SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Beat the Prosecution, presented by Northern Virginia criminal defense and DUI lawyer Jonathan Katz, where we are here to regularly present you information and ideas for beating your prosecution as best as possible. Nothing on any of our media sources, such as our podcast or website, is legal advice. John Katz only provides legal advice to current clients or for individuals who have paid for a consultation. And now for your host, John Katz.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Hello everybody. This is John Katz, the Beat the Prosecution. I'm a criminal defense and DUI defense lawyer here in Fairfax, Northern Virginia. I am absolutely delighted to have today's guest. His name is Fleet Mole. I've only waited enough over a year to try to get him on as a guest. Maybe it's because I contacted him the wrong place. I was contacting him on Facebook, and then I tried another way. Fleet Mole has a very fascinating biography. I first heard about him because he was involved with uh the prison mindfulness uh folks. And uh he was in DC over 10 years ago, and I went to part of his program that he was at, and he was dynamite with a uh meditation and just dynamite with so much else. You're gonna hear from him, and he's got two books, and I recommend both of them. One is called Dharma in Hell, which talks about his time in prison hell, 14 years or was it 15 years in federal prison for a drug case that caught up with him after, I guess, years of dormancy. And he's also has radical responsibility and fleet. What's the third one called again?

SPEAKER_03 1:42

The resilience do. The resilient correction as in correctional officer.

SPEAKER_01 1:47

The resilience CO. Fleet, I ask you to introduce yourself and uh at any time that you think it's ready for us to do a short sip, I would love that as well.

SPEAKER_03 1:58

Great. You you want me to introduce myself?

SPEAKER_01 2:01

Yes, please. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 2:02

Yeah, so my name is uh Dr. Fleet Mall, and I'm the founder of Prison Dharma Network, which has three divisions involved in uh criminal justice and social action. Uh Prison Mindfulness Institute, which brings uh mindfulness-based interventions to at-risk incarcerated and returning youth and adults, uh, the Center for Mindfulness and Public Safety, which brings mindfulness-based interventions to public safety professionals, correctional officers, probation and parole officers, community police, and other first responders. Uh, and then the Engaged Mindfulness Institute, where we train mindfulness teachers to um to work with uh individuals and populations that have been placed at risk or are marginalized, under resourced in various ways. Um and uh yeah, so those three divisions within Prison Dharma Network. And then I also uh uh am involved with HeartMind Institute, which I founded uh in 2020, and we do mindfulness-based programming uh of all kinds, kind of at the intersection of uh current neuroscience, positive psychology, and ancestral wisdom and all the contemplative traditions of the world. And uh we do a lot of big summits, um uh rewiring your brain for this or that, healing your deepest wounds, somatic healing, things like that. And um uh yeah, so uh as uh I think uh you shared, I I spent uh 14 years in prison from 1985 to 1999, and uh worked very hard at turning my life around while I was in there, and that paid off because I've had nothing but opportunities since I got out to get out in the world and serve. And so it's uh uh it's great. I live I live on the East Coast with my with my beloved wife Sophie and and our dog Kiku. And yeah, that's that's who I am.

SPEAKER_01 4:01

Okay, well, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna keep uh talk with you until you say that it's a good time for a short sit.

SPEAKER_03 4:09

Oh, we could start off with that if you like. That would be great. Okay, great.

SPEAKER_01 4:15

I'm ready for you to lead.

SPEAKER_03 4:17

All right. Well, I would invite everyone to, and how will how long would you like to do that?

SPEAKER_01 4:22

As long as you want, anywhere from one minute to five.

SPEAKER_03 4:25

Okay, all right. So I would invite everyone to just find your way into a comfortable posture, one that feels relatively open, awake, uplifted, whatever works for you. And I would invite you to either lower your eyes, lower your gaze, or perhaps close your eyes altogether if you're comfortable with that. And just let yourself gradually sort of come into the body into this felt experience, this felt sensate physical experience we call body. Very often our attention is up in the head area because we're very cognitively focused, visually and auditorily focused. So perhaps just letting your attention drop down to your neck and shoulders, upper body, down to your waist and hips and buttocks, upper legs, lower legs, all the way down to the soles of your feet. And just to take a moment to allow yourself to feel just to feel whatever you're feeling in this moment, physically, emotionally, without needing to change it in any way, shape, or form. Just feeling it. And simply allowing ourselves to be just as we are in this moment, to be just as we are and to feel whatever we're feeling.

SPEAKER_02 5:57

Nowhere to go, nothing to do, nothing to do.

SPEAKER_03 6:50

Self-compassion, self-acceptance. Perhaps most importantly, curiosity, a deep longing to become to know ourselves, our own being, our own body, heart, and mind, and perhaps a little deeper level by just dropping in and allowing ourselves to feel allowing ourselves a more being in the midst of all the busy doing. And keeping in mind that our entire body all the way down to the bones and including the bones, is a living organism, all containing neural cells connected to the central nervous system, and thus all sensory, all feeling.

SPEAKER_02 8:02

Allow yourselves to drop in ever more deeply into the body, being curious about feeling into the internal sensations into the body. All the sensations we can feel.

SPEAKER_01 9:14

Thank you, Fleet. That was excellent.

SPEAKER_03 9:18

You're very welcome, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 9:20

Um, do you uh okay, what is your URL or your preferred URLs to share with everybody?

SPEAKER_03 9:27

Well, my basic website is fleetmall.com, fleetmall.com. They can start there, and through there you can find our prison work. Uh specifically, you could go to prisonmindfulness.org. And if you want to find out about more about my style of teaching medicine uh meditation that I call neurosomatic mindfulness, as well as all the summits and other programs we do, you could also check out Heartmind Institute, which is heartmind.co, heartmind.co.

