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Once again, thank you so much for being here, Mr. Simpson Bay. We really are honored to have you here to get today.

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So just to begin with some background, could you talk about the details of the case that led to your incarceration?

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Yes.

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Think my name is Ronald Simpson Bay, I currently work as the director of outreach and alumni engagement for organization called Jeff's Leadership USA.

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It's a New York based National Criminal Justice Reform Organization committed to Decarceration America, cutting a national prison population.

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Man, my story? Wow. That's a great question. A little bit of background.

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I served 27 seven years in Michigan Department of Corrections from 1985 to 2012 on a wrongful conviction.

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My conviction was subsequently overturned, and the nature of that conviction was based on.

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I was involved in a police shooting in 1985 in Flint, Michigan.

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Myself and three other guys are with me, called my codefendant, so to speak.

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We were to go. We were riding around on October of eighty five, you know,

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doing foolish stuff that fools are doing back in that time, selling drugs and this, that and other.

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And we ended up being, you know, in a shootout with an undercover police officer.

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What had happened? I had gone by one of my spots. I was selling drugs out of and went to collect the money, but the guy wasn't there.

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So my buddy and I, we sat there, talked to his girlfriends and her friends for a little while, and he didn't show up.

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At about a half hour, we left the apartment and told them that we would come back later to see to see the guy I was looking for.

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But we didn't know at the time the whole apartment complex was was under surveillance because it was a hotspot for drugs.

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And as we left, they thought we had arrived to draw a spot or something.

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So they followed us down or down the street and we were driving through the neighborhood.

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And about a block or two away from the place apartment complex, they stopped us.

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And so we pulled over. It was on my car and we didn't know who it was.

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And so I get out of the car. When the guy pulls up, he's on a Z 28 Camaro, got on a blue jean outfit.

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We all had gerekiyor, curl hair styles, as little data for you guys.

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And so the guy got out of the car, he squashed down his door and pulled his gun, and he's like, Wow, who is this guy?

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And so we ended up. He fired the shot and the guys in my car would shoot, shoot and back and forth and him.

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I'm standing there, bullets zipping past me, and I don't know what's going on.

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I'm running to get out of the way because I don't want to get shot. And the guys in my car take off and an undercover cop take off at the dome.

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Unbeknownst to me at that time, we didn't know it was undercover officer. So two or three miles down the road,

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they run off the road and there's a second shootout and that this particular shootout the officer gets hit in arm.

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And at times, I didn't know that was going on.

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I walked in, got to a place of safety and I called my buddy's girlfriend to drive my car.

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Hey, you guys come by the house to come pick me up at the garage.

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And so hour or so later I call her, she said, Your body's been arrested, they are there the police station.

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And so I knew they're going to be looking for me. So later on that day, I was arrested and subsequently charged with them with the charge of assault,

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with intent to commit murder on a Flint police officer, even though I wasn't there to shoot it and I wasn't at the scene when he got shot.

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And he even testified his initial police statement of the incident was that, you know, when he pulled up,

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I was standing outside of the car with a brown bag in my hand because I had a beer and the shooting started,

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so I figured I was going to get out and get released because I wasn't involved in the shooting.

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But as luck would have it, I got convicted. Assault with intent to commit murder got since the 50 years of Michigan and I went to prison.

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So that's kind of how my case, I ended up in prison.

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And I'm curious, do you know what happens to the police officer who testified against you?

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Yeah, actually, I mean, he he is funny because his original statement that I hadn't done it.

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But when you got the trial, he said, when I after I left the scene as I was running away from the car and jumped over fence,

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he said he thought he saw a gun in my hand that was smoking.

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I'm like, We don't when we do this, not this, not the eight hundred and shoot muskets and black powder.

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I mean, how is how were the gun going to be smoking? And I'm running.

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So I mean, I didn't even have a gun. So anyway, he he ended up years later making a statement on my behalf.

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As I was as I was appealing my case in the late early 2000s, around 2009 2010, I knew one of his nephews and they connect me to him,

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and he and I are writing a statement on my behalf, basically saying that, you know, he basically made up his made up, his out, his testimony at trial.

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Right, right, and on. So you did advocate for yourself in prison on this path to exoneration.

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I curious to know what were some of the barriers on that path to defending yourself, whether they're big or small ones?

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Yeah, huge, huge barriers. That's a great question.

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And just for transparency, I actually wrote the habeas corpus petition to the federal courts that got me released.

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I did my homework because what happened when I got convicted?

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At the time of my trial, I had paid a lot of money for attorneys, and when I went to prison, I hired appellate attorney to.

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I spent like $30000 on attorneys in eighty five ended up doing, you know what, a 50 years since I've said I want to spend.

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I didn't have any more money to spend, so I had to advocate for myself.

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And the problem with that in prisons, the law library, the materials are so antiquated.

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There's so minimal. It's like it's almost impossible to litigate for yourself.

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And I was just fortunate to get hired as a paralegal for the only law office that was inside

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of a prison in the United States at the time called Prison Legal Services of Michigan.

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And so I had a little bit more access to legal materials and the average person inside prisons.

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And that the barriers were huge. You didn't have a lot of access to the library where you could work on your case.

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At the time I'm going to prison, they only gave you like one or two hours a week to be in a library.

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And I became a named plaintiff in a class action lawsuit, part of which dealt with access to court.

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And we were able to get the library at times expanded to six hours a week to get the materials upgraded where they had better materials.

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And so just the whole process of having having the materials, knowing what to do because you didn't have,

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I guess I would say the average person just had one with to prison.

