good evening, everyone and welcome to this important event of the wisconsin book festival. i do >> good evening, everyone, and welcome to this important event of the wisconsin book festival. i do want to say out of respect to our speaker tonight, in another year this would be a packed house to hear you talk about this excellent book. my name is ken frazier, and i am the directs emeritus of the uw madison libraries and currently serve on the board of the friends of the libraries. our friends group is proud to be one of the sponsors for the book festival and tonight's presentation by jared adams. among other things, we friends provide small grants to scholars who use university libraries to do research and write books. we strive to improve all of the libraries of the uw campus, including the great library and archives of the wisconsin historical society which, as you know, is located on the madison campus. and we support the university's efforts to encourage students of color to consider careers in academic libraries and archives. if that sounds interesting to you, and it might because you're here tonight, we invite you to join us. redeeming justice begins by describing an injustice done to two young black men in 1998. young men who would eventually become mr. adams' clients and who are still unjustly imprisoned 20 years later. 1998 is the same year that jared adams himself was convicted of rape at age 17, a crime which he, too, was innocent of committing. jared adams writes with remarkable empathy for others, like these two men, and even for the individuals who did him great harm. this book could have been all about himself. his remarkable odyssey from being a teenager sentenced to nearly 30 years in prison and now leading a firm practicing law in three soon to be four states. mr. adams' book is a fast, compelling read, but his is a long story. he was released from prison in 2007 on bond, not yet exonerated, and his healing from that incarceration took much longer. he earned his juris doctorate from loyola university in 2015. he now leads legal offices in new york, chicago, milwaukee, and next year in los angeles. mr. adams is also co-founder of life after justice, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping exonerated -- exonerees, people unjustly imprisoned, to help them rebuild their lives. please join me in welcoming jared adams to the podium. [ applause ] >> thank you. i want to thank you for that welcome. i could tell that you most certainly read the book. and it's a pleasure to be here. i hope that you guys aren't expecting a scholar type big words type of lecture, because that's just not me. and you can tell that's how i wrote the book, and with that i won't take over because i know my good friend steve is ready to go with questions. >> welcome, everyone, and thank you for some. i am steven wright, a associate clinical professor at the university of law school and innocence project. it's my great honor to be with jared today. but i am mindful as i read his story that in 2020 alone there were 129 exonerations in the united states representing about 1,700 years of people who were sacrificed to the criminal justice system. in 2019, that number was about 143 individuals. 50% of those cases involved some type of state misconduct, whether it was police or prosecutors. we are also very mindful, and i'm sure many of you saw national reports that wisconsin incarcerates black men at a higher rate than any state in the union. black men in particular are 12 times more likely than white men to go to jail or prison in the state of wisconsin. although african americans only make up about 6% of the state's population, we represent about 42% of the population of individuals who are incarcerated. jared's story is extraordinary when you read it, but, unfortunately, it's very common. so i guess i want to start there. jared has rightfully received a great deal of attention. he has been featured on nbc news and cnn and every major national paper. so with that, i guess, i'm wondering why write the book? what more did you have to share? >> well, it's a long answer behind it. i will shorten it up for the sake of tonight. so i get my law degree. i graduate. i can recall going home, you know, when they give you the paper degree when you are at the graduation degree, right, and mail you the diploma. i remember when the diploma came in, i remember running to my mother's house and wanted to give it to her. and she sat and started to cry. and i said, you know, i thought we were done crying. so in turn she said, no, i'm crying because i know that you aren't going to go off to do big law and forget about what it was like to be isolated on that island in the courtroom with no help. i know you are going to practice law. that will help other people out. see so i run off with the law degree and i realized i wouldn't save every kid with this one law degree. so i started feeling like spooning water out of an ocean. so i had to come up with something different. so i read many books and i continue to read books. i know i may look as cool as a cucumber, but i'm a nerd, like, deep down. i read cooking books. i am reading a book about south africa