Name: Joe Rogan Experience #2096 - Josh Dubin & Sheldon Johnson
Uploaded: 2024-02-01T00:00:00.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #2096 - Josh Dubin & Sheldon Johnson' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-02-01. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #2096 - Josh Dubin & Sheldon Johnson' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-02-01. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #2096 - Josh Dubin & Sheldon Johnson

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
Okay, Mr. Dugan, good to see you again, sir.
Mr. Rogan.
Always, always a pleasure.
Introduce your friend.
This is my friend, my client, my brother, Sheldon Johnson.
I figured we'd do something a little bit different.
Um, typically the person sitting to my right is someone that was wrongfully
convicted.
So I don't want to bury the headline.
Sheldon is guilty.
Um, and I thought it would be a real interesting conversation to learn his
background, learn
about his upbringing, learn about the crime that he committed.
And hear the sentence he got, which, um, I don't want to shade it and, uh,
inject my opinion.
I have a strong one, but it's, uh, pretty astounding how, uh, he was treated by
the system.
Um, I think that there's a real interesting twist that happens at his sentencing.
And, um, I know I've said this before and it probably sounds repetitive, but
another miracle
sitting to my right, just like, uh, a marvelous human being who was basically
told by a judge,
um, um, by an African-American judge that you don't matter, you don't count,
and I'm going
to throw your life away for a crime in which the victim received two stitches.
And, um, um, on a second offense, his first offense being a gun possession
charge.
So, I will say this, that he receives a sentence that far eclipses a sentence,
um, that would
be commonly doled out for murder or manslaughter.
So, with that, here's Sheldon.
Sheldon, how long have you been out for?
Um, going on nine months.
I got out, uh, May 4th.
And you were in for 25?
25 years and five months.
For two stitches.
Two stitches.
Jesus.
But one, one of the things that always struck me about Sheldon, um, was I didn't
know him.
And I got a call from these two remarkable attorneys at, uh, organization
called the Center
for Appellate Litigation, Barbara Zolot and Allison Haupt, who had been working
on his case
for a long time.
And they called, uh, me and Derek Hamilton and said, you know, we know you're
working
on some stuff with the Manhattan District Attorney's Office.
We have this case that has sort of hit a snag.
I want you to take a look at it and, um, see if you could help us.
And I called Barbara back and said, I think, I think that there's a mistake
here because
it says that he was sentenced to 50 years.
Um, I mean, that's no bullshit.
I could not believe what I was reading.
And then I read about what Sheldon had accomplished while in prison.
Um, and then his earliest date of release was, I think, 20...
2049.
49.
And he had already served 25 years.
So, um, I was just blown away by the level of accomplishment and the mental
wherewithal that
he possessed to accomplish what he did while incarcerated.
And then the path he's taken in the eight months since he's been out is, um, it's,
it's, uh,
we talk about on these episodes, how do you make change happen?
He's living it and making it happen.
So I thought it would be just fascinating to go through, um, like I said, his
life, um, how
he got to where he was, why he got this, what his thoughts are and our thoughts
are on the
sentence he received, why that happens too often to people of color.
Um, and I know there's one thing I want to say and then I'm going to shut up
and really
let Sheldon talk and you talk.
Um, I get, I get this a lot.
Why are you always bringing up race when you talk about the system?
Um, my, my response to that is if you don't talk about how it impacts the
system, even for
people that have been found guilty, um, it's like, um, it's like having a
conversation about
president Biden and ignoring the very obvious apparent cognitive deficiencies
he has, it would
be like talking about Donald Trump and not recognizing that he seems like an unhinged
lunatic.
It would be like talking about Kamala Harris and ignoring that she, you know,
didn't do much
to advance criminal justice reform.
You have to confront it.
It's just, it's there.
Um, is it that all people that get wrongfully convicted are people of color?
No, but most of them.
Is it that all people of color get disparate sentences?
Oh, absolutely.
Um, so that's why I thought that this is an important conversation to have and
getting to
know Sheldon just thought he, uh, he has a remarkable story to tell and a
perspective on,
on his circumstances, the system, and he's someone that's taken responsibility
for what he
did.
And I think is a living example of what can happen if we think long and hard
about, um,
if someone's life is worth just throwing away and putting behind, uh, bars so
that they can
rot in a dank cell because he would have been 70 years old when he got out way
past his life
expectancy.
You know, one of the things that's happened through all of our conversations
that we've
had on the show is it, it highlights how insanely broken the criminal justice
system is and how
little oversight there is and how few people are looking at these individual
cases and that
you can have one judge who does what they did to you and no one's looking, no
one cares, no
one pays attention.
And until someone like you goes in and starts combing over this and then coming
up with a
strategy for, you know, to actually apply real justice or at least get someone
out.
I mean, the only way to apply real justice is to have a fucking time machine.
Right.
But it's broken.
I mean, it's, it's so broken and it seems so overwhelmed.
And the root cause of it is never addressed.
The root cause of, I mean, I've said it ad nauseum, but I'll say it again.
Where the fuck did we come up with a hundred and whatever billion dollars to
send to Ukraine
and we don't have any money to, to try to do something about these insanely impoverished,
crime-ridden, gang-ridden, drug-ridden communities.
We don't do anything.
We have nothing.
I mean, this is my, my take on this whole make America great again thing.
You want to make America great again?
Make it so there's less losers.
Make it so that more people have a fucking chance.
The idea that everyone starts on the same line.
I mean, I'm not talking about equality of outcome.
That's not possible.
But equality of opportunity is possible.
That's a possible goal.
And at least we could advance that.
At least we could do something to, you know, just, just change the course of
who knows how many people's lives.
And we don't do a fucking thing about it.
I mean, we're looking at each other because we just had, we just like had lunch
before we came.
It's like the precise conversation that we had.
I told you this is a motherfucker that gets it.
Oh, I know.
It just makes no sense to me.
It makes no sense to me.
And it's not a subject of any presidential debates.
It's not a subject of anybody who's running for Congress or running for Senate.
We have to fix this.
This is a problem.
It's been going on for decades and decades back through Jim Crow, back all the
way to slavery, the same communities.
And we don't do anything?
Pull that a little closer.
Redlining, everything.
Pull that mic up a little bit.
Yeah, just, just, yeah, it's good.
That's good?
Yeah.
Yeah, it's good.
I mean, it's, it's wild.
It really is wild.
And, you know, and the race part of it is a major factor.
It's a major factor.
And it's a factor that gets ignored when people start talking about racism,
systemic racism in the country.
Talk about sentencing.
How come that's not talked about?
Yeah, well, that's a vestige of, that's a vestige of slavery.
Yep.
Segregation.
Jim Crow, Redlining, everything.
Exercising your right to a jury trial.
Yep.
Being punished twice.
Yeah, it's, it's hard to know where to pick up because we just had this
conversation.
But you're, you know, look, well, let's preface the, the episode by saying this.
We are doing something about it.
I keep telling you that this, this forum, it keeps paying dividends.
We are, we are making progress.
We are opening people's minds.
I'm getting letters from prosecutors.
I'm getting letters from sheriffs.
I got a letter from a sheriff in Oregon last week and he sent me a badge and
said, I want
to show you how committed I am to trying to make change happen.
And it was from this show.
So we're doing it.
We're addressing it.
We're making it happen.
Why politicians don't, um, I, I, you know, what drives someone to want to get
into politics
these days is for different psychiatrists.
I have no fucking, I have no clue what the allure is, but you know, like there's
such
a swirl of, uh, ego and power struggle and divided loyalties.
I can't even wrap my head around it, but, um, you know, we're doing it.
We're helping.
We got to do it, uh, grain of sand by grain of sand until we have a sandcastle.
So that's what we're doing.
So I do think we're making a difference, but you know, it's crazy because Sheldon
and I
are the same exact age.
Um, and we didn't know that until we were on our way down.
One days apart.
Yep.
And he, he flew, when we flew down, it was the first time he'd ever been on an
airplane.
Wow.
What was that like?
Fucking weird, right?
Nah, I was, it was, I actually loved it.
I was, I was very excited.
I'm kind of like an adrenaline.
I like the adrenaline rush.
Just the speed of it and just the whole idea of just, you know, I, I, uh, I had
this analogy
in my head when I was up in the clouds and I'm looking down and I said to
myself, I said,
I just came from the bowels of hell, spending 25 years in prison.
And now I'm in the sky above the clouds and the heavens headed to a destination
to, um,
talk about change and to talk about all of the things that brought me to this
place today.
And, you know, the conditions in which I grew up and, you know, how social
conditions play
a role in the decisions that we make or the lack of achievements or
opportunities.
Like Joe just said a couple of minutes ago, you know, um, those opportunities
are very important
and being able to start that line where everybody is not necessarily equity,
like equitable, but,
you know, everybody has that same opportunity.
So, you have a chance, you have a chance, you have a chance, a real chance.
Well, so tell us about your upbringing, upbringing.
So, I'm a coda.
My mother's deaf, my father's deaf, my sister's deaf, my aunt is deaf.
I grew up in a deaf household.
What's a coda?
A coda is a child of deaf adults.
That's crazy.
This is the second podcast in a row I'm doing with someone who's like that.
Moshe Kasher, who was on yesterday.
His parents are deaf.
He signs and, you know, he's, he's, he had to translate for his mother his, his
whole life.
Same with me.
So, as a child growing up, uh, my mother's also white.
My grandmother came to America in 1918 from a boat from Sicily.
Um, my father is Nigerian.
He's African.
So, there was this, always this contrast where, you know, I wasn't really sure
where I belonged at.
You know, um, kids are cruel.
So, growing up, um, you know, kids would say, oh, you're mulatto.
Oh, you're a half-breed and, oh, you're adopted.
And for a long time, I kind of suffered as a child with an identity crisis, not
really knowing where I fell at on either side.
What my identity was, who I was supposed to be.
Um, and, and my father, I'm also, uh, a product of intergenerational
incarceration.
My father was incarcerated when I was young at an early age.
Um, he did about 15 years.
Um, I was incarcerated.
My grandfather was incarcerated.
My great-grandfather was a slave.
And my son, um, killed somebody when he was 12 years old.
Um, so that there's this cycle of, of, of incarceration based on the conditions,
the social conditions, and where I come from.
I grew up in, um, New York City, Harlem, on the borderline between the east
side and the west side on Fifth Avenue.
You hear Fifth Avenue, you're like, oh, wow, you live in a nice place.
Okay, um, crack era Harlem, 80s, 90s.
Um, you know, and I grew up, you know, uh, protecting my mother, interpreting
for my mother.
My mother could hardly ever keep a job because of her handicap.
There was al