Name: Joe Rogan Experience #1858 - Josh Dubin & Derrick Hamilton
Uploaded: 2022-08-17T00:00:00.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1858 - Josh Dubin & Derrick Hamilton' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-08-17. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1858 - Josh Dubin & Derrick Hamilton' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-08-17. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #1858 - Josh Dubin & Derrick Hamilton

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day!
Alright, we're rolling. Joshua, my brother.
What's up, man? Good to see you, my friend.
It's great to see you, always.
Please introduce your friend.
Man, it's hard to introduce the unintroducible.
So, this is Derek Hamilton, who has been regarded by the New Yorker
as the most prolific jailhouse lawyer that ever lived.
He is single-handedly responsible for freeing probably over 100 people,
including himself.
He spent three decades in jail for murders that he didn't commit.
He was framed by one of the most horrific, corrupt cops in the city of New York's
history,
sown by the name of Scarcella.
But more than that, he's become known as one of the biggest and most effective
criminal justice reform advocates in the country.
And I'll tell you, get into it a little bit more later, but Derek is not a
miracle.
He's a force of fucking nature.
And I'll tell you a little bit about how we met and how we got involved
together.
Probably about nine years ago, Jay-Z wanted to get into boxing.
And Roc Nation started a promotional company to promote boxers.
And Andre Ward was one of them.
So, we were on the opposite sides of the negotiating table.
And it might be less or more than nine years ago.
It was right on the heels of the Eric Garner murder when he was, you know,
putting a chokehold on Staten Island.
And Jay-Z was coming to sign the contract.
And I was there with Jay Prince.
And we started talking about, like, what the fuck is wrong with this country.
And figured out that we had, like, a common bond in that regard.
So, fast forward to a few years later, we—I find out through working with Roc
Nation on just criminal justice reform initiatives that Jay-Z has this
foundation that flies under the radar that is just remarkable.
It's called the Sean Carter Foundation.
He and his mother started it.
And they take inner-city youth, mostly from Brooklyn, really the five boroughs,
and help give them an opportunity to go to college.
But they start when they're in high school.
They take them on a bus tour.
They help them with the application process.
And they literally change the trajectory of these people's lives.
So, I had this idea that I would have five of their scholars—we would do a
scholarship program—come work on social justice cases with me.
And Jay-Z's mom loved it.
He loved it.
Roc Nation.
There's someone named Donya Diaz who runs their philanthropy arm, and she's on
the board of the Sean Carter Foundation.
We made it a reality.
It took a couple of years.
So, this summer, I had five college students that were coming to work with me
on innocence cases.
And I said, you know, I need somebody that can really connect with these people
because I have sympathy for the way they grew up, for the conditions that they
were born into, for the opportunities that they didn't have.
But I can't empathize because I'm white.
It's just as simple as that.
So, I thought of Derek.
And I had met Derek about five years ago after he had been out for only six
years.
And Derek was the first person on my mind that could mentor these students.
And I asked him if he would join me in helping mentor them through this seven-week
program working with me on a case.
And over the past seven weeks, we're this close to freeing this man named Bruce
Bryant, who they worked on together.
They worked on his case together.
And to watch Derek and to know his story, I knew right away that he'd be able
to connect with them, but I did not know his power.
So, when he picks up the phone and calls a district attorney of Queens, they
take his call right away.
He calls the head of a conviction integrity unit that's involved in re-reviewing
cases.
He's got such deep respect.
And people in high places have such admiration for him because of what he was
able to overcome in not only helping himself, but helping free others.
He had a settlement with the city and the state.
And instead of taking that settlement and resting on his laurels and doing
whatever, which would have been understandable, he's dedicated his life to
helping get people out of jail.
And not only that, to helping reform the criminal justice system.
But these are words like reform the criminal justice system.
We kick around.
This man is a human tornado of action that instead of leaving destruction in
its wake, leaves hope.
And instead of devastation, leaves opportunity.
I mean, so maybe tornado was the wrong analogy, but I've just never witnessed
anything like it.
So I'm on the verge of starting this new criminal justice reform center, which
we're not at liberty to announce that is being funded by someone that I've
talked about quite a bit on this show.
And they were asking me to find a deputy director, you know, a lawyer.
And I said, I looked at resumes, I interviewed people, and I said, I found him.
I found my lawyer.
He may not have a law degree, but he knows more about criminal procedure.
He's more respected.
He's the best strategic thinker I've ever encountered.
And he knows human beings better than anyone.
And Derek's going to be my—I'm the executive director.
Derek is going to be my deputy director.
And, I mean, I'll let him tell his story.
But when you hear what he's been through and what he's overcome and what he has
done since, he's not a force of—
There's words aren't adequate to describe who this man is and what he's
overcome and what he's been through.
I was trying to suck an ounce of his mental energy on the ride over here from
Houston, just trying to understand how he summons the strength because I'm
trying to use it and apply it in my own life.
So it's just—I'm not going to cry yet.
I usually wait until hour two, but it's just so—it's just amazing to me the
way the universe aligned for us to come together and for him to be next to me
today and for your listeners and you to hear his story.
It's just an honor.
Well, it's an honor to meet you, Derek, especially after such high praise.
So tell me your story.
Like, how did—what happened to you?
Well, thanks for having me.
And, Josh, thanks for the accolades.
You know, I was a 17-year-old kid running around Brooklyn at a time when
Brooklyn was terrible.
And I was a product of my environment.
I was doing little robberies and, you know, little stump stuff that adolescents
do.
And I got on the radar of the police department.
They used to search me all the time, pat me down, you know, throw me up on the
car.
Regular stuff that happened in that community.
One day, a man was killed about 5 a.m. by some older guys in the neighborhood.
The police had an identification of their car.
They called the guy in and he somehow told them he rented me the car and that I
was the one that bought the car back and told him that I had committed the
crime and that I had shot the guy by accident.
And that was my first real experience with the criminal justice system because
it was a murder.
I'm like, murder?
You know, I did a couple of robberies.
You know, I did some petty stuff, but murder?
That's not me.
So, you know, what was amazing to me is, number one, nobody would have gave me
their car at 17 years old.
Right?
Any cop would have known that this guy wouldn't have gave me his car.
But they arrested me and they charged me with murder and I was convicted by a
jury because they admitted grand jury testimony of a witness who came before
the court and said,
I've never seen this guy at all.
The police made me lie in the grand jury and say that I've seen this guy.
I'm not testifying.
I refuse to testify.
I'm not going to get up there and purge myself.
The judge told the prosecutor that day that they were dismissing the case, that
if they don't get another witness, this case is going out of here.
The judge's name was Lombardo back then.
This was 1983.
I went back to Rikers Island that day.
We came back the next day and the judge said that he thought about this all
night and he felt that the only person would benefit from this witness not testifying
would be me.
Therefore, he was going to allow the prosecutor to admit their grand jury
testimony as evidence-in-chief at my trial and I would forfeit my right to
confront the witness and let the jury hear the truth that she never saw the
crime.
So that was my first real experience.
I was a young knucklehead.
The lawyer that I had at the time, Candace Kurtz, said, look, young man, get
your head out your ass and you better read these cases and you better see what's
going on like they railroad you.
She took the stand and told the judge what the witness told her.
And I was convicted.
I was sentenced to 25 years of life and it was at that moment that I know that
I had to study law, that I had to really dig deep in the books and I did it.
New York State, thank God, had a law library.
They had all the books in the world.
You had to supply yourself.
And I spent the next five and six years working on my case.
In 1987, the appellate division in that case found that the judge had no
evidence whatsoever that me or anybody acting on my behalf had threatened this
witness did anything improper.
And that the judge was right.
There was no evidence that can prove that.
So they reversed the conviction and I was able to get out of prison after six
and a half years.
Unbeknownst to me, there was a rogue cop by the name of Lewis Garcella who felt
that I didn't do enough time for this conviction.
He didn't like the appellate division decision.
Eight months later, I was in New Haven, Connecticut at a unisexual line that I
had on at the time.
He came in that store and arrested me, told me I was going back to Brooklyn for
a murder.
And I'm like, a murder?
Like, this can't be true.
Like, again?
Like, how many times has this happened?
I went to New York.
I was processed.
About a year later, I went to trial.
I was convicted.
They brought a witness in by the name of Jew Smith, who said that she was
present at the murder when her boyfriend was killed, that I was a gunman.
I had a gun in my hand and I shot this individual several times with this gun.
But her original statement to the police said she wasn't there, that she never
saw this crime.
She was around the corner at a store.
When she came back, her boyfriend was dead.
The jury never heard that statement.
But in any event, the ballistics evidence proved that this guy was shot with
two different guns, that he wasn't shot in the building where she said he was
shot at, but he was shot outside in the street.
Despite this evidence, I was convicted.
After I was convicted was when I learned that she had first told the cops at
the crime scene.
She never saw the crime.
But she had told it to a different detective.
So I made a pro se motion to set aside the verdict.
And in the motion, I argued that this detective that never came in that she
gave the statement to could prove my innocence.
And the judge ordered a hearing for a year.
He said, I can't give this guy a day in jail, let alone 15 years, which is the
minimum.
I want this witness to come back.
The prosecutor said, I'm not calling him.
And the judge said, if you don't call her back, this case is going to a new
trial.
Right?
They called her back, and she admitted that she never saw the crime, that the
detective Lewis Garcella told her what happened and told her that if she didn't
get up here and say that I committed the crime, she was going to jail.
She was on parole.
Her boyfriend was a felon that just got out.
She had kids.
They said, you're going to jail.
She said, what was I supposed to do?
Here's the system telling me this, that if I don't come in and say this, I'm
going to jail.
And I came in and said it.
The judge ruled a year later that, again, he felt that I was, he said there was
a common thread of string.
I manipulated this evidence.
Again, I called the detective.
The detective came in and said exactly what the witness said, that she told him
she didn't see the crime, that she was beat up and took to the priest a