Music Mogul Jason Flom On Reforming Criminal Justice & Resurrecting Rock ‘N Roll

Today I sit down with music industry titan Jason Flom for a deep dive into what currently ails our criminal justice system, and how to fix it. The current CEO of LAVA Records, Jason's much storied career features stints as Chairman and CEO at Atlantic Records, Virgin Records and Capitol Music Group. He is personally responsible for launching a litany of massive acts, including Kid Rock, Katy Perry, Lorde, and most recently Greta Van Fleet. The New Yorker described him as “one of the most successful record men of the past 20 years…known for his specialty in delivering ‘monsters.” Jason's accomplishments in the recording industry are extraordinary. But it's his commitment to criminal justice justice reform that compelled this conversation. A founding board member of The Innocence Project as well as a board member of several advocacy organizations devoted to drug reform, prison education and ant-recidivism, Jason is a leading civilian expert on clemency with a talent for procuring exonerations for those wrongfully convicted. A sought-after public speaker on such matters, Jason also hosts the Wrongful Conviction podcast, which features mesmerizing interviews with men and women who have spent decades in prison for crimes they did not commit. A means of exposing what ails our current justice system and prison industrial complex, his goal is to promote alternatives to mass incarceration and offer ideas on how to reduce the indecencies of wrongful convictions. Although I have followed Jason’s work for years, I had never met nor heard him speak until our paths crossed at The Nantucket Project a few months back. At the conclusion of his riveting, standing-room-only presentation alongside Amanda Knox — the exchange student who spent almost 4 years in an Italian prison following a murder conviction Jason played a part in having overturned — there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. I knew immediately I wanted to share his story and work with all of you. Today is that day. This is a compelling exchange about what ails our criminal justice system and how to fix it. It’s about systemic inequities and the recurring issue of false confessions — why so many innocent people plead guilty. We discuss the impact of DNA testing technology, overcoming prosecutorial malfeasance, and how unaffordable bail exacerbates social inequality. But mostly, this is a conversation about how misaligned incentives often produce unjust results and why Jason is so committed to giving a voice to those wrongfully incarcerated. But I couldn’t let him go without a peek into his legendary music career. Stories from the frontlines, he recounts how he discovered Lorde, the current state of rock and roll, and his new venture, aptly titled, The Church of Rock and Roll. My hope is that this conversation will provoke a deeper sense of empathy for those that suffer. Motivate you to investigate these issues more thoroughly. And inspire you to get involved in forging solutions. Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 1:05Speaker 01

  I'm a person who believes in a system of law and order. I'm not an anarchist. I grew up respecting the uniform, and I think that the majority, the overwhelming majority of police, prosecutors, and people in the system are good people who mean well. They may make mistakes, but they don't make them intentionally. Everyone makes mistakes. Doctors make mistakes, you know? Everyone makes mistakes. But prosecutors, there are some bad actors, and they do incredible amounts of damage. When there's a high-profile crime and there's immediate frenzy, it increases the pressure on the authorities to solve it. And mistakes are made at every level, honest mistakes. You also have, you know, the possibility that somebody on the stand, like in Making a Murderer, could be lying.

• 1:47Speaker 01

  And so you have to pay attention because it's somebody's child up there, it's somebody's mother or father, it's somebody's life.

• 1:54Rich Roll?

  That's Jason Flom, and this is the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 2:10Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey people, great to be back with you, spending a little time with you here today. My name is Rich Roll, I am your host, welcome or welcome back to the podcast where I have the great fortune of sharing long-form conversations that matter, at least I hope they matter, I think they matter, at least a little bit, with all manner of great leading minds committed to making the world a better place. A quick reminder that I have set an ambitious goal to raise $100,000 for Charity Water to help them bring clean water to approximately 3,300 people who currently lack such access. Right now, as of the date of me recording this, we're at about $32,000, which is unbelievable,

• 2:54Rich Roll?

  but still a very long way to go. So I'm asking that you consider donating to this most worthy cause of solving our global water crisis. Together, we can do amazing things. So to learn more and to give, go to my.cheritywater.org/richroll and of course, I'll put a link up in the show notes to that URL. Today, my guest is Jason Flom. Jason is a music industry veteran. He is the current CEO of Lava Records and over the course of his very storied career, Jason has served as chairman and CEO at Atlantic Records, Virgin Records, and Capital Music Group. He is personally responsible for launching a litany of absolutely monster musical acts,

• 3:39Rich Roll?

  including Kid Rock, Katy Perry, Lorde, one of my personal favorites, and most recently, a rock band called Greta Van Fleet. But what compelled me to get Jason on the show isn't so much his music career as it is his philanthropic work, his commitment to social causes, in particular, his championing of criminal justice reform. And on this front, he is a founding board member of The Innocence Project, as well as a board member of several advocacy organizations, all devoted to

• 4:11Rich Roll?

  Everything from drug reform to prison education, anti-recidivism, and so much more. Jason is a leading civilian expert on clemency, and his sweet spot is really procuring exonerations for those wrongfully convicted. In other words, working to free innocent people unlawfully imprisoned. In addition to being a sought-after public speaker on such matters, Jason also hosts the Wrongful Conviction Podcast, which features unbelievably compelling interviews with men and women who have spent decades in prison for crimes they didn't commit. And Jason's goal with this is really to elucidate the broader issues at play and

• 4:52Rich Roll?

  promote alternatives to what ails our current justice system and prison industrial complex. The conversation is heavy, it's provocative, it's super informative, the details of which I'll get into in a minute.

• 5:12Rich Roll?

  Okay, we got through that. We did it. So, Jason Flom. I followed Jason's work for a number of years, but I'd never met him. I'd never heard him speak until a couple months ago, when I was at the Nantucket Project, and I was witness to this presentation that he made in a church before a packed, standing-room-only crowd alongside Amanda Knox, who many of you may know quite famously, was the exchange student who spent almost four years in an Italian prison following a murder conviction that Jason played a part in having overturned. And at the end of that hour, that presentation, I can tell you, there was not a dry eye in

• 5:55Rich Roll?

  the church. And I knew immediately that I wanted to share Jason's story and his work with all of you. So, when I was in New York City a couple of months ago, I made a point of getting together with Jason. I made it a priority, and so here we are. I think it's fair to say that this is a quite compelling exchange about what ails our criminal justice system, as well as how to fix it. It's about systemic inequality. The recurring issue of false confessions, the impact of DNA testing technology, prosecutorial malfeasance, the ills of our prison industrial complex, unaffordable bail, how misaligned incentives often produce unjust results, and why Jason is so committed to giving a voice to those wrongfully incarcerated.

• 6:40Rich Roll?

  Jason is also an animal rights advocate, so that's an added bonus. We talk a bit about that, including the children's book he wrote with his daughter entitled "Lulu Was a Rhinoceros." And of course, I couldn't let him go without a peek into his music career and compelling him to tell a few amazing stories, including how he discovered "Lord," which is a phenomenal tale, and the current state of rock and roll, as well as his new venture. It's called "The Church of Rock and Roll." My hope is that this conversation won't just better educate you on these important issues, but also provoke a deeper sense of empathy for those that suffer and inspire you to think and look deeper into these issues and perhaps even get involved in forging solutions.

• 7:25Rich Roll?

  Here's Jason.

• 7:28Rich Roll?

  You ready to go, Eman? Let's do it. Thank you so much. I appreciate you taking the time today to talk to me. I was super inspired. I mean, I've been following you for a while and I've heard several podcasts that you've been on. I've been listening to wrongful conviction. But it was great to see you at Nantucket Project and I was very moved by your presentation and what Amanda Knox had to say. And I was like, I gotta get this guy on the show to share this incredibly powerful work that you're doing that's transforming our criminal justice system. And there's a lot of work to do. But before we even get into it, like, I applaud you for even attempting what feels, must feel like for you at times to be work that has no end.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  Wow, it does, it has no end because the problem is so massive. And first of all, thank you for that very kind introduction. I'm a fan of yours as well. So let's just get that out of the way. But yeah, it's a, it's a mission that I feel like is, it's very personal to me. It's not even an optional thing. I almost feel like I got tapped on the shoulder like, hey, kid, go do this. And it happened when I was in my young 30s, which I think is what a lot of people experience, that first, you know, rush of wanting to, you know, do something bigger than themselves. So I'm certainly not unique in that way. But

• 8:55Speaker 01

  I was just very lucky to find a cause that, you know, felt so natural to me and that became such a, you know, huge part of my life in a way that I just, you know, I'm just very grateful for it.

• 9:10Rich Roll?

  So what was the moment where it connected with you? Like, what exactly transpired that made you realize like, this is going to be the thing?

• 9:18Speaker 01

  So what happened was, Rich, that I was on my way to play tennis of all things. And I was looking for a newspaper to read and taxi. And I grabbed a daily, it was the New York, New York Post. The Times was sold out that day. So serendipity has it. I bought the Post, not my typical paper. And there was a story, the headline was Cuomo bid for cocaine kid or something like that. I mean, no, sorry, Ferraro plea for cocaine kid. So I was like, oh, this is interesting. Geraldine Ferraro, of course, was the first woman to ever be a vice presidential candidate for a major political party in America. And so

• 9:59Speaker 01

  this had a number of things in it that interested me. And so I read this story and I, it was a story by a kid named Stephen Lennon, who had been sentenced to 15 years to life for a nonviolent first offense cocaine possession charge in New York State. And just in case you thought you misheard me, that was a nonviolent first offense, and he was sentenced to a mandatory sentence of 15 years to life. And so the reason it was in the paper was because his mother, he had been in for eight years already. He was the same age as I was at the time, which was 32. So obviously that hit me, right?

• 10:31Speaker 01

  He, I had been to rehab myself, so I had my own issues, but, you know, I had been very, very lucky to avoid any sort of, you know, problems other than going to rehab, which isn't a problem. And anyway, so I was in the newspaper because his mother, Shirley, had been trying to get clemency from the first governor Cuomo, Mario Cuomo, and had gotten letters written on behalf of Stephen by, from the warden, the judge, and even Geraldine Ferraro wrote a letter advocating for him. Gerald, Ferraro's kid, her own son had had, had been arrested for code. Yeah, I think I remember that. Right. So, but he was sentenced to house arrest.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  So, to her credit, she took up the cause. And anyway, it was turned down, it was denied. So that's why it made the newspaper, otherwise it would've just been another one of the 2 million, well, back then we had less, but now over 2 million people in our prisons in America. So, I read this story and I freaked out. I just thought, I had no idea that these type of sentences were possible for nonviolent crimes in this country, much less this state, because we are in New York State as we record right now. And I decided I had to do something about it. So, I contacted the only criminal defense attorney I know, it was a guy named Bob Colina. He used to represent my rock stars when they would get arrested. In those days, I had Stone Temple Pilots and Skid Row, so I was, yeah. It was a lot of work for that guy. I had him on speed dial, you know?

