422: Darnell Epps—Where There’s a Pulse There’s a Purpose

Well, here we are, my friends, at the beginning of another new year with perhaps the most earnest title you're going to hear all year.

You're on the way I heard it.

This episode is called Where There's a Pulse, There's a Purpose.

I thought it was a decent quote.

I thought it was a great quote.

This is so great, in fact, that I totally missed it when it occurred.

I could see that when I glanced over and saw you just staring intently at nothing in particular in the near distance.

No, that wasn't entirely true, but yeah, but close enough.

My guest is Darnell Epps.

I don't know how interesting or eclectic your resume is, but I doubt it's as interesting or as eclectic as this guy's.

He came across my transom because he launched something called Thurgood Industries, which is a career building and a networking platform that's focused on skilled workers and creating a more persuasive case for the opportunities that exist in the trades today.

If that sounds like microworks to you, well, imagine being me and reading that.

Yeah, and then add to it the fact that he went to Yale Law School.

Yeah.

And Lincoln Tech at the same time.

Yeah, so that's never happened before.

My guest today has graduated from the most prestigious law school in the Ivy League.

Arguably.

And a trade school that many of you have probably heard of.

Consequently, he's taken his large brain and he's applied it toward closing the skills gap.

And so I wanted to learn a little bit more about Thurgood Industries, which is why I invited him here and which is why he flew across the country to chat with us.

I wasn't really up to speed with the 17 and a half years he spent prior to his admittance to Cornell, which then led to Yale, which he spent at, I believe it was Five Corners Maximum Security Penitentiary.

And before that, Rikers for a period.

Yeah.

this guy's story zigs and zags and there are times when you'll swear you're in the middle of an episode of law and order and there are times when you'll swear you're in the middle of some kind of feel-good graduation unlikely story interrupted by lockdowns but then weirdly morphing into a trade school play it's just you just can't make it up

and so there's no need to no and the one thing about Darnell that was really amazing is that there's just not a trace of bitterness in him.

For a guy who spent 17 and a half years behind bars,

there's not a trace of bitterness for his circumstances.

No, and you could make a pretty good case.

And he did make an excellent case as a jailhouse lawyer, self-taught.

The guy didn't even make it through high school.

This is really a story of a Yale graduate and an entrepreneur who didn't make it through high school and very nearly spent his entire life in prison, but got out early on account of his excellent behavior and his great big brain.

You're going to like him, darn L Eps, right after this.

He's not like the other celebs, you know, but it occurs to me that Theo Vaughan, like so many other guests on this podcast, is a true American giant.

What he's built, with his own massive podcast and his comedy tour and his advocacy for people struggling with addiction and his whole unlikely overall rise to fame.

It's not just a monument to hard work.

It's a love letter to reinvention and to the American dream.

I can say the same thing, of course, about the men and women who work for American Giant.

I mean the sewers and the cutters and the dyers who make American Giant clothing right here in America.

For nearly 16 years now, they have been delivering on a pledge to make all their clothing right here.

And today I'm delighted to tell you that they've not only honored that pledge, they're helping MicroWorks train the next generation of skilled workers by selling MicroWorks t-shirts and zip sweatshirts to benefit my foundation I'm so delighted by this go to americondash giant.com slash mic wherever you find the MRW logo you'll know the net proceeds of that purchase will help fund our next round of work ethic scholarships while you're there check out their whole inventory quality sweats and teas and jeans and all the other essentials at americandash giant.com slash Mike.

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American Giant, American Made.

Darnell Epps is here.

He's just traveled all across the country to sit in our humble little studio to tell us the story of his life.

Yeah.

It's great to meet you.

Nice to meet you, Mike.

Huge fan of your work since Dirty Jobs and

love your podcast.

You know, I have some big shoes to fill here, but happy to be here with you and Chuck.

Great opportunity.

Like I said earlier, you got some big feet.

I think we'll be

size 13 and a half.

How tall are you?

I'm 6'6 ⁇ .

Yeah.

So you played football in college?

No, I played in high school.

I played high school football at Sheepshead Bay High School in Brooklyn, New York, where I grew up.

And yeah, I was a defensive end.

I played Pop Warner, too.

So back then, I would say I was pretty average.

It was like

my

freshman year of high school when I actually put on all that height.

It was that summer vacation between middle school and high school.

And I came, when I seen most of my friends I hadn't seen over the summer, they were like, what happened

I just sprouted up like I've never heard anyone say they put on height yeah like they put on weight and sometimes they put on some weights

you put on some height

it was quite

shocking to many of my friends but yeah I'm a tall guy tall guy I'll admit no doubt yeah so are you in a you're in Connecticut now you I'm in Connecticut now yeah I work from Connecticut my wife and I we moved there and

our kids go to school in Connecticut back when I started law school in 2021, which was

a huge achievement for me given my upbringing and where I come from.

How many kids you got?

I have four.

I have four kids.

You ever think about what the world would be like if like without Pop Warner?

Oh

yeah, Pop Warner taught me so many things, just a ton of friendships that I developed there as an athlete.

My dad was a coach at the time.

It was at Kings Bay.

We played Kings Bay football.

A little fun fact is that

Lombardi, Bill Lombardi, actually grew up in Sheepset Bay before he went on to coach the Green Bay Packers.

I think he actually was an assistant coach for the Giants before he went to the Green Bay Packers.

But some fun history there.

So the color of our team uniforms was gold and green, just like the Green Bay Packers uniforms at Kings Bay.

I didn't like the color growing up, but it grew on me, and I kind of now understand some of the history there.

You near New Canaan, by any chance?

New Canaan?

Yeah.

No, that is.

I was just trying to think.

I've been to Hartford, which is where you live now?

Yeah, Hartford County.

That's where we live now.

And I haven't been to New Canaan.

Where is that?

That's in.

It was the first time I ever shot in your state.

Oh.

And it was a dairy farmer, a guy named Matt Freund.

You know, I mean, since we're about to talk about reinvention.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know,

this was a guy.

He was a dairy farmer, and he was kind of a mad scientist.

And he had

like his whole house and the whole operation was heated by the cow crap.

He built these digesters and these fixed film reactors and all this crazy science.

And then one day the bottom fell out of the dairy market, and

he just couldn't make a living selling milk.

And he realized, in a way, that the crap from the cows might be worth more than the milk.

So

he started making these flower pots.

He called them poop pots.

Pooh pots, okay.

And so you'd put your geraniums in it and then just dig a hole and bury the pot with the you know the flour.

Right.

And the fertilizer would just make the thing grow twice as fast.

Oh.

So I thought it was a great story.

Yeah, we went and filmed there for Dirty Jobs, and

the thing aired.

And like six months later the guy had a deal with walmart he was selling poop pots in walmart all over the country oh wow and it's like you know one day right

you realize the crap's worth more than the milk and yeah it's sort of like uh my own pathway right like i don't want to characterize my legal education as crap necessarily but i will say that you know uh When I went to law school, you know, I had followed really a non-traditional pathway into college anyway, right?

Well, look, that's why we wanted to talk to you.

You're the only guy I know who went through the Ivy League and through a trade school.

And I just thought that that in and of itself would be a reason, you know, to get you out here so we could really

understand what happened in your brain.

But as it turns out, what happened in your life before that is every bit as interesting.

So I know you told the story a thousand times.

Yeah.

But give me the short version.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, I kind of write about it in a 2018 New York Times op-ed called The Prison Old Timers Who Gave Me Life.

And I mentioned there that, you know, March 8th, 2000 was the most regrettable day of my life.

It was a moment defined by poor decisions.

I grew up in the housing projects in Brooklyn, New York.

And it led to devastating consequences, including, tragically, the loss of a life when things escalated between my brother and a man.

who had sexually assaulted his wife who was pregnant.

And that landed us in prison for 17 long years.

Could have been worse, though.

This guy was

in a gang?

Yes.

So he was a gang member in a community older than my brother and I.

And New York, unlike most states, doesn't have a stand-your-ground law.

