam. That's me. And today, UM particularly excited because we have two amazing people in the studio. First of all, the star of our show today, Matthew Charles m His story is gonna blow your mind. I'll leave it at that for the time being. But Matthew, welcome to the show. And with him is Kevin Ring, who has a remarkable story of his own, um, having been imprisoned himself and now being the leader of an organization that is very very near and dear to me, Families Against Mandatory Minimums, on whose board I have served for twenty five years. So Kevin, welcome, Thank you. So Matthew, it all starts with you, because you've become sort of an amazing symbol of this mandatory sentencing nightmare that is a uniquely American problem, you know, and you're here now. It's funny. I'm the only one here not in a suit and tie, which is sort of ironic. But um, that being said, Uh, you don't look like a guy who would have been sentenced to thirty five years in prison. You look like a guy who would be more likely to be since the thirty five years sitting in a corporate boardroom. But that's beside the point. So let's go back to Tennessee and back to when this where this story started, because you weren't wrongfully convicted, but you were wrongfully sentenced and more than once. So let's go back to the time of the crime and how this all started. Back In was arrested on felony drilling a farm valations. At the time, there was a warm drug so therefore fifty grams and more for crack cocaine allowed you to have a citizen range of ten years to life and because of the amount exceeding fifty grams, it allowed me to be at thirty years to life. And when I was sentenced in nineteen ninety six, I received a thirty or five years sentence. Then we'll get to that saga, right, But what makes your story so newsworthy is the fact that you were in for so long for decades and then out and thriving on the outside for about two years and then put back in. I was incoceprated for twenty one and a half years before I was released. The first time I went back in did seven more months. Once I was sent back and the original thirty five years sentence was reinstated, but throughout that process of time. The citizen guidelines changed three particular times during that period of mind conservation, in nineteen ninety six, in nineteen and in two thousand teen, in nine and two thousand it actually stated that the sentence that I was serving could not even be above twenty years. So therefore, everybody that got sentenced after two thousand, which was Book of versus Washington, they received the sentence of twenty years for the same offense, with the same criminal history and the same career. Fender gut Last. The only thing changed was it took away the mandatory nature by the sentence and gut Last. The Rachel disparity didn't disappear, It didn't completely disappear. It got a lord, you know, greatly in two thousand. In two thousand ten, Senator Durban sponsored and championed the first mandatory sentencing rollback in America in forty years. You know that rollback, which I'm proud to say I worked. You know what was involved in while it didn't establish parody for crack and cocaine, it rolled it back from a hundred to one disparity to eighteen to one. UM. Now, this is an inherently racist situation because we know that the overwhelming majority of crack arrests are people of color, and the overwhelming majority of coke arrests are white people. So you don't need to be a social scientist to figure out what's going on there. I'll say this about Senator Durbin because you mentioned him. He recently gave a speech, and you don't hear politicians do this, but he said his vote for the original hundred to one disparity A lot of those guys voted for that at the time because it was the height of the drug war. He said it was the worst vote he ever cast and that he was sorry for it, and that you know, since that time he has worked hard to erase it, and two thousand ten was the first step in doing that. But I mean, it just takes a lot of courage to say, you know, we were caught in a moral panic, made a mistake, but as an elected ficial, I did the wrong thing, and now I'm making amends. Even when I went to meet him, he stayed at how he was instrumental in the two thousand teen changes as well as the ones that took place that released me in two thousand nine, saying how does you know people? I tell people about Matthew's case and they say, both, it isn't that double jeopardy. He was in, he was out, and he was put back into the same crime. Matthew was sent back because the federal judge in his case thought that the two thousand ten law applied to him and should have benefited him, so he was able to cut his sentence. And it turns out the appeals Corps. So this was another funny thing about where politics work. It was the Obama Justice Department who appealed the judge's decision and said no, he should finish serving his thirty five years, and then the appeals court agreed, and then they sent it back to the judge. And now the Trump Justice Department was there, and the judge said, I really don't think I should be sending this guy back. Are you sure you don't want to drop these charges? Because he'd been out for two years and people saw him and they said no, send him back. So everybody's hands were on this. They could have left him out. It was a decision to send him back just because of this commitment to you know this this sort of like formalism of this rule of