SPEAKER_01 9:54

And fleet mall is spelled f-l-e-e-t, mall, m-a-u-l-l. That's correct. Do you call yourself, how do you pronounce it, Acharya, uh, much these days?

SPEAKER_03 10:06

No, I usually use uh if I'm gonna use a formal title, it's uh it's doctor or um or Roshi for my uh role in the I'm not uh I'm still deeply involved in the Tibetan Buddhist uh tradition as my personal practice, but I'm not really functioning as an acharya right now, but I am still functioning as a Roshi in the Zen tradition. So I usually use Roshi mall or Documol, but please call me fleet.

SPEAKER_01 10:35

I definitely want to get to that part. What I also definitely want to include today is for you to talk to uh my clients and future clients and other criminal defendants and inmates and their families about how to deal with that. But before we get to that, uh, do you remember, I don't know if you remember what you said, because it may have been in the moment. The only other time I've been in a sit with you, this was at some historic building, I think, in the DuPont Circle area of DC. It was around 2008, 2009, thereabouts. And when we were doing this sit, I think you said something along the lines of uh, for instance, if you have any interfering thoughts and or uncomfortable thoughts, I thought your phrase was something like it's part of who you are. Do you remember the phrase that you were using? Because I think I thought that was great.

SPEAKER_03 11:22

Uh the phrase was it's part of who you are?

SPEAKER_01 11:25

Well, that's my recollection. I'm trying to have you help me remember.

SPEAKER_03 11:29

Yeah, well, it it could be. I mean, uh it is. I was I would suggest that in some ways it is and it isn't. Uh on on one, on one hand, everything we experience is part of who we are, obviously. And we're interconnected with everything and every, you know, everyone and everything in the universe. So it's all part of who we are. And at the same time, thoughts can be very impersonal. They can be simply like noise on the radio. I remember watching a video of a retreat that was being offered um by uh I think uh Joseph Goldstein and Jack Gordonfield out in California. This was a video we had in prison of a retreat. And during one session, they uh either Joseph or Jack, I don't remember which one, suggested to the participants who are sitting in rows during this next session of mindfulness meditation practice, uh it's kind of a thought experiment. Why don't you just imagine that all the busy thoughts you're having are actually coming from someone in the row behind you? Because they may as well be. It's kind of that impersonal, right? Because we get over-identified with our thoughts. That's one of the things that makes them very sticky. And uh we remain attached to them and caught up in them, and it fuels more thinking and more. Uh, in current neuroscience terms, one of the um one of the neural networks or collection of neural networks in the brain is known as the default mode network, which is active when we don't direct our attention. And it, you know, it's responsible for the busy mind, what sometimes meditators call the monkey mind, like a big tree full of chattering monkeys, or um, you know, very discurt, a lot of discursive thoughts. It loves to time travel into the past, ruminate about the past, loves to time travel into the imagined future and and worry about the future, fantasize about the future, keeps a running commentary going on about the present, about me, what others think about me. It's where we constantly reinforce the separate sense of self. So all that thinking up there, yes, it's part of who we are, but on the other hand, it's certainly not all we are, and uh um and uh it's kind of a lot of it's kind of impersonal, almost like static on the radio. Having said that, it really depends on one perspective, because that's kind of a relative perspective. From an ultimate perspective, the very nature of cognitive activity, the very arising of thought, can also be said to be the expressive nature of awakened mind.

SPEAKER_01 13:54

Yes. And uh in your book, Radical Responsibility and what you dealt with at that uh gathering went with uh went to with you, uh, I think you include talking about uh what is it, uh not reading, but uh uh uh uh and not judging, but but giving a characterization to what to what the moment's like. Uh help me out here. What's that phrase you use?

SPEAKER_03 14:22

Well, I think generally uh in in the practice of mindfulness, it's very helpful to cultivate an attitudinal quality of non-judgment, right? You know, and just allowing our experience to be as it is. Uh, and of course we'll find ourselves judging, and we don't want to, you know, and then when oh, I wasn't supposed to judge, so now I'll judge myself for judging, and oh, I wasn't supposed to do that, so we catch ourselves judging ourselves for judging ourselves for judging ourselves. At some point we just have to smile and appreciate the absurdity of all that. But over time we can relax the layers of judgment, the conditioning around constantly judging things and evaluating things, and you know, the strong preferential mind we have that we want things to be this way or that way. You know, the process of uh, you know, the practice is just being with our experience as it is. Over time, that will cultivate a quality of equanimity, a greater capacity to just be with things as they are, without continually trying to manipulate our experience or or have it change or be the way we want it to be, what for whatever reasons, which is mostly conditioning. Um so um so non-judgment is a good attitude and quality to be cultivating. And I also probably mentioned the idea of non-blaming, uh, you know, of uh because when we blame, when you know, if we're feeling a certain way, you know, uh we're experiencing something we're uncomfortable about in whatever way, shape, or form, and we blame people or situations outside of ourselves for what we're feeling, we're basically putting situations outside of ourselves or people outside of ourselves in charge of our feelings because we can't control any of that. And so we don't get to feel different until they change. So it doesn't really make sense to give our power away in that way. We all do it, uh, but you know, upon closer examination, uh, it doesn't make so much sense. So uh I think it's more efficient use of our energy to focus on okay, if there's a situation that I'm not so happy or about or comfortable with, uh first of all, being curious about is there any way I kind of created this or at least contributed to it, not for blaming myself, but just to learn, because if I see how I created something or how I participated in something, I can make different choices in the future to get different results. But you know, maybe I don't see that had anything to do with it, but I can still choose, okay, how am I going to respond to this? What's the most creative way I can respond that's gonna lead my own life forward in a good way? And if I have a relatively long-term perspective on that, what we often call, you know, uh enlightened self-interest, uh, which is usually a longer-term perspective, that usually works out to be in everybody everyone else's interest as well. Because when I think long-term, you know, we're all interconnected. So on a long-term basis, our our needs and our uh all intersect in in different ways, right? I mean, in the short term, if I'm angry, it might feel good to punch somebody or yell at somebody, but in the long term, I could end up in jail or in court or, you know, so um if I think long term, though, the best thing here is to take a breath and slow down and uh try to understand why I'm upset to begin with and see if it's even, you know, if that's you know, really going is anything to do with what's going on out there, or if it's all just mounted up, and if it does have anything to do with what's going on out there, is this the only way I can respond to it? Or am I holding it in such a way that's causing me to be more upset that if I reframed it and held it in a different way? I mean, how can I work with this and reclaim my power to be choosing my response to life rather than just being caught in reactivity that may or may not work out so well?

