Is Kodak Black's Sentence Excessive? Rap Star with 46 Month Prison Sentence | 191 |

[Music] hey everybody larry lawton here we got a great edition we got an update on kodak black and i'm with the kodak blacks attorneys been with them from the start brad cohn good guy got to know him has some great insight and we want to let you guys know what's going on with kodak black because your ass let me bring brad right in hey brad nice to see you how are you larry nice to see you a couple of things uh we're gonna update with brad uh with uh how are you doing i'm doing great i'm doing great uh hopefully kodak will be doing well too in the next couple weeks but we'll uh update everybody on what's going on with his cases now we're gonna get into prison because you deal a lot with prisoners i do and you deal a lot with uh kodak black yes i'm always uh i'm always a big fan and i've always talked to people about prison reform because i think you can't have justice reform without prison reform um justice reform in itself should include uh people not going to prison right but once they're in prison what do we do for them while they're in prison and how do we treat them are we a third world country or do we treat people with respect and dignity which they should be treated with respect and dignity i understand the punishment aspect of prison i'm not a babe in the woods uh but at the same token um there is there is something to be said about punishment and torture there's a difference there and and putting people in 23 24-hour lockdown is not good for anyone once they're released because their their mental ability and where they are when they get released is very important to society right because you don't want individuals going in one way coming out a lot worse which is basically what you see in a lot of these places a lot of these places are just storage units they're not real uh rehabilitation places where they can teach classes where they can get drug treatment help to attack the core that's what you need to do so that you don't see recidivism and you don't see them coming back into the system just to let you know obviously you know what we do here is prison reform a lot of it and let me give you a couple of numbers and you can use them a person who leaves incarceration from the shoe special housing unit the whole my audience knows know what it is if you leave from the shoe into society your recidivism rates near 70 if you leave from the yard it's still high it's in the 40s high 40s so it's a big difference like you said and people i love that when they say oh we give them a wreck we give them you said it right when you clicked on you said 23 24 exactly it's 24. they have every excuse in the world to say well for the safe and orderly running of the institution we gave no wreck right uh we didn't give you uh even legal time too legal work on as i know so let's get into kodak black sure kodak black has been you know on our channel we we highlighted him and i've mentioned him on other shows because i think we need to do what you said he's a young kid successful rapper did he make mistakes yes stupid mistakes yes did he deserve to get and let's give the audience let's why don't you give the audience at the beginning what he was charged with how much time he got and a little bit of a background on the case good so he was charged with essentially lying on a governmental form and that governmental form that he lied on is a 4473 it's a it's a form to obtain firearms he was not a convicted felon at the time that he filled out the form but one of the questions on the form is essentially have you do you have any cases that are pending that would affect quote unquote interstate commerce most i would say 90 percent of the country don't doesn't know you know what would or would not affect interstate commerce but just for your audience everything affects interstate commerce when the feds want to charge you with the crime essentially they can say anything affects interstate commerce if you have a weapon on you and you commit a crime it could be federal because the weapon would be made in a different state and they would use that as affecting interstate commerce so and that's been upheld by many many courts just to highlight that area myself and my audience knows that i was under the rico act the hobbs act which is interfering with interstate commerce because the jewelry i robbed was made in another place and it goes for mcdonald's i often explain it even though robbing a mcdonald's is a regular local crime since mcdonald's gets his potatoes from idaho there you go you're interfering with the state commerce right correct that is that that's exactly correct so anything can interfere with interstate commerce so he checked off the wrong box he got charged with lying on a governmental form because he has some priors when he was a youthful offender um that kicked them up into different levels and how the federal system works is kind of like a grid if anyone ever played you know you sank my battleship it's kind of the same thing it's a grid where you at the top is your criminal history and on the side is the level that you score for the crime that you committed so the level that you score for the crime you committed it can go up or down depending on several factors so there's enhancements which kodak ended up getting enhancements because he was purchasing three weapons that is an enhancement because he was on bond that's an enhancement all these different things that were enhancing his his score which should have been around the 12 or 13 and scored him maybe 18 or 19 months it kicked him up into the 50 plus months the judge looked at it during sentencing and said to himself okay i agree his past criminal history is overstated um i don't think it is as great as they put down on paper and i'm willing to knock off some of those months and he ended up giving him 46 months instead of i think 56 months did he get a gun he did get the guns but he was he was able to carry a weapon the thing is is that he is not a convicted felon so at the time that he purchased those weapons he was not a convicted felon the only crimes he ever had were from withholds of adjudication