The Latest (Fake) Assassination Attempt & How to Fix the Justice System (w. Emily Galvin Almanza)

00:00:06
Speaker 1: Welcome to Brief Recess. I'm Michael Foot, I'm Melissa Albranch. Today we're going to talk about the time I kissed at Jehovah's witness, the first times that we both got high, the latest stage shooting from Trump, Trump's unhinged sixty minute interview. He did not fall. We predict Cash Betel's downfall. We got a full Weeji board out for that one. We share why we lie to our doctors. Actually, no, we don't, and I'm going to keep doing it. And then we're going to interview Emily Galvin l Manza about the criminal justice system. And I'm going to answer all your burning questions from the DM So stick around. But I'm supposed I'm getting used to double breasted. How to button it and unbuttoned?

00:00:46
Speaker 2: Is it difficult?

00:00:47
Speaker 1: No, it's not difficult, It's just different. I do a lot of self unconscious What is it? Yeah, unconscious unbuttoning when I'm like standing and sitting. I'm used to it being here, but it's over here now and I have to adjust. It's like a thing. It's like how your glasses are on your head and not your face. You like get used to that, do.

00:01:06
Speaker 2: You have a good rest of the week.

00:01:07
Speaker 1: No, no, really, what led you to believe I would have a good week?

00:01:12
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know. It was your birthday week, it was our birthday.

00:01:14
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's right, it was our birthday week. How is yours good?

00:01:18
Speaker 2: I spent a good portion of the day by myself, which is what I like.

00:01:22
Speaker 1: I love being alone, so do I.

00:01:24
Speaker 2: I had a really good day. I had a massage, a facial, a manicurein a petticure, all of which alone, and then I had a lovely dinner with my husband.

00:01:32
Speaker 1: When you do it all at once like that, are you like a queen where there's like a person working on each TOUTSI.

00:01:38
Speaker 2: No, you know what, because all the people that I like are not in the same place. There is a little bit of me hoof in it from one place to another.

00:01:46
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's like that though, because sometimes, like the good facial, we go to Rowena. I don't want Rowena doing anything other than my facial.

00:01:55
Speaker 2: Well, not just that, but Rowena is where she is. She's a specialist. Right my massage therapist, Beryl shout out to Beryl is where she is, and the manicure pedicure place is where they are and they're not together.

00:02:07
Speaker 1: I got a massage. It was definitely like underground, illegal, unlicensed.

00:02:12
Speaker 2: It's good though.

00:02:13
Speaker 1: It was so good. Yeah, I don't know the name.

00:02:16
Speaker 2: How will you go back?

00:02:17
Speaker 1: I probably won't. It was like Brigadoon, where like every fifty years the town appears. It's like where I go and I'll never be able to find that massage again. I'm sure that man's not there anymore. And it was just incredible, and you know there's actually I think it's even better because I know I'll never have it again, you know what I mean?

00:02:40
Speaker 2: Really, I wish that I could get a massage every week. I can't, but I wish that I could. I have like weird like neck things.

00:02:50
Speaker 1: I like go through faces like once I get when, I'm like, that was incredible. I should be doing that more. And then I forget that it's an option.

00:02:56
Speaker 2: No, I will never forget. I will never forget about these are Life's life is shitty, Michael. Everything is fucked up. I've gotten everything is terrible. What's my mom saying about the church? That time?

00:03:09
Speaker 1: Oh? When was burning? I called? I was with Melissa when we found out Notre Dame's on fire and we called Melissa's mother together.

00:03:16
Speaker 2: Like everything is burning and nothing show.

00:03:23
Speaker 1: Can you more dramatic? This is sidebar. This is all the weird, wild things going on in our lives and our personal lives.

00:03:34
Speaker 2: I spent a lot of time with my family this weekend. My cousin Valerie is having a baby, and we went to her baby shower, and I spent a lot of time with my mom and my uncle like so her brother.

00:03:46
Speaker 1: Yea.

00:03:47
Speaker 2: Most of the time I was just like looking at them like this and just like laughing.

00:03:52
Speaker 1: Because they're like click and clack the top of brothers.

00:03:55
Speaker 2: Absolutely and they're like, so they're so clearly brother and sister. That's me and my sister that it's so funny to me. I always say, if I had hairshet pull it like we're just we're just like a hair pulling brother and sister in the backseat. Oh yeah, did you guys fight a lot? Oh my god, yeah, what's the age difference?

00:04:14
Speaker 1: Two years?

00:04:15
Speaker 2: See, my brother and I didn't fight at all because he was a baby, Like we were eleven years apart. It would have been weird. Oh way, do you know what any.

00:04:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, that would that would have been weird. What's wrong with you? Why are you fighting with a toddler?

00:04:28
Speaker 2: Brothers years we had like nothing. Yeah, he was like my pet. I just kind of took him everywhere.

00:04:37
Speaker 1: That's so cute though. Yeah, I remember my sister got me high when I was like fifteen. We were driving around with I.

00:04:44
Speaker 2: Don't understand these stories. These sometimes you say things to me that are so unrelatable. They're so unrelatable. I don't like this. Oh, when I was fifteen, I got hot. Where are the drugs from? Where are the drugs?

00:04:59
Speaker 1: My sister's boyfriend, he was a Jehovah witness, he was, and it got me high. He also kissed me once, yeah, and so we got in a fight over him. But he got me really high in the back seat. And it's one of these things where, like a lot of people, the first porn they ever see is like the weirdest porn they'll ever see. It's like the first time I got high, it was like the weirdest situation.

00:05:27
Speaker 2: The first porn. Most people, the first porn that they've ever seen is the weirdest porn.

00:05:32
Speaker 1: Usually. I have a theory, like if someone was like, hey, this is the first porn I saw. It's usually like the weirdest shit, and then the rest of your life you see like relatively normal porn. But anyway, I think this, I know, I put that out there as a theory. I've yet to prove it. This is a hypothesis. This is what science is about, right, And so we put up the hypothesis.

00:05:54
Speaker 2: Was it like a theory like my hug theory?

00:05:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like your three kinds of hugs. It's like that. That is mine. But I will say I want to extend it to the first time you smoked pot. I feel like every other time after that probably was a more normal situation than what you experienced the first time.

00:06:11
Speaker 2: How old were you the first time you smoked pot?

00:06:13
Speaker 1: It was in the backstat of that car with the guys.

00:06:15
Speaker 2: I was how old I was the first time I tried pot? Yes, yes, just guess.

00:06:19
Speaker 1: I don't know. In your twenties twenty one, nineteen thirty, forty thirty four, Melissa, maybe, oh my god, I was a grown as some Mormon shit. That is some no call.

00:06:33
Speaker 2: But again it is because it is not because I was afraid or I thought anything was bad. I was simply not interested.

00:06:40
Speaker 1: Do you know what I'm saying I thought you were going to say sheltered like you weren't, like, but you were out in these streets.

00:06:45
Speaker 2: I was out in these streets doing stuff. But I was so uninterested. I was like, why would you do that?

00:06:50
Speaker 1: Can I tell you what?

00:06:51
Speaker 2: When there's food?

00:06:52
Speaker 1: Can I tell you what he did when he smoked pot with me? For this is a firm fifteen. I think you must have been like a couple of years older than me in high school.

00:07:01
Speaker 2: Oh okay.

00:07:02
Speaker 1: And he took the joint and after it was all the way down to like a little the little nub, the little nub, and it was just like a rolled paper joint. He went sucked on it really hard. It's still lit. Inhaled it and swallowed it the thing the roach ate it ate it, sucked on it so hard.

00:07:22
Speaker 2: These are experiences that I cannot.

00:07:25
Speaker 1: And I didn't, And it was the for me. I was like, that is the weirdest thing I've ever seen. And it's still the weirdest thing I've ever seen.

00:07:32
Speaker 2: Did it make you feel like you should be doing that or were you like, no, this is I was like, that can't be part of it. Oh okay, there's no way that is how it's supposed to go. Is that the thing that can't be the thing?