right now. i start today read different books, the innocent man. what i didn't want to do, i didn't want the story to be looped into, okay, that's another wrongful conviction book. so what i did was i went and spent as much time with my remaining aunts who were still alive and for the first time i learned the history of who i was and it was important to write the book because how often does the news article portray young black men as if they were born at the scene of their accusation, right? no history, no nothing, just a picture, and you get looped into these stigmas and all of the historical depictions of what black boys and black men and overcriminalizing. so i wrote the book from the perspective of look at what it does to the community, right? the biggest victim in this story is the community. and here is why. the community, just like the one in milwaukee, is feeding the criminal justice system its youth and, in turn, the criminal justice system is feeding the city of milwaukee and many other cities 35 to 40-year-old men who have been warehoused for decades and more. so when i started to write the book it was a call to action because the calvary ain't coming. we the calvary. it was a call to action to say, look, how do we mobilize and how do we take this book, which i believe is a manuscript, to the sympathy and empathy that we need to get the attention of folks who have the power to make these changes. that article that just came out, it's funny. i wrote the book, you know, started writing the book two years ago. that was one of the first things i put in the book was because i met these men, these men who had came to prison as boys, grew up there, so i said, okay, let me write this thing in a way that, number one, anybody with a child could look at this and say, man, this is god awful. and once i get threw, let me take you into these communities in which the predominant amount of people who fill them up come from. so that's why i wrote the book. it's a call to action. we need to -- if -- and i have said this before. when i heard my accomplishments being read in the offices, if it impressed you, let me impress upon you the importance of going to save other young black boys because that's how you get to safety and security in our country. you don't get there by locking everyone up. in wisconsin, they are proving that by the numbers. >> so we'll get into a little bit more about the wrongful conviction and the appellate process. but one of the things that impressed me as sort of the power of the emotion in the book. >> yeah. >> and, you know, you'll explain to folks, but you ended up serving a fair amount of time in solitary. >> i did. >> i think one of the times was 360 days straight? >> it was 360 days and then it was 300 days the second time. >> and so, i mean, what was that like? how can you convey that sort of just being alone in that space, not only were you wrongfully convicted but then the doc finds out that you are helping people and they want to punish you for that. >> right. that's what it was about. so to say what it was like and to compare how humane it is, go lock a puppy up in a closet for days at a time and let somebody tell on you and you will see what happens. so if it's not okay to do it to a pet, then how is it okay to do it to a human being in any capacity, right. so the thing about the prison system, and specifically in wisconsin, is this. the time that i was incarcerated they opened up the wisconsin secure program which was called -- before. i'll use the baseball theme. if you build it, what? they will come. right? so when they built that prison with all of those bids and they did it off of the same theme that has got us here right now, they did it off of fear. jeffrey dahmer was killed in prison and they took that and waged a political war to go get a budget to build more prisons. and they did it out of fear. the same way they got the criminal laws that tax people out and send people of color to prison for cracking, not people who have -- the same thing. so when i started to realize that i became hscd tutor in the prison system. so i had the naive ignorance of believing that these people were making choices to commit crime and come back. that wasn't the case, right? and what i also realized was this. there is a difference between reading and understanding what you are reading. and i met so many men pleading guilty for rule infractions because they simply didn't understand the laws and stuff like that. i will give you one in particular. there was one call manufacturing a weapon, right. and you would get manufacturing of a weapon especially for black men because they would take the canteen razor, break off the tip to get a close shave. why? black men's hair curl up. men were pleading guilty to this rule infraction of manufacturing a weapon. so i started to tell them stop pleading guilty to that. there is no intent. you are shaving with this, right? i started to do writ of ser sher oris. then i am getting snatched out of my cell and they are accusing me of stuff with confidential informants that made so much. keith finley from, you know, the founder of the -- one of the founders of the wisconsin innocence