Podcast appearances and mentions of billy cannon

Steve, Mike, and Charlie played their daily "Triple Option" segment. Mike remembered Billy Cannon's legendary "Halloween night run" for LSU. Steve discussed Chris Olave's concussion issues and his decision regarding using the "guardian cap." Charlie reviewed a stat from Audacy NFL insider Brian Baldinger regarding the increasing effectiveness of the run game in pro football.

Joe Burrow and Billy Cannon, you have company. Jayden Daniels became the third player in LSU history to win the Heisman Trophy. The senior quarterback claimed college football's top honor Saturday by a comfortable margin. Ask us, and we say voters got this right. As the nation's best player, Daniels was a deserving winner. Now, we turn the page to 2024. On today's episode, hosts Blake Toppmeyer and John Adams offer eight players to watch for the 2024 Heisman. Of course, quarterbacks dominate the list, including a few from the SEC, and they serve up a few sleeper candidates, too. Later in the episode, they preview the College Football Playoff semifinals and unpack the possibility of an Alabama-Texas rematch in the national championship. Stay connected on Twitter with Blake (@btoppmeyer) and John (@JohnAdamsKNS) and stay up to date on SEC football news by subscribing to KnoxNews: knoxnews.com/subscribe.

Aaron Murray and T-Bob Hebert react to Jayden Daniels winning the Heisman Trophy over Michael Penix Jr., Box Nix, and Marvin Harrison Jr. Jayden joins Joe Burrow and Billy Cannon as the two other Heisman winners from LSU. The guys discuss Deion Sanders and Colorado hitting the transfer portal to bolster their offensive line, and react to the news that Dillon Gabriel will be transferring to Oregon from Oklahoma. (Timestamps may vary based on advertisements.) 07:50 - Jayden Daniels wins Heisman   13:00 - Jayden Daniels vs. Caleb Williams 25:15 - Top 5 Heisman candidates 2024 31:00 - Deion Sanders hits the portal 41:30 - Transfer Portal news #VolumeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Aaron Murray and T-Bob Hebert react to Jayden Daniels winning the Heisman Trophy over Michael Penix Jr., Box Nix, and Marvin Harrison Jr. Jayden joins Joe Burrow and Billy Cannon as the two other Heisman winners from LSU. The guys discuss Deion Sanders and Colorado hitting the transfer portal to bolster their offensive line, and react to the news that Dillon Gabriel will be transferring to Oregon from Oklahoma. (Timestamps may vary based on advertisements.) 07:50 - Jayden Daniels wins Heisman   13:00 - Jayden Daniels vs. Caleb Williams 25:15 - Top 5 Heisman candidates 2024 31:00 - Deion Sanders hits the portal 41:30 - Transfer Portal news #VolumeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today we discuss the legend of Billy Cannon, LSU Tigers, 1958 national champion and 1959 Heisman Trophy winner. Cannon combined sprinter speed with bulky size that ripped through opponents like they were boys. He was Bo Jackson - Lawrence Taylor - Mike Tyson -Pete Rose all rolled into one. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jay-abramson/support

Today's Locked on Ole Miss podcast we talk about why this QB class was brought together and the overriding need to speed up Jaxson Dart's development in certain areas of the field for the Ole Miss Rebels and Lane Kiffin. The quickest way to fix the hole in Dart's game was by bringing in Spencer Sanders from Oklahoma State to push the young QB and provide that urgency to his development. In the second segment of the show we talk about the return to Oxford by Miami Hurricanes Running Back coach Kevin Smith. The South Florida native couldn't turn down his chance to go home but after one season the UCF graduate came back on to a staff that saw him develop future NFL players such as Snoop Conner and Jarrion Ealy. We also talk about the Transfers receiving there pre spring jersey numbers. In our final segment of the day we talk to friend of the show Stuart Stevens who has spent most of his life in politics but even more following Ole Miss. We talk about him being in the stadium in 1959 for Billy Cannon's punt return and the return of historic rivalries like the Georgia Bulldogs and Tennessee Volunteers to a semi regular basis. WANT MORE OLE MISS SPORTS CONTENT? Follow and Subscribe to the Podcast on these platforms: 

Today's Locked on Ole Miss podcast we talk about why this QB class was brought together and the overriding need to speed up Jaxson Dart's development in certain areas of the field for the Ole Miss Rebels and Lane Kiffin. The quickest way to fix the hole in Dart's game was by bringing in Spencer Sanders from Oklahoma State to push the young QB and provide that urgency to his development.   In the second segment of the show we talk about the return to Oxford by Miami Hurricanes Running Back coach Kevin Smith. The South Florida native couldn't turn down his chance to go home but after one season the UCF graduate came back on to a staff that saw him develop future NFL players such as Snoop Conner and Jarrion Ealy. We also talk about the Transfers receiving there pre spring jersey numbers.   In our final segment of the day we talk to friend of the show Stuart Stevens who has spent most of his life in politics but even more following Ole Miss. We talk about him being in the stadium in 1959 for Billy Cannon's punt return and the return of historic rivalries like the Georgia Bulldogs and Tennessee Volunteers to a semi regular basis.   WANT MORE OLE MISS SPORTS CONTENT?   Follow and Subscribe to the Podcast on these platforms:  

Bloody Angola: A Prison Podcast by Woody Overton and Jim Chapman bring you a story of redemption today involving Heisman Trophy winner and great LSU Football All American Billy Cannon.Billy Cannon's life was not free of scandal and although there were stumbles throughout, Billy persevered and the most beloved of LSU players not only found himself, but redemption in the most unlikely of places, Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola.It's a story you must hear told by two of his lifelong fans in detail.Its the story of the redemption of Billy Cannon, Great All American!#LSUFootball #BillyCannon #HeismanTrophy #BloodyAngolaPodcast#Podcast #PrisonPodcast

Ole Miss is 7-0 going into its annual game with LSU for the first time in, well, a long, long time. Ole Miss-LSU is important any year but there's much more than usual at stake for the Rebels this time. Ole Miss has gone from favorite to underdog since oddsmakers posted the opening line. The Clevelands discuss this year's game as well as the storied history of the rivalry known as the Magnolia Bowl.

Welcome to Friday's episode of the Sports Scouting Report! Legendary coach Barrett Murphy joins Lee in the studio today as they go over his impressive history surrounding Louisiana football. From playing with Billy Cannon to coaching the Bayou Beasts against the Honolulu Hurricanes in Hawaii, Murphy has had a most impressive history. He is also the author of his book Barefoot, Bloodied, and Bruised. Be sure to not miss this episode. Make sure to subscribe and follow our YouTube, Podbean, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for watching! 

TUESDAY POD! On Monday it was announced by the university that former LSU Women's Basketball and WNBA superstar Simone Augustus would receive her own statute! Augustus will join Shaquille O'Neil, Billy Cannon, and Bob Petite as former athletes who have statutes on the LSU campus. Coach Kim Mulkey joins the show to discuss what it means to have a womens basketball player get a statute on campus and what it was like to coach against and recruit Augustus. She also discussed the WNBA draft as two former Tigers were selected last night, Khayla Pointer and Faustine Aifuwa. On3 Recruiting's Billy Embody joins the show to discuss the latest in LSU Football recruiting and LSU Football spring practice, as the Tigers have had some big-time recruits viewing spring practice and meeting the new staff. and MORE!!! 

For Wednesday's episode of The Sports Scouting Report Podcast With Lee Brecheen, Lee has a full show with three great guests. First, Lee interviews former LSU Football player/coach Lynn LeBlanc about being a part of the great 1958 National Championship Team, being around LSU coaching legends like Paul Dietzel and Charlie McClendon, having the big sack against Ole Miss that set up the famous Billy Cannon punt return on Halloween Night in 1959, coaching Washington Redskins legend Bob Brunet at Larose-Cutoff, and more. Then, Lee brings on the first Class of 2023 recruit ever to come on the podcast in Denham Springs High School junior OT Tyler Kimble. Finally, Lee interviews the BROC Foundation's Athletic Training Outreach Manager Deanna Melancon about the program and the importance of having athletic trainers in the state of Louisiana.

LSU junior defensive end Bj Ojulari joins the show to discuss LSU Football, the new coaching staff and Head Coach Brian Kelly he also recaps his trip to Indianapolis for the NFL Combine where he was among other top underclassmen to get invited to the event by the NFL and the NFLPA. Jordy gets into talking about his old high school field trips and somehow tied it back to LSU football. And Jordy reminds us why none of us want to go to prison, as he takes us down memory lane with an oral history of Billy Cannon's wild history culminating in being the face of Angola. 

For Wednesday's video version of The Sports Scouting Report Podcast With Lee Brecheen, Lee interviews one of the biggest hitters in the state in Live Oak High School senior safety Aiden Saunders. Also, Lee catches up with Southern Lab High School Head Football Coach Darrell Asberry, who led the Kittens to the 2021 Division IV State Championship. Coach Asberry talks about their incredible ride to the state championship, calling games as a color commentator for his other alma mater Jackson State, what it is like to be around Coach Deion Sanders, and so much more! Finally, we flashback when Coach Barrett Murphy showed some incredibly rare film of LSU legend Billy Cannon when he played football at Istrouma High School!

Interview with LSU football great Jimmy Field a community leader walking with the Lord. From his time on Billy Cannon led LSU teams, to traveling to Europe, to his successful law practice and election to the Louisiana Public Service Commission Jimmy talks about life and his long friendship with LD. LISTEN to the Count Time Podcast episode: "Living Legend Jimmy Field" see notes, transcript, pictures and videos here.

Billy Cannon was a star college football player. He would also change pro football, on THIS DAY, November 8th with Chris Conley. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A tour through an exciting new University!! Written by Bo Segrest Performed by Bo Segrest, Mehran Jahedi, Billy Cannon, Stevan Marcus, Jack Carr, and Andrew Hodnette

Multiple SEC schools claim national titles from the 1930s through the '50s, including LSU with star running back Billy Cannon in 1958, prior to Cannon's epic game-winning punt return against powerhouse Ole Miss a year later.

LD and Greg Lafleur review the book Billy Cannon: A Long,  Long Run and discuss the parallels with their lives. Click here to comment and for detailed show notes, transcript, pictures and videos.

Wearing borrowed uniforms, practicing on obscure college campuses, and led by a former Marine Corps W.W. II fighter ace as commissioner, the American Football League (AFL) debuted in the Fall of 1960 to challenge the monopoly of the well-established National Football League. Within ten years it had won two Super Bowls and had forced a merger with its rival, splitting the NFL into the National and American Football Conferences. This colorful history of the AFL and its unforgettable cast of characters, from Billy Cannon to Joe Namath to its "Foolish Club" of team owners recounts the startling success of an upstart league that prevailed against long odds.

Corey Beltz of MTM Recoginition, who makes the Heisman, tells us what goes into making the Heisman Memorial Trophy. From the process, repairs and changes, Corey delivers the inside secrets on the most recognizable award in all of sports.

SHN Trailers is part of the https://sportshistorynetwork.com/ (Sports History Network - The Headquarters For Sports' Yesteryear.) HIGHLIGHTED SHOW https://sportsfh.com/ (Sports' Forgotten Heroes) is the online home to the Sports' Forgotten Heroes podcast. Every other week a new podcast is uploaded, and every episode of Sports' Forgotten Heroes is a tribute to the stars who shaped the games we love to watch and the games we love to play. Sports' Forgotten Heroes is not about reliving the careers of superstars we talk about every day like Muhammed Ali, Jim Brown, Babe Ruth, or Michael Jordan. Rather, Sports' Forgotten Heroes is about the stars who have faded away with time. Some were elected to their respective Hall of Fame, others might have had one great season or just one great game that will live in infamy. Guys like Billy Cannon, Ed Delahanty, and Bill Barilko – stars whom time has forgotten. https://sportshistorynetwork.com/podcasts/sports-forgotten-heroes/ (Learn more about the show on the Sports History Network.)

If you don't live in the southeast or within the footprint of the SEC, you might be completely unaware of one of the greatest plays in LSU football.  On this minisode, we'll tell you the story of Billy Cannon's famous punt return against Ole Miss that won the game for the Tigers and eventually locked up the Heisman Trophy for Cannon.  Before you hang out with an LSU fan again, make sure you know about the Cannon Halloween Run.  Check out all of our episodes here: http://distantreplaypodcast.com 

In episode 14, Rob and Kristie discuss week 14 of the NFL including Jameis Winston's Monster game against the Lions and of course the Patriots win over the Bengals. Listen as they discuss various conspiracies behind the tapes turned into the NFL. Plus Joe Burrow wins the Heisman and his odd connection to Billy Cannon the only other LSU Tiger to win the Heisman. Finally, Rob updates Kristie on the Florida HIgh School Football Championship games from this past weekend and the disparity in pay for high school coaches across the country. Remember don't forget to subscribe and follow us on Instagram. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/sportsblisswithrobandkris/message

On the College Football Trophy Game Show the voice of the South Dakota State Jackrabbits Tyler Merriam chats with the Online Sports Guys putting the Dakota Marker game in perspective as North Dakota State, #1 in the FCS poll takes on #3 South Dakota State. The winner takes home the Dakota Marker. Plus a pair of SEC trophy games to discuss. The Southwest Classic between Arkansas and Texas A&M in Arlington, TX and the Magnolia Game Trophy between Ole Miss and LSU (Think Billy Cannon, 1959). The Online Sports Guys bring up the Coal Bowl between Indiana (Pa.) and California (Pa.) in Division II. The War on I-94 in Wisconsin, The Little Brass Bell and the Wagon Wheel in Division III

On the College Football Trophy Game Show the voice of the South Dakota State Jackrabbits Tyler Merriam chats with the Online Sports Guys putting the Dakota Marker game in perspective as North Dakota State, #1 in the FCS poll takes on #3 South Dakota State. The winner takes home the Dakota Marker. Plus a pair of SEC trophy games to discuss. The Southwest Classic between Arkansas and Texas A&M in Arlington, TX and the Magnolia Game Trophy between Ole Miss and LSU (Think Billy Cannon, 1959). The Online Sports Guys bring up the Coal Bowl between Indiana (Pa.) and California (Pa.) in Division II. The War on I-94 in Wisconsin, The Little Brass Bell and the Wagon Wheel in Division III

Can he do it?  Can Dan go 3 for 3 picking last place? Dan talks Belmont. Lantern Fly Alert!  Losing Insects (and the people who study them...).  Truancy due to airfare?  Germany cracks down.  Pele gets her dander up.  Getting to know Gainsborough.  The Roger Kahn Reader.  Billy Cannon.  Clint Walker. Credits: Talent:  Tamsen Granger and Dan Abuhoff Engineer:  Ellie Suttmeier Art:  Zeke Abuhoff

On this week's episode, Andrew eulogizes LSU football legend Billy Cannon (1:50). Andrew and Drew then discuss the NBA conference finals (6:30), quarterback Joe Burrow/Jeaux Burreaux's transfer to LSU - is he the savior? - (21:00), LSU baseball's postseason hopes (34:30) and Drew recaps his brother's bachelor party, leading to a skinny dipping debate (38:20). Twitter - @KreweDuDrew krewedudrew@gmail.com

One of college football's greatest players, LSU's 1959 Heisman Trophy winner Billy Cannon passed away Sunday at the age of 80 at his home in St. Francisville, LA. Join Roger Emrich as he goes into his archive from 10 years ago for a conversation with Paul Dietzel, who coached LSU to the 1958 national title with Cannon as his star player.

