He Finds Music Stars. Now He's Helping Us Save the Life of a Wrongfully Convicted Man

Welcome to Pablo Tore finds out I am Pablo Tore and today we're gonna find out what this sound is. If you do get picked up and you're suspected of a crime, just say your name, your address, and then say the following words I want to lawyer and then shut the f*** up. Right after this ad. This is your business. This is your business superchance with the help of zero accounting software! This is managing cash flow. This is managing your cash flow with the help of zero accounting software! These are your customers paying you. These are your customers having more ways to pay you with the help of zero accounting software! This is your business superchance with the help of zero helping you show your cash flow by giving your customers more ways to pay. So now you can focus on making your business food! Superchance your business today with the help of zero. So, Sarah with an X! Grab the maltisers because that's the ping-ping ping of Priya being added to yet another group chat. This time it's Bristol High reunion hall, Wine emoji, Dance emoji, Pokey tongue emoji, apparently to arrange a holiday with 15 women who haven't hung out since jaggings. Shove some more maltisers in because we're still debating a chat name. And frankly, have more chance of shaving a unicorn in a phone booth than the plans making it out of this group chat. Maltesers, look on the light side. We're on June 2029. I have lots of people on this show who have absurd resumes. You might be a gold medalist in this category. Wow, I'm, I'm rarely speechless but that introduction has left me at a loss for words. Jason Flom, thank you for being here by the way. Of course, I'm thrilled to be here actually. I'm thrilled to have you hopefully help me understand what it is that you do in your current act. But act one, can we just start there with music? Yeah, of course. You're the guy who personally discovered and or signed. How should we do the list? Do you want to give me the chronology here? If you want to do a chronological order, it depends how old your listeners are but it goes back to while the 80s. The first artist I ever saw was a band called Zebra. Big points to anyone who remembers them. Twisted sisters, get roast, don't tell pulpilates, white lion, jewel. I'm who it's I'm your soul. We're going way back into a memory machine, Tori Amos. Then I ended up, I'm leaving some out of course just to memory whatever was escape club. That was a funny one. Wow, wow, West. Then I started my own company which was Lava Records and Lava Records which was a division of Atlantic at the time because I started Atlantic and Lava had a great run with Mashbox 20. In Kid Rock and Transibere and Orchestra and Simple Plan and the Cores and so many different acts, Port Kid Pintry, etc etc and and with McCain. I'm in your dragon shoulder, I'll be. And then ultimately I ended up running Atlantic Records for a little while, assigned the Paramore back then and then we move on to Virgin Records. I left Atlantic and went to Virgin where I was the 44 year old Virgin and then during that time at Virgin and Capital was Katy Perry. In a bunch of other acts, 30 seconds to Mars and then ultimately left there to join the number one company in the music business. Public records still number one to this day. And I've been with them ever since and have signed in the partnership with Republic acts like Jesse J and Lord and Greta Van Fleet and many others we have one called The Warning that's blowing up right now. Which is really exciting. So yeah so it's been the music business has been very good to me. I left out a lot of names. If you're listening and you're one of those names forgive me, my memory is not what it used to be. I've been very very very lucky in the music industry. You have a sense of taste and a skill clearly that I want to understand. Like why are you good at this? But before we get to that, I do need to acknowledge that the artist that has the most current day present resonance is Kid Rock. And that is the sound of a man who knows where I'm going with this. Yeah. I don't even know what to say. I mean it's... He named you in a song. The seminal album double without a cause. He named me in the song I got one for you. He says, Hey Flam, you want to hit money? It was a very very difficult process trying to break him because he didn't fit into any sort of real established box. But it was fun for that reason. And we knocked out of the park. You know, now... Now I don't know. I don't know what to say. I need you to imagine that you're me for a second. And it's last December and you're at this upscale holiday party in New York. And you randomly get introduced to this guy you've never met before who's wearing a hoodie and glasses. And he kind of looks like John Chotero. And he kind of sounds like Ray Romano. And the first thing this guy starts telling you about is his former life and obsession with sports. Having been to rehab and then AA, I ended up in GA as well. Gamble's anonymous makes alcoholics anonymous look like a picnic in the park with, you know, the glee club. It's not to minimize the problems that come from alcoholism and drugs. But Gamble's anonymous, you really get us a sense of how dark it can get when you're trapped in the throes of a gambling addiction. When I walked into the first meeting, they always asked the newcomers 20 questions. Have you ever lost a thing this week? That, all the things that gambling takes away from you. And the only question I answered no to is have you ever considered killing yourself as a result of gambling. And I think almost everybody else in that room had in gone 20 for 20. When did you know that when it came to a sports betting, you had a problem. When I walked into GA, I think I owed bookies $35,000 and this was like, you know, in the late 80s, right? Well, that was a lot of money. I didn't have money. I had nothing in the bank. Were you betting on mostly baseball but also basketball, football. And I was betting a thousand dollars a game. You know, it was only because I'm a huge meds fan that, you know, I stayed alive in 86 because the meds won over 100 games a year on the World Series. But, you know, I was betting more money than I had on those World Series games. And now, you know, I just don't do it. Now, instead, Jason