RM113: Looking Back 40 Years To See The Future
Andy 0:00
registry matters is an independent production. The opinions and ideas here are that of the hosts and do not reflect the opinions of any other organization. If you have a problem with these thoughts fyp recording live from fyp Studios, east and west, transmitted across the internet. This is Episode 113 of registering matters. Larry, Saturday night here we are again and look at my clock says 7:01pm. What time does your clock say? It says five all three. Three, we have super duper awesome special guest Welcome back. Ashley. How are you this evening?
Ashley 0:34
I’m doing wonderful. How are you guys doing?
Andy: Awesome. Awesome. Thank you for coming back. Thanks for having me again. It’s an exciting week. How did Larry entice you to come back?
Ashley: I begged him to come back. Right Larry.
Larry 0:46
Wow. I would recollect it differently.
Andy 0:53
So what do we have going on tonight we have some big decisions. We have bunch of news articles. We have a remembrance of To highlight what also happened like in some southern states, where do you want to start? Larry?
Larry 1:06
Well, it’s a tough agenda. I think I think we could touch on the decision our out of Illinois, which is we have such sketchy information and solely to say that we we have a decision that we weren’t excited about, recorded the wayside cross ministry. That was an injunction sought after and apparently to the judge, the state court judge and Illinois denied the request for injunctive relief. So those men are going to have to going to have to leave the the shelter there that’s been there I think. Talk to our communications director today and I think she said that that thing has been in existence for like 100 years. And they’re there particular programs that that does matter and has been existence for like 50 years. And
Andy 1:54
at this is on the cover this topic. I don’t remember which episode how far back it was just a handful of weeks. So a park Park was set up semi nearby, and then they said they had 30 days to get out. I think that’s what,
Larry 2:07
that’s what I remember. But it’s so sketchy. The link doesn’t take us to a decision. I texted one of the attorneys and asked if she could send it and I haven’t gotten it back yet. So it’s certainly not an in depth dive, deep dive. But what we can always say with injunctive relief is it’s very difficult to obtain injunctive relief because this is even stumps our communications director, if you have the status quo, and you’re seeking to preserve the status quo, you have to show that irreparable harm will result and that you’re likely to prevail on the merits when the case goes to trial because the court is ruling in advance of the case being tested for sufficiency. So therefore, the expectations of what you show are very hot and since the case hasn’t been tried the the defenses that will be asserted at trial are presumed valid, and that really discombobulated. So everybody, you know, it’s like, well, whatever they’re saying now is presumed true is kind of like the standard in summary judgment. When people say, Well, this decision in the Supreme Court Smith versus doe. Clearly, the recidivism was not astronomically high and frightening. But those were facts that were determined in summary judgment, because the assertions that were made in the motion for summary judgment, the non moving party that didn’t want the summary judgment, is entitled to have everything that that party would have put forth as a defense, presumed true. Well, assembler standard existed injunctive relief, we haven’t had a chance to put on our full case. So therefore, we tell the court what we would allege is our defense if the case were being tried right now, and the court presumes that untested defense That’s true.
Andy 4:00
Wow, what status these these are people that are on supervision? Or is there a combination of both? I’m wondering about the, you know, the public interest, the public safety interest, where these men being afforded any due process as far as assuming that they’re dangerous to child safety?
Larry 4:19
I’m not sure it’s clear what the status of the 18 are, whether anybody wants to revision or not. I don’t believe it will make a dramatic difference in the analysis because they they don’t think delineates between supervised and unsupervised, it’s, it’s that anybody on the registry can’t be there. So I don’t think I don’t think that would be material to the termination.
Andy 4:40
Okay. I mean, you it, it seems reasonable to I could see arguing both sides that you could, the person did the crime, that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily going to do another crime. But I could see that getting argued both ways. You’ve obviously shown that you are capable of doing the crime. Therefore you’re you have a higher propensity to commit a crime similar I could see it going both ways.
Larry 5:00
But But that wasn’t the basis of the statute. The statute doesn’t say that you’re forbidden to live within 500 feet. If you have a propensity to commit a crime, it says you’re not permitted. You’re you’re not permitted, you’re forbidden to live there period. Right? So the courts not analyzing whether or not your where do you have a propensity to commit a crime? That’s not what is analyzed, and of course, analyzing whether or not you can have a statute that’s constitutional. The list is old enough where a person can live, whether or not that sound public policy is not for the court to decide.
Andy 5:29
Right? And but there are there are other places where they have ruled those kinds of restrictions unconstitutional.
Larry 5:35
There has been but this this judge at this legacy, this is this is a local judge. This was not a federal judge. And this is also confusing, because apparently they filed a federal lawsuit. But the Federal Court has required them to go through this exercise with the state court to see where they get before they move to the next level federal. So this is a big great thing to have Adele and mark and to talk about on a future episode, which I’m working on right now. But There’s so much we don’t know about this but in a junction is very difficult to get. That’s why when one is achieved we just celebrate so much because it’s it’s a it’s an almost insurmountable task to get injunctive really, which is what we achieved in the Georgia thing with the Halloween signs.
Andy 6:19
Well, alright then so and that that came from the the Daily Herald is where that first article came from. And since we have our super duper awesome former prosecutor Ashley on we do have an article where we’re talking about prosecutorial misconduct. Here we have from LA calm and the New York law journal that I know we talked about this three ish months ago where we brought it up that it was going to be an independent panel brought up to go through an audit the the prosecutors across New York and obviously there was pushback from the prosecutors and the judge struck it down. I’m still baffled. If you guys not you. I’m not saying you if those guys and gals are so they’re like, We want justice. Why wouldn’t they want To be to some degree, they would want to have their own selves be impartial evaluated for their integrity and all that. I’m just baffled by that concept.
Ashley 7:09
So I think what we’re running into is the same issue that raised whenever we do a law enforcement Oversight Committee on like law enforcement shootings and things like that. Because the fear is by prosecutors is the people on those types of conditions do not understand all the facts in a decision on whether to prosecute something, not prosecute something. It isn’t just prosecutorial misconduct. What they’re also worried about is that the watchdog group might say, Oh, you didn’t prosecute enough of these but then you prosecuted too many of these when there could be a million factors. So I think that plays a lot into it whenever you’re talking about a watchdog type of commission.
Andy 7:52
So are you saying just, you know, car theft versus just whatever you’re just talking about the whole batch so a prosecutor could have, you know, a wild hair that he just wants to prosecute burglaries and doesn’t care about carjacking. Are you thinking something like that too?
Ashley 8:09
Well, a little bit. It’s I mean, in certain communities because of public outcry, there’s going to be certain focuses on crime. We know this. We know the hysteria that inflames types of prosecutions. So they may focus on that because the public demands it, and then not give as much weight to top liftings and things like that. And then if, if they get questioned on that, then they’re gonna have to backtrack and say, Well, it’s because the public demands and then they’re going to be told, well, no, you’re supposed to do your job regardless, and it’s just going to turn into a big old thing. I think that feeds some of the fear. The other fear is lawyers, by nature don’t want to be watched. I mean, that’s, I think there’s some of that going on, too.
Unknown Speaker 8:53
I see, Larry, what do you have,
Larry 8:55
it’s hard for me to have much more to add on onto that. I do believe that they that they do have some legitimate fears depending on how the watchdog what they’re actually watching for. prosecutorial decisions are tough to make in terms of evidence and whether you have a strong case or not. A sensational case doesn’t necessarily translate to a strong case, nor does any egregious case necessarily translate to a strong case from a prosecutors point of view. Which means I would I would understand their their concern about if if if we’re going to go back and second guess their actual decisions on what to prosecute what not to prosecute. But when they’ve made a decision of what to prosecute, when there’s questions about whether they withheld evidence, whether they violated Brady, whether they whether they whether there were there’s unethical conduct, if we can narrow down the scope of the of the oversight. I think that that fear should be be, it would be misplaced. It seems like to me if you’re an ethical prosecutor, and Alex hunter and Peter Hoffman Both are very much both were you would want to not have an ethical people amongst us the same thing I say about police officers, if 99.8 75% of you are good and solid and moral. Why would you want that small fraction around in the club? You would want them out? I would think.
Ashley 10:20
And I totally agree with that. But I think that there are other ways to do it shorter the commission, and I’m with you, we don’t know exactly what the structure would be on the commission, if it’s actually questioning the decisions they make or providing some guidance and in the decisions they should be making or how they actually prosecute crimes. We don’t know we don’t know enough about it. But there’s, you can file a complaint with a bar, you can allege malicious prosecution, there’s ethical considerations, and the judicial badge actually goes after unethical prosecutors in some of the jurisdictions as well. So I think there are alternative methods to doing it this way. And I would kind of need to know more about what their struggle Your intent was,
Andy 11:01
I have an idea. So to make the analogy, why don’t we have registrants monitor registrants to make sure that they’re being compliant with the rules?
Unknown Speaker 11:10
Come again. If we had the registrants
Andy 11:12
monitoring the registrants, then I’m pretty sure that we would allow each other to curry favor with each other, like, Hey, you can go to this website. Hey, that’s fine. Hey, I get to go to my
Larry 11:22
website. He’s making a point that that that the attorneys monitor themselves may not be the most effective way to do that because self monitoring but but you know, I tell people I can’t speak for other states but what I there’s one state I can’t speak for. And that’s our chief disciplinary council Mr. sleaze here in this state. I can tell you this, I haven’t met a very more honorable man than in terms of holding lawyers feet to the fire. If you get crossways with Mr. sleaze about something that’s unethical. Your your you’re likely to pay with a significant sanction or you’re possibly a loser. your license. So So here, they take misconduct very seriously both in terms of handling client funds. And in terms of how a lawyer ethically represents their clients or what they violate the rules of professional conduct. You can get anything from a letter of caution, to a formal reprimand to a suspension to an outright disbar, but I don’t think actually, you could say you’ve seen them all, including a recent friend of yours.
Ashley 12:24
Yes, I have. I’ve seen it all the way across the board. So they do and, and the good thing about I don’t know how other states handle it, but here in New Mexico, you can give the ethics office a call and say, hey, look, I have this issue. Can you advise me and I’ll advise you, they won’t, oh, that’s unethical. They won’t act that way. They’ll be like, Well, here’s how you should handle it. And I’ll do that all day long. Everybody over there will. So I think that we have a really good system in place here. But like Murray said, we can’t speak for other states.