One of college football's greatest players, LSU's 1959 Heisman Trophy winner Billy Cannon passed away Sunday at the age of 80 at his home in St. Francisville, LA. Join Roger Emrich as he goes into his archive from 10 years ago for a conversation with Paul Dietzel, who coached LSU to the 1958 national title with Cannon as his star player.

Talking NFL, OTAs, Patriots, Brady, Bud Adams, Billy Cannon, Houston Oilers and more..

Inside the Trenches with LSU Tiger National Champion and New Orleans Saints Superbowl Champion Marlon “Big Fav” Favorite: Awesome episode.       You are now "Inside the Trenches" with LSU Tiger National Champion and New Orleans Saints Superbowl Champion Marlon "Big Fav" Favorite.   I provide in depth insight on some of the top stories in the worlds of sports and entertainment... with a little southern flavor added...   Hit me on social media...   Twitter: bigfav504 Facebook: Marlon Favorite Sr. Instagram: bigfav_dline_guru   Subscribe To Inside The Trenches On ITunes:   https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/inside-the-trenches-marlon-favorite/id1320252091?mt=2       Do you need sports training or consulting?     Go to https://www.conquersportspros.com/     Check me out during the week on the radio.   ESPN New Orleans - 100.3 FM or The Sports hangover with Gus Kattengale on Soundcloud   You can also get me on the LSU Sports Network on The LSU Sports Network app.   Remember, God is love!    Episode: AWESOME   #InsideTheTrenches #BigFav #BillyCannon #LSUHeismanWinner #LSU #legend #NBAPlayoffs2018 #Cavs #Celtics #Warriors #Rockets #BlackVynm #JaeNikeah #DontGiveUp       

Hour 2 starts with the panic among Wolves fans after Brian Windhorst's comments on a recent podcast regarding Karl-Anthony Towns. Then it's the Sports Person of the Day: the late Billy Cannon. John Heidt has a sports update, then Derek Wetmore joins from the ball park to talk about Gardy's first game back at Target Field as Tigers Manager.

Rivals.com's Mike Farrell and Adam Gorney break down the latest in college football news, including: Open - Hunter Johnson transferring 03:30 - Tua also talking transfer 12:40 - Saban vs. UCF 18:10 - Penn State, Oregon & Tennessee landing top players 26:50 - Pay for play olympic model 35:40 - Mike and Adam's thoughts on the Royal wedding 37:55 - Billy Cannon dies at 80

After leading LSU to a National Championship and winning the Heisman Trophy, Billy Cannon was selected No. 1 in the NFL Draft by the Los Angeles Rams and then GM Pete Rozelle. But the upstart AFL also had its eyes set on Cannon; and Houston Oilers owner Bud Adams offered Cannon a contract he couldn't refuse. With two contracts in hand, and both leagues claiming rights to Cannon an arbitrator was called in. Ultimately, Cannon was awarded to the AFL. Charles deGravelles, author of "Billy Cannon A Long, Long Run" and Jim Weathersby from Thesportshistorian.com join host Warren Rogan and talk about Cannon's career in the AFL, his very short stint in the NFL, and his life after pro football.    Links: http://www.sportsfh.com http://www.patreon.com/sportsfh http://www.sportsFhereos@twitter.com ©2017 Sports' Forgotten Heroes

Description of Sports' Forgotten Heroes. This summary outlines the fact that a new podcast of Sports' Forgotten Heroes will be released every other Tuesday. Additionally, it details some of the great heroes we will be discussing like Billy Cannon, Bill Barilko, Ed Delahanty, and Dean Chance.   Links: www.sportsfh.com www.patreon.com/sportsfh SportsFHeroes@twitter.com ©2017 Sports' Forgotten Heroes    

Billy Cannon was a Heisman Trophy winning running back for LSU. He helped lead the Tigers to a National Championship in 1958 and followed that with a stellar career in the AFL and a brief appearance in the NFL. In this two-part series of Sports' Forgotten Heroes, author Charles de Gravelles and Sports Historian Jim Weathersby join Warren Rogan to take a look back at the career of Cannon, his fall from grace after his playing days were finished, and where he is today.   Links: Sports' Forgotten Heroes website Sports' Forgotten Heroes Patreon Page Sports' Forgotten Heroes twitter ©2017 Sports' Forgotten Heroes