so he was never a convicted felon so the the if he possessed the weapon um the possession of the weapon itself in uh the federal system would not be a crime that's why they only charged him with the paperwork offense wow i didn't know that so i knew that you had to have a felony and i know misdemeanors and contenders and all that sure matter so now he they get him for filing i guess a false statement actually correct is it the same as bill clinton 18 usc 1001 it's it's it's kind of like it is it is comparable it's a different statute but it is comparable it's lying on a governmental form um and you know when you take a step back and if it was 46 months and the judge was able to uh give him what he advised and bop was able to put him into those programs he would have probably done in the high twenties because the judge recommended several programs that he was available to do um rdap which is we know that is the residential drug treatment program uh in the system and i think it would have been been very beneficial to to kodak um some any kind of mental health treatment that was available and some some advanced courses that he wanted to take so the judge allowed him to do that and recommended to bop to do that as well as recommended to bop to keep him in florida and bop did the exact opposite which is not a surprise uh the bop and you know it's only a recommendation from a judge they can do whatever they want they did it to me they're supposed to buy bop policy which we used to litigate they're supposed to keep you within 500 miles of your house that obviously that does they do what they want and they use the i call the acronym for the safe and orderly running of the institution they it's called and that's been upheld sadly correct uh but the blp is in of itself is such a i i hate to call it a criminal organization it's it's you know it's close it is very close in my opinion i i think that it's run that way because they are the only people who look out for themselves it's literally the fox watching the the hen house because what happens is is that any hearings that are held any documents that are filed anything that happens they're their own watchdog they watch their own stuff they're the judge they're the jury they're the executioner they do it all i've been pushing very very hard for a third party to come in unannounced do spot checks do things like that when in reality what they do is they give the place two weeks notice before they come in they pull certain prisoners right that the jail and prison already knows who they're gonna pull and they ask them how they treating you here and if the prisoner says oh they're treating me horrible you can imagine what's going to happen to them because they're not moving that prisoner afterwards let me give you one i did a whole show on this it's called the aca american accreditation association which does the prison inspections and i was a big proponent against them because what you just said they give them two weeks notice on my channel and your audience in the audience will look i had a a former prison guard who ended up going to prison he's a good dude i knew him when i was in prison and he was a my guard i actually interviewed him and we talked about the aca and how much [ __ ] it was he was the president of union and you what you said is so true they need an independent body that can surprise a prisoner correct at two in the morning on a sunday correct and the minute the lieutenant on call doesn't let them the minute gets fired that'll shut down that thing come in and at least go and try and with a system in place that if an inmate said something and it was against the prison if he has any kind of retaliation whether you call back right back we could set up a system that then that then that warden gets fired right somebody said something like that and we i've talked about this for for years and years and years because i've i've seen it and i've had since since the big sandy incidents with kodak which we'll get to since that those incidents i've had prison guards call me ex-prison guards from big sandy from uh um other areas in mississippi and uh and all these different prisons and they say hey i read about what you were making accusations against in in the big sandy case and i can tell you it's happened before in my prison it's happened before in my prison i mean i've heard that time and time again one guy is currently a probation officer he doesn't he he called me he's like i don't care if they find out who i am or not but i used to be a prison guard and i can tell you the four-point restraint 100 the water hundred percent they leave the windows open in the winter time a hundred percent they leave you in the four point restraints with no clothes on so that those type of things that happen uh that we make these accusations and people say wow that doesn't sound like that could happen someone's going to be chained to a bed with their arms and their legs and they're and they're in like paper underwear soaking wet with a window open in 40 degree weather that just doesn't sound like it would happen i have individuals that are saying that used to work in these places they're saying not only does it happen it happens frequently you know brad my audience knows i was strapped down naked beaten tortured four-pointed and they say over and they peed on me and that was all all people came into the prison they ended up firing people uh but it happens so often now they have their restraint chairs which are just as bad or worse sometimes and i would i was four pointed and i i look at that and you said it i often call the united states prison system a third world prison compared to germany france england spain norway all regular countries canada we have the worst prison system sadly we really do a it's a bad prison system so in kodak's case to get back to kodak's case he got 46 months um our idea was that he was going to be able to serve that in a medium prison because i did the scoring you know there's an internal scoring sheet that they use what made him get to a medium even um the medium the only reason why he would have scored a medium at the time was that he had a pending case in