Hes an attorney helping the needy facing felony charges and the wrongfully convicted. Heres more on the criminal Justice System from the city club of cleveland. This is an hour. Good afternoon and welcome to the city club of cleveland. Im michael meuti, a partner at baker and hostettler, and despite pleasure to introduce you to get a speaker, Jarrett Adams. In addition to my day job i served as the president of the northeast ohio chapter of the american constitution society. Acs as a nationwide network of progressive lawyers, judges, students and professors, all dedicated to the promise of our constitution and to the values that it embodies. Civil rights and liberties, genuine democracy, and access to justice. Over the past few years our chapter has hosted various programs on various the problem of Wrongful Convictions specifically. For example, we heard from Ohio Attorney general and his life about the myths of our criminal Justice System and how they produce Wrongful Convictions. And to be clear, june and nancy are both republicans which shows that this issue is not a partisan issue. Last year we heard from greg jackson, a clevelander who spent 39 years of his life behind bars, several of which on death row for a crime that he did not commit. And last years acs convention in washington, d. C. I was fortunate enough to meet Jarrett Adams who has an experience in common with wiki jackson. Mr. Adams was 17 years old when he was sentenced to 28 years in a maximum security prison after being convicted of Sexual Assault. After serving nearly 10 years and filing multiple appeals, he was exonerated with the help of the wisconsin Innocence Project your rather than be overcome by bitterness, he used the injustice that he had endured as an inspiration to become an advocate for the underserved. He enrolled in the Loyola UniversityChicago School of law after graduating from Roosevelt University with high honors. In may 2015 mr. Adams graduated from law school and started a Public Interest fellowship with honorable and clair williams, a judge on the seventh circuit u. S. Court of appeals. The same court that the reversed his conviction because of this trial lawyers constitutional deficiencies. Shortly thereafter mr. Adams, along with a life exonerating and one day, establish a life after justice center. Which serves as quote an advocate for the right of the wrongfully convicted by seeking health care, housing, job training, computer skills, finance classes, mentoring, and more. This past year mr. Adams pass the new york state bar, just last month he joined the new york Innocence Project as one of its attorneys serving our profession and our society by freeing wrongfully convicted men and women. Since 1989, Innocence Projects across the country have exonerated 342 wrongfully convicted inmates in 37 states. 70 of whom have been people of color. While his establishments can be considered extraordinary, part of the story is not unique. According to a 2014 study, was in the journal, more than 4 of those sentenced to death between 1973 and 2004 are likely innocent. Men of color are disproportionately represented in that figure. It begs various questions. How do we combat racism in the criminal Justice System to ensure that suspects are treated as truly innocent until Proven Guilty . Que . Que x what role cant attorneys play in creating a Justice System that is truly care for all . The conversation on race, equality in americas criminal Justice System is an ongoing one nationwide and here at the city club. We are so glad to add mr. Adams voice to the discussion. Ladies and gentlemen, members and friends of the city club, please join me in welcoming Jarrett Adams. [applause] all right. Thank you all for joining us here today. Mike, thanks for that great introduction. As im starting to get more and more speaking opportunist ive come to find introduction is like the best part. Hear someone say these great things about you, but thank you so much. This is something me and mike worked on for over a year trying to get me to come and to tell my story, so im very thankful for the staff and the city club for having me here today. My story began when i was 17 or i thought it was a good idea to go with friends to a College Party in wisconsin, which is like an hour and half outside of chicago. It changed the trajectory of my life were ever. 17 years old just out having fun. To 17yearolds, many of you may be, or getting close to. We do things that kids without thinking about the repercussions. In my case, we were just going to a party and it was me being falsely accused of a Sexual Assault i didnt commit. The age of 17, just like most 17 year old, look, making out, sex, drinking, smoking pot, that comes with being a teenager. But with the it also came with a false accusation. That changed everything. The reality for me was totally different after this accusation. I was a kid thinking about, even during trial, about the chores i needed to do when i get home during the weekend. But i ended up being sentenced to 20 years in prison. My mother, a single mother, worked two jobs and it still wasnt enough to be able to afford an attorney. That in many instances is the reason that our prison population is over filling right now and is access to justice. The prison system has a disproportionate amount of black and brown men, but if we were all green, and would have a disproportionate about of poor green people in prison. Being an attorney is more than just saying im an attorney and wearing nice ties your we are promising and being sworn in to serve the peopl people. Thats exactly what i set out to do once i was released. When i was sentenced in 1998 to prison, the first prison i went to was green bay, wisconsin. It was one of the most violent prisons in the state of wisconsin. I fortunately was never attacked, but you cant erase what your eyes see. Prison isnt a place of corrections. Its a place of warehousing. I saw it on a daily basis, men just waking up, eating, going to sleep and just waiting the white flag on their lives. 