Speaker 1: 0:00

Okay, it's my privilege today to have Ms Amy Pova on Justice Then Justice Now. Amy is quite a remarkable individual that I've gotten to know very, very well over the last couple of years due to very unforeseen circumstances that occurred not only with me professionally but in my life. Amy is a role model to many people in society. She has had the attention of the White House, she's been there, she's a prison reform activist and also a marijuana reform activist. She has met with Gerald Kushner and the First Step Act. Involved in that, she has an organization called the Can Do Foundation which is made up, and she will be a very valuable friend and asset to this podcast and will periodically be on because she's referring people that have outstanding stories to tell as far as second chances that were given to them and how they've succeeded. And Amy has the most respect for law enforcement and the respect for everybody that follows the rules in the criminal justice system.

Speaker 1: 1:37

Okay, and we all know that there are problems in the criminal justice system. That's the purpose of this podcast and what we're trying to do is discuss them and come up with some ideas. This show is not a bunch of talking heads with no experience or political people that get on and have no idea about it. We'll be covering everything, from the border to everything the current drug problem, the rehabilitation that we have going on nationwide. So I'd like to welcome you, amy, to the premiere editions of this podcast and I look forward to us working together in the future, my friend.

Speaker 2: 2:23

Thank you, Tobias. It's really been nice working with you and looking forward to working together in the future.

Speaker 1: 2:33

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, your background and where you grew up, and your story on what you've accomplished? Your story on what you've accomplished.

Speaker 2: 2:44

Well, I was born in Dallas, texas, and raised in Arkansas. From the time I was about five years old and my parents moved to Arkansas because there was a moment in time back in the 60s when my grandfather there was a little surge of growth in Arkansas and he got a plastering job for the downtown post office in Little Rock. And the more that my parents came out to visit, the more they loved the topography Because, as a lot of people know, dallas is very flat and Arkansas has gorgeous Ouachita Mountains, gorgeous lakes. And although I moved to, I moved back to Dallas after one year college and then moved to California in 88,. I recently returned to Arkansas this last year because, well, frankly, a lot of people are fleeing California. So so, anyway, uh, right now I'm looking at a gorgeous view of the washington mountain forestry and I feel like I'm back to my roots.

Speaker 2: 4:15

But in the interim, uh, when I was in dallas, I met somebody and fell in love with a guy who was a Stanford Law School graduate and owned numerous businesses. But one of the things that I wasn't privy to was that he was getting into the. He was very interested in MDMA as a drug that had medicinal properties. We now know it has medicinal properties for PTSD and a number of other things. But it was legal back then and I tried Ecstasy it was the street name for it and it kind of gives you a euphoria.

Speaker 2: 5:03

But long story short, I was working for one of his companies, commonwealth bank corp. That provided, uh, second mortgage, home improvement loans, but they were mostly, um, swimming pool loans, and it didn't take long for me to realize that there was a lot of secrecy in his life, there was a lot of things that I wasn't privy to, and he also had a drinking issue and still quite the womanizer. And so after three years I moved to California to sever myself from the manipulation I didn't ask for a divorce, because anytime I tried that, there was a lot of begging and promises and I was just 20.

Speaker 2: 5:57

I think I was 24 when I met him, but we got married when I was 25. And I just didn't have the skills. I was raised in a very small town called Charleston, arkansas. Everybody was wholesome, worked hard. We eventually moved out to a farm I call it a farm, but it was more like a raised cattle and um, so, uh, I just really maybe wasn't prepared for um life out in the big world the way some people might be, although I think when you're young, you just you're not looking for signs of deception and you have a tendency to just see things through rose-colored glasses and you assume that or you give people the benefit of the doubt that that everybody's pretty honest, because that's how it was in my community. Everybody went to church.

Speaker 2: 6:58

So, uh, you know, after I moved to California, he got in trouble. He was arrested in Germany for manufacturing MDMA and I was still sort of tender-hearted for him. I cared about him as an individual and he wanted me to come visit him, which was a bad decision I made to go and see what was going on. I was getting information that it was a big mistake. But long story short, because hopefully I don't know if the public is very well versed in the conspiracy law, but the conspiracy law is sort of a catch-all. It ensnares people so that if you do one thing, they call it one overt act, then you're responsible for the actions of an entire group of people that you may or may not have known or known about. And so by traveling to Germany and I hired an attorney for him and he asked me to retrieve some funds to pay for legal fees, and he thought he was going to get bail. Well, you don't get bail in Germany if you're a foreigner. So I did what was asked of me.

Speaker 1: 8:32

And.