law, like, no, that's what the sentences. And even though we see that he has been rehabilitated and he doesn't need this sentence, we're going to send him back anyway. The thing about it, you is me just being incoscerated for that period of time and seeing others that are incostrated with the same amount of time or more based on mandatory minimum sentences with no way of having any type of relief. I just hope that more changed his forthcomment, Well, what percentage of the people that you were in with do you are really a menister society? I would say probably, I would say sevent five percent having over centers and are not a minister society. And I would say fifty percent of those people are changed. In February, I have become a Christian. It doesn't matter what your religious beliefs are. You have a right to justice for all. You have a right to be senters for the crime and get a punishment that suit for that crime, not to be over centers. And the majority of people in there are for non valiant offenses, and even some of those that have valiant offenses, still they have changed over the years. That's what I was speaking about. Either a person changes because of their choice to change for themselves or their family, or they may have an encounter or spiritual you know, awakening like I may have had, or the fact that they've just aged over the years and they've just taken a real look at their lives. It doesn't take much to awaken a person. But the sad part is that those people that have been awoken are still awakened into thirty years sentences life sentences, and they are non valient offenses. We know that in most parts, I would say of Western Europe, the maximum sentence you can get for anything is fifteen years, you know, and some people say, wow, that dangerous guyship. I mean, okay, we can have that discussion right there. There may be exceptions, but in general, the idea that in Western Europe you can murder multiple people and get sentenced to less than half the amount of time that Matthew did for you know, it wasn't a small amount of crack, but it's still we're talking about seven ounces, right, and can we put that in context? Seven ounces? It would be like five or six sweet and low packages, right or um. I don't know how much is in an actual you know, sugar package that you put in your coffee. But it's you know, it would be not far off from that. So it's not like you weren't Scarface exactly exactly. And you don't appear to be a dangerous society either. I mean from everything that I can tell from knowing you for the short time that I have, But I can't even imagine your perspective going from being one of two point two million people in this school log system of America, anonymous, almost without hope, and then the next thing, you know, here comes Kim Kardashian. Next thing you know, you're being discussed in the White House, and you're being discussed in the halls of power, and you're actually visiting these places, and you're on the front page of newspapers and everybody's knowing the name of Matthew Charles. And the reason for that, of course, is that you were freed. You were out. Anyone could see that you were doing great right, You were contributing to society, You're contributing to your community and your family. And then what happened during the time that I went back for those seven months, once my family and friends started telling me that Kim Kardashian West at first tweeted about asking the president to release me, I do something about my situation. I wasn't all you know what I mean. And then actually, once I was it would be released. And thank her for speaking on my behalf and having her hearts and her thoughts concerning me throughout my plight. And I was able to go on her page and tweet that. And then when she tweeted back, God bless you, Matthew, I was like, Wow. And the fact that she's speaking out against the mandatory minimum nature of the citizen guidelines, all the mass and conceration extensive sentences and calling for more criminal justice reform just as amazing because voices like hers and people like her, Oh I listen to and I'm just thankful for yeah, and I am too. And you know, as you know, she was on wrongful conviction. We did an episode with her and we talked about your case, and you know, she really is a passionate advocate. And because I started in this work because of a mandatory sentence in case way back in thee and once I was found out, I was able to make a difference and get this kid, Stephen Lennon home I was hooked and I'll never stop. I mean, as long as I got breath to breathe, I'll keep fighting the good fight. And I feel like it's the same thing with her now that she's had the experience of working with you and Alice Johnson and she's in it now, and you know, having her voice is it's just a great, great thing for the movement. So and it takes voices like hers, and I'm asking, now, what can we do for the laws that are still incocerating, and that is it's a common thread. We've recorded about eighty episodes of this podcast so far, and I would say almost everyone has got the same goal that you do, which is to help the others that were left behind. I don't know any to come out and go, Okay, I'm gonna go get what's mine now. No, everybody comes out with this passion that is so inspiring and then puts so much gratitude to my attitude because everybody wants to go and help others and that's the way it should be. And because the show is called wrong for conviction, I