90 of those men will be going home one day. I really sat and i thought about that. At the same time while fighting for my freedom. That fight didnt start until one day while in the prison cell, i was sewed up with a man whos close to 50. Viet dinh in prison for about 20 years. He was an older white man who was found guilty of two murders turkey would tell you look, i committed the crime. I know why i am here. After an incident happen in prison, we were all on lockdown. You are pretty much in your cell and begin an investigation to find out if its an isolated incident or if its just like a full scale riot. While lockdown was the first time strangely that i really had a conversation with someone i had been in a cell with for almost six months. During this time i just happen to a prison phone call, and i was calling out to my parents. They bring you the phone in your cell. Everything is in your cell. Your bathroom is in your cell. A feature in your cell. So this phone call in my cell that day in the year 2000 at the time was very, very, very instrumental in the ticketing here today. As i was on the phone speaking to my mother and my aunt and telling them about how they denied another one of my appeals, and they basically were denying my appeals throughout wisconsin by saying if your lawyer told you a strategy, thats a strategy you can do over. They never addressed any other witnesses that proved it was impossible for me to be two places at one time. They never addressed that at all. And me in prison, i got to the point where i was in the cycle, just like many of the people that i was in prison with. I just didnt want to deal with my case. As im talking to my mother on the phone and i told her, look, they denied another one of my appeals. I dont understand why. As soon as i got off the phone my stomach told me to get off the top bunk. He was listening to everything as a phone because he was right on the bottom bunk. He said listen, ive been in this cell with you almost six months. Ive never heard you say anything about your innocence, your case. I mean, you dont do anything but work out, play basketball and play chess. Quite frankly you act like youre in college. It wasnt until i had that conversation with him that i saw myself in the same cycle of giving up and not thinking about anything else. He said let me see a transcript. Let me see your final. I. T. Seemed to him that day. Many of which were unopened, still in their envelope from my attorney because i just, i just wasnt Strong Enough to deal with the reality of being imprisoned for 28 years with a mandatory release of 2019. I wasnt Strong Enough to take my own life, but i also wasnt Strong Enough to deal with the reality of the place that i was in the. Over the course of a week, we had gotten off of lockdown and he read through my transcripts and my Police Reports. I again went out and play basketball and just in worked out. It was my therapeutic way of not dealing with it. When i came back to my cell one day, he had all of my paperwork spread out. He had the Police Report enhance. He said, sit down. He threw me a notepad and a pen and he said look, im never getting out of this place. You are here for some racist bull crap with no evidence. You were going to play chess, working out and you have given up. Its like youre 18, 19 year old edge of the rest of your life ahead of you. You need to start working on fighting for your innocence. Ive never seen a case so devoid of any evidence. That day, i put down my passable shoes, i got rid of a chessboard, which i really love. Actually made a chessboard myself. I went to the law library and i started to craft my own shoddy version of the petition to get myself home. I started off writing letters to everyone, you know, naacp, Innocence Project, opera. I tried to find steffens address. [laughter] i was ready to go in aikido then i was innocent but i realized that as the years went by, my writing got better. By research got better. I went something look, im innocent, get me out to saying look, im innocent, i case where a lawyer was defective and Constitutional Rights were denied because of this or didnt do this job. Immediate essence or start writing these letters, i got a response. I got a response from the wisconsin Innocence Project. T. Fit within the director, they came and saw me with two law students who were in school at the time. And they said, do you mind if we take your case . I almost fell over like do i mind . [laughter] i didnt know you had asked. I told him absolutely. They