project, we was working on my case for years and there were students assigned. carl williams and stuff like that. so as stuff was going on, i was showing it to them real time so they could see what was going on. essentially, people stopped pleading guilty to these rule infractions and we started doing, you know, writ of certoris on it and they couldn't fim up the bed space in the segregation unit. think about it. what is in segregation? it's beds. what does wisconsin have a problem with? overcrowding. somebody was going to the hole. it's like a ticket quota system and it happens real life, real time inside of these institutions. >> so let's jump into the -- the book is two parts. the first half discusses your experience as a victim of the criminal justice system and the second half discusses your journey to become an advocate within the system. i don't know where to begin talking about your -- the injustice that you suffered. what stands out to me at least is the way that the criminal justice part happened. >> yeah. >> you -- the background is that you have gone to a party. despite witnesses and a litany of evidence showing that you were not guilty, you are falsely accused. >> yes. >> the witnesses, excuse me, the accuser has a lot of problems. several judges before you get convicted say this doesn't sound credible to me. but let's start at the point you -- the police leave a note on your door saying hey, come visit us. you don't know what's going on. you're 17, right, at this point. and you don't have a lawyer and you decide not to go with your mom. so you go there and you think that telling the truth -- >> yeah. >> about what happens will be the solution and they'll understand and you'll go home. >> worked like that on "law & order," you know? i mean, honestly, you know. so that's exactly what i thought. also, another reason why i started the book, explaining to people how i was raised because it lets you understand how easily it is and easily it can happen. i mentioned about my grandmother and grandfather. the reason why is because there is a lot of us, a lot of family, right? and we still weren't prepared. the reason why is because no one was facing anything like this. we are not going to jail or snig like that. my grandmother was a little old lady from cleveland, mississippi. let me tell you something. when people talked about her, you would think she was 7'0" tall because she didn't play. the police and the school wasn't calling the house, you know, because it was going to be a problem. so it was always that you respect authorities, you do what you are supposed to do, you tell the truth, and that's how we are taught, whether in actuality, black kids should be caught a little bit more than that, right? because whether i saw that card in my door, i had graduated, you know, high school. it was this -- this took place over that summer break. and it was kind of, you know, as a high school -- it was kind of sad that summer because we were trying to hold on to friends you knew were going everywhere. and we were just partying, hanging out. we knew it was coming to an end. so towards the end of the summer i am bagging groceries and just making a little bit of extra money and stuff like that. and so when i get home i'm now graduated now. so i'm at home all the time. parents are gone. there is a card in the door and it's like robbery homicide. so i call right away because i knew they had the wrong jarrett adams, right? i called and they got me. they said, look, come on down, you know. you never been arrested before. just come on down and you can clear it up. i said, look my mother gets off work at 4, 5:00. he asked me, he says, well, how old are you? i said, 17. he said that's legal in illinois, kid. come on down, get it over it. the entire interview i was called kid, boy, son, kid, boy, son. when we were charged we were the three black men from chicago. just that fast. just that fast. and i just -- you know, i pray again that -- and i wrote this book in a way so that it's tutorial. i remember every lyric from tupac's 1998 double cd when i was in that police station, i didn't know one amendment to our constitutional right. didn't know i had the right to walk out of there. didn't know that i could have simply said i want a lawyer and things would have been over. i thought if i told the truth, it would work out because when it comes on, everything worked out, man. they got the bad guy. so that was my false belief. >> and in the interrogation room there is one police officer from the chicago police -- >> yes. >> and someone who has come from here in wisconsin down there. >> yes. >> and, you know, having just, you know, you were very much in the book, the interrogating officer didn't come with an open mind. >> not at all. >> did not -- i mean, it was a foregone conclusion once you stepped into the room. >> mm-hmm. >> i'm wondering at what point did you know that? at what point did you know -- at what point did you sort of lose the optimism that telling the truth and standing up would not -- would not get you out of this problem? >> in all craziness, as i look back at it right now, so they didn't arrest me right there. they let me out