new york a hold out of him in new york that was kicking him up and he got into an altercation in miami that was kicking him up i got that new york case dismissed or i think he got like probation 12 months probation and he ended up getting that hole taken off of him so then he would have scored somewhere between it would have been discretionary it was like right on the cusp of a low and a medium and he was still in a maximum and they said because of the orderly safety all the things you know they gave every excuse under the book and even in they they got it wrong even on their score sheet because they scored him as a level three criminal history when he was when the judge used a level two criminal history so right off the bat they did things wrong on that sheet so i pointed those things out didn't matter he was in big sandy uh he had issues in big sandy we obviously we have a pending lawsuit in washington d.c now against big sandy bivins yep but a question on that uh the bop actually does the scoring afterwards the probation department does the original scoring right so they didn't accept it so the the um the probation scored him with a level three the judge after during sentencing said i'm gonna use a level two because i think it's overstated it should have been corrected at that point but then when he was getting evaluated for what prison he was going to go to they have an internal form for that and they were scoring him a level three still so i got a hold of that internal scoring sheet i gave it to one of our experts she went through it and she's like this is incorrect i sent them a letter that's incorrect and even though it's quote unquote incorrect they said yeah it might be incorrect but for the safety of everybody we we're going to keep them at a maximum security prison and he'll get to his case manager and they'll look it up and all that [ __ ] and you're eight months down the road and and all of a sudden you're in this maximum security prison where he's literally i think when he got there he was probably just turning 21. he was the youngest inmate at that maximum security prison he not only that he was the only inmate with the least amount of time in that maximum security prison his roommate was a triple lifer i think everybody on his on his row were lifers um and here's a kid who's literally got three years to go at the time maybe even less and he's in with lifers at 21 years old so it's not a fair system and when i say that people sometimes like oh well it's not you know fairness gets gets excluded out of a lot of conversations because like they're they say oh it's the law though this is the law it might be fair might not be fair but that's the law the law is based on fairness like ultimately the law is based on fairness right don't steal don't do these things these are things that people came up with with the ten commandments that are based on fairness it's not something that someone came up with all of a sudden but when you say the word fair in court or you say the word fair in a letter everyone's like well life's not fair this isn't fair but it should be okay so the point is um is that kodak was at that big sandy uh kentucky no no programs offered no rdap program offered nothing that he could take whatsoever even voluntarily no access to a priest or a rabbi in his case he wanted to see a rabbi he had no access to a rabbi and because of the incident in miami which this is a this is a whole separate set of facts but because of the incident in miami they didn't hear that until seven months later so he was in the shoe for seven months waiting for a hearing he gets a hearing and they give him another six months it's sad what the system is doing now they're actually putting kids who are under 25 with 10 years or more automatic penitentiaries right but he had not even close to that time not even close and the danger for him for for people jealous and stuff and not getting out i was in maximum security prisons and it's bad even myself as an older wiser really a criminal uh this kid is a kid you know and i look at him and i say what damage are we doing to him down the road correct i mean non-violent crime non-violent crime he had no business being independent no business zero you're correct no business being in a maximum security prison so um i complained enough to where they finally moved him ironically further away from florida to outside of chicago this prison seems to be a little bit better um it's still a maximum security prison it's a penitentiary what is he doing in a penitent that's that's that's the big question i mean i gotta have people look this up and all my audience out there i want you to look this case up i want to look kodak black i want to look at united states penitentiary and what the system says you can look it even on the internet i mean obviously go through some of our videos a penitentiary is made for people with life says when i was in atlanta the was the worst prison at the time we had 2 000 inmates 880 at life and in the system life means letters there's no parole nothing you never get you die that's the only way to get out of that prison and how many people have 50 60 years oh yeah it's it's crazy so this this prison is actually a little bit better he is partaking in some uh higher education classes management classes and things like that that he's not getting credit for in terms of getting time off he just actually wants to better himself correct and he's always done that he's always wanted to better himself even when he's in he got his ged when he was in in broward not ordered by the court he just got it on his own and i remember the day that he got his ged he called me he was like so happy so proud of himself that he got his ged that it was like you know it was something that he wanted to do for himself and he did and that's why these courses that the judge recommended i think would have been so helpful for him that the prison is refusing to put him in a place where he can partake in those um so that's a real problem in itself but this this prison um that he's in now i actually have contact with his case manager his case manager is actually a gentleman in this prison so you're finding