took my case and they started litigating a case in court. They did this federally, and should not be too confusing, once you exhaust all of the remedies in state court, you have the opportunity to file in the federal court and say look, there are constitutional flaws in this conviction or would you overturn a . The seventh circuit creatively certificate to appeal. The wisconsin Innocence Project appealed by convention all the way to the seventh circuit where a three panel judge, judges, enough to agree to overturn my conviction. As i listened to them argue my conviction, i was on the phone in prison with shackles on listening to them argue on my behalf in chicago. At almost a year to the date that they argued my conviction in a court, i was released. You know, and that was another fight that started. Because now im released. I want to have my record expunged at how do you expunged 10 years that are missing from your life . While doing a report, cbs asked me to ge give pictures. I went to my mothers house and, not only to eat her food but to get these pictures. I looked through a photo album from when i was a baby up until 17 years old when i graduated high school. There are pictures and those pictures do not start again until i was 27. That, as long as i am, almost made me remove myself from the room and go cry. But it really put into perspective just how you cant erase that, you know. I got out, and i noticed when i got out that my aunt and my mother, their emotions were very high and very sensitive to me. They just didnt know, right . All of the misconceptions that you believe from prison and people who go to prison, you just dont know. Because you know that they are not set up, we are not set up to be released from prison to do very well. So they develop the same about me as well. I just felt so godawful that i put them through this, like i made the decision to go sneak and go to this party. Although i wasnt guilty, i felt so guilty that when my mother had to go to church and they would ask where was her son, that dark cloud was over her head, and she would be brought to tears. I cant tell you today for i knew i would be an attorney in the state of new york, but i did know that i owed her. For the prison phone calls. I owed her for the support. I owed her for giving me birth twice. One time to get me here and to continue to keep my spirit alive as i sat for 10 years in prison. I got up off the couch in 2007, a month after i was released, and i walked three miles down the road to the college. Three miles isnt quite that long but in chicago inside what it is longer im telling you. The wind was blowing. I had a thin coat on. I just wanted to be able to one day, sunday do what im doing now and be able to compute, to be able to talk to people who are going through things, even talk to people before they go through things to help them understand that this is real and this is possible. I graduated in 2009 from south suburban. I was able to meet someone who introduced me to someone who hired as a fulltime investigator at the federal public defenders office. I got that job, and that job, it really contributed to my growth as a person. I went from being in prison just in 2007, and to 2010 i am going into prisons and taking statements, hoping people and contributing. That encouraged me to continue to go to school. So i went to school at night. My schedule was ridiculous, now that i get the opportunity to sit back and think about it. I would get up at five, he to work at about 6 30 before anyone tighter and heard me copping 100 pages from a book. Go to work during the day, 95 serving subpoenas and stuff like that in chicago. I never really realized how many loose dogs were around in the city until he started serving subpoenas as an investigator. So i did that and i would come back into the office every from five to six and go to school until 9 30. I would get home around 11 30 p. M. And repeat the process. I did that for five years. I was an undergrad at roosevelt and its leaders and college. I am saying is specifically for you kids better here. Look, you are going to obstacles always in life. You are going to have to decide whether not you go around it, over it all right through it. You just have to keep going. That is, look, that is the real message. Its not scripted, and thats what i had to do. I didnt know i would be here today at all as an attorney but i knew i wanted to be something. If you read the book, it was a good said probably wrongly infected guy got out at the end. Not at all. I was able to get through law school by continuing to network and meet great people. I met great attorneys. Great attorneys. Graduating law school was outstanding feeling it was even better was the clerking in the seventh circuit. Because im clicking in the seventh circuit the same circuit that overturned my conviction. Many other times ill have to ask the clerk that was in the courtroom with me what all was going on in court because i was daydreaming back to when i was in a maximum security prison listening on the phone to attorneys argue my case for my freedom. And now im in the same courtroom less than 10 years later as a graduating law student on his way to becoming a lawyer. This ma maybe pinch myself. It really did. And judge williams was