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In Michigan, only 66 percent of people incarcerated in Michigan didn't have GEDs at the time.

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So imagine not having a high school education and trying to understand law and the legal system that people are going to college for years for.

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So just it was a huge barrier, just even learning it once you learned them being able to actually put it into effect.

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And litigating for yourself is, I won't say it's frowned upon by the courts,

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but they don't give it much credence because the average personal litigant doesn't really know what they're doing.

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So they throw a lot of jargon, a lot of junk into the motions that they file, and the courts don't really like seeing them.

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So it's just a huge uphill battle to deal with the stress of living in prison.

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You know, you incarcerated me for something I hadn't done.

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And so that was frustrating, and I've sat down with the stress, anxiety and learning the legal system to advocate for myself was huge.

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Were those wanted to our limits?

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Did they have some sort of reasoning for that or were there just arbitrary limits that they only totally arbitrary, totally arbitrary?

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And because, you know, when we were litigating that case, you know, we asked this,

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we asked the same question Why is it limited at a time wasn't even to our obsession.

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It was like two hours a week. And so we got to like two hours a day,

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three days a week signal six hours where you can go in and kind of get some research done and then go back to your cell.

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But it was a totally arbitrary number. Right.

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And knowing that you were wrongfully convicted,

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did you begin that journey to advocating for yourself and exoneration right away, or was that the decision that came gradually?

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Oh, that decision came gradually.

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One thing about doing prison time especially long since is you do it in phases and the first phase, the first five years of my sins.

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I was angry. I mean, I was super angry. I was out of the problem on the prison yard.

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I wasn't the solution.

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I wasn't advocating for anything but chaos and mayhem because I felt I had been wrongfully convicted and I was already angry and aggressive.

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So and it just fed into my anger and aggression.

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So the first five years, I don't do any advocate now, which is I was on the yard playing cards, gambling and fighting,

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you know, selling drugs, making homemade wine with all and all the negative stuff that you hear about in prison.

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I got involved in the first five years. But in 1990, I read a book.

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A friend of mine sent me a book I love reading. She sent me a book called Visions for Black Men.

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The 90 page paperback by a professor from Florida. It got nine doctor named Ackbar.

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And that book was such an eye opener for me was so powerful because there was a

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21 page section in that book called The Transformation from male to Boy to Man,

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and it broke down the attributes of a male. He had behaved, boy behaves and how man behaved.

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And so I put myself along that spectrum. At a time, I was probably about 30 of just over 30, maybe thirty one, thirty two years old.

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And so I know I'm a man. I thought I was when I read that book, Oh man, I'm barely a I'm operating at the boy level.

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And so that really, that really hit me a man, and I hate being a hypocrite at anything.

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So I changed my way of thinking I because I started looking at looking at life differently.

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I started looking at, stopped looking at myself and felt like people old me started making out wrongfully convicted.

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I started looking outwardly instead. Inwardly, when I did, my whole circumstances changed.

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Well, yeah, and you know, in that process of studying the law and advocating for yourself,

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did you ever feel like you were being like the guards or prison staff were punishing you by

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taking away library time or through hostility because you were advocating for yourself?

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Well, on the prison staff level,

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they didn't really have much input as far as how much time I got to be in a library that's more with an upper level administrative matter.

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They said that the central office that runs a whole Department of Corrections in Michigan,

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they said the hours in the times and the memos I put for our prisoner movement.

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But what the staff would do, I told I was involved in a class action lawsuit from 1988 to 2005.

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It was the largest class action lawsuit in Michigan. It dealt with conditions of confinement, access the court lack in a number of other things.

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And what would happen to officers took offense to us litigating for ourselves.

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So they were retaliated against us. I mean, they would come in our cells, toss us, they'll throw stuff away, lose files or what have you.

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It got so bad that the court had an issue of court order they they couldn't search ourselves without without pre-approval from the award.

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They couldn't transpose facilities without approval of the court.

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I mean, the retaliation was so bad I filed a retaliation lawsuit because they put me in solitary confinement for 60 days,

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one time on a bogus ticket and a misconduct report.

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They wrote me say I tried inside a riot. I end up beating the ticket.

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I got found not guilty.

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And so I had to file a lawsuit for being placed in solitary confinement for the time in twenty twelve thousand five hundred dollars for it.

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But that's just the environment in which you operate. Now we had to fight the courts in all going on.

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We had to fight the officers to get off our backs so we could fight.

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Right, and you've spoken as the prison system, as designed to dehumanize, and this really speaks to that.

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And can you expand upon more moments where you felt dehumanized as an incarcerated person?

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Mandy dehumanizes Dehumanization Star from day one, when you when you get transferred from the county in which you were convicted,

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they transporting you on a van or a car or a bus take you to Watts car reception and guidance center.

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We call it a quarantine. There's a processing center for all new people coming into the prison system.

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The very first day of dehumanizing you go to this big, huge holding area where 50 other guys, they make you strip down to nothing.

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I mean, you stand in a room but naked with 50 other men.

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And you know, you can only imagine you're coming from a county jail with the smells and the like.

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The noises inside was horrible.

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And then you go through this whole group shower and delousing puts powder on the delousing powder and gave you a bed roll.

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You get dressed, you take your mug shot and you get going to the prison. And it starts from day one.

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You know, you're not a person. You become a number. They gave you a number and that's what you identify.

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They don't call me by your name. When they call you over the speaker, they may say they may say your name.