the person on me let's get to per person personal with kodak sure how is he doing do you think mentally i talk to him like probably once a week i think that kodak is a very strong individual mentally in terms of that he goes into these these situations where he's in 23 or 24 hour lockdown and he writes like this kid writes manuscripts he's written a movie he's written uh he's written a show he writes more music i mean he probably wrote you know he he can bang out a rap in probably an hour you know a a hit and he just keeps sending him sending himself so i'm saving them all in a box for when he gets out so that he can readdress everything that he sent when i was in i used to i used to often obviously write as well and it keeps your mind away from what the craziness around you correct and as a young kid what i worry about is his one association with bad people that are not the right people let's call it what it is right certain gang members rights uh people want something from him he is a celebrity he does have notoriety and they you know they're gonna try his money they're gonna try him in a lot of ways and it's tough for him whatever he can say he wants to be a tough guy it's it's a hard life nobody wants to be in a maximum security prison let me put it like you know even if you think you're a gangster you don't know what it's like in a maximum security prison just going to visit there i'm not i mean i'm not going to say i'm the toughest guy in the world but i can hold my own and you go into some of these places and you're just like it's another level of bad it no one wants to be in a maximum security prison especially if you're 21 or 22. i can't imagine if i was 21 or 22 going in there i'm i'm turning 50 and when i go in there there's some things that i'm like wow this is like that's a scary situation um and i don't care how tough you are when there's 10 guys that want something from you there's 10 guys that want something for it from you so it's a bad it's a bad situation in maximum security you know you're making such a great point brad because i when i went to prison at for the long stretch i was 34. and mature connections with the mob everything else around the world it's rough right and i'm now i'll be 60 next this year geez i'm getting old and you're right as tough as is you it's a different level and i that's why i'm hard on it hot on this case where because i think his it's so unjust what they're doing today first of all the length of time come on are they trying to make an example of them uh what does the u.s attorney say uh why i mean i've never heard of a case with paperwork i mean 46 months it's crazy it's crazy and and that's why we put in for the commutation with the president yes you put in a communication have you done any briefs uh covert briefs to the federal court yet so so kodak did a pro se brief it was it wasn't um legally sufficient but that being said for the commutation it does show that he's trying some uh resolving any kind of outstanding possible other way that he could get out or any other kind of mitigation that he's done so they denied it based on that it wasn't legally sufficient um i'm hoping that the president you know considers his commutation there's been a lot of news about it we've gotten calls from a lot of black leaders in in the united states that are like this is completely unjust because it's 46 months for a 22 year old on a paperwork case um we've had a lot of people like lamar jackson the quarterback from the baltimore ravens and jake paul and little pump and little yachty and yogaty and gucci mane they're all tweeting that you know kodak should get a a chance here because it's just an unjust sentence and if you and i and i put together the commutation packet and when i was putting together the commutation packet some of the charity things that he's done i totally forgot about like i had to go online and start pulling things on and it's like he paid for kids to go to college that couldn't afford to go to college he paid for a a little kid's funeral whose mom couldn't afford to pay for a funeral he paid for three fallen officers funerals and then gave the kids like five or ten grand a piece for christmas anonymously like he was doing so much stuff before this even came down that like literally i would forget from year to year the amount of charity work that he would do every every christmas he does christmas giveaways this past christmas he adopted 60 families from broward gave them all toys food provided lunch gift cards like he goes over and above like what anyone does in terms of charity maybe it's not like oh he's donating a million dollars to this charity but he does it on a mac on a little micro scale where it really affects people's lives he's not giving a million dollars to the united way and he's not making money now no i mean so this young man still has that heart you know and obviously as a guy who was imprisoned and understanding how tough that is yeah you're worried about your own mental state and now he's still doing that on the outside is an amazing really credit to his maturity it is and every time i talk to him i bring up current events i tell him hey this is what's happening i just read something about an officer that got shot in the line of dude he's got three kids he'll tell me hey make sure all those kids are taken care of for christmas like anything that i discuss with him he takes it and runs with it there's a there's a new charity organization called um i think the bar stool fund but with dave portnoy and dave is the greatest he's a he's an amazing guy and he's he owns barstool sports they were just bought by a bigger company but he put together this thing called the bar stool fund that does um it's putting money together to support small little restaurant businesses mom and pops in different hoods in brooklyn in pompano all these different areas and i was just talking to kodak about it caught us like make sure you you hook up with them make sure you take care of them make sure you that the money goes to like pompano and stuff like that local areas that they'll help local restaurants i mean like i said like the kit is amazing it's one thing to read