my mentor. I met her as i started law school because i applied for the chicago park scholarship foundation, which i want and she was one of the deciding voting members. That was very important for me. Because again, nothing on my record but the tentacles of a Wrongful Conviction will reach you almost forever. I didnt have a bank account. I didnt have credit. Bankers didnt find a credit where the when they did a credit check when the last known address was a maximum prison in wisconsin. Almost before getting to student loan money and buying starbucks, i was bringing folgers crystals to school and pay my way through college because of the difficulties that i endured with money. So that scholarship that i received from the Chicago Bar Foundation was very, very, very important to get me where i am today. And i never lost touch with our relationship. I continue to send judge williams emails, updates and let her know how i was doing a school. And that gave me the opportunity to court on the very same circuit that overturned my conviction. I spent the next six months after a court in the seventh circuit in the sub edition of new york. I click for another amazing judge. Another amazing person who sat me down and told me things that debt that i needed to know as a young person starting a legal career. The bar has also nothing to do with being a lawyer. It just doesnt. But its necessary, right . Que . Que x you have to do what you need to do to get through and get by, and thats exactly what i did but i needed that community of support. I got that continuously to get to where i am today. I have, started working for the Innocence Project, and its, i could pinch myself sometimes that the walk through the door, and i have my case files of people who i am fighting for the innocence. Do it is, not even 10 years ago, i was fighting for my own innocence, you know . I dont want to seem as if what i did was just so amazing and what else can do it because you absolutely cant. You have to believe in yourself. The one person that should never stop believing in you is you, is you. So i know this is a talk about my life and my story, but whenever im in a room with kids who are close to my age of nature i address you cannot let you know that you have to continue to push forward. I know that my time is short and i have a timer after to make sure i stay within the time limit. I will close by saying this. I had a birdseye view of the criminal Justice System. Its not a place of corrections. It is a place of warehouse. The two scariest things i ever saw in prison were not violent. One of them was people getting out in the wintertime and coming right back in the summer. Where the crime happened at. And they were right back as a result of that. And thats whats happening in our prison. The last and second thing that really just shook me as im watching a couple of guys play basketball, you know, im noticing that theyre calling each other names and im thinking like its just nicknames, they are referring each other as pops, old man, grand pops and son. I didnt learn until a month later, they werent nicknames, that was a grandfather, a father and a son in one prison not on the same crime, could you imagine how their family looks like right now . Fanned we continue to vanish people from society and break down these structures in our community, how can we ever expect to stop the senseless gun violence thats plaguing our community . How do we ever expect to bridge the gap of the police in the community . Women are strong but theyre not Strong Enough to be a father and a mother and there are a lot of fathers in prison. Some rightfully but a lot just because they were in the back seat of a car that happened to shoot a couple of shots and its ridiculous, an enormous amount of men and women are in prison for drugs, pot, you can create pharmacies legally but theyre still in prison, thats a headscratcher and taking the toll on our community. You cant put people in prison, teach them nothing and release them and tell them to do good. It doesnt make any sense. You dont have to be an attorney or Rocket Scientist or anything like that to understand that this system is broken and has been broken since its inception, sorry, since inception. The design is flawed. Now people are people are speaking about it but speaking about it, again, its not so much a racial color line, its access to justice. If youre poor and you cant put up a defense, your chances of going to prison are high. He said, look, id rather rich as hell and guilty as hell than poor as hell and innocent as hell. Thats truth and the reality of it and the people that we release from people are going right back where . Into our communities and now start to boil into everyones neighborhood and everyone must take notice to this and do something about this. I dontcare if youre a doctor, have the real conversations at the water fountain, what you do, who you vote for, it does have an effect. Speak up because we all will be here and be gone some day but we are going to leave it to the next generation, how do you want to leave it, right . Do you want to continue to be the greatest country in the world and also the greatest imprisoner in the world . It cant be, we cant say to ourselves that there are 1 point something Million