• 11:58Speaker 01

  So, I speed dialed Bob and I was like, Bob, what can, you know, what can be done? He's like, nothing, there's nothing you do. This is the way it is, there's drug laws, Rockefeller drug laws. And I said, do me a favor, this is really bugging me, can you talk to Mrs. Lennon on the phone? He spoke to her, he said to me, look, I'll do a favor to you, I'll read the transcripts of the trial. He read them, he calls me up a while later, he says, listen, you know what, it's hopeless, but, you know, you're a good client, I'll take the case, pro bono. Great. Several months later from that point, we ended up, we found ourselves in a courtroom in Malone, New York. They brought Stephen in shackled, as if he was like, you know. Violent offender. Yeah. Ready to break out. Charles Manson or something, right? And

• 12:42Speaker 01

  The judge looked to be in his seventies, he had white hair, he looked like a conservative guy, I was like, you know, I didn't think we had a shot, but I sat there with Mr. and Mrs. Lennon, she was actually squeezing my hand tightly, as you could imagine, as the arguments were made, back and forth, and then the judge makes some proclamation, "I haven't heard anything in this courtroom, under section this, statute that, blah, blah, blah, but under the powers vested in me, the motion is granted," and he slams the gavel down. And I was like, "What the fuck just happened?" And Bob comes over, I go, "Bob, what happened?" He goes, "We won." I was like, "We won? Get the fuck out of here." "What do you mean?" He goes, "We won." I was like, "Oh, my God, that's amazing." So it was the best, you could tell I'm still excited about it. So it was literally the best feeling I'd ever had, and he was freed, and, you know,

• 13:24Speaker 01

  with six years left to go before he would have been even eligible for parole, and then I thought, "This is my calling in life, you know, I want to do more of this."

• 13:32Rich Roll?

  Right. And where does Innocence Project come in?

• 13:36Speaker 01

  So that led me to do a little bit of research, I read an article in Rolling Stone Magazine soon afterwards, about an organization, that highlighted an organization called Families Against Mandatory Minimums, which is F A M M dot org, wonderful organization, I joined their board, and then, not too long after that, I was at my in-laws' house, and I was bored, imagine that scenario, probably a lot of listeners can relate, and anyway, as I was flipping the channels, and I came across a story of a guy named David Keaton, who had been sentenced to death, and was scheduled to be executed, and this nascent organization called The Innocence Project, had come along and taken his case, and found the DNA from

• 14:19Speaker 01

  the crime scene, and had it tested, and proven that he was actually innocent. And not only wasn't he executed, but he was freed, and I thought, "Oh, my God, that's the most profound thing I've ever heard." And so I went, I called up, in those days, you could just call The Innocence Project and get the founder on the phone, because there was nobody else there.

• 14:39Rich Roll?

  So it's Barry, Barry Shack, who most people know from OJ fame?

• 14:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:43Rich Roll?

  It's kind of like the DNA guy, and then Peter Newman?

• 14:46Speaker 01

  Peter Neufeld, right.

• 14:47Rich Roll?

  Neufeld, right, is the other co-founder.

• 14:49Speaker 01

  So I went in to see them. It was just two guys in a little room, office with a telephone and a briefcase and a dream. And I just said, "I'll do whatever you want. Like, I'm pretty good at networking. I can help you raise money. I can do, like, I'll just make myself useful. I want to be involved." And so I became the founding board member. And, you know, the organization has grown a lot since then. It's become internationally recognized as a leader in this work, directly responsible for around 200 exonerations, DNA exonerations,

• 15:29Speaker 01

  almost exclusively, 21 of whom were on death row. So imagine that. And more, probably even more important than the individual wins is the legislative victories, or are the legislative victories that we've had. We've passed dozens and dozens of laws that are preventing countless numbers of wrongful convictions from happening. Those are the ones we'll never see, and those are even better, because that means people won't even have to go through this miserable, this hell.

• 15:59Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 16:00Speaker 01

  Before we're able to get them out.

• 16:02Rich Roll?

  So, in this work that you do, which is really, you're oriented around essentially reforming the criminal justice system, trying to rebut these mandatory sentencing laws, and then decriminalizing drug use, marijuana, et cetera. But I think it would be helpful to kind of provide, to provide some context for the conversation, to illuminate us a little bit about what's going on in our criminal justice system in terms of wrongful convictions, how the system is set up in a way that is, that is just conducive to so many, so many

• 16:46Rich Roll?

  acts of, or miscarry, you know, miscarrying of justice.

• 16:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a topic we definitely need to get into. I want to put in a quick plug for my podcast, which is called Wrongful Conviction. And in it, and on it, I interview each week someone who was wrongfully arrested and convicted of a crime that they didn't commit and served, you know, in most cases, decades in prison.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  Up to, I mean Malcolm Alexander was in for thirty-eight years, Keith Alan Harwood thirty-three years, some of them were sentenced to death like Sonny Jacobs and others. And it's really a privilege for me to be able to play a part in helping to tell these stories or helping them to tell their stories and move hearts and minds, which is part and parcel of what we're about to talk about now, which is changing the criminal justice system itself. And so, our criminal justice system is, or criminal injustice system, is so bloated

• 17:51Speaker 01

  and so misguided, is too weak of a word, but to give you some very basic statistics, thirty or so years ago, we had around three hundred thousand people in prison in America. Now, we have two point two million people, combining the people who are in prison and in jail. That's a seven hundred percent increase with no benefit to public safety. We are so far out of step with the rest of the civilized world that we lock our own citizens up at five times the rate per capita of Western Europe, fourteen times the rate of Japan.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  Think about that. In Japan, there's only around seventy thousand people in prison, and they have almost half the population that we do, and they probably have less people in prison than some large states in America. I mean, there's certainly more people in prison in Texas than there are in Japan. So, not to pick on Texas, in some ways, Texas is more progressive than other states in this area, but we'll get into that. So, we are doing it exactly wrong, right? There's no benefit to public safety, it's tremendously expensive, and not only are the numbers, and I think this is where a lot of conservatives see, you know, or I could

• 19:19Speaker 01

  say this is where a lot of conservatives are aligned with those of us on the left, and this is probably why criminal justice reform is truly the only bipartisan issue that there is right now, and it's not fully bipartisan, but at least there's some cooperation. Is because conservatives, libertarians, whatever, they look at it and they go, this is big government. We don't want this, right? We don't want to spend these tens of billions, hundreds of billions of dollars, taxpayer dollars, to keep all these people locked up. And, and no one can even, you know, you can't even see the cost. I mean, you can have social scientists that estimate the cost of the tax revenue that's being lost when those people who would have been working and paying taxes are locked up. And then when they come out

• 20:04Speaker 01

  and can't get jobs and likely reoffend because they can't get any work, and that goes into the category of what I call the second punishment, because our, our parole and probation system's so broken, our bail system is broken, right? So it's wrong on every step. We have about seven million Americans. Remember, these are Americans. We stopped treating them like Americans as soon as we arrest them, but there are about seven million Americans who are under supervision, about 4.5 million on parole and probation. And that is such a, you know.

• 20:42Rich Roll?

  It's devastating. And, and also, I think, what is it, like five, 5.1 times African-Americans are incarcerated at a rate of over five times the rate of white Americans. And when you have the imbalances in the bail system, it just, it just exacerbates this problem. And, and I'm not sure the argument can be made that, you know, when you're talking about big government, that privatization of our prison system is really, you know, resolving this issue or moving us in the right direction.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  No, private prisons, and, you know, I think it's around 6% of the prisons in America are private. That's 6% too many. I mean, how, how does that make any sense whatsoever? We don't privatize any other government function like that. And when you think about it, it's pretty simple to understand that the only motivation for a private prison company is profit. So.

• 21:40Speaker 01

  You end up with prisons that are even more dangerous and more chaotic and just less humane in every conceivable way than even the worst of the maximum security prisons that the government operates because these are prisons where the guards are paid minimally, they're trained minimally, the food is rotten, or it's the cheapest food that you can find. Everything they can cut, they cut. So, you know, you end up with these, you know, there's a both wonderful and terrifying piece in Rolling Stone Magazine recently about a

• 22:23Speaker 01

  guy who was, he was a thief and he was murdered in a prison in Arizona, a private prison in Arizona by the other inmates. There's basically no supervision because the guards, they're sitting there, there's tremendous turnover of the guards, and they're sitting there going, "Hey, I'm making, you know, 12 bucks an hour, I'm not getting involved in this stuff." You know what I mean?

• 22:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah. The incentivization structure is ill-conceived from top to bottom, and it also lends itself to creating these lobbying groups that are going to be a counterbalance on Capitol Hill to whatever measures you're trying to get passed to create a structure that is keeping these private prisons at 100% occupancy all the time and creating more and more prisons to fill up because profit is the end game here, not rehabilitation.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  No, there was that really, really powerful and depressing movie Cash for Kids, or Kids for Cash.

• 23:19Rich Roll?

  I haven't seen that.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, it was about the, some journalists, some brilliant journalists discovered that there was a county, I don't know how he figured this out, there was a county in Pennsylvania that was locking up juveniles at like... You know, twenty times the rate of the other counties in Pennsylvania. And he thought this was curious. And he, and after he did his investigation, he discovered that these judges, there were two judges who were being paid by the private prisons to send kids to their prisons. So they were locking kids up for spitting on the sidewalk, spitting out their gum, for talking back to a teacher. For one kid, this one that haunts me, his name was Charlie. Um, he was arrested for possession of a stolen scooter. I think he was thirteen. It was a gift from his uncle or something like that.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  He didn't know it was stolen. And if he did, what was he supposed to do? He's a thirteen-year-old kid. And the judge gave him six months. And then, of course, they keep you in there. They charge you with infractions. They, he ended up serving about four years between his thirteenth and his eighteenth birthday in prison and then came out and got addicted to heroin and the whole thing. But yeah, but let's talk for a second, Rich, because since we're on this topic. And by the way, my, my Instagram, which is where I talk about these topics, because I'm not really a, I'm not, I'm not as active on Twitter or Facebook, but on Instagram, very active. My Instagram is at It's Jason Flom, I T S Jason Flom. But let's talk about bail for a second, because this is a very hot topic right now.

• 24:44Speaker 01

  The American system of bail is so desperately in need of reform. And for people who aren't already aware of it, which I think is probably most people,

• 25:00Speaker 01

  the bail system works like this. You walk out of here today and you get picked up for whatever it is. Let's call it trespassing, right? Let's call it, let's say you jump a turnstile. Let's say you're caught with a, an open container, whatever it is, right? Could be something as benign as that.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  And you get taken to jail.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  And they say your bail's a thousand dollars. But you don't have a thousand dollars.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  Well, you better call somebody who's got a thousand dollars. Let's say you don't know anybody's got a thousand dollars, which most people don't. A lot of people live paycheck to paycheck, and you're not going anywhere. And now you have two options. Either you can wait for your trial in jail. And when people say jail, I think, you know, for a lot of people, jail conjures up these images from the movies of like a country jail, you know, the guy laying back. Maybe not, maybe it's just me smoking a corn cop pipe. But jails, by and large, are more dangerous than prisons. Because there's no, it's all transient, right? So there's no real structure. And you have a mixture of innocent people, guilty people,

• 26:16Speaker 01

  gang members, nonviolent criminals. And so, for instance, in New York, Rikers Island is, you know, is more dangerous than any of the maximum security prisons in New York State. So now you're there, and you could wait a year or more for your trial. And one of the things that they- It'd really be a year? Oh, yeah. Look at Kalief Browder, right? I mean, you know, may he, may he rest in peace, and may his memory live forever. Kalief Browder was arrested, and he's a perfect example, or a tragic, tragically perfect example. Kalief Browder was arrested for allegedly stealing a backpack.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  Nobody said he beat anybody up, or hit anybody, or stabbed anybody. He stole a backpack. His bail was twenty-five hundred dollars. He was a sixteen-year-old kid. He didn't have twenty-five hundred dollars. Nobody in his family did either. And he was in Rikers Island for three years, where he was beaten by guards, inmates alike. He was in solitary confinement for two of his three years there. He's a child, sixteen-year-old child. Ultimately, the charges were dropped.

• 27:29Speaker 01

  And when he came out,

• 27:32Speaker 01

  he had a lot of trouble adjusting. You know, there was a I can't imagine. There was a lot of publicity on his case. Many celebrities called him. He was on TV. And not too long after that, he hung himself at his mother's house. And, you know,

• 27:53Speaker 01

  he was a teenage kid charged with stealing a backpack.