about somebody on paper and to be like oh man he he's accused of this or accused of that and there's one thing to have interaction with him like i consider him like part of my family like my son he was i was talking on the phone the other day he was on speakerphone my son heard him he's yelling uncle kodak uncle kodak and kodak's talking to my son i mean literally listen i don't have that type of relationship with every one of my clients i try to take care of everyone my clients like their family but literally i have a family-like relationship with kodak where it pains me to see his mom cry about the situation his son cry about the situation you know he hasn't been able to talk to his son since he's been in because he's been in the shoe and they don't allow phone calls he hasn't seen anybody since he's been in the shoe especially with covid i tried to go see him they said oh there's still covert running wild so there's a lot of things that the the public doesn't know about kodak and there's a perception about kodak sometimes that oh like he always is in trouble he always but if you really look at the cases they're they're total there's nothing yeah that's a gs case like i'm going to give you an example one case because this is a funny case there was a case back in the day this is how this whole thing started now i wasn't his attorney had a different attorney there's a case back in the day he got charged with kidnapping now you read that you're holy [ __ ] kidnapping that's a serious you know that's as serious as it gets right so you're reading this kidnapping case and all of a sudden you realize and even in the police report you realize well what what's going on with this kidnapping case well five kids and it's in the police report five kids broke into his mom's house stole a bunch of [ __ ] ran out he found out who those five kids were he went around the neighborhood picking them up taking away their phones bringing him to his mom's house so they would apologize to his mom for breaking into her house legitimately it's in the police report that is the kidnapping case the first lawyer he had led him out to that to like probation and that's how this whole thing started then he violated probation with a little like a nothing case uh you know marijuana possession and that's what kept going is like little violations until you know we're here where we are today so you've watched him grow up yeah i mean now you've been with him for how long five years so he's 22 now correct so you've been wanting to see 17 years correct wow so you're actually seeing a kid mature and all the stuff and and talk talk about things we talk about different things here i mean the kid reads and and talks about different books we're talking about different books that he's reading and i want to just go back to this kidnapping case for a quick second because this is the most poignant point of that is that out of the five kids that he brought back three of them are serving life in prison two of them committed a murder while they broke into someone else's house the other one had like seven or eight burglaries that he got a life felony for armed burglaries and he was trying to stop this stuff correct the two of them i guess got scared straight but the other three are serving life in prison and that was the kidnapping case that was the big case it's a kidnapping case so when you read it on paper it's a totally different thing than when you know the case let's get right to it do you think is racism involved you know pompano beach is a you know when you have broward sheriff's office in pompano beach um before sheriff tony took over i think that there was a significant amount of pressure put on that area in that i don't know if i'd call it straight out racism because there's black cops white cops and i don't limit racism to white cops i mean there's there's some that that will do things that are you know mexican spanish black doesn't it doesn't matter um this particular area they definitely have a affinity towards the kids in that area to not try and pick them up but try to put them down well that's what i always talk about police reforms you know spending the money the right way instead of tanks how about community centers instead of uh you know more armor or more of this how about basketball courts keep the kids better better mentors guys like yourself and myself older guys who've been through some stuff trying to mentor these kids to show them that we want to help super excited and that's why they grow up you know a lot of the kids in pompano grow up with the mentality that police are bad and the reason why they grow up with that police are bad is because what they see i mean kodak at eight or nine years old is seeing kids get shot in front of them not by police but by just drive-by shootings like the no one addresses really the the the heart of why an individual is like the individual is and when you're eight or nine i mean think about this guys go to iraq iran and they come back with ptsd because they're full grown men you know they're 20 21 22 years old and you're seeing your friend get shot or you're seeing something happen and you come back and you have severe ptsd right you're talking about an eight or nine year old kid that is in a neighborhood where there's drive-by shootings sometimes your house gets shot they witnessed their friends getting the shot they witnessed their friends getting killed all these different things growing up and no one says like hey maybe we should take a look maybe there's some ptsd with some of these guys that grew up in these neighborhoods um and nobody nobody wants to do that but it's it's it's ironic that we think that a 30 year old or a 25 year old is is somehow not as equipped as an eight-year-old an eight-year-old is not equipped at all right you're talking about guys that are 25 and 30 that come back with ptsd when you have an eight-year-old that witnesses stuff like that it's beyond ptsd it severely affects i think that whole generation and i think there's something that we can do to bring them back but not what we're doing now well i often talk about you can't compare a kid who grows up in the hood and hears gunshots