wanted to ask you about that too. Before we turn back to Kevin, what percentage of people because there were hundreds, if not thousands, of people you've encountered in twenty one and a half years in prison. What percentage of them do you think we're actually in the sense of the crimes for which they were convicted since my incoceration in the federal system, I would say, because the federal system uses a thing called conspiracy, and in the conspiracy it doesn't take any real actual evidence. They can just convict you on somebody's testimony. Are what we call in the federal prison system as ghost dope. In other words, they can give you an amount even though they don't actually have that amount, just like even in my case, be a two undred sixteen grounds, but the actual drug amount that was attributed to me that could factually be proven was fifty six grams. Everything else came from hearsay testimony that I wasn't able to refute because the government was able to get it in under the conspiracy rule. So when saying that, I would say, either the people that are incarcerated for drug offenses, I would say probably sixty of them have been charged with conspiracy are ghost dope, and the sad party is a lot of times in the federal system they're forced to take complete So in other words, the prosecution states to what it doesn't matter, I'm gonna give you this amount of time. And normally, because the court is bound by at the time, I was sentenced to mandator a minimum and this is the sentence that has to be imposed, and then the judge just actually has the discretion to give you the low end the mid of that sent us all the hot hand, but it's normally already so hat they just give you the low end anyway, you know what I mean. I'm not laughing at this fact that they do that, because it's sad and disappointing and so in other words, a lot of times that is held over the inmates are the prisoner's head to where they have to agree to a police sent us then come into prison and know that all the evidence that they gave against you was fabricated. So a lot of times they got it wrong. You know, we have this. I think it's an initiative that was driven by the Innocence Project called the hashtag guilty plea problem because in America, we know the nineties of felony convictions are guilty please. And it's exactly I mean, you said it very eloquently. That's exactly why it happens, because for a lot of people, it's the only rational decision you can make. Brian Banks a great example of that in California, right pleading guilty to a rape that not on even committed. It never happened, but he was advised by his attorney like, we're gonna lose, you know, and you're gonna get to life, and so he chose, you know, the only rational choice. And fortunately eventually it was proven that that he was as innocent as could be, but it was too late to save him from the sentence that he got. That You mentioned something you said about these guilty plead problems. So glad the Innocence Project is doing that. I've seen a lot of their work on it and it's excellent. As you know, every year when they released the number of gnorees, there's always a percentage who pled guilty. People deny that it happens. Prosecuteur will say, no, one innocent pleads guilty. It happens every year. We see it now because of every day. Yeah, and we know it because they get exhonerated by DNA evidence. And then you look back in those cases and you say they played, and it's always the saying why did you do it? It was a better deal. And I was testifying in Pennsylvania Senate and the great criminologist Mark Lemon said to a hostile senator, if the prosecutor said to a person, plead guilty and testify as we want, or we're going to break your arm, no one would have any problems seeing the moral problem with that threat. And yet breaking your arm would be a luxury compared to spending thirty five years in prison. So when you have a system that's sort of incentivizes people to say whatever, do whatever, admit to crimes that didn't commit, testivoue against people when they didn't see something, you're going to get injustices. And so I would even take one further. You can say to people, um, please guilty, and we'll give you a choice, either break your arm or spend years in prison. I'd be investing in the company that makes the casts right that company because everybody would take that choice, and I've never heard a good comeback for that. That's exactly what that choice feels like, is going to do this or we have all the leverage in the world and especially with mandatory sentences, because right if you say I want to go to trial, I think I'm innocent or I'm just bullheaded, and at least the judge would have some discretion in normal case. Well with a mandatory minimum, if the prosecutor brings it and threatens you with that, the judge is cut out. Now you get to the end of the sentence, you've been convicted, and the judge may say, I don't want to give you that punishment, but I have no choice. Now. These mandatory sentencing laws are so out of step with the rest of the world, the rest of the Western world, but almost anywhere in the world you can't get these kind of sentences for for drug crimes. No, that's right. It's only America who did this. We had this crime rise, and we responded with these mandatory sentences. No other country did that, and so our incarceration rate, you know, grew. I always tell people the same thing that from two thousand five, we built a prisoner