• 28:00Speaker 01

  And he waited three years. Because one of the things that they can do, they would prefer, they'd always prefer for you to plead guilty. You know that 96% of felony convictions in America are the result of guilty pleas. It's called the guilty plea problem, right? And the reason for that is the Kalief Browder problem, right? Which is that people can't sit there like that, right? And when your options are wait, and then, and they can always, the authorities can always postpone your trial. Right? It's not uncommon for a prosecutor to show up and say, "Your Honor, I need, I need more time to prepare." And the judge will say, "Okay, come back in three weeks." Now you go back to jail for three weeks. And they, then now they have all the leverage. So years ago, I created, or I can't say I created, I worked with Robin Steinberg

• 28:43Speaker 01

  at the Bronx Defenders to create something called the Freedom Fund in the Bronx. And what the Freedom Fund is, was and is, is a revolving bail fund where I raised the money, I raised 200,000 to start, not a lot of money. And I turned it over to the Bronx Defenders so that they could post bail for their own clients in these, what I call, "nudnik cases," right? Cases in which bail is $1,500 or less. 97% of our clients showed up for every court date. And one of them's had 15 court dates, right? Because they keep postponing. Right. But at least he's out. And so, and, and in many cases, they'll drop the charges. If you're out, they're not going to prosecute you for, you know, smoking a joint in the park or riding your bicycle. This kid was actually riding his bicycle on the sidewalk.

• 29:28Speaker 01

  That's what he was originally arrested for. And then they claimed you resisted arrest. He was, he was training to be a police officer at the time. Anyway, I'm not going to name his name. So, so we created this bail fund. And it's been a

• 29:41Speaker 01

  Tremendous success. It's proven without any doubt that people don't need a cash incentive to show up for trial. What they need is a text message, you know, reminder or something like that, which is easy to do these days. And now it's being taken to national, it's being taken national. So we have a national bail fund. We raised a lot of money. We're hoping to bail out 150,000 people over the next three years. And it's also been replicated in cities and counties all around the country. So we need to stop locking people up.

• 30:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, that's a, that's a great and seemingly simple solution to this gigantic glaring problem. I mean, when you think about the fact that we have a constitutional right to a speedy trial and that somebody would sit rotting in a jail cell for, you know, years based on a nonviolent petty offense because they can't afford $1,000, it's insane.

• 30:42Speaker 01

  It's also, oh, sorry, Rich.

• 30:44Rich Roll?

  No, I was just gonna say like, and, and you're right, like, most people can't afford these nominal, you know, to post these nominal bails because they don't have it. And then they're presented with this fact that they're gonna sit in a jail cell for however long. And so it's not surprising that you're gonna get a gigantic number of false confessions.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  We also know that, or please, yeah.

• 31:10Rich Roll?

  Please.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  Or just guilty, please. But we also have the statistics now that show, this was compiled at the Quinlan Center at UPenn, where they were able to show that people, even if you're locked up for, I'm gonna say as little as, I don't wanna trivialize it, but three days, you know, awaiting your hearing, your life goes downhill fast. When you're a person who's living on the margins... You will very likely lose your job.

• 31:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  You could lose your, who can show up for, not show up for work for three days? You could lose your housing status. You could lose your, you could even lose custody and have to fight to get that back. So whatever problems you had before you went in are exacerbated greatly

• 31:58Rich Roll?

  Of course.

• 31:58Speaker 01

  by this experience, even if it's a short stay. And then you are much, much more likely to commit a crime in the next 12 months, which is a problem for all of us in society, right? So we are actually making the problem much, much worse as a result of this. And it goes even further because money bail is a violation of the Sixth and the Fourteenth Amendment. Equal protection and due process. You can't have two separate systems of justice, one for rich people and one for poor people, but we do. And constitutionally, bail is supposed to be set according to your ability to pay. But it isn't. And bail hearings, by and large, are a joke.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  There are many places in this country where you're not even in front of a judge. You may be on a video monitor, there could be a whole group of you. And, you know, you may not be represented by anyone. And, you know, there's, so there's very little consideration for your socioeconomic status or your possible culpability. And the answer is, you know, first of all, there's a wonderful guy, a real hero of mine named Alec Karakasakis, who runs an organization called the Civil Rights Corps. So it's Civil Rights, C O R P E, uh, C O R P S, Civil Rights Corps. And he's been suing and winning all over the country on exactly that legal premise.

• 33:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I would imagine there's a very valid constitutional case that can be made to challenge these structures. It's surprising to me that something like this hasn't been, you know, taken to the Supreme Court by the ACLU.

• 33:36Speaker 01

  Well, the, the federal, and it probably will, I don't know, maybe it'll end up there, I have no idea, but the money bail was abolished in the federal system in the 60s. And but it still exists in almost every state. Washington DC doesn't have it. California just abolished money bail. Actually, today's a good day in one sense, which is that Washington State abolished the death penalty today. So, you know, we can celebrate that. The 20th state to abolish the death penalty. But money bail, you know, the difficulty with money bail and even eliminating it is that we have to be very careful about what it's replaced with because there will be all sorts of new profit motives and people that will step in to prey on the poor.

• 34:21Speaker 01

  It's just a tax on the poor is all it is. And people will step in with all kinds of new testing, drug testing, ankle monitor things that you have to pay for. You have to pay for these things. And then you get stuck with these fines and fees that you can't pay, and then that's a new crime. And so, we really are, you know, it's designed to keep poor people poor, desperate, and under supervision, when what we should be doing is providing them with services and help that will allow them to become productive citizens and pay money into the system rather than us paying money to keep them in the system.

• 35:01Rich Roll?

  Why is it so hard to implement a process whereby we could overhaul the system to ensure that very thing?

• 35:12Speaker 01

  Oh, I mean, there's a lot of money involved, you know? And there's money in politics, right? And so, it's never as simple as it should be. And that's why even in California, where we've just, just a few weeks ago, money bail was abolished, the, you know, the solution was highly imperfect because of some of the things I just talked about. But it's still progress, and I think we're going to be able to make changes that will be, you know, we'll keep, you know, eating away at that until we get to a system that's fair. But the answer is, as we've proven in the Bronx and in other cities and counties now, that if, like I said, you get picked up on your way home for shoplifting or whatever

• 35:54Speaker 01

  it is, or you look like somebody that did something, you should be, you know, given a court date and sent home to go to your, take care of your family, go to your job, go to church, and show up on whatever date it is for your trial or your hearing or whatever it is. And then we can determine unless...

• 36:14Speaker 01

  Well, how about this too? I mean, there's a saying in the movement that a system in which Sandra Bland goes to jail and Robert Durst goes home is a broken system, right? So if you were picked up for what Robert Durst was picked up for, right? Which was killing and dismembering his next door neighbor and then chopping his body into bits and throwing it in garbage bags, putting it in a garbage bag and throwing it in the sea. I mean, there's an argument that we shouldn't really have any particular number that bail, you know, like...

• 36:46Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, when you have, you know, infinite resources to make yourself scarce.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  There just shouldn't be any number, right? If there's a legitimate fear that you're that guy, then shouldn't we hold you there for a minute? Until we can figure out what the hell's going on? I mean, and what number would be appropriate? Like, yeah, as it turned out, they didn't know he was rich because he was living like a... You know, he was living in a different identity. But regardless, it seems to me that the fault should always be to send you home and we'll figure it out when you show up for your hearing. And then, or the charges will be dropped between now and then when it becomes clear that you weren't the guy that did it. Or if it does look like you were, then we should have a hearing and you should get your day in court like everybody else and you should have a speedy trial and all the rest of it.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  But in the meantime, you know, breaking up these families and these communities as we're doing by virtue of keeping, you know, the 450,000 people as we're sitting here now having this conversation, it's 450,000 Americans. And I keep saying Americans because we have to remember, these are our people, right? And there's 450,000 people in jail right now just because they don't have the money to get themselves home.

• 38:00Rich Roll?

  Let's talk a little bit about the faulty, false confession dilemma and this technique, what's it called, the Reed technique? And how this is basically creating a situation that is getting all of these people to admit to crimes that they didn't commit.

• 38:27Speaker 01

  So, false confessions are a fascinating phenomenon. Mystifying, troubling, puzzling, fascinating. Because I would bet dollars to donuts that 99% of the people listening right now are saying to themselves, "I never confessed to a crime I didn't commit." Are you nuts, Rich? Get this guy off the air. You gotta be crazy. I'm not. It's ridiculous, right? Nobody would do that. Well, and it becomes the most damning piece of evidence. That's all you need. I mean, it is. It is. It's the most damning piece of evidence. And because it's exactly what I just said. What juror can possibly see through a false confession and understand why somebody would confess to a crime they didn't commit? Well, there's a lot of reasons why.

• 39:12Speaker 01

  One of them is the read technique, which was a technique that was a protocol that was developed, I think in the 60s or 70s in Chicago. I think it was a detective and maybe a psychologist working together who created this. It's almost like a little, I mean, this is, it's a weird way of saying it, but it's almost a scripted routine that they go through. It's like this nine-point process. Right. So they get you in that room. It's this airless, windowless room from which there is no escape. Typically, you're there by yourself. You're not represented by anyone. And for anyone listening, I tell all my listeners on Wrongful Conviction, my podcast, I tell them, "If you get arrested and charged with a crime you didn't commit, or brought

• 39:57Speaker 01

  in for questioning about a crime you didn't commit," even if they say, "Listen, Rich, we're just talking to you as a, we think you might know something about this." What you say is, "My name's Rich Roll. Here's my address, and I want a lawyer." That's it. And then shut up. Because once you say, "I want a lawyer," they have to stop talking to you. That's the law. But if you don't, they're gonna engage you in conversation, and then the read technique may come into play, which is, you know, it involves good cop, bad cop. There may be either real or perceived threats of violence. There's a whole, you know, in the room, out of the room, move closer, move away. They're allowed to lie to you. Don't forget, when they're interrogating you, they can lie.

• 40:42Speaker 01

  So they can say, "Listen, man, you know, we got your fingerprints on the gun."

• 40:49Speaker 01

  Your friend's next door, a guy was at the crime scene, he saw you do it. I mean, he told us, you did it. Like, you gotta, man, we're trying to help you here, you know? Like, this is not good for you. And since we got all the evidence already, we really don't even need your confession, right? This is something they might say. It's a hypothetical. So, you ought to play ball with us. Because if you do, we're gonna go easy on you, man, you know? And look, you know, it'll get sorted out later, you know?

• 41:19Rich Roll?

  It's amazing I can lie to you like that.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, they can lie, they can say whatever they want. And, you know, and then, you know, you take the case, and it's interesting too, I think, that most false confessions happen after long interrogations. Because if you're guilty, you're not gonna wanna sit in there all day and all night, right? You're gonna fess up to get out of that room. But, you know, take the case of Jeffrey Deskovic, right? Who was interrogated as a 16-year-old kid, was interrogated for nine hours. By the time he confessed, he was curled up in a fetal position on the floor. And, you know, it was a classic good cop, bad cop thing. And they told him, listen, man, just confess to the crime. No one's gonna believe you did it. This is the brutal rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl. You're just a kid. It'll get sorted out, trust me.

• 42:04Speaker 01

  But, you know, just, we want, we're trying to help you here, man. I'm trying to, my partner's the other, I don't know what he's gonna do, right? But, you know, look, the best thing for you to do is confess. You can go home, well, tomorrow we'll get this all figured out.

• 42:17Rich Roll?

  But if you don't, and you can't afford bail, you're gonna sit there for however long, you're gonna lose your job, and there's a domino effect of how that's gonna negatively impact your life. Like, the whole thing is rigged to basically incentivize these people to just, to do this exact thing, which is confess irrespective of their connection or relationship with the offense.