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They say no so-and-so songs. I also report to the control center report back to your housing unit you

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identified by a number and during during the period when I first went to prison,

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you can wear your personal clothing, you know, on the yard.

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You could walk around the prison, which, you know, approved personal clothing in the mid nineties.

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They change that. They change the policy where you go and wear a prison issue uniform.

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So everybody had on the same uniform on the ice, you got 3000 guys on.

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The guard will look like penguins out there. There was no personal identity. Yeah.

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And they they. They advocated the administration.

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They did not want any type of individualistic or self identity going on, so they they put processes into place that will dehumanize him.

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Just make you just wanted a group.

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And after what it wears on, you even the names they use, you know, inmate felling can be all that type of those things they dehumanize.

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If they don't recognize the people, the person they don't, they don't use person first language that we tried to knock incarcerated person,

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formerly incarcerated people or those, you know, humanizing the people they harp on.

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They own the labeling of people to put them in categories.

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So that was an incident. The officers always try to dehumanize you.

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They would do things that they would come in your cell and just just do disgraceful things.

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I see officers going and urinated on guys beds and in their bring the dogs in and sometimes difficult for drugs.

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And you know, you got a flea bitten dog rummaging through your stuff, climbing on your bed.

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And it's just it's just the whole process is just to humanize it.

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Going to the showers, going to the chow hall, you know you in a line and it's just, you know,

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you can't talk sometimes depending on what level of security and you maximum security.

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You might get two or three hours out of your cell a day. And it's just it's just the whole process was built to dehumanize you.

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Wow, that sounds horrifying. And so you mentioned in the mid-nineties,

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there's this change with the uniform was did you witness a shift in your time while you were incarcerated in any other form besides the uniforms?

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What was the question again?

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Witness, what did you witness a shift, maybe in the methods that they used or conditions during your time that you were incarcerated.

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This can include the uniforms, but some other associated with that.

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I think that with the uniform it was, it was part of a larger chain.

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But I think the uniform changes kind of signal to the officer that, you know, we make them less human.

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They all going, we know that we're going to put them all in the same box. You should treat them all accordingly.

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Because Senator stay, I became more aggressive. Would they shake down their searches and it just became a little more hostile, so to speak?

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Not all. I mean, I shouldn't say I'm not blanking, saying all the officers, but you had a certain castrated certain mindset that one operation,

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anyway, it gave them a license to go further, if that makes sense.

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I mean, to put it in context, in today's terminology, we had, you know, Trump's supporters who are guys, you know, who believe in supremacy,

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but their guards in the Senate, you can only imagine they had the license to do what they wanted to do pretty much.

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And immense facility, you know, the way we balance the lot of time officers would get assaulted, you know, the ones that the worst ones.

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They ended up in some in some pretty dire situations with people attacking them.

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And by the time when I told you I had been putting aside psychic confinement for inciting a riot,

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that particular day, one particular prisoner has stabbed three officers in a housing unit.

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Because these three officers have been missing him, he got some bad news from home that his mom or somebody had died,

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he was trying to guess some, you know, just make some calls home. They were harassing him and he just snapped and he had stab and three of them.

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And so. Those kind of things that happen in. Right,

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and with this experience of being incarcerated and being in the prison system while also learning about the law on studying the law as a paralegal,

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how did those two things change your view about the justice system as a whole or maybe just justice as a concept?

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I mean, what I became was I started studying law myself.

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The biggest takeaway that I had was that the laws, whatever the court says it is at that moment,

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whatever the judge says at that moment in making a decision. That's what the law is.

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And the way I came to that conclusion is by doing appellate work, you identify issues that you look for, case by case law that supports your issue.

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And for example, if you're looking for you had say over your turn, turn it into a job.

189
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Is this a huge issue that most people find in prison? Is inefficient, inefficient, excessive counsel?

190
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So if counsel in inefficient you fathers used being around trying to get some representation.

191
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But what I've discovered was that you could find 50 cases that support your issue.

192
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50 cases that was against it based on the exact same facts circumstance.

193
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So I started arguing my cases to the to the court, trying to convince the court I didn't care what the law meant anymore.

194
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It became more about humanizing the story and getting the judge to agree what you was saying,

195
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more so it trying to convince them of what the law said because the courts make the law.

196
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So that was my biggest takeaway when I became a paralegal, not so much.

197
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Citing a whole bunch of case law to support your issue, tell a story and then put a few cases that support your story.

198
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I became much more successful. And you did while you were incarcerated, you took on several leadership roles.

199
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Yes, for you. Can you expand upon those roles and also what it meant to be a community leader within the prison system as an incarcerated person?

200
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Well, for me, when I was the prison I had already been, the guy had gone to college. I went to Eastern Michigan University in the mid 70s.

201
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I was going on a track scholarship.

202
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And so when I got to prison and I and 66 percent of people in prison didn't have it, I'm like, Oh man, this is this is crazy.

203
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And at the time I was, I was aggressive Tucson on the way. I mean, I got more education than they have, and I'm aggressive.

204
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I'm going to run the prison. I feel like I'm a go out of jail and I'm going to control the yard.

205
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And that's kind of what happened to me, and I discovered that.

206
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I became a leader in a number of groups. I became a religious leader in an Islamic group called The More Silent Symbol of America,

207
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which actually was the largest prison organization in Michigan prisons statewide.

208
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And I became their leader. I became the grand chic of that organization. And I became the president of the NAACP, the National Rifle Association,

209
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as even on on the board of directors for organization called Hasta is a Hispanic organization,

210
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and only only Spanish I knew was Olé and C, but they put me on a committee anyway to help guide their interaction with the administration.