In this episode of Bloody Angola Woody Overton and Jim Chapman tell the story of legendary Warden Burl Cain. Burl Cain was the longest serving Warden in the history of Louisiana State Penitentiary and his vision and reforms changed this historic prison forever. This docu-series is the most anticipated and sought after we have ever done on Bloody Angola Podcast and it starts now!#BloodyAngolaPodcast #BurlCain #Becomingthewarden #Louisianastatepenitentiary #PrisonWarden #Podcasts #Dixoncorrectionalinstitute #DCI #MDOCOur Sponsors for this episode have a great deal for you!GET 16 FREE MEALS PLUS FREE SHIPPING AT HELLOFRESH!HelloFresh delivers step-by-step recipes and fresh, pre-portioned ingredients right to your door. First, you set your meal plan preferences with options for carnivores, vegetarians, calorie-counters, and more. You'll choose from 30+ delicious weekly recipes carefully put together by the amazing chefs!Click Here to Take advantage of 16 FREE MEALS and FREE SHIPPING!FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOWBECOMING THE WARDEN: THE LEGACY AND LEGEND THAT IS BURL CAIN PART 1Jim: Hey, everyone, and welcome back to Bloody-Woody: -Angola.Jim: A podcast 142 years in the making. Woody: The Complete Story of America's Bloodiest Prison. Jim: And I'm Jim Chapman. Woody: And I'm Woody Overton. Jim: And we're back, Woody Overton. Woody: Back in the saddle. Jim: Back in effect. Woody: Back in effect. Jim: And we're bringing y'all a hell of a story today. Highly requested.Woody: Yes. A legend.Jim: Legend. Someone you have some experience with. Woody: I do. I have a lot of years of experience with him. Solid dude. They can say whatever they want to. Everybody's going to have their haters or whatever. And certainly, he marches to the beat of a different drummer, but he's a visionary and has affected so many lives. Jim: Boy, he sure has. And I'll tell you, as far as research, I've probably enjoyed researching this man more than just about anyone I've researched.Woody: I've read his book years ago when it came out. Of course, I have the family history at Angola and all that, and of course, my personal history with him. Just super, super intelligent, super unique.Jim: Yeah, very. I think that's a great word to describe him. And of course, if you're hanging by a thread right now trying to figure out who we're talking about, it is the legendary warden of Angola, Burl Cain. So, we're going to start off and we're just going to take you through a journey of his life.Woody: Yeah. And I think it's so important, this research that you put together, a lot of it I didn't know, especially about the early years. And I don't know how they haven't made a movie about him yet, honestly. Jim: It's got to be coming at some point. Woody: Y'all, we've done a couple of series before, but not real long ones or anything. But it's going to be several parts to this. But you got to stay tuned because every one of them is going to kick you. Jim: Yeah. So, to start off, he was born in Pitkin, Louisiana, and I was not familiar with Pitkin. Woody: Small town in Vernon Parish. Jim: Vernon Parish. And for those of you that are kind of wondering where Vernon Parish is, that's on the Texas line. It's in the center of the state all the way to the westernmost.Woody: If you're familiar with Toledo Bend, the largest lake and kind of splits Louisiana. Texas too, but fantastic for fishing, all that. It's real close to that. Kind of a piney woods area, but really, really rural. Shit, there's not even any major highways to get over there. From off the Interstate 49, which runs north and south, splits the state. Shit, it's probably hour and a half, two hours from there. Jim: Yeah. And he actually described it in an interview one time, and he said, "We didn't even have a stoplight."Woody: Yeah, well, my hometown still doesn't have a stoplight.Jim: [laughs] So, you think about that, folks. He went from that to warden of the largest maximum-security prison in the United States which, first of all, goes to show you that it doesn't matter where you're from, it doesn't matter, hard work and really destined. I think he was kind of touched by God to do what he does. He's 80 years old as of today. Woody: So, he is a couple of years younger than my dad. Actually, maybe one year because my dad was born the week before Peral Harbor, and he was born on July 2nd, 1942. Jim: And still going.Woody: Still going, very, very healthy. Jim: We're going to get into that. Woody: But he grew up on a farm, y'all, that's where he developed his work ethic. And let me tell you something, this dude can work. Jim: Let me tell you, if you're 80 years old-- look, if I make 80, I'm considering that a success. When you're 80 and you're still working, that tells you who he is as far as his work ethic is concerned. He grew up on a farm that would play a huge role in his future development. And he grew up in a very religious house. Woody: Right. Back then, not knocking it, but a lot of people, especially ones that were raised on farms, their parents had to raise them as help. I mean, they worked. Jim: That's right. You needed help, you had another kid.Woody: Talking about throwing hay, tending animals and cows and everything else and working the gardens. And hey, there wasn't any PlayStations and cable TV or anything. Hell, they're lucky if they had electricity. Jim: And you woke up 4:30 in the morning to milk them cows and do all those things. Woody: You didn't have a problem going to bed at dark with your ass tired.Jim: You were tired. And his household was very religious, y'all, extremely religious. He attended church, as he described it, every time the doors were open since birth. And he didn't even dance. He wasn't allowed to dance or attend dancing--[crosstalk] Woody: And I had a lot of people that I grew up with that were the same way. That just wasn't acceptable. People talk about Bible Belt, I can't say Vernon is directly, but I know there's some count-- not counties, parishes over there that are actually dry. They don't sell alcohol. They're Bible Belt. So, down here where south Louisiana, where everything goes, and then you hit that area of the state, it was borderline to the west of Alexandria and all that, but they were really, really country, and the farther north you go, the more country getting. There's a couple of dry parishes in the state, and this area would have been one of them.Jim: No doubt. At his age, being born in '42, he was kind of hitting those late teenage years when Elvis Presley-Woody: Absolutely.Jim: -was big. So, I'd love to sit him down and ask him, "How did you avoid dance when Elvis Presley came on the radio?"Woody: He didn't have a radio. Jim: [laughs] Yeah, that's it. That's probably exactly what he would say. "I was out there milking cows. I wasn't worried about the King." Also, Burl Cain never dreamed he would be a prison warden growing up. Of course, being from such a small town, that'd be like most people dreaming they were going to be an astronaut. It just didn't seem possible. As a matter of fact, he remembers vividly fearing Angola, as it was common for his mother to tell him, "If you don't straighten up, you're going to end up in Angola." It was a threat, matter of fact. Woody: And one thing they did even back then, believe it or not, is most schools, once a year, certain age group of kids, they bus them to Angola. And of course, it was educational for them, and they didn't hold back. They took you down the walks and stuff like that, and they fed you the prison food, and they were like, most girls be crying and shit like that, and they're like, "I ain't never coming to this motherfucker."Jim: Yeah. It was used as a form of threat. And so, he had another dream. And believe it or not, y'all, he wanted to be a veterinarian.Woody: Yeah, he wanted to be a vet. And when he graduated from high school, he went to LSU Alexandria campus, y'all, that's a satellite campus, and they have one in Alexandria and one in Shreveport to do just that. But he struggled coming from a small town where the chemistry side of school basically was a fight for him. And they just didn't teach a whole lot beyond the basics, like the element charts and stuff like that at his high school. So, he switched to something that was more prevalent in the areas from and that's agriculture, education. Let me tell you something, vet school is tough. You might as well go and become a doctor. Nowadays, you got to have a four point whatever just to get in, and there's no guarantee you're going to make it. And it's heavy, heavy on sciences. Jim: A lot of people don't realize LSU has probably the best vet school, if not one of the best in the country. Woody: So, imagine this, coming from probably my hometown, I graduated we had 28 in my graduating class. Still don't have a red light to this day. I submit to you that his town was smaller. And back then, they didn't test for the kids to pass the test. You just got the books, you know Jim, it was a different type of education. And they were just giving your basics.But the ag part, growing up on a farm, he already knew tons about it. And pretty much everyone in his family were teachers. So, he settled on basically just working towards a life of teaching after college, which I think is very unique now that I know him.Jim: Right. You look back on that life and you see how those skills benefited him, even though he wasn't in the world of education when he really got going. So, he graduates from LSU in agriculture education. He starts teaching at a high school, and [chuckles] he figures out in about three months' time that teaching is not easy.Woody: Not at the high school level.Jim: Yeah, not at the high school level. So, he figured, "This ain't for me." He lasted about three months, and he went to work for the state of Louisiana at what's known as the Louisiana Farm Bureau. Woody: Yeah, Louisiana, of course, our number one industry is oil and gas. It's kind of a tossup between the two, but then you have seafood, and then it's agriculture. And the seafood and agriculture are kind of on the same level. Like, where I'm from, it's all farms, we raise trees. So, agriculture is beyond just raising cows. It's growing trees. It's everything that you can profit from in the long run by growing it or raising it.Jim: That's right. And he was a master of that, having grown up in it, and then got official education in it. And in 1976--Woody: '76, I was six years old.Jim: I was two. [laughs] In 1976, he finally starts his career in state government, and he started out with the Louisiana Department of Corrections as the Assistant Secretary for Agribusiness.Woody: And that's huge. Now, I'm going to be honest with you, and this is just a straight-up truth, and it's how I got my state government job, my first one with the Department of Corrections. Actually, when I was in high school, I got a job. One of the local state reps got me a job cutting grass at the state-run old folks' home and the Villa. So, when he gets this job with the state, there's a lot of things that go along with that. One of them is, and I have some personal knowledge of this, I'll tell y'all probably on the next episode, one of them is you're civil service. And there's a lot of protections afforded to you through the civil service. And you get your guaranteed raises. You're never going to get rich, but you have protection. There's a certain comfort level of that.Jim: Yeah, they can't just fire you.Woody: Right. Real quick. When I left the university PD, we were civil service, to go to the sheriff's office, and they were like, "Why would you leave a civil service job to go somewhere where you're an at will employee?" I said, "Well, I don't need civil service to save my job." But civil service, and this is the truth, this is how much protection you have, if I was state police and I walked in my captain's office and I got on his desk and I took a shit on his desk, the first time, all they can do is give you a verbal warning. The second time, I go in and take a shit on his desk, then they can write you up for it. And the third time, they can fire you. There's only certain offenses like drugs or whatever that they can fire you for on the spot. Jim: Did you ever take a shit on his desk? [laughs] Woody: No, I didn't. I didn't have a captain either. I answered to the colonel. But just an example. And they say, it's like the Snark missile. For you who don't remember, during the Iraq War, Saddam had these missiles called Snarks. Every time they were developed and every time they fire them, the fuckers blow up. And so, they said, civil service employee is like a Snark missile. You can't fire and you can't make it work. That's not true. A lot of the best people in the world are lifetime state employees, and a lot of my dear friends are. Jim: Absolutely. And look, y'all, this is 1976, so the economy is down at this point in time. That was a really good job. And of course, look, any sort of state job at that level, sometimes you got to know somebody, Woody Overton.Woody: Absolutely. Jim: That ain't changed. That's been that way since the beginning of time.Woody: [crosstalk] -is and it's Louisiana. Jim: That's right. Woody: I got my job at Department of Corrections because my dad pulled some strings with politicians. Jim: Sure. And that was a good job. And this was a downtime in the economy. So, Burl freely admits, and he said this on many interviews, that his brother was instrumental in getting him that job. His brother, y'all, and whether you're aware of this or not, was a senator from the state of Louisiana. Woody: They look almost identical. I'm surprised that they're not twins. Jim: Yeah. So, he starts that job, and he's a rockstar at it. He's doing great, and in 1981, he gets an opportunity. Woody: 10 years before I went there. In 1981, he became the Warden of Dixon Correctional Institute, known as DCI. And he was only 38.Jim: Only 38, warden of the prison. Woody: When I met him, it was in '90 or '91, and of course, he had been the warden for 10 years. DCI, y'all, it's a mixed security prison, and this is kind of a misnomer here too, but mixed security, meaning it has medium, maximum, and some trusty camps. The trusty camps would be like-- Jackson, Louisiana, is full of state-run facilities. Villa, like I was telling you about, geriatric home, state run. The hospital from mentally insane, which is basically on DCI property, right across the street from their Claiborne. And it has the state-run mental hospital. If you don't have healthcare and you legitimately to be, I'd say crazy, what's politically correct term? Jim: Nuts. [laughs] Woody: If you're literally nuts, you went there. Look, I had an aunt who spent most of her life in that hospital. Then, you have DCI. It's all these state run-- the war vets home was there. Biggest state war vets home is there. So, you have all these state-run facilities. And I guarantee you, all my people from Jackson, I've got family from there, all of them were state employees, one facility or another. So, DCI is located right outside of Jackson, y'all, which is about 40 minutes north of Baton Rouge. Small town still to this day. One major road running through it. And then, DCI is off of one of those roads.But the mixed security, the main camp at DCI where I worked, you had two maximum security camps. And then, they had the satellite, the trusty camp at the state mental hospital. And that's because they took everything there. They were orderlies and took care of the grounds and the whole nine yards. And I used to go to little peewee football practice on the state ground. And there, the prisoners would line up on the fence, all the trustys. And years later on extra duty shifts, I would go pick up and I'd go be the guard at the trusty camp there. But they do that for economic reasons, and Burl had them do that for economic reasons because they didn't have to bust them back and forth to work every day. Jim: Wow. Woody: And so, they were there around the clock. And they were instrumental in all the state-run facilities, the trustees, the cow barns and everything. I'm talking about, look, DCI wasn't 18,000 acres, but it was a lot, but spread out in different areas. The cow barns and all that, shit, they raised cattle for the state of Louisiana. But anyway, it was there. Burl--Jim: 38 years old.Woody: Yeah, I didn't know that--[crosstalk]Jim: Damn, when I was 38, there's no way I'm running a prison. I'm lucky to stay out of prison. Woody: You're right. I was in Texas still when I was 38.Jim: Yeah, really amazing and a huge opportunity. And guess what? It was his first experience as being a warden, what he would become just an absolute legend for it. At that time, DCI had about 1400 inmates. That was its capacity. And it was female and male, which made it different from other prisons. It was also relatively new. It had been built in 1976, so it was only six years old. That's like the state-of-the-art presence, especially compared to Angola at that time, which was hundred years old.Woody: By the time I got there in '91, there were no females there. It was probably like 2500, they had added on to it. Jim: So, no females at that time, gotcha. Woody: And then, the other kicker is, and I forgot to mention this earlier, so I say it's about 40 minutes north of Baton Rouge. Well, guess what? It's only 30 miles from Bloody Angola. It's East and West Louisiana. I was born and raised in Clinton, where my grandfather was a judge, but West Feliciana butts up to it. My mama was from West Feliciana, where her daddy was the DA during this time, actually. But that 30 miles is deceiving because back then, they had the old road to Bloody Angola and that wound up the Tunica Hills and part of it's gravel and shit. And when you turn it off at 61, it took you another 40 minutes to get from there, the last 10 miles to get in. Jim: It seemed like 300 miles. It was not what you would call picturesque. You're not looking at the Rockies when you're going down the highway. This is where Cain coined what would eventually be one of his most famous phrases. He started at the facility, and as is common, your first day on the job as warden, you're going to have a meeting with all of your people, and you're going to learn the ins and outs of this prison, things that maybe the outgoing warden didn't tell you. And one of the things he found out was that they had no worship services for the inmates. And it was where he kind of coined the phrase, "moral rehabilitation." Woody: He carried that [crosstalk] to talk about it, but he still carries to this day. And he was serious about it. Jim: Yeah. It was, as a matter of fact, one of the first things he changed at Dixon, was bringing religion into prisons, something that, look, we're going to talk a lot about. So, he becomes a rockstar again. He's just killing it at Dixon. Woody: Let me tell you just a couple real quick stories, and I know I'm going off script, but I met him the first time, I think it was 1990 or 1991, and I got hired. So, he had what they call the White House. And the White House was an administrative building. I had to go to the White House, do paperwork and stuff like that, but I hadn't seen him. And then they put me on the largest rec room-- after I got back from Angola, doing my training and all that. They put me on the largest rec room at DCI. And long story short, I ended up getting in a fight with him because the captain told me, you give them direct orders like, "Hey, do this," and if they don't do it, you can arrest them for it. And so, one of them I told to come with me, and he turned around, ran out in the yard, and I had to hit my pager and get the captain to come. And the captain went out there and got him and arrested him. He said, "But next time you do it, you hit your pager, and you use whatever force necessary to bring the situation out of control." Well, it wasn't two weeks later, Sunday night, they turned off the lights in the dorm, and I told him to clear the rec room, except for the night guys that were up. And one guy was standing on the back wall by the water fountain with his foot up on the wall. And we said, "Get to your house." And I told him, "Get to your house." And he just kind of looked at me. I said, "I'm not going to tell you again. Get to your house." And he didn't move. And so, I hit my pager, and I said, "Well, you're under arrest. You're coming with me?" He said, "Fuck you." And he turned around, walked into the dorm, which was closing down at that time. The lights and the inmates are shuffling back and forth, getting the water, going to the bathroom, and I tackled him, and the fist fight was on. So, Captain Raymond Newman said, he said, "Man, when I hit that rec room door, and I was long ways away from it," he said, "And I didn't see you." He said, "I knew it sure had turned to shit. I knew shit was going down." And what happened was that there's a couple of fireable offenses. One, if you get caught having sex with an inmate or you get caught bringing in contraband or sleeping on duty, civil service doesn't protect you for that. And the biggest one is if another officer is in a fight and you don't help them, then you can be fired on the spot.Well, there's two sergeants on the dorm. I'm fighting with this guy. I didn't think I could start a riot. And I'm fighting with this guy, and he's a big dude, and one of the sergeant is trying to help me, the other froze up, didn't want to do anything. Newman came in. Long story short, we get him out. We were punching, we were punching. My eye was swollen and stuff. Long story short, Ray gets me to the office. He said, "You got to go home." I'm like, "Fucking getting fired, man." I said, "Ray, you told me, use whatever force necessary. He wouldn't stop and put my hands on, and he went to fight." And he said, "You could have started a fucking riot, man. You realize that? You got to go home, and we'll call you." I'm like, "Fuck, I'm getting fired." So, they called me on Monday morning, and he said, "You need to report to Warden Cain's office." Jim: [chuckles] Oh, shit. Woody: My first time in a life on the carpet, besides the military, being called on the carpet, it means you know you're going to get your ass shoot to get fired or whatever. And he brought me in, and I'll never forget it. He actually got up from behind his desk and he shook my hand. He said, "Sergeant Overton, come on in. Have a seat. Boy, tell me what happened." I said, "Warden Cain, Captain Newman, he was in there." I wasn't trying to throw him on the bus. I said, "This is what happened before. He told me next time, use whatever force necessary to bring the situation under control. And so, I did. We ended up fighting." He leaned back and steepled his fingers a little bit, kind of like [unintelligible [00:26:36] would. Warden Cain, he's not big in stature, he's not tall, but he's not fat, but he's kind of-- I don't want to say heavy set, he's more of a round of shape. You wouldn't think this guy has such a presence, but he does, but he was just super, super nice. He said, "All right, son, I get that. I appreciate you taking an initiative. But I'm going to send you somewhere where you could fight every single night." I said, "Well, where is that?" He said, "I'm going to send you to the working cell block. That's where we have our worst of our worst, and somebody's going to be--" You know what, he would curse sometimes. As religious as he was, and he probably did say ass-- when he got mad, he'd curse. But he said, "I'm going to send you back there." And believe me, I passed this down to all the guys I trained over the years. I would tell them, I say, "Look, you don't have to go out of your way put your hands on somebody to look for shit because there's enough assholes out there that are legitimately going to give you a reason to fight them, when you go to arrest them or whatever." He said, "I'm to going put you back there." And I did it, and I rose up as a superstar. And every time he'd see me, he'd say, "How are you doing, Sergeant Overton?" Jim: Love that story, and I'm sure you've got several. And what we're going to do, folks, is this is going to be a docuseries. So, this is going to be three episodes. In the third episode, we're going to have Kelly Jennings, who also has some experience with Burl Cain on the show. And it's going to be storytelling time with Woody and Kelly. And they're going to tell some stories that are just fire.Woody: We need to promote that.Jim: Yeah.Woody: The last episode is going to be The True Stories.Jim: The True Stories. Woody: From Woody-Jim: From Woody. [chuckles]  Woody: -and female Woody.[chuckles] Jim: Yeah. You can't get no better than that. Look, I got the best seat in the house, and I'm going to be kind of the moderator of what will be an amazing episode coming up just in a couple of weeks. We're going to move on. Look, Warden Cain, he became an absolute star. He made a name for himself. And of course, he had a brother that was in politics. And so, they knew the Cain name. And in 1995, the warden of Angola, a guy by the name of John Whitley, who at some point we're going to do a story on, but John Whitley was retiring. And so, secretary at that time was Richard Stalder. Woody: And he was the head of the Department of Corrections when I was there also. Jim: That secretary he is kind of like who is the boss of the wardens.Woody: He's the boss of all the prisons. Jim: Yeah. Outside of the governor, he is the top person in the prison system. And he announces the new warden will be the warden at that time of DCI, which was Burl Cain. Now, you may be surprised to know something. Burl Cain did not want that job. [laughs] Woody: Yeah. And that's because he knew that wardens in Angola didn't last long.Jim: That's right. Woody: I think they averaged just over five years of service because Angola was so bad, y'all, and somebody had to be the scapegoat for the bad things that happened. But he wasn't left much of a choice. He had the most experience of any warden in the state of Louisiana with his 14 years at DCI. So, he took it.Jim: Secretary Stalder just basically said, "You're going to be the warden of Angola."Woody: When he took it, I tell you, it was truly bloody Angola, and they were under all this federal scrutiny and everything else. And he's like, "Mm, don't want to do it." I'm sure it was a challenge to him, but he didn't want to lose what he had going on.Jim: No. You're 14 years at one place, you have a system, it's working. You're looked at as a rockstar in the system, and now you're being sent another challenge. You're comfortable. You don't want to have to do that. But also, Angola had some issues. There were 300 attacks on the staff and 766 inmate-on-inmate assaults, half of which were--Woody: That was in one year, the year before he went there. And this was right around when I was getting out of corrections, he left right after I left DCI. And he went up there but, fuck, I knew about it. I mean, you heard about it. It didn't make the news every day, but it made the correctional officer grapevine. It was bad shit.Jim: Yeah. I remember when he was announced as the warden of Angola, and if you were from the state of Louisiana, I mean, that was big news. Big news. Side note to that, this may or may not seem out of order, but I'm going to mention it now. He was actually still living at DCI throughout-- Wardens typically live at the prison they're at.Woody: They have very nice homes that are provided to them by the state at no cost. It's part of your salary, and it's maintained by the convicts and all that. He took the job. But shit, nobody wants to move-- especially back then, wants to move to Angola, not even on the B-Line, because it's so fucking far away. I knew his wife at the time, and then he was there, and he's got kids and the whole nine yards.Jim: Well, and you may wonder who took his place at DCI. Well, Jimmy Le Blanc took his place there. They were good friends. Woody: Jimmy was an underwarden to Burl at the time. And so basically, Burl Cain tapped him to take it over. Jim: Right. And he made a deal with him. He said, "Look, take it over. I think you would be a great replacement for me, but I ain't moving out of my house." [laughs] He literally said that. And Jimmy Le Blanc was okay with that. In the state of Louisiana, they gave Jimmy Le Blanc kind of a stipend for the home he was already living in, because that's considered a perk. It's a huge perk. Woody: It's a big part of your salary. And I'm sure you have it in here, Jim, that when Stalder retired, Jim Le Blanc ultimately became the head of the corrections--[crosstalk] Jim: Yeah, we'll be getting into that. But just to finish that point up, Cain lived at DCI, y'all until 1999. And what prompted him to actually leave was the murder of Captain David Knapps in Angola. And we'll get into that in the second episode. Woody: Captain David Knapps was a multi-generational correctional officer, and he lived on the B-Line. And that's all he ever knew. His father done and his grandfather done, his brothers and everybody-- he lived there. And he was brutally murdered in '99 during an attempted prison escape. And we're going to cover that. Ultimately, he's a superhero, but Burl would have been his boss for almost five years at that time.One thing I'm going to tell you about Burl Cain, is as any good leader in any good spot, if your people take care of you, you damn well going to take care of your people. And you're going to know who they are, and you're going to promote them up and everything because, unfortunately, and I've said this many times, and I felt this, I truly did believe this, some of the people that you worked with in corrections were shittier than the convicts. I think that plays into the whole civil service thing, because you can't fire them, you can't make them work, and they knew the rulebooks and all that, but absolutely 95% of them were the best people in the world. But Burl knew who were his rising stars and who would run whatever, and David Knapps was one of them. Jim: Look, being a good leader, one of the best attributes you can have is being able to spot other good leaders.Woody: And I've had so many, and I'm telling you, I think he is probably one of the best leaders I've ever had. And I'm talking about my military career, my police career, my corrections career, whatever. Jim: Yeah, you've been around a lot of them.Woody: And I took a lot of his leadership skills from him. Like that day when I was trouble in his office, I mean, if I'd have been a turd, he'd have fired me. But no, he gave me freedom to run. And he knew I was going to handle my business.Jim: Yeah. So, imagine you're Burl Cain, it's 1995, February, and you're now in charge of the largest maximum-security prison in America. 18,000 acres of sheer intimidation.Woody: And the worst of the worst.Jim: And the worst of the worst.Woody: I would put those guys up there against any convict in the world as far as the horrificness of the crimes, etc. Jim: So, warden gets there, and one of the first things he did was he outlines his philosophy to the inmates, and I'm going to quote him here. He said, "Your dorm is like a city or a community. The beds and houses along that are the street, with the street being the aisle itself. So, three beds down is like saying three houses down. You should visit your neighbors." Woody: He'd actually say that, yeah. Jim: "Counsel your neighbors and be concerned for each other. Keep your city free from drugs and violence. And don't curse. Once you start cursing each other, violence is sure to follow." That was his philosophy. Woody: Absolute genius. And do you know that to this day that's what they call their bunks and stuff as their houses? Jim: Yeah. Well, it essentially is.Woody: And the aisles, because these big long aisles that run in between rows of bunks and they call them their streets. Jim: That's their streets. Woody: Isn't that crazy? Jim: It is. Woody: I never knew Burl was the one that coined that phrase. Jim: Yeah. And so, I'm going to tell you a quick story here, Woody and I both, and this is about when he went to Angola, he had to deal with one thing he didn't have to really deal with at DCI, and that was executions. I don't care who you are, I don't care how blessed you are to deal with certain things, that's hard for anybody.Woody: And keeping in mind that Burl-- when I knew him, as far as I know to this day, he's a very strong Christian man. Jim: Absolutely. His first experience with that was with an inmate by the name of Thomas Ward. And this would play probably-- I bet, if Burl was sitting across from us, and Warden Cain, if you'd ever like to sit across from us, we'd love to have you. I've tried to reach out to your guy. But if he was sitting across from us, he'd probably say this changed him more than anything else he's ever done.It was just after midnight, Warden Cain found himself alone. He was in the death chamber with Thomas Ward. And without one word, Woody, he lifts his hand, he gives a thumbs down signal, which he would later say he hated. He hated doing that. It did not feel right to him, but it was a signal that was common to give to the executioner. This was lethal injection. So, when you would issue that lethal dose, he would give that thumbs down signal. The lethal dose gets administered, and six minutes later, Ward was dead. It was Cain's first execution.Now, immediately, Cain began to regret that signal, as I told you. His uneasiness, it started to grow. He felt guilty because he never found out Ward's spiritual condition that night or before. He just basically ordered the lethal dose to be administered. Warden Cain actually was quoted as saying, "He didn't utter a word as we strapped him to the gurney. When the time came to ask him if he had anything to say, he didn't answer. He just choked up." The execution took place only three months, y'all, after Cain took over as warden and completely spearheaded the change that we're about to tell you in that prison.Woody: So, real quick, let's go back to that. We've talked about executions before on the show, but now in the execution chamber, the warden is the one that's in there, and they have to read the death warrant. But giving that thumbs down, he didn't know what he was going to feel. It's the first time he ever basically legally murdered someone, and that's it. But I know as a Christian man, he just saw somebody being murdered, even though it's legal murder. He just saw the state of Louisiana take a human being's life, and he knows that he's not in there for being a choir boy, but as a Christian, he's thinking, "Mm, you know what? I should have talked to him. And even if he told me, 'Go to hell, I don't believe in Jesus,' I'd have done my job as a Christian to try to spread the word, to give him a chance to call on Jesus to repent." Jim: That's right. And he had a conversation with his mother, Woody, after this. It bothered him that much. And his mom said, "You need to do everything you can to get those guys spiritually ready to meet the Lord, because you're going to have to answer for that."Woody: Because--[crosstalk] Jim: Yeah, me too.Woody: When you have that opportunity, and so very few people do, to ever have an opportunity to talk to someone that you know is about to die, and even like I said, even if they reject you, you don't take that opportunity, you have to answer for it. Jim: You're going to have to answer for it, and it bothered him. Literally, this was the start, y'all, and we can't even dictate into words how huge this is. But this was the start of a change at Angola. Not to sound like Donald Trump, but like nothing you've ever seen. Just unbelievable. He started instituting what he called, and this was another phrase that he coined, "cultural change." The first thing he did, and thank God, Woody was not working there at this time.Woody: Right. I'd have been damn sure been in trouble for it.Jim: He banned cursing by guards and inmates. Now, you can only control that so much, but it was definitely frowned upon. I think that's why he banned it. Woody: Actually, they put it in the rulebook after that that you can't curse. Jim: Yeah. And he believed that cursing led to other things. It wasn't the curse word itself. Now, as Woody said, he said one every now and then, but it was when it was appropriate. Woody: I said it, I'm not going to lie. [laughter] Woody: What he's talking about-- I got to interject again. Jim: Sure. Woody: What he's talking about is, I would carry this later on. When I talk to the younger guys and say, "Listen, most of the time when you're dealing with people, you're dealing with them on their worst day. They're going to be upset, they're going to be screaming, they're going to be cursing. So, you should start out nice as can be." Look, when I was in the street, unless we were fighting or something, we didn't curse people. Will Graves [unintelligible 00:43:37] would have hung your ass or any department I work for. I said, "You always start out low and treat them super kind, even if they're cursing you and berating you, start out low, because then if you need to jump up and escalate, they'll be surprised."But one person cursing at another one, it's not going to end well usually. Especially between men, and one of them has never had any respect for authority in their entire life, and they hate you as a correctional officer. What is he doing with this just simple thing? By taking out curse words or trying to take out curse words, he is making a mutual level of respect. You take that off, that gasoline that can do no good. Somebody's going to feel degraded, somebody's going to be pissed off, say, "Fuck you, Jim Chapman. You're