SPEAKER_01 18:05

That's all excellent. And if I'm gonna convince my clients not to get upset at the smallest little things, was perhaps the phrase you were using in your book, something along the lines of circumstances are neutral or something is neutral.

SPEAKER_03 18:19

Yeah, that's that's the great discovery if we really do this work. And in in my workshops, I I lead people through an experiential process to really to experientially get that distinction. Um and you know, it's a tough one. Usually we get to that point in a workshop and we land that and people go, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it. And then they start thinking about more, well, yeah, but what about this and what about that circumstance? And are you saying if that happened, that would be neutral? Are you crazy, you know? So uh, you know, some circumstances are pretty neutral that we in fact do find ourselves getting upset about. But um but the statement circumstances are neutral is not a value statement about the circumstances. Some circumstances are are are most of us would agree are terrible, or they may even be criminal or negligent or really terrif uh horrific. Um in some circumstances most of us would think were were pretty good, right? Uh although, you know, you never know how things are going to unfold. There's that famous story, I think it's uh I think it might be a Sufi story, I'm not sure, about the the the uh father who's it involves his son, you know, potentially being taken away to the army, drafted into the army, and has something to do with a horse who was the the horse was stolen, horse broke the leg. But anyway, there's something happens, the person goes, oh, how terrible. And the farmer goes, well, actually, no, because because of that happened, this good thing happened. And the person goes, Oh, how wonderful. Well, no, because that this other thing happened, right? So uh it's a that's an interesting story if people are familiar with it. Um, but you know, um, you know, even something people have probably all heard about, you know, the idea of winning the lottery, most of us agree, wow, what could happen better than winning the lottery? Actually, from what I've read anyway, the majority of people who win the lottery end up losing all the money in their lives end up not going so well. Uh so I don't know. But at any rate, um uh, you know, some circumstances most of us would agree are are pretty terrible. And um uh so the neutrality is not a value statement, it's pointing towards choice. Right. We always have a choice about how we're going to respond to a circumstance. And, you know, in some cases, it may be completely reasonable to seek accountability or seek justice, or or we may need support, or we may need to have it validated that we were in fact victimized in some way. But at some point, uh if we get lost in, you know, the sense of victimization and never come back to, okay, yes, this happened to me, it shouldn't happen to anybody, it's horrible, it's terrible. I need support, I need validation, uh, I want to seek accountability. But do I want to make my whole identity in life about this? Or do I want to find the most creative way I can move forward with my life and you know, uh perhaps turn you know, lemons into lemonade, even. You know, there's like so many stories like the woman who founded the organization called MAD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Um, you know, she lost her son to a drunk driver. Uh, of course, you know, this is right up your bally work, right? And as a DUI attorney.

SPEAKER_01 21:31

Well, I I wish that I wish that group didn't exist. They they get a lot of legislation passed that doesn't help my clients, but I hear what you're saying.

SPEAKER_03 21:38

Yeah, well, fortunately, at some point the the original organization, I think, was called Mothers Against Drunk Drivers, and they decided to make it less personal and made it Mothers Against Drunk Driving. But at any rate, uh, it's a classic example of someone who experienced something terrible and then went out and tried to one one of the ways they transformed that for themselves was to go out and try to prevent. That from happening to others, right?

SPEAKER_01 22:02

You are my second guest on the podcast who's been incarcerated. The other one was for short stints. Actually, he enjoyed it. Tony Sarah would do short stints in uh uh low security uh prisons for not filing his income taxes, enjoyed doing the gardening and helping the other inmates. Your situation was hardcore. So if you maybe walk the audience through a little bit about uh what made you uh come to Chogyam Chungpa Rinpoche, the extent to which you know Mike uh Michael Carroll, who's uh who's also been on uh uh on this show, and and then you know how that felt when you found out you were being prosecuted and going through the whole situation where you then got convicted and incarcerated and and and what plans you made for for making the best out of your incarceration or for what you would do afterwards, including the you had a son already at the time you got convicted, as I if I recall correctly.

