the JustPod

• Gary Tyler’s Quest for Justice in Louisiana’s Angola Prison

  Send us a text[For a complementary audio excerpt of Gary Tyler’s book, narrated by Cary Hite, describing the point when Tyler is considering accepting a government plea agreement, and starting life outside Angola, listen here.  Copyright © 2025 by Gary Tyler. Audio excerpt courtesy of Simon & Schuster. Audio read by Cary Hite, from the audiobook Stitching Freedom by Gary Tyler, published by Simon & Schuster Audio, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Used with permission from Simon & Schuster, Inc.]In 1974, at the age of 16, Gary Tyler, who is African American, and was born in St. Rose Parish, Louisiana, was convicted by an all-white jury of a crime he did not commit:  the murder of a white teenager.  Tyler was sentenced to death.  He was sent to Louisiana’s infamous Angola prison, where he was the youngest person on death row in the United States.  A song by the British reggae band, UB40, titled in his name, “Tyler,” captures the injustice.  But Gary Tyler survived to tell the tale, and to write a magnificent book about his life experience:  Stitching Freedom:  A True Story of Injustice, Defiance, and Hope in Angola Prison, written with Ellen Bravo, and published by Simon and Schuster.  Gary Tyler was released from custody in 2016, having spent four decades in prison.  Despite the compelling evidence of his innocence, he has never been exonerated.  We had the honor of recording our discussion with Gary on October 6, the day before his book’s release, and the October 7 anniversary of his arrest, decades later.

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• Sentencing reform, statutory mandatory minimum sentences, and the quest for justice:  Our discussion with retired federal District Judge Mark W. Bennett

  Send us a textThe honorable Mark W. Bennett is a retired U.S. District Court Judge, and the former Chief Judge of the Northern District of Iowa.  Judge Bennett retired from the federal bench in 2019, and is now Director Emeritus of the Institute for Justice Reform & Innovation at Drake University Law School.  Judge Bennett is known for his advocacy for sentencing reform—including his criticism of the federal sentencing guidelines and statutory mandatory minimum sentences—for his research on implicit bias, and, unusually, for his prison visits to check up on hundreds of the defendants he sentenced.  For some of those inmates, Judge Bennett has written, he is the only visitor they have ever had.  Equally unusually, Judge Bennett has often met with the families of those he’s sentenced, at their request, to explain his sentences.  We were honored to discuss with Judge Bennett his own quest for justice, his experience sentencing thousands of federal criminal defendants, and so much more. 

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• From Prison to Prison Consultant: Our Discussion with Joseph De Gregorio

  Send us a textJoseph De Gregorio was raised in a middle-class working family in Brooklyn, and comes from a line of hard workers.  His father regularly got up at 4am to work at a plant, where he was a machinist.  Joseph himself had the opportunity to get into finance, but the allures of Wall Street, gambling, and addiction, ultimately took him down a path toward fraud, and eventually a federal criminal conviction and a term of imprisonment.  Today, as the founder of JN Advisor (www.jnadvisor.com), Joseph shares his own experience as a consultant to defendants facing criminal charges and the threat of imprisonment.  He’s learned a lot along the way, and we were fortunate to hear some of his lessons on this episode of the JustPod.

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• White Collar Talks: Upcoming International White Collar Crime Institute in Geneva

  Send us a textJoe Whitley (Womble Bond Dickinson) discusses the ABA Criminal Justice Section’s International White Collar Crime Institute (a special convening of the Global White Collar Crime Institute and the London White Collar Crime Institute) in Geneva, Switzerland on November 17-18, 2025, with Nina Marino (Kaplan Marino) and Lucian Dervan (Belmont University College of Law). Registration is ongoing at Criminal Justice Section Events.

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• When You Come at the King: Our interview of National Best-Selling Author and CNN Senior Legal Analyst Elie Honig, about his recently released book on investigations of U.S. Presidents

  Send us a textElie Honig is CNN’s Senior Legal Analyst, and a former federal prosecutor.  He is the bestselling author of Hatchet Man: How Bill Barr Broke the Prosecutor's Code and Corrupted the Justice Department (published by HarperCollins in 2021), and Untouchable: How Powerful People Get Away with It (also published by HarperCollins, in 2023).  Elie is most recently the author of the recently released book When You Come at the King: Inside DOJ's Pursuit of the President, from Nixon to Trump, a history of the Office of Independent Counsel and Special Counsel investigations.  We recorded a lively discussion with Elie shortly before the book’s release. 

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