and and neighbors oh who are prostituting this everything going on and then a kid who's a doctor's kid goes to this school and they're nice and and i'm not knocking the doctor's kit at all i'm just saying you don't tell me you can compare him to apple's apple no it's just not no and and sometimes as a judge there are judges that that really look at that you know and say like hey wait a minute how did he grow up why did he grow up why did he do this how is he doing this there are some judges like that but they're very few and far between most judges just look at the crime look at the individual and say like hey listen this is what i'm gonna give you a break you know i'm gonna do this because you're a young guy instead of saying like hey let's fix what's going on here there's there's more to the story here there's got to be a reason why this is going on is it you know the dad's not around is it that you know you witnessed something traumatic in your life there's something more to it than this these kids are suddenly decide to break into houses well i often tell people this quick story a kid is 21 he comes to prison he robbed a bank because he was a drug addict and he did it with a note he gets five years for prison they don't touch what the problem was with his drugs and stuff so he comes to prison what does he do he does drugs what do they do in prison they take him and they put him in the shoe put him in a hole they take away his phone take away his commissary take away his visits so if he did have anybody who was still trying to stay in contact a guy who hurt a construction business can't even call him anymore he loses truck touch with him he ends up going and gets out of the shoe he's still a drug addict never touched his addiction is your order based cause so what does he do in prison he gravitates towards the people gonna give him drugs and he might have to one do something whether it's sex whether it's stab somebody whether it's in a doom now let's say he gets out he's 24 years old 25 years old he gets out he doesn't have hiv hopefully he doesn't have any kind of disease or whatever but they never help this drug addiction he gets to the street now he's worse right because he don't fear prison and he's still an attic he's going to get what he has and we're not hitting the numbers right what is going on nobody does it nobody does it and and well they are you know and i'm gonna push back on that there are countries oh yeah norway sweden yes germany i'm talking about looking at those nobody does it here nobody doesn't hear and it and you know the when we talk about justice foreign prison reform the president had the first step act and the second chance um i think both of those were good starts i think that they need a little bit more teeth in them so that like when you recommend 500 you know 500 miles from from wherever you live they should be it's not just oh it's for the safety of everyone we have to send them there needs to be some sort of litmus test of why you're sending him 3 000 miles away because if it's not 500 miles away why can't you send them 700 miles away why is there not a prison in mississippi why is there not a prison in uh in someplace else that's close they're off right of course i was i was georgia i was all over and they kept pushing me away because i was a i was a troubled inmate you know i was fighting the system i got my degree i got my law and then once i learned that these my fists didn't work and my brain worked and writing and lore and i got my law degree and everything else in prison it was a whole different animal i learned a bp system and then i learned yeah that's his name every system in the world to the degree that i learned but what what they do is they use that terminology i don't know if they need a separate uh governing body on where they put people i think it needs a separate governing body to oversee them so if it's whether or not where they put them whether it's not their administrative hearings whether or not it's it's their uh inspections they need a third party a body that is not associated with the prisons and what so whatsoever that's totally separate that doesn't have anything and doesn't owe anybody doesn't kowtow to anybody and that's what needs to happen i mean ultimately that's what needs well yeah i mean you know what they're going to say they're going to say we have that it's the inspector general but it's i know because i went this route and that's all [ __ ] yes they never get to the expected what gets to the inspector general is what the bop wants after they do their investigation correct which is [ __ ] like we know every police agency says oh we you know we'll do our own investigation let me shoot you and then investigate me but that's the [ __ ] is that but that's what happens all the time and the the the ironic thing is is that you could have three prisoners saying and and we did in kodak's case saying that he was on his knees that he was soaking wet he was in uh you know a paper underwear that his hands were handcuffed behind his back you can have everybody under the sun testify on his behalf if one guard says well that's not what happened then they say well you know the prisoners have something to gain the guard doesn't have anything to gain and they don't do an investigation you know when you told me i remember when this all came out with the what they did to him and they forepointed him and i as a man who was and no i knew exactly that was true yeah every word because you couldn't make it up you wouldn't i wouldn't know it right unless you did it yeah and i know it happened to me i'm saying this is dead right and why are they doing this to a kid because he has because he is stubborn and i was too and i love that about him but that's what's going to make kodak a big success i mean forget his success in music i'm talking about success as a person yeah he's going to grow up he's going to hopefully it doesn't damage him and there is a warrior and that's why we're doing this where do you think what's your next step and where do you think we should go okay so we have the commutation that's pending when is that pending it's pending now it's been pending for