211
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I was the chairman of a committee called The Warden Form is kind of a political party.

212
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You get elected by your fellow inmates to represent them at the warden's means.

213
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And I became not only a representative, but I was the chairman of all the representative.

214
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And what I discovered was, I mean, once I got out of my anger after the first five years and I started doing this type of work,

215
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I discovered that advocacy was the way to go.

216
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I discovered that administration lot of officers and the staff, they didn't know the rules as well as I did.

217
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So I was able to advocate for people who couldn't advocate for themselves. I always hate bullies.

218
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Hours have always hated bullies, so I would try to help the people that couldn't really help themselves in court or with the administrative rule.

219
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They would get bogus tickets written on on misconduct tickets by the officer.

220
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I helped them buy two tickets an appeal. So for me, advocacy took on a whole new meaning it became a way of life.

221
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That's why I'm doing the work that I do now because I discovered that, you know, fighting is stabbing and beating up officers.

222
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That wasn't going to get me anywhere.

223
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I discovered that I could litigate and write, you know, reasonable arguments that I could make a much better impact on the prison.

224
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Unconditional confinement of people incarcerated in Michigan. And through these networks of organizations, maybe in within the prison itself,

225
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we're able to instigate any change of the conditions of the prison or was it just sort of more legal advocacy?

226
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We were actually able to change the conditions because the way the war in form is set up.

227
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It deals with all aspects of living within the prison. It deals with, with with the child, how the food you eat and then chow how weather is hotter.

228
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Weather's cold, your access to a commissary to store items, your recreation, your out of cell activity,

229
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you access to the yard, to the gym, you access to the library religious services.

230
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Every aspect of prison life was was kind of touched upon by the war and form committees and other organizations that supported them.

231
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So yes, we were able to actually change, you know, policy and conditions of confinement.

232
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The lawsuit that I mentioned, the class action lawsuit, that's what it was about changing the conditions of confinement.

233
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So we would take the stories from the people that, you know, suffer hardships and arguing before the court.

234
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This is why this policy should be changed.

235
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Your honor because this person, these people suffered this hard because of the practices, policies and procedures of the Department of Corrections.

236
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And so we were able to get a lot of these changes. That's its incredible story.

237
00:22:41,760 --> 00:22:57,840
And just thinking about after being released from prison, after you served 27 years, what was that first day out of prison like, man, I remember.

238
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Yeah, that was the first day out of prison.

239
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It started on me at about four o'clock in the morning and they transported me from the prison I was at to court because what happened?

240
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Michael Bay's never overturned by the federal courts.

241
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And they had to take me to court that morning for a pretrial hearing on my new angling to get a new job.

242
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But when I got back to court that morning, the prosecutors, they didn't want to send me back the track or the case.

243
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I've been good at by my appeal. And so end up getting released that day when I went to court.

244
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So I went back to the they took me back to the prison,

245
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packed all my stuff up and my family came and picked me up that afternoon around four or five o'clock.

246
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And as I was leaving the prison, you know, at the time,

247
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I was at a minimum security and when I was as I was leaving and we were driving along the fence.

248
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You know what a prison was, how it all, you know, had been in prison for twenty seven years.

249
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I knew everybody in the prison. Everybody was standing. I was in tears because everybody along the fence line waving me off, you know,

250
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wishing me well, because these are family members I had done 20 seven years with.

251
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And so. Excuse me.

252
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You know, please take your time. Leaving them behind what really are from it is even harder now you can see how I'm reacting now.

253
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And that's why I do the work that I do because there were so many good people has left behind.

254
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Not everybody in prison is bad. They just made bad decisions. A lot of my innocent stuff, they charged up.

255
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So. That first ate them after they picked me up and I drove away from the prison.

256
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We were driving and we head toward expressway because I had we had to drive out across the state about about 300 miles.

257
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And as we were going through town, we generally drive and passed down a restaurant row on the main street.

258
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We passed windows when it was the last restaurant I had eaten at before I went to prison.

259
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And they stop at Wendy's, stop at Wendy's and we stopped.

260
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I didn't want to sit Naomi, but we ordered it to take our window. I got the same thing I saw with order.

261
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When I was before I went to prison, I had my favorite meal I ordered from Windsor.

262
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I ordered it and went home, drove home and enjoyed it.

263
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It was surreal. And once we got back to Flint, Michigan, and we were driving down the street that my mom stayed on.

264
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It was like it looked like enchanted for us. When I had left prison, the trees were, you know, 12, 10, 12 foot trees, you know, just small.

265
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When I got home, all the trees on the street had grown over. So big they were, they created a canopy over the street.

266
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I was like, Wow, look at these trees. They were like saplings when I left.

267
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So when I get home, the trees are fully grown. That was that was a shock.

268
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Just getting reacquainted with my family. I have four children and and four grandchildren.

269
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So, you know, catching up with my children and grandchildren was it was it was overwhelming.

270
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Actually, I had to go. I took like a day, just went in hiding because it was too much sensory overload.

271
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I couldn't deal with it. Too much anxiety. And, you know, finally, being outside of the prison, what aspects of freedom were most important to you?

272
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Once you had that freedom? Oh, yes, for me, I mean, I live by the motto, freedom, I'm free, you have to work for your freedom.

273
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You know, people take freedom for granted.

274
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I mean, look, look at just look at the incident happened in D.C. in January to seek as good as a good, a good.

