Taken from JRE #1993 w/Josh Dubin & Bruce Bryan:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/29iLg98zT2ysKTU6HqmK1r?si=a678dd6610a24fb9

For everyone to, like, guys started realizing while you were there, your story.

Like the word started getting around the green room and it was 1 of those things like, what?

He just got out 3 weeks ago, wrongfully accused for 30 years and here he is having a good time.

It was a crazy experience to be sharing the green room with you, because you could see everybody, like you became the celebrity of the green room.

Everybody wanted to hear the story, everybody wanted to talk to you, everybody was blown away by it, and by the grace that you displayed.

The fact that you could be wrongfully accused spend 30 years of your young life in in a Cage and then come out and just be this wonderful fun guy having a good time Everyone's laughing having conversations It was beautiful

Look, I'm standing next to him last night, you know, worried most of the night because, You know, we had got on a plane and that was his first time flying in over 30 years There was a lot of stimulation and You know, I could tell you that I'm still in shock, even sitting here now that we're sitting next to each other because I spent the last several years visiting him at Sing Sing, which is not a great place.

But I don't want to throw cold water on anything, but you know, there's a lot of stealing yourself for the moment last night going on that people didn't see.

I mean, there was 1 point where we were sitting in the balcony watching Attell.

And by the way, congratulations on that amazing club.

The Comedy Mothership Is really a dream for the comedians love it.

It was just so awesome to see so congrats on that

but we were sitting there and some other folks came in and at some point, you know, Bruce kept looking over his shoulder.

And, you know, I realized that he was uncomfortable and he switched seats very quickly so that he would be side to side, shoulder to shoulder with them.

Well, I think in prison you become accustomed to not wanting people behind you, right?

And then I got this scar in prison from behind.

So you're always conscious of what's behind you.

No 1 goes through that experience unscathed, right?

You come out with these idiosyncrasies or these quirks that you, these defense mechanisms that you developed while you're incarcerated.

You know, you're in an abnormal environment for decades.

It's going to have an effect on you psychologically.

Well, I was arrested back in 1994 for homicide.

I think that everyone knew that I didn't do this case at all.

I mean, I literally woke up that afternoon because my girlfriend wanted to change her niece's costume and she also had a taste for chocolate cake.

So just imagine waking up to change a costume for Halloween, a child's costume, and then disappearing for the next 29 years of your life, right?

And being charged with a homicide while the prosecutor involved in your conviction has a history of misconduct, and it wasn't until some 27, 26 years later that he finally gets arrested and gets convicted.

He gets convicted for the very same misconduct that I've been telling them about, that he's been doing for decades.

So he would just find someone, pin it on them.

Yeah, he would concoct a story, a theory, as he did in my situation.

Anybody that he felt was involved in a criminal lifestyle or in drug dealing, it's easier to get someone that has a history of being involved in the streets to put a case on them than it is someone that doesn't.

So, you know, once they find out that you have a record, it's easy to say, all right, well, he did this homicide.

What kind of a record did you have at the time?

So that's enough for him to say, okay, he's a part of a drug crew, and let's arrest him and lock him up.

This particular prosecutor, his thing was bribery.

He would pay off witnesses and he ended up not only getting convicted but went to federal prison for it.

He was in some of the worst penitentiaries in New York, from Attica to...

I was in Clinton, Great Meadows, Sing Sing, all maximum securities, all maximum security prisons way upstate in some towns that are essentially, you know, some, you know, a lot of racism is pervasive in those towns.

And the prison is the only economic development in that town.

So you got brother, cousins, aunts and uncles working in the same prison.

So you get into an incident with 1 officer, you got a problem with the entire system.

And that's just how it is when you go deeper upstate, I mean, borderline Canada, you know, Clinton down to Moorwood, Great Meadows, and different prisons like that.

Because there's really nothing there but snow during the winter time and farming.

So the Prison is the driving force behind the economy.

Siblings, so nepotism is prevalent in these prisons.

And 1 of the things that you encounter is that, you know, it's not just cold in those areas.

A prison is a cold environment and it's up to you to create your own heat.

It's a dark environment and somehow you got to find that light, you know, that light within yourself in order to travel, in order to, you know, to do something with your life more meaningful, you know what I mean?

You watch guys, you know, guys you talk to today and tomorrow they're swinging from the light dead, dead, right, yesterday they were fine, you know, The next morning you wake up, they've hung themselves.

And these are the things that you encounter day in and day out, and you still have to maintain a sense of humanity.

You could become bitter, or you could become better.