And, you know, my brother could have raised a justification defense or asserted self-defense.

But in New York, there's called a doctrine called duty to retreat.

And my brother basically didn't have a chance going to trial with that argument, and he pled guilty, took full responsibility for his acts.

And when we went to prison,

we just committed to accountability, personal growth, and

helping others avoid the same mistakes we made.

We created programs that helped at-risk youth in Seneca County and...

other areas in that region of Romulus, New York, where we were at.

We worked with the probation department to keep kids out of prison and out of jail.

And they'll probably make better choices.

I feel like you're probably skipping over some big stuff.

I mean, first of all, duty to retreat.

Yeah, so a duty to retreat means that when,

if there's a threat made against someone and

someone's going to do them bodily harm,

they can't act on that.

They can't, if there's an opportunity for them to say, say, leave the scene, perhaps call the authorities or hop in a car, drive a couple of blocks away.

You cannot engage in that confrontation.

So in this situation, it was right outside of my apartment building where I lived in those housing projects.

And there were threats that were made.

And this followed the act that had happened to my brother's.

wife at the time.

And again, she was pregnant.

And I happened to be be with him, right?

I didn't actually physically do anything, I didn't shoot anyone.

You know, there was a struggle over a weapon, and my brother was wounded in the process, as well as the other individual.

I was charged as an accessory, eating and abetting.

And the gang member died.

And he died, yes,

tragically.

Yes.

And I remember, you know, going to court as a 20-year-old, first-time

felon,

spending time on Rikers Island, not knowing if I would ever see the outside of a prison again.

It was

a very challenging moment in my own life.

And

your brother's with you at this point?

My brother was with me.

We were initially in the same dorm on Rikers Island for some time until we were separated.

He pleaded guilty.

He ended up going upstate New York to Five Points Correctional Facility, which is a maximum security prison in Romulus.

And it was just built at the time.

You know, so there were plenty of available beds there.

And I was hoping that, you know, if once after I went to trial, I was eventually

acquitted of some counts, but convicted of reckless homicide or aiding and abetting a reckless homicide.

Did you have an attorney, a public defender?

At the time, I had a public defender.

I call them, you know, today sometimes,

public pretenders in some respects.

Oh, my gosh.

I don't want to, you know,

you know, our brother had a private attorney.

You know, resources were scarce.

You know, we didn't have the funds really to pay for attorneys for both of us.

And we felt like my brother was in the most...

challenging situation in terms of liability and potential sentencing exposure.

He brought the gun?

Yeah.

And it was that

because of that, you know, I decided to go to trial.

And when I went to trial, again, it was,

I was found guilty.

And we could get into some of the legal issues that stem from that conviction, but that could probably be its own podcast episode in itself.

We don't need to take a super deep dive.

Yeah, but I think there are a couple things that are interesting.

First of all, the stupid question, but you know, I was a law and order junkie.

Yeah.

I watched every episode, and I can still hear like boom boom Rikers Island yeah was it like what we saw on that show worse probably Rikers Island was a terrible place I mean you have a lot of cuttings a lot of you know violence both on part of the guards and on part of the inmates who are there and it's not an environment uh that i think is meant for any human being in many respects.

It is a very tough and challenging environment.

But, you know, my brother and I were together and we held each other accountable.

You know, we never wanted to make a decision or a choice that would potentially separate us.

We were in the same dorm, right?

Can I ask about your mom, your dad at this point?

Because you said you had never had any issues with the law before.

Right.

And so you're suddenly 20 years old, 20 and 21.

Yeah.

And in about the toughest prison there is under circumstances.

Most people can't really, I mean, all we know is from watching TV.

Like most people, that's all we know.

Yeah.

But if you can paint that, like, where were your folks in the scheme of things?

Well, my parents had separated when I was in high school and divorced.

And, you know, that was a challenging moment for us.

There were four boys in the house, right?

I have three brothers.

Daryl, my older brother, was the one who I was incarcerated with.

And then I had two younger brothers.

So my two younger brothers moved in with my mother, who was a New York City police officer, believe it or not.

Really?

Yeah.

So

yeah.

I didn't know that.

And she,

you know, so you can imagine just a mother's pain.

It's not just me.

There was actually someone who died.

So I don't want to make it seem like, you know, I suffered as much as someone else did or their family.

But I will say that, you know, it was devastating to my mother.

And she was in court every day.

She stuck by us.

She was on a visit when we were, you know, five hours away.

She was coming up every month with my nephew with my sister-in-law with my brothers to show us support send us care packages and commissary money and I always wanted to have the opportunity to make her proud again given the amount of shame that I know that came with you know going to prison for such a serious offense and I didn't know if I would ever have that opportunity honestly

and when I entered again I had dropped out of high school you know I stopped playing sports in the 10th grade because I missed too many classes.

I was kind of a knucklehead, like many at-risk youth in the inner city.

And I dropped out.

And

so when I went to prison at the age of 20, I didn't even have a GED.

I had to take a GED exam when I first entered Five Points Correctional Facility in 2021.

So how long were you at Rikers before

you transferred up there with your brother?

Less than a year.

Yeah, and my brother ended up in Romulus at Five Points Correctional Facility.

It took about

six months or four months after he played guilty.

He ended up there.

And then I ended up going to trial, and my trial took a little while.

Why didn't they try you at the same time?

Well, my brother played guilty.

So because my brother played guilty and took responsibility for the act, he was sentenced.

And once you're sentenced, you can no longer stay in a a city jail so he ended up going up to five points and there was no guarantee that I was gonna end up in the same prison in fact odds are you won't because you know for security reasons they don't want two brothers or two co-defendants to be housed in the same correctional facility and it just so happens again because this facility was just built I ended up being transferred to that facility.

And my brother was in a different housing unit and then we eventually moved into the same housing unit, and then we bunked for 10 years before we were later paroled in 2017.

What was Darryl's sentence?

It was 17 and a half years to life.

17 and a half years to life.

Now, typically, when someone goes to trial, you get the maximum sentence.

40.

Yeah.

I could have received upward of that if the judge, if I were convicted on...

weapons charges and in the top count and ultimately the judge chose to run no sentences consecutively.

But the judge in my case

didn't feel comfortable, Gustin Reichback.

He did not feel comfortable imposing a sentence higher than what my brother had received.

Later on, New York law had changed and it was clear that the way that the prosecutor's office used

aiding and abetting statute in my case was overbroad and that the conviction in itself was wrongful.

And the Court of Appeals,

New York, New York's highest appellate court, had ruled on this issue and said,

you know, under the circumstances of my case, cases similar to mine, the prosecutor, we shouldn't have been charged as an accomplice.

The problem with that was that the ruling was not made retroactive.

So

anybody whose appeal was heard before October 14th, 2004, would not benefit from the court's new interpretation of the statute.

So, how close were you?

2003.

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And the district attorney's office even conceded, the Brooklyn or Kings County District Attorney's Office conceded that the conviction was wrongful under the correct interpretation of the statute.

And we litigated this all the way up to the U.S.

Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and argued that the 14th Amendment required that the proper interpretation of New York's accomplice liability statute be applied to my case regardless of when my appeal was heard.

Let me ask you this.

You dropped out of high school.

Yes.

Now, are you getting sort of a crash course in jurisprudence as you're going through your own

Pellscape?

Yeah, yeah.

At the time, you know,

There were no longer Pell Grants for incarcerated students.

So there was a dearth of college programming inside New York's correctional facilities.

And that came with the enactment of the crime bill in 1994.

One of the things it did was repeal Pell Grants for incarcerated college students.

So all of these programs that existed in the 90s and maybe late 80s, they just died off.

So when I entered the prison system in 2000, the highest level of educational attainment that was available was a GED.

So where I learned my university essentially became the law library.

One of the conditions you

at five points?

Yes, at five points of you applying to be what's called an inmate law clerk at a correctional facility in New York is that you have a GED and you take a state course on basic legal research and you pass the final exam.