275
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Incident of freedom not being free. Your freedom is real tenuous. So for me, from day one, I knew when I got home I was going to fight for freedom,

276
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not not just to keep my own freedom, but for everybody else's freedom that I left for everybody's incarcerated.

277
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And so for me, it was just it just defined my mission.

278
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And to give you a little bit more of my backstory around what know what motivates me on the work that I currently do.

279
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Back in 2001, Father's Day to died when I was in a prison about 50 60 years at the time, and my four children were coming to visit me.

280
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I had a son and three daughters, and I talked to my son and my, Hey, dad,

281
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I'm gonna come bring the girls, or we will come visit my son, who was 21 at the time.

282
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And so. I said, great. I'm sitting there waiting for them to come 1:00, 2:00 3:00, nobody shows up, so now I'm kind of concerned.

283
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So I got on the phone. I started making phone calls, trying to find where my children were and which is strange.

284
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I couldn't catch anybody. I mean, no. I got a pretty big family influence, though, but nobody was available by the phone, which was odd.

285
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So I called my mother, my ex mother in law, Bob Peebles. Hey, mom. Hey, Ron, how are you doing, sir?

286
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Have you seen the Kansas bowl to come visit me today? She said. You haven't heard.

287
00:27:42,510 --> 00:27:50,890
I not her watch. Look, Ronnie been shot and killed. Most my time on your son had been shot and killed, about 40 odd juvenile in Flint,

288
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Michigan, on Father's Day while I was waiting for them to come visit.

289
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So I mean, I can't I can't even begin to tell you the pain that that caused the anxiety and suffering.

290
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But by that time, I have been in prison long enough.

291
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I had changed my life that where I knew that I didn't want to take revenge or retribution for this child.

292
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I wanted to advocate for the shot. I felt like because the Michigan at the time, they were giving juvenile children life without parole for murder.

293
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And I saw no useful purpose,

294
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though a 14 year old child being put into an adult prison to serve a life sentence without ever having a chance for redemption or parole.

295
00:28:28,270 --> 00:28:33,220
I believe a second chance and redemption, everybody should have that, and I believe that for my worst enemy.

296
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So for a child to kill my son and advocated for him to be treated as a child to go to juvenile court instead of adult court.

297
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And I was successful in that he end up being sentenced to a seven year sentence and got out at age 21.

298
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But I always say that me advocating for that child was my first contribution to the restorative justice movement.

299
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I'm not sure if you got me.

300
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Restorative justice is the practice or the principle of trying to heal the harms on both sides of for a big demand for the offender.

301
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And so it was my contribution to try to heal that young man and his family because

302
00:29:09,100 --> 00:29:13,210
having him go to jail for the rest of his life was not going to bring my son back,

303
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was not going to do anything but further erode the fabric of our society and just destroy his family as well.

304
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So that's kind of my motivation for the work that I do today. Yeah, thank you for sharing that with us.

305
00:29:26,640 --> 00:29:38,410
That's a really powerful story. And I just wanted to ask.

306
00:29:38,410 --> 00:29:48,220
You feel like in that moment you're your views of justice really changed, especially with your experience as an incarcerated person.

307
00:29:48,220 --> 00:29:56,790
You know, contextualizing that. Everything about justice and justice in America is so man,

308
00:29:56,790 --> 00:30:01,560
is everything in America that's beyond everything in America is based on racial disparities that mean,

309
00:30:01,560 --> 00:30:04,800
let's just be honest and because the whole prison,

310
00:30:04,800 --> 00:30:12,150
the whole criminal justice system was built on on on a system of disparity, racial and racial inequities and disparities.

311
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And from that, from the days of slavery. And so I mean, if you when you built a system on that, on that foundation, the rest of the system is flawed.

312
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So justice is it's hard to get justice in America, especially for minority communities.

313
00:30:26,820 --> 00:30:29,340
Just look at you and just follow the news in the last year.

314
00:30:29,340 --> 00:30:36,240
We all saw what happened with George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and and Trayvon Martin and all these other people.

315
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These incidents we see Castiel Philando Castile has been has been just murdered by law enforcement,

316
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not just by, not by their own people, law enforcement. And so and this is supposed to be just these people that we depend to protect us as well.

317
00:30:51,150 --> 00:30:58,810
So. Justice is justice is an elusive concept here in the United States, I mean, we all we seek it,

318
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we want it, we desire just like we want liberty and freedom, but it's a moving target.

319
00:31:05,920 --> 00:31:12,910
And then just to go back to the time when you were released from prison,

320
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when you were released as an exonerated person, what resources did you have available to you?

321
00:31:19,300 --> 00:31:21,400
Oh, actually, me, I wasn't exonerated,

322
00:31:21,400 --> 00:31:27,550
exonerated what happened was when when they figured they could take me back to try to offer me a plea bargain two times or so,

323
00:31:27,550 --> 00:31:29,770
and they said I could go home that day if I accepted it.

324
00:31:29,770 --> 00:31:35,650
So I did accept a plea bargain to a lesser goods, to a lesser charge, and then I end up going home.

325
00:31:35,650 --> 00:31:40,570
So I'm not technically an exonerated, but my case was overturned and I got released.

326
00:31:40,570 --> 00:31:46,270
So but the resources that were available, even under my circumstances because I wasn't parole,

327
00:31:46,270 --> 00:31:56,920
there were no resources between getting released on parole or a supervised supervision or exonerees and get out with no supervision.

