a motivational speaking and bestselling author who served nearly two years in an arizona prison is in scottsdale this weekend hosting motivational seminars. james arthur ray is charging 300 bucks for a one-on-one self-help session. he believes he can help more people. the family of one of his victims believes he s done enough. you can t twist the fact that people who died, really an insult to the region and entire state where the crimes were committed. i think he s dangerous. he doesn t understand his actions actually made these deaths inevitable. we re having an event for james that is designed to be an
that guard shop and a lot of media out here right now. he was once a popular motivational speaker, and he appeared on oprah and in the movie the secret, but james ray spent two years behind bars after a deadly sweat lodge in 2009, and today after paying his debt to society, about two years in prison, he s about to be released. i think that s him. you think it s him, or no? i think it is, too. james ray was indeed released from the lewis prison, and he will be on probation for the remainder of his sentence right here in phoenix.
exclusively, and this is the first time he has spoken since he went to prison. your career was rocketing. were you a nice person then when you look back on yourself? do you look back on yourself with a certain degree of disgust, perhaps, at your actions and recognize there was a character trait in you that you had a change? there was definitely character traits in me that i had to change, and there still are. i don t know that i would say disgust, you know. i am human. to go from that kind of wealth to getting wiped out, and to lose your liberty, it s a huge toll on anybody, but do you think looking back it was an appropriate punishment given that three people that paid money to you lost their lives? i have no complaints, you know.
our first goal was to talk to the government about why this was not a criminal case. it was supposed to be a spiritual retreat. but right off the bat, all the news trucks show up. tonight there is an intensifying swirl of questions and intrigue. pushing people to their limit or pushing too far. and we never saw james ray ever again. and he doesn t know what some of us are going through. and so i think there was a lot of pressure to bring criminal charges. james ray is in serious trouble. three counts of manslaughter against him in arizona. that s recklessly causing the death of another. each count carries the possibility of four to ten years in prison. i was so naive.
especially bad experiences. especially well, the bad is relative. right? was my prison experience bad? yep. was it good? yep. i mean, you re here only because i went to prison. i wouldn t have met you otherwise. it feels a little bit like you re picking, choosing, which experiences we re talking about here in terms of the struggles you went through. it wasn t just about prison. it was about let me ask you, and i appreciate this question, what determines bad? what happened in the sweat lodge seems bad to people. so you re saying that death is objectively bad. and death definitely when you don t think you re going to die would be but you are. this rationale, honestly, that kind of thinking, i m just saying, i feel like a base line can be established that you can