Flom's time is spent making bets of a different kind. One of his portfolios, as you already heard, is in music. He's this insanely prolific talent scout and the head of Lava Records. And in the music industry, Jason believes his superpower can be basically summarized in one word. And that word is instinct. Now, of course, Pablo, it's become a business that is driven by data to a meaningful degree. And it's very sophisticated data. When I started the industry, we didn't have access to any of that kind of stuff. Although, I used to call record stores just to ask, like, are there any local acts that kids are looking for? Is anybody I'd call clubs? I'd call anybody that might know about something that was brewing. Which is how his All Star roster of prospects includes everyone from Lord to the dude who performed at the Turning Point USA Super Bowl halftime show last week to a young hit band, like The Warning. These three sisters from Monterey, Mexico, who just, they played like Metallica. I was like, what are they doing? It was nuts. But the night Jason Flom friscouted The Warning, it turns out. Takes us straight to this whole other set of calls that he spends his time making. Calls about his most important prospects at this point. And lately, hours. And here's where the world's collide, Pablo, this particular night, and it was, I think, maybe six years ago, a woman named Devon O'Connor, who works at Lava for me. She had said to me, you got to go to the Mercury Lounge tonight. It was the middle of the winter. This band called The Warning is playing a guy who'd check him out. I didn't know think about them. But I said, okay, I'll go. And it was a frigid night in New York City. But on the way down there, I got a call from a guy who I had been trying to help because he had come to me for help because his father was scheduled to be executed for murdering his mother. So here's this guy who reached out to me and said the dad's name was Donnie Cleveland Lance. It were just kids when their father Donnie Lance was convicted of brutally killing their mother. As adults, Jesse Lance and Stephanie Cape say their dad has always played a big part of their life despite being behind bars. We have always included daddy in every major decision in our lives. We are closer to our father in prison than a lot of our friends are to their fathers who live near them. The two wrote in a letter to the state parole board. But the relief they sought didn't come on Tuesday. The board denied Lance's request for clemency. His execution is scheduled for Wednesday night. But I wasn't aware that this was the particular night that he was scheduled to be executed. And that night, I got a call on my way down to the Mercury Lounge from Jesse, this is son who said they executed my dad tonight. And he said they dumped his last meal on the floor. I mean, even now I'm getting chills thinking about it. Like six years ago, I was like, they did what? And he goes, yeah, you know, he tried to pick up some fries and stuff, but that was all he got to eat. And I was like, I was so disgusted. I was so f***ing angry. And, you know, I get to the Mercury Lounge and truth be told, I think I did a shot in his honor. I don't do shots. I mean, I can't remember the last time I did one other than that. But I just was like, I had to do something. And so I took one shot at the Kila. Didn't want to be there at all. I didn't want to be anywhere, honestly, after that. That was in the state of Georgia. I'm looking at the article now. Yeah. The state of Georgia did that. Right. So it was Georgia. So both of the children, both of his children who lost their mother had begged the parole board not to kill their father. And the parole board didn't care. People said they said to me, don't you think that victims' families should have some say in the sentence, if they think a death penalty or this or that or and I'm like, well, they don't have any say what it's the other way around. No one listens to them. This is, I've seen so many cases where the family has begged for an execution not to go forward. Even if a guy was guilty, right? But they don't want to see somebody else die. They don't want that. And the state, no matter which state it is, is like f*** off. We don't care about your feelings. But we should care about your feelings only if you agree with us that we should dull out the harshest punishment possible in almost every case. So I'm like, it's got to cut both ways. And Donnie's is an extreme case because it's the children who lost their freaking mother and wanted their dad not to be executed for not killing their mother and wanted them to state to go find who actually did it. But none of those things are ever going to happen. He's dead. But what you just said in that story, which I didn't know anything about, that is what your brain is like now. Yeah. You are on your way to sign, hit musical acts. It turns out, while also managing an inbox that has become your current act. And I want to understand when you started taking an interest in wrongful conviction, which is the name of your show as well as your passion. When did that become apparent to you? I need to find a way to do this over here. I'm going to find the next story, Amos. And also I need to talk to Donnie Cleveland Lance because no one else is giving a sh**. This phase of my life began in a very unexpected and sort of sudden way in 1993. When I saw an article in the New York Post of All Places, the New York Post, a newspaper that I probably never bought until that day and have never bought again and no one should ever buy. But the sorry, what can I say? But anyway, but this particular day, the other newspapers were sold out. So I bought the New York Post because I was getting the taxi. The rust that you're disavowing the New York Post at this point, but I digress. So I was getting the taxi and I wanted something to read. But this was when we didn't have phones to distract us constantly while we were sitting in the back of the taxi, 1993. So I bought the post. And there was a story that I was obviously meant to read. And the story was a story about a kid named Stephen Lennon who had just been denied clemency by Governor Mario Cuomo. And spite of the fact that the censing judge, the warden, and even Geraldine Ferraro, and some of you will remember her. She was the first woman