328
00:31:56,920 --> 00:32:01,000
You left to your own devices if you didn't set up a support system before you got out.

329
00:32:01,000 --> 00:32:08,590
You're certainly not going to have one when you get out because it's difficult. You don't have access to housing, transportation, employment.

330
00:32:08,590 --> 00:32:14,980
You don't even get at the one act that you had access to with food that you could get a British power when you first got out to help feed you.

331
00:32:14,980 --> 00:32:20,320
So I was able to do that, but I was savvy enough and I had taught enough classes.

332
00:32:20,320 --> 00:32:26,530
Aside from preparing to come home to other people that I knew, I had already set up a support system for myself.

333
00:32:26,530 --> 00:32:35,110
So when I got in, I stepped into that system. They helped keep me afloat, so I got my feet on the ground.

334
00:32:35,110 --> 00:32:43,840
And we've stated before that one of your personal mantras is I am a vital force

335
00:32:43,840 --> 00:32:48,580
among vital forces and I refuse to be a victim of a prearranged destiny.

336
00:32:48,580 --> 00:32:56,590
Now, based on your experiences in and out of the system of mass incarceration or encountering systems of injustice.

337
00:32:56,590 --> 00:33:02,020
Where did you most feel that pre-arranged destiny imposed on you?

338
00:33:02,020 --> 00:33:04,660
And how did you eventually challenge that?

339
00:33:04,660 --> 00:33:11,710
Well, I mean, just just to correct the quote that I love that quote unquote by African gangs, that I'm a vital force among forces.

340
00:33:11,710 --> 00:33:15,460
I refused to be the victim of a prearranged destiny. That's my mind.

341
00:33:15,460 --> 00:33:19,630
I get up every day and I say that every day since 1990, when I read it in a book.

342
00:33:19,630 --> 00:33:24,760
But for me, I mean, you know, being a black man in America, we all know what the pre-arranged destiny is.

343
00:33:24,760 --> 00:33:30,380
You know, one of three of us go to a third of us, go to jail or prison before age 25.

344
00:33:30,380 --> 00:33:37,600
You know, we die at an early age from stress and hypertension. You know, we, we not even forecast lived a 65 most of the time.

345
00:33:37,600 --> 00:33:42,070
So the pre-arranged destiny of being a black man in America is pretty cut and clear.

346
00:33:42,070 --> 00:33:50,830
I mean, you got you got, you know, poor health services, poor access to education, to employment.

347
00:33:50,830 --> 00:33:57,310
I mean, it's just a cascading effect. So once you get to adulthood and you start trying to navigate all these mazes

348
00:33:57,310 --> 00:34:02,640
that you have to go through is almost predetermined as you're going to fail.

349
00:34:02,640 --> 00:34:10,350
And let me try to push you in these categories wisely. So many black kids in the neighborhood try to be the sports athletes or rappers.

350
00:34:10,350 --> 00:34:14,850
These are the these are the career paths to lay it out for Uber.

351
00:34:14,850 --> 00:34:19,450
Uber Jock, Uber rapper, you go to work on a cruise billed.

352
00:34:19,450 --> 00:34:28,890
There's so much more. You know, which is when I got to prison, I said, man, I looked at all an artist are available up there.

353
00:34:28,890 --> 00:34:31,800
And I thought I was fairly successful because I went to prison. I was on.

354
00:34:31,800 --> 00:34:35,370
I had worked the gentleman's 15 years and I was a journeyman tool and die maker.

355
00:34:35,370 --> 00:34:39,090
I went to school, got my journey, miss card and I was a skilled tradesman.

356
00:34:39,090 --> 00:34:51,170
But it was it was crazy to to see the actual justice system and how to prevent destiny affects black and brown communities.

357
00:34:51,170 --> 00:35:01,280
Right, and just with that prearranged destiny, I mean, you were forced to plead guilty while you were an innocent person and how did that feel?

358
00:35:01,280 --> 00:35:08,620
Did you feel a certain emotion pleading guilty when you were innocent? And what do you think that says about the system as a whole?

359
00:35:08,620 --> 00:35:16,360
I mean, it is devastating for me, it was it was it was it was a hard decision, pretty much because I had been in prison for 20 some years.

360
00:35:16,360 --> 00:35:19,480
By that time, I said, Well, I'm past the point of diminishing returns.

361
00:35:19,480 --> 00:35:23,860
I thought I couldn't make much, did what I pled guilty or kept fighting for my innocence.

362
00:35:23,860 --> 00:35:29,170
And now, with the now the flip side of that coin, I say, Well, I'm not going to take a plea, but I was going to fight it.

363
00:35:29,170 --> 00:35:34,660
I could easily have been in prison five or 10 more years litigating the case to prove my innocence.

364
00:35:34,660 --> 00:35:38,620
And at the time, Michigan did not have compensation laws, were wrongfully convicted.

365
00:35:38,620 --> 00:35:44,560
So it was like what I call a pyrrhic victory, a victory to have the cops.

366
00:35:44,560 --> 00:35:48,730
Oh yeah, well, but I lost my wife. I mean, that's not a good trade off.

367
00:35:48,730 --> 00:35:54,160
So that says a lot about the system to have you over a barrel, to make you lot of people, take those those please.

368
00:35:54,160 --> 00:36:00,340
I innocent people trust me because they try to avoid as much of the legal system of the prison system as they can.

369
00:36:00,340 --> 00:36:02,620
And that's a poor commentary on our society.

370
00:36:02,620 --> 00:36:09,820
Even though the law said, you know, better to go to guilty, go free the one innocent, get, you know, wrongfully convicted.