a dick," where's it going from there? Jim: That's right. Fisticuff. Woody: If you give me a direct verbal order, and I'm like, "Yessir." Then, I can go write you up. There's other ways to handle it. So, that was genius on Burl's part.Jim: It really was. And he also instituted cleanliness, like we told you earlier, he had this conversation with the inmates where he said, "This is your house. Keep your house clean. Encourage your neighbors to keep their house clean. Cut your grass." Woody: Most of them come from lifestyles that they never had anything clean. They lived in the hoods, they were raised around cursing, they had no respect for anything. And he's just trying to give them the base things. Just because you're in prison, doesn't mean you're not living. Jim: That's right. And he started inviting kind of the outside world. Look, let me tell y'all real quick. One of the hardest things to do for me in preparation for these shows is research. And why is that? Because we're dealing with a prison where not a lot gets out, for obvious reasons and I get it, but it requires an enormous amount of work to dig up some of this stuff because it just doesn't get out. He, at the beginning, was very open with inviting people into the prison, letting them see-- look, Barbara Walters, which we'll tell you a story on later, came into the prison and actually did I think it was a 2020 special on the executions that take place there. So it was a huge thing on that front. But his message initially was, "We don't have anything to hide, and we want to let people in here, see what we're doing to change what is in a horrible situation."Woody: Yeah. "Not that we're perfect by far, but we're not hiding anything." The culture in the past was, shit, loose lips sink ships. What happens in Angola, dies in Angola. Jim: So, I know y'all are ready for something here. And that is what was one of the more historic changes that he made right off the bat, well, we got it for you. One of the first, maybe one of the most controversial changes that he made, but this is Burl Cain genius right here. So, he's sitting there-- I'm assuming he's sitting at his desk one morning, this is how I'm picturing it. And he says, "We got a problem. Our death row inmates, most of them can't read and they can't write." It might surprise y'all to know that they didn't offer any sort of education, even as simple as reading and writing to death row inmates.Woody: They just locked them up. Jim: Yeah. So, you might say to yourself, "Well, who cares?" Burl Cain cared. And the reason he cared was not-- these are condemned men, so they're probably not getting out. Although we have done many stories with you guys where people were exonerated and didn't do it. So, there are those situations. But his thing was, if they can't read and they can't write, especially if they can't read, they can't read the Bible. That was a problem for him. He didn't like that.Woody: That's exactly right.Jim: And so, it was the first change he made, was he said, "We're going to offer education to our death row inmates." That's huge, Woody Overton. Woody: That's huge. Like you said, most of them had never had any kind of education. Right? Jim: Right. Woody: Ultimately, y'all, during this time, the death penalty put on hold and stuff like that, years later and stuff. But what do you give somebody who's locked up 23 hours a day and then they're all by themselves? That's where people go crazy and then they got nothing to do, they didn't have TVs, they didn't have all this stuff. So, he gives them, we say the word "hope," not hope that they're going to live, but he gives them something to do besides sit there and rot. Jim: That's right. Woody: And if you're going to sit there and rot, if the Bible is the only book you can read, maybe you glean something from it. And it goes back to what his mama said, you got to give them the opportunity. Jim: You got to give them the opportunity. And that's just what he did. It was controversial. Look, there were people screaming, "Why are we spending money to educate death roommates?" And yes, most of them did horrible things. But his thought process was, the way he felt about it, "I'm not only in charge of their imprisonment, I'm in charge of their soul. And this is between me and God and what I am doing to try to help these men." And that's the way he thought. And the prisoners themselves really started to take note. This guy seems like he cares. I mean, it was probably an absolute shock to them. Woody: He didn't judge them for what-- And I got this from his time too, and he told me this. He said, "Your job is not to punish them. Your job is to keep them safe and keep the public safe from them escaping. They're doing their time for their crime. Your job is not to punish. You treat them like a human being." And nobody had ever done that. Jim: Nobody had ever done that. He does another historical thing right after that, and that is, he was the first warden to invite, and in this case, it was the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, to come in. And basically, they had like a satellite seminary right there at Angola. For those of you that don't know what they do, they offer degrees in the field of seminary so you can become an ordained minister.Woody: Basically, it's like a Bible college.Jim: Yeah. This was genius. I cannot stress enough how genius this was, because in his long-term vision and if anybody can say anything about Burl Cain, he had vision. In his long-term vision, he saw inmates changing other inmates through God. And that's what was missing in prisons, in his opinion. That was probably, looking back on it, one of the most successful programs he ever had. Those graduates, they would be allowed to travel, not only to other prisons in Louisiana, but eventually all over the country. They were going all over the country speaking at these other prisons, and he called that imposing morality. Woody: And back to you, now, you get a degree from a college, then you have a little bit more self-worth. And these college studies aren't free. They were funded by outside donations. And Angola offered a four-year college degree in ministry, including instructions in Greek and Hebrew, as well as lessons on how to preach.Jim: Yeah. And it really changed the lives of not only these inmates themselves and gave them self-worth, but it enabled them to go out and then work to change others. Woody: And this gives me the bumps again, if you're doing that and you get self-worth for the first time in your life, guess what you're not doing? You're not raping and killing. Inside the prison, there's still raping and killing.Jim: Mainly hit it right on the head. Woody: Look, we're going to talk about Christianity and God and all this stuff a lot during this series, but here's the deal. I don't care what you believe in. And there certainly are convicts at Angola that were like, "Fuck you, I don't believe in anything. I'm an atheist," whatever. And that's fine too. But they were given an opportunity because Burl was raised that way. Jim: That's right. And he knew that the principles in religion were sound things that would keep people out of trouble.Woody: He also knew Angola was full of the darkness. He was trying to shine a little light and make the darkness back up. Jim: That's right. So, he started thinking about this and looking at the things that were missing from Angola. This became pretty successful. And he knew that work was or learning to work was critical in rehabilitation. Many of the inmates in Angola, y'all, they had never learned to work. They basically grew up in life, they robbed, they raped, they pillaged, and they murdered to survive. So, he instilled what he called meaningful work. Woody: Well, yeah, and let me tell you this, another famous Burl Cain saying, when you get to prison, he introduced himself and he said, "Welcome to the Department of Corrections. You're here for however long you've been sentenced. We're not here to punish you. We're here to make you secure. But you're sentenced to hard labor. Religion is an option. You'll have that opportunity while you're here to get religion, but work is not. You're going to work every day, and everybody has a job." And that goes back to him teaching the basics. Like I said, most of them never even knew how to work. They weren't raised like-- my daddy raised me, and your daddy raised you with a good work ethic. Jim: That's right. And it also gave them that pride that they were seeking, obviously, teaching these inmates to work. And he wasn't done yet. And this is probably-- well, it definitely is another part of his vision in those early days. And that was he founded a program in Angola called Malachi Dads. He did this with some inmates who came to him. Now, Warden Cain, he took note, y'all, of the fact that almost all convicts on Angola grew up in a broken home with the father typically being absent. Look, that's at any prison in the country, overall, it is not even close. Woody: It's not something we're making of. Jim: It's an issue.Woody: We're not people we're picking on or whatever. It's just the way it is. Jim: Yeah, I mean, you're talking 6000 inmates and most of them were fathers, but they came from broken homes. And so, it didn't take a genius for Warden Cain to figure out maybe that's part of the problem. Now, you can't fix the people that are in there. They can't be at home with their kids, they're in prison. But this program--Woody: And they're there in prison for the worst. [crosstalk] Jim: The worst of the worst. So, he knew that there's kids out there and they're now growing up without a father because he's in prison.Woody: Well, also, I'm going to interrupt you again, there are generational prisoners in there. There are fathers and whose sons, or grandfathers, or dads whose sons murder and grew up because it's the only thing they ever knew, right? Jim: Absolutely. Woody: And they got sent to Angola. I'm telling you, there's generational. Their grandson, the oldest one now, who's old, old timer in Angola whose son is down now for life of murder, that guy's son would come in for murder. He's looking this and he's like--Jim: It's a pattern. Woody: Oh, yeah. It's proven. And you're right, him being a forward genius thinker, he's like, "Mm, you know what? Why wouldn't I try this? Why wouldn't I try? If I can make a change in one person's life, it'd be something special." And nobody had ever done what you're about to tell about.Jim: That's right. He gets with about, let's say, these six trusted inmates that he had that they were all graduates of this seminary. And he says, "Do y'all see the same problem I do?" And they said, "Not only do we see the problem, we can institute a program where we teach other inmates how to be fathers behind bars." It's possible. Look, I got chill bumps again. They form what they call Malachi Dads. Basically, this is one of the best programs he ever instituted. And it was a program in which fathers that were incarcerated learned how to parent their kids from inside of prison. We're going to play you a clip real quick. These are the inmate founders of Malachi Dads. And they're discussing a little bit about Warden Cain and a lot about that program. We're going to play that right now. [video recording of Malachi Dads]Ron: My name is Ron Hickson. I've been incarcerated for 25 years. I'm serving life sentence for second-degree murder. Darryl: My name is Darryl Waters. I'm from Gibson, Louisiana, and I was sentenced for second-degree murder in 1992. George: My name is George Gilliam. I am from New Orleans. I'm currently serving a life sentence for a second-degree murder. We discovered in 2006 that a child of an incarcerated father had a 70% likelihood to come to prison and so we discovered those statistics and God gave us favor and that became Malachi Dads. Just because you're locked up in prison, that does not give you the right to not still be a father. Healthy people, who have a heart that's healed, who have a soul that's whole, they want to help, they want to give back. And that's what we do every day. Interviewer: Why do you think violence has come down in Angola?Inmate: When Warden Cain came on the scene, what he did was open up the door of opportunity. He was able to see, "If I can get these guys to start coming out to success because what success do, it change the way you think." If I can achieve something, I feel better about myself. [clip ends]Woody: Wow. Super. There's so much to be said, y'all. I'm going to do one more part that is-- maybe I don't want to say shows a harsher side, because it's not a harsher side, but it shows the business side of Burl. Jim: And a good story.Woody: He's all about trying to shine the light in the darkness and see what kind of positive things can come about it. But he's also all about, it's his prison and who's going to rule it. But listen to this story. This is crazy. And Jim researched this, and I had never-- believe it or not, I had never even heard of this. But as we told you many times on the show, Angola is huge. It's sprawling over 18,000 acres. And that's mostly-- the camps are spread out. It's mostly agriculture, big fields, Tunica Hills, Mississippi River, shit ton of wildlife. So one day, one of the convicts saw a huge 400-pound black bear on the property, and they freaked out and they're like, "Holy shit." Most of these guys are city boys, etc. Jim: They don't like the wolfdogs.Woody: Right. Until two years ago, I had never seen a bear in the state of Louisiana. But in Jackson, where DCI was, the first restaurant I've worked at was called Bear Corners. Back in the day, black bears were preliminary in the area. And now, they're coming back because of strict hunting ban, etc. But you got this mass 18,000 acres, and as rare as they are, there's a bear.Jim: In the middle of the prison.Woody: Massive black bear living in the middle of Angola. And you know what Burl thought? Jim: [laughs] [crosstalk] Woody: You know what? Kind of scared me, And I know it scared them because they came running to me. And he's like, "That's just extra security."[laughter]Jim: That's exactly how he said it. Woody: And I'll quote him. He said, "I love that bear being right where it is. And I tell you what, none of our inmates are going to try to get out after dark and wander around when they might run into a big old bear. It's like having another guard at no cost to the taxpayer." He was about business. We keep talking about all these good things that he's doing, let me tell you something, and we'll talk about it in later episodes in the series. I've seen it, that's one dude you don't want to see mad. And it's one dude that knows his business, right? Jim: That's right. Woody: Anyway, the bear was first seen by an inmate crossing the road in the prison. And it was taking a stroll near the center of prison, where about five and a half square miles were mostly untouched piney woods, y'all. And the prison workers measured the bear's footprints, which were six inches in diameter. Now, every inch that they can measure equals 75 pounds. The biologists have figured this out. So, that made that bear about 450 pounds. And Cain said, the wildlife people told us they think it's a big female they've been tracking for a while. And Warden Cain estimated at the time that 8 to 10 bears lived on that 18,000 acres. Jim: Holy crap. Woody: You better believe he promoted the shit out. Jim: Oh, yeah, I was about to say that. He told every inmate.Woody: When they come in, "Hey, if you out in the field, you see a bear, you ain't going to be the fast. You just got to be fast from one of the other convicts. We might not shoot you if you're running from the bear, but if you go out there at night, that bear is hungry. Bears got to eat." Jim: Y'all, we're just getting started. Woody: Yeah, just getting started. Jim: But we got to cut this one off. We've gone over an hour. Woody: Still though, I'm going to say it again, wait until you hear-- we talked a lot about-Jim: Oh, my God, we ain't scratched the surface.Woody: -the positive side today, which is something. But I'm going to tell you something, tough dude, bruh. There's a reason he lasted as long as he lasted and is still doing what he does. But it's the totality of circumstances of the man, which to me makes him a legend. Jim: Just to give you a little sauce for what you can look forward to the next episode, we're going to talk about a little bit about Billy Cannon and how Burl Cain was instrumental in bringing him into Angola. We're going to talk about Hurricane Katrina and the effect that that had on Angola prison. Y'all going to love that story. Look, this is stuff you cannot find anywhere else. Woody: We're going to talk about some executions. Jim: Yeah, how about his second execution, different than the first, right? Woody: And then what happened following after that. Just a whole--Jim: Captain Knapps. Woody: Captain David Knapps.Jim: A bunch more to bring you. Woody: Can't wait to bring you. And we appreciate and love each and every one of y'all. Jim: Yeah. Thank y'all for-Woody: Patreon members-Jim: -everything. Woody: -you rock. Our Patreon members, the show couldn't run without you. We appreciate y'all so much. Y'all, look, if you want to be a patron member, go to patreon.com/bloodyangola. Jim: We've got a bonus episode coming next week. So, what we're going to do next week when we record our second episode of the story of Burl Cain, we're also going to record our bonus episode just for patron members. And what it's going to be on, y'all, is we released the first episode to the general public, it was on executions and we kind of told a little bit of the story and it was great. We've got more for you, but it's only going to be for patrons, that second one, it's a good one. Woody: Y'all, we have all the different tier levels with all the different benefits. And I'm telling you right now, I've been doing this over five years, podcasting, and Real Life Real Crime original probably doesn't have as many patron episodes locked up as [crosstalk] of Bloody Angola. Jim: We got a ton of it. That's right. Woody: If you like Bloody Angola, go subscribe. If you can't be a patron member, we love you just as much. Jim: And transcripts. People love the transcripts. We've got all of our episodes transcribed on Patreon for some of the tiers, and these are not transcriptions, y'all, that are like the AI versions. This is actually someone sitting down typing because our southern accents don't cross over too well. [laughs] Woody: [crosstalk] Jim: Unfortunately, it's horrible. Woody: Look, we have merchandise. People love the shirts and--Jim: Hats. Woody: What about the Bloody Angola wine? Jim: Oh, yeah. We got limited wine in there for you, ladies.Woody: And that's good stuff. We sold out of at the live shows. But anyway, y'all, please share us-Jim: Review us.Woody: -like us and leave us a review if you're so inclined. And we appreciate you and love you. And wait until you hear what's coming next. Jim: Oh, yeah. And until next time, I'm Jim Chapman. Woody: And I'm Woody Overton.Jim: Your host of Bloody-Woody: Angola.Jim: A podcast 142 years in the making. Woody: The Complete Story of America's Bloodiest Prison. Jim and Woody: Peace. 