And I did that and I was hired as a clerk and I worked as a law clerk in that law library from about 2002 until I was released in 2017.

So you did the full boat.

I did the full boat.

You did 17 years.

Exactly, because there's a federal law called the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, again, passed by the Clinton administration, just like, or signed by

former President Bill Clinton, along with the crime bill.

But what that did was it restricted the great writ or federal habeas corpus so that state prisoners like myself could not avail themselves of that federal proceeding if the U.S.

Supreme Court has not clearly decided that legal question previously.

So you cannot ask an Article III judge, a federal district judge, or a circuit judge to announce a new rule when the U.S.

Supreme Court has yet to decide that rule.

And if ruling in your favor requires the federal judiciary to

announce a new rule, then the writ is unavailable to you.

So in my case, when it was heard by the U.S.

Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which was in New Haven, the oral arguments were in New Haven, and I was represented by Jonathan Edelstein.

who worked with a law professor from Fordham, Abraham Abramowski.

That was the reason why the court ruled against me.

Not because the merits of my claim weren't viable, not because I was wrong on the law and what the meaning of the 14th Amendment meant.

It was timing.

It was timing.

It was that the U.S.

Supreme Court had yet to decide this question, and we cannot intervene here and announce a new rule that would affect your case.

Okay, so to sum up,

your brother is married.

His wife is assaulted.

You two confront that perpetrator.

Yes.

Things go off the rails.

He dies.

Your brother winds up getting shot as well.

He pleads guilty, gets 17 and a half.

Yes.

You go innocent, but also get the same 17 and a half.

And somehow you wind up together in five points.

Yeah.

Literally bunking together.

Literally bunking together.

And it took a couple of years before that happened.

He was in a different housing unit altogether.

You had four housing units at that correctional facility: nine block, ten block, eleven block, twelve block.

He was in 11, I was in nine.

And we always wanted to get in the same housing unit, right?

Let alone the same cell, but we would be happy if we got in the same housing unit.

And over time, when the administration at the prison seen all the good work we were doing,

they let it happen.

You know, so it was Adepa Programs at the time who had facilitated my brother moving into

my cell.

And for 10 years, we celebrated birthdays together.

We ate, oh,

I remember one time we ate 16 slices of cheesecake because we didn't want it to go bad.

There's no refrigerator, right?

Like, and my family sent us to cheesecake, and we regretted it the next day, right?

We totally did.

I said, we'll never do that again.

We'll just throw it out.

Because if you're sharing a cell, you're sharing a toilet.

Yeah.

Sharing a toilet.

Sharing a shower.

We had a shower in our cell, thank goodness.

So

it was bittersweet.

Of course, you don't want to see your loved one incarcerated with you, but to have someone there to talk to who knows you.

We were 14 months apart.

He's older than me.

And we went from the sandbox together, you know, and then to spend that time together in there and to talk about

challenging things and to grieve together when we lost our grandparents,

you know, shackled together, going to the funeral.

It really gave me a different perspective on life in many ways.

And my brother's doing great work today.

He's the deputy director of SUNY higher education in prison.

He just won the Robin Hood Award in New York City and was hanging out with Eli Manning.

And I was like, wow, you're a Jets fan here hanging out with Eli Manning

after the event.

You mentioned accountability early on.

Like, we were going to be accountable to each other.

But

I don't want to spend our whole conversation in five points, but

I do want to understand when you decided to, forgive me if I say this wrong, but make the best of it.

When you decided, look, this is where we are.

We're going to accept this sentence.

We'll continue to take whatever legal avenues are available to us.

But while we're here, you know, while we're here, let's learn.

Let's get better.

let's, like, how does that process work?

And when did you feel rehabilitated?

That's a great question.

Really, it came from the realization that our actions don't simply affect us, right?

As simple as that sounds, when you look at your mother and you see the tears in her eyes, or you see your father, you see the tears in his eyes, and you see the impact.

that your poor decisions have had on so many people,

you have to grapple with that, right?

And when that self, when that gate closes at night, you know, you're there by yourself and you're thinking about that.

And, you know, I had my brother there.

He was very,

very spiritual.

He was the chaplain's clerk, and he devoted his time to studying the Bible, right?

And being grounded in his faith.

And I did as well, right?

And it was a great pastor, Bishop, Bishop Ronald Dewberry,

who was the chaplain at Five Points Correctional Facility.

And every

Saturday we would attend services, and it was always a message there that resonated with us.

Where there's a pulse, there's a purpose.

You know, that you can always find purpose, even in your darkest moments.

And, you know, my brother and I spent a lot of time under Bishop's tutelage and talking about life with him and grounding ourselves in our faith.

And that helped spur us to where we're at today in many ways.

I could reflect back on some of those conversations I had in a Christology class with Bishop Dewberry or Reverend Stewart, who

preceded Bishop Dewberry as the chaplain at Five Points Correctional Facility.

And it was really our faith and really finding a sense of purpose in helping others.

Our brother chaired the youth assistance program.

He was the youngest inmate at the time to chair chair that program, and that was the program that, you know, it's not scared straight, it was more therapeutic.

It was when, like, Seneca County probation and

the courts brought in some of the at-risk youth who were potentially going to, you know,

you know, expose themselves to a potential jail sentence or something to that effect, or they were involved in diversion programs.

And we

really

let our life stories be a lesson for them, right?

And my brother was a great leader of that program, a great chairman of that program.

And he did that from 2002 until we were released in 2017.

So while I was working in the law library and eventually joined the YAP program with him,

that was where he was grounded.

He was grounded in his faith as I was, and he was working as a chaplain's clerk, and then he also chaired the youth assistance program.

And we found a sense of purpose in volunteering because we weren't paid to do any of this and we weren't told that we would get a letter to parole if we participated in these programs.

In fact, the employees were told that they couldn't.

So we were doing it just for the sake of doing good, working with Project Hope out in Geneva and Mark Pitifer and he would bring his students in and

and some of the youth who really needed to benefit from hearing about some of the decisions that Darryl and I made growing up.

And it was rewarding in many ways.

It was something we looked forward to.

And, you know,

I had the legal studies, right?

I was working to help others in the law library, many people who just couldn't grasp the law, the complexities of it, the nuances of litigation, whether it's post-conviction, appellate, or doing something like a federal habeas corpus petition.

And I found success there writing briefs on behalf of some of the incarcerated people.

Some were wrongfully convicted, and I helped get them out of prison.

There was one gentleman, Lewis Harriston, out of Westchester County, who

had a Brady violation.

A Brady violation is something that happens when a prosecutor withholds exculpatory evidence that can demonstrate someone's innocence.

And he had been incarcerated for 17 years at the time.

And

We did a FOIL request, a freedom of information law request, and his mother sent it into Mount Vernon City Hall, and we ended up getting

an affidavit or a statement that was made by a civilian witness that basically supported his defense and said that the victim in the case was actually armed with a firearm and that the other two witnesses were armed with firearms at the time this encounter happened.

He was convicted of manslaughter.

This was not presented to the jury at his trial.

The prosecutor never told the defense about this witness.

And we ended up finding out about this through a FOIA request that we submitted.

So I filed a 440.10 motion, which is a post-conviction motion in the Westchester County Courts at the time.

And the judge felt like we raised a colorable claim.

So the judge then assigned counsel.

Colorable?

Colorable, meaning a meritorious argument.

He raised an argument that has merit to it.

The district attorney's office had no answer for what had happened, right?

And they wanted the judge to hold a hearing, right?

They were like, yeah, something's wrong here.

We ended up getting an affidavit from his trial attorney, also verifying that this was not disclosed during the discovery phase of the trial.

And it's rare when a district attorney asks for an evidentiary hearing in a criminal case, they typically just want the court to summarily reject the motion and not even hold a hearing.

Here, they wanted a hearing.

They wanted to try and justify what had happened.

And the judge wanted no part of it.

Same judge?

It was a different judge.

It was a different judge at this time because he had been incarcerated 17 years.

The original trial judge had retired.

So this judge said,

I don't want any parts of it.

This is a clear violation of his rights under Brady v.

Maryland.

In fact, the two witnesses that the prosecution called

were implicated by what this

civilian witness who lived across the street from where the crime had happened said to authorities.

So what happens?

Sorry to jump in, but what happens to a prosecutor?

Yeah.

What are the consequences for willfully and deliberately sitting on exculpatory evidence?

In some cases, you think of like the Duke La Crosse scandal.

That was one of the most prominent instances where a prosecutor was held accountable for withholding exculpatory information.

But in most cases, prosecutors aren't disciplined.

In fact, they eventually go on to become judges.

And it's hard to sue.

It's have something called absolute immunity in federal civil rights proceedings.

So if you were wrongfully convicted, like Lewis Harriston was,

he was eventually exonerated, but if you were wrongfully convicted and you tried to sue for what happened to you in federal court, absolute immunity would prevent you from suing the prosecutors for any acts acts undertaken in their official capacity.

So it's not even qualified immunity.

Qualified immunity applies to police officers.

So there's still a window where you could potentially raise a successful claim in federal court if you could show that the acts of the officer were unreasonable.

But in the case of a prosecutor or a judge who engages in misconduct, it's virtually impossible to sue in federal court.

So then you have to rely on

the disciplinary committee to take some action.

But in most cases, the disciplinary committee does very little to hold prosecutors accountable for these acts.

And

that's a well-known fact within the criminal law or justice community in New York that prosecutors typically aren't held accountable for acts like that.

Life would be so much simpler if we all had a dad who could just pardon us, right?

Situations like this.

What would be simple?

Yeah, I mean, yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, I mean, we could.

There are a lot of people who deserve pardons and clemency who don't get it.

It's got to be.

What did it feel like to get this guy out?

His mother wrote me a letter.

His mother wrote me a letter thanking me for what I did.

And that was such a touching moment for me because I had never gotten a letter from somebody's mom in a card

like showing so much appreciation for the work I did and that was something I held on to and it really let me know that I was doing something very meaningful in the law library.

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Who's teaching you this stuff?

Like, I mean, I'm just trying to get my mind.

You're wandering down to the library and you're like, what's in this book?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

You know,

this is good information.

Yeah, yeah, great question.

So, when I first entered Five Points in 2000, there was a gentleman named Harold Oglespy.

He was

maybe, he had to be about 68, 69 at the time.

He had been incarcerated for over 20 years.

And

he was very knowledgeable with respect to the law.

He would type on a ribbon typewriter with one thing up.

But his grammar was impeccable.

His writing skills were like super impressive.

I was like, I want to write like that one day.

But here's this guy.

And, you know, he was the one who got me my first job there, Harold Aglesby.

I'll never forget it.

I got to give him so much credit because I used to bother him all the time.

I would catch up to him in the yard.

He's doing his walks, right?

And I'd say, on a claim of ineffective assistance and counsel, what are the two.

I'm just trying to take a walk.

Yeah.

And he showed me how to shepherdize cases, which is a way of updating cases.

Shepherdize.

Shepherdize.

Back then, you had print volumes in the library.

It wasn't like now if you're a Yale law student or even if you're incarcerated, many clerks now have access to LexisNexis or Westlaw Edge.

But then it was all print volumes.

So you had to get stacks of books.

Shepherdizing a case was, say you get an older case from 1985 and you want to see how it's being interpreted today.

By getting the shepherd's books, you can then update that case and see if the rule is still valid.

So there are little codes that are used to show what part of the holding might be questionable today, and you can then pull those cases and see how it's being applied.

It's so interesting the fact that it's that fungible.

And what was true 10 years ago might not be relevant today in the same way.

Right.

I mean, and so to stay on top of that.

The law is constantly in flux.

Like the very legal issue I mentioned about retroactivity earlier, you know, the court today, the U.S.

Supreme Court, could decide that question favorably to

that issue as I raised it.

And

there would be no way for me to benefit from that today.

But the law is something that's constantly in flux, and you constantly have to check these cases and read them.

I would read everything.

I had, when I left Five Points Correctional Facility, I don't know how I fit all this case law in my cell.

My brother, I had a typewriter in the cell.

My brother used to get ticked off because I'd be up two in the morning typing, and we would get instant coffee.

You couldn't get a coffee pot, but I would make folders.

I'd stay up,

reading this cake, eating cheesecake, reading case law.

He's trying to get some sleep.

And then when I decide to go to sleep, you know, I snore.

So like, oh, come on, man.

Like, you're killing me in here.

But I don't know how I fit that much case law in myself.

So I'd think about, like, I kept those decisions very organized.

I had them organized by date.

I had them organized by subject matter.

And I had written the margins all these thoughts, right?

And it became a way for me to kind of immerse myself in what I was thinking at the first time I read this decision, how it's being applied.

It was always cold to kind of read some of my thoughts in the margins on these cases.

I would copy them in a law library, and I gave all these cases away when I left.

And the other guys in the cell block were like super happy to have it.

It was like giving them gold.

How many guys like you are in, like, how many people are doing this?

It's just so fuzzy, but over a 17 and a half year period, somehow you're going to explain how a high school dropout winds up in Yale.

Yeah.

And it sounds like during this period, it was just a constant revolving door of mentors,

new cases,

constantly talking with people, testing theories.

Yes.

It must have been consuming.

So there were some of us who really devoted our time to wanting to study the law.

And part of it was motivated by desperation.

And, you know, I wanted to get out.

I wanted to win my appeal.

I felt like I had a meritorious or strong argument.

And I had opinions about that.

And it really,

there was a fair, a small community, because not everybody is a law clerk inside a correctional facility.

It's you're talking about four or five people.

You have an administrative law clerk, then you have about two county clerks and two research clerks that work in there as well.

Someone is responsible for teaching the legal, basic legal research course.

And that group typically

is a small group.

There aren't many people, but you do have jailhouse lawyers, so-called jailhouse lawyers, which is a term people often use to describe clerks who work in a prison law library, who are doing some great stuff today.

So is there like a,

word gets around, okay, that you're getting smarter and smarter by the day.

And somebody, like, what percentage of the population there was like in a queue to talk to you?

Oh, well, yeah,

tell me about it because after a couple of people got out, it's like the whole prison wanted to come see me

in a library.

And I'm like, I feel like, yo, I can't keep my brother up that late.

I gotta, you know, I gotta have some time to, you know, actually do some jobs in the yard, too, myself.

But it was high demand.

Like, once people figure out that's the guy to go to, that's the guy who knows his stuff, then you have everybody flocking toward you.

And that's the experience I had for probably the last 10 years of my sentence,

12 years of my sentence.

And I tried to help as many people as possible.

This is the ultimate OJT.

This is the ultimate on-the-job training.

Absolutely.

I mean, it's not a position you apply for.

No.

You're not going to clerk your way to it.

No.

But there you are.

Yeah, yeah.

And I end up at Yale later on.

No, no, no, no, no.

No.

There's a lot to skip in there.

All right.

Well, just, I mean, give me the insight.

Like, when did you wake up?

At what point, how many cheesecakes had you devoured?

Like, where are you when you go, you know something?

Hell with it, man.

I'm going to the Ivy League.

I can do this.

Yeah, so that's a great question.

It was when college came back.

So President Obama introduced Second Chance Pell, which was a pilot program that was going to restore Pell grants for incarcerated students.

President Trump ended up making it permanent when he signed the 2021 Consolidations and Appropriations Act.

Huge shout out to both of them.

But the fact that it was a nonpartisan issue and everybody's seen the benefit of this was, you know,

I love it.

So it was 2012 when

Cornell, actually it wasn't Cornell first, it was 2012 Hobart and William Smith Colleges, which is a small private college, liberal arts college in Geneva, New York, started offering courses at Five Points Correctional Facility.

We could only take one course at a time.