of the police station. let me tell you what they were doing, now i know what they were doing. so they had gotten -- they had knew all three of us. we weren't hiding who we were and stuff like that. so they knew all three of us, but they decided to interview me first. here's why. because we went up to this room staggered, right. i stayed downplaying video games with a young man who they took a statement from -- >> this is on the night of the accusation? >> the night of the accusation. it was a three-page statement written the next day by the young man who would ultimately save our life. they kept trying to figure out, well, this kid is saying that one of them stayed back, got his friends and saw all of them downstairs. when they were talking to me, it was -- the conversation was, what did your friends do? you know you want to save yourself. you see how easily it could have been that someone trying to save themselves, not knowing what's right to do, could have did something wrong, could have totally just threw the case upside down. so i -- you know, i leave out i wasn't arrested. as a 17-year-old kid, i went to the counsel of my friends, who were also 17. they were like, man, if you were going to be arrested, they are just poking around, you told them the truth, you're good. boy oh boy. taking legal advice from a 17-year-old, i do not recommend it. the shocking dismay on my face when a caravan of police show up about a week and a half later, right. because what they did was they took that interview and they used my interview to go fit the missing holes and blanks in their case. and so this caravan of police show up. you talk about -- i will never forget the embarrassment, shock and dismay on my family's face. and then my mom -- so my mother was already mad because she was, like, i didn't know you went to wisconsin. when she found out the name of the campus, whitewater, she was like, are you crazy? what is wrong with you? i'm like, mom, come on now. i didn't -- i didn't -- i never -- as naive as this may sound, i just never for a doubt thought that things wouldn't be okay. >> what is extraordinary is when you get to wisconsin there are perhaps signs of hope. wisconsin, you go through a preliminary hearing, the state has to sort of show their evidence. the judge at the hearing says this is a really bad case. >> i will never forget his name, judge hue. he looked at the case. he heard the first -- because this is something that i want to make sure that i say as well. you guys ever heard the facts of the case? you know what the facts of the case are? they are the police report. you understand? so sometimes people become, you know, confused. they are like the facts of the case -- the facts of the case are the police report. so the police report wasiaten -- i it was a crypt from rosewood. remember that movie? that's how theatrical things were. we have supposed to have snuck up a flight of stairs, raped someone out a gun, no threat, nothing, no conversation at all and flee a building. meanwhile, they had the witnesses statement which disproved that and they knew it. so i am -- i am just dismayed at the allegation itself, especially because i didn't know the exact allegation until the preliminary hearing. the judge wasn't buying it based on the testimony of the accuser. he is like, that's not -- he is like, look, i don't see second, third, i don't see it. i will bond it over and let the trial judge handle it. that was the worst mistake ever because -- >> he had the power to do it. >> not only that. it is very rare to get a judge that has not been a prosecutor or coming somewhere from high litigation and white collar, you know, who has no understanding that not everybody in front of you is guilty of what they are accused of. so that judge had an opportunity, but i understand the legalities of it. but we go on to a judge. you could tell that the atmosphere in the air shifted. i mean, literally i kept asking my lawyer at the time, like, you know, where are the black people at? where are the native people out? there are ain't no asians up here? we are in a courtroom. the only thing of color is the judge's robe and the lawyers' suits and us. so i said, how do you get 40 people in voir dire, whatever that latin term is, how do you get 40 people and not one person of color? so the lawyer was like, well, you know, you know, up, yeah, it's just the luck of the draw. i am like the luck of the draw? can you challenge this? no, you won't win that. just someone never being through this going through it, that's the nightmare journey in the book. that's what it is. about you what you don't understand, that's most of the people who go through the system. they're not -- boy oh boy. did i realize how much of a kid i was while going through this. i thought i knew it all, right? i thought i was ready to go out on my own, all that good stuff. they are literally saying terms that i have no idea what they are talking about. and one of the most important forks in the road came when there was a mistrial and then there was a retrial and me and my codefendant dimitri realized that our remaining codefendant, whose only family was able to hire an attorney, his attorney