jail in this country every ten days, and that's solely to keep up with how many people we were throwing into the prisons because of these mandatory sentencing laws. The fact that we incarcerate black males in America at six times the rate of South Africa at the height of apartheid is something that I can actually feel people shaking their heads when they hear this, right, and that, which is crazy becuse we're not even live so I'm projecting. But the you know, the idea that a black man in America without a high school diploma has a something like a sixty something percent chance of spending a year in prison before his thirtieth birthday. What like, I mean, people don't talk about this. But the real reason that Ferguson erupted, I think most people and most social scientists would agree it was not because specifically of Michael Brown, but it was because they were arresting people in Ferguson for mowing their law in the wrong way, you know, for walking down the street without I d I heard that in Ferguson the average household had something like four outstanding warrants, right, because they were just arresting people for just being black, basically, right. And of course there's the socioeconomic aspect of this, which is just basically pulling money in so many sort of the farious ways from the poor community and putting in the hands of certain corporations. Who are you know, profiting from this mass incarceration, And you know, I hope that listeners will check their portfolios and divest from companies. If you have a pension fund or anything else that you're involved with and you find out that they own stock and private prisons, divest. We have to make it known that we're not going to be involved in profiting off of caging other human beings. It's not okay. A lot of people doing don't know they're doing it, so so it's worth taking a look. Well, let me give you an example of something that just happened this week, and I don't mean to be so self absorbed about this. My sixteen year old daughter wanted to have a debit card so she could go with her friends and not have to always carry cash. So we opened an account for her and she's been using for a couple of weeks, and then we just got to notice that her account was overdrawn, which it wasn't. They said, we're closing it out and sending you the check, and right away I knew what that was because I had to co sign for that account. So I called Capital One and I said what's going on here? And they said, we're going to send you a close that check and we'll inform you what this is about. And all they did was send the close that check saying this account was closed at the customer's request. No it wasn't. We didn't ask to close it. And so I had to bump around on a million phone calls and finally say, I have a felony conviction. Is that why you closed her account? And they finally said, yes, the bank has made a business decision not to have an account with you. So I went to prison for a year and a half, as you know, for public ruption charges. My daughter can't have an account a Capital One bank. So this is a cultural problem. You wouldn't need to do this podcast if everyone saw it the way you saw it. And we see it right. So part of our problem is we're trying to convince our fellow citizens that this is the problem. And and look at its tentacles. I mean, why can't a sixteen year old girl have a bank account because her dad went to prison for year and a half for you know, these charges. And that's the way it is. And I'm fine, right, I have I have a credit union account. I will be fine. I'm more fortunate than most. What if you're a single mother and you know you your husband had a conviction and now you can't have an account for your kids and that bank accounts the only chance. So we just penalize people in so many ways, prison being the worst of it. But you just never get out of the penalty box. You don't get occupational licenses to do. You know, people who barber in prison, then they can't do it on the outside. We just never let people out and we punish them. And that's I'd love to point to somebody say it's their fault. But we countenance this unless we go to say that the politicians, we don't want these policies anymore. No, that's that's absolutely right, and you know it, it's nuts because all of us want to live in a safe society, right, all of us want our ourselves and our families to be, you know, able to walk the streets. And it shouldn't be that difficult for people to understand that since ninety five or more percent of people that are in prison right now are going to be coming home, the only approach that makes any sense is to give those people the best chance possible to get back on their feet when they get out. Instead we pull the rug out from under them. Then then we act surprised when they have to resort to stealing something or doing something else because they need to eat. It's amazing. You know, in other countries they have recidivism rate that's a tiny fraction of hours because they treat their prisoners like human beings, and they paved the way for them to come out and get back into society, where we just put up barriers one after the other. I love my country. I was born here. I know how lucky I am to have been born here in the first place. And it's because I love my country that I want to see these things changed. You know, it's a very interesting moment because this is, at least to some extent, the only bipart is an issue right now. Right