the past couple months when do you expect the decision either this week or next week it's got to be before the president leaves office the president's leaving office on the 20th so it has to be before the 20th we've had hashtag free kodak everybody's been tweeting towards potus p-o-t-u-s at potus and they're saying free kodak 46 months is too much for a paperwork offense everybody under the sun is tweeting to them um we've had a lot of support and then like i said all these uh big um uh black organizations that have been calling us a lot of black leaders have been calling us saying like this does this just doesn't make sense but this is that you know i'm calling for and i'm not a black guy because it's right is right right is right and that i mean i agree and they should have the black orders but they also should have other people they and they do they do we have uh we have support really across the board for this and paul yeah jake paul jay paul little pump so like all all the the people in the music industry are behind him i think just the regular average joe is behind him because no one can figure out it's 46 months for a paperwork offense it just doesn't sound right right and it and it's not it really is excessive and that's if he was serving it in a low right he's serving it in a maximum you have guys like michael cohen who was uh you know used to work for the trump organization no relation no relation turned on the president turned on the president gets out before his 50 is done and gets to uh uh gets to have house arrest because for reasons unbeknownst to me he's he has no pre-existing conditions or anything like that he gets house arrest he violates his house arrest they let him back out it's unbelievable the system is really very one-sided um i i don't think that uh you know in my opinion that anything that happened to kodak was really a fair um determination of a the facts and b where he should be placed and what he needs to go forward so well i know the cases i've seen are i mean i've seen cases get overextended too much time i've seen him piss off a federal judge and you know what happened their law obviously it might get overturned but by that time it takes three years i know a kid who cursed out a federal judge was going to get 18 months to judge him 10 years yeah now it was overturned but it took three years yeah sure so i i always say don't you want to curse somebody out curse the cop out curse the [ __ ] don't [ __ ] with the federal judge i'll tell you not to get off a codex subject but i had a case in orlando credit card fraud right they charged it under the credit card fraud where it's not a two-year min man because there is another one that's a two-year min man he was scoring six months prison zero to six months i talked to the prosecutor before i got there and prosecutors like i'm gonna go along with probation it wasn't really that big of a deal blah blah blah i show up in orlando it's an older uh an older judge and i i start to argue and all of a sudden i see it turn south he says that credit card fraud's the worst he seemed to be a victim of credit card fraud he's like it's the worst crime that you can possibly commit it's so horrible and then the prosecutor who's not my prosecutor he was out for the day sends in some other guy he says you know what judge our hands are tied though i said his hands aren't tight he offered he offered probation i don't understand what he's saying his hands are tied and the judge says you know what uh it's a horrible crime and i said listen so give him the six months i was going to ask for probation but if you think it's so horrible give him the top of the guidelines is six months and we'll call it a day no i'm giving them 24. gives them 24 this is a kid that thought okay i'm going to be in and out gives them 24 months i appeal i win the appeal from the 11th circuit but they a deny getting the judge off the case for the resentence so we're going back in front of the judge and b they don't address whether or not the 24 months is too high they just say he did it wrong he didn't sentence him correctly now we go back in front of him right now he knows everything that he did wrong he corrects himself everywhere of course now i'm indignant because at that point i know he's going to give we've already been in for 18. kid's getting out in two months so he's already been in for 18 months by the time the appeal comes through so he's only got two months to go so now i'm just indignant because he's not giving it more than 24 months so i go on you know my speech which you know i like to do about how unfair this is it's it's ridiculous the kid should have never gotten it and blah blah blah and the judge says okay you're done yeah 24 months so now and the kid gets out two months later you know i i i'm telling you i've been i know fred will judge i've been around on my deal on the court dear god don't ever [ __ ] with a federal judge don't tell people i don't give a [ __ ] who you are what you did in life don't [ __ ] with a federal judge it's true i watched a federal judge tell a state judge no matter what you do to him i can get him out what i do to you nobody can get you out to another [ __ ] judge a state judge yeah federal judges are [ __ ] uh you know that so and there are and listen i've been i've been in front of federal judge across the country right there's some federal judges that are like unbelievably great great fair smart uh well well well tempered um just great great federal judges um and then there's some that aren't so great you know i'll be honest with you in in kodak's case his judge he treated us with respect i think that in his mind he was giving a fair sentence because he kodak was scoring 56 and he was giving us a break to give him you know 46. i just think if we all took a step back from the case and really like looked at the crime itself and not really looked at just the guidelines which are our suggestions right they say it's the case right booker booker case i i want a case on that you know they say the washington case right so they say it is a suggestion but it really isn't most judges stick pretty pretty well by by uh by the guidelines but if we all