00:07:42
Speaker 1: I think that's how you're supposed to do.

00:07:43
Speaker 2: That's not how this goes. That's how any of this goes.

00:07:47
Speaker 1: This is your algorithm is showing. These are all the weird, wild things happening in our beads on all of social media. We had another fake shooting this week. Are you ready to cover it? There's another stage shooting, another fake attempted fascination of the president. So I figured we'd cover it. We actually just copy and pasted from the last two times we covered the stage shooting.

00:08:13
Speaker 2: So nothing new to see.

00:08:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it was at the White House Correspondence and it's the first time he's attended it. So put your pen down, pens down, pencils down, heads up.

00:08:24
Speaker 2: I think when I first, you're telling me about how you felt. But when I heard that he was going to do this the dinner, I was just like, that's weird because he.

00:08:31
Speaker 1: Hates these people, these people, I hate these dinners.

00:08:33
Speaker 2: He hates these dinners. And I think the one time that he did go, he got mad, he got roasted. Because that's the point of the thing, right, Obviously, we all know about your credentials and breadth.

00:08:43
Speaker 3: Of experience, and he got really pissed off, really upset. He got butt hurt over it and decided that he was never going to do this again.

00:08:54
Speaker 2: And then I was just like, why is he doing this now?

00:08:58
Speaker 4: Right?

00:08:59
Speaker 2: And I was thinking to myself, is it because his numbers are in the toilet?

00:09:03
Speaker 5: Like?

00:09:03
Speaker 2: What what is this? Because with this president, I feel like, more than any other, it's never just to do the thing. There's a reason behind it.

00:09:13
Speaker 1: Thirty three percent his approval rating right now, I mean it's really bad. All the independence are Yeah.

00:09:19
Speaker 2: So I was just like, this feels wrong. And then I don't know what I was doing.

00:09:23
Speaker 1: You called it You've got some I mean, no, witch.

00:09:27
Speaker 2: No, it isn't. No, it isn't. It is just logical. Do you know what I'm saying? There's nothing special about this.

00:09:33
Speaker 1: It's just like one inferential leap. It was like a small critical thinking.

00:09:37
Speaker 2: But Michael, I get so I'm so annoyed. I'm so irritated that this whole thing because I just knew that something was going to happen, and not because I'm so intuitive, but because.

00:09:51
Speaker 1: He's never been right. He's gone It's like.

00:09:54
Speaker 2: What is he after? What is he really after?

00:09:56
Speaker 1: Is he going to say something? Is there going to be a yeah, sho, sure enough? Not showing up. Did you see the guy who kept eating?

00:10:08
Speaker 2: I didn't see there's this guy.

00:10:10
Speaker 1: That would have been me, that would have been just sho. I'm sorry. The chicken Milans is really good Chicka Pats, Chicken Pocatto or chicken franchise at those.

00:10:20
Speaker 2: Days, with some chicken with the with the green beans with the almonds on it, almondine, so kind of a rice.

00:10:29
Speaker 1: Just kept gobbling down the journalist he kept eating. He was like, ain't no way, ain't no thing but a chicken wing.

00:10:36
Speaker 2: I mean, like, the whole thing was so ridiculous.

00:10:40
Speaker 1: I mean it was so stage as a photo millennia like this, and Trump's like.

00:10:46
Speaker 2: But my favorite though, one of my favorite things of the whole thing is then picking up JD. Vans by the back of the jacket and dragging him out like and.

00:10:58
Speaker 1: They were dragging him out like he's an fighter, like.

00:11:01
Speaker 2: He was going to like like let me at let me.

00:11:03
Speaker 1: We know about JD is that he's always at fisticuffs Like this is like he's a he's a w w F fighter is going to laplancha someone with a folding chair. No, like he's he's shad events. We've got like a bloated face meme of him, like that's what he's not. He's known for fucking a sofa and that meme, Like that's it. All he's done is blown out a lazy boy and that one meme. He's not known for fighting? Why you have to drag him out of there, like he's like he's precious cargo.

00:11:29
Speaker 2: Well, I mean I think you got to drag him out of there because he has no survival instincts, right, he has no survival and he would just be out there like a fish out.

00:11:36
Speaker 3: Of the water, just flailing around, not doing anything, no survival instincts.

00:11:40
Speaker 1: He's procreating with furniture. He's not actually even trying to like start a legacy. And did you hear he's still It's two days later, he's still in the stairwell where they left him. They haven't even gotten it. They haven't even retrieved him.

00:11:53
Speaker 2: Shaking.

00:11:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're still waiting. Someone's got to go get him.

00:11:57
Speaker 2: Someone's gonna be one, but nobody wants to. They're all drawing straw and nobody wants to do it. Do you know you might be too young for this? But do you know who Benny Hill is? Okay? So Benny Hill was this pretty famous British comedian. He had a show called The Benny Hill Show and it's like known for being kind of body slapsticky. But sometimes he would have these skits where he would speed up the tape or whatever and there was this weird music that would go. It was like, do right, somebody set I guess a stucred service running around to that music?

00:12:39
Speaker 1: Really funny.

00:12:44
Speaker 2: Should I've ever fucking seen I'm gonna find it because it so funny. It's because it just feels like, what do these guys do?

00:12:53
Speaker 1: One video, they were like they were having RFK like climb over a table and all of these and it's like, there's no way that was the fastest way out of there. They had him like walking diagonally over a table.

00:13:07
Speaker 2: But is it to sort of like be a constant moving target so you can't get him if I'm bobbing.

00:13:12
Speaker 1: Maybe the table it's the cake topper.

00:13:18
Speaker 2: It's like Trump's absolutely on his interview with the next day.

00:13:24
Speaker 1: The next day, I'm like did they book the interview before the shooting, like they knew it was or no, just.

00:13:28
Speaker 2: Trying to do her job, and she's all wide. She was just like when he goes and he's like, you're disgraceful, she's like, so okay.

00:13:36
Speaker 1: Yes, okay. So just for context from people who haven't seen it, He's sit down the.

00:13:40
Speaker 2: Next day with sixty minutes Nora o'donald, I'm so sorry. You know something pop the last week too.

00:13:49
Speaker 1: It's sorry, now.

00:13:51
Speaker 2: You want to check your arms. You're so uncouth.

00:13:54
Speaker 1: True, it's my fake sneeze. I'm so uncomfortable.

00:13:57
Speaker 2: My face is way yeah, I know.

00:13:59
Speaker 1: He just spit on everyone. So he does this in interview the next day, which it's like again, it was so they were so ready for everything. He's like, camera ready. It's so obviously this has been planned out by like a PR crisis.

00:14:20
Speaker 2: I mean, go ahead.

00:14:21
Speaker 1: If anyone has any doubts about how I feel about the situation, I personally believe this was planned and fake. And it's amazing that every single shooter in American history doesn't miss, except for the three times Trump's approval ratings around the toilet that is like, I'm sorry for me once for me twice, that is a shame on if you think this was really, I think it's a shame on you.

00:14:45
Speaker 2: Mo. I mean I think again, I think a lot of people the minute that they heard about this, I was like, I called bullshit on this.

00:14:52
Speaker 1: I called bullshit. I'm sorry every single time.

00:14:55
Speaker 2: Again, like I said, when I heard that he was doing it, I was just like, there's no.

00:14:58
Speaker 1: Way, There's no way. I didn't even pause. We were watching a movie. I didn't even pause that. I just like I texted. I texted a friends and I was like another one. She was like, yeah, okay, what do you it was? Has anyone seen the New Spider Man? Yeah?

00:15:14
Speaker 2: Of the dark, but a new lipstick? Like that's again, that's like, that's what color red. I leaned towards reds. I enjoy a good red.

00:15:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, do you have like a preferred Yeah?

00:15:24
Speaker 2: Right now, my favorite red happens to be the Finisha. No, that's a good color color. I would wear that vicious.