Larry 12:57
Well, but the point he’s making is that it said it’s The prosecutors are market themselves entity in a complaint, it’s going to the to the judges or to the lawyers and but but that we have a lot of professionals that self that self monitor, you know we do we do that in medicine. We do that in in a number of professions where the where there’s where those boards of discipline that takes it. The theory I think, Andy is that the that the the expertise required to know whether something’s crossed the line and the rules of professional conduct. Some are very simple, some are pretty complicated. In terms of what you can do I find myself setting up. We just sent some letters to prison in Mexico and I kind of jumped the gun without consulting with ash and I said, Ashley, I hope I haven’t broken the rules, the rules of Professional Conduct here in terms of because this was kind of a lorry solicitation, and we stamped it as attorney client confidential. There’s a rule that right you can’t you can’t do that. You can’t do that. But we were, we were we were we were we were five
Andy 13:57
I would also make the comparison to like the scientific community. They put forth their paper and then they let their peers go beat on it to prove whether it’s valid or not. Not this doesn’t necessarily work the exact same way. And I know we can move on but I’m just It seems that maybe you would have an other state who has a similar process evaluate you know, state a versus state be just to have some level of oversight because the the fox watching the henhouse this does seem to be a bad idea. Like always. I can understand that. What do you guys want to cover this? this tragedy out of New Mexico that is literally 40 years old tonight. Wait, do Andy so this is a I think you you’ve reported Larry, you said that this was the worst death of riot in US prison history.
Larry 14:46
I think something along those lines. It remains to be the database prison right and US history to this very day. It eclipse the I think Attica held the record and I believe Attica with 71. That’s a New York princess. And this eclipse data and it’s To this day I don’t think anything comes close to Mississippi, Alabama. They’re there they’re competing to see if they can match it but but right now I think this is the devil it still remains the Dallas right and US history.
Andy 15:15
And that was 33 people sorry
Larry 15:18
33 inmates on this very weekend 1980. The the the one and only penitentiary of New Mexico went into a full fledged riot. Two o’clock in the morning. 132 o’clock in the morning, the the inmates took control was relatively easy. I mean, it’s a long story long read in the Albuquerque journal, the leaks that we’ve put on there, but it was it was relatively easy. There was a skeleton crew on duty to prison, very young guard that was in a key position that had left a door gate, a grill open and they overpowered him quickly and they took control of the various sections of the prison. Then one housing unit was down for major renovation for the where the maximum security would have been in the head to put those people in into the lower security facilities because we only had one penitentiary in those days. And and so there was a lot of work with torches saws, all sorts of tools that were in the prison. And they were able to take control of that stuff. But we ended up with 33.
Andy 16:19
And I know we’re going to tie it together to the recent Mississippi situations is do you think that there’s a parallel between the conditions then versus the conditions in Mississippi that brought up the situation a couple weeks back? There’s absolutely
Larry 16:33
a parallel and it says so disingenuous for the governor of Mississippi to blame the situation on cell phones.
Andy 16:40
I have a clip of that when we when we get to it, it kind of cracks me up.
Larry 16:44
The situation in Mississippi is very comparable lack of funding, lack of professional staff, lack of programming, degraded facilities, outdated facilities, and the same thing that that that he he minimizes it tries to paint the cast a problem on gangs and present Yes, there are gangs in prisons and Mississippi presence in every every prison system, there’s gang activity. But the cell phones are largely a reaction to the exploitation of the overcharging for phone calls. And if you can end up paying 1012 $15 for 30 minute 1530 minutes done alongside but 10 for a 10 to 15 minute phone call. And the cell phones are cheaper because the lowly paid guards will smuggle in the cell phones so that they can bypass this exorbitant extortion that’s taking place by the state of Mississippi. Now here at our state we have we have the intrastate calls, our public regulation Commission has limited the cost of those so they’re relatively cheap. They’re only a couple of dollars each, which adds up over over a period of a month but our our our commission regulators have been tough on that, but you can’t regulate the cost of out of state calls because that’s those are federal, and those were those Some controls put it by the FCC under previous president obama, which have been challenged in the court and the Trump administration has scrapped those, those limits so now, if it’s an interstate call us whatever the market will bear, but I wanted to read the names of the Dan.
Ashley 18:15
Michael brioni 22 Lauren secret cardones 24 Nick Kocha 30 Richard JP arrow 26 jamesy, fully 19 Donald J Dawson’s 23 Philip C. Hernandez 30. Valentino eat out a meal. 35 Kelly Johnson 26 Steven Lou Sarah 25. Joe Madrid 38. Ramon, Madrid 40 Archie m Martinez. 25 Joseph a middle ball 24 then g No 20 Gilbert. Oh, what No. 25 Thomas O’Meara 25 Filiberto m Ortega 25 Frank J. Ortega 20 Paulina Paul 36 James Perrin 34 Robert F. Quintanilla. 29 Robert L. Rivera 28 Vincent E. Romero 34 perman D. Russell 26 one m Sanchez 22 Frankie Jason deal 31 Larry W. Smith 31 Leo j Tenorio. 25 thomassie Tenorio 28 Mario Ross day 28 Danny D. Waller 20 Sex and Russell and warmer 22
Larry 20:04
you look at Danny socially serving one to five years for credit card fraud
Unknown Speaker 20:08
and he was at a penitentiary for that. Well
Larry 20:11
there’s there’s a number of there was a number of them that were in for relatively minor offenses now. New Mexico’s come a long way since then. But the gruesome way these people were killed.
Andy 20:21
Yes, I watched a little bit of a video clip. There. There were there’s like almost like a chalk outline almost. It’s a there’s an outline of where a body laid and they said they tried all kinds of different ways to get the stuff off but they couldn’t get it off. Someone’s capitated that’s, you know, that was a little really horrific.
Larry 20:39
polino know that. The one had a armbar driven through his from ear to ear. And that was for a sexual offense. He was in serving time for a sexual offense. These were people who had been targeted as snitches or who had sexual offenses, or for just whatever savage reason they could come up with but This is what happens, can can be a result of running a snitch system. They were going straight to the PC unit to get these people and some of them managed to barricade themselves and not be not be apprehended by the mob. But these people, these people were Savage. And they administered such horrible, unthinkable. I mean, it’s just hard to even talk about it. But But these people were, some of them were serving just such minor short sentences, but their families saw them off to prison. They never expected anything like this to happen and we let them down.
Andy 21:36
we endure it was and we’re making a comparison of harsh treatment back then to what has happened at parchment and Mississippi in the last I don’t remember the date but just a couple three weeks ago, and yet 13 people go down and somebody just died in the last couple days. Do
Larry 21:52
you know the lessons are there for Mississippi and Alabama for any state to learn? Wait, we already know what we DePaul, we know, categorically what where we failed. And what what was the I mean, did the inmates have a right to do this? No, they did. So I’m not justifying the Savitri. But they had tried for years to get attention to what had been going on in the penitentiary of New Mexico. And it was not a high priority because I’ve said on the podcast before the government, Mississippi, Alabama, they’re not going to stand up and say, Okay, what I want to do, how I want to funnel more money and our prisons, I’ll tell you what, because that’s what we need to do. It’s the moral thing to do that that’s just not a vote getter. So prison stay on the back burner by and large and told there’s two there’s an incident. And then the governor has a beautiful opportunity to say, Well, folks, we’ve neglected our prisons for a while and we’re going to have to, we’re gonna have to make some investments in prisons, and we’re going to keep locking up this many people, but instead, the governor says it’s because of self Folks, it’s rather pathetic governor rather pathetic.
Unknown Speaker 23:03
Let me let me play the clip where
Unknown Speaker 23:05
we’re cracking down on criminal coordination by using the managed access system to prevent contra ban cell phones from being used in all apartments housing units. These phones have been illegal for years, but they’ve been snuck in. And they’re being used to coordinate gang activity throughout the Mississippi system. And even throughout the country. That was a large part of what caused the recent series of killings to escalate as much as it did. It’s a real problem. And it’s got to be taken seriously to save lives.
Andy 23:39
So the way that I’m looking at this is there were pictures sent to news outlets of the completely horrible conditions that these men and I guess just these men were living in, and because of that, it brought light to the problem which is What really caused the riot but the governor’s blaming it on the cell phones, as that’s what caused the riot. But really, they were just I’m sure the people were writing home to mom and dad and two different organizations saying the conditions here are atrocious. And then maybe investigators come out and they can’t even make it through the door or the administration only takes them to the best unit so that they don’t see all these terrible conditions. They just were sweeping it under the rug and they just had a powder keg and then eventually it exploded. That
Larry 24:29
is exactly what happened. And that’s what happened here. And, and like I say, it was a combination of all those things coming together of no programming, inadequate level of staffing, and adequate training of staff. It was it was the perfect storm. And and that’s what’s going to happen in Alabama, Mississippi and any prison system. If you’re going to lock people up. You have a responsibility to keep them safe. There. sentences a loss of their freedom, not of their life unless they’re sent us in the states where they have a death penalty, but their sentence to a loss of their freedom. We have a duty to keep them safe while they’re losing their freedom. I’m sorry, that may cost money. But that’s our job to do that as a society.
Andy 25:19
Another piece of this is Jen in chat. So why do they think our excuse me, Who do they think is sneaking in the phones, and I’m sure that inmates have their ways of doing them. But it seems that would be significantly easier for an officer to bring one in and then do a wink wink, nod nod quid pro quo, with a guard that’s doing the check in and the shift change stuff and then the phone makes it in and they drop it off. They make two 400 bucks, whatever that number is. And now there’s a phone on the inside. I’m pretty sure that’s the more likely Avenue than someone putting a phone somewhere somewhere for you then
Larry 25:53
well, of course the most of the contraband is introduced into prison by staff. There’s there’s no disputing that. And you would never eliminate all contraband from country prisons all the way you’d eliminate all contraband would be to not have humans coming in and out of prisons. And that’s not possible. So you’re going to have contraband entered into prisons. But it is enhanced in terms of when you take the salary structure of the EU. They’re paying these people 12 $13 an hour to be responsible. It’s when you ride home to bomb when you’re in college. Very few people that I’ve met in my life and I’ve got a few decades behind me have said, Well, I can tell you, when I get out of this, get my get my degree. I can’t wait to go work in a jailhouse.