People vanished from society. I worked for the smartest attorneys and still some of the thoughtful eloquent and smartest people were right there in prison with a prison number on their chest. Very smart men and we dont know what we will benefit from society and i will reach you by saying, how do we know that one of these young men or women who have the groundbreaking idea for a medication that can cure a cancer, for something that contribute to society . Some people are put by demographics, where they were born, it shouldnt be that way. I thank you all for your time and i appreciate coming out today. Thank you all. [applause] thank you. Im stephanie, director of programming at the city club of cleveland and today we are enjoying a forum with Jarrett Adams. We are about to begin the q a. City club members, guests, students or voas joining us web cast at the public library, if you would like to tweet the question, tweet at the city club and our staff will try to work it in the forum. We want to remind you that the questions should be brief and to the point and actually questions. Holding microphoneses faith walker and wesley alan, may we have the first question, please . Good afternoon. Im so happy that you are here and the young people to hear your important message. Im a retired teacher and so often students would come in front of you that have the same story that you have. My question is, what can a teacher say to a student who has stopped believing in himself or herself, no longer has his or her eyes on the prize, its just ready to give up . What would you say to a teach e to try to help that student . First, thank you for your question. Teachers have one of the most difficult jobs in society, like for real. The Attention Span of kids and teenagers are like so i would encourage you to do this. You as a the teacher have in some ways more of an effect on a students life than their parents because youre around them and you see them so much and you cant give up. If they give up thats one thing but you cant give up encouraging them, you just cant. Its a fulltime job. It really is. And im sure you take a lot of the stories home with you as a teacher and weighs heavily on your heart but you have to continue to encourage them and continue to tell them stories. Im not the only young black man who has been able to overcome the odds, although, i dont get as much as air time as if i was a rapper. There are stories that you can find to continue to encourage these kids to continue to push forward and i really dont have, you know, the concrete answer for you other than to say that, look, faith is believing and sort of becomes true. Continue to push forward. Thank you again for your question. [applause] i wanted to know if you went back to jail and speak to cell mate . You know, i believe he passed away and it was hard for me to find like him and where he went because it was when youre in prison, you just have numberses on an id. You dont really know peoples full name or government and stuff like that, i was reaching letters and trying to contact him and i believe one of my letters did make it to him. He was he was, you know, a person who he didnt care about being known or anything like that. He just wanted to say his peace and quite honestly most of the time i was in there with him he was like a grumpy old man. For real. [laughter] i wasnt able to have a greater relationship with him as i wanted to and specifically when i got out. There was just so much that i had to deal with getting out and starting a new life. I can give you one example. I go down to get my id and you all have whoever been to get an id, you know how the lines are. Its ridiculous. I go down and get the id, i am in line for about an hour, okay, you can get your id, you need a birth certificate or Social Security card. I dont have one. I go stand in another line for two hours, you can get your birth certificate. You just need your id. Stuff like that that i was dealing with in trying to reintegrate to society and one thing is for sure i will make sure his memory lives on because i wont stop telling that story. Thank you for your question. [applause] do you find that immigrant, foreignborn people are vulnerable because theyre in a strange place, they dont know the language, they dont know the laws, often times they dont have the money, what have you seen . Well, i can tell you from two perspectives from being in there and being out and now as an attorney, absolutely theyre vulnerable. Theyre vulnerable not access to justice but also victims of crime, like who are they going to report to, right . You know, there are a lot of studies out on immigrant who come to this country just to make a living and send back to their family, they are taking advantage of, slave wages and all types of things and in prison, what i found was there were people who barely spoke english and they were sentenced to serve time in prison and instead of being released they were released to a county jail awaiting extradition back to their country. So that was another headscratcher, im asking myself, not only as an attorney but contributing member of society who pays taxes, why are we spending money to lock them out and sending them to country. What sense does that make . You know, it makes no sense at all, so