to ever receive a nomination for Vice President from one of the two major political parties in this country. So she had even written a letter on his behalf. And yet this kid had been turned down for parole. What was he in for? Well, he was doing 15 to life on a nonviolent first offense cocaine possession charge in a maximum security prison in New York state. He was in Dan Amora. And he had gotten a college degree or two in prison and he had done all these different things. He was 32. I was 32. He had been in prison for eight years. I had been sober by this point for almost eight years. And I was like, I'm an atheist, but there but for the grace of something higher than me goes, I, right? So I felt like I got to do something about this because that very well could have been me. And I knew it. And so I decided to just try. And I called his mother, surely because her name was in the phone book. She lived in Rome, New York. I offered my help. I said, I don't have a lot of money, which I didn't, but I'll send you what I can in order to help you get a new lawyer. I don't know how this stuff works. I'm not a lawyer. Everyone thinks I am. I'm a high school graduate. So I called the only criminal defense lawyer I knew at the time. The kind of Bob Kalina. He represented Skid Row and Stone Temple pilots. His partner was their music lawyer. And they were getting busted frequently back. I was going to say this feels like a useful person to have if you're the way it's been. Scott Wiley and Sebastian Bach. He was on speed down. So I'm like, that Sebastian Bach was one of the Davinos that tipped over to get you. I know it's kind of perfect. So I love Sebastian. Anyway, so I called Bob and said, well, what can be done? It goes nothing. It's nothing because there's a Rockefeller drug laws. And it just is what it is. It's thousands of cases like this. And I said, well, Bob, do be a favorite. Talk too surely on the phone with you because it's really bugging me. So he came to my office. He talked during the phone. He said, look, I'll read the transcripts of the trial. So he calls me up a month later. And he says, you know, I found a loophole, an angle. It's not going to work. But I've been meaning to take a case pro bono anyway. So I'll try it. I go, great. Six months later, we end up in Malone, New York, in the courthouse. And I'm sitting there holding Mrs. Lenin's hand. Her husband Stan was on the other side of her. The judge was this old guy with white hair. I thought, this is not going to go well. And they bring Steven in in shackles, right? His legs are chained together. His hands are chained to his waist. I'm like, didn't it say in the paper nonviolent first offender? I'm like, doesn't it seem a little extreme? Well, whatever. So arguments go back and forth. I literally have no idea what anyone's talking about. I still had a mullet and purple dock martens. Okay. So that's what we're talking about here. And I have pictures to prove it. I don't like the odds of anything is about to happen. No. So the judge, after hearing whatever everybody had to say, things that gavled down, it says the motion is granted. And so Bob, the chubby Bob and his three-piece suit, the lawyer comes scurrying over. And I'm like, Bob, what happened? And he goes, we won. And I was like, we what? I don't if he was more surprised than I was. He's like, we won. And I was like, holy s**t. That's the best thing I've ever heard. And so, I decided that in there that if this was my superpower, then I was going to use it for as long as I could as often as I could. And so that led me to join the board of families against mandatory minimums, which I read about in Rolling Stone magazine. I became the first board member there. And then soon after that, I saw something on TV about a case that the Innocence Project had won where they had gotten a guy who was scheduled to be executed. They had found the DNA. These two genuses, Barry Shek and Peter Newfell, with their law books and their microscotch. The founders of the Innocence Project. Correct. Right. So, I joined the Innocence Project board. And ever since I've been obsessed with helping people get out of prison. And you just met one of them who came home 10 days ago. So it's just what I do. Luckily, I'm good at it. And you're referring to Avi, who is behind the glass of a podcast studio now, which is a fantastic revelation to meet him. And so the question of when you were looking at, is this person going to be a star? Is this a prospect worth signing? And now your self-imposed responsibility is, I got to figure out which cases I can turn my attention to and platform in the way that I am. You're a record executive in a different way. Still dealing with records. Different kind of executive. Was there any skill in what you used to do and still do and what you're doing with wrongful conviction? Well, this is why your show is one of my favorite shows to listen to. Because you're only the second person that's ever drawn that connection. And it was Jeff Campler, my partner and great friend of over 30 years, who's the CEO of Lava Media, my company. So he runs the podcast, the wrongful conviction and the whole Lava for good podcast platform. And he said that it's a similar instinct that allows you to identify not just cases, but also causes. And I'm very proud that I've been able to identify future leaders in the criminal justice reform space, who I've been able to provide some seed funding for or other assistance who've gone on to help move the needle dramatically in the fight to end the disastrous failed social policy. And wildly expensive social policy known as mass incarceration. So of course, my wife, Kalea, who is the daughter of Muhammad Ali, who's on your t-shirt today. It was just so great. I did it. I did it. Plan. My thrill at Manila shirt has been featured many times on this show. Never with one of his in-laws. Yeah, yeah. We are here today. Yeah. So she works with me on this stuff day in and day out. You know, the day after our wedding, we went to Texas to try to help prevent the execution of Robert Roberson. Yeah. And our first anniversary, we were on death row in Texas, visiting a guy who's innocent, has been in for 30 years. And we're hoping we're going to be able to help him come home. Another horrible case. So yeah, it's just a, it's a big part of our life. We wouldn't