Andy 26:41
Yeah, I’ve never heard of anybody that tries to come up and that’s what they aspire to. I want to go to the moon but my second choice is to be a prison guard. Ashley, do you have anything to add?
Ashley 26:52
First of all, I’m going to be a little less diplomatic than what Larry is being the whole thing about somebody hiding the cell phones and there is a Bunch of BS cases across the US. And you can open any news page and on any given month there is a guard somewhere that is bringing in contraband drugs and cell phones because they make more money off the cell phones than they do even off the drugs. The thing is that the whole whole thing about Oh, it’s being used to coordinate gang activity, b. s, I’m waving the BS flag. Most of the reason and Larry has already pointed this out that people have cell phones in prisons and what they’re using them for is to talk to their families because their families don’t have money to put on the books so that they can afford phone calls, and commissary and everything else because it’s become such a racket and a money making activity until you’re cutting off people that are stuck in a hotbed of activity from any outside family support system, anything like that. And then you add to that the guards coming in And if they’re being abusive or or being bullies or anything else, you’re just pouring gasoline on a raging fire. So it’s a whole bunch of stuff. And I get it. That’s a hard job. And I think we’ve established that none of us woke up in the morning and what you know what that is my first career choice. I don’t spend the rest of my life going to college and everything else to be there. And I tell the guards, when I go visit my clients at jail, I couldn’t do that job. I don’t have the I don’t have the patience for somebody screaming obscenities at me and banging on the wall because they’re really upset. But it is a two way street and there needs to be more training, there needs to be more resources. And Larry’s absolutely right. Nobody ever wants to put money into a prison system or into anything else to make these conditions better. And then we see this stuff happen and we pay the price. So it isn’t because there’s cell phones coming in. There has been a cell phone problem in prisons for years and years, Georgia has had no cell phone policy for ever and ever. So no They can’t blame it on that they need to be looking internally and solve the issue.
Larry 29:05
And that’s gonna cost that’s gonna cost some money. Ashley?
Andy 29:08
Yeah, let me let me throw this back at you from the like the policy side. I understand that we aren’t willing to throw with them in the money to do it. But that comes from the voters voting for who would be the executive who then appoints the Department of Corrections head. And I mean that and then the legislature not putting forth the money. I mean, this this false what I’m getting at is if this falls on us, that we the people,
Larry 29:32
yes, I don’t know. I have no problem saying that. But we the people do not like taxes. We have so vilified taxes since the 70s with proposition 13 was was the was the beginning of the heyday of anti taxation in this country. And we’ve convinced ourselves that our taxes are so high in the United States, which they’re really not compared to the countries that we’d like to compare, as we like to pretend were more similar to but taxing Americans. Any level, when you start talking about giving an example, we just raised a vehicle excise tax here from three to 4%, where it’s been had been stuck for four decades, decades. So when you buy a vehicle, there’s a we don’t charge the sales tax. I think Georgia just level levies the regular state sales tax on a vehicle, but we don’t do that they’re exempt from sales tax. We raised it from 3% of the sales price to 4%. After it haven’t been there for decades, and they complained about that and that they raised the gasoline tax, a few payments that had been stuck at the same level since 1993. And the last time the gasoline tax had been adjusted was in 1993. So what we’re approaching right at 30 years of inflation and the per gallon assessment being eroded by inflation and plus the decline in consumption had rendered the revenue coming into the road fun that you have you have declining consumption because of the increased fuel efficiency and you have the years almost of inflation, and people just pitch to fit, you know, there they go again those liberal tax and spent point is Alabama needs to spend money Mississippi needs to spend money, but nobody wants to pay that money. And when you go out and say, Look, our corrections department in this article says about these about $900 billion, and Alabama, they’ve got they’ve got almost double 170% but it’s not quite double of what the capacity of the system was designed for it being held in custody, and nobody wants to pay their taxes. So it’s like it we can wring our hands. And if we don’t want to spend any money ready to cut some people loose a lot of people not just some people but an awful lot of people need to be cut loose. And that’s that’s that’s where it is.
Andy 31:46
We have an opinion article that is talking about granting. clemency is one possible solution put together some sort of panel figure out who may or may not deserve clemency and then let the the governor say you get to go home early.
Larry 32:01
Well, that’s turning loose a tidal wave of crime on us, Andy, we can’t have
Andy 32:05
that. Is that is a fair alternative to have 13 people. And you know, and 3040 years ago 33 people like, I mean, you know, this is like a road warrior with Mad Max, whatever. I mean, this is this is about as raw, brutal humanity that you could come up with.
Larry 32:22
It is the story of about Alabama moving 16 600 inmates from from home and I think that’s why they pronounce it.
Andy 32:31
Yes, I believe
Larry 32:32
it. That’s that’s what we remember. Last week, we talked about decades old prison that that was a 51 year old facility. And what what I was trying to make a point last week, I don’t know how eloquently I succeeded. But society has changed. The people that designed an institution 50 years ago. They weren’t dealing with the issues we’re dealing with today. 50 years ago, the the profile of an inmate was completely different because who were incarcerated was different. Wait Presence had not become the de facto mental health facilities that they are today. We didn’t have the opioid crisis today. We didn’t have. So managing a prison 50 years ago is different than managing a prison today. But since the facility, there’s always so much a deputation, you can do to an old facility. Yes, you can put in some high tech, you can you can go in to constrict wires and put cameras in. But in terms of if you’ve got a lead your supervision system versus versus a direct supervision, and the old days, they didn’t built for direct it Nowadays, most modern facilities that have been built in the last 2530 years, there is a person inside the housing unit, or if they’re not inside the housing unit, they’re overlooking the housing unit from a control panel or they have direct line of sight. We didn’t have direct line of sight prisons 50 years ago, if you go into home and you’d probably be fine, very little of that, because that’s not the way they were designed that long ago. So prisons have not changed as as who there is the population has changed. The needs of the prisons have changed. You’ve got these decades old institutions that just are not designed for what they’re trying to do with them today. And it makes it very difficult to keep people safe.
Andy 34:11
Yeah, I’m thinking of Jackson State Prison in Georgia. And it’s I I’m picturing, even like, if you’ve seen the movie, The Green Mile, where it’s just a long hallway, with cells in you know, stacked next to next to next and a parallel, I guess that would be serious, in a serious fashion versus what you were just describing were more like an open dorm. And from one central place, they have line of sight, the walls are low, there, no high walls in the shower, like it would be incredibly difficult for you to hide anywhere in there. And they have pretty much full line of sight from all of the units from a central from a central place where somebody can watch them.
Larry 34:44
And Jackson, I think was built in the 1960s. So it’s a it’s a very old institution on how much they’ve added to it, renovated it but but, but the prisons that built that many decades are just not suitable for today. But again, these are hundreds of millions of dollars worth of infrastructure. And if you look around what state legislators are grappling with, they’re grappling with no taxes, because that’s horrible to think about raising taxes. And they’re grappling with schools that need new infrastructure, colleges and universities, that new infrastructure, transportation facilities, bridges, the roads that need infrastructure. So your citizen centers are needing infrastructure, all these things that are the capital outlay. And when you look at how many votes you get out of prison, having a good corrections policy, everything I just mentioned, above the prison list, turns out more votes for you in prisons,
Andy 35:35
Louis, and I’d like to get yours in a second. Also, while I was gone, as I recall, in a county nearby where I am, they went to a four day school week to to save money. So they they chose to not spend, how do I want to wear this they chose to reduce the school days to save money versus putting any more money into the prison system. And I was like that doesn’t even make any sense to me because probably more education would keep people out of prison. Obviously, that’s a generation from now most likely, but I just couldn’t. Anyway, they decided that didn’t work. So they went back to the normal school week. But anyway.
Larry 36:15
Well, it’s it’s it’s tough. It’s tough on the elected officials. And I’ll let I should jump in here. But yes, it’s very tough because you’re competing against an anti tax mentality of the voter, and you’re needing capital. And prisons are just not a high priority. Sorry.
Ashley 36:32
And the funny part of that being because Larry’s in an expert in an old handed being up at the legislate jury. So he sees this like every single session, I got to view it firsthand, even though I was peripherally aware of it where everybody’s coming in and trying to do these let’s get tough on crime bills. Let’s add this crime. Let’s do this and everything. And then it comes down to how are we going to fund the additional lawyers, the additional judges If we’re going to increase and make mandatory times on stuff, how are we going to fund the prison? And nobody, nobody says a word about it. They ask about it. And they they claim, oh, well, this could, this could be bad. And then it’s so sexy to pass these new crimes. And these new bills that make it look like they’re being tough on crime, but they don’t think it through where we’re just going to keep throwing people into prisons like Jackson. Jackson is a really good example, Georgia, where you do you keep funneling people in, and then every time somebody violates probation or parole for testing positive and you send them off to prison, you’re just increasing the amount of people in there and not increasing any of the resources or capacity. So, no, it’s it’s not good for legislators to come back and say, Hey, we need more money for the prisons too, because everybody goes, Oh, no, you don’t. What do they need, they don’t need anything else. And that’s just not true. They don’t, they don’t see it as a as an entire system and echo swear that they’re nothing more
Andy 38:00
And one other point to make is if you didn’t if you couldn’t do the time, then you shouldn’t have done the crime.
Ashley 38:07
How about we start right back to what you were talking about decreasing the school days, so that we don’t have to put any more money into prisons? How about we find other things, more resources to help people initially maybe drug treatment services, mental health services, economic stuff, a whole bunch of other stuff. Why don’t we start at the root of the problem, and giving kids less time get in trouble might be one of them as well. So I’m a little bit baffled as you are. But it’s, I I used to feel that way. I don’t feel that way about if you can’t do the crime, or you can’t do the time don’t do the crime because I think that there are so many other factors at play. It’s just not a simple explanation like that.
Larry 38:53
So I just, I just did Wikipedia on Georgia diagnostic classification system. It was opened in 1968, which was Consistent with my memory and renovated last 1998, which is a quite some time back in 1998. I don’t know what extent the renovation is. But Andy, if you’ve been there you might use describe it as I thought it existed it it’s a it’s not a it’s not a direct supervision facility. It’s
Andy 39:18
an eight, it was not a club paradise either that I promise. And so and also it had very poor climate control.