I chose the latter because 1 of the things I did early in my incarceration was make a conscious decision to not serve time but to have time serve me.

I made up my mind that if you were going to have me incarcerated for a crime I did not commit, then I was going to take this time and use that cell as if it was an office.

I was going to use that school building as if it was a university And every chance I had to just self-reflect and engage in introspection and do the things that I needed to do to protect my soul, I was going to do it.

And I started delving into material that I probably would never have read, being a free man.

I started reading everything from philosophy books to very few novels, but I tend to learn from the experiences of others.

So autobiographies became my thing, from Quincy Jones to Miles Davis, and just continuously studying, right?

And then studying the system and what drives the system and why it has become what it is, you know, from education to, you know, to the whole system of why educational system looks at a guy in the third grade and determines whether or not he's going to be caught up in the criminal justice system as early as the third grade, right?

Based on your reading level, they can determine how many prison beds that they're going to develop.

These are things that most people don't know, right?

Like 50% of the incarcerated people in New York State or probably in the country are living with dyslexia.

So then, so they're unable to learn, you know, the basics of education like reading.

And these guys go home and they commit crimes over and over again because they were never corrected.

And these same systems that were built on the premise of rehabilitation are draconian in that they do nothing but, you know, steal a person's humanity and allow them to become or look that as nothing more than a number.

You got to wake up 06:00 in the morning and sometimes when they're coming around they're asking you your name and they're not asking your name they're asking you you know your numbers what cell location you in.

And a lot of people begin to internalize that and lose their sense of self.

And so I remain guarded and try to maintain a sense of humanity through my meditation, right?

Through fasting every now and then, and just through deep introspection and reflection.

The easy part was education and learning.

The hard part was introspection and fighting a system, right?

Not just a prosecutor or a court, but fighting a system that was premised on, you know, oppression, right?

That was premised on, It's a business, a prison industrial complex.

You know, the 13th Amendment says you're allowed to be enslaved if you're convicted of a crime.

And so, you know, in a system like that, you have to find a way.

You got to find it within yourself to rise above the fray.

Did you meet anyone else inside that showed you this path?

Early on in my incarceration, there was a group of guys called the Resurrection Study Group.

And it was founded by a guy named Eddie Ellis, who has since passed on.

And what the Resurrection Study Group did was they developed this program called the Non-Traditional Approach to Social and criminal justice.

And it helped them understand why the vast majority of incarcerated people in New York State came from, at that time, they came from 7 basic neighborhoods, right?

And these were neighborhoods that were all impoverished, that were all plagued with what we call crime-generative factors from, you know, substance abuse to dilapidated housing to, you know, just poverty, right?

And what I've come to realize is that poverty is violence.

So wherever there's poverty, you're going to see violence because poverty itself is violence.

And so these neighborhoods, you begin to learn and study and you begin to see that this is not by accident.

saying, they say, you build it, they're going to come.

Similar to the 1994 crime bill that was signed by Bill Clinton and co-offered by our now President Joe Biden and incarcerated more people across the country than at any other time.

You had guys who stole a slice of pizza, third strike, he gets 25 to life.

We're looking at cases now where guys took $200, he'd been in jail for 20 years.

Some guys sentenced 70 years for armed robbery.

All of these things come under the 1994 Crime Bill.

So when you begin to see it as a system that was designed to do certain things, it's a wake-up call for you.

And you begin to say, hold on man, I fell for the trap.

It's time for me to begin taking a different route and begin educating myself more.

And so the Resurrection Study Group, these guys steered me in that direction.

They steered me in that direction and I began to learn from another gentleman that was a part of it by the name of Dr.

And he had a program called the National Trust for the Development of African American Men.

And what it did was it helped us restore those values that we strayed away from.

So this is what got me on the right path early in my incarceration.


Speaker 0: The Joe Rogan Experience

Speaker 1: For everyone to, like, guys started realizing while you were there, your story. Like the word started getting around the green room and it was 1 of those things like, what? He just got out 3 weeks ago, wrongfully accused for 30 years and here he is having a good time. It was a crazy experience to be sharing the green room with you, because you could see everybody, like you became the celebrity of the green room. You know what I'm saying?