filed an appeal to bar us from being retried again. and the lawyer, we get to court and the lawyer is, like, hey, you know, let's talk out in the hall. i didn't know that, but i know now. if a lawyer asks you to talk in the hall when you get somewhere and you ain't got a heads of what the conversation is going to be, it's not going to be good. we get out in the hall and the lawyer is like, hey, look, you're the codefendant, filed a motion, you know, we want to go ahead and proceed because you saw what happened during the first trial. for people who haven't read the book, we were tried twice. the first trial ended in a mistrial because, again, the police report wasn't testified to. and so the state moved to amend the charges at the end of trial right before it went to the jury and we asked and requested a mistrial to be declared with prejudice. >> at the end of the first trial. >> at the end of the first trial. >> the prosecutor goes to the judge and says i know i can't win. try again. we get back up to the second trial. a good and well this didn't make sense. which i think we need to talk about as well. a panelist's attorney, got paid when the case was closed. so look, you said it happened on the first trial. let's get this over with. your good kids and all of this. i knew it didn't make sense. i'm looking across at my mother. the ring goals of anger on our forehead were tattooed in and i knew that this guy wasn't making any sense. [inaudible] i was responsible for that and was going to pay it back. i thought if i could get it over with we went to trial, never impeached the witnesses on the inconsistencies then you call the witness. the strategy was a no defense strategy. at 17, 18 i said you know what, no defense because they can't prove their case. that's a solid dismiss. going into a trial like that some of the cases were a study of justice. two of you get a state appointed attorney and one of you gets a private attorney. the first case the state appointed attorneys basically just sort of let the private attorney do all the rest. while the paid attorney did all the questioning our attorneys didn't even get it open because the paid attorney at the time so it's just scary. this isn't right but i believe that i know the prosecutor in me this evidence had nothing to do with any allegation of a crime but the historical depiction of young black men and the accuser so for him it's on the representation to press forward we would divide and conquer at that point and i will never forget part of the reason is exhausting but i never took a timeout. i will never forget just looking at i remember turning around and looking at my mother in the courtroom, i remember how sunken in her eyes were into her head. she looked like my grandmother in the middle of this. it was like what is going on. this isn't about the truth for you. there would be a lot of men in the 60s in the south. you asked me the question. that's when i realized it wasn't looking good. >> the first state appointed attorneys that's the prosecutor at the very end basically says i'm not going to win and you are allowed to be retried. the power of attorney has figured out that he wants to appear in the case. your attorneys don't figure that out so they made a decision which is classic and effective. >> 's of you go to a second trial but this time because your friend is going through an appeal. it's you and the others and both of you have the same attorneys and same counsel who just sat there. there was just no reason. it should have been mistrial. the appeal was directly at the heart of what this issue was. it was just inexcusable. i read this as a professor and it seems like there is one constitutional violation after another. we learned later not all exculpatory evidence and we of course know that they specifically exclude for or five people that come up to the jury on the state but one of the things i remember i was surprised though it didn't put a lightbulb over your attorneys head, the argument of the state beginning with the police and the prosecutor is why would this woman sleep with three black men and we said that in the closing. throughout the trial, that is all we saw. that's how obvious at the trial and that is what he kept saying and was screaming it at the end of the first trial. it just didn't happen and i can't go past this without mentioning the state public defense system in wisconsin isn't broken. it was never working. you have a system where they are overwhelmed so where is the safety valve for that. create a fund where you can assign experienced attorneys and pay a decent rate. right now, the state is not incentivizing good representation. it's pushing it away that's good for some attorneys that can't generate their own business but that's not going to get you the constitutionally affected representation all the time and so you think about this. if we really wanted to make sure that we got it right, why aren't the scales leveled for public defense, why are they doing civil suits to get the funding to represent the states. i don't want to come across as a science major or anything like that, but i'm telling you right now we could fix this thing, but there