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Part 2 of this amazing story is here!In June 2016, Andrew Hundley became the FIRST juvenile lifer in Louisiana to be paroled following the U.S. Supreme Court's Miller and Montgomery decisions that prohibited the mandatory sentencing of children to life without parole. It was clear that he was not the same 15-year-old who went to prison in 1997 to the parole board who approved his release.Since his release from Angola, Andrew has earned a Masters degree in Criminology, is founder of the Louisiana Parole Project and is known in all circles of justice as the real life Andy Dufrane.Whatever side of this issue you sit, you will not want to miss this episode.In this episode Woody and Jim sit down with him for an in depth interview you are not going to believe on Bloody Angola Podcast.#BloodyAngolaPodcast #LouisianaParoleProject #AndrewHundleyLouisiana Parole Project website:https://www.paroleproject.org/Check out P2P Podcast (Penitentiaries to Penthouses) Here:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-p2p-podcast-penitentiaries-2-penthouses/id1646270646?i=1000586120763SECOND CHANCES PART 2 TRANSCRIPTJim: Hey, everyone, and welcome back to another edition of Bloody- Woody: -Angola.Jim: A podcast 142 years in the making.Woody: The Complete Story of America's Bloodiest Prison.Jim: I'm Jim Chapman.Woody: I'm Woody Overton.Jim: And we're back for Part 2, Woody Overton.Woody: Part 2, Second Chances with our main man.Jim: Andrew Hundley. How are you?Andrew: I'm well.Jim: I feel like we just talked to you. [laughs]Andrew: Thanks for having me back.Woody: Yeah, [crosstalk] right. Andrew, I just want to say that it's an amazing story, y'all. You've got to go listen to Part 1. I don't think we've maybe done one or two series on Bloody Angola that-- actually series, one or two episodes that went past episode 1.Jim: The only one that we did was Archie Williams.Woody: No. Brent Miller.Jim: Yeah.Woody: So, two, you'll be the third. Thank you for being here, I really appreciate it. Y'all go back and listen to the first one if you haven't.Jim: Yes, please do.Woody: When we left off last, you were at state police barracks out at JESTC, and you gotto finish telling me how you got swung.Andrew: Yeah, I had unauthorized female visitor, to keep it PG. [laughter]Andrew: I had a female friend who visited me at the office I worked at one evening. I knew that wasn't supposed to happen. It happened. And I understand that you keep visitors off of the premises because you never know who's going to be coming out there, what they're going to be bringing out there.Jim: I ain't hating on it. I don't blame you. [laughs]Woody: [crosstalk]Andrew: [crosstalk] -I'm not the first guy to get in trouble and probably not going to be thelast guy that got into that kind of trouble. Jim: Some things are just worth it. [laughs]Woody: Everybody you see today and the rest of your life got there because two people had sex.[laughter]Andrew: But it was against the rules. They actually didn't move me immediately because my job that I had--Woody: They didn't want to release you.Andrew: I had to finish some job responsibilities. But they said, "Hey, you're going to have togo." I said, "I want to go to Angola."Jim: And wow. Before you say anything else, that's just like-- Woody: You're one of the only people ever said that--[crosstalk] Jim: Yeah, you might be the only one to utter that sentence.Andrew: Well, and I recognize and I had done enough time and met enough people who had been to Angola and who, in prison speak, were successful at Angola. They had done well. And I wanted to be a trustee. At state police barracks, I was a trustee but the only place as a lifer going if we say back into DOC, I couldn't go to DCI or Wade or Hunt or any of these other prisons [crosstalk] have to go to Angola.Jim: What year was this?Andrew: Oh, that was in 2012, 2013. Jim: So, it was post Burl Cain? Andrew: No, Burl was still there. Woody: Burl was still there.Jim: Okay.Andrew: When I first get there, I actually go to Bass. For my first couple of months, I was a cell block orderly at Bass, paying my penance. As soon as I got there, they told me, "Look, keep your nose clean, out of sight, out of mind for a couple of months, and we've got a job for you." They told me this as soon as I got there.Woody: That's really cool.Jim: Your reputation preceded you some way probably.Woody: Another unique thing about what you're saying is, I don't think people understand-- I would say you might have a better number on than me. Most people at Angola are nevergetting out, like 80% or something like that. But to go in and have to do 10 years to make trustee without a low court or high court writeup, holy shit, bro, that's almost impossible. So basically, they're telling you, "Keep your nose clean, lay low for a couple of months and you shake it out, we got a job for you," basically, you almost were like getting credit for time served already.Andrew: Right. They gave me credit. Look, I had a unique experience. Woody: Meaning, credit under the trustee program.Andrew: I used to tell people I did my time like Benjamin Button. [laughter]Jim: In reverse.Andrew: Yeah, I did my time in reverse. Most people start at Angola and they're either going to die there or there are some old timers who after they've been there for a few decades, they'll allow a transfer to a prison closer to their home if they request it, if they have space. For me, I ended at Angola and did my last few years there.Woody: I got to interrupt because I'm visual. You ask to go to Angola, and had you ever been to Angola before?Andrew: I'd been only for boxing matches. I had been there for those kind of trips.Woody: So, you're taking that ride up, or they giving you the ride up and you hit the gates and you go inside the wire the first time. Do you have any different impression? What was your impression?Andrew: I was thinking, "Oh, man, I hope I made the right decision." [laughter]Woody: Right, because this is like the Harvard of convicts.Andrew: Yeah, because I'm starting to second guess because it's like, well, if I would have gone back to the smaller prison, I was big fish in a small pond. And now, I was telling myself, "You're just another lifer here. You're going to be lost in the shuffle." But thankfully, I wasn't lost in the shuffle. Thankfully, my reputation did-- I did have a good reputation.Woody: I'm sure somebody called and gave them a heads-up and say that, "You better get your hands on this dude because he's the bomb."Andrew: I got there. You go on this review board as soon as you get there, and it's medical, mental health, security, classification, and they're trying to figure out where they're going to send you. A lot of guys will start off in a cell block, or some guys will go into medical facilities. Some guys will be under mental health observation. And never having lived at Angola but new Camp J is not the place to be.Woody: Right.Jim: Don't send me to Camp J.Andrew: The major who was on the review board is like, "Hey, I got a call about you. Let me see what they want--" He's telling pretty much everyone on the review board like, "Someone's about to make a decision where this guy's going to go. We're not going to make the decision." He gets off the phone and says, "We're sending him to Bass." And I was like, "Okay. Where is that?" He's like, "You're going to Camp J." And I'm like, "Oh, my God. I thought I'm coming here to be a trustee."Jim: You're sending me to lockdown.Andrew: And I'm going to lockdown because you go to J when guys on death row screw up. They get sent to J, to the cell blocks at J because people would rather be in their cell on death row-Woody: Absolutely.Andrew: -than be at J because J is wild. Now look, today J has been shut down for a fewyears because of talk about-- Jim: [crosstalk] -reason for that.Andrew: Look, Camp J is four cell blocks and one dorm. They have a few guys in a dorm that are cooking for the guys there. They're taking care of the place, taking care of the yard. You hear J, you assume the cell block. Just having worked in the cell blocks, these are guys with significant mental health issues.Woody: Most of them, yeah.Andrew: They're throwing feces on each other. They're throwing stuff on the guards. They're guys who've been back there so long and there's this mentality in prison, bar fighting. And you make enemies in a cell and you throw stuff on so many people. You've seen this guy, he comes out on the tier for his shower. Y'all stay up all night cursing at each other because that's just how time is done. And then, you get into it with so many people, you're back there a couple of years and they say, "Okay, it's your time to come out." Like, "Oh, no, I can't go into population because I've threw crap on so many people."What these guys don't realize is, look, all y'all have thrown crap on each other. Y'all cursed each other out, talked about threatened to kill each other. You get out, chances are, "All right, man. We're in population now, we're going to put that stuff behind us." But so many of those guys, they've developed these enemies, and then they just dig their hole deeper and deeper. There are guys who've been back there decades and refuse to come out of their cells.Jim: Damn.Woody: The listeners know, like you're talking about, to get sent to Camp J, not the dormitory, but to get housing and cell on Camp J, you had to break a rule in prison. Not just regular fist fighting. It's fighting with weapons or attacking an officer or raping someone or whatever it may be, it's a serious infraction. You don't get classified and sent to Camp J immediately, most people. You get sent to wherever, and then if you're so bad that you can't follow the major rules inside-- those rule infractions, they could be a street charge too. But if you're so bad that you can't live in the general population with the worst of the worst, or what's considered to be the worst of the worst in America, you got to send to Camp J. It's a huge mental issue. I agree with you, like 90% of that shit is mental.Andrew: They call it the Behavioral Management Unit.Woody: Yeah, right.Jim: [chuckles] That's one way to put it.Woody: You lock them up and throw away the key.Andrew: The reason that they had to shut it down was it's an old cell block, and they couldn't repair the cells. Guys would open up cells, jump on guards.Jim: Oh, my God.Andrew: [crosstalk] So, whenever they sent me, they said Bass, which is the name of the dormitory, the general population dorm for the guys that work and serve. Luckily, it was like, "No, we're sending you back here," they did me a favor because it's like, hey, they recognize, "This is a guy that's done a lot of time. We have something in mind for you. So, we're going to put you on timeout."Woody: And show you what the worst could be if you want to fuck up. Jim: Yeah.Andrew: They told me, "Give us a couple of months." Those couple of months, it's like no one else talks to me after that. I remember day 30, day 45, I'm thinking to myself, "These people told me-- they've forgotten all about me." I remember seeing the assistant warden over the camp after I'd been there about two months, said, "Hey, I don't know if you remember me," he's like, "Yeah, I remember you." "You haven't looked at me. You haven't acknowledged me. Just want to make sure." He said, "Have you hit your two months yet?" "I'll hit my two months at the end of this week." He said, "Okay, we'll see what happens." Two days after I hit my two months there, they came to me and said, "Hey, we're moving you to Camp F, and you're going to be working out on the range crew. We're going to make you the clerk on the range crew."Jim: That's awesome.Andrew: What it ended up being, obviously Camp F is the old timer camp, class A trustee. Iwas in my 30s, I was the youngest guy at Camp F. [laughter]Andrew: By like 20 years.Woody: Yeah.Andrew: The youngest guy. There may have been guys that weren't quite that much older than me. But I go back there, and I have this job and I didn't realize how great of a job they were giving me. 18,000 acres, the thing that's awesome about the range crew is you have trustees that get to leave whatever camp, leave the main prison, get outside the fence, be on the property. But the thing that's awesome about the range crew is cattle there-- on just one little spot of the prison, there's cattle from the front to the back of the prison. So, when you're on the range crew, you have access to the entire prison. When I say the entire prison, I mean the property.Jim: So, you were a cowboy?Andrew: I was a cowboy. I wasn't born a cowboy. Jim: [laughs]Andrew: I learned how to ride a horse. Learned how to take care of cattle. The cows at Angola are 2000 head of cattle, not counting the bulls and not counting, given time of the year, when mamas are dropping calves. There are actually a lot more cattle there but every cow is on state property control. They're branded, they're tagged.Woody: Oh, my God. I remember-- [crosstalk]Andrew: When John Kennedy was State Treasurer, he used to give DOC hell, "How the heck do you lose a cow?" I was a guy that if I read that in the paper, I would think the same thing, "Well, how the heck do you lose a cow?" And I learned on 18,000 acres, it's really easy to lose a cow because if a cow goes in a drainage canal and dies--Woody: Or a gator gets--[crosstalk]Andrew: You're hoping that the buzzards are going to tell you where they are. So, part of my job was to keep up with the cattle that were on state property control and to do continuing inventories, order the meds, order the vaccines, along with just general clerical responsibilities around the range.Woody: You have a brain that I don't because my entire state career every fucking year when I had to fill out these property forms and serial numbers and I hated that shit. I'd rather be kicked in the nuts than have to fill out one of those. You were doing it every day all across the whole scale.Andrew: And then, another job responsibility I had once I got the job was assisting with the management of the rodeo as it relates to the rides. In my job, I was responsible for the fall and spring rodeos, to get the riders signed up and to assign the rides. There are people who-- the stock contractor comes in. There's, obviously, Alan Barton and his crew are managing what's going on inside the arena. There are acts coming in. Security is getting the public in. There's the hobby craft. There's the concessions.But the guys that are participating, someone has to organize them, someone has to decide who's getting what ride. It's sort of interesting because that's really a high-pressure thing because everyone wants a ride and everyone wants to be on this shoot. My responsibility was being the guy that fairly distributed rides for people who signed up. In the middle of the rodeo, you'll have guys who are on a horse and then they hurt themselves, but later in the day they were supposed to be on the poker table. So, I have to keep track of that and replace them in real time.Jim: Wow. Did you have anybody helping you?Andrew: I had people that would help me, but I'm the kind of guy that- Woody: Nobody is going to do it--[crosstalk]Andrew: -nobody's going to do it as good as you.Jim: [laughs][crosstalk]Jim: Struggle with delegation. [laughs]Woody: You were the CEO of everything that state workers--Jim: Well, if you do it, it's done right. [laughs] Or if it's wrong, it's your fault. And that's important.Andrew: But I can remember people ask me often about what I'm missing. I think there'll come a point in my career where I'll move out in the country, get a piece of property and have cow because there are days when you work around cattle, you just get this gunk in your nose at the end of the day, especially when we're pushing cows, got them in a catch pen, working them, and you just get all this muck in your sinuses, I miss that. I had to be in prison to really feel this sense of purpose and enjoying-- there were times I forget I was in prison. I forget I have my-- [crosstalk]Jim: Wow. It's almost like [crosstalk] you're so involved.Andrew: -sentence because I was in nature. I was working around these animals, got run [unintelligible [00:19:15] people. I think people have this idea that brahma bulls, the meanest thing that you could come across and know a mama cow that you're pulling the baby from will run your ass over. Well, I've been run over quite a few times and been kicked by cows. So, it was a great experience for me.The other thing I should say about my experience at Angola that was totally different from everywhere else I had been. Obviously, I was an outlier everywhere else I was having a life sentence. I would see people come and go. There were a handful of lifers at Wade, a handful of lifers at DCI. But when you get to Angola, everyone has life or everyone has 50, 100 years. They're not going to do that sentence. You every once in a while got a guy that somehow ended up at Angola that's going to be going home, but that's the outlier.And I got to meet so many older guys who had been there for decades. Some of the best people I ever met with in my life, I met in prison, and they were in prison for murder. I know that the general public can't get that, or they think I must be twisted to see that. But you see who a person becomes. I'm not meeting people in their worst moment. I'm meeting people years later after they've developed, they've taken responsibility for whatever brought them to prison and they've changed their lives. So, I think that had a big impact. Frankly, seeing a lot of death at Angola, going to funerals at Angola and seeing people buried and their headstone being on the penitentiary property, it's life changing.Woody: We did an episode on the Lookout Point and the call for making-- and all that stuff, that Burl really stepped up the game on.Jim: That's exactly right.Woody: [crosstalk] -we missed an episode. My mama sent me the article afterwards. Governor Edwards, when he passed, they had them make his coffin and he was buried. But then, his wife or some family member had him dug up and cremated. But so, we did Billy Cannon's. [crosstalk]Jim: Yeah. We definitely talked about that. It'd be a good point to bring up Burl Cain brought two very, very important things to Angola, in my opinion. He brought religion and he brought education at a level no prison had ever seen in the country. Everybody makes