have it any other way. And I'm just so lucky that she is her father's daughter in every conceivable way. She has her father's spirit and she has his courage. And she walks into these places and it's almost like the seas part. And of course, she's also super helpful because, you know, she can, it's got to the point Pablo so plenty where, you know, I, when my phone rings, it's most of the time that somebody calling me from prison or someone who's recently been freed. Many of the people who were advocating for where if they call my phone and I don't pick up, they just call her phone or vice versa, right? But with the question of you could have a life that does not require you to go into these places and take these calls. And many people work their entire lives to specifically avoid the very thing that you're running towards. And having now been a person who met you in a way that only reflects my ignorance because I was like, oh, wait a you're the wrong book and fiction guy. Oh, wait a minute. And you're wearing, of course, your own merch. And I'm like slow on the uptake at this fancy Apple podcasts like party event, cocktail, past or dervish sort of a thing. And I'm like, my show, we just started looking into the thing that it turns out you've done 560 plus fucking episodes about with the story of Charles Don Flores. The Charles Don Flores case. It's so crazy that in our crazy life where we're immersed in this stuff day in and day out. And each time I think I've heard it all, right? And I'm always like, that's it. I can't. Anyway, this is two nuts, right? But now I've heard everything. And then of course, the next one comes. And of course, Kalea, we're together almost all the time. We travel together, we do everything together. We go to prisons together. We go to wherever we go. In during our recent snowstorm, we're having, I was watching the video on my laptop on the couch, on the opposite side of the room from where she was. And I didn't even think she was paying attention. And 15 minutes in, because she was working on whatever she was working on 15 minutes in, Kalea goes, this guy's got to be at the top of our priority list. Like, this is insane. And so I hope everybody has that same reaction. I hope everybody watches that episode that you did. And here's our voices today and wants to get involved because this case, this man, it's all just, it's beyond. What jumped out to you about his case? Again, you've seen it all. What stuck out to you about, about him. So this is a really easy story to tell. His presence is, I mean, he's an ethereal guy, right? I mean, he, yeah, he could talk football with the best of him. And he is our Dallas Cowboys correspondent. He's dialed in on NFL stuff way more so than I could ever be. But that's beside the point. He has this aura, right? I started hearing a bunch about meditation. I was reading about meditation. I was hearing about meditation on the radio. Everywhere I turned, it seemed like meditation was coming at me. And I was like, I want to learn how to meditate. And I did. And with the help of friends and people sending me books and that kind of thing, that was the key. That was the key of putting space between the awareness that is me and my ego, which is pride, which is anger, which is all of those things, right? And the more you meditate, the more the space is in between that, right? And that was what gave me the handle on control. And is that, that makes sense? It's, it's, frankly, the only thing that explains how you could be a Cowboys fan this time. It's like a grace, you know, and again, I'm not a religious guy, but he is, and he doesn't come across that way either. He just has this spirit that is unbroken, not only unbroken, but it's indomitable. It's whatever you want to call it. He is transcending his circumstances so much so that even though you're watching him in this, and I've been to death row in Texas four times, right? The Polonski unit in Livingston. I've been in that room that you were in, right? With the vending machines and the whole thing. Yeah. It's shocking how many of these people are on death row in Texas or all over the country or in any state where they have the death penalty still. But Charles, it's not unique because there are others that have this almost unreal ability to transcend their circumstances and their surroundings. But then when you get into the circumstances of his case and you go, what? Like, and so what I mean by that, for people who haven't heard your episode already, I will summarize it. Please. Very succinctly. So in the late 90s, the woman named Betty Black, 64-year-old woman, I lived outside of Dallas, had her home broken into and she was killed during this, I guess it was a botched robbery. Two guys drove away, one witness saw the two guys and she described them as white guys with long, just Jesus-y type of hair, whatever, right? Tall white guys, long dark hair. Right. Charles is not a tall white guy with long dark hair, never was. Not even close. Not even close. Charles on Flores. Look him up. He's always been more of a lineman than a wide receiver. Yeah. So they knew who the shooter was. He pled guilty to being the shooter and there was no evidence connecting Charles to the crime and he had alibis. So all of this presents for a very difficult case to make against him. If the thing that you're wondering is, should this guy be killed by the state? He didn't kill the woman, no physical evidence at the scene and doesn't match the description from the eyewitness. So far, it would seem logical to say, probably shouldn't f***ing kill this guy. Shouldn't convict him, shouldn't sentence him and shouldn't kill him. All of it. Right. So here you have the actual killer who I understand, his father is a cop. Is that correct? Yes. There is a depth to this story. Yes. That we don't even have, we don't have time to even get into, but there is much more. Yeah, which makes it very similar to the Rob Will case, by the way, which is another innocent guy on death row in Texas right down the hall from Charles. But so the state decided that they would allow Richard to take a plea, but they still had this problem of how the hell they were going to convict Charles with no evidence whatsoever. Well, they solved that problem by hypnotizing the witness. And you were familiar with forensic hypnosis before this whole thing? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've seen that before. In fact, one of the earliest episodes we ever did was Guineham Keith on Harvard, an important news case, Virginia, and he was, he did, he ended up doing 34 years, narrowly avoided the death penalty. And there was the same thing they hypnotized the witness. But in this case, they do this forensic hypnosis technique. And there's a video, which we play in the episode, you can see these cops in Texas, like do the, basically, the you're getting sleepy. It's not that far off from that. Have you ever seen a documentary film like on TV, I like the, with the Animal Kings and the Show, or, you know, what we're going to do is, is, is when we get you into a deep theta-pipnosis, we're going to take you to a theater. It's going to be your own private theater. And basically, what it is, you're going to be seeing in a documentary. You're going to be seeing the film of the events that occurred on that day on that morning. Go ahead. And you're like, this is science, typically, and legally allowed. Or was. And that's another thing. So, using this dubious as two kind of a word, but using this junkiest of junk science, and we did a whole season of wrongful conviction, what we call it wrongful conviction junk science, where each week, we delved into a different one of the junk sciences, which ones you ask, well, we did everything arson to blood spatter to boot print analysis to forensic odontology, which is teeth marks, hair analysis, they're pure junk. And so, but they're none more junky than the forensic hypnosis, which of course is just, it would be funny if it wasn't so sick and so devastating at the consequence, we're so devastating this case. So they hypnotize this woman. You can watch it yourself a week after she had initially not identified Charles, and they managed to induce her, I would say, into identifying a guy who wasn't there. And sure enough, using that technique, they were able to secure his conviction. Well, fast forward to, he's on death row. He brings a suit. The Texas courts, they said, this can no longer be an accepted practice forensic hypnosis in Texas criminal cases. The crazy thing is, and this is not the only time I've seen this, not by a stretch, they refused to make this change retroactive. That part. That part. Like the Dallas Morning News, they do a long investigative series about forensic hypnosis, they mentioned Charles Flores. This is part of the impetus to effectively shame the state of Texas into changing. What is on the books, which is to say, they officially rule that you can't use forensic police hypnosis in a criminal trial. You can't do it anymore, but it does not apply if it's already happened. And that is, is, is so illogical to me. It happens a lot in our criminal legal system. It's really weird how you can say that if you did the same thing that we're now saying, like, for instance, with sentencing, you see this time to time, well, we're reformed sentencing laws, but we won't make them retroactive. It's like the old saying, how'd you like to be the last guy to die from, you know, an unjust war? How'd you like to be the last guy sentenced under the old sentencing laws? For instance, the old crack cocaine sentencing laws. And I was, you know, I was a big advocate for for reforming those back when they used to be 100 to one in 2010. They were rolled back to make them 18 to one, but they weren't made retroactive. The Republicans wouldn't allow it to be made retroactive. So those guys who are unlucky enough to be convicted under the old laws were just left there to language, while some other guy would come into the same prison with a new conviction for the same crime that they committed, but be sentenced to 82% last time because they made it, they changed it from 100 to one to 18 to one, the crack cocaine disparity. Again, that was the best deal that could be made with the Republicans at that time. It didn't want that law changed. There's no way to make sense out of it. Both things can't be true, that it was okay before, but not okay now or the other way around whatever it is. And as these changes are made in practices like this very welcome change to the forensic hypnosis practice in Texas, they absolutely should be done retroactively and it should be an automatic cause for relief or a new trial or something. A new trial, right? And so all trials has been fighting for is can you hear my story? Well, the regards to my case, man, I just want a fair review. I just want a fair shot. The Dallas County Prosecution Office, the Dallas D.A., they have a convictions integrity unit. And I want them to look at my hands. I want them to review the case. Give it a look. Let the evidence speak for itself. Can we go back into court and we can now with light of day after more than a quarter century of again, almost entirely solitary confinement. Can we allow me to get a new hearing? And let us not forget that the actual killer was paroled in 2016, right? So he's been out for 10 years. Yeah, while Charles has been sitting in a, you know, tiny cell, a dungeon effectively on Texas death row, where sometimes for a year or more, they don't even see sunlight, not even allowed outside. You can't help a wonder how he maintains how he hasn't lost his mind and the noise and this and the terrible food and the, you know, just like the loneliness, the total lack of any type of appropriate human contact, right? You can't even visit from family. You're done through bullet proof class. If you're lucky enough to have any family, the business you, right? And the resentment, which I would imagine is a necessary condition of all of us, just like Richard Childs is out. The guy who killed this woman and I'm in here because also by the way, another wrinkle on the legal system in Texas is that there is the law of parties, which means that if you were there allegedly, if you were there and were convicted to have been there, a necessity to this crime, you are treated sentenced as if you yourself committed capital murder. It's shocking to a lot of people and it should be shocking to everyone. The idea that the state can say, we know you didn't kill anybody, but we're going to execute you anyway. At New Balance, we believe if you run, you're a runner, however you choose to do it, because when you're not worried about doing things the right way, you're free to discover your way. And that's what running's all about. Run your way at newbalance.com slash running. Starting making tax digital is seamless with zero's HMRC recognised software. If you're a sold trader or landlord whose income tax is going digital, not only is zero MTD ready. It also gives you better control of your finances, like capturing your receipts with a snap, so all your records are accurate, sorted and ready for tax time, which changes the way you see MTD. Search MTD ready with zero. Maltese's bunnies, they're back, but like a hot person on an escalator going the other way, they're not here for long. They're a temporary thrill, like those two days you were a morning person or a bank holiday or that TV show that criminally only got one season, or even that 24 hour post where your bum looked out ragiously good. Some treats you just have to enjoy while they last. Maltese's bunnies here, but only for Easter. Maltese's, look on the light side. What would people be surprised most by if they hadn't spent more than the time they've taken to listen to this episode about just how this system works? The fact is that 97% of felony convictions in this country are a result of guilty pleas. The reason why so many people keep guilty, even if they're innocent, is because they're smart enough to recognize that the odds are stacked against you. When I say that, first of all, everybody watches these shows like Law and Order, and they get this impression that everything works fine. The authorities are doing their level best. They're going to get all the bad guys off the street. The bad guys are really bad. The good guys are really good. The scientists are great. The witnesses are great. The courageous are brave. Everything's perfect, more or less. Sometimes the cops are very horny, but we allow that because they're solving mysteries just like Sherlock Holmes. Unfortunately, that is a very, very far stretch from the truth. Then you add to that the fact that the overwhelming majority of the public are assigned public defenders. They relatively quickly come to find out that that person doesn't have time to visit them in jail, or they're most likely being held before trial because they're too poor to post-bale, which is unconstitutional, but that's a separate story because judges have to buy virtue of the constitution. They have to post-bale according to your ability to pay it, but that's almost never adhered to. There you are sitting in jail for a year, two years more, and jails in many places, including New York, are worse than prisons. They're more chaotic. There's no recreation. It might not be a law library, a toxic mixture of the most violent people with the innocent people, with people who couldn't pay parking tickets to you name it and everything in between. And so there's no sort of order at all. And most people will do anything to get out of that environment. And you've got to figure out a lot of the people in jails, a higher percentage of people in jails are innocent than people in prisons. But so now your lawyer maybe shows up to visit you, maybe never does. It's a big schlep for them to go to the jail, go through the processing, it's a whole day, right? Basically, they make it difficult on purpose. So if you do get to visit your lawyer, you may quickly come to realize that even they may be doing their level best, but they're juggling 100 or more cases, and that's not hyperbole. They're also juggling, figuring out how to pay rent. In New York City, legal aid has many attorneys who drive Uber at night or DoorDash, or they do whatever they do to make ends meet because they can't make ends meet on the salary that they're being paid. They're overworked, they're underpaid, they're exhausted, they're juggling a lot of cases, and they may tell you that your best chance is to plead guilty. You're going to be also looking at a situation where the state obvious was just telling me this morning about a guy that he was in prison with in New Jersey, because I think it's still there, who was offered three years and is serving 45. Messiah Johnson, who I spoke to this morning from Virginia, he was offered three years and got sentenced to 100 and 30. 32 years in prison for a beauty salon robbery on 35th Street in Norfolk. No one was killed or hurt, and there was no physical evidence connecting Johnson to their crime, and there was also conflicting testimony at trial before leaving office in January. Governor Terry McCollough said there is credible evidence that support Mr. Johnson's claims of being innocent. A lot of people will say, you know what, I don't have a snowballs chance in hell against the state and its infinite resources, witnesses that maybe incentivize to lie, cops, prosecutors who may be playing fast and loose, and that's probably a polite way of putting it. And so they take the plea. So I think people really need to understand that if, you know, the first of all, this could happen to you, it could happen to anyone. It normally happens to people who are poor, people of color, people who are disenfranchised, but it does happen to others as well. And it can happen to anyone wrong place, wrong time. Big problems. Most important thing to know, and I'm so glad we're going to chance to tell your audience this, is if you do get picked up and you're suspected of a crime, just say your name, your address, and then say the following words I want to lawyer, and then shut the f*** up, because nothing you can say doesn't matter if you're innocent. And those people ironically, most innocent people wavve their Miranda rights, because they think, why would I need my Miranda rights? I'm innocent. I'll tell the truth. And just like on TV, I'll go home. Well, you know what, that's your first mistake. And it may be your last mistake, because once they start talking to you, they have all sorts of ways of getting you to say stuff that you would never imagine that you would have gone and said, because you didn't know, because you're up against forces that you cannot control. And they may not be smarter than you, but they certainly are more experiencing you are. And they want one thing, which is to solve this case. The thing you keep on discovering over 550 plus episodes, right, is that it seems there are these incentives to convict. There are incentives to find