Speaker 2: 8:33

I have this tendency and it's a character flaw that I really need to understand what I'm saying yes to before agreeing to do something, because before you know it, even if you think you're not doing something illegal yourself, you're definitely crossing a line into the nefarious zone. And I was convinced that he was in trouble and he was still being cagey and dishonest about he wasn't being forthcoming about what had exactly transpired, about what had exactly transpired. But I did know that he was somebody who had access to MDMA and that he could get as much MDMA as he wanted. So that honestly didn't bother me because anal you know, christian person, that is perfect, I may be Christian, but I had tried many recreational drugs in my youth. That was the end of the 70s and 80s. About the time that this happened was coincidentally about the same time that the Reagan-Bush administration decided to resurrect the war on drugs. I tend to push back when I hear that this is Nixon's drug war, because I don't believe that during a Nixon administration or era that women and people who had a very ancillary role say maybe being married, being a girlfriend, being somebody on a low level participation were being indicted by the conspiracy statute. I think that came into play more in the late 80s. There also weren't mandatory minimums, which was passed in the 80s, and the mandatory sentencing guidelines, which mandates that if somebody goes to trial and if they will not cooperate and give what is called substantial assistance, which means aiding the government and the conviction of other people, then now there's a term for it called the trial penalty phase.

Speaker 2: 11:17

So I was living in Los Angeles. I did run around and collect some money. The money was not all. The money was not kosher. A lot of it was drug proceeds that he had put into some lock boxes that were at different locations and he was writing messages to me trying to lead me to these lock boxes and I, you know I collected this money. So that put me smack dab into the conspiracy statute and I knew when I was doing it that this didn't seem very kosher. And yet at the same time there was not a lot of information. Back then I really had no clue that what I was doing could land me in prison for 20 to life. But I found out pretty quickly.

Speaker 2: 12:14

In 89, the feds busted into my home. I was living in the Hollywood Hills. I had a very successful business back then called Primetime Promotions, and so I was gone when the feds busted into my home and in fact I was going interviewing for another job that I had just inked a deal on. And when I pulled into my driveway I it was just, it was like a shock that two men with guns drawn raced my car. But this was before SWAT was being used used mostly in drug cases and so they had on blue jeans and not that it hadn't been that long before a neighbor had had the same thing happen to her. But it was some thugs that had raced her car to rob her and they actually, I think, kind of pistol, whipped her for her purse.

Speaker 2: 13:30

And helicopters came and it was so loud and I had seen some cops running up the hills, so that was fresh in my mind and I thought at first that's what was happening to me. But I was given a command to. First it was like freeze, don't move, then raise your hands, and that's a little bit contradictory, so it was kind of like ah, so they flanked me and ushered me out of the car and into the house and I just remember seeing my kitchen. There was there's a lot of people in my house. I think ultimately there was about 10 people some most of them were from Texas and a couple of local cops that were raiding my home. And, um, just the noise, the you know the visuals of seeing everything in your kitchen on the floor and drawers being pulled out and all the silverware, the containers of the drawer just falling into the floor.

Speaker 2: 14:43

I don't know what. The theory is there, maybe kind of like you're trying to shock somebody and that way maybe they'll be more apt to to cooperate or scared straight. But for me it was so shocking. I think it would have been better if the feds had maybe just knocked on my door and asked to come in and ask some questions, kind of like the horny 5-0 approach, because I'm the kind of person that, if you know, if I think somebody is acting appropriately, then I have a. I don't keep secrets very well, I'm kind of transparent, maybe a little bit too open, and I think they would have gotten a lot further with questioning if they had just knocked on my door and asked me a few questions.

Speaker 2: 15:30

But I remember being ushered through the kitchen, past the dining room table and then into the living room where the front door was missing. So my mind was kind of stuck on the fact that there was a hole in my house where I could just see out into the courtyard. And at first I couldn't understand that the door was on the floor. I just knew that there was a wide open hole in my house. So all the furniture was upside down and I was tossed into the to a I'll never forget. It was like a green um hunter green kind of velvety chair that had to be uprighted and at that point I just kind of froze up. It was so shocking and so frightening and so scary that I couldn't, I couldn't process, I couldn't process what was happening to me so I had, I just you had, like the deer in the headlights.

Speaker 1: 16:34

Look what we call. Like you know, here it is. You thought it was like a home invasion. When you pulled up, the police were investigating.

Speaker 2: 16:44

Okay, go ahead I just wanted to make it clear, yeah okay, well, pretty quickly, you know, I did realize that this is something very different. And you know, you start processing and, um, somebody emerged from the crowd and kind of started hollering at me that I was in hot water. This was a federal investigation, they knew. They said we know your husband is in trouble, we know that you visited him and you better start talking because you're looking at 20 to life. And so at that point I kind of just focused on the floor.