00:15:32
Speaker 1: I want to do like a line of makeup and now polish colors that have names like that.

00:15:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was I can't remember who it was.

00:15:40
Speaker 1: It was a rapid dog bite.

00:15:41
Speaker 2: No, there was like a like a rapturess. I can't remember what her name was, but she had no I don't know, but she had a line, a makeup line, and all the names of the products were like disgusting. One was like vaginal discharge or something like.

00:15:57
Speaker 1: Yeah. Anyway, so he had to sit down interview with Nora and just really tore into her about how she's disgraceful.

00:16:06
Speaker 2: Well it starts out okay, right where, and you know, just it's and it is Trump being Trump, sort of like going off and rambling and saying whatever. And she asks him some normal questions and she was like, were you afraid? Yeah, no, I wasn't afraid. I wasn't afraid. And she looked because the first lady, well yeah, but she knew that I was there. You're the least helpful person on the planet, sir.

00:16:37
Speaker 1: He fell asleep during a press conference last week.

00:16:41
Speaker 2: And then so she goes on and she's reading this guy's manifesto and she's reading it Trump but like, looking at her, he's like.

00:16:48
Speaker 4: You know, I'll do this interview and they'll probably read the manifesto. You know, it's a sick person, but you should be ashamed of yourself reading there because I'm not any of those things. Excuse me. You shouldn't be reading that in sixty minutes. You're a disgrace. But go ahead, let's finish the interview.

00:17:09
Speaker 2: She's like, oh, okay, it's the manifesto. I didn't I didn't write this, mister president. I didn't write like and he's just.

00:17:15
Speaker 1: Like she doesn't even like bite, yeah, she doesn't.

00:17:18
Speaker 2: She's like, okay, I mean she's a professor, goes on and she's trying, you know, but this is his manifesto, sir. He's like, you're disgusting.

00:17:25
Speaker 1: She's like okay, all right, yeah, yeah, all right, well yeah, I know to feel like it is one of those I have moments like that sometimes in court or with clients where they're tearing into me or with other lawyers. I'm like, okay, so dead air is what you kind of got. Yeah, like that's it, Yeah, Like that's it right.

00:17:48
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:17:48
Speaker 1: I feel like if someone isn't willing to engage in and then this is like so far beyond this interview, right, But like, if someone's not willing to engage with you and any sort of conversation, it's just a waste of your breath. So why do we bother not saying this about you know, the sit down interview, do your thing, sixty minutes like sell the odd time. But for me, I'm like, if someone's not willing to actually talk to me, I've got to other people I'd rather much rather spend that time talking to.

00:18:15
Speaker 2: But they needed to do this, right, of course, they needed to do this. I was just thinking, I'm actually really surprised that he opted to do this with sixty minutes as opposed to.

00:18:24
Speaker 1: Fox, Like that was surprising, you know what I mean, Like like.

00:18:28
Speaker 2: This, if this is what you're going to do, and there's a narrative you're trying to spin it to be a certain way, go where they're friendlier to you, Yes, yes, right, go where they love you.

00:18:37
Speaker 1: Yes. And I think that Fox has been pretty critical and what they've been I've been noticing it. Last week before the shooting, Yeah, stage shooting, they were they were pretty they've been pretty like hard on him and the New York Post as well. I've been noticing just I'm noticing the shift how like the Republican Party is kind of like cut their losses and they're like, let's just distance ourselves as much as we can from this. We've got Cash Battel doing body shots like in ice luges, and like, what are we?

00:19:10
Speaker 5: Like?

00:19:10
Speaker 1: What is We've got?

00:19:11
Speaker 2: The been a more useless man? Has there ever been a more useless man than Cash Btel?

00:19:19
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, it's like, what good are you?

00:19:23
Speaker 2: What good are you?

00:19:24
Speaker 4: Like?

00:19:25
Speaker 2: I wonder if he looks at himself in the mirror and he's just like, I fucking suck. They're the worst. I'm the worst. I am useless and just sitting there flailing.

00:19:43
Speaker 1: Like I really thought about this.

00:19:45
Speaker 2: I mean, but it's like it's it's again. You know what I really hate about these people. Let me tell you.

00:19:50
Speaker 5: What I tell.

00:19:53
Speaker 2: Is that this is what they bring out of me. I am not this person. I don't kick people on the fucking subway. I don't hate people with the one going this is what I'm saying. This is not who I am. But these people have heard too somebody that I don't like.

00:20:10
Speaker 1: Be the changer, don't want to see in the world.

00:20:13
Speaker 2: And like it's too much.

00:20:16
Speaker 1: Everything is burning, and.

00:20:19
Speaker 2: Everything's burning and nothing shall remain.

00:20:22
Speaker 1: There are all these photos of Cash after the shooting, just looking confused on his phone like he was the last to get the memo that he got fired, the last to find out about the shooting he was at.

00:20:33
Speaker 2: He was at you see him with the best. The best is when. So afterwards, right, they go and they're doing this news conference and everyone's there in their tuxes. And if you look at Cash Betel behind the president, look and shook, he's like he's coming down off of something like I can't blink, I'm coming down off the high.

00:20:55
Speaker 1: It's true that comed out is really hard for some drugs, so that is the crash out, a crash out Patel, it is.

00:21:06
Speaker 2: He's looking super scared, very nervous. It's like a little anxious.

00:21:10
Speaker 1: I was not ready to be on in a press conference tonight that he was the last to find out about his own stage shooting, and that is and he's also the last to find out that he got fired. Because I think it's gonna happen this week.

00:21:21
Speaker 2: Think's gonna happen this week.

00:21:22
Speaker 1: I think by the time this episode airs, he'll be gone. So I'm going to look so I'm going to record this as why why do you think that? Because they've already soft launched the exit before the correspondence dinner.

00:21:33
Speaker 2: Do you think that he's going to be really fired fired or do you think that he's going to be re routed.

00:21:39
Speaker 1: I like, I think he'll get fired, like like Christinome, But she didn't.

00:21:44
Speaker 2: Did she get fired? Fired? Did she get rerouted? So fact checked me on that she's doing something else?

00:21:49
Speaker 1: No, that's her husband's boobies. That's not what she's doing. Byron. Byron's doing something else. She was fired, fired, fired, she got fired. You're thinking Pambondy or is it Carolyn Lovit is on maternity.

00:22:02
Speaker 2: No, No, she's still there. I saw her.

00:22:03
Speaker 1: She's oh yes, but she's getting ready for it. And they're saying that Trump might give the press conferences himself.

00:22:09
Speaker 2: Now, oh that I would watch that. I would watch just to watch the cluster, just the cluster, well.

00:22:18
Speaker 1: Because all the journalists. I love it. They're all trying to they're all trying to get there. You know, they're two minutes of airtime, like, good for them.

00:22:25
Speaker 2: He gets I think she's doing something else.

00:22:27
Speaker 1: Christine Olmes, Yeah, I really do.

00:22:29
Speaker 2: And I don't know why.

00:22:30
Speaker 1: Get any comments if you know what Christine Home is doing.

00:22:32
Speaker 2: It's just like the Haitian WhatsApp groups.

00:22:34
Speaker 1: She's shooting dogs and hanging out with her husband. I don't know.

00:22:38
Speaker 2: You know what my mother told me. We should call my mother because she's the one who told me them she has another job.

00:22:46
Speaker 1: She got another job.

00:22:50
Speaker 2: I swear to God again, I spent a lot of time with my mom and getting all the misinformation from like directly different from Magalie. There you go special on voices the Shield of America. That's what I'm saying, isn't if.

00:23:04
Speaker 1: Someone can tell me what that is, he doesn't.

00:23:09
Speaker 2: I think he doesn't want to like fire fire her, okay, and he wants to rerouted again. You're being put out to pasture for sure, but it's not like you're on the unemployment line. So that's what I'm saying. So do you think that cash will be on the unemployment line or will be rerouted somewhere? I don't know, That's what I'm saying.