Larry 39:26
Well, the first of all, when they were building that in 1968, they wouldn’t have been trying to maximize comfort. And then there was a check systems and all those systems would be very, very old, in terms of about non existent compared to how they would help how if you were trying to design one today in terms of energy management and how you would be able to present built today, unless they have the Texas and Florida model where you try to roast them out and kill them from health
Andy 39:56
where the RPO model where you rest in that right
Larry 39:59
but But But if you if you if you build a prison today, theoretically, the climate control is far better. And that’s not a complaint we get a lot in our about our prisons, although it’s pretty hot here in parts of the state. But we don’t get a lot of complaining about about the climate about. We don’t try to roast the prisoners. That’s not one of the things that we fail that here but but there are plenty of other failures we have that’s not one of them.
Ashley 40:22
Now we freeze them out here.
Andy 40:25
I’ve experienced that too. I don’t want to diminish the impact of this event. Is there anything else before we continue on?
Larry 40:32
Well, I hope that if there’s any chance of a family member out there that might have listened to this, or find out about this, that at least we haven’t forgotten,
Ashley 40:43
and that we care
Larry 40:44
that this happened. And we and we will never know what some of these young men could have grown up to be. When I say young men, they’re in their 20s which means that they had 4050 years of life ahead of them. And those that were serving small, relatively minor crimes. We don’t know if they would have turned their life around. We don’t know customer they never got the chance.
Unknown Speaker 41:04
Exactly.
Andy 41:06
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Larry 41:53
You make it possible for reforming our criminal justice system. Too many people are locked up and American
Andy 41:59
the next Articles are related to an individual named rafail ruis, who served 35 years and then was exonerated because of DNA evidence that was finally tested. And so I think, Larry, that this goes near and dear to your heart about the whole due process process. And I, in reading the information that the DNA testing that we are able to do now, like on a whim that you see all glitzy on TV shows these days was just coming into being used. But the way that they described that the police sort of pressured the victim to like point at a door like that’s where the guy lived, and they got a guy who looked vaguely similar, and they almost like coerced her into accusing this guy of doing it, and he’s denying it, obviously and the internet denies it denies it dies, it gets out of prison. And then in the end, he exonerate him for for the DNA evidence.
Larry 43:00
I think that’s more of a of an ashy one. But I, I know that as a general rule that wants a conviction has been had the burden shifts in terms of who has to prove what and doing convictions is extremely difficult. Only those who have gone to trial actually really have a have a prayer of a chance those have done please have virtually no chance. And I said virtually not absolutely. But But convictions are defended by every state, whether it be Arkansas, whether it be Florida, whether it be to Mexico, and oftentimes they will do everything they can to thwart the entry of evidence that would exonerate them. And since I’ve never been a prosecutor, I can’t speak to why they do that. I’m guessing that it’s because of fidelity. They don’t want to constantly be spending their time on old cases. But we’ve got a federal prosecutor, former prosecutor here so we can hear their perspective on why they strive so hard burn the midnight oil to keep a conviction. And and whether or not it was whether it was the right conviction or the right person. Because again, I make the same analogy I make to the police about the police wanting the bad one. If we’ve got a conviction, that’s doubtful that that person did it. If the prosecutor has the remotest amount of, of ethics, it seems like to me you would want the guilty person to come in, and you’d want the innocent person to go out because is the guilty person is still out there roaming the streets, you haven’t given that victim justice, because that that perpetrator is potentially going to repeat or has been repeating, so I don’t understand it at all. Anyway, let’s hear the prosecutors explanation.
Ashley 44:44
So I think it actually goes more along the lines of I don’t want to simplify it and say ego but let’s start with that. So you have prosecutors who, when they pick on a case, in theory or not, so post to try it or do anything else unless they believe that justice is being done. Now let’s break that that that down because what it really means in your average prosecutors, not all prosecutors just like law enforcement and everything else. There’s good ones, there’s bad ones. But in your average prosecutor when they go to try a case, the only way that they’re viewing the evidence is as if the person is guilty. So everything that they’re looking at, they see it as supporting the guilt, to trying to go back and appeal something and point out how it didn’t support the guilt is counterintuitive to most prosecutors, they look at it and go, No, that shows they were guilty and they don’t look at it from any other direction. The other thing is that once they actually convict someone, instead of wanting to get the person off on an appeal or cooperate with it, a lot of them take it personally that they did something possibly unethical by convicting somebody If in fact the appeal is overturned on various grounds, and they take it very, very personally, judges take it personally when they’re overturned on appeals, instead of going, Okay, this is an opportunity for me to learn an opportunity for me to look at this from a different light. They, they go all the way down in flames, if they have to maintaining the person was guilty, and the courts got it wrong. And I viewed that firsthand from both sides of the law.
Andy 46:27
It seems that they should lose sleep over putting an innocent person behind bars, more so than lose sleep over Oh crap, I got it wrong, they’re going to overturn me and make me look foolish.
Ashley 46:39
see most of the prosecutors that I know and not all of them again and me in particular, believe that as you’re going through the evidence before you ever get to trial, you’re not going to hit a stage where you’re going to put somebody on trial for something they didn’t do, unless you believe it strongly, and there’s evidence to support it. So once you get the trial stage, everything in your brain is going towards their guilty. And there’s no more I believe they’re innocent at all, because that should have gone off the table by the time you charge the case. And I think that’s the way most of them view it, what they’re not taking into consideration and you see this time in and time again, where there’s political pressure to prosecute somebody that maybe didn’t do it, or like you see a mysteries case where they’re like, Oh, we got to get a conviction at any cost. That is just bad prosecution. It is not upholding justice. It is not upholding the constitution and prosecutors have a duty, as I’ve said before, to do justice, not get convictions. They represent the community. They also represent the rights of the accused and that is what the prosecutor is supposed to do if they’re doing their job ethically.
Andy 47:48
Let me play a quick clip real quick that I that I pulled something
Unknown Speaker 47:51
I saw a quote that I loved a lot. A judge Blackstone from way back said I would rather 10 guilty people escape than one Some persons suffer.
Andy 48:01
Yeah. That seems to fly in the face of that.
Ashley 48:05
Right. I mean, there’s the entire system of due process and the Constitution, surrounding trial provisions and the rights of the accused are all centered around that belief better than many go free than one single innocent person get locked up for something they didn’t do. So this
Andy 48:22
is Mr. ruis. The The, the just the outlier out of all this, I think we can have I think we have fairly decent stats that maybe 10% of the people are actually I don’t want to say necessarily fully innocent, but we can go and say fully innocent, but they’re at least not as guilty as they were charged
Ashley 48:42
that the crime that they were charged with.
Andy 48:45
Right, right, right, right. And so is this just the complete outlier that this is the one that slipped through Meanwhile, the other 2 million people that are locked up they actually did it, but this has got slipped through the cracks somehow.
Ashley 48:57
I’m not sure what the percentage Is I’m trying to think if 10% is is around the range, but that the Innocence Project has uncovered a pretty decent amount through that DNA project. So we know that it’s not an outlier. We know this happens. And what I would hope is that the jurisdictions that this is happening in take a look at how they prosecute and their their training, and I don’t know that that’s what’s going to happen, given politics and human egos, but I would hope that they go you know, what, before we put somebody on trial for something, we better make sure we have DNA, we better make sure we have this we better make sure there’s no question in in the witness statements or anything else and maybe we wouldn’t arrive at a situation like Mr. Ruiz’s?
Larry 49:45
Well, I don’t I don’t know that I can add much to it. I I feel like that, that everything he says is correct, but there’s no mechanism to to to enforce that. It would be ideal if everybody operated the office. The way that my admired the ace of Boulder did, but they don’t. And and the reason why they don’t is because that’s not popular with the people, for Alex got hounded from office because he went to indict the ramseys. For the for the death of job today. He said we just don’t have the evidence. We just don’t have the evidence for it. You know, is that that so called ransom don’t ask him for $111,000 whatever his bonus was that year was not sufficient. And and and there are prosecutors who will indict and hope that the evidence materializes later. Because it satisfies the thirst for for I mean, we we have sensational recording, and there’s a mob mentality said soon someone’s going to be held accountable, and the DA are under enormous pressure. And I’m not I’m not being dismissive of that pressure. I mean, you look at the Atlanta child murders back in the 19 1881, Wayne Williams got prosecuted was at 29 3031 boys young man who had who had shown turned up dad and mostly the Chattahoochee rivers and surrounding areas. There was a little slight was under that’s the the A in Atlanta he was under enormous pressure to do something about that. But it takes a really principled person to say, No, sir. I am not going to charge this person until I have evidence sufficient to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt and I’m the first person has to be convinced I have to be convinced that this is beyond a reasonable doubt. How do we how do we instill that value? Because it’s obviously not happening across the land.
Andy 51:40
Let me throw this at you from a different tackler. I believe there was a component of Obamacare that was not about physicians, scheduling tests and just prescribing stuff. There was something to be said for like a performance based outcome and that would be the reward for the doctors to like, hey, We’ve identified this most accurately and we’ve identified the most efficient form of treatment. That was a component of their if I recall correctly, couldn’t we try to figure out a framework to its to put this on the prosecutors like, it is not about I had a 50% increase in prosecutions from last term from that that other guy on the other side of the aisle. So you should vote for me again? Could we figure out a way to actually, I don’t know, maybe we can have a prosecutor oversight committee that could evaluate the effectiveness of our prosecutor.
Larry 52:29
Well, how would you How would you determine effectiveness? One way we measure? I
Andy 52:32
don’t know. I totally don’t know. That’s a but I’m just so if we had an independent council that could like go back through and evaluate whether they did their job effectively, then you would have a scorecard.
Larry 52:44
But what determines what’s a fact? It’s,
Unknown Speaker 52:47
I don’t know. It’s just a hypothetical.
Larry 52:49
Yeah. Well, if if we could figure out what constitutes an effective prosecutor, I think securing convictions that’s what we will actually consider effective today. Prosecutor goes out and tells you that that they, they’d like to throw around their statistics. But I took the job, though, was a backlog of 472 unindicted felony cases. And I’ve whittled it down. And we’ve taken care of this backlog, and blah, blah, blah. That’s what they run off. So would you also separate the people from the decision making? What would we would we conclude that the people that vote for da XORed are sophisticated enough to understand the nuances of a day’s job or prosecutors job is to seek justice and protect the rights of the accused? The average person doesn’t understand that they don’t understand that special rule for professional conduct that a prosecutor has it’s above and beyond a normal attorney. So how would we how would we deal with the with with with the, with the people component?