Speaker 2: 17:33

I remember just sort of looking at my feet and I just I had to kind of block out all the noise because my mind I don't think people really understand but my mind just kept trying to process what had happened just five minutes ago. You know, it's just too much for the brain to process. I couldn't process what had just transpired, that there was a racket going on not only in my kitchen but downstairs. I could hear a lot of voices, and it's just too much for one little brain to process. I couldn't. I was just like then I started thinking about my cats. Where are my cats? You know, if there's a door open, that means the cats are probably gone and I just I shut down, are probably gone and I just I shut down. I do remember somebody emerging then, because there was one guy who was screaming and he was not particularly pleasant to the eye.

Speaker 1: 18:38

pardon, you know that no we, I've worked with those kind of guys. They're like the good guy, bad guy type cops. You know, everybody has a role.

Speaker 2: 18:50

Well, that's what I was about to say. So the good guy emerged and he was sort of handsome, blonde-ish, and he hollered at everybody. He was just like back up, back up, you know. And then he was sort of sympathetic to me and my situation and wanted to know if I wanted a glass of water. And then he kind of squatted down so that he could make eye contact with me, kind of squatted down so that he could make eye contact with me. And I remember he said, look, we're your friends. And that was a strange thing to say to me because I'm I'm like you're my friends. And he said look, you know, you're in a situation. All we want is information, we need you to talk to us. And he just kept referring to us. As you know, your husband is the bad guy, we know your husband is the bad guy and we need information.

Speaker 2: 20:13

But by that time I had seen a picture of me and my parents and my brother and it was on the floor and the glass was broken, kind of like a Shattered Lives looking portrait at this stage, kind of like a shattered lives looking portrait at this stage, and I just thought this is the this is the irony of saying where your friends was just too much of a leap for me, especially when I could hear banging and my house was being destroyed and I felt like everybody feels like their home is their sanctuary. That's your one safe place where you can pull into your garage and go into your home and know that when you shut the door, that that's you know one place, that's your own personal space. And this was the opposite. So I kind of, after a while I sort of meet out, you know, kind of squeaked that I would. You know, can I call my attorney? By this stage I had, I had surmised that I might get a visit because my husband was in in legal jeopardy and a lot of things were going on and I had hired an attorney for him and the chemist had also been arrested, which was somebody I knew through him and so on. A very small retainer, I think, maybe two thousand $2,000. I had just hired an attorney that had come recommended in the event that somebody ever did come and talk to me, but they said no, you're not making any phone calls, because I don't know if they gave a reason then, but later it was, like you know, you could call one of your associates.

Speaker 2: 22:02

And so I remember a friend, a friend of mine, who I was thinking about making a partner in primetime promotions, had pulled in behind me and she had been interrogated outside, unbeknownst to me, and she, she stuck her head in the hole where the front door used to be, and God bless her that she did that. She could have just like hightailed it out of there. But she said I'm leaving and she said is there anything I can do? And we didn't have the kind of we had. There were cell phones back then, but not like today. And there was no, was no internet, believe it or not, for all the young people who may watch this. So it wasn't like she could look up his name. But I rattled off his name and I said you know, could you please call information and call my attorney?

Speaker 2: 22:59

And so I just continued to just sort of block everything out and my attorney did come and I didn't know it, but the prosecutor was there, the number one, there was a number one and a number two chair prosecutor at my ultimately at my trial later and he singled himself out and had a conversation with my attorney and they said I could leave. Well, they had Mirandized me and I thought I was under arrest, but later when I left with my attorney, come to find out. My attorney said they're really not that interested in you, they're interested in your husband. But he did explain that I was, you know, in legal jeopardy. So not to dwell on this so much, because we probably want to move on into the what ultimately happened to me, which was after two years of following me, I think there were two more raids.

Speaker 2: 24:03

There were several raids in the Dallas area, which is where my husband was from. They eventually indicted me and I was arrested in Los Angeles and they said that they had found a white powdery substance in my house that they thought might be a controlled substance, which was not the case. Everybody has a white powdery substance in their house. They have flour, baby powder, all those things, and I had no illegal substance in my home. That was a white powdery substance, but that made the judge not allow me to have bail and I was what do they call it? Diesel therapy or Conair. I was put on Conair later and shipped to Waco, texas, where I sat there for one year and I did get a 24 year sentence because I took my case to trial. So, oh, I went to prison in Dublin and spent nine years, three months.