00:23:28
Speaker 1: Which one's worse? Do you think fired fired? I think he's still got to like do stuff if he does.

00:23:35
Speaker 2: But it's a way for him to feel like I'm still here.

00:23:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. Useful He'll be like and he'll be throwing that title around to get free bottle service, which is what he likes. Yeah, he'll be at every club asking for the.

00:23:49
Speaker 2: Table service, for table service, the good booths like a thousand dollars bottles of crystal.

00:23:59
Speaker 1: Anyway, this has been the craziest recording. I'm on so many allergy medications.

00:24:03
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:24:04
Speaker 1: I went to CBS.

00:24:05
Speaker 2: It was locked up, wasn't It was hocked.

00:24:08
Speaker 1: Up Monday at twelve pm. I go to CBS, Hey, can I get the allergy medication with the decongestice.

00:24:16
Speaker 2: It's always locked behind is with the pharmacist.

00:24:19
Speaker 1: The pharmacist, They're like, oh, no, the pharmacy's closed.

00:24:22
Speaker 2: What time was it.

00:24:23
Speaker 1: Monday, in the middle of the day.

00:24:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, so CBS, CBS. The pharmacy closes for lunch for like thirty minutes or now.

00:24:32
Speaker 1: I think I've been working my whole life. I don't think I've ever been allowed to take lunch. I don't think I've ever had a lunch break.

00:24:39
Speaker 2: I mean, okay, but CBSCBS does for sure.

00:24:44
Speaker 1: I guess I'm not. I'm buying it once a year. I don't really.

00:24:46
Speaker 2: The allergy medication is always locked up and you have to show ID and.

00:24:49
Speaker 1: I asked for too, and he said you got to come back tomorrow for the second one to what So I left and came back a few hours later. Yeah, and then I wanted two boxes, and he said, you can't buy two at once. You have to buy them a day apart. Because if you're.

00:25:02
Speaker 2: Making the mess, Yeah.

00:25:03
Speaker 1: You're making the mess one day at a time.

00:25:07
Speaker 2: One day at a time.

00:25:08
Speaker 1: You've got to make your small batch.

00:25:09
Speaker 2: Homegrown, artisanal mess.

00:25:12
Speaker 1: You can only make a small batch at a time. That's a local brewery. Anyway, comment with your meth resci people out.

00:25:21
Speaker 2: Do not do that. Do not do that method is bad for you.

00:25:26
Speaker 1: Your body actually needs a little bit.

00:25:28
Speaker 2: Do not listen to Michael everything in moderation. Michael is a lawyer, he's not a doctor.

00:25:35
Speaker 1: That's true. Yeah, do you lie to your doctor?

00:25:38
Speaker 2: Which doctor?

00:25:39
Speaker 1: Any of them? You lie to them?

00:25:40
Speaker 2: I have I lie to my doctor. It depends on what it is, though.

00:25:43
Speaker 1: And you know what, that's your job to figure out if I'm lying. That should be party of you know who I've lied to?

00:25:48
Speaker 2: Which is really really.

00:25:50
Speaker 1: That is my heart take, that's my fucked up take.

00:25:52
Speaker 2: I've lied to my therapist.

00:25:54
Speaker 1: Good for you.

00:25:54
Speaker 2: I don't want to get into it.

00:25:56
Speaker 1: Do you need to does your therapist tell you anything about your like their life occasionally. Really, yes, that's actually they're not supposed to do that. I don't think.

00:26:04
Speaker 2: I think I've had a few do that, and I think they've been telling me about their life to let me know that some feeling that I'm feeling is normal, if you know what I mean. Yeah, I saw old therapists on the street the other day.

00:26:16
Speaker 1: Really, it was weird. Did you just start crying?

00:26:18
Speaker 4: No?

00:26:19
Speaker 2: I didn't. I texted him later, I was like, I saw you a grandson test I did, and he told me he was on his way to his son's baseball game.

00:26:28
Speaker 1: I texted the therapist once years later, just to let her know that I had done something that I was very afraid of that I worked with her on Okay, and I was like, hey, I just wanted to let you know, like I finally did that thing.

00:26:42
Speaker 2: Was she proud of you?

00:26:42
Speaker 1: A big one? I did my big one, and I just wanted to let you know, like, hope you're well, Like it wasn't like a hand let's talk.

00:26:48
Speaker 5: Yeah.

00:26:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, And she wrote back because she was like, oh my god, that's so great. I'm so happy to hear it. Like I just wanted to, like, hey, Diva, want you to know that eventually all that blood, sweat inters you put into I eventually got over.

00:27:01
Speaker 2: The therapist that I saw on the street. I changed my life. He was wonderful.

00:27:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, I did therapists once. Tell me, will you help me pick out a therapist once?

00:27:09
Speaker 2: Do you remember that I did.

00:27:10
Speaker 1: We were today, yes, and you were like, Michael, you need a gay therapist because you have a black therapist. Yes, And you were like, I don't want to have to explain to a white therapist what it's like being a black woman.

00:27:22
Speaker 2: One has that time.

00:27:23
Speaker 1: And I was like, I don't think I should have to explain you know what it's like.

00:27:27
Speaker 5: No.

00:27:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, so.

00:27:30
Speaker 2: We were good.

00:27:31
Speaker 1: Melissa and I were scrolling through psychology today no and I was like, how can you? And I was like, well what about this one? And you were like, no, I don't think he's gay. And I showed you one and you went, well he's gay.

00:27:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I picked him and he was you're welcome.

00:27:49
Speaker 1: She did enough of a thumbnail about the size of a quarter, I'm telling you. She said, Oh, well, I don't have that time. Carl's gay. An he was good anyway, let's get into under Oath. We've got an incredible guest today.

00:28:04
Speaker 2: We're excited.

00:28:05
Speaker 1: Stick around, we'll be right back under oath. Welcome back to brief Recess. This is under Oath. We are joined by the incredible Emily Galvin Almonza, who's the co founder and executive director of Partners for Justice. She recently wrote a book titled The Price of Mercy, Unfair Trials of Violence, System and a Public Defender Search for Justice in America.

00:28:28
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here.

00:28:30
Speaker 2: Hi, Emily, We're happy to have you, so I'm so excited to have you.

00:28:33
Speaker 1: I've been following your work on social media for quite some time. If you haven't gotten an opportunity to check out Emily and what she's doing on the internet, it's incredible. Her book really is extraordinary. It takes us behind closed doors in America's criminal courts, something I'm very familiar with and something we talk about a lot on the show, and it reveals really how the institutions that claim to protect us, that are there to serve justice, are actually doing the exact opposite quite often. It's something that I encounter an immigration court all the time. It's something that I've encountered in my criminal practice. Emily, in your book, you really offer a blueprint for how to fix this right, like how to sort of like move forward. I would just love to hear a little bit about the book and what it sort of covers.

00:29:20
Speaker 5: Yeah, so you can't do a whole book that's just how bad stuff is. Nobody wants to stick around for that. And in fact, I was trying really consciously to give people foundational knowledge about how bad stuff is so that they can be conversant in all of the ways in which these systems fail us, even if they have been so lucky in their life is to never have interacted with the criminal court system. I wanted them to hear, like soup to nuts, how is it bad? And also how are all the bad pieces working together to make each other worse? Because that's something we often miss out on, is that this is like it's an apparatus, it's machinery. And I wanted to once we've thoroughly depressed people and made them look like fire, then we go into talking about a number of things, which I think some of them could be termed solutions, and some of them are like ameliorations. But the bottom line is the number of ways in which we could do better, build more public safety, better, you know, health and ability to thrive, and also a fair system, a system that puts forth some form of legitimacy. Like the number of ways is stupid? People act like the solutions are so hard to find you they're not. There's like multiple studies showing a number of things would work really really well. We just need political will to do them.

00:30:40
Speaker 1: It's interesting, you know. I mean, I think people find me on social media or have told me that things that they are drawn to about my social media is that I offer what I always offer, and we're always offering out on this show as well, Like what can you do? Like what is the next step? So much of journalism, so much of what gets covered in social media and legacy media, is here's how fucked up everything is?