So there were two volunteer professors, Professor Arissade,

who had a strong French accent, and then Professor Vaughan, who taught math.

I ended up taking Foundations of European Studies 101 with Professor Arissade.

And then eventually they started offering more courses, right?

And this at the time, this was before Obama signed

the pilot or announced the pilot of Second Chance Pell.

At that time, this program by Hobart and William Smith Colleges was being funded by a student who devoted money to getting this program off the ground at Five Points.

The thing was, you had to take the courses that they gave.

There was no course catalog.

You couldn't select.

So I was trying to get the most out of every class.

I'd take a class on Geoffrey Chaucer or Christian de Troy reading, you know, I read Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales and one of our assignments.

Yeah, and you know, Juan Nadabrill with the Sharis Sota, the dracht of Mart persona.

We had to memorize this and we had to read the Middle English version.

Right.

And Professor Arisat held us accountable.

And I thought I was a great writer.

until I went into our class.

I was like, I wrote all these briefs.

Here I am.

I won some cases.

And she was like, your sentences are way too long you need to put a period on it I like my sentences short and crisp like my salad and I was like how am I gonna win her

approval right and I remember when I got my first A plus on a paper that I wrote on Sir Gowan and the Green Knight I was so excited when that happened it was there it was in that you know, in those early days when I started taking college courses that I began to think about, well, what are you going to do with this this once you can get out?

I love the law, right?

I was reading about,

or later on, I would read about someone like Dwayne Betts, who was incarcerated as well, who graduated from Yale Law School.

The one thing my grandfather did was he paid for before he passed away, he would make sure I got the Sunday Review to the New York Times, right?

So I read that and I would read these stories about Sean Hopwood, Dwayne Betts, and I knew it was possible if I was able to get out

to actually enter the legal community and apply the skills that I've been self-taught over more than a decade.

And

so Cornell began offering courses at Five Points Correctional Facility in 2016.

And it was the year that my brother and I were going to be considered for parole.

And

I enrolled in those courses.

I took a course with on public policy with Jamila Michner.

I took some philosophy courses as well.

And by this time, we're now taking

four, three or four courses, right?

So we're really ranking up credits there.

And these credits all will transfer.

Yeah, so they did transfer.

So I wanted to go to Cornell and a mentor of mine, a legal mentor, Joseph Margulies, who wrote the book, What Changed When Everything Changed,

which focuses on the unity that we've seen in this country after 9-11 and then how that sort of collapsed later on during the, you know, the Bush administration when Bush was re-elected.

And, you know,

so he sort of elaborates on that.

But he was a Supreme Court attorney, argued a couple of cases before the Supreme Court successfully.

And he came to see me one day on a visit.

He read something I wrote about.

federal habeas corpus and he was like, I got to see this guy.

So a friend of mine just took him right up to five points.

and i had read his book and we were sitting there talking about the book for about three or four hours right

he's like wow you read my book better than any of my students did

well i had some time yeah he was like you should come to cornell i was like come to cornell i dropped out of school i have a gd he was like no i'm serious you should come to cornell so what happened when i finally thought about it i was like i would love to move to ithaca we ended up getting parole right which was rare because for someone to make their first parole board for what's designated as a violent offense and you're serving an indeterminate life sentence, that is very, very rare.

So 17 and a half to life.

To life.

To life.

And that is ultimately determined by the parole board.

Yes.

As you go.

Yes.

So after you serve 17 years, you're eligible to, because we ended up getting six months knocked off through a maritime law.

So at the 17-year mark, we were at parole eligible and we went before a parole board and you know I remember when I first arrived at five points there were folks who I met who had been denied parole multiple times after serving their minimum sentence so some of these guys were serving sentences of 20 to life and every time you're denied parole you can't see parole for another two years so we called it the getting deuced so there were guys who were deuced three or four times i didn't know like what was going to happen when daryl and I went to the parole board.

It was scary.

You've seen Shawshank Redemption?

Yeah, so

when Red is just like over, he was deuced

a dozen times.

What a scene that is at the end when he's

just

sunny.

I don't know what rehabilitated is.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, I mean, oh, yeah, Shawshank, that was quite the movie.

I remember seeing it when I was inside.

But

we didn't know what was going to happen.

You know, we were in the cell in the same cell at that time.

We basically had to support an administration given all the work we were doing around the prison and with the local community, Project Hope, Seneca County Probation,

the Seneca County court system.

So we didn't know what was going to happen.

And

Depp Lori Jones, she was a deputy superintendent of programs.

I remember we went through a sort of intense parole interview and we didn't know what was going to happen.

It was Commissioner Elovich and Commissioner Krangle,

and

there were about, I don't know, maybe 15 other people who were seated there.

And my brother and I were probably seven and eight, if I remember correctly.

And I went first.

I was in there for, you know, some time, probably about 15 or 20 minutes, which is long.

And what did they ask you?

Like, how's the conversation go?

They were super impressed with our institutional record.

So Commissioner Krangle was like, how could you stay at this prison and not have any disciplinary?

Because we didn't have any misbehavior reports, like, which is very rare for someone in a maximum security prison.

Typically, you get over a 17-year span, you're going to get some type of misbehavior report.

It doesn't matter if you wire your hot pot so it cooks at a higher temperature.

Like, there are so many things you could be written up for, but we had no tickets, and that was something that stood out to them.

And they also asked about the crime.

They asked questions to kind of see if you took responsibility.

And obviously, I took full responsibility for my acts, and my brother did as well.

And

it was just hard to read them.

They asked some tough questions.

It must be tough because you pled innocent.

I pled innocent.

So, all right.

Time goes by.

The guy pled innocent, but now he needs to

assume responsibility for.

And that came up during the parole hearing when the commissioner ellen mitch asked about it and i made that point but she said so i made clear to kind of pivot and then say like that doesn't mean my actions weren't wrong and i couldn't have handled the situation better you know what i mean like i could have handled that situation much better there's no doubt in my mind and i always go back to that day and i regret it you know that i didn't just like body slam my brother who shot it at me and like

let's this is stupid

throw our lives away right but on the other hand you probably didn't know about the duty to retrieve no

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I actually didn't know what was going to happen, right?

I didn't know, honestly, at that time if the person who

was still there, right, when my brother was going to confront him.

So it was so much that was unknown to me.

I never thought it would escalate the way it did.

But at the end of the day, I could have made better choices, right?

I could have made better choices.

And I took ownership of that during that parole hearing.

But I was in there for roughly 15 to 20 minutes.

And then when my brother, he comes out, he's like, how did it go?

We had hot dogs for lunch that day.

That's what they were serving serving in the prison.

And, you know, that's like the cuisine.

You eat hot dogs, like get some real meat because most of the food is loaded with soy, soybeans, like baked meat.

And

so we had hot dogs.

And then he went in and he was only in there for about three to four minutes.

And one of the things that the parole board said was, you know, this isn't a package deal, right?

If we let one of you guys go, that doesn't mean we're going to let you both go.

And he took that as meaning that we both weren't going to get out, which would have been the most devastating news for me to give to my family, who had been committed all these years and coming up to see us on a visit.

So I didn't know what was gonna happen.

My brother, he seemed a little depressed, but he wanted me to get out.

He was like,

he always used to say in his Yap presentation that, does anybody know what it feels like to wake up and see the worst choice you ever made?

right in your face.

So he was, I didn't know it till I heard his Yap presentation.

So he was saying like every day him seeing me in a cell, he felt

you were his accessory.

Yeah, he felt like he was responsible for that, right?

And I didn't know he was carrying that guilt with him till I actually enrolled in Yap and I seen what his presentation was.

And it was hard not to be touched.

by what he was saying.

I mean, when he would do his prison life presentation, you would see everyone in the room shedding a tear, from civilians to corrections officers to the youth that came in.

So

Youth Assistance Program.

And then we created the Prison Community Awareness Program, which was actually for incarcerated younger people.

So after we seen the parole board, you know, my brother had the short interview, I had the long interview.