i saw a lot of that. It was very disheartening because when you think of people and the way we depict people, you immediately you dont ask yourself, i wonder what he was accused of or i wonder if he has a good attorney, you immediate i will say i wonder who he did or she did, right . Many of the people that i met in prison they had families too, they were fathers too, they were brothers too and i met a lot of people that were getting deported as soon as sentences were over and it was just it was one of these things they would tell me often times, look, you think its violent over here, you dont know violence over in venezuela or circumstances would have it, they would be end up in prison and deported back to the same country that they fleed. Many of them would do it over and over again. So its definitely a long topic and an issue but thank you for your question. How are you doing, i go to John F Kennedy high school . Where do you find courage not to go back and ever receive apology from any of the Defense Attorneys or anybody who wrongly accused you of your crime . Yeah. Great question but they dont apologize in court. [laughter] its not what they do. I had a chance to speak to my attorney and, you know, look, he failed to investigate my case. Im accused of a rape following someone in stairs and witnesses all around in the school that could have placed me somewhere else and false accusation. He didnt hire an investigator, he didnt call any witnesses, he didnt do any of this and i was so upset for him for so long and when i got a chance to actually hear from him, i heard that he too was human and he made a mistake and dropped the ball, the practice is just that, thats the practice. Some lawyers shouldnt be lawyers, and some lawyers try and they make a mistake, we are all humans, we are. I do want to say that you are eastern sunday shop over there. Thats what we use today say. [applause] to answer the question about what encouraged me, if i can get you all to see the wrinkles and creezs of my my mothers head, the phone calls, just the whole everything because im not the only one there, shes out but shes in prison in spirit. All the ridiculous shows about what happens in prison and this is all happening to her son in prison, i owed her and i was going to repay her somehow some way and thats what encourages me and your encouragement may be different, you may find Something Else that encourages you. Maybe what you hear from me will encourage you to go on and be not just great but extraordinary, right . Because you can do it, you definitely can. Remember me when you get up there. I might have my aarp card and be retired, remember, rememberole me. Thank you for your question. Thanks for your presentation and presence and teaching us some lessons. Your perception of having been in jail and you made some comments about drugs, possession, do you think if we treated all of drug possessions not necessarily trafficking charges as diseases and didnt imprison those people that that would be save for prisons that have been proven to be violent or Violent Crimes, do you think that would be great improvement on the system or do you have an opinion on that and when is your book coming out . Im just kidding, i dont know. [laughter] thank you for your question. I do. Im extreme note taker and i was taking notes in prison and im a a bit of a nerd and read everything. I read a study of norway on how they run prisons and the idea of them running prisons is more so like how it should be. They youre in prison, no doubt. You cant get out and leave but it doesnt look like a prison, right . It goes to my point that im making, you cant cage people up like animals, feed them like animals and then release them and tell them to be human. It doesnt make sense. It doesnt work at all. And, you know, the theme with people who are in prison a lot of them in prison, i dont want to paint with broad brush, they are there because they have different types of abuses and things like that, right, many of them are substance abusers, right, many of them are selling drug to feed their own habit, many are robbing, stealing and kill to go feed their own habit and we are punishing people, we have this extreme glut for punishment, you have to register, you cant do this, you cant do that, people are going to prison and theyre not being treated, right, theyre not being treated at all. There are people who come and right before your eyes are suffering from withdrawals from heroin right in the cell with you if thats your cell mate and not being treated at all. When you dont treat people, the same things happen. To be quite honest with you, you can get whatever drug youre looking for in prison, whatever it is. Many of them do drugs in prison as well. We have to separate people who are there for nonViolent Crimes from the people who are there for Violent Crimes and i will tell you why, if youre raised in a house full of people who yell, you will raise your voice without knowing. If youre in prison with a bunch of people who are violent, you will be what as a result . Violent. You are either the one who is handing out the violence or receiving the violence and the entire system needs to be rehauled but it has to be a want by the 10 that really has all the money in our society, right . Right . 1 . 1 . It has to be a want to change that, so i really am im an advocate for changing what goes on inside, right, because if you change whats going on inside, you change the numbers of the people who are inside. If over 70 if its like over 50 i think 70 , im not sure of the recent study, but just think about it. Over half of the prison people in the prison have been there before. They have been released and they came back. Well, lets use another analogy. 50 of the cars that were produced by im not going to name a company, i dont want them mad at me if they see this, lets imagine if a car company produced cars and on average 50 of those cars came back after they left the production line, it would stop. Something would be done. So why hasnt it been done with the prison system, right . I mean, the answers may be there, is it because of the people who hugely fill the prison system, is it a black and brown thing, is it a poor thing . Its something, we do know that. Thank you for your question, though. Hello, over here. Hi, my name is amy, my fbi fiance has been in jail for 13 years, both passed polygraph test based on innocence and best friend admitted he was guilty and also passed and we have always fought for innocence and freedom, there hasnt been one year that weve havent filed something or any kind of appeal or whatever but recently the Innocence Project in ohio decided to collaborate to file new trial motion and we have an application of innocence pending with our local conviction integrity unit. They accepted it once last year, sat on it for nine months and denied it but after the article was written by kyle they decided to reopen his case, officially reopen his case, but i think it was because of the attention, you know from the article that, you know, brought them to make that decision to reopen and reinvestigate his case but as the family members, how do we keep how do we create more attention on these cases when all the evidence is there, its clear as day. I mean, if you read this you would say to yourself, why is this man still in prison. We got a thousand signatures but it stopped. Right. Yeah. How did your family keep fighting for you after so many years . Its been 13 years for us, you know, and it seems like we got to this point, you know w the Innocence Project which is awesome, you know, but we still want to bring more attention to his case and make more people aware of the injustice that are happening to him and so many others, how did the family members keep fighting and create that attention . Yeah. Weve written celebrities too. I will make sure i give you the information before i leave so we can talk further. To be honest two you, thats a question that my mother, my aunts could answer better than i could but i will say this, the squeaky wheel get it is oil, you know, you to continue to beat that drum until the attention, you know, comes and, listen, we cannot forget about the power that we hold in our hands now with the cell phones, with social media and you dont have to wait for someone to write a report, you can become your own author and write these blogs and continue to spread them on social people and tag the president of the united states, he also himself has to continue to write out and, you know, wait for justice and, look, the unfortunate thing about prison and being in prison at the time, look, it really doesnt go slow, before you know it, one christmas will turn into eight, before you know it and, you know, one of these things like the best thing for me to do when i was in there was believed that each and every day i was going home the next day, that was one of the things that kept me sane. It was like reverse psychology for myself. I could just imagine what youre going through, i know what it was like to speak on the phone with my mother during prison calls and see her on the visit ing and stuff like that. I will repeat what i said earlier, keep the faith and continue to reach out to as many people as you possibly can. On average i was sending out 50 letters a week on average and youre only supposed to get ten stamps a week but i was doing writing and getting stamps from people and get many letters wouldnt change but besides the date. Hello, its me again. I was mailing the same people. It took a long time. I was in prison for five years before the Innocence Project took my case and so it just took a lot of reaching out and now more than ever 1998, there was no google. Google didnt come out till 1999. There was no cell phones and stuff like that. If youre going to tweet and facebook, do it with the purpose and with the calls. Thank you for your question. I will make sure i give you my information, okay. This is going to be a really followup to that question. Each time ive read or heard about a person like yourself being found innocent or being exonerated, it seems that there was an extraordinarily sloppy job done on the police and the prosecutors side of investigating and making any real effort to determine what happened. You know, i appreciate the pressure that is brought on the assistant prosecutors or district attorneys, depending where youre from to achieve a conviction, but from your vantage point, do you have any suggestions as to changes that could be made on the prosecutors side and