Speaker 1: 25:10

Dublin. Tell them where Dublin is, because to most people it's a pub over in across the pond. You know things like that, so you can explain. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 25:20

Well, thank you.

Speaker 2: 25:22

Yeah, it's called FCI Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin in Dublin, and Dublin is outside the San Francisco area, in the tri-state valley kind of, you know, a little bit south of Oakland, and so that institution right now is in a world of hurt because there's some scandals going on there and there were scandals going on when I was there. There's a lot of sexual predators and there was just recently a situation where FBI Dublin went into receivership due to the warden and many people being walked off and later arrested for sexual misconduct with the prisoners. So that's where I served nine years and three months and Glamour magazine had an interest in my story in the late 90s and this was back when nobody was really sympathetic to anybody who was in prison for drugs. We were the scourge of the nation thanks to, I tend to think, president Bush handled the drug war during his vice presidency under Reagan.

Speaker 2: 26:48

History Channel did a really good three-part series on that and then later, when he ran for office, everybody remembers that he held up to crack cocaine and wanted stiffer punishments for anyone even associated with a drug case. But thanks to Glamour Magazine, two senators in Arkansas one of whom was from my little bitty community of Charleston, arkansas, that I mentioned earlier. Senator Dale Bumpers and Senator Pryor were shocked when they read the article, because I told the journalist, david France, if you're going to do an article on me, I want it to be about the conspiracy law, because everybody was blaming mandatory minimums and I didn't get a mandatory minimum, I just got mandatory sentence.

Speaker 1: 27:34

What was your sentence Amy? How much? What was your sentence? The original?

Speaker 2: 27:39

24 years.

Speaker 1: 27:41

And what did your husband receive?

Speaker 2: 27:44

Well, the press always gets this wrong because they think he served four years on the same case. He did not. When he was arrested in Germany it was because he had said this was this all happened after I left him. He was setting up distribution in Europe and not one MDMA tablet ever came to the US and he was just getting it rolling. Mdma tablet ever came to the US and he was just getting it rolling. So I to this day I really don't know whether any ecstasy was sold over there, but there was a pharmaceutical.

Speaker 2: 28:20

He always used pharmaceutical companies, so it's pharmaceutical grade, and that one was called called M Hausen, and M Hausen was the pharmaceutical plant that in Europe. The other, unifarm, was the pharmaceutical plant that he used in Guatemala, which is where all the ecstasy came from that came into the United States. So these were two totally separate cases and the US had no jurisdiction over. In the European case that he did four years, for Germany actually doesn't have the conspiracy statute and they did a fairly honest investigation. If you read their summary, it reads that he was walking in the gray and M Hausen agreed to do it. They knew what they were doing and so he served four years. Then he came back to the US. He cooperated fully and snitched on everyone, including me, and he got three years probation. So, to answer your question, I got 24 and a half years based on all the MDMA that he manufactured in Unifarm that came to the US and he got three years probation because if you cooperate you get the benefit.

Speaker 1: 29:36

Yeah, as we say in the business, the first dog that eats at the bowl gets fed the best, and that was a speech that I used with with defendants, telling him that it's quite a discrepancy. It's quite a discrepancy how we got connected, which we'll go into. The second half of this is Evelyn Bazone. Papa received double life sentences and 240 years for money laundering, which I was the co-case agent on, and her husband remained a fugitive until he was assassinated down in Barranquilla, columbia, in 2006. So, you know, it seems like that the discretion, the direction of the court is so widespread. I mean, from what you said, you've come honest, forward what you did. So when you go into it, tell everybody, after the senators got interested, what the happy ending in your case was and bring it up to 2023, please.

Speaker 2: 30:46

Right, right. Well, just a little footnote before I do. That is, I said when I was waiting for them to indict me through an attorney and also later in Waco I got a court appointed attorney, because by this time they had seized every all funds I said that, look, I don't have a problem admitting to what I did, which was collecting money. I said that, look, I don't have a problem admitting to what I did, which was collecting money. But the answer, the message came back that that wasn't enough. They wanted to know where all the MDMA was, where there was more funds, and they wanted me to testify against other people. Initially, my attorney told me that they wanted me to cooperate and the definition was you don't get to write the rules of your cooperation Once you start cooperating. If they want you to wear a wire, if they want you to infiltrate his organization, you'll you know you have to do what they request. Because he, being in Germany, couldn't do his own dirty work, he couldn't go around and set up people.