We didn't know how it was going to go, and it took about four days before we actually got a decision.

How we got the decision was very weird.

I knew that if you were denied parole, typically the envelope that you would get on the legal mail cart would be thicker than the typical envelope that you get because there would be appeal forms in there.

So I was like, I'll know from

the weight of the envelope if we're denied.

So we end up getting called to the school building.

So we're in the school building and

I have no business being there at this time, right?

Because I have no classes.

I'm supposed to be in my program in a law library and I get this random call out to come to the school building.

So I get down there.

I'm sitting on the bench.

There's no officer at the desk.

So I'm like, I'm just going to wait.

Here comes my brother down the hallway.

I'm like, what are you doing there?

He's like, what are you doing here?

I was like, I don't know.

They just told me I had a call out.

They told me I had a call out too, he said.

And he just left the chaplain's office, which was his assigned program.

He was the chaplain's clerk.

So I'm like, wow, what is this like?

Crisis intervention?

Is this going to be like the deputy of programs and the superintendent saying, look, you guys didn't make it, but hold it together.

It might happen the next time or whatever.

I wasn't sure what to think, right?

But I was like, this is a weird way of

us getting a parole decision if we were getting a parole decision at the time.

I just didn't know why we were there.

So then I hear these heels clicking down the hall and it's Depp Lori Jones at Depot Programs, who we've always worked closely with.

in getting these programs off the ground that I mentioned from Pete Cap, the Yap.

And she said, she has two envelopes in her hand.

She says, I got something for you guys.

So she tells the officer who now showed up to open the door.

And she tells him, shut the door.

So she says, have a seat.

She gives both of us envelopes.

So we opened the envelopes and we both were granted parole.

And I was just like, and then here comes the chaplain and here comes

some of the other civilian staff who knew but were coy about it the whole week and didn't tell us.

Oh my God, it's an episode of

returning to favor or something.

Yeah, I know.

And we were, you know, we were so the first thing I do, I got to run back to the gallery and now tell my family.

So I call my mother.

And now I didn't call her all week on purpose because I was like, well,

I'm going to wait till I get a decision, right?

I'm not going to have them come into the front phone anxious.

And

so I heard a voice crack.

She said, hello, because you hear it's a prison call.

You hear, you know, the recording that comes before you actually get to talk.

And I heard a voice crack.

So I think she was anticipating bad news.

I was like, ma, we made it.

And that was, she just started going.

Oh, my God.

Was she retired at that point?

She was retired at that point.

And my stepfather, Louis, at the time, who passed away from cancer a couple years back, he was like, wow.

He was like, I guess I don't got to get you anything for Christmas this year.

And it was that moment that stands out as like

such a monumental moment in my life when that had happened.

And then back to the point of me wanting to go to Cornell.

Typically, when you end up in the prison system in New York, you have to go back to the county or city where the crime was committed.

So in this case, they wanted to send me back to Brooklyn, but all my family had moved out of Brooklyn.

So,

I was going to end up in a halfway house or something in Brooklyn.

But my friend that I mentioned, who brought Professor Mark Gulies up to visit me, had spoken with a judge who was friends with Mary Katzenstein.

And the judge's name, Jim Kerrigan.

He's now probably in Hawaii somewhere enjoying the sun.

Great friend of mine to this day.

And he's like, Darnell could stay with me, you know.

And I was like, I didn't even know him.

He's like, he opened up his doors to me.

And, you know, so I ended up moving in into, he had a residence in West Seneca Street in Ithaca, New York.

And I ended up moving there.

I didn't know whether to call him Your Honor when he came in or how to greet him.

I'd go with Your Honor.

He was a city court judge.

And then

I ended up getting a job as as a litigation paralegal with the offices of Wiggins and Polino.

And I landed a job through Professor Margulis at Cornell Law School.

So I worked for the Cornell Center for the Study of Death Penalty Worldwide.

I wanted to prove myself so much.

His wife, Professor Margulis' wife, was the clinical professor of law, Sandra Babcock, at Cornell Law School.

And I wanted to prove myself to her and Delphine and Sharon so much.

They gave me a writing assignment.

I think it was based on Moore versus Texas, a a recent criminal decision that came down from the U.S.

Supreme Court.

And they wanted me to brief the case and to give an analysis of the case.

So I did that.

And I told them, look, I'll work for you guys for free.

Like, I'll work for you for free.

Just give me a letter of recommendation so I could get into the undergraduate school,

arts and sciences, right?

And Sandra, Professor Babcock, was like, we pay people for their work around here.

And she ended up hiring me.

So I hadn't even been accepted to Cornell as an undergrad yet.

And I was working with law students at the law school.

Oh, my God.

That's unbelievable.

Yeah.

All right.

We got to leapfrog a little bit.

Yeah.

Cornell to Yale.

Yeah.

How's that happen?

How long are you there?

What's your degree in?

And then you got to get me to the trade school.

Yeah.

So I end up.

Graduating from Cornell in 2020.

The pandemic hit.

So they kind of shut down classes and everything went remote.

It took a gap year to study.

You know, you got to take the ELSA and stuff like that when you apply to law school.

And I also wanted to earn some income before I moved to Connecticut because it's a big move and I had a family.

Started working for a nonprofit, Ithaca SNR, doing

research around academic libraries and stuff like that.

Sorry, I should have asked you, did you marry?

When you were out or while you were out?

Yeah, when I was out.

Okay.

When I was out.

I married.

I married my wife, Jessica, who was a teacher in Ithaca, New York.

And we met at Cornell.

She worked at Cornell initially,

and then she was an admissions count

director at Cayuka College in Penyen.

So we were married.

We got married.

I took a gap year, graduated in 2020.

I didn't get a full commencement like most students do because, you know, it was COVID.

So I walked the art squad with my son, took some cool pictures, although we both had masks on.

And

I applied to law school.

When I applied to law school, I applied to Yale because I had met Professor James Foreman, James Foreman Jr.

So his father, James Foreman Sr., founded SNCC, or co-founded SNCC, the student nonviolent coordinating committee, and was a huge activist during the civil rights era, you know, along with Martin Luther King and others.

And he did a talk at Cornell in 2018 after I wrote my New York Times piece.

He encouraged me to apply to Yale.

He was a professor at Yale, he was part of the faculty.

And I was like, he signed his book.

He said, I look forward to seeing you at Yale.

And I was like, well, that's kind of the number one law school in the country.

I don't know if that's even possible.

But

I applied to Yale.

after I graduated from Cornell and took that gap year.

And I remember

the day that

the dean of admissions had called me, and she said,

I seen I hadn't even finished applying to all the schools I wanted to go to because,

you know, it costs money to apply to each school.

And I was like, I'm going to paste this out.

I'm going to apply to about four, and then I'm going to apply to another four.

And I needed some safety schools too, because you didn't know if you were going to get your boots smoked and not actually get into any of those colleges that were your top choice.

So I got a call.

It was December 7th of 2020.

And it was Miriam Ingber, who's the Dean of Admissions at Yale Law School.

And I had just

interviewed for that job at Ithaca SNR, actually.

And it was a long interview where I had to, I did a writing sample early in a week, and then I had to speak with like three or four different people.

at the nonprofit, Kevin Guthrie and others, who was the founder of JSTOR.

And so I had a long interview.

I was like, I'm going to go for a jog.

So when I get in the car, I see this call from Miriam Ingber, and it's transferring over to my Bluetooth and my Toyota Camry that I had at the time.

And I'm frantically trying to figure out why is Miriam Ingber calling me.

I thought like maybe my application was incomplete.

Maybe they needed additional information on my character and fitness statement.

Because if you have a criminal record, you have to then specify that and go into details about the crime and explain why the law school should admit you, you know,

given the fact that you've been incarcerated before.

So I ended up getting her on a call and the first thing she said was, I hope you're ready to move to New Haven.

I was like, what?

I was like, you got to be kidding me.

She was like, I'm very serious.

And I got out of the car, ran back into the house.