were people who were not affected by it and people that are benefiting from the prison system and the job that it creates who are choosing not to do what is right to save the lives of folks that may be innocent that have gone through the system. it's one of the things that becomes evident. the state has to do the investigations. part of the reason you were able to vindicate yourself, there were witnesses at the party is to have investigators that could have sat them down and the police had talked to them they knew what happened in the but they did not hand over those documents. >> they never turned over those things. they knew it would happen the next night. this was a layup, in so many words. they had all the elements, and all the fixings, for what had historically worked. i cannot use that word enough. historical, historical, historical. that is how we change and we get to a different place. we cannot look at history and her peoples feelings because the only way, ahead of the road, -- and that is, that is the thing that just kept it going. i kept saying to myself, from the first time this took place, all the way up until i was walked out, in 2007, i just kept saying, this could be over anytime. they will get this right. we are talking about a decade now, that goes by. and so, i remember asking an attorney about the investigator. i remember him saying, something about a budget. the point that you just made was important, because, the deposit all of the state, we cannot just count how huge that is. when they face state versus, so and so, that is exactly what they mean. the state is bringing a federal investigation to look it up. you name, it -- all the words that come at the governments power. and so, for my public defender, even if he wanted to give an investigator, there would've had to have been a process of going to the court, asking for a budget. and again, it is not conducive to getting it right. do we want to get it right is the question? if we do not want to get it right, then you do not give public defenders the resources they need to hire more bodies. you do not give distinct offender systems the opportunity to really play attention, and know what they are doing, and provide representation. this is about want, and desire, in terms of issues in the book. and so, i will move on to the experience i once you are convicted. one of the things that struck me was at sentencing, the judge said something like, i was going to give you 20 years, but i do not like your attitude, so i will give you 28. that was real. so, when i knew this was in, and we were going to be found guilty, because it was a day and a half, with no witnesses, i knew time it was. i turned around and looked at my mother, and i knew what was going on. i could not have my aunties, and my mother, sit up in this room, in this courtroom, and hear me be depicted as someone other than who they raised. so, i stood up, and i said, i would like to apologize to everyone in here, my mom, everyone in this room, but i will not apologize for rape that never happened. it is not true, and i pray that someday you tell the truth. so, the judge overheard this, after the jury find me. when i came back for a sentencing, she told me, exactly what you just said. she gave me eight more additional years, because she said that i was not remorseful. i do not know remorseful was on the penal code, and against the law. apparently, she was able to do so. let me point this out. what's she tried to do to punish me, really save the trajectory of my life. i went to the maximum right away. there was no consideration of me going to medium or anything like that. dimitri ended up staying at -- and he went down to a medium. so, i am with this older white dude, who has been there for a long time. i remember, it was him who gave me a wake up call. someone was attacked, and they locked everyone down. i was on the phone with my mom. you could spy the phone through -- with my chicago public school education, i had to explain to my mom, and my aunt, who kept saying, how does someone never get arrested in 28 years, in prison. my auntie was like, how does someone use the presence of pre-block was as an elemental force. i cannot answer these questions. i am literally still a baby. i cannot answer any of these questions. i remember saying, let me talk to you. he was just like, i do not understand what you are doing. you are going out here, you are playing basketball. you are trying to be known, for being a good basketball and chess player in the joint? you are ridiculous. let me read the paperwork. so he read it, he said the witness who came up, -- he was there for almost the entire thing. >> his testimony never never really got. they're >> never really got there at all. so he has like three sentences of notes inside of my paperwork, that i never paid attention to. so than, that's when i started to find out who was representing them. i said, you guys have to go out and find this to. that is when it later came out this statement. the thing about it was, when the statement came out, the prosecution almost immediately, dismissed the charges against the remaining codefendant. >> this is the person at the paid