Speaker 2: 31:50

But after the Glamour Magazine article, I got 16 politicians who wrote supporting my clemency, because this was sort of the first story that explained what was happening to girlfriends and wives and people who were kind of the low hanging fruit, and even Nancy Pelosi wrote saying this was not our intention. We didn't pass these laws so that the kingpin could go free and that the women or mules or people who are in that category could end up serving time for everything that the kingpin did, or ringleader or whatever. So you know, the senators went to Roger Adams, who was the pardon attorney at that time. A lot of people think that, oh, you know, you had, you had favor with politicians and you know it was easy. This was not easy because nobody's going to ask the president of the United States for a favor, especially back then. And my senator was like I voted for these laws and until the Glamour magazine article came out, he knew my mother, so he told my mother I can't get involved in this because I'm I. I voted for the mandatory minimums and until Glamour explained that the ringleader was free, he'd even come to the US and married an attorney and we were still married. We had not even divorced yet. So he's a bit of a scoundrel.

Speaker 2: 33:24

So they took my case to Roger Adams, who was the pardon attorney at the time, and when they left there they knew that it was. They had not made a very good impression. He didn't seem, he didn't seem interested and he didn't engage. It just seemed like he was sort of like, just because they were senators, kind of giving them the courtesy of talking about my case. So then it got to the point where they were like, well, we're going to take this directly to President Clinton and he was in Little Rock for a special event and they had dinner with him and they pulled a package on me including the Glamour magazine article and asked him if he'd please look into it, including the Glamour magazine article, and asked him if he'd please look into it. Just to collapse the story.

Speaker 2: 34:14

We kept waiting and waiting and a lot of letters went in again from politicians who were supporting my clemency and it ultimately took 60 minutes. They became interested in my story and Senator Pryor was getting a little frustrated Rest in peace. He recently passed and he told Bob Anderson of 60 Minutes, who said they weren't filming at the time, they were on break. But they said how can we help? And they said, well, call the White House and ask why she's still sitting in prison. And he did and I think, um, about two weeks later, uh, I got called over the loudspeaker and I thought it was in trouble Cause anytime your name is on loudspeaker.

Speaker 1: 35:02

Yes, of course. Report to R and D. Yeah, Everybody's like okay.

Speaker 2: 35:08

Well, or the lieutenant or your caseworker.

Speaker 1: 35:10

SIS lieutenant yes.

Speaker 2: 35:13

Yeah, it's either a loved one is dead, in which case the chapel normally calls you, and in this situation I thought, you know, maybe they found a little contraband in my locker or something. And so I was very nervous and went to the unit and she was in a state of stress, but she didn't say what had happened. She just kept barking orders at me. She wanted to know where I was going to live and I was just like I'm parents, I guess I don't have a place to live, why? And she just said I've got to focus here, sit down. She said you know, I've got a lot to do. And then she's kind of hollering at me and I was just like, well, what is this about? I kept asking her why, what's going on? And then she kind of turned to me and squared me eye to eye she was actually a pretty nice woman and she said you're going home. And so I was like I always.

Speaker 2: 36:14

I was in shock, I was just like what? And she said President Clinton has commuted your sentence and I have to have you out of here by five o'clock. That's back when it had to all be done the same day. And I remember jumping, popping up out of the seat like a jack-in-the-box and all I wanted to do was call somebody. I wanted to call my parents, I wanted to call a friend, especially somebody who could come pick me up, and she said no. She said I have to do this paperwork and get you out of here before 5 o'clock and so I couldn't concentrate. I just kept answering her questions. She had to set up contact, probation, get me set up. And I just kept saying, can I please make a call? And I would sit back down and then I'd pop back up because I was so excited. You know you can't contain yourself. And she finally let me make a phone call. And so when I got home, you very quickly realized that you're never free. You just want to go free. That's your goal.

Speaker 2: 37:19

And I was in the law library constantly. Everybody made fun of me. They thought I was crazy. They never dreamed anybody would get clemency, because no one had even heard of it back then. Clemency because no one had even heard of it back then. And so when you get, when you get out, you're carrying all this heaviness in your heart, because my roommate was still in there, my best friends were still in there. That becomes your family because, believe you me, when you go to prison, most of your friends kind of just just peter out or really disappear and you're kind of left with your family. I had a few friends who came and visited me and were hardcore supporters, but the people that you serve time with are the people who become your families, especially in the law library.

Speaker 1: 38:07

So I decided to start the can do foundation let me ask you a couple questions that I think are relevant. Um, when Evelyn got out, first thing she wanted was a shamrock shake and I remember, like Evelyn, it's it's April. They may not have any. So I went into McDonald's and there was one packet in the back and I said how do you know about shamrock shakes? And she said, toby, when you watch television for 30 years and you see a shamrock shake, you never tasted it. You want that. So my question is you is, when you got released, what's, what's the first mealcooked meal you had back home in Arkansas and what year was this? 96, right Late 90s, no 2000. It was 2000.

Speaker 2: 38:59

I'll never forget July 7, 2000.

Speaker 1: 39:02

Okay 7-7-0-0.

Speaker 2: 39:05

Okay, what was funny was a few things is when you're on a patch of land for nine years, you're just like a cow or something. You're just walking around. So a lot of people get carsick when they get out. But what was interesting for me is that nobody had told me that the when I went to prison the speed limit was 55. Remember that arrow? When they choked down the limit.

Speaker 1: 39:37

Save on gas. Yeah, we're doing that now yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 39:44

So now it's 70, but I didn't. I didn't notice any, any speed limit signs. I just remembered, like holding on and just thinking we're going so fast, we're going so fast. And after a while I said, can we just stop? And I just wanted to get a snack or something or have an opportunity, like at a quick pick, to pick out something. And so my friend was like my god, I'm so sorry, I should have thought of that. Nobody thinks like we think. And so we went in and it was. It was so overwhelming, you don't, your eye can't focus because there's so many choices. And I saw the little freezer thing there full of Dove bars and ice cream, and so I was like, oh, I want a Dove bar. Maybe you know that was my choice to get a Dove bar.

Speaker 2: 40:39

But I really missed of all things in prison, I missed Thai food, and we would sit around and we would all ask one another when you get home, what do you miss most? What do you want to have? First, to kind of answer your question, and I remember we'd go around in a circle and somebody wanted a chocolate cake or chocolate lava cake, and when it would come to me I'd be like I want a margarita, I just wanted a margarita, I just wanted a margarita. So I had some friends got together and we went to a Thai restaurant. But after I got home and I was with my parents and they actually picked me up at the airport, we went and had Chinese food. I love, I love ethnic food a lot. I just love ethnic food. But the first home-cooked meal is I wanted a pot roast, I wanted a really good pot roast. So that's multiple answers to your question.

Speaker 1: 41:39

And did you manage to fit a Jose Cuervo in between there?

Speaker 2: 41:43

Yes.

Speaker 1: 41:44

Okay, yeah, okay, I'm sure.

Speaker 2: 41:49

And, to this day, margaritas are my favorite drink.

Speaker 1: 41:53

That brought that out in California. I'm sure you know you get a taste for that out there. We'll talk about the prison and the abuse. I think that's important, but people don't realize that you've produced movies, you're a mentor to other federal inmates and have led the charge with this case. And I'm very grateful because when I found out about Evelyn Bazan-Papa that you know I always check the prisoners because I did put people in jail with the US Attorney's Office and they got released, they either lot deported back to Colombia, venezuela, and I needed to check and I saw that she was there and I know you know this story but a lot of people don't.

Speaker 1: 42:45

On the right side of the screen I hit a mouse click. It was your foundation, the can do foundation, with her daughter's, martha's plea, and it was a very organized video and I read it and I'm like and we had a, let's say, an adversarial relationship and it was very adversarial in Spanish, back and forth with us. So I looked and I says guards are writing letters, prison officials and all this so when? But I'm saying it was your foundation that brought my attention, that led that. That's. Everybody knows the story and in the book that pete throne wrote. I gave you full credit for that because that was what triggered the release. But why don't? Why don't you talk about and I'm more interested in what you've done since you went back and you got your clemency and how it led up to a wonderful event that happened to you under a different president and a different political party. So go ahead go ahead.

Speaker 2: 43:57

Well, I was pretty much, uh, kind of a lone wolf, if you for lack of a better term, I just worked out of my house. I really was not plugged into back then. I really frankly, there really wasn't a criminal justice reform advocacy arena like the magnitude that we have now, and all I knew when I started the Can Do Foundation is that I really needed to help bring some of my friends home. So at first, I only focused on women and, um, you know all the women that I assisted uh, out of Dublin, our home, not necessarily because of me, some of them just did their time, but there were several Josephine Ledesma, who was serving life, and Obama kicked off Clemency Project 2014 in his second term, and I was the only organization in the nation where my mission statement was clemency for all nonviolent drug offenders. That's what can do stands for. And so this wonderful woman, nikichi Taifa, in Washington DC. She had inroads with the Obama administration. She's amazing and, um, she and she had the Justice Roundtable and she also was president of another organization and she's the one who floated the idea to the Obama administration to do a clemency summit, and he had already kicked off Clemency Project 2014. So I had already.