My son, Chase, was two at the time.

I started jumping up and down.

I'm like, I got accepted to Yale.

I got accepted to Yale.

And he doesn't doesn't know how to interpret it.

He just starts saying, happy birthday.

Happy birthday.

Happy birthday.

So

then, you know, we got prepared for the big move.

And

I started law school in 2021.

Small group professor was Una Hathaway.

Great experience with her and many of the students who were in my small group because every

class, incoming class, gets situated in a small group.

And then you get Coker Fellows who are like student advisors.

and then you get who your small group professor is who is someone you can ask for advice throughout your legal education and whatnot and so I had Una halfway and I met some great people in that small group class

and you know I took a sports law course I had met with DeMaris Smith who at the time was the head of the NFL players association.

I kind of thought about sports law.

I was also thinking about appellate litigation and criminal law because that's something I devoted so much of my time to all those years.

But I was looking for something with a little softer, less, you know, intense

bend to it.

And I thought sports law could be something pretty cool.

And I had met Peter Stern, who's the CFO to Brooklyn Nets, right?

So Peter Stern and I became good friends, and he wanted me to come over there and work with the Brooklyn Nets for the summer.

And I worked with him, and that was a very great opportunity that I had.

But at the same time,

39 at this point, 40, maybe?

Yeah, 39, 40 actually at the time.

So I had also met Matt Blodgett, who was an investor and general partner at Praxis Ventures.

And I met him at a dinner that involved a non-profit that he has called Put Me In, which provides funding to children with incarcerated parents to partake in athletic programming.

So

they get some of these kids cleats and uniforms and anything they need to, you know, participate in pop water sports and other activities, athletic activities.

So I met Matt and I met, you know, the supporting team from Put Me In and their ambassador, Julian Edelman, Super Bowl, you know, winning wide receiver from the New England Patriots and Robin Glazer, some of the folks from the Kraft Corporation.

I ended up learning that Matt was an investor in

companies that are at the intersection or startups that are at the intersection of IT and manufacturing.

And what he started talking about was the fact that there was this skills gap, right?

No employers could find top of the funnel talent, that the baby boomers were quickly leaving these careers after COVID, right?

And many of the companies that he was associated with just couldn't find top of the funnel or entry-level skilled labor.

So I was like, wow, that's fascinating.

Because I was doing clinical work work with Professor James Foreman at the time as well.

And, you know, there were many people in New Haven who were in need of middle-class jobs that didn't require four years of college.

Because many of the job openings that Matt was talking about didn't require a four-year degree.

And, you know, some were union jobs, some weren't, but paid well above a living wage.

I was like, wow, why isn't that messaging getting across to communities where the hunger for economic opportunity is greatest?

And I ended up meeting another investor, Jacob Ruttenberg, who's the general partner at Tinicum Incorporated.

He's a senior associate there, but he was a general partner of Tinicum Venture Partners, so their investment wing at Tinnecum Incorporated at that time.

He was running that.

And they had plenty of factories throughout the U.S.

from Penn Engineering to Watlow to Dexter.

And he kind of reiterated what Matt had said about this skills gap.

And another fun fact is that part of the law school is named after Jacob's grandfather.

So you have Ruttenberg Hall at Yale.

It's named after Daryl Ruttenberg, who was a famous Yale attorney who then went into the manufacturing sector and founded Tinicum.

I wanted to know more about it.

I had done some research.

I read a report by Deloitte, which said that 2.1 million jobs in advanced manufacturing were expected to be unfilled due to the existing skills gap.

I read that report.

And, you know, at the time, there were half a million construction jobs that were unfilled.

And I was like, wow, this is a tremendous opportunity to kind of connect people in underserved communities to some good careers because many of the people I was seeing in New Haven, which had a 26% poverty rate and a median household income of $42,000.

You know, they were working in the food service sector or the retail sector, the gig economy, right?

And they needed jobs and, you know, offered good benefits and a living wage.

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I ended up, you know, going to the IMTS conference in Chicago with Jacob and Matt, and we did a panel on the main stage in IMTS.

And then I went on sort of a

road trip with him and Matt, where we toured several of his factories throughout the Midwest.

We went to Watla, we went to Dexter, and we were in this small car and we were like bumping Kentucky bluegrass and rap,

listening to Loretta Lynn's Coal Miner's Daughter, and then we would play some rap music like the Rizz's from Wu-Tang Clan's

Grits.

And

there were a lot of synergies between, you know, what we heard about, what we were listening to across these two genres, despite the different cultural contexts.

And we were listening to the Kentucky Bluegrass because our final destination was this place called the Gene Haas E.

Kentucky Advanced Manufacturing Institute, which is in Paintsville, Kentucky.

Sure.

And we were going to meet with their executive director, Kathy Walker, who

was running a program, a boot camp essentially, that was initially launched to provide

skills training to people to dislocated coal workers and their families, but then it eventually expanded.

Are you done at Yale at this point?

No, I did this in between classes.

So I'm in Yale.

So we ended up going on this tour.

This was September 2022.

Flew out to Chicago for the IMTS conference.

We take this road trip.

go throughout the Midwest, small car, three big guys, all of us are tall.

Matt used to play football for Yale.

He used to play center.

Jacob is about my height.

So here we are, two investors and a guy who did, you know, 17 years

in the can, right?

So here we are, tour

road trip.

And so we end up at

the East Kentucky Advanced Manufacturing Institute.

And it was a great program.

And I mentioned it because it was something that really inspired me to do more work in this space.

Kathy Walker, I would encourage you.

you and Chuck, maybe one day to attend one of the graduation ceremonies there.

It's a remarkable program.

It's not only free, but they provide a stipend to all the trainees of $1,700 a month and all the cutting-edge skills from

additive manufacturing, CAG care modeling to

mechatronics and machine industrial vision technology.

You get eight NIM certifications when you're there.

It's a remarkable program.

And I attended the graduation and it was so many.

tears that I've seen from the families who are there and seeing the impact that these new career opportunities had on the folks in eastern Kentucky.

And I felt like, how could we replicate this elsewhere, right?

There's so much in common between the folks in eastern Kentucky and the folks in East New York, Brooklyn, right?

You know, Eastern Kentucky, you know, 80% of the population, working age population, doesn't have a college degree.

It's the same thing in East New York, Brooklyn.

Why aren't we extending opportunities?

for people to achieve the American dream who haven't gone the traditional track of going to college for four years.

So it's a really good question, but why are you asking it in the middle?

I mean, you're getting close to graduating from the top law school in the country.

You're about to do something that I don't think has been done before.

And now you sound all distracted by the fact that there's another course or another path.

Well, yeah.

Great question.

When I went to law school, I wanted to have a social impact through the work that I did.

I either wanted to, you know, initially go into appellate litigation or constitutional law law or focus on civil rights law, but I felt like this was an opportunity to achieve the same outcome through entrepreneurship.

And it still holds true to what inspired me to go to law school.

And I didn't see it as a distraction.

I ended up working as an entrepreneur in residence because I wanted to launch a company.

Initially, we were thinking about

augmented reality or virtual reality.

This is at, you know, at the time when Mark Zuckerberg is, you know, his avatar is showing up all over YouTube when he's talking about the metaverse being a new frontier for human interconnectivity and everything else.

And I wanted to see if potentially we could provide free skills training to people in some of these communities to fill some of the openings that, you know, Matt and Jacob.

were talking about.

We didn't feel like the hardware was where it needed to be.

You know, we went through, tried to Oculus.

It would be too capital intensive.

I wanted to launch a company that would have, again, provided that kind of skills training to

people in underserved communities, but I just felt like VR augmented reality wasn't the way to go.

And I also didn't know really what the skills were that employers were looking for.

So that's why I ended up going to vocational school in my second year.

I wanted to go to kind of investigate.

and identify what are the core competencies, what are the skills that can can get someone in the door at a Sikorsky or at an electric boat, which is building the Virginia-class submarine, and they need, you know,

20,000 technicians over the next three years, right?