there's such a divide in this country, but on this issue there's some alignment. Is it because of the fiscal problems that come? Yeah, I think it's more personal than that. I think that people use arguments that they can justify to their own side. So you hear conservatives talking about the cost of prisons and and these things, but Ultimately, I think it's a morrible issue for everybody. It is a matter of fairness. The system didn't hit every community in the same way, so certain communities were sensitized to this issue earlier on. But now we have this new study from Forward dot US that said one out of every two adults in America has had an immediate family incarcerated. So that's over a hundred thirteen million Americans. I mean, obviously, I'm self interested. Fams been fighting this for over twenty five years, thanks to your help. What we're trying to do is take that number. Right. If you were a lobbyist and you were trying to influence a member of Congress, you'd say, hey, do I have any plants in his district? Do I have any constituents? We have constituents everywhere across this country. A hundred thirteen million people have been affected by this system. What we're trying to do is make them advocates, make them part of a loud, noisy army that says we can't do this anymore. A bad system will breed bad results, and we have a bad system that incentivizes the wrong things. And so what we're trying to do is get people involved. Our particular interest is bringing forward the families who have been affected by this. And I think about my situation, you know the fact that I wasn't somebody who thought he was going to end up in federal prison, but when it happened to me, and all of a sudden, you know, the next day, I'm taking my kids to the bus stop, and one at a time, neighbors are coming up to me over the next week saying, I've never told anyone this, but my brother went to prison. Somebody else come up and never told you when my dad went to prison, and I thought, we're not talking about this. It gets the point where I think it's Abraham Lincoln has said, if you want to repeal a bad law, enforce it strictly. We've got a point now where we're locking everybody up, and so now every community is saying, maybe we're doing this wrong. It's almost self interest that's got us there. Every family has been touched, either directly or indirectly by mass incarceration, you know, and in this country the statistics are so insane, like the one you just talked about, Like I'm sitting here listening to it. I knew that number but it still doesn't make any sense. Write a hundred and thirteen million people, what is it. It's not a rite of passage. It's nothing to be proud of. It's disgusting. What are we doing. All we're doing is like trying to hurt our own people. And unless you believe that American people are inherently evil and need to be punished differently and more than other people around the world, then the only other conclusion you can draw is that we're doing it wrong. I believe that mass incarcerations, maybe a controversial statement, is the worst social policy disaster since slavery. I used to same analogy, and I said that's not politically correct because I was talking to some inmates and when some prisoners and I was like, well, really, whenever in two thousand tens Centisen guidelines changed and they said that this was based on the racial disparity, crack cocaine, the pot of cocaine, the majority of the people that got inconcerted with African Americans. Then when it was changed from eighteen to one, but those changes were not made retroactive. I did you kind of make the analogy of slavery, because I was like, well, you know, the slavery was wrong, and then it shouldn't existed. So therefore you let the slaves go free. In this situation, you're saying, Okay, we acknowledge that it's wrong, and we're gonna stop slavery, but we're gonna keep the people slaves that's already in there. And that's the way I look at retroactivity. Not only did they turned around and change the Centisen guidelines themselves to drug tables, So therefore it was a clear admission that this was wrong. It was the is proportionate to the black community. But yet you still had over three thousand people me included that was still inconcerated because it was never made retroactive. Uh so the first step fact did make those changes retroactive. And if I hadn't got out for those two years and they was actually able to see me in society showing that I had been rehabilitated by society's terms, they did never even knew, and I still would have served nine or ten more years in federal prison. Whereas I got some fellow brothers that I considered my brothers because they're incocerated. It doesn't matter what their race is. A lot of time. People say, well, you didn't receive an infraction or distiminary report in twenty one and a half years. Well, okay, that's fine. To Dan, I'm still a work in progress. But these people shouldn't have a long center just because they commit a minor infraction or they do something wrong in prison for centers that they shouldn't have had anywhere. I don't want to say that their behavior shouldn't be taken into accountability. But any time that you say, okay, Charles is in a different category than the rest of the prisoners that are in press federal prison, you're sadly mistaken. Some of my best examples, some of my best mentors, had life sentences, and to me, they were living a better example of how to be. Somebody just changed and I ever could. And it doesn't matter that I became a Christian at that time, and they may not believe anything. But once you start looking at it from the perspective that he's a Christian, he didn't get it any trouble and therefore the wrong that was done him needed to be righting. Well, the wrong has done, anybody need to be writing right. And it's interesting because talking to Matthew and you know, he's a man of faith and everything else. I'm a Jewish atheist, right so, but at the end of the day, I think we all believe in the same thing, which is redemption, right and America is supposed to be a nation of second chances, and yet we're actually the opposite. We are lock him up and throw away the key nation. The amount of human potential that's being wasted, the people that could be contributing to society tax dollars, you know, is the most mundane example. But you know, culture and everything else, it's a tragedy, you know, in the limited amount of time we have left, I want to talk about Families Against Mandatory Minimums. It's some of the victories that the organization has won over the last couple of years are really phenomenal. F A M M dot org. By the way, Fleck blom right, f A M M like music music, f A M M dot org. I encourage everyone to go to the website, sign up, learn more, get involved. But can you talk about some of the work and some of the priorities of Families Against Mandatory militis right now? Yeah, sure, Well, a lot of the things that we've been working on at the federal level were included in this first step back, and you know, we're the first ones to say it was first step back for a reason. It only made incremental reforms. But the retroactive change of the crack law has been a priority since they passed it in two thousand and ten. We thought at the time that was a difficult decision and probably for you too, that we thought, this isn't retroactive. All these guys whose stories were told now aren't going to benefit from this law. It made no sense. So it's so glad to see that finally happen. What we're seeing is people getting out like Matthew who weren't serving twelve or fifteen year sentences and getting a couple of year of breaks. There's lifers who are getting out. There are people with sentences like thirty or five years like Matthews were getting out. So it's been that's been incredible changes to the compassionate release rules. We talk about a sickness in our culture. We have this just bloodless to make people die alone in prison cells, even when they didn't get a life sentence. If they fall ill while they're in prison, they just can't get out. Because no one, you know, their family can't get through the bureaucracy to get out of prison. And so there was a change in this law that allows families and prisoners to appeal denials by the Bureau of Prisons, or if they don't get an answer in a timely way and they're terminally ill, they can go straight to court. So we're starting to see that work out. Another big change that we were happy to support was in Florida, there was a ballot amendment um. The big one was obviously Amendment four, which gave felons the right to vote in Florida, so that was hugely important and we supported that. But we had another ballot measure because Florida had its third highest incarceration rate in the country and had the quirk in its constitution that said, even if the legislature wanted to make its sentencing reductions retroactive, it didn't have the power to do it. So we had to change the constitution. So we were able to get that on the ballot, and I think partly because of the wake of Amendment four, it passed with fifty of the vote. So now in Florida we're working on sentencing reforms that will be retroactive, so we can get some of the cases that you've been helpful on, Jason, So get some of those people out, because again we've told stories about people are getting unfair sentences and then we changed the law, but it didn't benefit them. So now we're working on that. I think the next big thing we have to look at is these long sentences. Um if you talk about violent offenders, or if you get to the specifics of the offense, people get nervous. But if you say, how about after fifteen years of serving a sentence, no matter what the crime, the judge gets to take a second look at you and see whether you've been rehabilitated, whether you've just grown out of the crime, or whether they've just, on second thought, maybe the punishment was too severe. So we're talking about pushing forward what would be known as sort of a second look provision to get at some of these longer sentences because that's really what's driving our incarceration rate. And we hope that people realize the more they see people like Matthew get out that if you even if you don't make an internal change, is he said, people grow out of crime. I served time with the guy who get ten years for a drug sentence and I said, oh, you probably needed two years, and he said, no, I needed five. I was a punk, I was a bad guy, and I needed to get away from my community, away from my family, which brought him into the drug selling. He said, I needed some time, he needed to grow out of it. Anybody who was in that prison would have looked at him though, after those five years and said, you can go home now. But we don't have a system that allows for it. There's no parole in the federal system. So we have to have some way for judges to look back at these sentences