371
00:36:09,820 --> 00:36:13,930
That's that's good in theory, but it doesn't play out in practice.

372
00:36:13,930 --> 00:36:20,140
So it's just for me. A man is.

373
00:36:20,140 --> 00:36:24,880
It's a sad, sad state of affairs. Yes, truly.

374
00:36:24,880 --> 00:36:25,830
And you know,

375
00:36:25,830 --> 00:36:34,510
you've worked with many people who have gone through the system and you yourself have gone through the system with knowing those experience.

376
00:36:34,510 --> 00:36:46,450
How many of these barriers and prearranged destiny do you think you can firmly attribute to classism and racism and other systems of injustice?

377
00:36:46,450 --> 00:36:54,130
Well, let's look at it like this. At the beginning of this conversation, there was some talk about, you know, about people with felony conviction.

378
00:36:54,130 --> 00:37:03,620
What have you for a person with a felony conviction? There are over forty five thousand collateral consequences.

379
00:37:03,620 --> 00:37:08,600
45000 collateral consequences. Now let's look at that.

380
00:37:08,600 --> 00:37:13,970
In America, we have 77 million people with felony conviction. Seventy seven million.

381
00:37:13,970 --> 00:37:21,740
So these seventy seven million are affected by those forty five thousand. Collateral consequences which affect every aspect of our lives.

382
00:37:21,740 --> 00:37:24,830
As Nicole was saying at the beginning,

383
00:37:24,830 --> 00:37:35,220
every aspect of our lives is affected by the criminal justice system in prison and mass incarceration because of all the clout of consequences are.

384
00:37:35,220 --> 00:37:41,730
The consequences that you suffer once you in society now, why are you locked up when you come to society, you can't have, you can't be,

385
00:37:41,730 --> 00:37:49,350
you can't have certain licenses, you can't cut hair, you can't go certain places, you can't be a certain school, you can't say you can't do so.

386
00:37:49,350 --> 00:37:54,490
They relegate every aspect of your life and it reduces your quality of life.

387
00:37:54,490 --> 00:38:03,090
So yes, those consequences are real, real powerful, and they permeate every aspect of society in America.

388
00:38:03,090 --> 00:38:10,380
And just speaking about those barriers, besides the one the obvious ones of being in the system,

389
00:38:10,380 --> 00:38:19,920
can you speak more about those barriers of what it was like to be someone who has a felony conviction outside of the prison system?

390
00:38:19,920 --> 00:38:28,020
Who who is a formerly incarcerated person? I mean, it's a stigma you get stigmatized when you as you get that label,

391
00:38:28,020 --> 00:38:32,190
you are truly, truly, truly stigmatized and most people will try to run from it.

392
00:38:32,190 --> 00:38:36,510
They try to hide it. I mean, job applications is a good, good, good example.

393
00:38:36,510 --> 00:38:40,290
If you've been around a while, you have heard of the ban the box campaign.

394
00:38:40,290 --> 00:38:46,260
There was a campaign to remove the box on job applications that you had a felony conviction on your record,

395
00:38:46,260 --> 00:38:51,990
so you can have a fair chance of getting to the second round of interview because once they see that check mark.

396
00:38:51,990 --> 00:38:57,420
But that box check you, you would never get another interview I'd even considered for the position.

397
00:38:57,420 --> 00:39:03,310
So it created huge barriers to employment, and it create equally Pugh's barriers to housing.

398
00:39:03,310 --> 00:39:06,840
If you try to live in a public housing or apartment, is you got a felony conviction?

399
00:39:06,840 --> 00:39:11,880
They deny you. You try, you try to rent a home somewhere. You've got a felony conviction on application there.

400
00:39:11,880 --> 00:39:19,500
The night you try to get bank loans and you got a felony conviction, you have to get a cosigner of the interest rates are so high or they deny you.

401
00:39:19,500 --> 00:39:24,210
I mean, it's just all these day one after the voting.

402
00:39:24,210 --> 00:39:29,460
Does that mean voting is the basic constitutional right of every citizen in this country?

403
00:39:29,460 --> 00:39:34,980
But if you got a felony conviction there a lot of states that you cannot vote in once you get out of power, you can't go back and vote.

404
00:39:34,980 --> 00:39:38,940
Some places you can apply. You can you can request to get your voting rights back.

405
00:39:38,940 --> 00:39:44,550
You have to have a hearing and go through our jump through all these hoops to get it. Some places they automatically reinstated, like Michigan,

406
00:39:44,550 --> 00:39:50,190
automatically reinstate your voting rights once you go to the Secretary of State's Office and apply and get your voting car.

407
00:39:50,190 --> 00:39:59,680
But just something as simple as voting is an obstacle for people with felony convictions, and the list goes on and on and on.

408
00:39:59,680 --> 00:40:08,500
And in know, trying to combat this system of mass incarceration, what does the decarceration movement mean to you and then how do you see

409
00:40:08,500 --> 00:40:14,750
incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people leading the decarceration movement?

410
00:40:14,750 --> 00:40:19,300
The organization I work for, I tag tagline is those closest to the problem are closer to the solution,

411
00:40:19,300 --> 00:40:22,270
but birds away from resources, opportunity and power.

412
00:40:22,270 --> 00:40:28,900
So those who have experienced the criminal legal system should be the one driving the narrative for change.

413
00:40:28,900 --> 00:40:35,170
They should be at the at the seats where these decisions are being made about, you know, people's lives in jails and prisons.