00:31:04
Speaker 2: Good luck right, And like you said, I think people we know, we know how better? Oh yeah, we would really like a way out of that. And what can we do as an what can I do as an individual sort of help fix the problem, as opposed to just being like, yep, it sucks to be here, you know.

00:31:22
Speaker 5: I was just gonna say, people are so hungry for exactly that actionable piece. Yeah, like they want to get up tomorrow and do something which will make a dent in the grimness of the world.

00:31:30
Speaker 1: What facts did you uncover when you were writing this book. Take us through some of the really surprising things you learned. It's okay if you depress us. We will get into what you can do next, how people can help, how people can channel their anger and use that as impetus to affect change. But talk us through like the things you found as you were looking really hard at the criminal justice system.

00:31:51
Speaker 5: A lot of this for me was not purely surprising, because I spent ten years as a public defender, and now I work with public defenders all across the country, helping them expand their practice and build sort of more effective, more beautiful forms of public defense. And before that, I was a kid who actually needed to be defended. So I have been on both sides of this. I've been on multiple sides of this, and so going into this work it was a little bit of like downloading everything that I had learned over a lifetime into a set of pages. But what I found the most surprising was that, like in every dark corner that I poked in, I would find something worse than I had actually experienced in practice. So for example, you know, we've all been there. Like I used to practice in a jurisdiction where the cops at are local precinct would clean the mouthpiece on the breathalyzer with an alcohol white before people used it.

00:32:43
Speaker 1: Okay, oh my god, Oh no, it's alcohol.

00:32:46
Speaker 5: Wait.

00:32:47
Speaker 2: Alcohol, It's so stupid.

00:32:49
Speaker 5: But then you know, I do the research and I learned that there's a drug lab in that it was you know, studied and reported the news where the ventilation system was so bad it was literally blowing drugs all over the lab and contaminating every sample. So like, no matter where I thought the floor was the.

00:33:07
Speaker 1: Floor, yeah, it was just it was that horse meat disco is where they were doing all the drug testing.

00:33:13
Speaker 2: I think that that is really it's astounding, right, because you would never it would never didn't even occur to me to wonder, how are they cleaning off the little breathalyzer thing, right, right, And the idea that they would use alcohol.

00:33:26
Speaker 1: Oh I did. I did a continuing legal education and this was just it was for every type of legal practitioner we have to do legal education like throughout our life. So it was a continuing ad class and the it was it was like eight in the morning and he had someone come up on stage rinse their mouth out with listerine and then do a breathalyzer and it said that they were like anebriated. Right, so like the whole like you're you're right though, once you start sort of picking away at it, it's like an onion. It just kind of has layers and it smells worse the more you can touch it. Yeah. When we were sort of preparing for this interview, we were looking at some of the facts that you uncovered researching this book about how trees in certain neighborhoods affect crime rates. Could you sort of tell us a little bit about that research.

00:34:13
Speaker 5: I've done this thing to myself. You know how Madonna is always called the material girl and she meets it.

00:34:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, yeah, now you're the tree girl.

00:34:19
Speaker 5: Ever, every time every time there's a cairon, it's like public defender thinks you can fix public safety with trees.

00:34:25
Speaker 1: Yep. Could you throw that up on the Can you throw that up? CJ? Actually I want to see that. And you know what this is on the heels of They just announced in New York City that they want to cover New York City and thirty percent trees by twenty forty. Yeah, I'm so excited, which just announced this weekend.

00:34:41
Speaker 5: So this is some of the some of the research in the book that I found so thrilling. I mean, that's sort of the twin, the good twin to the evil of finding out that everything was worse than I thought, is that I found a ton of solutions that were just like easier and more available and more immediate than I thought. I think one of my favorite ones is like having an after school program drops youth involvement in crime by fifty percent. Yes, it's like so achievable. But the other things, all of these great environmental design pieces. Now, a lot of the time, the government will put forth this idea that a safe public environment is one that is heavily surveilled. But when we look at the research, we don't actually see surveillance preventing a ton of crime. I mean it's kind of obvious if you put yourself in the place of a person who's considering doing a crime, Like you see a camera, who knows if anybody's watching the other end of that camera. It's just like put on a hat and an N ninety five like whatever. But if a space is occupied or beautiful in a way that suggests the space may become presently occupied by other people, it's just not a good place to do crimes. So then when when you see like this research on if you've got a vacant lot and you turn it into a community garden, crime drops if the community is involved in creating that garden, like if they do it themselves, crime drops even more because the space is more likely to be utilized occupied. Every dilapidated house you fix up drops crime by twenty percent. One of my favorite comparisons is like, if you want to eliminate one homicide using police saturation, you need about seventeen police officers in the vicinity to eliminate one homicide. Okay, wow, But the City of Philly improved street lighting, painted sidewalks, fixed up some dilapidated spaces, and dropped youth homicides by seventy five percent.

00:36:31
Speaker 1: Wow, just by fixing infrastructure, just by fixing up the little structure.

00:36:36
Speaker 5: And the beautiful thing of is like, even if I'm wrong, even if everything I've written is wrong. We've still built a more beautiful world and the same thing, Like this is the tree thing. The tree thing is kind of my favorite because it's it's well researched, but it's also mysterious.

00:36:50
Speaker 4: Yeah.

00:36:51
Speaker 5: So like tree. You can take two similarly situated housing complexes, right, they're identical in every way. They've got the same type of people living in them. If one has more trees, the research suggests that that building will have not only less property crime outside the building, but less domestic violence inside. Wow, it's like people behave.

00:37:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, but do we know why that might be.

00:37:18
Speaker 5: There's a lot of theories. I mean, one, there's just a behavioral piece, where like people behave differently in beautiful places than they do in ely places. Like that's just a fact like that, it's context, but it's also there's really interesting research connecting beauty with longevity, Like people who live in spaces where they can take in beauty live longer than people who are deprived of that. There's also the pollution factor. I mean, there's a lot of research showing correlation between air pollution and sort of any form of ingested pollution and behavioral impact. Trees, of course, clean our air. A lot of the time, the smog layer is going to hover like in the mid layer of a building. So smog is not going to be worse on the first floor. It's going to be worse a little bit higher up. But that's exactly where you find the tree layer. I mean, so there's nobody can tell you definitively why the trees are making people not like shove their but.

00:38:11
Speaker 1: The evidence is there.

00:38:13
Speaker 2: We don't exactly know why, but yes, but the evidence is so.

00:38:17
Speaker 1: We brought you on not as an arborist, but we brought you really to talk about the criminal justice system. But I know it's an interesting sort of talking point, and I get it. Sometimes there are these headlines that linger around our name. I will forever be the guy whose name is on the list of ice lawyers, like the lawyers up against I will always be asked about that. I'm very happy to be asked about that. But you talk a lot about the prison system and how jails actually increase crime, right, And a lot of defense attorneys know this. A lot of people who are insider baseball a part of the criminal justice system understand this. Right When I have a client who was mentally ill who committed a crime because they were experiencing you know, extreme mental illness symptoms psychosis, who then get arrested for a crime and go to prison for a year, their illness gets worse. They're oftentimes learning how to commit more crimes, recidivism rates, learning from other criminals, getting like making friends with other criminals, and then leaving. Now they're on parole, and anytime they do any little thing, they're back in prison.

00:39:24
Speaker 4: Right.

00:39:25
Speaker 1: So this is very clear and well documented in so many legal circles. But I think I think the mainstream, everyday person is slowly starting to get socialized to this idea, right exactly.

00:39:36
Speaker 5: No, So I often, and I take great pleasure saying this as a woman speaking publicly, that like, our current criminal legal policy is very emotional, and I just wish it was more rational in evidence based. Yes, yeah, because it's all based on like who were scared of and who we're mad at, and like, let's do bad stuff that people were mad at and yeah.

