How I help free innocent people from prison | Ronald Sullivan

51,630 views ・ 2017-08-30

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00:12
So, imagine that you take a 19-hour, very long drive
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to Disney World,
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with two kids in the back seat.
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And 15 minutes into this 19-hour trip,
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the immutable laws of nature dictate
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that you get the question:
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"Are we there yet?"
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(Laughter)
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So you answer this question a hundred more times, easily,
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in the negative,
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but you finally arrive.
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You have a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful trip.
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You drive 19 long hours back home.
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And when you get there,
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the police are waiting on you.
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They accuse you of committing a crime
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that occurred while you were away in Florida.
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You tell anybody and everybody who will listen,
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"I didn't do it!
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I couldn't have done it!
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I was hanging out with Mickey and Minnie and my kids!"
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But no one believes you.
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Ultimately, you're arrested,
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you're tried,
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you're convicted
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and you are sentenced.
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And you spend 25 years in jail,
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until someone comes along and proves --
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has the evidence to prove --
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that you actually were in Florida
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when this crime was committed.
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So.
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So, I'm a Harvard Law professor,
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and the last several years, I have worked on
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winning the release of innocent people
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who've been wrongfully convicted --
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people like Jonathan Fleming,
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who spent 24 years, eight months in jail
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for a murder that was committed in Brooklyn, New York,
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while he was in Disney World
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with his kids.
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How do we know this?
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Because when he was arrested,
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among his property in his back pocket
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was a receipt --
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time-stamped receipt
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that showed that he was in Disney World.
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That receipt was put in the police file,
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a copy of it was put in the prosecutor's file,
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and they never gave it to his public defender.
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In fact, nobody even knew it was there.
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It just sat there for 20-some-odd years.
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My team looked through the file, and we found it,
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did the rest of the investigation,
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and figured out someone else committed the crime.
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Mr. Fleming was in Disney World,
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and he is now released.
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Let me give you a little bit of context.
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So about three years ago, I got a call from the Brooklyn District Attorney.
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He asked whether I'd be interested in designing a program
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called a "conviction review unit."
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So I said yes.
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A conviction review unit is essentially a unit in a prosecutor's office
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where prosecutors look at their past cases
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to determine whether or not they made mistakes.
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Over the course of the first year,
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we found about 13 wrongful convictions,
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people having been in jail for decades,
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and we released all of them.
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It was the most in New York history.
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The program is still going on,
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and they're up to 21 releases now --
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21 people who spent significant time behind bars.
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So let me tell you about a couple other of the men and women
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that I interacted with in the course of this program.
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One name is Roger Logan.
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Mr. Logan had been in jail 17 years
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and wrote me a letter.
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It was a simple letter; it basically said,
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"Professor Sullivan, I'm innocent. I've been framed.
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Can you look at my case?"
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At first blush, the case seemed like it was open and shut,
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but my research had shown
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that single-witness identification cases
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are prone to error.
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It doesn't mean he was innocent,
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it just means we ought to look a little bit closer at those cases.
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So we did.
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And the facts were relatively simple.
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The eyewitness said she heard a shot,
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and she ran to the next building and turned around and looked,
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and there was Mr. Logan.
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And he was tried and convicted and in jail for 17-some-odd years.
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But it was a single-witness case, so we took a look at it.
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I sent some people to the scene, and there was an inconsistency.
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And to put it politely:
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Usain Bolt couldn't have run from where she said she was
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to the other spot.
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Right?
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So we knew that wasn't true.
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So it still didn't mean that he didn't do it,
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but we knew something was maybe fishy about this witness.
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So we looked through the file,
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a piece of paper in the file had a number on it.
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The number indicated that this witness had a record.
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We went back through 20 years of non-digitized papers
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to figure out what this record was about,
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and it turned out -- it turned out --
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the eyewitness was in jail
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when she said she saw what she saw.
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The man spent 17 years behind bars.
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The last one is a case about two boys,
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Willie Stuckey, David McCallum.
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They were arrested at 15,
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and their conviction was vacated 29 years later.
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Now this was a case,
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once again -- first blush, it looked open and shut.