perhaps on the police side to see that matters such as yours are, in fact, properly investigated . Thank you for your question and i think thats a great question and i actually have been giving it some thought. The relationship between the police and the prosecutors shouldnt be as close as they are. They should not be able to work hand in hand, prosecutors should not be able to become investigators and then back to a prosecutor, you shouldnt be able to go into a room and question a suspect as we have seen so many times with prosecutors, you shouldnt be able to tell a Police Officer how to question a suspect, how do i change stuff, we have created a criminal Justice System, a system in itself that picks sides against one another. I dont care if its a spit ball contest or whatever contest it is, you dont care about about anything but winning. Justice is robbed. We need to have a separate entity between the police and the prosecutors. An entity where you dont you dont have to know the name of a person to find out whether theres enough evidence of guilty, you definitely dont need to know the color of the person to find out if theres evidence of guilty. You dont need those things, there should be a rule with three openminded people who get evidence, who look at evidence and decide whether or not it goes to trial and the prosecutor and the police should not be able to hand jobs to making it fit whatever they wanted to fit. It should never be this way. It shouldnt. In the end, when you get out, if you are wrongfully convicted, theres a thing call immunity. You cant even sue the prosecutors and the police unless you catch them doing something egregious, egregious meaning they were actually on tape dropping the murder weapon at your house or Something Like that. How do you do that . Most have been there for years before technology is out and now science is advancing rite now with dna to get people out. Once you get out, you cant even punish the people who did it to you because many of them who are prosecutors and Police Officers are now judges and now captains of the force and stuff like that. It is all about winning. It is not about justice at all. Its just not. You can see im passionate about that. That is mind boggling. [applause] can you comment on the wildly popular serial podcast, kind of a similar situation where the lawyer didnt do her job and is that going to help Innocence Project . I actually was in prison with steven avery. Steven avery was in wisconsin, the show about a case in wisconsin and i didnt know him personally and stuff like that but when youre in prison you bounce around prison to prison and stuff like that. I was in the same system with steven avery. I do know this, i cant even go and get my own niece or nephew out of school and im their uncle and how on earth can a police get them out of school and question them in a police station, question them for hours and say what they want them to say and take them back to school and later use that evidence to charge him and his uncle with a crime . How if we want to preserve the criminal Justice System, they should be given a new trial. Thats what they should be given. They should be griffin a new trial. There should be enough evidence to find them guilty fairly without using that was manufactured by way of intimidation and just straight taking advantage of people. There was a kid, questioned for hours and hours with no parent and no lawyer in this Police Department being questioned by people who question people for a living and have been doing it forever and they use the evidence to convict. The kid is in prison a defacto life sentence he has with all the years in prison and im glad that they exposed, you know, this through this show but also theres another point that i want to make about the show that i think it missed. Steven avery was wrongfully convicted. He was released after 20 years after dna proved he didnt commit rape and the crime hes in jail for now happened like a year after his release or probably shorter than that, he was released from prison with nothing and hes staying on auto body salvage yard, junk yard in a trailer surrounded by nothing by vacant torn down cars, isolated, reminisce of what . Prison. Yeah, our bad. Youre released. You didnt do it, you didnt commit the crime. Hes released in these conditions of god knows what into a trailer yard living by himself and now arrested and in prison for murder. That should be a bigger topic in itself. Like i said, i dont know the evidence of the case but i do know the fact that he was released without no one talking to him. After 20 years of anything, you know, anything whether its marriage or whatever it is, hes released from prison and, you know, its like nothing. The case is just mind boggling. Thank you for your question, though. [applause] thank you for having me out. We are live this morning as the group of faith leaders are holding a press conference here in washington to kick off the National Tour on faith and morality and politics, this is live from the National Press club here on cspan2. Let me welcome you all today and announcement of the National Higher ground declaration day of action on september the 12th and i will be talking more about that in just a moment, before we say anything, i want to ask the