What are the basic core skills that are needed?

And so I ended up enrolling at Lincoln Technical Institute in East Windsor, Connecticut.

First, I wanted to see if it was doable within my schedule.

My wife was ready to strangle me, right?

I was doing a lot, right?

So I kind of tailored all my Yale law courses

to be from 8 a.m.

to 12

noon.

And from 12.45 on, I was at throwing on my Lincoln Tech uniform and hopping on a multi-axis CNC machine and, you know, machining some cool parts for my son.

So,

you know, I journaled all of this.

I documented all of this.

You know, I developed a lot of friendships during my time at Lincoln Tech.

When I eventually launched my software, you know, with my two brilliant co-founders who worked at Indeed, Dan Selen and R.C.

Johnson, Lincoln Tech gave us the opportunity to pilot the software there.

What's it called?

The software?

Thurgood.

Thurgood, the app for workers.

So now we finally get around to the shit.

Yeah, sure.

You're aware.

Yeah, absolutely.

And a lot of people ask, why is it, what's the deal with Thurgood?

What does that mean?

And, you know, I kind of, it was a way to blend my legal education with what I was doing

in the trades.

And Thurgood Marshall, I always considered him to be a legal engineer of sorts.

He spearheaded the arguments.

in Brown v.

Board to overturn Plessy v.

Ferguson.

So he was always a hero of mine.

He also believed in the right to industrial self-determination.

So I felt like, who better to name the company after than Thurgood

Marshall, the first?

And the airport in our hometown, Baltimore, is now the Thurgood Marshall.

Yeah, he was from Baltimore.

Deep history there.

Thurgood Marshall is, you know, someone who I always had looked up to.

And so I named the company after him.

We launched at several campuses after our pilot with Lincoln Tech.

We've partnered with other schools from SUNY to the Porter and Chester Institute to workforce development programs like Match that offer free skills training.

And what we want people to do is to be able to showcase their work.

One of the problems I think with the trades and advanced industry and the stigma that's associated with it is that it's not visible to everyone, right?

Many of the students and skilled tradesmen that I encounter, they're not on LinkedIn showing what they're building.

They're not...

And we want to have a platform and a network where we can build that out.

So you kind of think of a LinkedIn for the skilled trades.

if I had to use another company to compare it.

That's what we are, right?

We want to bring attention to the meaningful careers that people can find in this space.

We want people to showcase their work.

We want to celebrate the achievements of America's skilled workforce.

And that's the only way we're going to really appeal to the younger generation, right?

So, we have a combination of skills assessments and a public feed where people could post videos and showcase some of the work that they're doing.

But they can also apply for jobs on a platform as well.

Search within a specific geo and look for a job as an electrician.

Look for apprenticeship opportunities.

You can find that on a platform as well.

Give out some referral bonuses and stuff like that to incentivize people.

What's your business card say?

Thurgood.

What do you mean?

What's your title?

CEO and founder of Thurgood.

Co-founder, because I have two other co-founders who have much much more product expertise than me.

Are they the big guys in the little car with you?

Oh, yeah.

So Matt Blodgett and Praxis did provide the pre-seed funding to get Thurgood off the ground.

So that's when I recruited a founding team, R.C.

Johnson and Dan Sellen, who used to run Indeed.com's internal incubator and know

all the pitfalls and problems with the traditional resume when applying for jobs.

And what we're trying to do is, you know, allow students and job seekers to showcase their skills in work and use that as a way to connect them with employers who are looking for people with the requisite skills to fill some of the needs that they have on the labor side.

So,

yeah, it's making hiring more efficient, giving students and job seekers a better way of applying for jobs in the construction trades and advanced industry, but also having an aspirational pull as well in trying to get more people interested in the trades.

So we have a dual objective, right?

To kind of make hiring more efficient, to streamline the process, do away with the traditional resume, but also to create that aspirational feel toward doing great work in the skilled trades.

And that's where we need more seasoned veterans and technicians to come onto the platform and like showcase the work that's being done in this space.

Some of the baby boomers who are leaving, right?

How do you pass on that tribal knowledge to those Gen Zers, right?

So we're trying to create a network and a platform where that information can get shared better, disseminated.

It's just so crazy the fact that you and I have wound up in such a similar space.

Space.

Coming from such completely disparate backgrounds.

Loretta, Lynn, and Arissa, you know.

Yeah, man.

What should people do?

There's not a day goes by where somebody doesn't call me for some kind of quote around what you just summed up, really.

And for me, it's just math.

You know, five leave, two come in.

Five go, two come in.

It's been going on now for over a decade.

And the opportunities are so vast, people truly just don't understand.

And so making a more persuasive case for the trades.

is something I spend a lot of time thinking about.

It sounds like it's precisely what you're doing.

Yeah.

so if we could just leave people with a what's the ask

download the app get engaged on the platform showcase what you're doing there's so many people who aren't in vogue tech schools but who are working on stuff in their dad's garage or who are building things with their hands that really demonstrate their skills and the great work that they're doing in this space and be get involved right get on the platform uh

share some information about you know what it's like to work at Sikorsky for 30 years, the benefits of doing it, the types of opportunities that it opened up for you.

How about a welder?

How about an HVAC guy?

How about an electrician who just

somebody who's just got it done right today?

Film it, put it up.

This is what I did.

Yeah, you have electricians who have been sharing some of the work they've been doing in our public feed, because you have the option to just create a portfolio that's visible to employers, but also to post something in a public feed that anyone can see.

So if you downloaded the app now, you would see some cool posts and videos from students and people working in the trades who just want to show some of the stuff that they're building.

So that's the ask.

That's the ask is to download the app, get engaged on the platform, and help build out this community and bring awareness to the careers in this space.

Brother, you took the scenic route, but you got there, man.

Yeah.

You really did.

You were the only former inmate, Yale, graduate, lawyer, trades apologist that I know.

And it was super great of you to fly across the country to do this.

Yeah, my God.

It means the world to us.

Yeah, yeah, totally.

And I know you're working to bring awareness to the careers in this space and how I could be involved and team up to do that.

I'm more than happy to do so.

We're singing from the same hymn book.

Yeah, that's for sure.

Something tells me we'll find a way to figure it out.

I've seen your tweet, by the way, about Elon potentially doing some work with Elon Musk.

Let's get Elon Musk to build the Giga Factory in East New York.

There you go.

Well, look, man, that guy is just crazy enough to do it.

He just does things, it seems.

I didn't even tell you that.

I saw a clip of him the other day.

I put it on Facebook and all the normal places.

I saw that.

Yeah.

I mean, there he is.

It's like.

Saying what you say all the time.

It's like, hey, man,

welcome to the party, dude.

I've seen that.

Yeah, right?

But look, it's the truth.

People, I understand how important

law is.

There is no order.

It's law and order.

Right?

Yeah.

You have to have it.

But very few people are walking around today going, you know, God, if we just had a few more lawyers,

things would be so much better.

The need is elsewhere.

And the fact that you manage to inhabit both those worlds at the same time is super cool.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, like I wrote about in the Washington Post piece,

there were 50 students in my tortz class at Yale and two in my machining class at Lincoln Tech, which was

really showing where our priorities are as

a nation and like the work that needs to be done to really balance that out better.

So definitely going to continue to be an advocate for the trades and vocational training and

hopefully keep people engaged and active

on our platform.

Well, please give your brother my regards.

Is your mom still around?

Yeah, my mom's still around.

She's out in Staten Island.

She's

super proud of our accomplishments.

She was at our graduation at Yale.

I

got to walk across the stage with my daughter and my son.

carrying my daughter who's one in chase and it was an experience I'll never forget.

We had a wonderful dinner afterwards, and you know, that one thing I wanted to do was you know, make my mother proud.

And I mentioned before,

I can always say I did that, and that really

means a whole lot to me.

So, yeah, what's your name?

Denise, Denise, you done good.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

I sure appreciate it.

Appreciate it.

Yeah.

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