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They had confessed.
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But my research showed that juvenile confessions
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without a parent present
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are prone to error.
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The DNA cases proved this several times.
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So we took a close look.
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We looked at the confession,
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and it turned out,
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there was something in the confession
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that those boys could not have known.
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The only people who knew it were police and prosecutors.
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We knew what really happened;
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someone told them to say this.
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We don't exactly know who,
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which person did,
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but any rate, the confession was coerced,
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we determined.
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We then went back and did forensics
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and did a fulsome investigation
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and found that two other,
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much older, different heights, different hairstyle,
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two other people committed the crime,
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not these two boys.
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I actually went to court that day,
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for what's called a "vacatur hearing,"
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where the conviction is thrown out.
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I went to court; I wanted to see
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Mr. McCallum walk out of there.
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So I went to court,
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and the judge said something that judges say all the time,
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but this took on a really special meaning.
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He looked up after the arguments and said,
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"Mr. McCallum,"
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he said five beautiful words:
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"You are free to go."
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Can you imagine?
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After just about 30 years:
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"You are free to go."
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And he walked out of that courtroom.
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Unfortunately, his codefendant, Mr. Stuckey,
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didn't get the benefit of that.
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You see, Mr. Stuckey died in prison
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at 34 years old,
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and his mother sat at counsel table in his place.
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I'll never forget this the rest of my life.
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She just rocked at the table, saying,
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"I knew my baby didn't do this.
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I knew my baby didn't do this."
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And her baby didn't do this.
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Two other guys did it.
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If there's anything that we've learned, anything that I've learned,
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with this conviction integrity work,
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it's that justice doesn't happen.
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People make justice happen.
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Justice is not a thing that just descends from above
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and makes everything right.
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If it did, Mr. Stuckey wouldn't have died in prison.
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Justice is something
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that people of goodwill make happen.
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Justice is a decision.
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Justice is a decision.
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We make justice happen.
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You know, the scary thing is,
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in each of these three cases I described,
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it would have only taken just an extra minute --
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an extra minute --
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for someone to look through the file
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and find this receipt.
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Just one -- to look through the file, find the receipt,
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give it to the public defender.
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It would have taken someone just a minute
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to look at the video confession and say, "That cannot be."
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Just a minute.
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And perhaps Mr. Stuckey would be alive today.
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It reminds me of one of my favorite poems.
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It's a poem that Benjamin Elijah Mays would always recite,
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and he called it "God's Minute."
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And it goes something like this:
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"I have only just a minute,
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only 60 seconds in it,
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forced upon me, can't refuse it,
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didn't seek it, didn't choose it.
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But it's up to me to use it.
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I must suffer if I lose it, give account if I abuse it.
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Just a tiny little minute,
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but eternity is in it."
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If I were to charge
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each and every one of us,
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I would want to say something like,
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"Every day,
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every day,
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take just one extra minute
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and do some justice.
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You don't have to --
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I mean, some people spend their careers and their lives,
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like public defenders,
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doing justice every day.
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But in your professional lives, whatever you do,
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take time out
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to just
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do some justice.
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Make a colleague feel better.
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If you hear something that's sexist,
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don't laugh, speak up.
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If someone is down, lift them up,
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one extra minute each day,
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and it'll be a great, great place.
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I want to show you something.
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Now, above me is a picture
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of David McCallum.
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This is the day he was released from prison.
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After 30 years, he got to hug a niece
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he had never been able to touch before.
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And I asked him then,
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I said, "What's the first thing you want to do?"
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And he said, "I just want to walk on the sidewalk
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without anybody telling me where to go."
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Wasn't bitter,
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just wanted to walk on the sidewalk.
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I spoke to Mr. McCallum about two weeks ago.
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I went to New York.
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It was on the two-year anniversary
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of his release.
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And we talked,
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we laughed, we hugged, we cried.
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And he's doing quite well.
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And one of the things he said when we met with him
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is that he now has dedicated his life
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and his career
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to ensuring that nobody else is locked up unjustly.
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Justice, my friends,
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is a decision.
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Thank you very much.
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(Applause)
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