• 42:42Speaker 01

  Well, and in many confessions, many false confessions, I'm thinking about one Jeffrey's case, or, you know, and he did confess, and ended up serving 16 years before he was exonerated with DNA. And...

• 42:54Speaker 01

  You know, in the case of of Yen Searing, right, who's a guy been working on his case for, you know, quite some time. He's been in for 31 years in Virginia. False confession. And he he got all the details wrong. Like, in these confessions, you know, most of the time, the details are all wrong. So, you know, you got to be able to see through that. And then there's Johnny Hincapié, who was on my podcast, right? And Johnny was a guy who was convicted of one of the most notorious crimes in the history of New York. It was the murder of the Brian Watkins on the subway at 50th and 8th. He was here with his family from Utah. They were going to the US Open, a gang of kids. This was during the crime wave in the early 90s, and a gang of kids, late 80s, early 90s, a gang of kids, got on, black and brown kids, got on the subway. This is

• 43:37Speaker 01

  this, you know, Utah Mormon family, right? So, it had all the media triggers. Super Predators, all this stuff was by patchwords back then. And, you know, they they got on, this group of kids got on to rob people, and they were robbing this family. And one of them pushed the mother around, and this kid heroically came to his mother's rescue and was stabbed in the in the melee by one of these kids who ran away. And six of them were picked up. And, you know, one of them was probably under this very difficult interrogation, and and they was told to name somebody. And he just pulled Johnny's name out of a hat because it was a kid he knew from school. And Johnny was picked up. He was 18 years old, had never been in trouble, was a dancer and a DJ. And, you know, he says to me, you

• 44:18Speaker 01

  know, they were beating the shit out of me, you know? They pulled the hair out of my head. They're smacking me around. And he's like, and they told me they were going to kill me and dump my body in an alley. He goes, why did I confess? He goes, why wouldn't I confess? Right? I knew what these guys are capable of. And and I was hoping that something would change. 25 years later, he was proven innocent, served 25 years in prison. So, you know, you have to hear these stories to believe it. But when you, again, we have so many cases, 25% of the first 250 DNA exonerations were false confessions. And we know also, and this is important for anyone who's going to end up serving on a jury, and if you're listening, please, if you get called for jury duty, show up,

• 45:00Speaker 01

  pay attention, be woke, and stay woke, because what you're hearing and seeing Needs close inspection. If you haven't seen Making a Murderer, watch it, right? You'll know what goes on. And, you know, when you hear these, these stories from the people who live them, the Johnny Hincapié episode of wrongful conviction, well, it'll blow your mind. He's such a good guy, too. He's a close friend of mine.

• 45:25Rich Roll?

  The other thing that, that really blows my mind, that I think a lot of people don't really fully grasp, is the fact that prosecutors and judges rarely face misconduct charges for introducing false evidence. And even worse, prosecutors who knowingly submit false evidence are immune from civil damages suits, which is banana. I mean, I understand the incentives that create a structure like that, because prosecutors need to be able to do what they do without fear of reprisal if they make a misstep for being sued, because that would have a chilling effect on the cases that it would bring. But I feel like this pendulum has swung way too far.

• 46:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, and I always say, there's, you know, I'm a person who believes in a system of law and order. I'm not an anarchist. You know, I remember there was that button that people used to wear in the 70s, you know, don't like cops, call, next time you're in trouble, call a hippie, right? You know, I mean, I, you know, I grew up respecting the uniform, and I think that there, the, the, the majority, the overwhelming majority of, of police, prosecutors, and people in the system are good people who, who mean well. They may make mistakes, but they don't make them intentionally. Everyone makes mistakes. Doctors make mistakes, you know, everyone makes mistakes. So, but prosecutors, there are, there are some bad actors, and they do incredible amounts of damage. They're,

• 46:51Speaker 01

  they're, they're driven by ambition, with a lack of, a lack of empathy's not even in the picture, but, you know, they, they, they just want these convictions, and...

• 47:05Speaker 01

  And you're right, they don't face any repercussions. So even if they screw up and they get caught, they can go back and do it again. And, and we see it over and over again. I mean, look in New Orleans.

• 47:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah, what was the case, uh, who's the woman who you just had on your show a couple of weeks ago? Um, who was falsely accused of killing her mom?

• 47:24Speaker 01

  Nora Jackson.

• 47:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 47:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, yeah, that's a, that's a horrible one. And, uh, you know, she was, in her, in this particular case, Nora, who's, um, you know, who's family to me now, um, she, um, she was wrongfully convicted of killing her own mother, which is just, um, I mean, if that doesn't break your heart, I don't know what will, right? And she found her mother's body.

• 47:49Rich Roll?

  She discovers her.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, stabbed 50 times and, you know, the prosecutors concocted this insane story that, that they were able to sell to a jury, um, that she had stabbed her mother 50 times for basically no reason. And we know that matricide is one of the most uncommon crimes that there is. Girls don't kill their mothers. Except in very rare cases, and in those cases, it's almost always after a lifetime of abuse. Um, there was no abuse, uh, in this family and she was an old-

• 48:23Rich Roll?

  She was a single mom, right? Like they were super close.

• 48:25Speaker 01

  Single mom, only child, super close. Um, and so the story that they were able to sell to this jury was that Nora stabbed her mom 50 times for no reason. They claimed it was because she wanted to party more or something like this, right? Which is still, that's basically no reason. Every teenager's gone through that, pretty much. Um, I wouldn't even know if that's true. So, and magically somehow managed to not get a drop of blood on herself, not ruin her manicure, there's pictures of her hands, which her manicure was perfect, not leave any trace of her own blood or DNA at the crime scene, all of which is impossible.

• 49:04Rich Roll?

  And there was blood from somebody else, right on the scene?

• 49:06Speaker 01

  Right, there's two, there's two, I think there's two male, uh, um, there's blood from two unknown males, um, who are the, almost certainly the actual killers. And, uh, yeah, it's, it's, it's really hard to understand what drives someone or what allows someone to, to take the liberty of-

• 49:32Speaker 01

  Destroying the life of a child, in this case, a child. By, you know, framing them for a crime. In this case, it's a little orphan child. I mean, like, you know, Victor Hugo would blush, right, at this story. It's so terrible. And Nora, I mean, when she told this story, it's just, it's so heartbreaking and so hard to understand what motivated this prosecutor or prosecutors to withhold exculpatory evidence, to break other rules in the courtroom, so much so that the, you know, the Tennessee Supreme Court overturned her conviction unanimously. Right? Think about that. Unanimously. That's not common. They were even shocked.

• 50:17Speaker 01

  But ultimately, she was only subjected to a private reprimand and went on about her business and had been promoted by then, or promoted, she'd run successfully for DA.

• 50:27Rich Roll?

  Right. And she's been on the receiving end of like a litany of other similarly toned complaints.

• 50:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, these go in bunches. I mean, we find that. And that's why I say, like, I think that there's, the majority of prosecutors are doing their jobs. It's not an easy job, you know? And they're not paid a lot of money. So, you know, I'm not, I'm certainly not, you know, gonna lump them all together by any stretch of the imagination. But the ones that do this damage, I mean, look in New Orleans where Harry Connick Sr., right, he put eight people on death row, six of them have been exonerated. The other two may be innocent as well. I mean, these things, it's not hard to see these clusters, right, of wrongful convictions. And the thing, you know, one point I want to bring up in this is that every time, by

• 51:12Speaker 01

  definition, that we lock up the wrong person, the right person remains free. So, the innocent person goes to prison, the actual murderer, or rapist, or stabber, or shooter, or whatever it might be, remains free. To- Commit more terrible crimes and to create more innocent victims. And we know now from all these years of doing this that in, call it around half of the cases in which we've proven with DNA that the person who's, you know, been convicted was actually innocent and gotten them out, we've also gotten a hit in CODIS, right, the national

• 51:57Speaker 01

  database, and been able to hand that information to the authorities of who the actual killer was.

• 52:03Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 52:04Speaker 01

  Michael Morton's case is one of those. And in most of those cases, I don't know the exact number, most of those cases, that person has gone on, like in Michael Morton's case, to destroy the lives of other innocent people. That should never have happened. You know, Michael Morton's case is a classic example, and he's been on my podcast as well, wrongful conviction. Michael was wrongfully convicted of the murder of his wife. They withheld exculpatory evidence. There was a bloody bandana found outside the house. She was beaten to death. He was at work. And sure enough, they also withheld the evidence that her credit card had been used days later, 20 miles away. And there was also evidence that her, his son, who was four at the time, had been asked

• 52:49Speaker 01

  whether his dad has killed, had killed his mother, because he witnessed it. And he said, no, a monster with a mustache came.

• 52:55Rich Roll?

  And all of that somehow was.

• 52:57Speaker 01

  Withheld from the defense, yeah. So, and I'll get into that in a second, but in Michael's case, we know for a fact, because 25 years, 24 years and 7 months, as Michael says, he was in for 24/7, right? 24/7, he was in a cell for 24/7. So, we know that that killer went on and beat another woman to death, you know, two neighborhoods away, not too long after this murder. So, that, how would it feel to be a family member of hers and know that, you know, this guy was framed?

• 53:32Speaker 01

  And it never needed to happen in the first place.

• 53:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's inconceivable. I mean, it's impossible to imagine what that must be like.

• 53:40Speaker 01

  No, it's just, I can't even process it. And, you know, Michael, just, I mean, what he, what any of them go through, and of course, he came out, and this is another thing that is always so remarkable to me, and you'll hear it on basically every episode of my show, is that, you know, Michael comes out of this ordeal in a state of, I can only describe it as grace, you know, with kindness and positivity. And in his case, it was one of the only cases, there's only two cases that are known in which a prosecutor has actually been jailed for this type of misconduct, and his was one of them. There's a prosecutor named Anderson, who by the time he was arrested, was a federal, was a judge, a sitting judge,

• 54:24Speaker 01

  was arrested in his chambers.

• 54:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, one of the sort of consistent through lines with the people that you talk to and the work that you do, and something I found to be delightfully surprising, is the level of grace with which these people carry themselves. Because you would think that they would be incredibly bitter and angry, and yet, time and time again, there's so many examples in the people that you talk to and work with, that they really are able to like, maintain some level of equanimity and perspective on this, in a way that I think, at least I found personally, to be like, almost shocking.

• 55:07Speaker 01

  It is shocking.

• 55:08Rich Roll?

  If you imagine yourself in that scenario.

• 55:10Speaker 01

  You can't.

• 55:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 55:12Speaker 01

  I mean, and it puts so much gratitude in my attitude, because, you know, and Michael is so extraordinary, you know, when his tormentor, right, this prosecutor turned judge, who had withheld three critical pieces of evidence, and I want to talk about that, the Brady, the Brady Rule. When he was charged with three, I forgot what the three crimes were, I think they were felonies, and he pleaded down to misdemeanors, and there was a hearing.

• 55:46Speaker 01

  For this Anderson guy, this disgraced judge. And Michael was asked if he wanted to say anything at the hearing for this guy who willfully put an innocent person in prison for 24 years and seven months, took him away from his son, a guy who had just had to deal with, you know, the trauma of losing his wife, who he loved very much. And Michael gets up and says to the sitting judge, "Your Honor, I hope you show mercy on this man." And you sit there and go... That's extraordinary. Uh, who are you, dude? Are you Jesus?