Everybody wanted to hear the story, everybody wanted to talk to you, everybody was blown away by it, and by the grace that you displayed. The fact that you could be wrongfully accused spend 30 years of your young life in in a Cage and then come out and just be this wonderful fun guy having a good time Everyone's laughing having conversations It was beautiful

Speaker 0: It was beautiful. Look, I'm standing next to him last night, you know, worried most of the night because, You know, we had got on a plane and that was his first time flying in over 30 years There was a lot of stimulation and You know, I could tell you that I'm still in shock, even sitting here now that we're sitting next to each other because I spent the last several years visiting him at Sing Sing, which is not a great place. Sing Sing Prison in New York. But I don't want to throw cold water on anything, but you know, there's a lot of stealing yourself for the moment last night going on that people didn't see. From you?

I think for Bruce. I mean, there was 1 point where we were sitting in the balcony watching Attell. And by the way, congratulations on that amazing club. Thank you. It's just an amazing...

The Comedy Mothership Is really a dream for the comedians love it. The crowd was amazing. It was just so awesome to see so congrats on that

Speaker 1: Thank you very much. How funny is David tell

Speaker 0: he's My side hurts.

Speaker 1: He's a master. He's a master,

Speaker 0: but we were sitting there and some other folks came in and at some point, you know, Bruce kept looking over his shoulder. And, you know, I realized that he was uncomfortable and he switched seats very quickly so that he would be side to side, shoulder to shoulder with them. I know, I think I know why you did it. Why did you do it?

Speaker 2: Well, I think in prison you become accustomed to not wanting people behind you, right? And then I got this scar in prison from behind. So you're always conscious of what's behind you.

Speaker 1: Of course.

Speaker 2: Yeah. No 1 goes through that experience unscathed, right? You come out with these idiosyncrasies or these quirks that you, these defense mechanisms that you developed while you're incarcerated. You know, you're in an abnormal environment for decades. It's going to have an effect on you psychologically.

Speaker 1: How old were you when they put you in?

Speaker 2: I was 23, just turning

Speaker 0: 24.

Speaker 1: And tell us the whole story. What happened?

Speaker 2: Well, I was arrested back in 1994 for homicide. I think that everyone knew that I didn't do this case at all. Everyone knew I didn't commit the crime. I mean, I literally woke up that afternoon because my girlfriend wanted to change her niece's costume and she also had a taste for chocolate cake. So just imagine waking up to change a costume for Halloween, a child's costume, and then disappearing for the next 29 years of your life, right?

And being charged with a homicide while the prosecutor involved in your conviction has a history of misconduct, and it wasn't until some 27, 26 years later that he finally gets arrested and gets convicted. Former Queens prosecutor John Scarpa. He gets convicted for the very same misconduct that I've been telling them about, that he's been doing for decades.

Speaker 1: So he would just find someone, pin it on them.

Speaker 2: Yeah, he would concoct a story, a theory, as he did in my situation.

Speaker 1: And he did this just to convict someone? Yeah. Anyone? Yeah. So it wasn't that he was targeting you?

He just decided it was you?

Speaker 2: Anybody that he felt was involved in a criminal lifestyle or in drug dealing, it's easier to get someone that has a history of being involved in the streets to put a case on them than it is someone that doesn't. So, you know, once they find out that you have a record, it's easy to say, all right, well, he did this homicide.

Speaker 1: What kind of a record did you have at the time?

Speaker 2: I had a drug sale prior to that. So that's enough for him to say, okay, he's a part of a drug crew, and let's arrest him and lock him up.

Speaker 0: This particular prosecutor, his thing was bribery. He would pay off witnesses and he ended up not only getting convicted but went to federal prison for it. He was in some of the worst penitentiaries in New York, from Attica to...

Speaker 2: I was in Clinton, Great Meadows, Sing Sing, all maximum securities, all maximum security prisons way upstate in some towns that are essentially, you know, some, you know, a lot of racism is pervasive in those towns. And the prison is the only economic development in that town. So you got brother, cousins, aunts and uncles working in the same prison. So you get into an incident with 1 officer, you got a problem with the entire system. And that's just how it is when you go deeper upstate, I mean, borderline Canada, you know, Clinton down to Moorwood, Great Meadows, and different prisons like that.

So...

Speaker 1: And the economy of the area depends upon

Speaker 2: the prison. Depends upon the prison. Because there's really nothing there but snow during the winter time and farming. So there's nothing else there. So the Prison is the driving force behind the economy.

So everyone's there, right? Siblings, so nepotism is prevalent in these prisons. And 1 of the things that you encounter is that, you know, it's not just cold in those areas. A prison is a cold environment and it's up to you to create your own heat. It's a dark environment and somehow you got to find that light, you know, that light within yourself in order to travel, in order to, you know, to do something with your life more meaningful, you know what I mean?

