Name: Joe Rogan Experience #1521 - Josh Dubin & Jason Flom
Uploaded: 2020-08-06T19:00:09.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1521 - Josh Dubin & Jason Flom' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2020-08-06. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1521 - Josh Dubin & Jason Flom' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2020-08-06. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #1521 - Josh Dubin & Jason Flom

Do
Josh Jason, thank you. Thanks for being here. Try to keep this sucker like a
fist from your face
Gentlemen, what's happening? How are you? Thanks for having us. Happy to be
here. My pleasure. My pleasure
Let's let's just start this off. Just tell everybody what you guys are here for
and what you do. Okay, well
We do a lot of things. You do a lot or I do
Shout out to Andre Ward for introducing us. Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely one of
my one of my best friends and actually personal heroes
but so Jason and I both work at the Innocence Project
I'm the I'm the ambassador the innocence ambassador the Innocence Project in
New York and
We're here to get the word out about wrongful convictions. We have a podcast.
Jason has had a long successful podcast called wrongful conviction with Jason
Flom
I'm the host of a new spinoff of that called wrongful conviction junk science,
which examines all of these disciplines of forensic sciences that have been
proven
To be total bullshit total junk is the name would suggest let's get to that. I
don't want to hear what those are, but
Jason, can you just tell everybody what you're you're originally in the record
business? Yeah
Thanks for bringing that up. I've been in music business since I was 18 years
old. So I've signed acts over the years record business because I'm old
Yeah, I
I still call it that too you've been in the a-track game for a while
It sounds nostalgic a little bit, right? We missed those dot vinyl discs a
little bit
And they used to be able to clean your weed on and everything else on the on
the album covers
But yeah, I've been in the music business when I was 18
So I've signed acts over the years everybody from stone temple pilots and skid
row all the way to tori amos and katie perry and kid rock and
more recently greta van fleet and
Lord and you know, it's been an amazing run at various times
I was chairman and ceo of atlantic records virgin records capital records, but
my calling in life has been
Eliminating mandatory sentencing decriminalizing drugs
Basically getting people out of prison that don't belong there and reversing
mass incarceration
Which I believe to be the worst failed social policy disaster since slavery and
it's really just an extension of slavery
So I really appreciate you having us here and I can't wait to tell you the
story of how we first met
But I'd love that you're doing this I just before before we even get started
This makes me excited when when successful people go out of their way to do
something like this where it's just good
You know, you're you're just trying to right wrongs and I couldn't agree with
you more
I mean the the war on drugs is one of the most disgusting and and confusing
aspects of our enlightened culture
It's just it's it's infuriating that we have a gigantic percentage of people
that are in prison for
Nonviolent drug offense offenses and then a lot of them are wrongly in prison
There's that and joe
Do you know how many people are still?
Annually locked up for possession of marijuana in this country. How many?
Almost 700 000 last year like that's that's insane for possession of pot is
legal people are making tons of money on it
I mean, I don't have to tell you you know
Yeah, you don't tell me i'm a pothead. Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's outrageous
It's it doesn't make any sense and it's the slowest battleship to turn you know
In terms of the way our culture deals with it and handles it
We all we all know that it doesn't kill anybody
We all know that look I got a bottle of whiskey right here. This isn't illegal
How come I could drink this and die like this in my hand if I drank that i'd be
dead right or close to it?
Yeah, you know what you know what's crazy is that when you said
Thank you and you like when successful people do this when you said that I
almost felt like
I
I don't know the right way to articulate it
I never feel like i'm doing enough because there's so much
Bad shit happening to people and you know, I remember reading this book called
inside rikers
um
I forgot the author's name jennifer win, but she did this study of in of the
population
of
incarcerated people at rikers island and
How such a large percentage of them were in there for petty drug crimes and the
recidivism was all about people that had drug and alcohol problems
It makes up over 90% of the population at rikers island and she had a
revolutionary idea, right?
She said what if we start a program
And give them vocational training and put them in jobs and the recidivism rate
in her program called fresh start dropped to almost zero
point three percent
And it just shows you that the you know i'm the first episode of my my podcast
There was a great quote and i'm a sucker for quotes from the guy that I
interviewed
He's an attorney at the innocence project named chris fabrikani said that the
justice system is an efficient
Eating and killing machine for poor people of color
And rikers island is the best example of that. I mean right that that sends
chills down your spine to hear it put that way
But that that's exactly what it is. What's so succinct?
Yeah, and that and my calling and jason's calling sort of collided
We both work at the innocence project and we have sort of
I don't know we've merged embryos and we have been we've we've been trying to
be modern day robin hoods
So thank you so much for my pleasure
This is one of my come one of my favorite kind of podcast a podcast where I
think we could actually do some good
And we can we can get the word out about this stuff. Jason. How did you get
started doing this?