• 56:31Speaker 01

  Are you Mandela? Like, what the hell? Like, where's that even come from? So, I do want to talk about Brady because this is something that most people wouldn't necessarily know, wouldn't expect people to know. But Brady was a ruling in the Supreme Court in the 60s, which would seem very intuitive, in which the Supreme Court said that the prosecution must disclose exculpatory evidence to the defense prior to the trial. Seems perfectly logical. This predates, this goes back to English law. Like, in English law, they had a thing called trial by ambush, where they believed that they shouldn't tell the defense about any of the evidence against them because they

• 57:15Speaker 01

  shouldn't know, because then they could just ambush them with it, right? But obviously, as years went by and we became more evolved, we realized that you have to have, you know, access to this information. It's weird because in a, if we were, if we were in a dispute, a banking dispute or something else, we would have to give each other all the records, right? All of them. There's no, there's no question about that. But in a case in which somebody's life is at stake, they didn't have to do that. So the Supreme Court said, "Yes, you do. You have to, you have to turn over the exculpatory evidence of the defense." But...

• 57:53Speaker 01

  In the fine print, they said that it's up to the prosecutor to decide whether they think something is material. So that's sort of like letting the fox guard the hen, right?

• 58:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's to vest the prosecutor with that level of discretion without any kind of guidepost as to what that means is carte blanche to do whatever they want.

• 58:16Speaker 01

  Right, and that happened in Nora's case, it happened in Michael Morton's case, it's happened in so many cases. And there's also, and this is a state problem as well, that there's no particular time bar, right? So, you know, there are cases that we hear about where the day before, the day of the trial, boxes of evidence could be dumped on your lawyer's desk. Now, here's what you're dealing with. Now, you've got a public defender in most cases, who's doing as many as 400 cases a year. You may not have even met him till the day of the trial, him or her.

• 58:59Speaker 01

  And now you're getting a box of evidence dumped on your desk. What are you supposed to do with it? Are you going to go start interviewing witnesses? Where are you going to find them? You have no time. In many cases, you also don't have money, right? Capital trials in some states, the, you know, the public defender is paid $1,000. Win or lose, win, lose, or draw.

• 59:17Rich Roll?

  Right, so technically, they meet the standard of providing, of disclosing the exculpatory evidence, but it's a needle in a haystack.

• 59:26Speaker 01

  It's impossible. And then, you know, and of course, there's some of these, some of these, some of these things are so bizarre as to be, you know, if they weren't tragic, they'd be comical, right? Like, there was that case in Texas about a decade ago, in which a guy appealed his conviction based on the fact that his court-appointed lawyer was asleep for a large portion of his trial. And the appellate court ruled.

• 59:50Rich Roll?

  Oh my god.

• 59:51Speaker 01

  Two to one against them, and they said that the Constitution guarantees you the right to a lawyer, but not necessarily one that's awake.

• 59:58Rich Roll?

  Uh huh, that is unbelievable.

• 1:00:00Speaker 01

  So technically, he had a lawyer.

• 1:00:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  Sitting right there, but the guy was asleep and, you know, and by the way, I think that there's a great movie called Gideon's Promise that I hope everyone will watch, um, which really shows the nobility of public defenders when they're really diligent and good people. Um, these people are underpaid, by and large are overworked, they have, uh, you know, uphill battles to fight that are, you know, daunting, they have to deal with the, the, the, the trauma of losing cases that they know they should win because they're understaffed.

• 1:00:39Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:00:40Speaker 01

  And yet, they show up every day to fight. And so, I have so much respect for people, uh, they're, they're dealing many cases with debt from law school or college or whatever, that just, you know, there's a scene in that movie where the lawyer's literally pulling quarters out of her cushions to try to get enough money for three dollars for gas so she can get to the courtroom. And you're like, what are we doing? Like, what are we doing? Like, how is that fair? And, and, and, you know, again, in the Capitol trials, you're gonna give somebody five hundred dollars or a thousand dollars, is that what someone's life's really worth? To the, they should be able to hire experts. The government can hire whoever they want.

• 1:01:16Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:01:16Speaker 01

  You know, so, it's a, um, it's a, it's a, you know, there's a lot to it and, but there's a lot, there's more, there's the good news. There's more momentum now than at any time in, in my, uh, twenty-five years of doing this for change.

• 1:01:36Rich Roll?

  Well, DNA science has blown this whole thing wide open, and meanwhile, it seems to, we're having, we're experiencing an interesting moment right now because there's this massive, um... Kind of like resurgence of interest in true crime on a level that I don't remember in recent memory, and I don't know whether that's a function of Netflix and streaming services, or the growth of the podcast medium, because certainly, all these true crime podcasts are incredibly popular right now. So, people are, there is a thirst, there's a hunger for these types of stories. So, I feel like, at least, you know, from somebody looking,

• 1:02:16Rich Roll?

  from the outside looking, looking in to where you're sitting, I would imagine there's hope in that, right? Like, there's a lot of conversations that are happening, and there seems to be more and more avenues to address these wrongs through alternative forms of media like this that ultimately can, can catalyze results.

• 1:02:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, that's, the media, I think, played a role in creating the hysteria that led to some of these crazy laws being passed. The media has also played a role in many of these wrongful convictions. You know, you see it with Amanda Knox's case, Nora Jackson's case, see it with Making a Murderer, right? I mean, when, when there's a high-profile crime, and there's a media frenzy, it increases the pressure on the authorities to solve it. They can get tunnel vision. So, you know, a lot of these mistakes are made innocently, like I said. And they're mistakes in every profession. Listen, I don't even bat 300 at my job, you know what I mean? So, you know, my day job is, is music, of course, and trying to turn civilians into pop and rock stars.

• 1:03:19Rich Roll?

  We're gonna talk about that a little bit, I hope.

• 1:03:21Speaker 01

  Oh, we can. But, so, yeah, I mean, I'm not, you know, I'm, I'm not perfect, nobody's perfect, everybody makes mistakes, but those, the chance of those mistakes being made, and I say this because of the fact that everyone who's listening is a potential juror. So, if it's a high-profile case that you're on, be aware that there, you know, tunnel vision is a thing, is, is another very common cause of wrongful conviction, which, which just basically means that they get somebody, and they start to...

• 1:03:48Speaker 01

  Create a narrative that that that leads that that all points towards that person because they believe that that's him.

• 1:03:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:55Speaker 01

  Or her. And then they they can that that syndrome, that that mental focus can cause you to disregard evidence that otherwise would seem to totally, you know, exonerate that person.

• 1:04:10Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:04:10Speaker 01

  So, again, if you're on a jury, be woke, be aware. Mistakes are made at every level. Honest mistakes. You also have, you know, the possibility that somebody on the stand, like in Making a Murderer, could be lying. And so you have to you have to pay attention because, you know, it's it's somebody's child up there. It's somebody's mother or father. It's somebody's life.

• 1:04:39Rich Roll?

  One of the things that that I didn't really fully understand or appreciate is what you call the second punishment, right? Like, I just had this idea. You've been wrongly convicted. Your sentence gets overturned and you are released to the world and to your life. And that's really not how it works. There's still a whole process that has to be, you know, all kinds of knots that have to get untied. And then there is the all the issues that play into how you reintegrate into society. So can you talk a little bit about how that works?

• 1:05:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, I don't know if I coined that phrase a second punishment or not, but I think it's an apt title for this, you should have, I think, very American problem of the way we treat people who are system affected, guilty or innocent.

• 1:05:38Speaker 01

  And that extends to everything from that box they have to check in most places if they apply for a job that says, have you ever been convicted of a felony? The fact that you can't vote in most places. You may be barred from housing, all sorts of, you know, opportunities, doors close. Employers, I think, probably is the number one issue.

• 1:06:01Rich Roll?

  If your conviction is overturned for a felony, do you still have to check that you've been convicted of a felony?

• 1:06:07Speaker 01

  That's a good question. I don't even know the answer to that.

• 1:06:09Rich Roll?

  You shouldn't have to.

• 1:06:10Speaker 01

  You shouldn't have to. But the, you know, in some, I think in some cases you may have to, and then you just have to explain it. But even then, you know, I've had exonerees telling me, hey, you know, I go in and, you know, I was in for 14 years, whatever it is, and I go in for a job interview, and, you know, I show them the newspaper headlines and even a proclamation from a judge, and they say they understand, but they don't understand, you know? And I hope that people will start to open their hearts and minds and their, and their payrolls to system-affected people, because I can tell you that having worked with many of them over the years and having to, you know, having been helpful to them and getting

• 1:06:51Speaker 01

  them employment in some cases, they are some of the most hard-working and forthright people that you can come across, because they're so happy to have an opportunity, and they want to prove themselves, and they want to make up for their lost time. So, you know, there's, there's some really great success stories, but they're too few and far between, because most people are not willing to give them a shot.

• 1:07:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Yeah, it's gotta be incredibly difficult. I mean, just when Amanda was talking at Nantucket Project about that process for her, I mean, that's a whole different thing because of the white-hot media spotlight that was upon her.

• 1:07:28Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I mean, Amanda, who is such an extraordinary being, just an ethereal, sort of a little orb of light. And someone who I I respect so much, um, she said so eloquently when we were there. And it was hard for me because I was on stage with her, but I was off to the side while she was speaking, but my mic was on and I was trying not to cry, right? Because I was like, I can't start bawling into the microphone. It's gonna be a mass, you know, breakdown of everyone. So I held it in. But um, but yeah, she spoke so eloquently about the fact that she was a pariah, you know, she was portrayed as, as, and you can Google the

• 1:08:11Speaker 01

  speech, um, if you, I think if you Google Amanda Knox, Nantucket Project, it'll come up. Um, how, how she was portrayed as this, this seductress and this, this, this whore and this, you know, uh, because that's the, that was the thing that sold newspapers, right? And it, and it sold ratings and, you know, it, it, it's a lot. I mean, she is famous and infamous and, you know, I still get people coming up to me going, well, Jimmy, who know that, you know, we're close and, and who say, well, she did it, right? And I'm like, no, you did it, idiot, you know? You literally had more to do with that crime than she did.

• 1:08:49Speaker 01

  Like, get, get the fuck out of my face, you know? So, um, yeah, it's, it's a, you know, as a society, we can and should do better, uh, whether you're a religious person or not, you know, it's like, don't we, you know, I mean, how much, how much punishment is enough? Like, why, why would there be this second punishment if someone, even if they're guilty? And a lot of people are of something. And, you know, and there's a thing too, my friend Nadia, uh, Pastor Nadia Bolz Weber.

• 1:09:18Rich Roll?

  Oh, she's amazing.

• 1:09:19Speaker 01

  I love Nadia.

• 1:09:19Rich Roll?

  I didn't know who she was before Nantucket Project and I just fell in love with her.

• 1:09:23Speaker 01

  I followed her around like a, like a puppy for seven hours after she spoke. We went for pizza, we went for a bike ride. I just wanted to soak up, I want to, everything she says, I want to bottle it and then spray it on myself later, you know? It's like, and, and she talks about how, you know, as, as people, as a group, we have a need to demonize our fellow man or woman, uh, because it helps us compartmentalize our own transgressions, right? So by turning someone into that villain, you're a, you know, and I'm, I'm paraphrasing her, but I'm getting it more or less, right? And, uh, yeah, so these are extreme examples of that.

• 1:10:03Speaker 01

  But I think it's something we all need to be careful of because, you know, um, what did, I mean, and I'm not a religious person, didn't Jesus said he like he is without sin, cast the first stone, right? So, anyway, I think that, I, I do think, you know, there's reason to be optimistic, a change, as Bob Dylan said, a change is gonna come, and it's coming because we can't continue this way, it doesn't make any sense, it's wrong, it's, it's, it's illogical, it's wrong, it doesn't work, it's cruel, and it's pernicious, and it's, and, and now, there's

• 1:10:42Speaker 01

  this coalition of, of, you know, everything from, you know, famous rappers, to billionaires, to, you know, social workers, to advocates like me, to, you know, criminal justice, uh, just, there's, there's this major movement underfoot, and the media now is, you know, is, is playing a big part in it.