And it's difficult, it's not easy. You watch guys, you know, guys you talk to today and tomorrow they're swinging from the light dead, dead, right, yesterday they were fine, you know, The next morning you wake up, they've hung themselves. And these are the things that you encounter day in and day out, and you still have to maintain a sense of humanity. You've got to become. You could either do 2 things.

You could become bitter, or you could become better. I chose the latter because 1 of the things I did early in my incarceration was make a conscious decision to not serve time but to have time serve me. I made up my mind that if you were going to have me incarcerated for a crime I did not commit, then I was going to take this time and use that cell as if it was an office. I was going to use that school building as if it was a university And every chance I had to just self-reflect and engage in introspection and do the things that I needed to do to protect my soul, I was going to do it. And I made it my business to do so.

And I started delving into material that I probably would never have read, being a free man. I started reading everything from philosophy books to very few novels, but I tend to learn from the experiences of others. So autobiographies became my thing, from Quincy Jones to Miles Davis, and just continuously studying, right? And then studying the system and what drives the system and why it has become what it is, you know, from education to, you know, to the whole system of why educational system looks at a guy in the third grade and determines whether or not he's going to be caught up in the criminal justice system as early as the third grade, right? Based on your reading level, they can determine how many prison beds that they're going to develop.

These are things that most people don't know, right? Like 50% of the incarcerated people in New York State or probably in the country are living with dyslexia. So then, so they're unable to learn, you know, the basics of education like reading. And these guys go home and they commit crimes over and over again because they were never corrected. And these same systems that were built on the premise of rehabilitation are draconian in that they do nothing but, you know, steal a person's humanity and allow them to become or look that as nothing more than a number.

You got to wake up 06:00 in the morning and sometimes when they're coming around they're asking you your name and they're not asking your name they're asking you you know your numbers what cell location you in. They're not calling you Mr. Brian, they're calling you 60-cell. Right? And a lot of people begin to internalize that and lose their sense of self.

And so I remain guarded and try to maintain a sense of humanity through my meditation, right? Through fasting every now and then, and just through deep introspection and reflection. For me, that was the hard part. The easy part was education and learning. The hard part was introspection and fighting a system, right?

Not just a prosecutor or a court, but fighting a system that was premised on, you know, oppression, right? That was premised on, It's a business, a prison industrial complex. You got cheap labor. You know, the 13th Amendment says you're allowed to be enslaved if you're convicted of a crime. You see?

And so, you know, in a system like that, you have to find a way. You got to find it within yourself to rise above the fray.

Speaker 1: Did you meet anyone else inside that showed you this path?

Speaker 2: Yes. Early on in my incarceration, there was a group of guys called the Resurrection Study Group. And it was founded by a guy named Eddie Ellis, who has since passed on. And what the Resurrection Study Group did was they developed this program called the Non-Traditional Approach to Social and criminal justice. And it helped them understand why the vast majority of incarcerated people in New York State came from, at that time, they came from 7 basic neighborhoods, right?

And these were neighborhoods that were all impoverished, that were all plagued with what we call crime-generative factors from, you know, substance abuse to dilapidated housing to, you know, just poverty, right? And so you see violence. And what I've come to realize is that poverty is violence. So wherever there's poverty, you're going to see violence because poverty itself is violence. And so these neighborhoods, you begin to learn and study and you begin to see that this is not by accident.

These prisons were built for a purpose.

Speaker 0: There's a

Speaker 2: saying, they say, you build it, they're going to come. That's the same thing with prisons. You build them, they're going to come. Similar to the 1994 crime bill that was signed by Bill Clinton and co-offered by our now President Joe Biden and incarcerated more people across the country than at any other time. It perpetuated the 3 strikes you're out.

You had guys who stole a slice of pizza, third strike, he gets 25 to life. We're looking at cases now where guys took $200, he'd been in jail for 20 years. Some guys sentenced 70 years for armed robbery. All of these things come under the 1994 Crime Bill. So when you begin to see it as a system that was designed to do certain things, it's a wake-up call for you.

And you begin to say, hold on man, I fell for the trap. It's time for me to begin taking a different route and begin educating myself more. And so the Resurrection Study Group, these guys steered me in that direction. They steered me in that direction and I began to learn from another gentleman that was a part of it by the name of Dr. Gary Mendez, who also died.

And he had a program called the National Trust for the Development of African American Men. And what it did was it helped us restore those values that we strayed away from. So this is what got me on the right path early in my incarceration.

See all PowerfulJRE transcripts on Youtube

What 30 Years of False Imprisonment Taught Bruce Bryan