00:39:55
Speaker 2: And you know vengeance, right, let's get them. You know this person did this, let's get.

00:39:59
Speaker 5: Them exactly, and we get there because that's free political points for lawmakers who don't want to actually do anything. So exactly as you said, right, the multiple studies show us that exposure to incarceration, particularly pre trial incarceration, is criminogenic. The person who's in for seven days is more likely to be re arrested than the person who was in for two days, even if they were identical when they went in. Interesting, and I mentioned those those numbers because when we look at the research they're studying very short periods of exposure to incarceration, it's exactly like you just say, it's not super mysterious. It's a highly violent environment in which people are traumatized, cut off from all of their forms of opportunity and support networks, and often harmed both like personally, psychologically, medically. But if we were making policy that was reflective of the actual evidence, we would make radically different policy choices. The same could be said of you know, you mentioned somebody getting you know, being on parole and then immediately getting pumped back into the system. There's research in the book from a professor at UC Berkeley who studied a naturally occurring experiment in the Midwest which basically a state changed their laws about pretrial or i'm sorry, post release supervision and the period of time during which people had less post release supervision, there was no uptick in crime, but there was a downslope in new prison admissions. As soon as they put that intense supervision back in place, again, no change in crime, but prison admissions pop back up, demonstrating that this form of supervision isn't having any impact on crime. It's just filling prisons. And so if somebody were to look at the evidence, they say, oh, Man, probation and parole aren't really doing a lot in terms, there's like not worth the expense, the massive expense. In some jurisdictions, it can cost literally a million dollars to put a child on probation for one year. It's not worth that when you get no public safety benefit.

00:42:00
Speaker 1: That's crazy. And I think like a lot of supplementary service provider institutions were shut down for being too expensive. Right, we can look at mental health hospitals that were shut down and just said, let's have the police, let's have the prison system, just take care of those folks, and it'll save us a bunch of federal dollars. But it doesn't.

00:42:21
Speaker 2: But it doesn't, But it doesn't. And I wonder if I wonder why that information is not pumped out nearly as much as it is. You know, we're going to be hard on crime and we're going to put all these people away when there is evidence that shows us that that's not really how it works, right.

00:42:39
Speaker 1: I think it's like Emily says, it's emotional. This is emotional behavior. Like we talked about it with Carenn. Like we had a guest on where we talked about the death penalty and how you know people vengeance again down to this like emotional reaction, a victimhood, right, And it's just really psychological it is.

00:43:04
Speaker 5: But it's also the framing, right, Like, one of the things I'm hoping to achieve with this book is to get people to understand that when a politician stands up there and offers you something tough on crime, yeah, they're offering you the status quo. The status quo is tough on crime. If you like what we already have, yeah, sure keep, you know, keep. The person who wants to change nothing, doesn't want to do better. But if you want to make a commitment when a bad thing happens, you want to do the work to make sure that bad thing doesn't happen. Again, that's the harder work that requires actually looking at the evidence of what makes bad stuff not happen. You can see it specifically in the emotional policy offerings of a lot of lawmakers, like fentanyl, right, yeah, you So many lawmakers are like, I'm going to increase the sentencings that if you, you know, have to sell a bag it's got fentanyl in it, you're gonna get ten more years. Nobody is on the corner looking at the bags they have and being like, well.

00:43:57
Speaker 1: Let me test this right, double check. Yeah.

00:44:02
Speaker 5: People think they sell when they think they're not going to get caught.

00:44:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, you.

00:44:06
Speaker 5: Know, likelihood of intervention, a number of resources. We have to not put people in an economic position where selling drugs is legitimately the best option available. Like these are things that actually lower the likelihood of fentanyl being sold. But that's harder work and it takes a longer time scale. So we need a voting public that's willing to demand that and also stick with the longer time scale before they see the results.

00:44:28
Speaker 1: Who is like nailing it right now? Like is there a jurisdiction, is there a state? Is there is there a mayor, is there a town that is kind of doing what we want to see more.

00:44:40
Speaker 5: Of a bunch. Yeah, a bunch, there's a bunch. They're all doing different things. So, for example, Baltimore has done a really good job of investing in community violence, interruption and like community services that can make it less likely that people will get involved in violence in the first place. Chicago also had a really good hits with cb I in a ships see the I, by the way, is the first thing in our sector that this administration cut. It was like the first thing when when DJ Granzi and it's it's suspicious because it was that in victim services and like both community violence and interruption and victim services are ways of like helping people heal so that gun violence doesn't happen. So interesting to watch those get immediately trashed. But you know, Colorado got rid of qualified immunity for police officers. I love this because when you talk about it, people are like, you could never get rid of qualified immunity. That'll never happen. I'll ever pass. Everybody would see the police would be a disaster, And like Colorado just did it and they're fine.

00:45:41
Speaker 4: And the.

00:45:44
Speaker 2: Day, yeah, exactly, life went on.

00:45:48
Speaker 5: California and Washington, and like a couple of other states have dealt with the problem of how our kids get railroaded. This is something that like every parent should know. Kids should not talk to police alone. Children will waive their right to counsel ninety percent of the time. Yeah, and over a third of them will falsely confess to a crime they did not do, and that number gets higher the younger they are, or if they think they're covering for a friend. So basically, none of us should want our children talking to police alone, because one it's terrible for the children, but two, like we're not getting any accurate information out of it, like they're just they're just doing they're confessing to stuff they didn't do. So California, Washington, a few other states have passed laws that just say, like, if the police want to talk to a child, the child has to have a lawyer present, period, And of they don't have to invoke they don't have to know the magic words.

00:46:41
Speaker 1: And just for illustration, I would like to share with folks an anecdote of like a what is it like an exacto knife? A client's a minor had an exacto knife and the cops frisked frisked. My client found this exact do knife, which is oftentimes needed for like school projects. And the cops said, is the sewers And client said yes, and this kid they said, oh is this you know? He said it's for school and the cops said, yeah, you probably need this for protection for the crazy people on these streets too. Right, client says, yes to that, you've admitted to intent to use that as a weapon. These are not kids who are I think when people hear that and hear you say, oh, every kid should know this, they're thinking kids in inner city youth. We've got inner city youth who are oftentimes coming in contact with drugs and weapons. No, it can be something as simple as a pen. Oh do you need this just in case a homeless guy jumps you? Yeah, I guess. Okay, you just admitted to intent to use this as a weapon, and that is a crime. Right, So I think people, I just to show people that this isn't this isn't your kids slinging bags on the corner.

00:48:05
Speaker 2: No, no, no, you know what, I really I remember this. You know, I was a young person doing that such a park five right where these were all young boys and they didn't they wouldn't let them call their parents, they didn't have attorneys with them, and they managed to somehow manipulate these young boys into admitting to something that they had not done. And these boys were punished, they went to jail, and their lives were, you know, permanently changed because of it. Only to find out decades later that they had not done this thing, but because they had been alone with the police who were asking them, so, this is the first time you had done this, and he was like, yeah, I guess this is the first time I had done that, and before you knew it, they had sort of railroad. Absolutely. The other thing is like we have always told children, especially that the police officer is your friend, trust them, call the cops if you need help, Call the cops if you need help. And only to realize now that especially I think black and brown children right are in front of these police officers and now they are sort of, like you said, manipulating the information. And now these boys, these children are sort of allowing themselves to be put in this position where there's no one to help them, and now they're sort of admitted to something that they really didn't do.

00:49:26
Speaker 5: And it's so isolating. To. I mean, so many the kids I represented exactly like you say, for stupid stuff, you know, possession of a screwdriver that's a burglary tool, possession of a pen that's a graffiti tool. You know, like these stupid cases. Oftentimes I might meet them when they were fourteen, but the first time they were followed home by a police officer or stopped or questioned or frisked or criminalized was when they were eight or nine. And largely this is the adultification of black boys and the hyper surveillance of black and brown neighborhoods. And it's not like the other kids at school have the privilege to not have that happen to them necessarily know that's going on, and so kids often can't turn to each other either. That's actually my next project, after the Price of Mercy, is that this fall, I have a book coming out called Andromeda Das and the Reasonable Doubt, which is a book about a little girl whose parents are public defenders, who knows how to defend her friends when they are accused of things.