Andy 53:47
I don’t know. And I was and as you were saying, all of that, I’m thinking over to the progressive prosecutors that we have now like the lyric brazzers and they are getting tomatoes thrown at them left and right for going back and finding people that that wrongly convicted and letting them go. I mean, they’re getting beat down for doing what we are describing here. Now.
Ashley 54:07
They are unless that another nuance to that too, because Sorry, can tell you I’m living this firsthand to where the the elected da is the elected Attorney General’s. When a case gets a lot of media attention, and it’s sensationalize. They’re under tremendous pressure to show that they’re being tough on crime and everything else. And they will indict things or press things forward, knowing that they’re going to lose it at some point. But then they can point the finger at the judges and say, well, we did what we were supposed to do, but the judges failed you and the judges who are elected officials are like, well, the prosecutor didn’t break the charges, right? Or there’s this, this and this and there’s all this finger pointing when at the end of the day, if everybody would just take a look in the mirror and do what’s right. Without any type of oversight. Maybe we could conduct problem but That’s, that’s just ideal utopic vision.
Larry 55:06
And I don’t have huddle. I don’t have the answers either. You know, I brought a boy Williamson, somewhere listeners will have no idea doubtless a series of murders in Atlanta in the early 1980s. The the federal debt, the national attention and even the federal government was breathing down Lewis lightens neck and flattens credit. He was stood that pressure did not charge just for the sake of charging when they finally did charge white Williams who was ultimately convicted, and he sits in the state prison at Jackson to this very day proclaiming his innocence. But when they charge slight when the site did charge Williams, he was reluctant about doing it because they were relying on what they call fiber evidence and those days we didn’t have DNA we had. We had we had, we would, we had some carpet fiber, and the five Baphomet carpet had been analyzed. Of course it’s no telling how many thousands of homes that same barber was in but the the fiber that was that one of the kids had been wrapped up in that that carpet fiber match what had been taken out of Williams his home in a search warrant. So they had they had that as one link the puzzle that but but he was he he maintained his innocence that was convicted he still maintains his innocence that he will die Jackson maintaining his innocence because his peels are exhausted. And barring some miracle, I mean, whether he’s guilty or not, he’ll die pretty tragic. I don’t like it.
Andy 56:38
I almost the only other one thing that I wanted to bring up so this guy was exonerated from finally getting some DNA evidence tested. I hear programs all the time about the bajillions pick, pick whatever number that is very large of all the rape kit, rape kits that continue to go untested, that everyone is all like man, we Need to get these things tested so we can find the guy that did it. But it could also potentially exonerate people at the same time. I hadn’t thought about that until this particular article came up.
Ashley 57:10
I didn’t actually think about it that way either because everybody is pressing and there’s a lot of fuss being made here in New Mexico as well about the backlog of rape kits that go years and years and years. And I didn’t think about the exoneration factor. I thought about it from the other perspective, because that’s the way that the public is, too. So that’s, that’s actually interesting, that, that it could it could be exonerating people. However, the only thing I would say in terms of that, as the more recent cases probably didn’t press forward without the DNA back in the wind Gilbert days and, and the days of Mr. Ruiz and everything, they didn’t have the DNA testing that we do now. Now. It’s kind of the norm not to proceed unless you have DNA.
Andy 57:58
We too, I felt They’re like in Chicago, there’s some, like 20,000 rape kits that just sit in a vault. Are you saying that you believe that those are from decades old that they’re not current ish?
Ashley 58:10
Oh, yes, the ones here. They’re some of the rate backlog is. I think they’re also like 20 or 40,000. And Larry may have the number off the top of his head because it’s come up at the
Unknown Speaker 58:21
legislature.
Ashley 58:22
But those are 10 to 20 years old as well.
Unknown Speaker 58:26
There’s not more recent ish, or Well,
Larry 58:30
yeah, there can be recent at the batch. But what happened was that we, the science developed quicker or faster than the funding developed to carry it out. When you’re when you’re building budgets. This is a complicated thing that people don’t understand. So when you’re when you’re building budgets for law enforcement, when something new comes along, that’s not in your existing budget, which is the blueprint that you start from you have X number of personnel, you have X, X amount for offices, X amount for blah, blah, blah. But these rape kits This was relatively They knew in terms of what all they can do with the with the testing, and the forensics are not cheap. So a police agency of a small police agency may not even have any option of turning it over to the state. Well, the state has hasn’t funded because again, we hate taxes so much. So the state of the state, the state had not built in the funding for the testing for these kids. So you sent them up to the state lab, say here’s a, here’s a Clovis PD and you don’t have it, you don’t have a lab, you can’t do all that. So you, you, you send your stuff up to the department, public safety and Santa Fe, and all the other agencies are sending out all these gobs of forensic evidence, and you have to forensic technicians because that’s all you had funded your budget, and you’ve got more than what to do over the next 20 years. And that’s how that’s how the backlog builds up. And it’s one of those things it’s not glitzy to talk about it until it because you have to say again, where do we find the Funds we’ve got to, we’ve got to find funding and everybody’s got their Paul that I wish people would understand in a budgetary cycle. It’s a state legislature, just like in the National Congress, there’s all these paws out saying, I need, I need, I need, I need I need. You’ve got these people that are having to make these priority choices to give funding and funding just didn’t keep up. And that’s how we ended up having this backlog. And there’ll be the cynics out there that will say, Yeah, because they were taken too many trips to Hawaii and and all these political jackets, and they should have spent the money on that. And that’s fine. You’re entitled that opinion. But the reality is that the funding just didn’t keep pace. So now we’re going back and having to backfill, and particularly last 10 years after we went into recession away Do not New Mexico’s funding stayed relatively flat for about 10, almost 10 years, until we’ve had the resurgent center and an oil and gas production. 10 we’ve we’ve we’ve gotten some revenue now the last couple of years. So we can actually go back and fill in some of these holes, but funding has been a problem. Gotcha.
Andy 1:01:05
Gotcha. Well, let’s uh, let’s let’s circle back because I accidentally skipped something. What is HP 43 and Hb 237. What kind of crazy hieroglyphics code are you sending me?
Larry 1:01:18
Well, House Bill 43. That was a piece of legislation that was introduced into the session pre filed in our state legislature here to close the out of state loophole for those who we don’t have a catch all provision and in Mexico law, so everybody who wants to pack up, come to New Mexico, come while you can because in order to be required to register, you have to have an equivalent offense to one of those offenses on our list. And our list is not as long as some states lists. We we have longer list and I’d like to go to hell but it’s not nearly as long as a lot of other states are finance has our list of things. This has 12 enumerated offense, fences, or their attempts to commit those offenses. You can look at other states where they have 2030. Sometimes more offenses, but but in order to be required to register, you have to have an offense that’s equivalent. Well, how would you figure out if it’s equivalent? Well, there has to be some sort of determination made. And that’s an expensive process. And the state just hasn’t bothered to make those determinations. So we finally filed a lawsuit. That was our first Liberty justice state lawsuit against registration was to challenge that. We’ve got hundreds of people here who have not undergone any type of process that are trying to throw equipment, and probably most of them are, but they haven’t received a due process. So we’re trying to establish due process, well, this was the answer. Health Bill 43 was the answer. We’ll just we’ll just gut that and just say that they have to register it in Mexico, if they have to register for it any other state? Well, that is an option that we considered that they would do with When we filed a lawsuit, we were smart enough to figure that out to that would be an answer. We were confident enough that we thought we could work the legislative process and keep that from becoming a law because that’s a misguided policy. So that was what House Bill 43 was it it was in its first committee to estate. And Ashley and I went out. And we both testified and spoke. And Ashley will tell you is her first experience in the Capitol and how much how thrilled she wants to be there and how and how enlightening it was. But at the end of the debate about health Bill 43. Unlike most of the states to go into the deep bowels somewhere and hold a hearing, a cloaked in secrecy in the middle of the night, we actually have a vote after the after they’ve taken public comment and after they’ve actually the lawmakers have debated amongst themselves. And after all, the debate was had on House Bill 43, which was designed to build our lawsuit and they use the Jeffrey Epstein hoopla that Jeffrey on the ranch here in New Mexico and he was told he didn’t Register because his prostitution offense in Florida is not equivalent anything into Mexico. So they tried to sensationalize that. We kept their bill from moving forward. We kept their bill from getting a do pass recommendation. And I’m very proud of that. And even though I’m proud of it, and we patted ourselves on the back, and we sent out an email blast to our supporters, we received a critical email back saying, Oh, really? Did you people do that? Why don’t you be more transparent? Why don’t you tell us how you did it? Let’s see exactly what you did. I found that email very troubling because we can’t even tell everybody everything we did. Because we wouldn’t be able to do what we do. If everybody knew how, how we do what we do. So we kind of like Rumsfeld said that. There’s the What was it that own unknowns and other things? We don’t know. We don’t know. Yeah, there’s four of them. Yeah, some of the things we do. We cannot publicly tell people what we do. Because if we did, we would not be able to do them. But the proof of the pudding should be in the tasting. Tell me how many states, I responded back in an email to tell the guy said, Well, let me just tell you this. We had a sensational bill promoted by the boogeyman of Jeffrey Epstein. And pretty high profile, just very few people have heard of Jeffrey Epstein. And we stopped their Epstein boogie man from carrying the day and you name it the other state. I said, Tell me about Pennsylvania. What Sandusky did you stop anything and Pennsylvania. And I went through a litany of states I said, Tell me did you stop Dennis haftar from from eradicated the statue of limitations after all the sensationalism. Did you stop the changes that happened in Michigan after Dr. Larry Nasser? No, you did. So rather than being so critical, important to know, how did we do it and prove that you did it? Why wouldn’t you just say thank you. Congratulations. That’s enough ranting. Go ahead, Ashley.