• 1:11:02Rich Roll?

  How has all of this been colored by the current political climate? Like, what is the Trump impact on legislative and regulatory efforts, and, and just sort of public consensus around these ideas?

• 1:11:14Speaker 01

  Well, the action is in the states, let's just say that, you know, ninety percent of the prisons in America are in state facilities, um, so, you know, there's gonna be probably a limit to what can be accomplished federally, there is, you know, Jared Kushner is a major advocate of criminal justice reform, and, and he means it.

• 1:11:39Rich Roll?

  That's good.

• 1:11:41Speaker 01

  And I think that he is, you know, he's a great advocate, I, I just don't know, I mean, there's a lot of resistance.

• 1:11:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:49Speaker 01

  But, in the states, there's so much movement, um, there's so many changes being made, small and large, and even in states like Louisiana, right, where there's been some criminal justice reform recently, uh, they're no longer the, the, the large, you know, the largest per capita incarcerator in this country, now it's Oklahoma, um, but, you know, Texas has made some very, very positive moves, um, you know, states that you wouldn't expect are, and maybe that's because, like I said, conservative, a true conservative looks at this and goes, this ain't right.

• 1:12:24Rich Roll?

  Right, right. It's super inspiring and fascinating the impact that you're having on our legal system, given that you're not a lawyer, but you are the progeny of a great lawyer, the great Joe Flom. And it's like, I can't help but thinking, like, is this bred into your DNA, despite, you know, the choices that you made as a younger person to get into the industry that you're in, still, it's like, it's crept up and becomes expressed in you. Like, do you think about that?

• 1:13:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think about it a lot. I mean, my dad was my hero and my mentor. He was a legendary attorney, but moreover, he was a very super ethical guy who taught my brother and I something that I passed on to my kids, which he said, "Do whatever you want to do. Try to be the best at it, but just make the world a better place. If you do, then you'll be a success in my eyes." So I've tried to live up to that. You know, I found my calling in criminal justice reform. Maybe I'm overcompensating for the fact that I'm a college dropout. You know, my rock and roll dreams went by the wayside when I was a kid, but, you know,

• 1:13:40Speaker 01

  they took priority over school. And, you know, now, here I am, you know, all these years later, and, you know, I'm in a, I'm in an interesting position because I'm able to approach this from sort of a, like a stealth operator, you know? I mean, I can take meetings with people that might not otherwise meet with me if I was a full-time advocate, but they're interested in talking to the guy who discovered Katy Perry.

• 1:14:07Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:14:08Speaker 01

  You know, or Kid Rock, or, you know, now Lorde, or Greta Van Fleet, whatever, you know, it's a, you know, it's sort of a different thing if you're a politician or somebody. And then I can, you know, often get them engaged in conversations about criminal justice reform or even individual cases.

• 1:14:25Rich Roll?

  Backdoor it in.

• 1:14:26Speaker 01

  That might not otherwise happen. And so, so I love being, I love being schizophrenic, you know, or living a double life.

• 1:14:34Rich Roll?

  That's cool. I have the dubious honor of having been the worst

• 1:14:42Rich Roll?

  Paralegal slash legal assistant at Scadden back in the late 1980s, early 90s.

• 1:14:49Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:14:50Rich Roll?

  I worked there for two years. I don't think I ever met your dad, but I was I was at 919 Third Avenue for a couple of years there, yeah.

• 1:15:00Speaker 01

  We may have seen each other there.

• 1:15:01Rich Roll?

  I would imagine we may have. I can't believe I went to law school after that experience because it was so clearly not for me, but that was my formative, you know, introduction to the practice of big time Wall Street lawyerdom. And it was fascinating. That was a very interesting, that was really in the midst of the boom of the M and A era, which was, you know, what your dad ushered in. And it was fascinating to just observe, if nothing else. But I just wanted to party. And that place was so big. And the floor that I was on was just all paralegals.

• 1:15:37Speaker 01

  What floor were you on?

• 1:15:38Rich Roll?

  And I think I was on 23 or 21.

• 1:15:40Speaker 01

  Oh, I didn't know. I didn't meet you there.

• 1:15:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah, no, it was like, and I figured out very early and often how to hide and like dodge calls and not have to do anything and still maintain my employment there. So it was not my finest moment, but.

• 1:15:54Speaker 01

  So Scadden is just by way of reference, Scadden was my dad's firm, Scadden Arps Late Mar and Flom. And so I keep running into people, most interesting circumstances, who worked there at some point. And it's awesome. I mean, he really did it. It's funny, you know, when he was on his last legs, you know, he had a heart operation day after Christmas about seven or eight years ago. And he survived the operation, but the recovery was too much when he was 87. And he was in the hospital for a few months, and I visited him very often, almost every day. And one day I was there and I was sitting by his bed

• 1:16:38Speaker 01

  and, you know, I was texting or doing whatever because he was sleeping.

• 1:16:42Speaker 01

  And he opens one eye and he looks at me and he goes, "I had a pretty good run." And I was like, "Fucking A, Dad." Yeah, he did. He had a great run. He was a great guy and he taught me so much. And I think, you know, he was a big fan of the work of the Innocence Project. He loved the fact that I was involved in this. You know, whenever he would be the first guy I would call if I would get a, you know, if I was able to get clemency for someone, or I guess I'm out of, to get someone else out of prison by, you know, whatever means I could.

• 1:17:17Speaker 01

  He, you know, he just loved that stuff and, you know, I'm glad I was able to make him proud. I think I wasn't the best teenage son, but, you know, he lived long enough to see me, you know, become successful in the music business and, you know, have a positive impact on people's lives who really needed help. And, you know, there's a thing for me about helping the helpless. I've always, that's always been a big thing for me. I don't know why. I guess I got it from him.

• 1:17:47Speaker 01

  And, you know, the idea that I'm in a position where I can do that means that I must do that, you know? And I just wish I could do more. And, you know, people say to me, like, "Why are you so obsessed with this? Like, you're doing this music stuff and whatever else?" And I'm like, "'Cause you know what? You know, a long time from now, nobody will give a fuck who signed, you know, whichever act you want to pick of mine that was a big hit, you know? To Skid Row, or, like I said, Katy Perry's a great example. No one cares. Nobody cares who signed The Beatles or Pig Floyd. Nobody cares. You know what the legacy that I want

• 1:18:29Speaker 01

  is that I was able to help give somebody their life back, you know?

• 1:18:35Speaker 01

  Or change a law that helped, you know, that helped to prevent, you know, people from this...

• 1:18:43Speaker 01

  Terrible, terrible fate. Um, and that's what I like. I mean.

• 1:18:51Rich Roll?

  This drive to, to help the helpless, that spills over into, into animal rights as well for you.

• 1:18:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:58Rich Roll?

  Based on your Instagram, you're, you're always posting about endangered species and all, all kinds of animal advocacy stuff.

• 1:19:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. So my Instagram is at It's Jason Flom, I T S Jason Flom. Someone else had the Jason Flom name, which is funny, he's a school teacher in Tallahassee. We've actually connected.

• 1:19:14Rich Roll?

  He wouldn't give it to you?

• 1:19:15Speaker 01

  I haven't asked. Um, and you know how I find out about him? It was so funny because my girlfriend at the time, this is about seven years ago, she says to me, um, we're, you know, uh, you're not playing Words With Friends with me. You haven't made a move in like a couple of days. I go, that's because we're not playing.

• 1:19:29Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:19:30Speaker 01

  And she goes, yes, we are.

• 1:19:31Rich Roll?

  She's playing with him.

• 1:19:32Speaker 01

  And she shows me she's playing with Jason Flom, right? Now, I'm not Jason Flom on Words With Friends. I forgot what my name is. I don't know, it's Popeye Doyle or something. But anyway, so, um, so I said, oh, I got an idea. So I start a game with him, right? Now, remember, I'm not Jason Flom on Words With Friends, right? So I start a game with this guy. And I play a couple of games with him, then I messaged him inside the game and I go, by the way, dude, I'm also Jason Flom. And he goes, oh, you're that guy. He goes, that's why people keep sending me their music, you know? So I was like, and now I found out there's a lawyer.

• 1:19:59Rich Roll?

  Now he gets all kinds of, he gets all CDs in the mail and stuff like that?

• 1:20:02Speaker 01

  He's a professor. And so there's, and, and then a friend of mine was looking for a real estate lawyer in LA and came across a guy named Jason Flom. So of course I'm gonna have to call that guy and be, and I just want, I can't wait to call his office and be like, hi, is Jason there? They go, yeah, who's calling? I go, Jason Flom. They go, no, no, no, this is, and there'll be a whole Abbott, Costello thing, right? But I have to hire that guy just to do something because just so I could say, hey, Rich, call my lawyer, Jason Flom. It'll be fantastic. I can't even, and then I want to organize a get together for the, at least the three of us. Or if there are any other Jason Floms out there listening, let me know. Um, DM me or something. And, uh, yeah, let's get a, let's get a Jason Flom, uh, support group going, or maybe go out and all, go camping together or something.

• 1:20:44Rich Roll?

  That would be a hilarious adventure.

• 1:20:47Speaker 01

  Be fucking epic. It'd be amazing.

• 1:20:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, man. All right. But the, the animal rights stuff, tell me about that.

• 1:20:53Speaker 01

  So that's a more recent passion of mine. Several years ago, I became involved with an organization called VetPAW. VetPAW is Veterans Empowered to Protect African Wildlife. So it's V E T P A W dot org. And it's a group of US military veterans who are on the ground in Africa, saving rhinos and elephants. And, you know, it's a win-win-win because while they're there, they're training the African park rangers in US military tactics. They're using counterintelligence to find spies and they're, you know, in these networks. Because these poachers are, you know, we're gonna have no rhinos left in five years. There's gonna be no rhinos. It's an unimaginable thing, right? And elephants don't have that much longer. Maybe they have another 15 years after that.

• 1:21:37Speaker 01

  What is the current rhino population? I think the current rhino population in Africa is less than 15,000. And, you know, there's three a day being poached. So the math isn't good. And, you know, they're being poached for their horns, which, you know, which are used in this, you know, they call it traditional Chinese medicine. The fact is, or Asian, you know, whatever, it's witch doctors. Rhino horns are made of the same stuff as your fingernails. It's keratin. They have no magical properties. There's no medicinal value. They belong to rhinos. But the idea is that it enhances your virility. Yeah, if you mix it with Viagra, it does, you know? And that's what they do. And

• 1:22:17Speaker 01

  it's ridiculous. Or they just, some idiots, you know, maybe they, you know, they're insecure morons. They have, you know, they take a rhino horn, they put it on their desk, and they think it makes them look tough, or whatever the hell it is. It's so horrible. So these guys are balancing, you know, the odds and giving these rhinos a fighting chance. So we're providing meaningful employment for US military veterans. We're, you know, saving the lives of these African rangers and potentially saving a species. And I love rhinos. I'm about to post a rhino picture, actually, today, because it's Throwback Thursday, so I'm gonna post a picture with me and the rhinos. And I actually wrote a book recently called Lulu is a Rhinoceros. Yes, kid's book. Yeah, I wrote a kid's book with my daughter called Lulu is a Rhinoceros. It's about my bulldog, who's actually a rhinocerous trapped in a bulldog's body. So it's about

• 1:22:59Speaker 01

  her struggle for acceptance in a world where she's judged by her physical Appearance instead of what's in her heart. And it's doing really well. I'm very, very excited about it. We have a lot of exciting things in the works with that book. But check it out. It's on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Lulu, L U L U. Lulu is a rhinoceros. So, yeah. So, vet paw is a labor of love for me. And, you know, I don't eat meat. I don't want to do anything to hurt animals or the planet. So, I try to avoid plastics. I don't eat meat or dairy. And I just, you know, try to, I try to be, you know, you know, leave less of a negative footprint, you know, any way that I can. How long have you been vegan then? Well, I'm vegetarian.