Speaker 2: 45:28

I used to do vigils in front of the White House, including the Bush administration which came into. Bush Jr came in after um, after I was released, after Clinton and I. I would just one person standing out there and I would stack the little posters up against the the uh fence and take, get back and take pictures so I could send it into. Danielle Metz, who has a movie out right now. She was serving triple life with me in prison and uh, jos, she was serving triple life with me in prison and Josie was serving life and I just wanted them to know that somebody was trying out here.

Speaker 2: 46:04

And then, when Obama kicked off his clemency project, there was a guy who worked for USA Today and he reached out to me and he said I want you to create the top 25 women. I know you focus on women and so I started trying to find all the lifers because I wanted to prioritize women who were serving life and put them at the top of the top 25. What's strange is I was communicating with a lot of people in a lot of different prisons and Evelyn's name was not floated to me even by people. That later I was very surprised because I was in communication with them and they knew of Evelyn, but somehow she fell through the cracks and so it was kind of late in the game.

Speaker 2: 46:53

Nearly all the lifers on my top 25 came home. Alice Marie Johnson was number one on my top 25 came home. Alice Marie Johnson was number one on the top 25. She didn't come home until Trump and Michelle West is still in there who's serving live but Evelyn? When I heard about her and everybody loved her and you know Demarius and some other people who were like her best friends, somehow I got in touch with them after this, I think that's one woman's name was Billy, who asked me why don't I have Evelyn on there? And I was like Evelyn who? And so I was just shocked that she had served as long as she had and that the sentence was as severe as it was. And then, thanks to you and thank you, tobias, you're a huge hero.

Speaker 1: 47:43

I'm not the hero. That was a team effort. It always is. It always is. Amy, the prosecutor, got on board.

Speaker 2: 47:51

Oh well, I say that too. Even when people sometimes credit can do, I'm like it takes a village and it also starts with the person serving time, because those people aren't going to come home if they were troublemakers in prison. So I give first credit to the person who served that time and did it properly and um was very invested in their rehab and. But what was kind of a deterrent that was not in Evelyn's favor was that the Obama administration did not grant a single clemency to anybody who was not an American citizen. And we started becoming very concerned about that because on the denial list oh my God, you just go down the list and it would be Martinez Rodriguez, you know all these Hispanic names were who were not American citizens, weren't? And we inquired. It was like, are they not going to grant any to anybody who's going to be deported? And we never could get a clear answer.

Speaker 2: 49:01

So you came flying in out of stage, left and if it weren't for Paul Peltier who was her prosecutor, that was huge because that's rare who supported her clemency or compassionate release. But if she hadn't come home the way she did, which was through your efforts of getting a detective involved, and I know there were other organizations that were suddenly kind of hyper focused when they found out the prosecutor was willing to write a letter. I think the, the, the think the biggest you know contribution was you finding a detective who, as you know and I don't want to tell parts of her story that are, you know, I had nothing to do with that, so I take no credit, please, no.

Speaker 1: 49:57

Well, you're getting that detector the only cool, the only cool part that we I really I was amazed with is she was released to me and I we didn't go through ice detain we had. We had the detainer lifted. But I picked her up and liz mendoza, her husband, and and that, and we went from there to the Colombian consulate and got her visa for 30 days and sent her home. And you know, and I was, when I went to the airport, customs and border protections like where's the escort team? I go, it's me. And they kind of looked at me like I said yeah, here's the deportation order and uh and that.

Speaker 1: 50:42

And they read the JNC and they're like, are you kidding me? I said yeah, so I I give a lot of credit to the judge because she was bound by what the sentencing guidelines were and we had told her what they were, but she didn't cooperate and she had an attorney who now is resting way down with a bunch of fire, who was representing the cartel, not representing the client, and that was something that we found out years, or I found out years later in this process. So but let's talk about you. Let's talk about you. So take us up to what happened to you in 2021 as you move forward with your foundations and everything that you started and progress to what it is now, with a movement.

Speaker 2: 51:42

Gosh. Well, good Lord. I went to the Obama White House three times. I went to the Trump White House four times and, believe me, the first time that some of us crossed that line, the community what I call the criminal justice reform community just went on attack. It was all over Facebook and we were just vilified for crossing that line.

Speaker 2: 52:12

I'm prisoners over politics and I I don't care who's in the Oval Office. I may care from you know a perspective of policy and who's best suited to govern our country, but as far as I was concerned, the Trump administration was trying, through Jared Kushner, to get first step back past. I threw all my weight into that and I went over and, like you said, I talked to Jared. In fact I talked to him about Alice's case, but I was all in with the first step back and more people came home with under first step back, Especially the reduction of sentences for crack cocaine by all the layovers that were still in there, because we did change it from 100 to 1 ratio. A lot of listeners may not understand what we're talking about, but the African community was severely punished 100 times more for crack cocaine than powder cocaine, and so, even though that law had been tweaked several times. There's still some, and even now there's people in for crack cocaine who never got any relief, but under the Trump administration they were walking out in droves, mostly African American. And then we had the compassionate release, where people are still coming home on compassionate release and Evelyn, you know, benefited from, and then elderly release. Just a whole lot of people have benefited from the First Step Act and I got a full pardon.