Ashley 1:06:04
Now that was pretty close to my ranting. So we went up there. It was super, super exciting for me, Larry, like I said, as an old had that that but I had never actually been up to the Capitol and not Cassidy and we did. And we watched them table it. We watched the debate, despite the fact that there was a disingenuous behavior to quote leiria ism from one of the members of the committee, minimizing the equivalency portion of that bill and it, it was really good. It did not make it out of committee, however, dumped dumped on. What they did was now built to 37, which Larry and I are actively working on in which we’ve spent the better part of the weekend working on right, Larry?
Larry 1:06:47
That’s correct. We got more to go. we’re analyzing it and putting it analysis for the committee, upon request of the committee analyst, by the way, and I won’t say which committee but we were requested to provide Analysis they’re they’re very impressed with the work that we’ve done. Correct riddle
Andy 1:07:04
riddle me this, sir, if you would. I’m trying to think it was three ish episodes where you said if you are going to support bills, you are in the train boosting business. But if you’re going there to stop something here in the train wrecking business, which side of the equation were you on here?
Larry 1:07:20
Where the wrecking business? We’re in the restaurant business.
Andy 1:07:23
Right? And again, I know that you’re not going to divulge a bunch of details but you You gave me some details. Can you like how many votes and how did you get like headed like the train know how to Pacific sky
Larry 1:07:40
is getting getting getting very, very specific. But the bottom line was they needed three votes and they could not get to the magic number they needed to pass that’s that’s what I wanted to say.
Andy 1:07:51
I didn’t I didn’t want I didn’t want to get to Pacific.
Larry 1:07:55
It’s It’s It’s a numbers game. And like I say being the We actually, unlike all the other states I’ve traveled to, we actually vote at the end of the bill. And I emphasize this because none of the rest of them do that. They actually have a hearing, sometimes they’re open, but they’re two weeks later, and you’ve already forgotten about it. And the emotions are not there. And they’re not facing the people that just spoke to them. And they they do it as far as I’m concerned, it’s a cowardly way to do it. But we actually have the debate after the public has spoken. The lawmakers debate amongst themselves, and then there’s a motion bait, and they could not get the three votes to put two or five member committee they could not round up three votes. And and they would have had three votes that said one of the republicans who would normally would have been in favor of it, she ducked out, because she had a she had a disagreement in terms of how they were conducted the process and I actually agree with her about her disagreement. She was right, that they they should not have heard that bill because it had not been. It had not been on the calendar for a full 24 hours in its amended fashion. Because I had substituted what for what had been introduced to two committee substitutes. And that did give us time we were not able in the public to actually see what they were voting on. Because that wasn’t to build that we had analyzed, they had been changes of a significant nature. And this republican was irritated because they weren’t following the rules. And she was correct about that. So she ducked out, and that kept him from getting she never would have been a do pass, but she ducked out, they couldn’t get to their five. There’s three of five.
Andy 1:09:26
Someone in chat who shall remain nameless, remain nameless, has said you called her state cowardly.
Larry 1:09:32
I did it do. I did do that. Yes, that’s, that’s. That’s the way they do it in Nebraska. That’s the way they do it in Maryland. They do it that way all over the country. I have not met a state where they actually had the courage to vote while the people are there.
Andy 1:09:47
And is that written into your constitution, or is that Oh, no, no, like,
Larry 1:09:51
No, it’s just or whatever. It’s just the way they do it. They move a bill. It kind of seems it seems like a no brainer. You schedule a bill. To be heard, and you hear the bill, and the people have traveled great distances now in Maryland, you it’s not quite as great a distance. But here, it’s a great distance. I mean, Maryland, so much smaller geographic state, but you travel a great distance and you take time off work, and you put your energy and your soul into it. And you want to know what they’re going to do, but they don’t do anything. Right. They say thank you for coming, folks. Stay tuned, we’ll decide something at some point. And we’ll put it on the website.
Andy 1:10:27
Interesting. And and, and new. Mexico’s the only one that you know, that does it that way so far
Larry 1:10:32
now. Otherwise, all the listeners, we’ve got someone who’s post, bit on the capital, if they vote on a piece of legislation and committee after the committee has debated it, please let me know. So I can add you to the states that are not powerful. But But I don’t know if a state we can ask Georgia just had a hearing on the GPS bill last week. As far as I know, they didn’t vote on it during the committee with the people watching them.
Andy 1:10:58
And that next session, could they just vote to change the rules. And then they would do it at a later date to do the vote, or was it enshrined somewhere more more permanent?
Larry 1:11:07
I think ours is mostly just tradition. committees, just it’s part of how they’ve always done it. You’re here bill and you make a decision.
Andy 1:11:16
And I’m not I’m not trying to bring up the impeachment stuff. But all through this, they were like, okay, so they’re going to they’re going to have a hearing about whether they’re going to have witnesses. And that was them establishing the rules for how the whole process was going to go through there on the spot. They could have had different rules. So it’s not it’s not a constitutional thing at the state level that they’ve made these things, no place. These are just your house and senate rules at your at the at the House or Senate leaders discretion to change the rules, or the members
Larry 1:11:47
Next, I’m not sure I did. It’s always been that way since I’ve been here. Even the two years that the two years since I’ve been in the state, the Republicans control the house for two years from 15 years 1516. They didn’t even attempt to change that now. They’re reading named some of the committee’s, and they changed, having four sessions twice a day versus once a day, they did some changes, which was their prerogative as a majority party to do that, because they had the numbers, but they didn’t change this long standing tradition of making a decision after a bill. I’m so spoiled. I find it totally discombobulated to go travel and sit and wait in a hot room, fanning yourself and waiting for 37 people to testify. And at the end of the day, not knowing a damn thing that you’re gonna have to stay tuned and watch the website and they’ll be reported someday they’ll be a committee report and if you’re lucky enough to find that you’ll get to know what they did. I find that so objectionable.
Andy 1:12:35
Now, is there an advantage on the other side, though, that if they decide to not vote that they could could just sort of disappear or are they required to then vote in these other
Larry 1:12:45
state? No, it there’s, there’s some advantages. It’s some things disappeared, disappeared. They they’re forgotten about. But I would rather I would rather have the vote that there’s disadvantages advantages I can see, but I’d rather have to vote. I know what I’m going to do next. If this bill is going to move, I need to know it because I’ve got work today.
Andy 1:13:02
You sound a little bit passionate about that particular subject, by the way,
Larry 1:13:06
yeah, I’ve got work to do, I need to know what where this thing is going. And if I it takes me two weeks to figure out where it’s going, I don’t know where to where to start applying pressure, and where to put the resources if I don’t know what’s happening. So I have to watch website to the middle of the night until they find the decide to have their meeting in their cloakroom and vote on it. And by the way, I’ve lost a lot of valuable time that I could have been doing work sabotage, because most of the time you’re going to be in the sabotage business, you’re not going to be in the passing business, where you’re going to be in the blocking business.
Andy 1:13:36
It was that just 43 or that also, what what
Larry 1:13:39
foot through 37 we’re still analyzing at it. So there’s really not much to report is scheduled for hearing in the same committee, and our hope is that we can rack it again, I’m not going to be overly confident there are factors that I can’t talk about. That will make it more difficult to wreck but that doesn’t mean that we I believe will be successful and keeping it from making it to the finish line but But it may not be is as easy as it was on 43 alrighty then I got my right
Andy 1:14:09
well let’s move over to God I don’t even know what the mascot of this state is to be honest with you that’s where I’m from Prince George’s County Maryland police shooting. I love it when when the when the police gun people down for no apparent reason for not for not a justified reason. I’m being very facetious with that a police corporal in Maryland was charged with second degree murder on Tuesday and the fatal shooting with suspect who had been handcuffed in the front passenger seat of patrol car the previous night. Why Why do we let cops kill people when they’re handcuffed? I still am baffled by this whole thing all the time.
Larry 1:14:43
Well, I don’t think we’re letting them do it. I think you read the article he’s been charged
Andy 1:14:47
the questions in so that would be the sort of like the weird part of this is that somebody is actually getting charged with something.
Larry 1:14:52
Well, that’s the point it’s gonna make whether be convicted, convicted, a police officer is very, very difficult. Actually can remember very Well, that when, when john Boyd was shot off the side of the mountain when he was trying to surrender a few years back, and he was coming down peacefully, when what the offer sort of blew him to death at Paul on camera that our district, former district attorney Kerry Brandenburg decided that she was going to try to cop so you could take the story from there. How did that work out from his Brandenburg?
Ashley 1:15:21
It was horrible for her career. And the officer stopped reporting crimes to her there. It turned into utter chaos. I was still in Georgia when that actually happened. And there were people calling me from here asking me if I would come out here. Yeah, that’s how bad it got.
Larry 1:15:38
Shame, shame and fear for her safety. She said that she was afraid for her safety.
Ashley 1:15:42
Yes, they they harassed her to no end because she went after law enforcement and having been in that position before for excessive force cases or anything else like that I can legally understand the I don’t think you can explain what happened. When the lawmakers turn against you like not, but that goes right back, that’s actually one of the turning points for law enforcement oversight committees. And that may be along the same lines is what we’ve been talking about.
Andy 1:16:11
I’m just pulling up a killings by the police by country. The the second country on the list, What year is this from? I don’t see what year this is from, but we have 120.5 per 100 residents. The country of Yemen has 52.8 Montenegro, Serbia, it’s like there’s a lot of killings in the set of states by the factor of almost three before you get to second place position.
Larry 1:16:36
Well, I’ve said that I didn’t have the statistics and I think you met about 400,000 per hundred but but yeah, yeah, but but the the the statistics on officer deaths have been have been dropping. It was far more dangerous to be a police officer in the 1970s and is today, more police were killed it killed on a smaller population base by triple compared to what get killed. Today, the opposite trend has been in place for police killings. Now this is despite the fact that we have so many non lethal means that we didn’t have in the 1970s when you looked at a police officer and the weaponry they were carrying in the 1970s they had that people call the various pejorative terms but they had the nightstick and they had their service revolve and that was pretty much about yet so you either going to use your fist you’re gonna use that stick that club Are you going to use your revolver
Andy 1:17:29
that I’ve had is the one little bullet in his pocket. Nowadays the
Larry 1:17:33
the average police officers loaded with options you know from from from from gaseous things that they can discharge it today and carry and those days with a taser to two beanbag rounds, two different Donnelly, they have all these non lethal options available to them. But yet the lethality of police conduct has gone through the roof since the 1970s. Now, explain that one to me. How is it? That is we’ve introduced more and more non lethal Options into their arsenal, that more and more people are getting killed at the hands of the police.