guilty people. And there is no countervailing structural protection against what is the gravity of the state. That's very well said. And I talk about that a lot. How it is that we have reverse and even perverse incentives for people to close the case. You know, an attorney who's been practicing more than 40 years, a defense attorney called for me, told me that he'll often at the end of his closing argument, he'll say to the jury, when the prosecutor goes back to his office, no one's going to ask him, did you get justice? They're going to say, did you win? And we're in the culture in this world of winning. And when you think about it, they're getting pressure from their boss, who might be pretty much from their boss, who's going Pablo clean this shit up. It's getting hot, right? I don't, I got a reelection coming, whatever it is, do this. And this is very common for police prosecutors, whoever. At the end of the day, most cases don't get solved, right? We get up to murder, it's still 50% of cases that are solved nationally. And then even of the cases that they do solve, many of them are solved wrong. And when you solve the case wrong, and someone ends up on my podcast as a result, who's innocent, I think something that people don't think about, maybe it's uncomfortable to think about it, but when there's a violent crime, murder or otherwise, in which there's an actual victim, and you go and railroad an innocent person, you are working in service of the guilty person, whoever the second perpetrator was in the Charleston, Flores case was probably at the club poppin bottles when he got convicted, because they know they're done. They're no longer, they're not looking for anybody else. They got their conviction. I'm straight. Now, who else are we going to go rob tonight? You know, whatever your view is on prosecutors, public defenders, and I have friends who became prosecutors and friends who became public defenders. And I like to think that everybody is in service of justice, of the truth, right? That's the best version of a system. There is a balancing act between a defense and a prosecution. And in that pursuit, we get to the closest thing we can get as flawed meat sex towards accountability. For those who did wrong, the problem is that if you don't understand how unfair that fight is, when it comes to people without resources, especially, you are not doing something resembling truth seeking. You are servicing money. And that is where I'm like Charles Flores is a guy without resources clearly. And the question becomes how do you begin to give him what the state will not grant him as we sit here today, which is a hearing, both a consideration in general for the human suffering they've already enacted upon him, but also something resembling the pursuit of justice and because of how we have outlined this whole story at the end of that freedom. Like you have answered this in 550 plus episodes. You're going to tell stories and interview people. I don't know how well to help beyond telling people that you should take some time to listen to this man's voice and listen to the story that the state of Texas does not really give a sh** about that you need to hear. Well, look, the one thing that we've learned is that Lorenzo Johnson, who was a dear friend of Calea's and mine, who was wrongfully convicted twice in Pennsylvania in sort of 22 years of a life sentence. And when he was in prison, he decided he was going to get as much attention brought to his case as he could. He was going to get the newspapers writing and buy some good TV, he was going to get away with it. And his lawyers were like, no, no, no, that's going to piss everybody off. Don't do that. And he was like, I'm doing it. Like, because I'm stuck here, I'm doing it. And you know what? He got himself out. I mean, there were many people who helped him, but he got himself out. And he always says one thing they don't like is tomorrow's headlines. And so what we've learned is that when you're able to bring attention to these cases, oftentimes stuff starts to change. When they're allowed to exist in darkness, nothing seems to change. And of course, there's exceptions. But others who have created media around these cases have brought pressure to the bear that, you know, oftentimes causes the authorities to act or at least look into stuff, which can then start a domino effect, or it leads to another outlet publishing a thing or a newspaper. And so, reason I say this is you who are listening now are not powerless. You may know of somebody who is wrongfully convicted, over sentence, unfairly tried, et cetera. And by speaking up about it on social media, talking about it in any forum that you can get, talking about it in the diner anywhere, you never know who's listening. And stuff starts to change. And it's amazing when it does. You may know somebody who knows somebody. Maybe you can get a meeting with your local Congress person, or you can, who knows? Maybe you have a distant relation, who knows the governor of whatever state you're in. And you know, you got to try. I mean, my story is a series of these type of miracles. I didn't know what the **** I was doing, but I got to even let it out. And he's never gone back to prison. And he's had a great life raised a family, paid a lot of taxes, built a business, you know, like he didn't need to be in prison. We need to take a different approach. We incarcerated people in America at a rate that is five times the rate of Western Europe or the rest of the Western world, 14 times the rate of Japan. What we do know is that what works locally is that if you devote a tiny fraction of the resources that we spend on these awful practices over surveilling people, brutalizing them, if you take a tiny fraction of that money and build a community center or much less than that, you just pick the garbage up off the streets in the area where the violence is most concentrated, every city has an area of probably two or three blocks where it's most concentrated square blocks. If you fix the street lights, if you put a taco stand, a little green space, it's amazing. Crime falls. We've known this for a long, long time. And my whole theory on a Pablo is it's very freaking simple. What causes crime is desperation. Prove me wrong. Okay, desperation. And people say, Oh, what about mental illness? That's desperation. Untreated mental illness causes desperation. Extreme poverty. But okay, what prevents crime is a much smaller word, hope. Starting making tax digital is seamless with zero's HMRC recognized software. If you're a sold trader or landlord whose income tax is going digital, not only is zero MTD ready, it also gives you better control of your finances, like capturing your receipts with a snap, so all your records are accurate, sorted and ready for tax time, which changes the way you see MTD. Search MTD ready with zero. Maltese's bunnies, they're back, but like a hot person on an escalator going the other way, they're not here for long. They're a temporary thrill, like those two days you were a morning person or a bank holiday or that TV show that criminally only got one season or even that 24 hour post where your bum looked out ragiously good. Some treats you just have to enjoy while they last. Maltese's bunnies here, but only for Easter. Maltese's look on the light side. If you are going to wield the power of execution as our government does, as certain states still do in this country, you would imagine that they would wield it so carefully and yet when I listen to Charles Flores and when I go and read more about this, and these are just cases that are not even in dispute anymore, right? We're in the middle of the fight with Charles, but on the other side of it, there are so many cases. The Units and Project has established how often it happens, the state doing it with our money, two people who are in it's it's and I just don't think people understand how broken let alone perverse that concept actually is. Wasn't it Scalia who issued the opinion of the US Supreme Court that actual innocence is not a valid reason for a new trial and that executions can proceed. And by the way, no other Western country has had the death penalty in generations. None. It's one of those deeply American things that we consider, because it's in movies we're used to it, but it's not normal. We kill people to show the killing people is wrong. Make it make sense. At least one in 10 people that have been executed in this country have been innocent. Just wild. It's just unbelievable. The great Bynastie even since says if one out of every 10 planes that took off crash, nobody would fly. But we don't even do any forensic analysis of these things. We don't even like when there's a plane crash, you don't have a whole slew of people that come in with all sorts of fancy titles and degrees. They analyze every single thing and they figure out what went wrong. None of that happens here. And we know the states that have the death penalty have always had higher murder rates than states that don't. So clearly the death penalty is not as a turn. So I want to just get to the end here by returning to Charles, right? Because Charles is now for us here at public Torrey finds out in our audience the human face on a larger issue clearly. But in so far as we can do anything, we would like to help him because time is running short. And so one of the things that I'm so glad to tell our audience is that you're also trying to get down there to see him. We're planning on doing an episode of Rompville conviction as quickly as we can. The podcast probably hosted by Maggie Feeling who's a tool of surprise winning journalist based in Texas and just amazing, amazing investigative journalist. So most likely she'll be the one going into visit Charles. But we're working on it now. And we're I'm going to do everything I can to bring as much attention to this case as we possibly can because he deserves it and his case cries out for it. Whenever I listen from now on to not just Rompville conviction, but the Torrey Amos and Matchbox 20 and Skid Row and stunt temple pilots and twisted sister and Katy Perry and Lord and you know the warning and also still somehow kid rock. I'm also going to think about Charles Flores and it's an honor really to spend time with you and to make sure that both of us are making sure that people hear his story. Everyone of my records gone number one or been big hits whatever they have all given me, you know, great deal of satisfaction happiness. You know, it's great ego boost. When you're a kid and you have a record before your friends do and you play it and then it becomes popular and it gives you social currency. I get to do the grown-up version of that. It could be a lot of happiness. But none of those number one records compares to walking one person out of prison. And that's the difference between happiness and joy. So you know, go find your happiness. Do whatever you do. My dad told me and my brother do whatever you do whatever you want to do. Try to be the best at it but just make the world a better place. And ultimately, hopefully if you're lucky, like I was lucky to find a cause that really touched my heart, then you can ultimately find the same joy. And it makes me feel good to have Avi come over for breakfast and know that he's not calling me from a freezing cell or horrible circumstances. And he's now going to be out here making a difference in the world. It's why we're here, man. And so thank you for having me. I appreciate it. It's been a long time coming. Let's do it again soon. And just one quick post script. Because the day after our last episode with Charles published, Charles Flores' legal team did in fact file their Hail Mary Cert petition at the US Supreme Court. And we will monitor that as it makes its way through the highest court in the land. But there is also a different kind of petition that we still hope you can personally sign. It's at actionnetwork.org slash petitions slash Charles. And we'll put that link in the show notes too. This has been public. I find out. I'll talk to you next time.! Starting making tax digital is seamless with zeros HMRC recognized software. If you're a sold trader or landlord whose income tax is going digital, not only is zero MTD ready. It also gives you better control of your finances, like capturing your receipts with a snap. So all your records are accurate, sorted and ready for tax time. Which changes the way you see MTD. Search MTD ready with zero. If you're in having your numbers sorted all at the same time, seeking finally focus on taking business where you want to! Supercharge your business today with the help of zero. Search steering with an ex!