• 1:23:44Speaker 01

  I'm not vegan. But, you know, and I still, and I still eat some fish. I need to, you know, really eliminate that. But I'm, I'm getting there. It's only been going on for a few years. But, and so I don't judge anybody else by their habits because I used to do it, you know? But I think if people could, you know, look, the latest UN report on, on climate change says that if we don't, if we don't, I mean, we have to take drastic measures or we're not going to survive as a species. Not very long either. It's this century. And one of those is we have to, you know, cut down on, on meat by 30% as a species because it's the number one problem in, in climate is, is, is the meat industry. And so, and it's simple.

• 1:24:27Speaker 01

  So, yeah, so I'm, I'm getting there. It's, and I think if people are like, oh, that's too much for me. I can't give it up. I love a steak. I love this. Then just eat less of it, you know, like, and, and if you can, eliminate pork. Like pigs are so smart. They're such, they're such amazing animals. They're the smartest animals other than dolphins and whales, elephants and monkeys. And there's only certain monkeys. Pigs are the smartest animals that there are. They're much, much smarter than dogs. And, you know, and yet we allow them to be tortured every minute of their miserable lives just so they can be then butchered, you know, slaughtered and butchered so we can eat them for what, five, 10 minutes? Does, I love bacon. Don't get me wrong. I just don't eat it. And now there's all these great vegetarian options, you know?

• 1:25:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's getting.

• 1:25:13Rich Roll?

  Better and better. That New York Times article, though, what was it, like, a week ago? Was pretty shocking and stunning.

• 1:25:20Speaker 01

  About the climate?

• 1:25:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:21Speaker 01

  Brutal. And by the way-

• 1:25:22Rich Roll?

  It's like, this is, like, we shouldn't be talking about anything else-

• 1:25:25Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:25:26Rich Roll?

  Other than that.

• 1:25:26Speaker 01

  But we don't deal with long-term threats. The existential threats-

• 1:25:29Rich Roll?

  The human brain doesn't work well that way.

• 1:25:31Speaker 01

  And by the way, my new addiction is these things called Fruffalo wings. Have you tried them?

• 1:25:34Rich Roll?

  No, what is that?

• 1:25:35Speaker 01

  Oh, my god, they're vegan chicken wings.

• 1:25:37Rich Roll?

  I don't, I should know about that. I don't know about that.

• 1:25:39Speaker 01

  Oh, my god, Fruffalo wings. Trust me. I don't, I'm not being paid by them. Maybe somebody will listen and go, "Hey, let's send this guy some Fruffalo wings." They're delicious. You put them in the freezer, take it out, it takes five minutes to cook. You mix it with, like, a little spinach or broccoli or something. I can't cook at all, but you cook these things, and I'm telling you, I don't even care if you're hungry. It's so delicious that it's scary.

• 1:25:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:57Speaker 01

  It has the buffalo sauce on it.

• 1:25:58Rich Roll?

  All right, well, check it out.

• 1:25:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's great.

• 1:25:59Rich Roll?

  Um, we gotta, we gotta start winding this thing down, but there's no way I'm letting you out of here without telling me a couple good music industry stories.

• 1:26:06Speaker 01

  Oh, my god.

• 1:26:07Rich Roll?

  We don't have time to, like, track your entire career. I feel like I could do a whole other podcast with you on that. Uh, but for people that are interested, that, that conversation that you had with, uh, um, what's his name, Lefkets?

• 1:26:19Speaker 01

  Oh, by the way, we just got a new exoneration.

• 1:26:21Rich Roll?

  Oh, you did?

• 1:26:22Speaker 01

  Wilbert Jones in Louisiana, of the Innocence Project New Orleans, just got another victory. I just happened to glance at my phone, there it is.

• 1:26:27Rich Roll?

  Text machine, text message.

• 1:26:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, Wilbert Jones, welcome home, buddy. Um, I hope we get to meet you soon. Innocence Project New Orleans, ipno.org, ipno.org. Um, so, yeah, so Lefkets were, uh, yeah, Lef-

• 1:26:41Rich Roll?

  That was great. I mean, that was a deep dive into, you know, all the, some great stories about your career in music.

• 1:26:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, um, you know, the, this, this business, um, it's not as colorful as it used to be, I guess, but, you know-

• 1:26:56Rich Roll?

  Well, you've been there from, I mean, you, because you've been doing this since you were 18, uh, almost like bef- before, you know, like, at the very beginning of the music video era, all the way to where we are right now, there's been so many incarnations of this industry. You've seen, you've seen a lot of change.

• 1:27:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, look, I'm, I'm older than dirt, so, you know, I've been around.

• 1:27:22Rich Roll?

  Dude, you're like, two years older than me, or whatever.

• 1:27:24Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, I started this when I was 18, so, you know, July 31st will be my 40th birthday in the music industry. But, um, yeah, it's been an amazing journey. I've been really, really lucky in so many ways to, to bump into a lot of great-

• 1:27:40Speaker 01

  Artists, I mean, the latest one is one of the most fun I've ever had, which is Greta Van Fleet, you know, sort of taking over the world. Yeah, this is the new sensation. The new rock band, yeah, that they, you know, Robert Plant said they are Led Zeppelin, you know, so that's the highest praise you can get. And anyway, yeah, so, but it goes back to, I mean, there's so many crazy stories, I mean, you know, when I was, I'll never forget, when I was 18 years old and I started working at Atlantic, and I had never heard of AC/DC, but my favorite bands were Aerosmith and Zeppelin, and of course, the Beatles and Bob Dylan and stuff, but I loved hard rock. And I found in the hallway a single of Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, and on the back was

• 1:28:24Speaker 01

  the Jack, I think. And I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I was like, oh, my God, AC/DC is the answer to everything. And then I found out they had all these albums that had been out, but they hadn't done anything. You know, they were, the first three albums were, you know, stiffs. But they were, of course, now they've sold millions, but, you know, it was High Voltage and Powerage and If You Want Blood, You've Got It. And I would listen to those 24/7. And then one day, I heard, How Would a Hell It Come Out and Taken Off, and it had just gone gold. And I heard they were going to be in the office. And I was like, oh, my God, I have to meet them, right? So, this woman named Simo Doe, who ran the publicity department back then, she knew

• 1:29:08Speaker 01

  how much I loved them, so she told me they were going to be in the office. They were going to be up on the 30th floor in the corporate offices. We were on the second floor. So I tried to go up to the 30th floor, and of course, they wouldn't let me in. I was an 18-year-old kid with so much hair that I couldn't even see. And so, that didn't work. So then I thought, well, I'll just wait on the second floor in case they come down here. And sure enough, they all piled out of the elevator. You know, they're all about 5'2". And, uh, you know, I'll never forget Phil Rudd, the drummer, had a, they'd given him a cake. It was in a flat box, like a pizza box, and he puts it on the receptionist desk and he goes, "Yeah, I'm the pizza delivery guy." "So who's gonna pay for these pizzas? Give me a, I got money for these pizzas, man, what's going on?" And I was like, "What the hell?" And then Bon Scott comes walking right by me. So I was like, "Well, fuck this."

• 1:29:53Speaker 01

  You know, the original singer of AC/DC. So I followed him into the hallway and I'm like, "Bon, oh my God, I gotta meet you, man." Like, "You're so, you're so awesome and the way you sing." I was like, "I always wondered, like, what it'd be like to talk to you." And he's like, "Ah, yeah, man," he thinks, "I think people think I sing out of rest." He's got his hand over his nose. And then he goes, "Anyway," he goes, "you know, I got, I got a cocaine nose and no cocaine. You got any?" And I was like, "No, I don't have any, but, uh, you know, I have a guitar and stuff. I got a demo tape." "You wanna come in my office?" I go, "I may have a little weed in there," you know? So he, uh, he comes down, they'd given me a tiny little office in the back, like a closet. And he comes in there and I gave him my demo tape. And, uh, he, uh, I showed him I had my guitar in the office. And then about an hour later, I'm walking down the hallway. I'd had my thrill.

• 1:30:38Speaker 01

  And I see him, Angus and Malcolm knocking on this guy's door. It's a guy named Rafael Torres. They're banging on Rafael's door and I'm sort of staying out of the way. And I hear Bon going, "Is Jason in there? Jason in there?" And I was like, "Are you looking for me?" And he goes, "Ah, this is the guy, right? He gave me his demo tapes, got a guitar in his office." And they were like, "Oh, yeah, mate."

• 1:31:05Speaker 01

  I was like, "Oh, yeah." And next thing I know Angus and Malcolm come following me into my little office. Mal- Malcolm took off. Angus sat down on my tiny little couch, picked up the guitar, it was an SG, and started playing. So I was like, "Okay, it doesn't get much weirder than this, right?" Or better. Or better. And then the best part is, so I said to him, I go, uh...

• 1:31:24Speaker 01

  Angus, man, I go, uh, I'm asking him questions about this and that, you know? And I was like, finally, I was like, Angus, you're so young, because he was like, you know, nineteen or twenty, right? I mean, he'd start off when he was really young. I go, you're so young and you're so great at guitar. I go, when'd you take up playing seriously? And he goes, ah, I never took it up seriously. And I was like, oh, fuck.

• 1:31:45Rich Roll?

  Because you were still harboring the rock and roll dream for yourself at that time, right? The demo tape was all about like, well, I'm gonna leverage this Atlantic experience

• 1:31:53Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:31:54Rich Roll?

  to launch my damn.

• 1:31:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. But then he, he's taught me how to play a couple of songs. He taught me to play Kicked in the Teeth and Riff Raff. I'll never forget. I mean, I forgot how to play them, but I'll never forget the experience. So, yeah, that was just one of a million stories. And, um, you know, it, it's been, the music business has been very good to me. I mean, it's, it's, it's up and down like anything else. It has, you know, a, a lot of, a lot of frustrations and a lot of misses, but, you know, the hits make up for the misses.

• 1:32:22Rich Roll?

  I mean, you, you, you said you've had the opportunity to bump up against all of these, you know, amazing talents, but, you know, when I look at your career, I see somebody who has a very acute ability to discover new talent and nurture it. Like, you, you've launched all these amazing acts from, you know, Katy Perry to, to Lord. And, and so I'm curious, like, what is it, like, if you have to, if you had to, like, articulate, like, what that thing is, like, that, that, whether it's their creativity, or that aura, or that promise, like, what is it that you're identifying in these people? Because in a lot of the stories that you tell, you're seeing something, and then there's a committee

• 1:33:04Rich Roll?

  of people who are telling you, you're wrong, right? When your instinct is telling you, no, there's something here to be nurtured.

• 1:33:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, again, I'm wrong most of the time, like everybody else. Nobody bats four hundred in the music business, but, um, the, uh, I do have an instinct, you know, a sort of a needle in the haystack instinct. And it's served me well over the years. I mean, going back to, you know, like I said, the days of, oh, God, there's so many of them. Matchbox Twenty and the Chorus or Trans Siberian Orchestra or, you know, the aforementioned-

• 1:33:35Rich Roll?

  Kid Rock, Sugar Ray.