SPEAKER_03 22:55

Yeah, that's all correct. Um, so um uh, you know, I uh from an early age I was always a spiritual seeker, but I also, you know, kind of came into adolescence, young adulthood with a big hole in my gut and a lot of anger because of uh I didn't really understand it that much at the time. But uh, we had alcoholism in my family. And I grew up in a basically good middle-class Roman Catholic family Roman Catholic family in the Midwest. But my beloved mother suffered from kind of episodic alcoholism. She didn't drink all the time, but sometimes once a week, sometimes every other week, on a really bad week, twice a week, you'd come home from school and you could tell she'd been drinking, and things would just get worse from there. And and my father would get home from work and things would just go into chaos and things being thrown, and uh about and you know, and at some point she would pass out and you'd wake up in the morning and come down for breakfast. There was beloved mom making breakfast like nothing ever happened, and it was never discussed. So that creates a real splitting in one's psyche. And also if my father wasn't home and my brother was, he was six years older than I was, so he was pretty soon away at school. Uh, you know, so if my father wasn't home, uh my mother would come after me, you know, and and get violent with me. And I remember at around nine or ten going into a room and threatening her that if she ever touched me again, I I don't know what I said, I'd kick her ass or something, which was felt like a terrible thing to have to do, but I did stick up for myself. I feel I finally realized I was big enough I didn't have to put up with that anymore. I don't remember exactly what age that was. But at any rate, all that, you know, leaves an imprint on you pretty deeply. And so I came into adolescence with uh all that stuff and um um and graduated from high school in 1968, a very tumultuous year in in US history with all the assassinations, the Kent State murders, and um so uh I just went headlong into the cult counterculture at that time and uh got caught up in all the craziness of it. But I was also a spiritual seeker, and so um uh, you know, actually in the summer of 1966, uh the famous Summer of Love, if you lived in San Francisco, I was in Missouri, we weren't quite that uh progressive in Missouri, but um at any rate that very summer I discovered Buddhism and realized I was probably a a Buddhist, uh initially reading Zen Buddhist books, and uh I discovered marijuana, discovered LSD, and uh maybe sex and alcohol, the same, you know, I don't know at the same time. So anyway, things unfolded from there. And um uh before I could untangle all that, I did meet Trunk Brampache and became a close student of his and did a three-year clinical training program in integration of Buddhist and Western psychotherapies at Neuropa University um while still having all this shadow activity going on. Uh I had gone and lived in South America as an expat, an kind of angry young man expat for years before I found Trunk Brampache. I was actually down there when I heard about him founding Neuropa University in Boulder, Colorado, originally Neuropa Institute. And um, so I was living in as an expat in South America, and I'd gotten into small, small-scale drug smuggling, or initially even just being a connection down there for smugglers, but then some small, small-scale drug smuggling as a way to just live outside his system. And and I I justified that with all this us versus them thinking and so forth. And um, but anyway, before I could untangle all that, um I ended up getting indicted. Uh and um others I had quit, uh, but others who continued decided to invite me to the party when they got busted, so to speak. And um uh I had kept a secret from my community and my family and my teacher. But it so at this point I let all of them know, and I uh asked him what he thought I should do, whether I should go on the run or stay in faces, or whether this is my karma, or is this some kind of you know, Reagan-era uh stuff that I should get away from, or and he thought about it for a little bit and then he felt I should stay because he he was very practical-minded. He basically said, if you know, if you're on the run, it's gonna be very difficult for you to continue your Dharmic path or for to be my student. Uh, if you go to prison, even if you go for a long time, you can still practice, and you can still be my student, you can still dedicate your, you know, uh your life to uh practice. And so that was about the first time I ever took anybody's advice. Generally, if you wanted me to do something, just tell me to do the opposite prior to that. But uh anyway, I I did I did decide to turn myself in. And because I refused to cooperate, um, and I didn't I wasn't trying to be a stand-up guy, particularly. Um uh I was a Buddhist, had longtime Buddhist, and the idea that you know I would trade my time for somebody else's time or somebody else's family would suffer so that I would suffer less, it just didn't square with me. It never Good for you. I I just could never imagine doing that, so I refused to testify. But plenty of people that knew me and didn't know me, you know, they draw a big net, and uh evidently there were lots of people that I had never met that were somehow tangentially involved. But anyway, a whole lot of people, including some people that I was associated pretty directly with and knew pretty well, and I thought ostensibly were friends, decided it would be a better idea for me to do time than for them to do time. And um so anyway, I got designated the kingpin. Um, and uh I didn't really feel I deserved that designation, so I that's the only reason I went to court. I had five counts, some drug smuggling and different things, and but I went to court because I didn't feel I was guilty of that Kingpin statute, the so-called uh, I think continuous criminal enterprise statute. CCE. CCE, and it carries a no-parole sentence, uh and uh uh you know, a very serious offense and very potentially serious consequences, even life in prison without parole. So I did go to court, but uh I was found guilty on all counts, and uh actually uh so I ended up in prison and so forth. Uh just because you're a prosecutor and because of this podcast, I'll share a little bit of a criminal defense lawyer, not a prosecutor. I mean a criminal defense lawyer here, right. Sorry. Uh because of that, I'll sorry about I'll uh I'll share a little bit of this. But but before I do that, basically, you know, when I got to prison, I realized um, you know, really the jig was up for me, and and uh that I'd pretty much torched my life. Uh initially I was sentenced to 30 years no parole, and I was 35. The paper next morning said I'd be 65 before I have any chance of release. And I was really devastated over what I'd uh done to my son, who was nine years old at the time, and all my justifications for all the things I've been involved in just really began to crumble. And I was just devastated over what I'd done to myself, more importantly, what I'd done to my son, and how I'd let my family down, my teacher down. And um so I realized that, you know, uh the only way I was gonna survive my time or have any kind of life in prison, much less any possibility of a life after prison, if I even got out or ever got out, because I had no surety or even strong belief or confidence that I would survive my time. Um, I realized I had to take like 1,000% for having got myself in there, what I was gonna do with it, and what I could create for myself in that situation. And I also realized once I got there that I was in an incredibly negative, corrosive environment where everybody was walking around with a huge victim story. And I didn't want to live that way in prison. I didn't want to come out of prison broken and bitter with a big victim mindset. Uh so I knew I had to very proactively work to not absorb that mindset and that culture while at the same time embracing this was going to be my home and these were gonna be my my um uh brothers and sisters for uh quite a long time. So um having said, so I I made that choice, and my whole philosophy of radical responsibility was kind of birthed there and it served me very well. It allowed me to start all kinds of programs in prison you're not supposed to be able to start, start two national organizations and catalyze two national movements while I was in prison, all of all of which prisoners are not supposed to be able to do. But it really all came out of that responsibility of radical responsibility, radical ownership. Having said that, um, you know um I was sentenced before 1987, uh, fortunately. Yes I benefited from a lot of good time under the old law. So on 30 years, if I managed to stay out of trouble, I would have served 18 and a half. My appeal took uh about two and a half years to go through the courts, and on appeal they knocked off one count, the conspiracy count. They charge you, it's a matter of regular practice, they charge you with conspiracy NCEE because it really confuses the journey, jury, and you really should, you know, and it's it's there's real strong case law saying you're not supposed to be charged with both because of that fact. But once once on appeal, they never give you a new trial, they just throw out the lower conspiracy count. And at any rate, that did reduce my sentence by five years because I had an aggregate sentence made up from the five different counts. So I was grateful that it reduced my sentence by five years. Uh when I actually went through trial, you know, the the uh the prosecution spent about three weeks prosecuting me, spent brought in a special uh prosecutor from I think the Baltimore area, some organized crime task force people. And, you know, my family, uh I screwed up. I through my own mistakes, there was a thin thread of my involvement they could trace back to St. Louis where I grew up. So they did the trial there, mainly because my family was prominent there and they knew they'd get a lot of press, and they did get a huge amount of press, and uh that's one of my deep regrets, is the shame that brought to my family. Um so uh they made a big deal out of it, and the prosecution's case took about three weeks, and my my defense was about two and a half days. You know, that's what I could afford. And um uh and when it went to the jury, the jury was uh, first of all, they you know, judge raised the jury instructions, as you well know, and that takes a long time, and I everybody in course fallen asleep, including the jury. And and then they send the jury out, and I know about an hour later, not very long, um, the jury asked for a copy of the jury instructions. Uh the judge refused to give it to them, and they came back 15 minutes later guilty on all counts. Crazy. Yeah, that that also should have probably got me a new trial, but it didn't. So there's all that going, right? Um also, as I said, many of my formerly close associates, some few of whom I've considered friends, you know, uh decided to have me do all that time while they went free. Um and um uh so some of them went free, some of them served just a very little bit of time. Um and um and and while while you're being prosecuted, even while you're being investigated, the government breaks all the all their own rules, they break the law, they do all kinds of, they play hardball and they make no bones about it. And um so I could have focused on all that. Um and uh I just made the choice not to. I said it's not gonna do me a damn bit of good to focus on all that. Um it is what it is. It's like, you know, if you go to the zoo and put your head in a lion's cage, you're liable to get your head bit off, right? So um I definitely stuck my head between the bars uh of the federal system. And uh, you know, um so at any rate, I decided to focus on what I can do with this time to add as much value to this community I'm gonna be part of now for a long time. And how can I train myself to continue my path and and um and uh leave a better legacy for my son than just his dad went to prison or even his dad died in prison, and uh and have some possibility of creating a life for myself when I get out. And once my appeal went through and my sentence was reduced to 25, then I knew I would serve 14 and a half on that 25, which I did, 14 inside, six months in a halfway house and house arrest. Um, I did manage to stay out of trouble, which is not easy in prison. There's trouble waiting around every corner all day long, every day. And uh, but I did manage to do so m mostly through mindfulness. I probably avoided, I mean, I I had um I've often shared the story over those 14 years, I had about six encounters that could have gotten really, really bad. Wow. And I, you know, I had to stand up in those six encounters. You can't run away, you can't, yeah, you gotta stand up for yourself. And uh and I did and went toe-to-toe. Unfortunately, I got through all six of those without getting hurt or hurting anybody else. Um, but I probably avoided thousands of situations, literally thousands of situations, by being mindful and aware and seeing things coming, uh, and also learning to carry myself in a way that was not passive, which invites predators, and not uh belligerent, which invites challengers, right? So I learned to carry myself with awareness and you know I stayed focused, was very disciplined, uh, stayed busy, I wasn't hanging out. So I avoided thousands of possibly terrible situations, and and I I did get through um through my time and served those 14 years inside and was able to do a lot of good while I was there. And and as I said before, I've had not had nothing but opportunity since I was released in 1999.