Oh, thanks for asking. I um, it's it's kind of crazy serendipitous occurrence
that happened in the early 90s
I was on my way to play tennis
I used to play tennis and I wanted a newspaper to read in the in the taxi ride
and usually I would buy the times
But it was sold out. So I happen to pick up the post and there was a story
Cuomo bid I'm sorry ferraro bid for
Cocaine kid right so the story of course I read this I was fascinated by you
know drugs and stuff
And the story was about a kid named stephen lennon who had been
Sentenced to 15 years to life for a non-violent first defense cocaine
possession charge in new york state and just in case people think
They might be that might be misstating that that was a non-violent first
defense cocaine possession charge in new york state
15 to life 15 to life right so
What year was this this was 92 or 3 and well, no, he was sentenced in the 80s
So he had been in for eight years already and he the reason it was in the
newspaper was because his mother
Shirley lennon was her name had been trying to get clemency from governor mario
cuomo
Andrew cuomo's father of course
and for you new yorkers out there remember that and
She had gotten letters from the sentencing judge from the warden and even geraldine
ferraro had written a letter on behalf of this kid
You know who had a you know good record in prison and everything else and it
had been turned down
So that's why I made the newspaper and I've read this and my whole sense of
fairness and equity
And and everything just got thrown completely out of whack. I was like, I don't
understand
Like I kept rereading it and going this doesn't make any sense
Nonviolent first offense like that could be anybody right wrong place wrong
time kind of thing
And I decided I wanted to do something about it
So I only knew one criminal defense lawyer back in those days and there's a guy
named bob colina
He represented stone temple pilots and skid row who both were artists that I
had signed
And so I had him on speed dial because you know, they were getting arrested a
lot in those days and like weekly
So
Bob agreed to take the case pro bono and long story short even though he said
it was hopeless six months later
We ended up in a courtroom in malone, new york
And I sat there holding mrs. Lennon's hand the woman. I originally spoke to shirley
lennon who was in the story
Her husband stan was on the other side of her and they brought the kid in and
shackles like he was manson or something
Right leg irons. I was like, this is all new to me. I'm just like what the hell
and um
You know skinny guy with glasses whatever and uh, the judge looked like ted
Forsythe. I thought we're we're screwed, right?
There's no way this guy's gonna he's an old guy with white hair
And the arguments went back and forth. I knew nothing about what was going on
and finally the judge says
Blah blah blah blah blah whatever he said he goes the motion is granted
And he bangs the gavel down and bob comes running over. I go bob what just
happened?
He goes we won. I go we won get the fuck out of here. We won. He's like we won.
I was like, holy shit
That's incredible. And it was the best feeling i'd ever had and they sent the
kid home. He had served nine years
But he had six to go before his uh, uh parole his first eligible parole date
And um, and that's I was hooked, you know
So I did a little research just to make it to bring it to a close
I found out about an organization called families against mandatory minimums famm.org
Which had just started and I joined their board and then soon after that I
found out about the work of the innocence project
And I marched in and just offered my services for whatever they needed and um,
and that's how it started
I I started in a similar I got hooked in a similar way
I mean
I didn't want to cut you off. No, no, no, I mean I
So i'm trying to remember the year but it was a so it was about 18 years ago.
My my um
I got a phone call
And I was only 27 28 i'm only 45
Only that makes me feel good
But I got a phone call and it was like hey josh. This is barry sheck. I need
your help on something
Can you give me a call back now? I thought it was my brother?
pranking me because when I was in college we used to watch the oj simpson trial
And we used to think he was fucking great. He was hysterical. He was like this
Dynamo like this this tornado of action that you know, it was just like
everybody was watching that trial trying to remember barry sheck
He's the he's the he's the the little jewish guy that said how about that? Mr
fung
At the oj trial was like the big moment at the oj trial where he was undermining
all of the dna
And he found the innocence project
That guy. Yes, he and peter newfound founded it together. Yeah, they founded it
together. Yeah, I almost got myself into trouble
So that's barry sheck. So I didn't return the call
Because I thought it was my brother fucking with me. So I then got a call from
a real famous
civil rights lawyer named jerry lefcourt who said
He said what the fuck is wrong with you. I refer you to barry sheck and you don't
return his phone call
So I said, oh my god, so I called him and at the time I was
you know a
Alleged expert in jury selection
So I was getting passed around this
Circle of criminal defense lawyers and I had to lie about my age a lot because
I was 27 28 and I was
You know regarded as an expert in jury selection and people would see me and be
like
The fuck am I gonna take advice from this young kid?
So I went and met with barry sheck
Then he had this case
Where this guy was?
Like literally brutalized
He is name is christopher ochoa
In austin, texas and he gets implicated in this murder at a pizza hut and he's
accused of
Raping and his friend is accused of raping and murdering this
employee at a pizza hut
He had nothing to do with it
His friend had nothing to do with it and he was a vulnerable kid and they took
him in an interrogation room
And they beat a confession out of him
And
I was so horrified
I was so perplexed that this could happen in our country and what happened to
him
was
They threw things at him
They threatened him with prison rape
They did everything that you hear about happening in an interrogation room to
him until he finally just said
What a lot of people say which is okay?
I'll tell you what you want to hear just to get out of the room
And he spent you know 13 plus years in prison for a rape an