mistakes, Burl became very powerful, and with that, there became maybe some problems. But probably the most well-known warden in the history of the country, I would say. Would you agree? Did you ever have any dealings with him?Andrew: Oh, certainly. My favorite story about Burl, and he would do this to a lot of people, you always knew Burl was the boss and Burl had the vision. If you were going to work for Burl, you were going to carry things out the way Burl wanted it done. Burl had a whiteboard in the ranch house where he would often hold court around lunch. If there was an assistant warden, staff member who had to see Burl, Burl had a convict he wanted to come see him, you'd get called up to the ranch house and he had a whiteboard. Burl used to draw a circle on the whiteboard and then put a dot in the middle of it. He'd hand you the marker and say, "That's where I am. I'm the dot. Show me where you are. Are you in the circle? Are you outside the circle?"Woody: Wow.Jim: [chuckles] That's pretty awesome.Andrew: And he would tell you, "Draw it. I want to see. Where are you?" If you'd put that dot inside the circle next to him, "So, well, let me know if you're with me, because if you're not with me, we'll draw your dot outside of the circle." I think that's a perfect encapsulation of who he is. He had a vision. He knew how he wanted to do it. Obviously, it's hard to stay in one place. He was at Angola over 20 years. That's unheard of. No one will ever be warden of the penitentiary--Woody: I know this off the record that numerous times, and actually tapped Jimmy Le Blanc to be head of the Department of Corrections, he turned it down. He believed in so much in what he was doing in Angola. When he was warden at DCI, when I started-- I trained at Angola, I think it was Camp F is where the--Jim: Yes.Woody: Yes, I slept in a dormitory there and everything, but my mom was raised on the [unintelligible [00:24:08]. So, we say Bloody Angola, the Complete Story of America's Bloodiest Prison. That's more of a catch-all. Certainly, it's not a nice place to be, but it's certainly not to 19--[crosstalk]Jim: '65, '64.Woody: -when they had [crosstalk] yards and shit like that. I forget the name of certificationprogram, it's a national thing run by the government. Andrew: HOST?Woody: Yeah, that certifies prison. You got to really-- Andrew: Oh, ACA.Woody: American Correctional Accreditation, something like that. But Angola was nowhere near that when Burl got there, and he did all that too.Jim: Right. Leader of men, there's no doubt about it. Now, I believe the head of the Mississippi Department of Corrections.Andrew: Correct.Woody: Most listeners don't know the Montgomery case comes out, how did you learn about it? How did you hear about it? And what happens next?Andrew: US Supreme Court actually has made a series of decisions that affected how we sentenced juveniles. I mean, it's not that long ago the first decision where they looked at adolescent brain science was Roper, and it was new science. It's sort of what everyone who was a kid or had kids, knew kids or immature kids are impulsive. And the Roper decision, that's when they said, "You can't execute a juvenile anymore." I mean, that's just in the last couple of decades that we haven't been able to execute-- The Supreme Court said, "Stop executing juveniles."Woody: I was a police officer when that came out.Andrew: And they said, "Hey, kids are different from adults, and we have to treat them different than adults." Eventually, there was the Miller decision. And all these decisions, we're in prison, we're watching the news, we're reading the newspaper, we're keeping up with it. The guys who are going down the rabbit hole, staying in the law library are telling everyone what's happening. So, we're just watching it. The Miller decision came out in 2012, and that decision said that you can't give a juvenile a mandatory life without parole sentence. Well, if you remember in the first episode, I said when my judge sentenced me, there was only one sentence.Woody: Mandatory without.Andrew: If my judge would have had an option and gave me life anyway, the Supreme Court decision wouldn't have affected me because the Supreme Court didn't say you can't give a juvenile a life without parole sentence. It said it couldn't be mandatory. The judge has to have leeway. But Louisiana and some other Southern states--Woody: They still followed it.Andrew: We're fighting it, the retroactivity, because they said, "Okay, well, this only affects new cases. It can't affect all these old cases." I actually went back to Acadia Parish in 2013 after Miller. I was fortunate my family could afford to hire an attorney for me. The judge who was there for my trial was still on the bench.Jim: Oh, wow.Andrew: He agreed for me to come back in. He said, "Now, I have an opportunity to give you a different sentence. I'm going to sentence you to life with parole, and I'm going to let the Department of Corrections figure out what that means," because there wasn't a law in the book that said what does-- life is still life in Louisiana, whether you're a juvenile or not. The parole board wouldn't schedule a parole hearing for me, obviously, because there's nothing that says that.Woody: To set the precedent.Andrew: Yeah. We're hearing from all of our attorneys that this isn't going to affect old cases. So, in January of 2016, the US Supreme Court ruled in a case called Henry Montgomery, Baton Rouge case. A black guy, he was 17 years old, when he shot an East Baton Rouge sheriff's deputy. Not to argue that case, Henry, he shot someone who happened to be a sheriff's officer. He didn't know it was a sheriff's officer, but still, he shot a sheriff's deputy, and he was held accountable and was initially given the death penalty, ended up with a life sentence. His case made it to the Supreme Court. I remember we initially thought, "Man, that's such a bad case to make it to the Supreme Court," because everyone in prison knows you don't--Jim: When it involves a police officer--Andrew: You don't commit a crime against a police officer because you're not going to getany mercy.Woody: So the listeners know, when they submit to Supreme Court, Supreme Court has a right to turn down the hearing of the case. They don't have to hear it.Andrew: Right. So, they agreed to hear it. In January of 2016, they reviewed it favorably. Henry Montgomery, what his attorneys were arguing was that Miller's retroactive, and it affects Henry and people who've already been in prison, not just new cases. The Supreme Court agreed, and it put me at the front of the line.Jim: When he says the front, the very front.Andrew: The very front. It's not because I obviously wasn't the person who served the most time. I wasn't the person who had the most certificates. I was at the front of the line because most other guys in my position, they couldn't afford to hire attorneys, and other courts didn't want to fool with it. There weren't any local judges that were looking to start resentencing people. Everyone's like, "Oh, let's wait and see what the Supreme Court does." Well, my judge looked for the-- was happy to hear when my attorney went and said, "We were going to file for a hearing for a change in sentencing." He says, "Let's set a date."Woody: I'm sure also, I know what he told you originally, but I guarantee that the judge looked at-- that you did your time, you didn't let your time do you. You totally turned your life around, or you've been on a straight and narrow other than the one time at JESTC. [chuckles]Andrew: That's true. He put all that stuff into the record, and that obviously helped me. So, when the Montgomery decision came down, my attorney petitioned the parole board and said, "You owe him a parole hearing." At that point, the state of Louisiana had not issued-- the legislature hadn't changed any laws. So, he was arguing because of what the Supreme Court said, "Because his district court already sentenced him, you have to give him a parole hearing. You can't hold the legislature's inaction against him." The parole board agreed and actually got an opinion from the attorney general's office that said I was parole eligible.I go before the parole board in June of 2016, I'll be honest with you, even though I knew I was rehabilitated, knew if I get out, I'm going to do well, I still know I committed a horrible crime. I was in my 30s. I was 34. I'm telling myself, "I'm going to be denied," and I'm preparing my family, I'm going to be denied. This is the sort of a process and every couple of years I'll be able to reapply. And in 10, 15 years, they're going to get tired of telling me no, and I'm going to come home one day. And I'm going to tell y'all, my biggest fear, I didn't say this in the first episode. My biggest fear while I was incarcerated wasn't about someone hurting me, wasn't about being raped or being stabbed or even not getting out of prison. That wasn't my biggest fear. My biggest fear and what would keep me up at night was the fear that my parents would die while I was incarcerated.Woody: Yeah, I get it.Andrew: Because I've seen men whose parents died. Mom's the last person with you. Andwhen mom goes, everyone else goes.Jim: And they had your back the whole time you were in prison.Andrew: They didn't make excuses for me, but they showed me love. They visited me.Woody: Shoutout to your folks, man.Andrew: They answered my phone calls, and my mom and dad just sustained me. I went to prison as a 15-year-old, and even although my body matured, there was part of my-- I never went off to college. I never got that first job.Woody: The growth experience.Andrew: I was emotionally dependent on my parents' love and affirmation. So much of me furthering my education and doing good things in prison was so when my parents would come and visit me, I could say, "Guess what I'm doing?"Woody: They could be proud.Andrew: I say all that to say that whenever I had the parole hearing, I prayed, and I just prayed. "I know I'm not going to make it this time, but please, God, just let me come home while my parents are still alive so then I can be there for them as they've been for me for my whole life." Luckily, that day, I have a parole hearing. Generally, they tell you after the hearing, you've been granted or you've been denied. They threw a curveball, and they said, "We want to take this under advisement. We want to think about it." I understand I was the first juvenile lifer after Montgomery with a parole hearing. The parole board generally doesn't hear at that point, murderers going up for parole.I go back to my life in prison. I tell myself, "You're going to be denied. You're going to get a letter in the mail in 30 days that said, 'You've been denied. Apply again in two years.'" I'm back on the range crew. I'm back doing my job. I'm worrying about cattle. I'm worrying about inventories. I remember it was 10:30 on Thursday, June 9th. My supervisor is a guy named Alan Barton, June 9th, 2016, his phone rings, and he answers it, and he looks at me, and I could tell whatever that the call was about, it was about me. And so, I'm wondering, "What's this about?" Nowhere did it come into my mind this has something to do with parole. And he's like, "Okay, okay, okay." He hangs up the phone, and he looks at me, and he says, "Pack your shit." In prison, when you hear, "Pack your shit," it's usually one of a couple of things, but it could also mean you're going to the cell block.Woody: Right. It could mean you're getting swung. The other one is you're going home.Andrew: You're going home. This is how much I didn't allow myself to believe I was going home. I was prepared to go home. [crosstalk] Immediately, in that split second, "What are the things--? Do they know I brought a brick of community coffee back to the dorm to get to this old timer. What do they know? I got some extra chicken out the kitchen." And he says, "You're making parole." And I was just like, "Wait. What?" He's like, "The parole board granted you, and you're releasing now." I lived at the office of the range crew at the lake house, at the hog lot, this is prison jargon. Like, 80% of my properties out there because I go back to the dorm to sleep and then come back to work and work all day. He says, "Pack your stuff," and I was like, "Man, if this is a bad message, I don't want to pack all my stuff. So, let me go to the camp and see." He's like, "I'm not bringing you back. You're going home."So, it took me going to the camp and then giving me my release papers to sign before I believed it. They said, "Do you want to call anyone?" I said, "Yeah, I want to call my mom." So, they give me the phone, I call my mom. She answers, and I said, "Hey, do you know anything about me?" She says, "Yeah, we're coming to get you." I said, "How long have you--" My mom knew one hour before I did.Woody: Wow.Andrew: My attorney called her from the parole board to say, "Hey, the parole board just called me in to say that they're granting Andrew's parole." It was great that my mom knew for an hour before I called her. She knew she was waiting on that call. My sister had just graduated medical school. My parents were packing her up, getting ready to send her off for her residency. So, just thinking, my younger sister finished medical school, they're packing her up, and at the same time, their son's releasing from prison.Jim: What a day.Andrew: I was told at 10:30. I got up that morning thinking, "I may die here. I may get out in a few years." At 10:30, they said, "You're going home today." At 04:00, I was walking out the front gate with my family.Woody: Wow. One of the few people--Jim: For the first time outside since you were 15. Woody: Outside of the gates of Angola.Andrew: Right. Packing, getting all my stuff gathered, and all these old timers and these juvenile lifers who've been there all this time are coming up to me, "We're so happy for you, man. This is awesome." I remember thinking to myself, "Man, how much grace that they have," because if I was in their shoes, I would be saying, "Why this guy?"Jim: Yeah. People try to sabotage people getting out sometimes in prison. Andrew: "This guy's only been here 19 years. Why is he getting out?" Jim: You would almost think there'd be jealousy there.Andrew: Yeah, and I'm sure there was but guys were just showing me so much love. The last two guys I talked to before I get out were two juvenile lifers. One had been in for 40 years. One had been in for 50 years.Woody: Wow.Andrew: They say, "You're going to be the guy that helps the rest of us get out." I don't think they meant literally, but like, "You're going to get out, and you're going to show that people can get second chances. Man, you could do well." I was like, "Man, I'm sorry that it's me." They're like, "No, no, man, get the hell out of here. You're going to do well." We're driving down that road that I didn't know if I'd ever leave. My sister asks me, "Well, now what?" I had all these plans on paper, but now it's like, "Oh,-Jim: Now, it's real.Andrew: -it's real." I told myself what came to me is, "I've got to find a way to help people. I've got to find a way to help these people that I've left behind." So, through that guilt of leaving my friends behind was born Louisiana Parole Project.Woody: Wow.Jim: And what a beautiful project, and we're going to get into that. I do want to say, because I sense you had a little bit of guilt with you that you were the first, and there were these people that in your mind are more deserving because they had spent longer time and all ofthat. For me, looking from the outside, I think you had a lot of-- and I don't even know if you felt this pressure, but I would have thought you would have had a lot of pressure on you because anybody who was against that ruling is watching you to wait for you to fail. "Y'all going to see. Y'all going to see, they let these guys out and watch what happens. They're going to screw up again." Wow, were you the total opposite of that, number one. Probably far exceeded even people with the best of intentions, expectations, and that's what we want to get into. But you did. You were the first, and that was great.You also were carrying a heavy burden, just like these guys told you, you're going to be the one that they use as the example. So, I'm sure in the back of the mind, they were thinking, "Be a good example because you can screw it up for all of us." [chuckles] So, you were just that. Now, I want you to tell us about your Louisiana Parole Project and what it does and the value of that for these released convicts, inmates, people.Andrew: I come home in June of 2016, I recognize-- my dad gives me a truck. I knew I couldn't go back to Eunice, Louisiana. Everyone knew me for the worst thing I did. They either loved me or hated me but there weren't opportunities there. And I wanted to go to college. Heck, I was 34 years old, getting out of prison from this life sentence, smart guy. I've already earned these credits. Testament to the prison system, I felt getting out, like, "Man, I've earned all these credits. I have to go to college." Whereas if I wouldn't have had those opportunities, I might look and go, "Damn, I'm not ready to invest four years of my life. I got to go into the job market right away." So, I enrolled for college right away. But then, I started telling people, "Man, I want to find a way to help these guys. I realize I'm coming out and with this ruling, I'm just the first. There are going to be other people coming home. How do we create opportunities for people when they come home?"I'm going to be okay because my family is going to make sure that I have opportunities to be successful. I had built a network for myself in prison that I know, "Hey, I'm going to take advantage of this network to find a good job and to hang around good people and have volunteer opportunities." The guys coming home and I had enough common sense to know that, "Hey, the first few people who come home are going to affect it for everybody. So, we need to make sure the first guys who come home are successful so that stakeholders, namely parole board, governor, judges, keep giving people chances." This was an abstract idea and literally just starting, building it out from my experience, from the experience of the first few people that came home, what did they struggle with when they first come home. And we've built a program. We're a nonprofit organization, so I had to figure out how to build a nonprofit organization, how to set it up.Jim: Not easy.Andrew: My first job was actually someone clued me into working at Pointe Coupee Detention Center. I taught pre-release at the detention center for a short time. There's a curriculum, and it's actually this curriculum I taught in the inside at Angola, at Camp F in my spare time. So, I have a job. My first paycheck goes to chartering the organization with the Secretary of State's office and the local clerk at court's office. And then, applying to the IRS for the 501(c)(3) status. All that costs money. So, I'm just figuring out the administrative part of building the organization, asking funders for money. It's the chicken before the egg. I'd say, "Hey, this is what we're going to do." Well, funders would say, "Well, what have you done?" "Well, I haven't done anything."