attorney. >> the paid attorney. >> the paid attorney was able to hire an investigator, figure that up, and when it was brought to the attention of the court, and the prosecutor, the prosecutors said you can go. so the three of you have been charged. the power of attorney is at home. you are seven to 20, eight your codefendant is serving 20? >> 20 years. >> so, i thought that the evidence was strong enough to garner -- they were most certainly enough to give me and dimitri a trial. the prosecutor said, well, your lawyers chose a strategy that did not include to cause a witness. i said, that is not our problem. they essentially made us go the long way. and we appealed seven years more. there is no doubt, i had started to write this, the same issues, i pointed out to them this is an opportunity to leave state court and go to federal court. i pointed out the issues, the innocence project chuck and drafted the two issues. first of all, it was the elements. there was no accusation of force. it was crazy how we got this charge. the second thing was resisting council. there is no doubt in my mind that had not been for the name of the innocence project, i would still be in there. and, i know this, based on the work that we are doing now on post convictions in the state of wisconsin. it is too easy for folks, sitting in their seats, to just say no. that is it. without even a hearing. but, the name gets their attention. the name, and also, what happened with my codefendant was what created the perfect storm. let me tell you more about this. i have the innocence project litigating throughout. dimitri is in a different prison. so, we are not able to communicate. so, he ended up ultimately missing a deadline for the federal. so, i go through, my convictions are first. this goes through to foul a motion in the interest of justice. in front of the same judge who gave me the 28 years. quote unquote, she said, it is clear that the court did not have all the evidence in front of them, so they will overturn this conviction of dimitri. dimitri came home three months after i did. so, do you know, the attorney general spearheaded by the prosecutor who is doing our case, is now elevated to the attorney generals office, and appeals the case to the court, and the court reinstated the convictions of dimitri, and said, it was because he missed the deadline. never said anything about innocence, guilt, none of that. just simply said, he missed the deadline, and the sentencing court did not have the authority to grant -- it is called the interest of justice. but the court said -- so, you have to ask yourself, why are we getting these types of opinions? why are there so many barriers to getting released, in a post conviction system? because, again, if the story is impressive, let me impress upon you, the people we are losing then. and so, we are back the same thing we have done it before. we are back at the conversation. and, i am a lawyer, i am not a scholar. until we address this thing, for real, and start to address the quality, we are not going to get past, this at all. if there was someone on that bench, or someone on that bench in that court, who could have solved this for what it was, they would have done exactly what thurgood marshall's quote says. sometimes you have to do it is right, and not the law catch up. this speaks volumes. we cannot keep relying on things to come out the way they are. we have to keep changing the shots. it is important that people use this book to mobilize on how to get it done. how you get it done is this. everything has its own policing power. every county, criminal court that you live in, there needs to be a pocket of a group created, to hold judges accountable. i am not going to lie. i played abracadabra with the judges. i will not lie. i do not do it now. it is important that we know who we are electing, who people are, because we have to change the people who are making the decisions. those decisions are keeping other people -- i am of the motion, or belief, that there are not other innocent people in the wisconsin system. if you are leading the nation for capita in locking a black man, then, come on. sometimes there is a mistake made. so now, it comes down to people who are in the seats right now not doing it. how do we groom the candidates to put their replacement and. they are the oppressors of the equality and justice, that we need to be able to move forward. >> i think we have about ten minutes. there is a microphone over here, i am told. [inaudible] >> you did a good job. you did a good job. >> we talked a lot about your experience going through. let's talk a little bit about what you want people to know about your life and your passions, and helping other man who have not been able. >> first and foremost, i am not here because i did it all on my own. i had a strong family structure. my mom, my aunt, and people in the community who reached out and extended their palms and pulled me up. i had a former assistant states attorney, who took me under his wing when i got to chicago. i continue to build on the relationship with the innocence project. -- i am on cancel at the milwaukee firm there. i wanted a presence