00:50:22
Speaker 1: That's full.

00:50:22
Speaker 5: So it's an attempt to teach kids about we can talk about this. This is happening to more than just you. You are not alone, and there are ways you can protect yourself, in ways you can protect each other and be kind to each other and treat accusation with skepticism. So I'm hoping to like reach until the states can pass totally reasonable law that gives everything counsel. I'm trying to teach the kids how to invoke.

00:50:46
Speaker 1: That's great. Yeah, I think that's great. And how can people like be a part of this right? How can people be a part of this change? Fans of the show, people who find us on social media, like, what are some of these reform ideas that are hopeful that people can kind of throw their way behind.

00:51:01
Speaker 5: So, first of all, I love that I can say you don't have to pay attention to the federal government as much on this particular subject matter. Okay, so much of the eight like eighty seven percent of people who are in prison are there on state and local cases. Okay, So mostly the policy changes we're looking for are policy changes brought about by local das, states attorneys, local lawmakers, county boards of supervisors, sheriffs. So the number of people that it takes to push one of these elections to a more decarsoral or smarter direction is fairly low. Also, like local initiatives can do so much. There's a program, though totally volunteer program that I cover in the book called Dads on Duty, where a bunch of guys just got like really sick of their kids having police encounters at school, and so they had t shirts made that said Dad's on duty, and they started like patrolling the halls, and when a kid was like doing knucklehead stuff, they'd give them a look and the knucklehead stuff would stop, and so incidents and arrests of the school. So like we can do so we don't have to wait for permission. Like you can form a like Grandma's on duty at your school. You can court watch. You can go sit in the courtroom so that if there's a judge who's going to be absolutely cruel to the people who appear in front of them, like they might not do it in front of you, particularly if you have a notebook, you can demand. This is one of my favorites. We often feel really helpless about bad policing, and people who work in policing feel helpless about that too. There are so many police leaders who wish they could fire the bad actors in their department. But because ninety eight percent of union contracts contain a provision that says you can't fire the bad guys like they're stuck. But prosecutors can use something called they do not Call list, where the prosecutor basically says, you do whatever you want police department. But if your officers are credibly found to have engaged in like lying to the public in you know, lying about the public test a, lying or mistreating the public violence, I'm simply not going to use that cop in any of my cases. And what's great about that is if the cop can't be used in a prosecution, they're essentially used.

00:53:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're paper.

00:53:07
Speaker 5: Exactly. They get benched immediately. So like you can go to your local DA and be like, why don't you have this policy? Why do you want to use bad cops? I love them, not use bad cops. There's so much we can do locally.

00:53:16
Speaker 2: Fac I love that really, Really, that's really cool.

00:53:19
Speaker 1: And what I love what you're talking about really is people. I get this all the time, right, like what can I do? How can I help? And I always try to empower people with like small tools that they can do with fifty followers on Instagram, right, like you need you don't need like a huge platform to affect change. And oftentimes, like you say, it is on these really small local levels like the mom's Facebook group. How can you pressure someone? So I love hearing that. When does your next book come out? Like? What is there anything you'd like to plug? We talked a bit about your book.

00:53:53
Speaker 5: Yeah, so the book is the Price of Mercy. If you like solutions like these, you can check it out. It's available everywhere books are sold. In September, you could expect the arrival of Andromeda Diaz. And if you have a middle grade reader in your life, and you would like that middle grade reader, like my daughter say to her local school cop, I want to remain silent, and I want a lawyer. Every time he tries to talk to me about that's, get of a copy.

00:54:15
Speaker 2: Of It's It's really true. And I think you know, I wouldn't have known what to say if a police officer approached me as a kid.

00:54:21
Speaker 1: So, I mean, we have to how did you sort of get into this work? I'm just so curious.

00:54:26
Speaker 5: Simily, Well, I had a really rough time of it as a young person for a period that culminated me getting arrested and coming before a judge who was a legendary advocate for young people in Massachusetts, Judge Leslie Harris, who I write about in the book. And then because of him and his determination to see potential in children instead of seeing threat, I was able to go onto college in law school, and in my first year criminal law class, I thought, Man, I really connect with these pass I don't know why to think too hard about that. It's not that I've done the crime, It's just that I like these stories. So I took a job at the La County Public Defender that summer, and I started walking into rooms with kids who were not that much younger than me and had done stuff that I had literally done that. They were black and brown and East La and I had not been. And I've been so angry about that for since. Sure that I've just never stopped.

00:55:25
Speaker 2: But isn't it wonderful though? That I mean, because this could have gone wrong for you if he did not happen to be in front of this particular judge who truly cared about what happens to kids. And I mean I think that, I don't mean, I don't know when people are in certain positions if they really understand sort of the power that they have and how they could use their power for good.

00:55:46
Speaker 4: Right.

00:55:46
Speaker 2: I mean I hate to say to say things like that because sounds so cheesy, but you know, because if you had gone before a judge who was a different animal, you would be in a completely different place right now. So this is what we need. We need more people like this judge.

00:56:00
Speaker 1: Yes.

00:56:00
Speaker 5: No, I was able to write him years later, when I'd become a public defender and I'd represented like thousands of people because case loads are way too high. I was able to write it and be like, you know, hey, like all of my cases are your grand cases.

00:56:13
Speaker 3: Congratulations, I've got all these dispositions.

00:56:18
Speaker 2: I mean, I think that that's I mean, those stories like that are what give us hope because we're looking at a landscape that feels sometimes really dismal, and it feels like we don't know what to do everything. Everything feels terrible sometimes, But when you hear a story like this, you're like, you know what, everything is not terrible. We can sort of invoke change if we if we try.

00:56:40
Speaker 1: But I also love what Emily said about like letting anger propel you. I think literally everyone is angry right now, And I hear it in every single DM. I get. People are angry, they're upset, they are reacting to you know what I'm talking about and headlines, And every time that happens, I'm not like, oh man, I mean this person agree. I'm like, hell yeah, Like if you're mad, like it means something good is happening, right, Like you're alive inside, you're fired up. I don't think anyone ever like invoked change from a place of emotional uh like.

00:57:16
Speaker 2: Calm distance, emotional distance, Like I think.

00:57:19
Speaker 1: I think all change and like revolutionary radical change in the world came about because we were something.

00:57:30
Speaker 5: Was secretly furious living.

00:57:33
Speaker 1: So I just I love to hear that, like this anger from your youth really propelled you through this extraordinary career and into this change. So I love to hear that. And I think that is hopeful, right, like helpful about I'm like, hell yeah, make emotional decisions. I love that.

00:57:50
Speaker 2: I also think the other the other sort of message of hope is that realizing that there are some things that you could do at the grassroots level within your own community that could potentially make a huge difference unity garden planting, more trees and more. People need to hear those things, and they also need to have the information that you have, right, like the statistics, the numbers. Show us the numbers, because I think if I were to go to somebody like my husband, for example, who's kind of a cynic, right, and I would say, you know, today I learned that if you plant more trees in a community, crime goes down, he'd be like, really, but but I But if I were to show him the numbers for him, that would make the difference. And I think we need to sort of tell people these stories but also provide the numbers behind it, what are the stats behind it, because people need to hear that as well. Otherwise it just seems like sort of airy fairy stuff. You know.

00:58:42
Speaker 5: Literally one hundred pages of the book is citations. And the reason is because as a public defender, like I know, no one's going to take my word for stuff.

00:58:50
Speaker 3: Exactly what you need to need you need, you need the receipts, you need the recepts.

00:58:56
Speaker 1: Well, thank you, Emily. Where can people find you on social media? What's your hand? And all?

00:59:00
Speaker 5: We'll throw it up on the stag at Galvan Almanza on pretty much everything Instagram, Twitter, blue scribe, blue sky, you name it all right?