Andy 1:18:06
I’m going to lay out one that I think is going to be a very radical idea. They’re, they’re not using those methods, da.
Larry 1:18:13
I never considered that. And why are they Why are they using those methods? What are our standard operating procedures? Why are we not requiring the use of those methods? Because they seem to be quite happy you see us tasers employed all the time. You see tasers be used on people or questionable circumstances. So why are they not usually the non lethal means more often? Why did they not use Ashley? Why did they use the non lethal means on john Boyd? Why the man who was walking down to surrender? Why did they need to fire it? He’ll tell me that. Of course you can’t tell me because it’s a rhetorical question but why?
Ashley 1:18:51
Because they’re trained to shoot to kill.
Andy 1:18:56
I don’t I don’t even remember reading with this individual was even charged. With at the time, it just but it doesn’t seem that if he was being just detained, His hands were cuffed behind his back. Yeah, if your hands are cuffed behind your back, you really have very limited means of assaulting the officer to make him feel like his life is in danger unless you’re some sort of Superman and you can just like Spread your arms apart and break the cuff.
Larry 1:19:21
Well, there you go again, Andy, you know, there are people who have very flexible joints, and they can slip those cuffs under their feet, and they can take them off at will and then they can we, you it’s your people have your mindset that’s causing this country to be in peril that it said right now, putting these officers in jeopardy, of course they could they could get out of those handcuffs. And I being a smart aleck here, but the average person’s handcuffed behind their back is variable threat. So what he did to justify that I would be I’d be curious to know as well because if he was truly in handcuffs, and was Shot fatally. I can’t imagine what you’d be doing that would justify a discharge of a fatal round.
Andy 1:20:06
And just to fill in the gap there if you have anything else, actually, but he’s the father of two. And so they just just took away the dead. Gotta love it. It’s awful.
Unknown Speaker 1:20:17
It’s awful. It’s called a perp walk.
Unknown Speaker 1:20:20
It’s one of the most offensive parts of the criminal justice system.
Andy 1:20:25
We have an article that comes from Forbes magazine talking about perp walks that the problem, one of the initial steps that we should take in criminal justice reform needs to be fair media coverage. And you can certainly find all kinds of clips of Jeffrey Epstein of Bill Cosby of Harvey Weinstein and the list just goes on and on. And it it already colors, the the the minds of the citizenry of what these who these people are, and obviously if they’re on TV being charged with a crime that they are guilty.
Larry 1:20:57
Well, I think I would start by saying Forbes It’s not known to be a liberal magazine. Everybody knows origin of Forbes. It’s not, it’s not one of those liberal leaning magazines. So if Forbes has recognize that there’s a problem with the purple box, that’s a step in the right direction. But where this thing always breaks down, is the same discussion we have about the bias media forums will never draw connect the dots to the next part of it is that the reason why this is done is because it’s allowed. It is permitted in a free society and no way we could stop these perk box would be if the big old bad government came in and said, as a matter of protection of the accused, you can’t do that. And then the press would holler and hell that this is a violation of their first amendment rights. And I would be curious if we were trying to because the obviously the press cannot suppress The urges to be the first with a story and to respond to a tipster to a hot tip from from from law enforcement. So since they can’t stop on their own volition, the only way to stop them but but be with some type of governmental intervention. So I wonder if Forbes would be willing to say that as a member of the press. And although we do believe in the press, we would encourage governmental intervention to stop us from doing what we can’t stop ourselves from doing I wonder if they would take that next step in this, because that would be their most admirable story that they could possibly run is to say, we were wrong. We can’t contain ourselves, and we need the big, bad government to stop us would be delighted to see Forbes move to that level of recognition that there’s a problem. And I bet I’ll be waiting a long time to hear that call for government intervention.
Andy 1:22:55
And I’m thinking to the 911 stuff, were just like repeatedly all day. CNN Fox everybody was was constantly replaying the towers falling and eventually they said, Hey, this is too traumatic. Maybe we should stop showing it. I realized it’s not a terribly great comparison but they at least decided to stop showing it so this would be along the same lines of if you want someone to get something of a fair trial, you don’t have their their picture plastered all over the newspapers and the television, showing them walking out looking all disheveled, like a you know, they kept like a coat over their wrist because they don’t want people to see them in handcuffs. They’re trying to save face somehow. But this seems that it would go directly contrary to innocent until proven guilty.
Larry 1:23:36
Well, it does. But But the point I’m making is the press what how, if anybody dared to propose such a prohibition, they would hell that it’s violates their first amendment right. To inform the public. These people have been charged and the public has a right to know who they are, and everything about them that we can dig up and Forbes with all the sudden, all dead. They recognize they in the story, they said that that people who have been cleared, can never clear what’s out there about them. They can’t do that they recognize that, but I promise you they will. It’s like the people who How about. We’ve got folks who constantly say the system’s not fair because people who don’t have money, don’t get representation. I say, Okay, well, let’s work through this. Let’s look for a solution. Do you want to put more money into indigent defense, which may be a collection of additional assessments on someone? Because we need the pot of money that’s available for me too fast to grow? They say no. I said, Well, do you want to limit what people who have money can spend on their own defense? Because that would be a way of equalizing and of course, I’m not spouting either of those options. I’m just asking them because they’re the ones moaning about how bad it is. And they say no, I say okay, well, we’ve just gone through a couple of options and So says the things that come to my mind that we could do. What is your solution? Do you want to commandeer the services of private attorneys and say that we will confiscate and require you to represent them and not become one? Oh, we can’t do that. I say, Okay, well, then what can we do? And I never get an answer. I get crickets. Mr. Forbes, what can we do to cure this? Because we agree with you. What can we do?
Andy 1:25:33
Absolutely. Ashley, anything, dad?
Ashley 1:25:36
No, everything that Larry just said is right on point in terms of every time there’s something passed or whatever. We talked about that small budget, and it’s like, well, are we going to put more research sources into indigent defense? Some states actually require lawyers contribute their time. It’s mandatory that they do indigent defense. I don’t know how they’re compensated. I don’t know. The state pays them per case or whatever or if they have to do it is like pro bono time. But I think most lawyers balk at that because they have to earn a living because they have to eat. But it does not solve the problem. I agree with Larry, there is no good answer. There. There needs to be a way to provide defenses for people but I’m not sure how we do it.
Unknown Speaker 1:26:22
At the end of the day, we’re about public safety. But when it comes to kids, public safety and rehabilitation are kind of inextricably linked.
Andy 1:26:30
Let’s move on to this article from the LA Times that California, the bastion of liberalism, this their offenders under 21 would automatically be tried as juveniles under California bill. Why? I mean, if they’re 18, man, I mean, even if they’re 15 and they do something heinous, shouldn’t we put them through the wringer and throw the entire book the entire bookshelf at them, instead of trying to hit them with kid gloves?
Larry 1:26:56
No, we should not and thankfully, our state doesn’t do that. We would not we would not be able to match this if this passes in California, I don’t think this will pass. But raising the age we’ve we’ve all recognized that the brain development hasn’t stopped it it even at 21. So this is coming out of a legislator from Berkeley, I have by Dubey acid is going to pass. California has made tremendous strides already, in terms of improving the juvenile justice system and cutting down the number dramatically. People are in custody. And, and I’m, I’m doubtful that this is going to pass but at least someone had the courage to introduce it in it. And it’s To me, it’s recognizing that we should, we should look at rather, putting more and more younger people in front of adult courts, which is hard to do as a prosecutor Asher tell tell people how hard it is to put a juvenile and adult court in this state compared compared to a state like Georgia that you’re somewhat familiar with. Describe what you have to do if you want to try a juvenile. Listen on Here,
Ashley 1:28:01
you have to the burden of proof for trying to juvenile as an adult here is in measurable, it is very, very rarely done. good reason. Like I’m in total agreement that we shouldn’t be putting juveniles into prison, we shouldn’t be putting juveniles into even custody, we should try everything else. But to get a juvenile, even if they’ve committed, or they’re accused of murder, or even if they’re convicted of murder, and doing them as a serious youthful offender here is a high burden of proof as well as it should be. And I think it’s interesting because the age that they’re trying to raise it to is 21, which I believe there’s a bill here, I’m not sure where it’s at, in the legislature it of trying to raise the age to buy cigarettes to 21, because the age to buy alcohol is also 21. And it’s all based on the same premise that your brain like Larry says, has not stopped developing and we recognize that there isn’t some magic age at 18. So why is it that we’re concerned About not providing cigarettes and alcohol to somebody whose brain is developing, but we have no problem throwing them in prison when they can’t even formulate good concepts at that age either. So I think we should kind of line them all up. But I’m with Larry, I don’t think this bill is going to pass. I think it’s, it’s a great Dult I don’t think it’s going to pass.
Andy 1:29:20
Is there this there’s something to be said, Larry of introducing it just to sort of like, you know, Blaze the trail, and then it will maybe get tweaked or maybe you’ll just get introduced in a session or two from now and that you’re planting the seed and that will eventually grow to fruition?
Larry 1:29:36
Yes, there is something to be said about that. Normally, major reforms don’t occur on first attempt, it takes it takes years of work. This is going to generate some good discussion, hopefully, and hopefully within a period of time, says California does tend to lead the way on many things that they will successfully get this into statute and California and then we can We can say, Look, they’re doing a California, it would it would set the path for us. But we’ve we’ve already done a pretty decent job. I mean, I tell the Cody posted store over and over again. Because that’s an example of a 14 year old who all he did was kill three people, there’s families, but his mother and father and sister, and they could not they could not put him in adult court. He was sentenced to our juvenile system, and he was released at age 21. Now, we had a failure of our juvenile system with DMR Griego, who was sentenced, and I can’t even begin to comprehend how they’ve managed to undo his juvenile sentence. Because it was so appalling to me that when he went out with him, some number of days of reaching his 21st birthday when he should have been released, they filed an extraordinary motion and actually, if you can do a better job explaining it, but they kept nearby in custody, and they sentenced him as an adult after he had been waiting to get out of prison sentence a big center started under under the under the juvenile code. How did they do that?
Ashley 1:30:57
So essentially what they did is they went back on his behavior was exhibited while he was in custody. And when he hit the age of majority when they should release him, they actually found a way to keep him in and state that he was not amenable to treatment and that if release, he was not amenable to anything that they could do after he was 21. And so it was a sleight of hand is what it really was. You rarely see it happened but they worked night and day to keep that kid in based on his behavior while he was in custody. And I’ve seen that happen where what they do is a juvenile goes in on a relatively minor offense and they just keep them in until they reach age of either the age of majority which normally happens at 21. Or they do something like what they did with me and my Greg and Laurie and I were both shaking our heads at the way they did that because legally I’ve never seen that done in 25 years.
Larry 1:31:54
Well, I have not seen it done it and he I don’t think that when your sales on a juice Code there’s Is there a clause in there? And I’m truly not in my league here? Because I don’t I’ve never worked in this area. But is there a clause in there that allows you to reach back if the person they’re supposed to be I know the findings that you have to be amenable to that the status show they’re not amenable to any treatment anywhere in the state. But is there a respect clause, that if they were found to beatable, and they did not respond to treatment? Or they can, or they can undo that decision? Is that is that what they did with the event?
Ashley 1:32:25
That is what they did. It’s not technically in the juvenile code. What they did is they relied on the fact that they could show that he had been successful, successful that treatment and what they were actually going to do is bring him up on charges on stuff that occurred in the jail and instead they use that that as a kickstand to do the amenability thing, but technically amenability is supposed to happen when they’re first going into the system, or you can do it at the at the end of when they turn 18 to see if you can keep them until they’re 21 but courts lose jurisdiction. Pursuant to the genetic code when they hit 21 and that’s
Larry 1:33:03
what I thought he should have walked free when he turned 21. But he didn’t know
Unknown Speaker 1:33:07
they just shifted over to the adult system.
Larry 1:33:10
But But anyway, we have a pretty good system all in all here in the state. Some other states out there that the try very young people as adults, it’s it’s tragic because they’re nowhere near ready for that they can’t even assist their their attorneys in any meaningful way. But when you put them in an adult court, the process is different energy of a record. Actually, I’m sure you’ve been in juvenile court. But the process in terms of how a proceeding goes toward is completely different.
Ashley 1:33:39
It is dedication, it isn’t technically a prosecution, it’s a petition. The parents are actually parties to the petition. There’s there’s a lot of things, and it’s designed that way for a reason. It’s designed to keep juveniles out of the system needlessly. So yeah, normally, the judges that I’ve been in front of do everything they can to keep a juvenile but out of the system. But having seen it juvenile court, both in in District Court, and also their parole hearings and everything. It’s, it’s stunning to see some of the stuff that they do.
Unknown Speaker 1:34:13
But it’s an excellent question.
Andy 1:34:15
So patron David asked for Larry’s opinion. And actually since you are here, obviously, we will get your take on it too. And this is a What can you at least like what is this thing called?
Larry 1:34:28
This is the plaintiffs response to defendants motion to dismiss. And every time you file a lawsuit challenging any aspect of state behavior, there’s going to be a plethora of motions to dismiss. And this this is standard procedure. They say that, that there’s not a justiciable controversy that there’s no that you’re outside the statue of limitations, anything that can think of to say that why the case should go forward because it Can’t can’t go forward, you can’t win if the case is tossed on technical grounds. So this is a standard motion to dismiss. And this is the response to the state’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit that was filed in Florida, which I’m not familiar with. It’s a nicely done document. I went through it and highlighted some things I thought were relevant. Ashley, you can feel free to highlight more things. Will you should make this available in the show notes. But my reaction to it was that the attorneys did a great job. very thorough, and the judge could still dismiss it. But I would be I would be very surprised if all these claims go down on this motion, because they say we’re very thorough in their response. And they really, they really called out some hypocrisy and the state on behalf of the State. They What was that about the bricks of you and I both noticed that what about the bricks?
Ashley 1:35:54
That’s my favorite quote where they start out they equate the registry as to a backpack and The backpack started out relatively empty in light and you’re walking across the road. And with each step, you take the out of brick to it so that by the time you get to the other side of the road, the backpack is completely too heavy to carry. And that’s what the way that they’re analogizing. The registry and the way that it has just evolved since the 90s, where they just keep adding requirements and everything else. It is really, really well written. I love that, quote, I’m going to find a way to use that.
Larry 1:36:29
And we we noted some similarities between the defense’s that they’re asserting that they’re using the same similar defenses that are case which these are common tactics. It’s like I tell people when they’re waiting trial, and they get so upset, they say, I just can’t stand the stress of this anymore. And I said, Well, if they can ever bring you to trial, I can promise you one thing, you’ll never be convicted. Well, the same operates at our side, if they can keep us from ever getting to trial will never win. So that Their strategy is to make sure we don’t get our day in court.
Ashley 1:37:03
And the famous thing about that is the finger pointing that goes on in this and you see it anytime you have multiple agencies involved, we see it in the Illinois to where everybody’s like, Oh, it’s not my job to let people out after they’ve done their sentence. It’s not my job to come up with a plan. And they just point fingers and they’re doing it in this one, they’re doing it in ours. It is so common, like Larry said,
Andy 1:37:24
and this is this is in reference to like the Smith v Doe. That the registry now is just so much very different than what was established as being the standard back then that all of these various different things have been being challenged being questioned as as the efficacy of it all and the constitutionality. Isn’t that what this sort of is a hinting around?
Larry 1:37:48
That’s the one thing I slightly disagree with these attorneys all but but it’s only a slight disagreement. the efficacy of my view is not important. It’s important to us because we know the registry is not effective. We know that. But public policy doesn’t depend on something being effective. It depends on public supporting it in and not violating the Constitution. So therefore, they were just a little more on the efficacy of registration I would be if I were writing the brief myself, but what they did do is they pointed out the constant evolution and how many fundamental rights that infringes on they have the right to travel and so many so many things here that they’ve that they’ve thrown into this. And they’ve done a very good job of citing two cases around the country where the Spanish versus doe no longer applies because registries like what existed at the time, Smith versus doe was decided virtually don’t exist anywhere in the country anymore, with a couple of exceptions. And Smith versus doe actually didn’t say you can do anything you want to and there’s a quote in here. They said that That says versus doe doesn’t say that anything you can imagine that you want to do it be constitutional. In fact, it said just the opposite. It said, you can do this limited registry because it does not impose any disabilities or restraints. It does not impair your ability to travel and work where you want to. And that that’s so many courts have just said, Oh, the state says dismissed versus done was controlled and we’re not going to work. We say Smith versus doe was controlling the Supreme Court said registers, okay, the Supreme Court said a limited registry, that Alaska had it back in the 90s was okay. They did say all registers would be okay. And people people lose sight of that. I could design a constitutional registry if I wanted to, if someone asked me to, but it would be so benign that partly no one would appreciate having it all the people who’ve taught their defective since the registry, because for three constitutional you really could require anything of anybody. But just For the listeners out there on footnote number 10, the National Association for rational sex offense, sexual offense laws got cited and footnote 10. And the brief
Andy 1:40:11
and what did you What did they say what did those crackpot say
Larry 1:40:14
but there it is. It’s a case decided that the the the National Association for rational sex offenses of sex offense laws at L versus Stein. And that’s a case that they’re citing, but but it’s, it’s a well done document. So those of you out there who like to read, well done stuff, this would certainly be worth your read if you can concentrate for 27 pages.
Andy 1:40:39
And there’s there’s an expression you use and you use it all the freakin time and I can never like then regurgitate it back it’s disabilities and restraints is a very concise way of wording, all of the garbage that the registry brings on you.
Larry 1:40:55
That is correct. And that’s where you were the the distance vs Doh actually helps you because you can say, actually the Smith court didn’t say you can do anything. They said you could do what Alaska was doing, precisely because it didn’t impose disabilities or restraints. And there’s so many disabilities the restraints on this for escape. Florida thinks it’s the worst in the country. Alabama sixers is the worst in the country. Louisiana sixers is the worst in the country. Illinois thinks there’s worse in the country. But they’re all bad. That baby there. They’re all bad.
Andy 1:41:30
Well, cool. So I’m glad that someone pointed this out, like so this was from patron David not using last names on purpose. But thank you for bringing it to my and bringing to our attention first to give a cover.
Larry 1:41:43
It’s a great it’s a great document and we’ll see what now the state will be able to reply they will be able to reply to this because they’ve made a motion. The the plaintiffs have responded to the motion and then they get to reply and support and they’ll Delphi Brief and then the judge will rule on the motion to dismiss some or all the claims. That then that’s one will move forward. Excellent.
Andy 1:42:10
Ashley. So now that we’re going to wrap things up, do you have any final words, comments, complaints, concerns, anything that you would like to say before we head out of here?
Ashley 1:42:21
Larry, is there any other news? I mean, we had a busy, successful exciting week, I think, is there anything else we want to share?
Larry 1:42:29
Well, we’re gonna we got a busy week coming up this week. We got we got to 37 through 37. And you’re not gonna be at my side on Tuesday.
Unknown Speaker 1:42:39
You’re gonna have to carry the torch without me.
Larry 1:42:41
What can you do that Larry? I won’t be able to.
Andy 1:42:48
All right, well, thank you. As always, Ashley, it is always a delight and a pleasure to have you you make it a whole lot of fun when you are here and I greatly appreciate it.
Ashley 1:42:56
Well, thank you. This was a really good we had so much to Discuss and I’m looking forward to future discussions.
Andy 1:43:03
Cool. And Larry, as always, you are spectacular as well. And I’m going to run through the contact stuff. Follow us on Twitter, YouTube. All those places. The website is registering matters dot CEO, Larry, I know you love some voicemail messages and I still haven’t shut off the phone but it’s 747-227-4477. And the email address is registry matters cast at gmail. com and the best and our favorite way to support the podcast is https://patreon.com/registrymatters. Anything else there before we go?
Larry 1:43:36
And how many more weeks are we’re going to before we disconnect the phone?
Unknown Speaker 1:43:40
Probably infinity, infinity.
Larry 1:43:43
All right.
Andy 1:43:45
And with that, I say goodnight to everybody. And I hope you have a great weekend and I’ll talk to you soon. Good night
Unknown Speaker 1:43:50
night everybody. Night bye
Transcribed by https://otter.ai