SPEAKER_01 36:46

As you were talking, many things came to mind, including the harsh distinction between uh that uh scene in uh Jim Chamwish's down by law, or one of the inmates is going nut so that one of his other one of his soulmates would uh put a scratch on the wall for each day that they were there, because that would just emphasize how how slow time was marching on. And then I juxtaposed that to what you were doing in in uh prison to make it productive. What uh Gene Harris was doing, uh who was the uh the headmistress of the Madeira school after being convicted of killing her her her lover, helping to create a school or or or or teaching uh inmates there. And even Bill Cosby.

SPEAKER_03 37:31

Yeah, she was at Bedford Springs, right? No, not Bedford Springs. What's it called?

SPEAKER_01 37:36

The name of the school?

SPEAKER_03 37:37

No, the uh the prison where she did her time in New York in New York State. It's a well-known prison in New York State, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:43

And then there was Bill Cosby also, apparently, who was helping the other inmates, and that blew me away.

SPEAKER_03 37:50

Yeah, so you know, I just uh there were uh two things really kind of driving me. Um at least two principles, and maybe a lot of things. I think just my own inner, you know, I I grew up, even though uh the problems we had in our home, I I was you had a lot of good values instilled in me through my upbringing. And um, and but I had on the one hand, I had my son who was growing up without his dad, and and his mom, who was originally from Peru, moved back to Peru. And so, you know, it was the deep pain the most painful thing about being in prison was being separated from my son and my community and so forth. But mostly my son, it was incredibly painful. And I stayed in touch with him by correspondence as best I could. My family brought him up a few times back to the U.S. for visits, but mostly, you know, I didn't see him much. And uh so I was incredibly painful. And so I was very motivated again to create a better legacy for him than just his dad went to prison. And then at the same time, I also had the example of my spiritual teacher, Chogim Chungper Bush, who um, you know, in my experience with him, just 24-7 was focused on uh benefiting humanity and awakening people and serving serving humanity. And so I had that example, and and so I was just, you know, kind of thrown into this hell realm of of tremendous suffering. The this uh Maxim Street Federal Prison Hospital that had a thousand patients, 600 medical, 400 psychiatric, uh in a psychiatric wing infamous 10 building written about in Jack Abbott's book, The Belly of the Beast. Um and uh and about 300 regular uh prisoners that were there to help run the place. I was in, they called the work cadre. I was part of that, and I taught school for 14 years, was my day job. And um, so uh, you know, I was in this really hellish place full of suffering, men dying of, you know, right in the middle of the AIDS epidemic, and just you know, terrible stuff going on, both in the medical and psychiatric side. And and um so I was thrown in there uh with you know the proper motivations, I guess, and uh things driving me that I just started showing up, seeing, okay, I I'm here, you know, how can I how can I be abuse here? And uh and so that worked out well and led to the rest of my life unfolding the way it has.