414
00:40:35,170 --> 00:40:39,970
And once they get out, they should be, they should be at all the conversations around reform.

415
00:40:39,970 --> 00:40:49,960
I mean, because and I always use this analogy, would you have a conversation around women's reproductive rights without women at the table?

416
00:40:49,960 --> 00:40:53,500
The Republicans tried it back in the 90s. It didn't work too well, so they they abandoned it.

417
00:40:53,500 --> 00:40:56,830
You got to have a people have to say what is most affected by the system.

418
00:40:56,830 --> 00:41:01,510
So even back in the 80s, General Motors had a car company, General Motors, Ford and Chrysler.

419
00:41:01,510 --> 00:41:07,300
They used to recruit people, the car thieves to help improve their security system.

420
00:41:07,300 --> 00:41:15,220
Teachers teach us how to improve our security system. The government, even today they hire hackers to help improve their computer security system.

421
00:41:15,220 --> 00:41:19,150
So the people that are involved in the system should be those who are most

422
00:41:19,150 --> 00:41:27,100
referred to to help change the system because they want to get the best idea. They understand how policy translate into actually everyday lives.

423
00:41:27,100 --> 00:41:32,620
So you said the voices of those most directly impacted by this system and have them at all these

424
00:41:32,620 --> 00:41:39,400
discussion tables and planning aid and organizations and what have you that's making these decisions?

425
00:41:39,400 --> 00:41:50,710
Right, and do you see a lot of enthusiasm from formerly incarcerated and incarcerated people towards advocating for these goals?

426
00:41:50,710 --> 00:41:54,160
Oh, absolutely. There's a huge groundswell going on right now.

427
00:41:54,160 --> 00:42:01,900
The organization I work for, we run a leadership development trying to perform incarcerated people, and we started out in the first cohort in 2015.

428
00:42:01,900 --> 00:42:07,240
And since 2015, we have trained over 1000 leaders of forty four states plus Washington,

429
00:42:07,240 --> 00:42:13,720
D.C. And these are people as involved, the ability to do some idea of the level of people that we have come to our program.

430
00:42:13,720 --> 00:42:16,840
One of our graduates is the mayor of a city in Mississippi.

431
00:42:16,840 --> 00:42:21,850
Another one of my graduates is a doctor, is an endocrinologist over at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

432
00:42:21,850 --> 00:42:27,670
We have got one that was elected to a state rep last fall in with in Washington state.

433
00:42:27,670 --> 00:42:32,320
We have people that sit on committees to help drive policy in their own states.

434
00:42:32,320 --> 00:42:36,800
They write policy. They advocate, they do reentry. So they are heavily involved.

435
00:42:36,800 --> 00:42:41,620
They run now private organizations that help cut the criminal justice system.

436
00:42:41,620 --> 00:42:50,740
So yes, there's a huge grass going on with people trying to actually have some type of influence that have been impacted by the system.

437
00:42:50,740 --> 00:42:58,000
Great. And now let me just ask one final question before I pass it over to Professor Van Cleef,

438
00:42:58,000 --> 00:43:03,010
let's say that people are listening to this recording in 100 years.

439
00:43:03,010 --> 00:43:08,190
What would you want them to know about mass incarceration as it is today?

440
00:43:08,190 --> 00:43:13,090
I want to know that mass incarceration is a failed experiment, just like civil war on drugs.

441
00:43:13,090 --> 00:43:17,460
It only it only serves to marginalize and minimalized people.

442
00:43:17,460 --> 00:43:24,780
It dehumanizes people. It does nothing to advance the great American dream of life, liberty and justice.

443
00:43:24,780 --> 00:43:37,220
It only it only proves it only serves to separate people to to, you know, put people in different categories to put people in these different.

444
00:43:37,220 --> 00:43:43,430
Political stand, we look at the political landscape today is driven around racism disparity and white fragility.

445
00:43:43,430 --> 00:43:49,070
The whole nine yards and out is premised on the fallout from mass incarceration.

446
00:43:49,070 --> 00:43:53,600
The people are trying to reduce mass incarceration. I run out of people that don't want to reduce it,

447
00:43:53,600 --> 00:44:01,110
so it's creating this huge chasm because this is it's become a economic industry, so to speak, to prison industrial complex.

448
00:44:01,110 --> 00:44:07,700
So that's what it is. When you run prison as a business, what's the number one goal of the business to keep people in prison?

449
00:44:07,700 --> 00:44:12,140
So, you know, in a hundred years now, people look back to the man.

450
00:44:12,140 --> 00:44:15,050
That was the stupidest thing. We just use prisons the wrong way.

451
00:44:15,050 --> 00:44:20,510
I'm not saying I'm not an abolitionist saying prison should be abolished because I've been in prison.

452
00:44:20,510 --> 00:44:27,330
I've seen who and yes, we need prison, but we need to use them in a different way and on a much, much, much smaller scale.

453
00:44:27,330 --> 00:44:33,640
You know, in the United States, we are one quarter of the world's population, which means that we less than one quarter of world population,

454
00:44:33,640 --> 00:44:38,850
but we hold one quarter of the world's people incarcerated, which is totally, totally ridiculous.

455
00:44:38,850 --> 00:44:45,090
And so we could do a whole lot better if we start treating people like people, humanizing people and looking for the humanity in others.

456
00:44:45,090 --> 00:44:53,248
I think we can solve this whole thing of decarceration. Right, thank you so much, Mr. Simpson Bay, for answering my questions.