• 1:33:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, those bands. And then, you know, back in the Atlantic days, even Skid Row and, you know, some of those acts, White Lion, you know, just Tori Amos, you know, is one of the ones I'm most proud of. And, yeah, it just goes back a long way. So, you know, I don't know, it's a lot of right place, right time, you know, serendipity, synchronicity, you know, and then a little bit of, you know, definitely luck. And then sometimes I just, you know, I don't, sometimes I manage not to fuck it up, you know? I mean, Greta Van Fleet was one of those. It just came in my inbox one day. I mean, I still have the email. And Lord, same thing, it was just in my inbox.

• 1:34:14Rich Roll?

  So, Lord, I'll let you go, but you gotta tell this story. Because like, when I first heard, when I heard Lord for the first time, I think it was my daughter that played it for me. I just thought, what is this energy, this voice? I had never heard anything. I was so moved by what she does. And as I understand it, like, you discovered her when she, or you were informed about her, when there was, she was just posting stuff on SoundCloud and like, no one was listening?

• 1:34:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. I got an email one day from a woman named Natalia Romaschevsky, who was a friend of mine, who was in the business, but we didn't work together. And she worked at a Jingle House. And she used to send me music time to time, but her taste was more eclectic than mine. And she, she sent me an email and the subject line was "Hot Shit." And then it just said, "Unsign New Zealand female, listen." And it had a link to her SoundCloud page. And then she wrote at the bottom, "Not sure if this is your kind of thing, but check it out."

• 1:35:18Speaker 01

  And I put it on and it was Royals. And there were other songs as well. I think it was the whole Love Club EP. And I called the Thai and I was like, what the, what the fuck did I just listen to? She goes, I don't know. She, I go, where'd you get it? She goes, a friend of mine in England just sent it to me. It had 200 SoundCloud places. Wow. And so she literally just put it up. But that's how fast it traveled. It went from New Zealand to somebody forwarded it to their friend in London, forwarded it to the Thai, forwarded it to me. And next thing I know, I was on the phone with, with Ella Lord and her parents and her manager. And I told them, I remember that conversation. I said, your daughter's gonna win Grammys. And she was 15 at the time.

• 1:36:01Speaker 01

  And, you know, they say there's three things that children can become geniuses at, which are music, math and chess. And it's because they're all based on math. And, and I believe that that album is an actual work of genius. I think it's every note on it, every word on it is, is profoundly perfect as it can be. Uh, even the title of the album, you know? Pure heroin. I mean, when she told me that was the title of the album, it took me two days just to recover. I was like, that's the most genius thing I've ever heard. Like pure heroin with an E on the end and Lord with an E on the end and just everything about it. It's like, even now I'll hear one of the songs and I'll go, how'd she do that? Like, how did it even happen? And that was just, it was just right to say at the right time. I mean, had I found that a few weeks later, I would have been too late. Somebody else would have grabbed it, you know?

• 1:36:46Speaker 01

  And by the way, I'll tell you one, one crazy thing about that, because I, I think this way, because of synchronicity and stuff. She wrote Royals because she saw a picture of George Brett in a Royals uniform, which doesn't make any sense in the first place, because in New Zealand, they don't play baseball. Yeah. But she did.

• 1:37:03Speaker 01

  The song comes out, goes number one all over the place, right? Giant hit in America, bigger here than anywhere else, I think. And the Royals, who had been perennial last place finishers, went to the World Series that year. Oh shit, they did. And then the next year they won. So for two years, they became the best team in baseball on the strength of the damn song.

• 1:37:24Speaker 01

  I mean, you can't really look at it any other way. I don't know. And I'm the only one who thinks these things.

• 1:37:28Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, what a beautiful gift of creation that girl is. And the fact that she could create something so magical at such a young age just makes you think that there are things at work in our world that we can't comprehend. Because it is a work of genius, I think.

• 1:37:48Speaker 01

  It is. And if anyone hasn't had the pleasure of listening to it yet, you know, it's out there for you. Just go on Spotify or whatever you're listening to music and check it out. It's remarkable.

• 1:38:00Rich Roll?

  Last question before we wrap it up. Greta seems to have given you hope about rock and roll. Like, what is the state of rock and roll right now? Because for the most part, I felt like, I don't want to say rock is dead. It's such a trope. But like, where is, where are the great rock and roll bands?

• 1:38:20Speaker 01

  Rock, um, rock was dead until now. And I don't know.

• 1:38:31Speaker 01

  I mean, I don't know what happened exactly, but you know, music, you know, trends ebb and flow based on who's making the best music. And, you know, they, for a long time, there hasn't been a lot of inspiration or genius at work in rock and roll, so people go elsewhere. People don't buy music they don't like. So, um, so Greta came along and, you know, they, they, they walk it, they talk it. They, you know, they're, they're true to it. You know, they write it. They don't, there's no outside influences. They're just, you know, they're just, they're, they're amazing kids. You know, they're really interested in the world and making a difference.

• 1:39:17Speaker 01

  They, um, you know, they're not, they're not social media guys. They're just like, their idea of a good time is going camping, you know? And they are, uh, you know, and he's, and he's gifted with that ridiculous voice that's just so over the, you know, off the spectrum. And so it's, um, it's just really a thrilling thing to be a part of. And it's taken off like a rocket ship, you know? And that's not hyperbole. I mean, they, uh, they went from where, you know, a year ago, they couldn't have sold out. You know, the table here, if they were playing on the couch, to now they're selling out, you know, 10,000 seaters within a few minutes. So it's just, you know, people, it's just magic. And when it happens, it's so fun to be a part of it.

• 1:40:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Cool, man. Tell me what the Church of Rock and Roll is.

• 1:40:06Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Church of Rock and Roll. So the Church of Rock and Roll is my latest passion project. So I started this thing called the Church of Rock and Roll with the idea that I wanted to start a movement, a community that stood for the things that I believe in. So the first principle is be kind to yourself, to other people, to animals, and the earth. And then it goes from there to, you know, do whatever you want with your own body, as long as you don't put anybody else in harm's way, and marry who you want, what you want, when you want to. And so it is a lifestyle brand that we're creating, which I hope will turn into a movement. You can get, you can go to churchofrockandroll.com or churchofrockandroll on Instagram and learn more about it. You can buy a shirt, you can come to our events, and ultimately, we're going to be opening churches, which will be full-service.

• 1:40:51Rich Roll?

  You did something at Life is Beautiful with that, right?

• 1:40:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. We opened it at Life is Beautiful. We did a pop-up, and Greta Van Fleet performed, and we invited, our motto is miracles happen here, so we invited about 75 members of the Las Vegas deaf community, as well as 75 people, you know, who are, you know, who are, you know, hearing people, and everyone was fitted with these haptic vibration vests that are made by Music Not Impossible. And so when the vest turned on, Pastor Nadia spoke, I spoke, vest turned on, Greta Van Fleet took the stage, and everyone got to experience music on, you know, on similar terms.

• 1:41:34Rich Roll?

  So the vest just, like, vibrates with the music, or puts pressure?

• 1:41:37Speaker 01

  So basically, it separates, it...

• 1:41:41Speaker 01

  It turns, the music turns into distinct radio frequencies that hit different parts of your body, so you wear wristbands and ankle bracelets and then vests. So the music is actually separated. It's not a wall of sound. It's, you can, you can feel the, the cymbal in one thing and the bass in this and the bass drum over here. And then this one's in your ankle and this one's in your shoulder and, you know, so you really, and we had a signer on stage, but it was to hear, for the lyrics. But it was such an amazing experience. You had these people crying and signing to each other and jumping for joy at this amazing experience of hearing, you know, you know, one of the greatest rock and roll bands in the world in a little club, performing for them and allowing them, and with us, with

• 1:42:25Speaker 01

  Music Not Impossible and the help of Zappos, you know, who are our sponsor and our partners, bringing them an experience that they'd never had before. So that was our first miracle, but there's going to be a lot more to come.

• 1:42:39Rich Roll?

  That's cool.

• 1:42:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. So churchofrockandroll.com, get a T-shirt.

• 1:42:43Rich Roll?

  You're wearing, he's wearing the T-shirt right now. It's dope.

• 1:42:45Speaker 01

  That's pretty dope.

• 1:42:46Rich Roll?

  Pretty cool, man.

• 1:42:47Speaker 01

  Pretty dope.

• 1:42:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And you can hear music in the background if you're listening to this probably because we're at the offices of a record company.

• 1:42:54Speaker 01

  We're at the record company. Exactly.

• 1:42:56Rich Roll?

  Uh, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure talking to you.

• 1:43:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, man.

• 1:43:01Rich Roll?

  Super inspiring the work that you do.

• 1:43:02Speaker 01

  The pleasure is mine.

• 1:43:04Rich Roll?

  Everybody can learn more about Jason at It's Jason Flom on Instagram. Listen to his podcast, Wrongful Conviction. And if people want to get involved or learn more about criminal justice reform, like where is the best place to direct them for that?

• 1:43:18Speaker 01

  Um, I'd say just to keep it simple, go to F A M M dot org. That's Families Against Mandatory Minimum. So it's F like Frank, A M M, Mary Mary dot org. F A M M dot org or go to InnocenceProject.org. Learn more, get involved and by all means, serve on a jury if you get called and vote.

• 1:43:38Rich Roll?

  Thanks, dude.

• 1:43:40Speaker 01

  Good talking to you, man. You all right?

• 1:43:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, man.

• 1:43:43Speaker 01

  Good, good.

• 1:43:44Rich Roll?

  Cool.

• 1:43:44Speaker 01

  Peace.

• 1:43:48Rich Roll?

  Pretty amazing, right? I hope you guys enjoyed that. I think it's people like Jason and Scott Harrison that remind us how much more meaningful and purposeful and engaged our lives become when we selflessly devote ourselves to an important problem or important cause. It's inspiring, and I hope it moves you to get more active, to get more involved, to find an important cause, a problem to solve, that you can become passionately devoted to in the way that Jason exemplifies. Do me a favor, let Jason know how this one landed for you. You can find him at itsjasonflom.com and on Twitter and Instagram at itsjasonflom.

• 1:44:32Rich Roll?

  He's pretty active on Instagram, so check that place out first. And as always, check the show notes on the episode page at ritual.com to expand your experience of this conversation beyond the earbuds. If you are looking for nutritional guidance, again, check out our meal planner, the Plant Power Meal Planner, meals.ritual.com. When you go there, you're going to find thousands of plant-based recipes. When you sign up, you fill out this form with all your preferences, your allergies, how many people you're cooking for, what your budget is, and basically you get delivered this very personalized, customized catalog of recipes that I think are going to change your life. They're delicious, they're nutritious, they're everything you need, they integrate with grocery lists and grocery delivery in most US cities.

• 1:45:17Rich Roll?

  We have amazing customer support, available seven days a week, experts who can answer all your questions, and you get all of this for just $1.90 a week when you sign up for a year. Super affordable, really proud of that. So to learn more and to sign up, go to meals.ritual.com or click on Meal Planner on the top menu on my website. And if you would like to support our work here on the podcast, there are a couple simple ways to do just that. Tell your friends about your favorite episode, that's the best thing. Share the show on social media, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, on YouTube, on Google Podcasts, leave a review on Apple Podcasts, and you can also support the show on Patreon at ritual.com/donate. I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show. Show today, Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, show notes,

• 1:46:00Rich Roll?

  interstitial music, Blake Curtis and Margot Lubin for graphics, DK for sponsor relationships and the music as always by Anna Lema. Thanks for the love, you guys. See you back here soon, shortly, with another great episode with Lindsey Vonn, the world's greatest skier. She's coming on the podcast. It's a good one. Until then, be grateful for your life. We're alive. We're sharing this spinning blue globe together. There's a lot to be grateful for. I'm grateful. I hope you are as well. And try to find a way to express that, to give of yourself in service to others. Peace. Namaste.