SPEAKER_01 40:10

Uh to what extent are you familiar with hoonopono and uh to what extent have you practice hoopono?

SPEAKER_03 40:18

Well, I am familiar with it. I it's been I've been introduced to it at different times in in my life. Uh um the idea of um I think it's uh I'm sorry, I love you, and thank you, something like that. Uh yeah, I think oh overall, and that's a really interesting thing about our criminal justice system and and our uh the way it is. Um as I mentioned before, I found most of my fellow prisoners, well, the staff as well. Uh it's really interesting the the the they're almost reflections of each other sometimes, and a and a lot of people that end up in corrections could have ended up in prison. They sometimes come from the same neighborhoods and um they have the same tattoos, and you know, um not universally, but in many cases. So but at any rate, there's a lot of victim mindsets on both sides. But among the prisoners, um, you know, when you're incarcerated, when when you're even arrested, the whole process of being arrested and booked and then tried, and if you're sentenced and then incarcerated, it's just this unfolding process of shaming, either by intent or by default. I I'm not sure which, but it's just this continual process of shaming and demonization and stripping of your humanity. And so, and it's really an assault. You're being buried under this mountain of shame, and you're being turned into a number and a non-entity and uh and you know, stripped of your humanity. So human beings naturally, just instinctively are trying to survive psychologically, emotionally, much less and as well as physically. And so we armor up, you know, we armor ourselves up psychologically and emotionally with anger and with a with a big victim story. And of course, m most people end up in prison, probably have been victim. Most of them probably had terrible childhoods, and have been victim, in fact, most of them did have terrible childhoods and have been victimized in many ways and traumatized in many ways. And that's how they end up in addiction and crime and so forth. And then many people are over-prosecuted, and there's tremendous racism uh by design or default in our system in terms of who gets arrested, who gets prosecuted, how much uh what they get charged with, and then the sentences they get, right? Tremendous amount of uh uh racism by designer by default there. And so, you know, there has been a lot of victimization. But at any rate, the problem with with developing that that armoring of anger and one's own victim story is it prevents one from feeling any genuine remorse or regret over the negative impact one's actions did have on someone or on society. Now, there are a few people that end up in prison who are innocent, um, but it's certainly um a minority. It's a it's a small number, and thank goodness there's uh projects like the Innocent Project, Innocence Project that have gotten many people um off death row because of uh uh through um um DNA samples and so forth. But the majority of prison people in prison did do something. Uh and in many cases they were programmed to do it by the circumstance of their childhood. But nonetheless, I mean we still have to hold ourselves accountable, and if people are doing harm, they've got to at least be stopped and given an opportunity to change, change how they're showing up in life. So, but at any rate, the the real problem there is then one uh one arm us up such that one doesn't then have access to feeling the genuine remorse and regret, which for me is foundational to real transformation, really the path of transformation. So initially, when I was arrested and and then charged and then sentenced, you know, I really hit this wall and had to face all the incredibly selfish and ignorant disciples. Decisions I'd made for so long, and all the justifications I had were falling apart, and mainly because of what I'd done to my son. But, you know, I still had some justifications around, you know, the fact that I'd been involved with drugs and a counterculture, and you know, I what I was smuggling was cocaine. And, you know, back then in the 70s, everybody was doing it, judges and lawyers were doing it. You know, I, you know, we had I had that mentality, right? And um so I that didn't fall apart immediately, completely. Um, but then I very quickly, when I once I got to that federal prison where I did my time, I immediately went up to the ANNA group to deal with I needed to deal with my own substance abuse issues, right? My own alcohol issues. And so sitting in that group on a on a weekly basis, listening to one man after the male prison, listening to one man after another describe how their life completely unraveled and how their family's life unraveled around drugs and often around cocaine, uh, you know, all my f justifications just finally fell apart. I could I couldn't hold on to one thread of self-justification. And I had to face the fact that I'd been involved in something, not only that's antithetical to the Buddhist past, certainly a violation of the Buddhist precepts, but something that was actually very harmful, being involved in a whole world of drugs. And uh so I really had to, you know, that's when I really contacted deep, deep feelings of regret. And and I had this really ongoing moment to moment prayer and daily prayer, hourly prayer, that if I could at least not cause any more harm. Yes. I'd like to do something good with my life, but could I at least not do any more harm? And then, you know, the whole process of of uh uh of uh you know remorse and expressions of remorse. I mean, I in the 12-step work I did my four-step, which where you do a fearless moral inventory of yourself. And I went back through my whole life and all, you know, a lot of the images I have myself of being this good guy, not that I don't have a good guy in me, but you know, I had to face all the really selfish decisions I make, even my own rules and values. I had violated them at different times. All that I really just went through it, the whole thing and and really was in that process of making amends. And, you know, so the the honopono thing of of it's really a pathway through remorse and regret. Um, and by remorse I don't mean guilt or self-shaming. I mean genuine regret, recognition of the harm one has caused and then the real wanting to repair and the real the real sense of uh how we reconnect uh ourselves with each other, with people, with humanity, with the world, by these expressions of regret, these expressions of of um apology, these expressions of love and and these expressions of forgiveness.