and get people out. So FAM is committed to continuing our work at the state level to make sure we get rid of mandatory sentences, which are the most absurd in Pennsylvania, Florida, Arizona, in North Carolina. Um, we're making great Jusiana has been incredible. Yeah, And so I think you know, there's a lot of groups doing this, a lot of movement. Our particular interest is bringing forward the families who have been affected by this. Sometimes there's a problem where you know, members of the public or the media or lawmakers will see somebody, even a guy like Matthew, although I haven't seen it happen with Matthew, and they'll say, well, you did something wrong, and so there's somehow they're able to not feel sympathy. But when you have family members come forward and say, you know, my dad made a mistake or my brother made a mistake, and they deserve to be held accountable. But you don't know what this sentence and this punishment is doing to all the rest of us were innocent collateral damage. That is very effective. And so when we bring those family voices. When Matthew was away, his friend Naomi came to our rally last July. She spoke with Tennessee senators. She was his advocate. That really does make a difference. And it's seeing people in the flesh. We're good at punishing others that we don't know, but when you see people and I always see this, and you're an artistic person, so you'll get this. If somebody said to me, what did it for Matthew? It wasn't just that Juliete Martin Elliott NPR Nashville wrote a great story. It's that she took pictures and when you saw Matthew working at a pantry and just saw him living his life. You just knew this guy was not a threat who needed another decade in prison. You were embarrassed that we sent him away for thirty five years. It's like when you first were talking earlier, It's like, this guy was in there for thirty five years. That makes no sense. And so we've got to bring some sunlight to the system. And so that's you know, by bringing the families forward and meeting with lawmakers and putting them in their face and telling those stories. That's what we're trying to do. I mean, not only am I not scared of Matthew, I'm thinking I need to get a hold of his tailor looking like a model. I mean, it's like every week it's another students. It's crazy, so right, and again that's f a MM dot org Families Against Mandatory Minimums dot org. We're doing amazing work and we're really winning. We're starting to really got on a roll. So now it's a great time to join. You know, together we can turn this upside down and get back to a sane system and free up money for education and healthcare and all the other things that we really need instead of spending it all unlocking people up, which has costs upon costs. Mean, it's amazing. And in New York City, the state controllers that it costs a hundred and seventy five thousand dollars a year to keep somebody in Rikers Island. If you break that down to a daily rate, it's more than the four seasons on fifty seven Street, you know what I mean. Like, excuse me, Like you don't have to be an economist to understand that there's something really really wrong with that, and no one should want to see their tax dollars being spent that way. And going back that we do have touched on before. You know, it wasn't forty years ago that we had three hundred thousand people in prison America. Now we have two point two million and women in prison. I mean, we don't have time to go into that, but the fact is we have four point four percent of the world's population we have of the world's prison population. That alone is mind blowing, But we have thirty three percent of the world's female prison population. Many of those women are mothers, and those children will most likely end up in the system themselves because we know from decades of research that the number one cause of why a child may end up incarcerated as if they've had a parent incrce rate. It's not education, it's not race, it's not socio economics. It's if someone is missing their parents and missing that family structure, you know they're going to fall into, you know, some of the same traps and uh, it's it's a cycle that we need to break in the country will be much better off when we do. This has been a great discussion. I could talk to you guys for hours, but I'm assuming that people who listen and probably have other things they want to do with their day as well. The good news is my favorite part of the show is this part of the show, UM, And here's how it works. At the end of each episode, UM, I get to take a rest and give everybody a break from hearing my voice. And so what that means is that I'm going to thank both of you again for being here. Kevin Ring, the fearless leader of Families against Mandatory Minimums, and of course Matthew Charles, who has been tremendous force for change in the in the brief amount of time we've been out and I know he's going to go on to do great things. So thank you again for being here. And now I'd like to turn it over to you for final thoughts. And like I said, I get to turn my mic off and just listen. So Kevin, how about you go first. I'll go first. I'm gonna be brief because I want Matthew to have more time and attention because he deserves it. When I first heard about Matthew's case, I was surprised that more people weren't working on it, and we jumped in and a lot of people, ending with you and Kim Kardashian and then the White House, everybody getting involved, and it was amazing. What strikes me so much about Matthew is his humility and what a decent person he is, and how ashamed I am that we had somebody like that in prison for as long as we did. And when I first met him and he agreed to come to DC and meet with lawmakers to think him. We're always criticizing policymakers, we have to thank them when they do the right thing. And that was a really great visit when he came, and when we had a chance to talk, he said, what I want to do with my life is serve the poor and those single parent households. That's what my life is going to be. And when he was out, he had worked in a pantry helping families, and that tells you all you need to know about him. And we had to say, could you not look for a job for six months and just help us be an advocate. So, you know, we hired Matthew to be a fam fellow for the next six months. And we've already met with the Tennessee governor of the Florida governor. He's met with lawmakers, he's giving speeches, he was on panel yesterday, He's in high demand, and it's just illustrative of who he is. Even aside from those who want to give back on criminal justice reform, he just wants to be a positive members community. And we're grateful that he is using his voice to help us on this cause for now and then he's going to be the pride of Nashville when he finishes up. I've worked with a lot of people in this area, a lot of people who you know, do good things and have been rehabilitated. But what has struck me about Matthew's story is that he has stayed grounded. He's not looking to be a celebrity. He is just looking to use his voice and experience and the best possible way. And we're incredibly grateful for Thank you. I thank you Jason for having me today. UH. I like to say I became known by default due to the fact that my circumstances caught media attention and therefore people able to hear my story. You hear the situation, you say, Okay, this can't be possibly true. Then you find out that it is true. Man was released at serving twenty one and have years on a non balance drug offense. UH, an offense which actually cares now less than twenty years. I was given a third or five years centis for and that they're not being for Judge Kevin Sharp allowing me to go for in two thousand sixteen, nobody would even heard of me or my study or that I had changed. So I'm grateful that all of those spokes in that room we're working at the time. But my situation is not isolated from other people situations that are still inconcerated, that don't have anybody speaking on their behalf that's actually asking how can I get some relief from a system that has caused me to feel bitter are pressed only because of the sentence, not the crime I committed, but the sentence that I was imposed. I've seen them, I listened to their studies. I worked in a lot of library where they would come up to me and asked me to read letters from home, whether read from their kids, or their wives or their siblings, because they didn't have that educational level. So because I worked as an educational two to before I worked in a lot library, I was able to make friends with some people and help them to write letters back home to their families, to their children, as well as read their letters to them and what they was receiving from their attorneys. And someone was like, I took this plea because that I not took this plea, I would have been sentenced to this or that, And all of those thirds soundeds anonymous to the point that it became it was the same. This person pleaded out to what they thought was less so that they wouldn't get a larger sentence, but yet they weren't even deserving of the sentence that they were given. It's just that it was a trap system. Whether trap doors are closed and there's no way out. If that happened to you, or that happened to your child, you will want somebody to speak out on their behalf, or you will want some system to change. Well, that's all we want as well. They want to be able to get out and get back into society and regain their dignity. And so I'm thankful that I was able to be out for those two years. I'm thankful not that I went back those seven months, but during those seven months that it took on a whole new realm of people looking at my situation to where they were also able to present it to the senators and representatives saying, hey, the person can change, and we have an example of someone who has changed. They would have been able to say, oh, he certainly don't need to be there anymore. You've got people with like Center says, You've got people with sixty years all throughout the federal system, all throughout the state system. That's just bigging and praying and hope a full a second chance. Even why is deserving of a second chance if they've changed, Well, you know, it's great that you're here being the spokesperson that you are. And I was closed by just quoting uh the Great Brian steven Sue said, I believe everyone's better than the worst thing they've ever done. Once again, this has been a unique and special episode of Wrongful Conviction, and thank you Kevin ring Man was against mandatory meadowums and Matthew Charles for joining us. Thank you 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 Innocent 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 Awardis. The music in 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 Grown Full Conviction podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one