Speaker 2: 53:56

Pardon because I was so participatory and worked very hard. I even got my own congressman, Ted Lieu, to change his mind because I was there when they voted on whether the House would pass it so that it could go on to the Senate, and he was a no, and I was in the for lack of a better word the voting room chamber, whatever you want to call it, and I walked up to him. He happened to walk in early, thank God, because a lot of people walked in at the last second, voted and left, and I asked him what he was going to vote and he said well, I got a. I got a letter from a lot of organizations saying to not vote yes, and I said, well, that's a big mistake, and I'm your constituent and I was at his inauguration at UCLA and I explained. He said well, help me understand what what's? I don't think most of them read the bills. So I explained how the compassionate release is normally up to the warden, and the wardens always deny compassionate releases, they never grant any and that this would give people the right, after a warden deny a compassionate release, to take it to their judge. And I also talked about women being shackled during labor and that it was going to help on the crack cocaine. And he, he, I convinced him and so he voted yes. As we know, it passed.

Speaker 2: 55:28

And then we had a big job and I went to Kamala Harris's Kamala, excuse me, Harris's office when she was senator, spoke with her staff.

Speaker 2: 55:33

Harris's office when she was Senator, spoke with her staff. But I was up on Capitol Hill walking the halls, speaking also to Tom Cotton, a Senator here in Arkansas who to this day is one of the biggest critics of the First Step Act because he's kind of very narrow minded, but anyway. So I got a full pardon through Trump because he did things in an unorthodox way. He was convinced by a lot of us who told him that the office of the pardon attorney is sort of controlled by Department of Justice. So the office of the pardon attorney has to send all petitions to the Department of Justice and then your prosecutor has the loudest voice as to which cases travel over to the White House. So he, then your prosecutor, has the loudest voice as to which cases travel over to the White House, so he was willing to work with some of us.

Speaker 2: 56:23

It wasn't a perfect system. In fact I wish he had just brought OPA and made it separate from DOJ. The Office of the Partner Attorney can give their recommendations, the Department of Justice can give their recommendations and then I think the White House counsel can take those two considerations and come to a conclusion that a president you know president may want to give clemency to certain types of cases, just like Obama focused on crack cocaine, and they have that prerogative. And Trump wanted to grant many more than what were actually granted, but because I helped get first step act passed, he decided to grant some full pardon for people who helped with that.

Speaker 1: 57:10

Yeah, no, that's wonderful and you know I was and I congratulate you on on that and well deserved. You did 16 years in federal prison and when we get, when I when we get, I'm sorry when we get back on another topic. I'd like to talk another day about the Dublin prison situation. Amy, you brought guests for my show upcoming. I don't want to. I want people to listen in, so the names will be out. They have to do with drug smugglers during Carlos Slater's day, the cocaine cowboy days in Miami women, a lady that was a gang member in Mexico, and so I think it's great and the whole point of this is to show all perspectives of the criminal justice system. So again, thank you so much, thank you so much and I hope to see you soon. And, you know, enjoy the beautiful view of the lake and Jeff hasn't said much.

Speaker 1: 58:28

Jeff really is very knowledgeable on this and I'm sure he'll have a lot of questions next time we're going to talk, but we're going to talk about the women in prison and and the abuse now. Dublin was closed.

Speaker 2: 58:42

right, it was closed by bop yeah, they wanted to ship the women out of there and I'm communicating with several of them. Many of them are in wasika, some are in hazleton and they are literally being there, is retaliation going on and anyone who was part of that class action lawsuit is really there. It's heartbreaking what's going on. And, yeah, they were all shipped out Last moment's notice. They were promised that they would be able to move closer to where their relatives were, but that they just had to get them wherever and not to worry. Well, guess what? Now that they're the ones in Wasika are saying that Wasika is saying you have to stay here for 18 months, which is a policy that when you arrive at a prison, you can't transfer for 18 months, and they're very far from home arrive at a prison you can't transfer for 18 months and they're very far from home, okay again, thank you very much.

Speaker 2: 59:48

Um, like I said, real pleasure to see you take care well, thank you, and thank you for the work you do. I really appreciate. Thank you for having me on.

Speaker 1: 59:51

Jeff and Tabar. Thank you, bye-bye, thank you.