SPEAKER_01 47:00

And and the reason I brought up Hopono Pono is the same reason I bring up uh Ram Das, the same thing where Ram Das would say, instead of working to change uh other people, we gotta work on ourselves. But what I like with you is there are people who want the advice, and you're giving the advice for the people who want it. You're talking about uh getting beyond blame and shame. You're talking about having, you know, I think you wrote in Darm and Hell how you would uh sweat like a pig, was it, going into the boom closet because that was the only place where you could meditate where no one would bug you. Uh do I have that right?

SPEAKER_03 47:35

Yeah, initially, um you know, a lot of people have this image of prisoners in a jail cell. Most prisoners end up in these big dorms. And I in the prison I was in, we started off in these 28-man dorms. So there'd be 14 bunk beds in there, and you start off on a top bunk, and they're incredibly noisy, chaotic, crazy places. And through good behavior and seniority, because people are leaving, moving, you know, and you get to a lower bunk and then you get to a smaller room. I always worked out so I could stay in the upper bunk because there was room to sit and meditate up there. If you were in a lower bunk, you didn't have head clearance. So I didn't want to lose the possibility of moving to a smaller room, so I would kind of make a deal that I could stay up there. And so I went by anyway from a 28-room room to like a 20-man to an 18 to a 12. It took me, I think, two and a half years to finally get to one of the few single cells they had on that unit. I was on a unit that was originally a hospital wing designed for 50 patients, and there were 185 men on that floor, no air conditioning in southern Missouri. Um, and um it was a powder keg and uh uh really crazy. And but there were originally there were uh four plus six originally there were ten single rooms or cells. Uh eventually they doubled up um uh six of those, and only four remained. And I I may it took me about two and a half years to get one. I managed to hang on to it for the rest of my time, which is not easy because uh you know they inspect your room every day. If they find some dust in a corner, they could kick you, you could lose your room. So it's kind of like a military situation. You gotta make your bed military style and all that kind of stuff. So at any rate, um uh I would uh when I was living in those big dorms, the only place I the best place I could find to do extensive meditation practice was the trash closet. And I would empty everything out, put things outside the door so people who wanted to use the mops and stuff could get access. And I would take a metal folding chair in there and sit in there and practice for two, three hours at a time on weekends and so forth. And uh it was very interesting. Eventually, some of the um Muslim prisoners um uh saw me doing that, and they decided, oh, that would be a good place for them to put out their prayer rug and do their prayer rug. So we then had to kind of negotiate use of the trash closets. But eventually I did work my way into a single room and was able to continue my practice uh with uh in a deeper way, um having act having, you know, having that. I mean, there was always even when I had that single cell, it was a single, it was on the main hall, and just outside the door was bedlam all the time. And you don't have a lock on your door, you know, there's a window in the door, so the guards can always look in. And uh anybody could open your door while you're sleeping and kill you, so you you don't have any protection. Um but uh, you know, if people are interested in that journey, um uh Dharma and Hell is a collection of essays that I wrote while I was in prison and published in various magazines uh about being a Buddhist in prison and trying to practice in prison and doing the work, the hospice work, so seriously. And then when I got out, uh my colleague uh Kay Crisp, who's executive director of prison Dharma Network, uh, she took all those and edited them into a book, which is the book Um Uh Dharma Hell. So, but it'll give you a good window, uh window into what it was like experientially to try to be a Buddhist practitioner uh in that prison setting.

SPEAKER_01 51:07

So, Fleet, is there anything short of having a daily spiritual practice to prepare a criminal defendant for dealing with all the angst and heebie jeebies about facing the possibility of long time in prison? Uh, because you know, Michael Carroll pointed out when someone came to him and said, Oh my gosh, maybe I just need to start meditating, my husband just left me. And Michael said, That's not the time to start meditating. The person should have started meditating years before.

SPEAKER_03 51:36

Well, that may be the case. Uh, although I had started meditating long before I went to prison, and that didn't keep me from going to prison. I I was very good at compartmentalizing my life. Um, I'd done a lot of deep practice and already been trained as a meditation teacher, so that kind of. But at any rate, um uh I was very thick-headed and a lot of uh twisted karma, so to speak. So uh, but you know, I wouldn't necessarily it doesn't have to be a quote spiritual practice, but I think uh I think for any human being, not just somebody uh facing incarceration for any human being, you know, we need some kind of awareness practice uh to be a conscious human being and really live consciously and live in response to life rather than just living in reactivity. Because, you know, we're all kind of we find ourselves uh living at the interface between our childhood conditioning, which we got before we were seven, had nothing to say about, uh, and the world around us. And our childhood conditioning for most of us is a mixed bag at best. You know, most of us probably receive some good things from our family lineage, but we also got some of the gnarly stuff they hadn't worked out yet, right? And uh and then the world around us is not exactly a bubble of benevolence. So we're in there, and until we take ownership for how we're navigating that, we're just kind of in there getting pushed around. And we think we're free-thinking adults, making free-thinking adult decisions all day long, but we're live really just living completely mechanical lives as we've been programmed to live them in a state of reactivity. So it requires an awareness practice to become awake and to recognize the gap between as Victor Frankel very famously pointed out, the gap between the stimulus and response, the place where our true freedom lies, where we can choose instead of just reacting from our conditioning to whatever's happening uh in the moment, we can actually choose how to respond consciously. And that requires some presence of mind, some self-awareness. And that the deeper we cultivate that awareness and that's presence, the mindfulness, the more things kind of slow down for us, and we have the ability to uh respond to life uh and respond with our natural intelligence and wisdom, and with growing wisdom, as through awareness, we develop greater and greater discernment through our life experience. We're able to respond and and choose how to respond to life because we begin to see this is what leads to good results. And when I respond or react this way, it doesn't work out so well. So I can choose rather than just being driven by reactivity. So I think, you know, and learning also to self-regulate, because uh we all have this uh autonomic nervous system, which is a major part of our overall nervous system, and as the two branches, one upregulates, it's we need it for alertness, but it can go into stress and uh fight or flight into panic and acting out, and then we have the one that downregulates the relaxation or rest and digest response. They're both happening all the time. And if we don't take ownership for regulating those, then they're being regulated by everybody but us, right? By the world around us. And we're just basically a passive victim to our circumstances. If we learn to regulate our own autonomic nervous system, which we can do with breath and meditation and physical presence and posture and voice, then we have the ability to regulate our own nervous system, which lets us regulate our own emotions, not to repress them, but to experience the very important part of our lives, our emotional life in a balanced way, in a well-regulated way, which means I can uh regulate uh my choices and my behaviors, which means I'm in the driver's seat of my life, rather than back in the caboose, just getting dragged through life, right? So that all begins with some kind of awareness practice. So I think that's really the core of becoming a conscious adult human being, whether we're in prison or not.

SPEAKER_01 55:26

Okay, so like so many times we're already at the end of where I told you it would be. So we got to have two minutes of overtime. Is the real approach you're gonna take then with my clients who are bouncing off the walls, all nervous about their cases, just to continue with my practice, working on myself and reassuring them through compassion, empathy, and understanding that look, I understand what you're going through. If you want, I can show you some things I do, just even with just focusing on the breath, but I'm gonna be doing my practice. You feel free to join me with my practice or any other practice when you want. But I'm I'm working with you as a team no matter what. I mean, what better can I do than that to help my clients along on that path?

SPEAKER_03 56:09

Yeah, I think that's exactly it. You know, you can't force anything on anyone, but by you practicing and holding a space, a mindful space, that's gonna help someone else settle down. Uh uh, you know, at least it's not gonna exacerbate uh what they're going through and what they're experiencing, you know, because they they can sense the stability of your mind, the stability of your presence. And that that'll be helpful to them, even if it's not immediately obvious that it's helpful. And the fact that you're offering some tools without uh, you know, forcing them or without trying to shame them into it, you just offer this this works for me, might might be helpful to you. It's been helpful to others. I think it's the best way to offer things. But I think the fact that you're a practitioner um is gonna you're able to hold space for people who are in a very difficult situation being prosecuted. Um, and um uh that's probably uh very, very beneficial, I would think.

SPEAKER_01 57:03

I appreciate that, Fleet. With what with us having gone over time, I want you to be able to tell the audience anything you want to tell them that you haven't already told it or repeated, and definitely remind them of your URL. And and where do you want uh contributions to go to, whether it's for prison mindfulness or anything else?

SPEAKER_03 57:21

Well, yeah, if anybody wants to make a contribution, please do so to prisonmindfulness.org. Um and you can go on there and make a contribution. It'd be very much appreciated. Prisonmindfulness.org is the website, and uh it's a nonprofit, and you'll be supporting the work we do to bring mindfulness into the criminal justice system, both for the uh the incarcerated as well as for all the staff that work in those systems, because they're all they're all they're all suffering. Everybody's suffering, everybody's traumatized. Uh that you know, the a correctional officer who works 20 years or more in secure facilities has a average life expectancy of about 59 years, two decades less than the general population, uh, because they're under their constant exposure to chronic stress and primary and secondary trauma, and of course, in uh then they're beset with all the chronic stress-related illnesses and uh you know, diabetes and obesity and and uh heart disease and uh and suicidality and so forth. Very high rates of depression and suicidality. So everybody in the criminal justice system is suffering. The way we've designed the system, all the professionals in the system suffer. Certainly the clients, the incarcerated suffer, the families of the incarcerated suffer, the families of the professionals suffer. Everybody. It's just a world of recycling trauma. Yes. And so um, anyway, we we're trying to address that in every direction we can to bring healing into that system and transform the system. So if you want to support that work, you could go to prisonmindfulness.org and make a donation. Again, if you want to find out more about the mindfulness methodologies that I teach, that generally I under the title of Neurosomatic Mindfulness, you can go to heartmind.co, heartmind.co. Um and um yeah. So that's probably it. If you're if people are interested in the radical responsibility book, you can go to radical responsibilitybook.com and there you'll see an offer where you can purchase the book online at any of the online booksellers, get the order number, the receipt number or something, and just put that in, uh, and then we'll send you a bunch of bonuses, um, um, a bunch of digital, you know, courses and offerings. Uh uh, so um that's radical responsibilitybook.com. You can also download every chapter from the book there, I think. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 59:46

I recommend to everybody Radical Responsibility and uh Fleet's uh newer book is The Resilient CO. He also wrote uh uh Dharma in Hell. A big reason why I was drawn to Fleet and why I remain drawn to Fleet is through my practice. I I want to have teachers uh that are tough as nails in many respects. I think Fleet is, and he's also compassionate and caring, and uh he's got a unique perspective you've all heard. Thank you so much, Fleet. You've heard from Fleet Mall, that's F L E E T Last Name, M-A-U-L-L. This is John Katz. I'm a criminal defense and DUI defense lawyer here in Fairfax, North Virginia. This is Beat the Prosecution because there is no other way. Thank you so much, and thank you, Fleet.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:42

Thank you, thank you very much.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:44

Thank you for listening to this week's episode from Beat the Prosecution. This is a regular podcast giving people a leg up against police investigations and prosecutions. Nothing discussed on our media sources, such as our podcast or website, is legal advice. John Katz only provides legal advice to current clients or to individuals who have paid for a consultation. We welcome you contacting us via email at info at beat the prosecution.com by calling our office at 703 383 1100 or texting us at 571 406 7268.