here, but not just a presence, i wanted to try and start something that would tackle that article. i feel this, i had never been born here, i never had an idea here, but i have equity in citizenship. i am not proud of that article that came out. it is embarrassing. do you understand? to be known for locking of the most black man, that cannot be what it is. we have to go from having a conversation about it, and putting changes into it. that is why i wanted to have a presence here. so many letters i get from men who are still incarcerated, who were incarcerated when i was incarcerated, and they are there for non fatal offenses, is telling me what? we are not re-integrating them back into the state of wisconsin. we are not doing a good job of it. you will see in the book, it tells you that well over 50, to 60% of people into carson rated and wisconsin, has had experiences in the system before. let me use another example. i imagine a car company. imagine if a car company had 60% of its cars come back to the production line after two or three years off of the production line. congress would have a national debate, they would be trying to start this car company down. it is a danger, it is a risk to the community. so, i go back to the reintegrating these men back into society. one or two years, i know, the scariest thing i saw on president, was not violence, it was watching someone go home in the wintertime, and come back by next summer. so, it is like, okay, how do we find the value to shut down a corporation, when it's product keeps coming back, and it is not right. but, no one wants to have a conversation about re-integrating folks back into communities. more importantly, giving communities resources they need. we are not locking our way out of this problem. the only way to fix it is to empower the community, and give them the resources they need, to fix what is there. think about what you use every day at home. think about a tv, or whatever it is. if someone breaks into your home, and you use it all the time, you usually know how to fix it. but it comes down to is this. do you have the resources? do you have the glue? do you have the tape? or do you have the syrup? i used syrup one day. it did not work. so now, you look at that, and you say to yourself, okay. that is how we fix this thing. we build the community as strong as we can, because they have to deal with the problems in their community. we cannot do that if we continue with the political -- everyone runs a campaign, and asked for reform, and as soon as they get into the office, we are in iraq fighting with people. >> we have one question i think over here. >> i am interested in the underlying reality of this crime you are accused of. was it that there was really an assault, and they got the three wrong guys who perpetrated it? or was it that the supposed victim was lying about the whole thing? did you ever find out? >> you did not read the book. >> i did not. >> i am hoping to be inspired. >> you have to read the book. see here is the thing. i do that with all sincerity. that is not a one minute answer. you have to read the book. that is what you have to do. this was a false accusation, and it's sprung out of an embarrassing encounter. you have to read the book. >> i surely will read the book. however, are you saying it was a false accusation? the question i have is, is there any sense of justice that the person who made the false accusation just lit walking off and living their life? >> the unfortunate part about this is this. this is not just my case. this is with all cases. when someone is lying, as a witness for the state, there are no repercussions. they can tell you all of what they want to tell you, and stuff like that, but a part of the reason is, if they prosecute people who are lying, they run the risk of people not coming forward. all the nonsense. i will say this, we were kids. adults were not being adults. i believe, and i know for a fact, that this young lady made this false accusation, because her roommate walked in the room and started calling her names. that is what kids do. sometimes, when kids are pressed with their backs up against the wall, they do not make the best decisions, and best choices. from day one, especially after that student wrote that statement, they knew with the truth was. they just decided themselves, that no, this is a layup. we will not miss this opportunity. >> i think that is a good place to end. that is our time. thank you very much. [applause] thank you for your questions, thank you all for coming tonight. i am the director of the books festival. this is the first day that we have been able to celebrate the festival in two full years. last celebration date was the 23rd of 2019. it is really wonderful to welcome you all back, especially for evenings like this. important books like this. this is also the 20th time that madison, wisconsin, the world has gathered to celebrate this book festival. thank you for participating in that tonight. these television companies supports c-span2 as a public service. on about the books we delve into the latest news of the , on about pucks, we't

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