00:59:08
Speaker 2: Well, thank you so much, Emily. This is great.

00:59:10
Speaker 5: Thanks for having me. You guys really appreciate it.

00:59:13
Speaker 1: Okay, well this is tells from the dms. These are all the weird, wild, freaky, deeky, crazy, lascibious, licentious, scandalous, salacious things you send me and Melissa on the internet.

00:59:29
Speaker 2: Friends, What do I always say? While Michael is a lawyer, he's not your lawyer, so you should probably look into getting your own.

00:59:35
Speaker 1: But you can hire me. I'm for hiring.

00:59:37
Speaker 2: It's cheap.

00:59:40
Speaker 1: Bogo. Did you know the word for sale in Sweden? I went to Sweden It's slut spurt. So all these stories, it was like.

00:59:51
Speaker 2: Let's let's look that up and put that in the notes. Because Michael is also known to be a liar to.

00:59:56
Speaker 1: The Swedish people say in the comments, it's let's right, you know.

01:00:01
Speaker 2: Somebody from Sweden reached out to me. Actually, that's so funny. And she wanted to know the lipstick that I was wearing.

01:00:09
Speaker 1: What is it?

01:00:10
Speaker 2: Tralla, No it was?

01:00:11
Speaker 1: Did you tell her?

01:00:12
Speaker 3: No?

01:00:12
Speaker 2: I did, Yes, I did tell her what it was, but unfortunately it did not have a cool name like vicious Trollope.

01:00:17
Speaker 1: Okay from the DMS from the Santa Con episode. People want to know Corey Johnson's seven four four four Okay, but drop the sweatshirt link, Melissa from your Taurus sweatshirt.

01:00:28
Speaker 2: I'm so sorry. Somebody a bunch of other people asked me about it, and I don't remember where I bought them. A friend of mine bought them for us. She's a Libra. I'm a Taurus, right, but I don't remember, but I promise I will look into it. I know that it was a black owned company that we saw on Instagram.

01:00:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is and this is the problem. If you do love our show, you are following two influencers over the age of thirty five. So we are likely going to forget where things come from. We're going to forget the link like it just comes with the territory. So if you want quick links, follow a twenty two year old.

01:01:05
Speaker 2: Sorry, friends, but I will look.

01:01:07
Speaker 1: Do you want to read one?

01:01:08
Speaker 2: Sure? Okay? This is I really love this because I agreed completely From Zach Tanner seventeen. America just needs to restart. Maybe someone should see if Trump can try and unplug the country and plug it back in. Seriously, though, our government is the worst.

01:01:24
Speaker 1: Something you would say to me, I would call you. You would say that.

01:01:28
Speaker 2: Control all delete, let's just start over. Everything is terrible.

01:01:34
Speaker 1: It's a deep, poor cleanse. I do feel like if you ever you know, doesn't do shower, like when you get home from a bar or something. Yes, yeah, I shower, I do the full, I do the you have to do everything shower, you need everything shower.

01:01:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's disgusting outside.

01:01:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay. From Katie Bites, she writes, high deep, high depots. I've been summoned for jury duty and I'd rather not any outfit tip to ensure I'm not the chosen one. Yes, really you have one idea?

01:02:04
Speaker 2: Well, I mean I can just so. I think that if you if you don't want to be chosen for a jury, I suggest that you go on social media and look for somebody who was trying out outfits to wear to Coachella, and that's that will get you out of it. For show, there were two girls.

01:02:26
Speaker 1: Who were making fun of uh Coachella influencers and going to Coachella, and they were like, get ready with me to go to Coachella, and I'm with me I'm shopping at Marshall's and they did this whole like Marshall's thing. Marshall saw it and sent them to Coachella.

01:02:40
Speaker 2: I'm sure they did. Listen, get it. Good for you. It's really amazing to me how people. Oh my voice is going, okay.

01:02:48
Speaker 1: Okay, she was silenced by Marshals okay. Sarah Newman wrote, do you have a possible question for the pod? I'm a licensed professional counselor in Texas and our grulish up a lot recently.

01:03:02
Speaker 2: I love that. Actually, go ahead.

01:03:03
Speaker 1: Sorry, recently updated our Health and Safety Code to prohibit my profession from facilitating treatment to trans youth as our license classifies us as healthcare providers. Interesting, he has classified gender affirming care for minors as child abuse in the state. Wow, all right, Texas. With the recent Supreme Court ruling that therapy has protected speech, it seems states can no longer prohibit a therapeutic approach by targeting the ideas expressed in session. Could the Supreme Court ruling be applied here? Yes, it could be. That is like my legal sort of understanding. It could be applied. However, it would have to go up and be fully litigated. By the Supreme Court. So this is something that would have to work through the court system, probably for a couple of years. And there are like activist law firms and attorneys who take those types of cases and will file suit in order to you know, sort of litigate that although to the Supreme Court and get a decision. But it is going to take some time. But I'm sorry, you're going you have to handle that. I mean, anyone who has to work.

01:04:09
Speaker 2: With I mean, just the idea that providing therapy, gender firm and care for a child and is considered child abuse.

01:04:18
Speaker 1: Even just therapy. It's not even like hormone block it's not even puberty blockers. It's nothing. It's literally just God ruling that therapy is protected speech. It could no longer it is technically, yeah, would be covered under the First Amendment, So I under I mean, it's a sound legal argument. I think it will get worked through and the law will probably be held on constitutional at some point, but just not yet. Okay, We're going to read probably the craziest email I've gotten, one that is so crazy we had to run it past the legal department twice myself as part of the one of the lawyers reviewing it. We sent it to legal. I have a language I'm allowed to use when we discuss it. But it's next week and it's a out the Gay Panic Defense episode. It is insider tea. It is hot, goss, it is it is nasty, it's freaky.

01:05:08
Speaker 2: It is let the record reflect that when when it came up. When it came up, I was just like.

01:05:15
Speaker 1: Sure, and I was like, it's fine, let's do it.

01:05:18
Speaker 2: I was like, okay, because you're the lawyer.

01:05:20
Speaker 1: But hard cut to legal getting involved. And since I said I'm a lawyer, I never said I was a good one. And Melissa saying, I told you so, I told you you did the I told you I told you so.

01:05:33
Speaker 2: Dance, I told you so. I told you so.

01:05:35
Speaker 1: All Right, let's get out of here. That was tales from the DMS. We'll see you next week when we talk about that weird crazy email we got. I can't. I can't, I honestly can't. I want to.

01:05:44
Speaker 2: You can't.

01:05:45
Speaker 4: Wait.

01:05:45
Speaker 1: Well, I'll do it next week and I'll give it the full segment. A dramatic reading, yes, and.

01:05:49
Speaker 2: A dramatic reading.

01:05:51
Speaker 1: Local warm ups. Okay, I'll see you in court. Just Michael not you never me. This has been an Exactly Right production recorded at iHeart Studios, hosted by Me, Michael Foot, and.

01:06:04
Speaker 2: Me Melissa Albrant. Our producer is CJ. Ferroni.

01:06:07
Speaker 1: This episode was edited by Nicholas Galucci.

01:06:09
Speaker 2: Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain and our guest booker is Patria Cottner.

01:06:13
Speaker 1: Our theme song was composed by Tom Brifogel, with artwork from Charlotte Delarue Manessa Lilac with photography by Brad Obono.

01:06:20
Speaker 2: Brief Recess is executive produced by Karen Kilgareff, Georgia hart Stark, and Danielle Kramer.

01:06:25
Speaker 1: You can find me on Instagram at Department of Redundancy Department or on TikTok at Michael Foot.

01:06:30
Speaker 2: And I'm on both Instagram and TikTok as Melissa Malbranch.

01:06:33
Speaker 1: Got legal questions, reach out at brief Recess at exactlyrightmedia dot com. Listen to Brief Recess on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts, and of course we're a podcasts with video. Search for Brief Recess on YouTube