took a step back from it and said man this kid is like 21 years old and i think if the judge knew he was going to be going to a maximum security prison i think that would have made a difference because i think he's a fair guy i i honestly do think he's a fair guy and i think he if he knew that he was going to a maximum security prison that b he wouldn't get rdap or any of the programs he was sentencing them to because i think in his mind the 46 months really after 85 percent and 18 months correct after after you do your 85 percent get a year halfway house you can do a lot of things so all of a sudden you're out in 17 or 18 months in his mind i think that that's what he believed when in reality now he's serving 46 months what worries me in the cases like this and i've seen him because a kid happened when i was there uh they get a short sentence but they go to a maximum screen to get killed correct and that really is sad or they do something bad in the in the middle because they have to survive a guy tries to rape them he stabs them or whatever happens because it's a different environment different environment he does not belong there and now you ruin a life over something that was all [ __ ] so let's get to the end where what can we do so what i would suggest is everyone get a board the the hashtag free kodak tweet to at potus p-o-t-u-s uh tell them that 46 months is too much for a paperwork offense and let's hope this commutation comes through i'm hopeful that it will uh there's several that are pending before the president that he's under consideration the press has said he's on a list for a commutation so that's good um but you know being on a list and getting it done are two different things and i i think i think if if the president and i think the uh the legal department of the white house look at this case in itself in a nutshell 46 months for a paperwork offense is crazy and the president has been good about that i remember he left the lady that got out and all that kind of he had it he hasn't it was a drug case was a stupid drunk game 20 years correct he's been he's been alice johnson he's been very fair with his his commutations up to this point i'm hoping that that continues and like i said hopefully that will come through what okay if nothing happens what's his what his is kodak's uh uh release date so his release date now is 2022 like the actual release date from the from the prison obviously you know that a that changes if he gets into a medium and he can do programs or he could lose good time or because there's really not much you get 95 correct but still that's 28 days that's i think 28 days a year correct like it was and i remember man i'd get in a fight there's another [ __ ] 28 days like it adds up it adds up it adds up it adds up so um so that's that and then also he's eligible for a halfway house probably this summer he's pro he'll be eligible for a halfway house because they did extend it to a year you know it used to be only six months correct now it's 12. yeah so he should be eligible for a halfway house this summer um but i'm hoping it doesn't get to that point and i'm hoping that the president realizes that you know like i said 46 we're looking for a commentation correct and uh let's let's talk right to kodak and i'll talk to him you know i hope you make a young man and we're going to try to help you in any way we can brad i know your lawyer has been on this with me and everybody else which you got to give him a lot of credit because he's not giving out he calls your son he i believe that i really do and uh as for all his fans i want you to make sure you go to uh there'll be links in this video right here down below where you can go you where you can tweet where you can email you can all even put brad's information in our contact and i'm sure he'll answer you or or somebody will answer in your office to help direct you in the right way to try to help them what would you like to say at the end oh i always talk to co i talk to kodak every week he knows that he's he's a great kid i i know that he's going to do great things um i'm hoping for the audience our audience except the help oh and push as much as we can yeah we got to push as much as we can that's the only thing that you can do in these situations is shed some light on it push as hard as you can push as much as you can tweet as much as you can text as much as you can you know i always call on uh on people you know attorneys on themselves they can do a lot of work right but like to really do a case and really to make a difference you need like an army behind you you need an army behind you with a voice and that really takes it to another level and i've always found the most successful cases that i've had people understood the plight of the defendant they understood what was going on they understood what happened they understood how these things fell into place and and it was beneficial um and i'm hoping that that'll be the case here i gotta agree you know uh brad i've seen him he's passionate about his clients and and what he believes in and i and it is criminal justice reform and stuff like that he's not just doing it he's doing it for all the right reasons all right brad i want to thank you guys thank you have a great show people please check out the links below make sure you check all our stuff out if you haven't subscribed subscribe uh and keep it going go to discord we're gonna push something on discord with this as well mike cook all right everybody have a great day stay safe don't go to jail yourself take care

Channel: Larry Lawton

Views: 35,684

Keywords: rap, prison, kodak black, rappers, lawsuit, prison reform, lawton, slammer, brad cohen, prison sentence, kodak black prison, gangster redemption, kodak black sentencing, kodak black sentence, kodak black news, prison abuse, kodak black now, kodak black court, kodak black life, kodak black abuse, sentencing reform, kodak black arrest, kodak black lawyer, kodak black lawsuit, kodak black 4 point, kodak black penetentary, kodak black then, freekodak, free kodak black, fair sentence

Id: _X2uBdAuCKs

Length: 48min 2sec (2882 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 12 2021