[laughter]Jim: "That's what we need you for."Andrew: "We need the funds." "Well, come back to us whenever you've done something." A lot of volunteer work, part time, going to college. And then finally, we had a couple of funders that took a chance on us. I mean, fast forward from 2016 to today, we operate a residential reentry program in Baton Rouge. We work with people who've been convicted all over the state that are coming home, and we work with people who've done 20 years or more, because we recognize these are guys who are more likely to listen to their peers. And it's a pure mentorship program. Same concept with AA. If you're an alcoholic who's going to AA, your sponsor is going to be another alcoholic.Woody: Somebody's who been through it.Andrew: Who's been through it and so we had the same mindset. We're going to have people who've come out of prison, who've been successful mentoring other people who come out of prison. Initially, that was an odd mindset for law enforcement, for probation and parole for DOC, because their job is usually keeping ex-cons away from each other. But today, we own and operate nine transitional houses in Baton Rouge. We own these homes outright. Seven houses for men, two houses for women. When they come home from prison, we're giving them a safe, stable place to stay. We have rules, we have expectations, but some of the things, our clients have served 20, 30, 40, 50 years in prison. So, it started out with these juvenile lifers coming home. And the legislature passed a bill in 2017 that also allowed something-- some people call it 40-Year Lifers, some people call it Disco Lifers. There's a group of about 120 lifers during the 70s that had parole eligibility before the legislature in '79 made life, life without parole. There was a bill that restored parole eligibility to some of those guys.Woody: I didn't know about that.Andrew: We helped some of them get back out. Jim: Wow.Andrew: And the governor has been signing commutations. And a big part of why he's signing commutations is because we say, "Hey, if you give this person a second chance, our program is going to help them rebuild their life." He took a couple of chances on people, and he's been signing more and more commutations. He's in the last year he's in office. Last week, he signed commutations for 12 lifers. These people are going to come through our program. To date, since 2016, we've had over 370 men and women who were once serving life or de facto life sentences have gotten out of prison. I know people hearing this go, "Wait a minute, 370 lifers?" Yeah, 370 lifers and de facto lifers, people sentenced to 50 years, 99 years, 200 years have come home. The reason you haven't heard about it is because they're not going back to prison.Jim: Period.Woody: Because they had made-- [crosstalk] Jim: Yes.Andrew: Our recidivism rate is 1%.Jim: 1%, y'all. Let that sink in.Woody: But you got to give them the other side of the scale. The average just on general recidivism rate is in the 40% range.Jim: Yeah.Woody: Which means almost one out of two that get out without Andrew's program aregoing to offend again. Jim: I'm sorry. Go ahead.Andrew: I said this to y'all before we went on air. I have a unique perspective where I did time, I'm a criminal justice practitioner, and I got my master's degree in criminology. So, one thing I learned actually getting the book education is when we hear like, "Almost one out of two people return to prison," the problem is it's the same couple of guys that go back and forth, back and forth. And they actually--[crosstalk]Jim: Yeah. Quadruples the number.Woody: Regardless, take those guys out of the equation, 1% is a stupid, crazy number in agood way.Andrew: We start working with our clients before they're released.Woody: Let's do it like this. You showed a picture of two people that you picked up yesterday, tell us what the process is going to be for them, from where you start until hopefully where it is.Andrew: Sure. So, two lifers came home yesterday. One served 41 years, one served 38 years. We started meeting with them months ago when we knew they had opportunities to come home. One was given a commutation by the governor, went through the pardon process successfully. The other guy was actually resentenced by the Orleans District Attorney because it was determined that he was overincarcerated. He was someone, after reviewing his case, they decided that he was less culpable than his co-defendants and he shouldn't have got a life sentence. So, they made a deal with him. He pled guilty to time served, came home. Anyway, we started working with him and it's just how much what our organization's reputation is. We go in, ex-cons--Woody: I was going to say, you go to Angola.Andrew: Go to Angola and the warden lets us in to go and see guys and prepare because they know we're not going in to bring in contraband. We're not trying to get anyone to escape. We're trying to get people out the right way, but we've got to go and prepare them for what to expect. To be frank, I've got to go in and determine, is this someone I want to help? Not everyone who applies to be our client, we accept. We turn down a lot of people. We look at the prison record and we also read between the lines. Having done time, someone who's done time or worked at Angola--[crosstalk]Jim: Real knows real. Andrew: Real knows real. Jim: [chuckles] As they say.Andrew: We want to make sure that it's someone who's taken responsibility for their actions and addressed the things that brought them to prison and bettered themselves and they're ready to come home. People, you're different at 25 than you were at 15. You're a different person at 35. You're a different person at 45.Jim: Amen.Andrew: A lot of my clients are 60- and 70-year-old men who are taking up unnecessaryspace at Angola.Jim: If you're judged by your worst mistake you ever made, everybody would hate everybody. Everybody, stop for a second, think about the worst mistake you've ever made, and then think about if everybody knew about that if they'd hate you or strongly dislike you. People change.Andrew: We pick our clients up at the front gate of the prison when they're released. We bring them to our program. Our clients, things we all take for granted, they've never used a cell phone, they've never used a debit card, they've never paid for gas at the pump, they've probably never opened a bank account. Who has been incarcerated for decades and still has their birth certificate and their Social Security card? These people, if they came home and didn't have the support, they'd just crumble, like, "Where do I start?" And their families, many of them have outlived their families. The ones who do have families, families love them, but they don't know where to start. So, our job is to prepare people to be successful. We're not putting people up for life and giving them a place to stay. We're training people to be self-sufficient.Woody: Like a transition.Andrew: It's a transition. We want you to learn the skills you need. I give someone their first cell phone they've ever had. [crosstalk] After a week, they're going to be like a 10-year-old with the first one. So now, we got to teach you how to put the phone down. Now, we've got to teach you what workplace etiquette is. We've got to teach you that when you went to prison, what was considered flirting is considered harassment. We've got to teach you what this institutionalization that you've had, "Hey, in society, we're more accepting of different people, different ideas. You've got to let that old thinking go." A lot of guys obviously come home with skills, and now we're--Jim: Mad skills, especially trade skills.Andrew: So, we're looking to do-- and I shouldn't just say, guys, we work with women too. Once they go through our initial program, we feel confident. Now, we're working to find them jobs. We give them transportation. We're going to transport them to their parole officer. We're going to transport them to their job. We bring them to the grocery store. We bring them to their medical appointments. Initially, "Hey, we're going to take care of all your needs. Now, we're going to teach you how to be self-sufficient." Our goal is we're turning tax burdens into taxpayers. We're not just getting people out and saying, "We're saving the state money, because that's one less person you have to pay for," we're turning these people into taxpayers. We're not just turning them into taxpayers when they're working. We're getting them volunteer opportunities. They're volunteering in the communities they live. I tell clients, "Go join a church." Some of them say, "Hey, I'm not into church." And I say, "You go find your church, find you an AA group, find you some group. Start showing up. After you're there three or four times, someone's going to recognize you and say, "Hey, you want to go to lunch? Hey, tell me about yourself.'"Woody: Integrate them into the community.Andrew: When people get in trouble, 9 times out of 10, it's because their family doesn't know what they're doing. There are no connections. What we find that's worked is we want all these tentacles into them. I'm going to tell you we're a parole officer's best friend because our parole officers have no problems with their clients because oftentimes, the guys out onparole, mama may not know where you're at, but that parole officer is keeping in contact with you, a Parole Project client. These are people who were convicted of the worst crimes, and they're the most successful group out there.And then, the mode is some of our clients who've come out been successful, we've had people start their own small business. We have homeowners, state employees, carpenters, welders, cooks. The people, you walk into Walmart and you don't realize the guy who's checking out next to you just got out of prison doing 30 years. You're in church, the person in the pew next to you is someone who came home. And that's the point. What does someone who's been in prison look like? We're training them to not only to blend in, but to give back to the community.What I would say is we've proven in Louisiana, a place where life without parole is something that is exactly what it means. And we've just accepted that, "Well, we give people life, and we can't let them out because they've done something so bad, they can't get out," or we keep them there so long, they can't adjust to society. We're proving that wrong, and we're proving that. And this isn't like a bleeding heart speech, because I'm not a bleeding heart. I don't believe-- there is a reason we have prisons, there's a reason we hold people accountable. Well, we can hold people accountable, and then we can take a look back and see, is someone worth redemption? Is someone rehabilitated? Someone worth a second chance? And it's a resounding yes. There's a way that you can support someone.One thing I hate to hear is, "He's been in so long, how can we let him out?" What I say is, "Shame on us as a society if we keep someone in prison so long, the reason we can't let them out is because we've kept them in prison so long."Jim: That's a great way of putting it. And you know what? I think your nonprofit does more than anything else, is the same thing that you get inside prison from the staff if they're doing it right, hope. The biggest reason that people reoffend, in my opinion, is they try other things, they hit a bunch of roadblocks, and it's the only thing they know. If you have a felony on your record and you go apply for a job and you have to disclose that felony, and you do, you're doing the right thing, it's hard. Look, I'm not saying they didn't earn the right to have to struggle with that, but it's hard for people to give you a second chance. It is not easy. I'm not someone that lived in that life, but I've seen a lot of people pass through my life that have had that struggle. I've seen people turn back to the only thing they know, because it's the only way they can make money, is by slinging drugs or doing whatever it was that put them in prison to begin with.Your program is really helping them adjust and teaching them that there's another way because anybody who's respected, even the worst of us, when you're respected for the right things, for being a good person, paying your taxes, all those things, you have a self-respect that you don't want to go back to that life.Woody: And then, second chance also-- Jim: It's hugely important.Woody: -what you just hit on, people come out and they can't get the jobs or people are like, "I'm not hiring a con," through second chance, through your program, somebody did take a chance. They're probably the best damn employee in the world. They're like, "Can you give me like 10 more of them?"Andrew: I was about to say two points I want to respond to as it relates to second chances, there is not an employer that we've gotten someone connected to-- a lot of times, it's a lot of work, getting this employer to take a chance, and I understand it. He's got to think, how isthe public going to feel about it? How are my other employees going to feel about it? There's not an employer who doesn't come back and say, "Hey, if you have another guy, I'd be willing to hire another guy." We have multiple employers, car dealerships in Baton Rouge, state government agencies that have multiple clients working for them.As it relates to hope-- We talked about Warden Cain, the current warden of Angola, Tim Hooper, is really a good man, and he's doing good things up there. But as it relates to hope, prisoner-on-staff violence is down at Angola. Prisoner-on-prisoner violence is down at Angola. Participation in educational and self-help programs are up. Why is that? Because people in Angola are seeing people go home. And not only go home, but they're seeing them stay home and stay successful. They know guys' success, guys communicate, and it gives people hope.Jim: So, light at the end of the tunnel.Andrew: What I tell people, even the hardest person who says, "I don't believe in any of this, lock them up. Why should I care about prison conditions?", if you don't care about the thousands of people who live in Angola, care about the employees who work there.Jim: That's right.Andrew: Because they should go into a safe environment. What I can tell you is, it's a safer place to work whenever there are people going home and there is hope in the prison. Hope is a good thing.Woody: Absolutely.Jim: This is a damn good episode. One more thing-- Woody: [crosstalk]Jim: Chills. How can people help support your program? Woody: Say the full name.Jim: We're going to link all of that too.Woody: [crosstalk] -links and everything. We're going to put it across all our stuff because I believe what you're doing is really awesome. Y'all, they are nonprofit, and you fund it through donations and stuff, right?Andrew: Yeah. Jim: In grants. Woody: Grants.Andrew: Grants and individual donations. So, our name is Louisiana Parole Project. Our website is paroleproject.org. You can find us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, @paroleproject. Check us out, you'll see-- If you're wondering what does someone look like coming out of prison, take a look at our social media. We call it the Money Shot, is the guy walking out of the front gate.Jim: [laughs] I love it.Woody: Hey, I'm going to follow--[crosstalk]Jim: The Money Shot.Woody: When we leave the studio, I'm going to go follow.Andrew: And people can donate to our organization online at paroleproject.org. Your donation, no matter how large or small, helps us buy someone coming out of prison, a pair of shoes, helps someone go to driving school, fund the cost to getting their driver's license, gets people started. We are a nonprofit organization, and all of our money goes to supporting people. It's a good investment. What I could tell you is, is it costs taxpayers thousands of dollars to keep people in prison for life. The older you get, the more expensive it costs.Jim: Doubles.Andrew: It does. It's a good return on the investment. We have been ill served by politicians who have fostered the idea that keeping people in prison forever makes us safer. We've led the country in incarceration because of life sentences, and it didn't affect crime. The people who are committing crimes today are not the guys getting out of Angola. So, there's a difference. When we hear some people are like, "Ah, I'm not into these reforms that are happening," what I can tell you is without a doubt, because I see it, I work with these guys, they're not the guys committing crime. They're the guys who are paying taxes, giving back to their community.Jim: Well, thank you for that and keep up the good work on that end. One more thing before we let you get out of here. You got a child and a wife now and we haven't even mentioned that. His wife's a doctor, y'all. How about that?Woody: Yeah.Andrew: Yeah. I'm a lucky man. God's shown me a lot of favor. The best job like I've everhad now is I'm dad to an 11-month-old daughter. Jim: Beautiful.Woody: Aw. Congratulations.Andrew: It's been a wonderful experience. Woody: Congratulations.Jim: Well, keep killing it, man. Keep doing the good work.Woody: Hey, you know what? I would like to ask you back again sometime. Jim: Please.Woody: Because this is [unintelligible [01:02:21]. This is important.Jim: Very important. Thank you.Woody: Thank you.Jim: Thank you very much. We appreciate you.Andrew: Thank you.Woody: Our favorite episode we've ever done. Episodes actually that we've ever done.Jim: Yeah, it was great. We hope y'all enjoyed this. Follow the Patreon, subscribe to us, if you'd like more information, and hopefully you would on the LPP, we're going to link all of that in the description of this podcast. Just scroll down, you'll see it there. You can click on it and help.Woody: When you hear it, if you're moved like I was, share it because we want everybody to know this story.Jim: That's important. Yes.Woody: And we've told you, it'll always be something different coming out of Angola. This isas far in the positive spectrum as we've ever been. Jim: 100%. And until next time, I'm Jim Chapman. Woody: I'm Woody Overton.Jim: Your host of Bloody-Woody: Angola.Jim: A podcast 142 years in the making.Woody: The Complete Story of America's Bloodiest Prison. Jim: Peace.Our Sponsors:* Check out Factor and use my code bloodyangola50 for a great deal: https://www.factor75.com/ Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy