Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Every crime has a story.
Every case has another side.
Real crimes, uncensored and raw.
Memoirs from an award winning criminal defense attorney.
This is the dodcast.
[00:00:18] Speaker B: Welcome to another episode of the dodcast, where we bring you real crime, uncensored and raw. Nothing is rehearsed. In fact, today, when my client pulled up in his vehicle in front of the studio, this is the first time I've seen him since February of 2015. I haven't seen this young man for over 11 years. The last time I saw him was a very emotional time of his life. We were in a courtroom. He was being sentenced, he was being cuffed, and he was being taken away to be transported to state prison with all of his family, all of his friends, all of his loved ones in the courtroom, everybody crying. I had to spend the next hour, hour and a half in the hallways of the courtroom explaining to everybody, you know, what just happened. Now, just like my other episodes and all the other clients I bring on the show, the fact that he's here today is an absolute miracle because at the time of this incident, he had a prior dui.
He picked up another dui, and unfortunately, there was a death.
And in the state of California, when you have a prior DUI and you have another DUI and somebody is killed, you're facing 15 to life. It's called a Watson murder. So any individual in the state of California who picks up a first time dui, they have to sign a Watson advisor that says in the future, if they drive again under the influence of alcohol and drugs and somebody is killed as a result of that, they will be charged with murder. And this is the exact same type of case that my client had. And fortunately, we were lucky enough that that did not happen and he is not doing life in prison, and that he is here with me today in the studio and out of custody. Thank you for coming.
[00:02:18] Speaker C: Thank you. Dodd.
[00:02:19] Speaker B: How's everything going with you?
[00:02:21] Speaker C: It's going well.
[00:02:22] Speaker B: Good. Let's.
[00:02:23] Speaker C: It's going really well.
[00:02:25] Speaker B: Let's.
What I want to start with is when you got married. Tell. Tell me what year you got married.
[00:02:31] Speaker C: I got married back in 2001.
[00:02:33] Speaker B: Okay, and where did you meet your wife?
[00:02:37] Speaker C: Mutual friend's house, at a party.
[00:02:40] Speaker B: How many kids did you have?
[00:02:41] Speaker C: I didn't have any at the time, but she had one.
[00:02:45] Speaker B: When did you have your first child?
[00:02:48] Speaker C: 2005.
[00:02:50] Speaker B: And how many kids did you have after that?
[00:02:53] Speaker C: We had three together.
[00:02:56] Speaker B: So three kids total with your wife at the time? And we can call her the ex wife now, but three Kids in total with your wife, you had an alcohol problem?
[00:03:06] Speaker C: I did.
[00:03:08] Speaker B: Tell us a little bit about your alcohol problem.
[00:03:12] Speaker C: For a long time now, I was drinking every day.
[00:03:17] Speaker B: What year did that start?
[00:03:21] Speaker C: It started towards the end of high school. I would say probably 1998, 1999.
Just hanging out with friends. And that's what we did.
Even when I owned my own business, I was. I was drinking on the job at times.
[00:03:41] Speaker B: What type of business did you own back then?
[00:03:43] Speaker C: I owned my own. My own swimming pool business.
[00:03:46] Speaker B: And then you're drinking a lot. How about your wife at the time? Was she contributing to that? Were you guys drinking together? We were partying together.
[00:03:54] Speaker C: Drinking together, huh?
We had a very, very difficult marriage, and we kind. We thought that if we had another child, it would make things better.
Well, we ended up having three children together, but things never got better.
[00:04:13] Speaker B: You guys kept on drinking.
[00:04:15] Speaker C: Mm.
[00:04:15] Speaker B: What about drugs?
[00:04:17] Speaker C: Drugs were not. Drugs were not part of our lifestyle.
[00:04:21] Speaker B: When you say you guys were, you know, drinking, you were alcoholics. How often would you drink?
[00:04:26] Speaker C: Every day.
[00:04:27] Speaker B: From what time to what time?
[00:04:31] Speaker C: Usually from the time I got off work to the time I would go to sleep.
[00:04:34] Speaker B: And what about your children?
[00:04:39] Speaker C: They were. They were really young at the time. They don't. They didn't really notice it, I guess
[00:04:45] Speaker B: you would say, were you guys home drinkers or would you have friends come over? Would you go to friends house? How would that work?
[00:04:54] Speaker C: We liked to have people over to our house.
We always had friends over at the house. And we would barbecue, we would drink, we would have a fire pit outside.
So, yeah, we liked to have people over.
[00:05:08] Speaker B: And the kids were young at the time, so they really had no idea what was going on.
[00:05:12] Speaker C: And quite a few of our friends, they had kids that were the same age as our kids, and they would all play around outside and, you know, just that we would have a big party.
[00:05:23] Speaker B: Not a very healthy marriage, right?
[00:05:24] Speaker C: It was not.
[00:05:26] Speaker B: Sometime back in, I believe it was 2002 or 2003, you had an incident, right?
[00:05:32] Speaker C: Yes. It was Thanksgiving weekend out in the desert. What happened out there for Thanksgiving with a bunch of. With a bunch of my high school friends that I kept in contact with after we graduated.
And we went out to the desert to have a big, big, big, big Thanksgiving party.
And we were all drinking and we were going off roading, riding dirt bikes, taking our trucks out.
And I had lost control of my truck coming down below Sands out in Ocoteea Wells had come down Bedo Sands and was going through the main road.
And I Lost control of it, ended up flipping the truck over upside down. My ex wife and I were in the car together, no one else. I got ejected through the sunroof. I broke my collarbone.
Her and I were both life flighted to the hospital and that Thanksgiving trip ended just like that.
[00:06:32] Speaker B: What was your blood alcohol level in that case?
[00:06:36] Speaker C: I think it was somewhere around 1.8 or 1.9.1, I think.
[00:06:44] Speaker B: What were your injuries?
[00:06:46] Speaker C: Just a busy collarbone for me, and my ex wife just had a bunch of cuts and bruises.
[00:06:53] Speaker B: And that was roughly around 2002?
[00:06:56] Speaker C: It was, yeah, it was Thanksgiving of 2002, I believe.
[00:06:59] Speaker B: So you guys were recently married at the time?
[00:07:01] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:07:02] Speaker B: So you guys getting this accident, dirt road, you know, you get in this accident, you both get ejected, you're both severely injured, but you guys keep on drinking, right?
[00:07:16] Speaker C: Yeah, I had stopped for a little while and I and I had to go to AA meetings, had to do a few things to be able to get my license back.
So I had stopped. I probably had actually quit for probably about six months.
[00:07:38] Speaker B: And you relapsed?
[00:07:40] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:07:40] Speaker B: What about her?
[00:07:44] Speaker C: She relapsed as well.
She didn't have to stop like I was court ordered to stop. She was not, but she stopped with me. But it didn't last long.
[00:07:57] Speaker B: What year did you guys start drinking heavily again?
[00:08:02] Speaker C: I would probably say within a year.
[00:08:05] Speaker B: So roughly around 2003, 2004, you guys are continuing down that same downward spiral. How's your relationship at the time with her and I? Yes,
[00:08:18] Speaker C: it was okay.
It wasn't great.
[00:08:24] Speaker B: When you pled guilty to your DUI back in 2002, do you recall being advised that if in the future you pick up another DUI and somebody is killed, that you would be charged with murder? You remember signing and initialing that advisal?
[00:08:42] Speaker C: I did not remember that until the second time around. When you and I talked about it, that's when I remembered, okay, yes, I did sign something like that.
[00:08:52] Speaker B: Now when you say the second time around, let's slowly get into the second time around.
So the second time around, quite some time had gone by, right? We're looking at about 11 to 12 years had gone by. What's going on in your relationship, in your life, with your alcoholism in that 10 to 11 years since your prior incident,
[00:09:18] Speaker C: every day was pretty much just the same.
Come home from work, drink and go to sleep, wake up, go to work, come home, drink, go to sleep.
It was basically a routine thing.
[00:09:34] Speaker B: What about ex wife? Was she doing the same thing?
[00:09:37] Speaker C: She was a stay at home Mom.
She did not drink during the day. She was actually a very good mom to our children.
But it was. Once I got home is when we would start drinking together.
[00:09:52] Speaker B: How much would you drink when you would come back from work?
[00:09:55] Speaker C: It would be anywhere from three beers to as many as 15 beers every night. Yes.
[00:10:07] Speaker B: 365 days a year, pretty much.
For years on years.
At some point, your relationship is completely spiraling, right?
[00:10:20] Speaker C: Yeah.
The marriage.
The marriage. It was never a healthy marriage.
Her and I probably never. Probably really never even should have gotten married. I thank God we did because we have wonderful children who I have a great relationship with now.
But back then, no, it was. It was a bad, really bad marriage. It was unhealthy.
[00:10:44] Speaker B: At what year. In what year did you guys decide that maybe we should separate?
[00:10:51] Speaker C: It was right before the accident. So we're looking at. We're looking at 2014.
[00:10:58] Speaker B: Now you say right before the accident. That's a good segue to the accident. So we're going to get into the tragedy of 2014.
You guys were living in separate places at the time, right?
[00:11:11] Speaker C: Yes. She had just recently moved out into an apartment, and I stayed in the
[00:11:15] Speaker B: house and you stayed in the house. And how was the custody split at the time?
[00:11:24] Speaker C: She had.
It was just mutual. It was what the kids wanted to do. If they wanted to come see me, they could come see me.
If they wanted to be with her, they could be with her.
There was no court involved yet.
It was just an agreement that her and I had.
[00:11:44] Speaker B: 4th of July of 2014. Do you remember that day? I do talk about that.
[00:11:53] Speaker C: The neighborhood that I lived in was a very suburban neighborhood, and it was a yearly thing that we would close down our street and we would have a block party, and all the neighbors would get together and we would party all day long.
[00:12:07] Speaker B: Where your kids are?
[00:12:13] Speaker C: My oldest one was because my wife had already moved out into an apartment. She did not want to come to the Brock party.
[00:12:25] Speaker B: There was a golf cart at that party, wasn't there?
[00:12:27] Speaker C: There was.
[00:12:28] Speaker B: Tell us about the golf cart.
[00:12:30] Speaker C: So the golf cart was my neighbor's.
He lived in the house directly across from. From the property. The block party was out at. Was out at.
And I used the golf cart that night after the party to help clean up, to take all the trash from the site of the party to my house because I had a big trash dumpster at my house that I use to throw away all my pool parts.
So my neighbor was going to sleep. He was going back to his house, and he told me That I could hang onto his golf cart since I was using it to help clean up.
[00:13:08] Speaker B: You took the golf cart home?
[00:13:09] Speaker C: I did.
[00:13:10] Speaker B: How far away was his house from your house?
[00:13:13] Speaker C: There's only one house in between us, along with an empty lot, so maybe a car, quarter of a mile.
[00:13:21] Speaker B: You're pretty drunk at the time. It's fourth of July, huh? You go home, you go to sleep, you wake up, start drinking again?
[00:13:33] Speaker C: Not right away, but yeah, pretty much.
[00:13:35] Speaker B: What did you drink?
[00:13:36] Speaker C: I woke up, realized what time it was, and I wanted to get the golf cart back over to his house because my kids were coming over to spend the day with me.
So I drove the golf cart over to his house. He was awake, and he offered me a rum and Coke.
[00:13:54] Speaker B: When did you know that your kids were supposed to come and stay with you on the 5th of July?
[00:14:01] Speaker C: I knew the day before.
[00:14:03] Speaker B: So you get up in the morning, you go to return his golf cart, and moment you get there, it's still morning time, right?
[00:14:10] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:14:10] Speaker B: Here's a rum and Coke.
[00:14:11] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:14:12] Speaker B: And you didn't just have one.
[00:14:14] Speaker C: Him and I had two or three of them together.
[00:14:17] Speaker B: And these are rum and Cokes that you don't typically get from a bar with one single shot. These are pretty strong rum and Cokes, right?
[00:14:26] Speaker C: Yes, they are. They're probably doubles or triples. Doubles or triples.
[00:14:29] Speaker B: So safe to assume that when you went to the house the next morning, the three rum and Cokes that you had were probably the equivalent of about nine drinks.
Right?
[00:14:42] Speaker C: Fair enough.
[00:14:43] Speaker B: Then you get in the golf cart and what happens?
[00:14:45] Speaker C: He told me to go ahead and take the golf cart back. Back. Because I got in a phone call from my ex wife saying that she was in my driveway.
And so my neighbor. So rather than walking back to your house, just take the golf cart back. I'll get it from you later.
[00:14:59] Speaker B: You drive the golf cart back, you go in the house, you see your children. Right. You make another rum and Coke.
[00:15:07] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:15:08] Speaker B: A triple at least.
[00:15:12] Speaker C: No, this time it was. This one was not nearly as strong.
It was probably just a regular one.
[00:15:20] Speaker B: How many did you have?
[00:15:23] Speaker C: If I remember correctly, I had just that one, but then I had it out of beer in my fridge, and so I ended up drinking a few beers while my kids and I were all outside playing around.
[00:15:39] Speaker B: So it's pretty fair to assume. And, you know, even based on your blood alcohol level that we'll talk about later, you're probably a good 12 to 13 drinks in within a very short time period. A couple hours, right?
[00:15:53] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:15:54] Speaker B: What happens after that?
[00:15:57] Speaker C: My kids were playing on the, on the slip and slide. We had the water hose on. You know, they're all getting wet.
They're in their swimsuits.
And I offered to take them for a ride on the golf cart. And they all said, yeah, dad, I want to go. I want to go.
So we turned the water stuff off and got in the golf cart and went around my suburban neighborhood.
[00:16:26] Speaker B: At any point prior to getting on that golf cart, did you ever think to yourself, I am so intoxicated, this is probably not a good idea?
[00:16:36] Speaker C: No, I actually honestly thought that I could handle it.
[00:16:39] Speaker B: What happens once you get on the golf cart? So explain for our viewers. So you're driving, who's sitting next to you and who's in the back?
[00:16:46] Speaker C: It was one bench.
It was me driving it. My youngest son, Colton, was on my lap.
My daughter was next to me, and then my oldest son was on the end.
[00:16:59] Speaker B: Tell us how old the three of
[00:17:00] Speaker C: them were at that time. Four and a half, six and a half and nine and a half.
[00:17:09] Speaker B: So now you're driving, the kids are having fun. They're in a golf cart.
What happens?
[00:17:13] Speaker C: We were going around my neighborhood, which was, like I said, it was a very suburban neighborhood, very quiet neighborhood, no cars already ever on the streets.
And it does a big giant.
A big, giant loop.
And we were going around our neighborhood. Had gone around once, no issues.
Had gone around a second time. And each one of these loops, you know, takes Probably a good 5, 6, 7 minutes to go up, to go up and around the entire neighborhood.
And as we came back around the second time, my oldest son was ready to go home.
And I should have listened to him and just went home. But I said, no, let's take your brother and sister around one more time.
[00:18:07] Speaker B: Do you remember how fast you were going?
[00:18:09] Speaker C: As fast as that golf cart would go.
[00:18:11] Speaker B: Do you know how fast it went?
[00:18:12] Speaker C: I do not know.
This was not a super turboid golf cart. This was your normal golf cart that you would see on a. On a golf range.
[00:18:23] Speaker B: So oldest son wants to go home.
You say, let's do one more lap.
[00:18:30] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:18:30] Speaker B: And it's probably the lap that you regret for the rest of your life, right?
[00:18:33] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:18:33] Speaker B: Tell us what happens.
[00:18:35] Speaker C: So as we were coming back down on the. On the last final downhill turn before heading back to my house, I lost control of the golf cart.
[00:18:47] Speaker B: What did you hit?
[00:18:48] Speaker C: We hit the. The curb on the side of the road, which is about a 6 inch curb.
Hit that curb and that made the entire golf cart Go on its side.
Next. Next to that curb was about a five or six foot patch of dirt between the curb and then my neighbor's fence.
And as the golf cart went down sideways, it even hit the neighbor's fence and then ended up completely on its side.
[00:19:20] Speaker B: What happened to all four of you?
[00:19:22] Speaker C: We were all ejected.
[00:19:23] Speaker B: What happened to you?
[00:19:26] Speaker C: I.
No injuries to me. I was able to get the golf cart in a position, to be able to. For my kids to be able to get out from under it, so to say.
And then I was able to get my. My youngest son into my arms and we managed to get back to the house.
[00:19:52] Speaker B: What happened to the oldest son? The one that wanted to go home?
[00:19:59] Speaker C: She. She was not.
He. He had. He got scraped up, had quite a few cuts, but he took the less damage than his sister and his brother took.
[00:20:12] Speaker B: What happened to the sister?
[00:20:13] Speaker C: The sister ended up getting a gnarly, really deep cut on her head that ended up having to be stapled shut.
[00:20:22] Speaker B: Let's talk about the four and a half year old.
So he gets ejected from the vehicle and ends up inhaling a lot of debris and a lot of the dirt
[00:20:37] Speaker C: and gravel that we landed on from. Yes.
[00:20:40] Speaker B: From what you. From the accident.
Paramedics arrive and they're trying to resuscitate him, right?
[00:20:46] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:20:47] Speaker B: He gets airlifted?
[00:20:48] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:20:49] Speaker B: Where did he go? To the hospital.
[00:20:50] Speaker C: Children's.
[00:20:52] Speaker B: How long was he there?
[00:20:55] Speaker C: Less than a week.
[00:20:58] Speaker B: You and your whole family?
Well, your dad, your brother. You guys come to my office a few days later. Do you remember that?
[00:21:07] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:21:08] Speaker B: When you guys came to my office, your son was still in the icu. And we didn't have any idea what his status was. Right.
[00:21:17] Speaker C: Other than the fact that he was on life support.
[00:21:19] Speaker B: Correct. And you remember the first time you came to my office, I had told you guys that if, unfortunately, something happens and he passes away, that this becomes a murder case.
[00:21:31] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:21:33] Speaker B: And unfortunately, that's what happened, right?
[00:21:37] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:21:38] Speaker B: Tell us what happened.
[00:21:41] Speaker C: So he had three different CAT scans done on his brain.
The first one, they said it was a little too soon to really go by.
What it was showing because it wasn't showing anything. It wasn't showing any brain activity.
But they wanted to wait two more days and then perform a second one, hoping by that time enough time had passed that we would see some activity.
Unfortunately, it was the same.
Still no brain activity going on whatsoever.
Waited for the third one before we decided, before we made any decisions as to what we were going to do.
Third one came back showing no activity, and that he was, in fact, brain
[00:22:41] Speaker B: dead at that point. They declared him brain dead. And you guys decided there's nothing more we can do.
[00:22:47] Speaker C: Yeah. So Thursday night, we had decided that we would take him off. Going into the hospital Friday morning.
[00:22:56] Speaker B: How did that feel as a. As a father?
Now you're potentially facing murder charges, and you're responsible for the death of your son.
[00:23:08] Speaker C: Mm.
[00:23:08] Speaker B: How did that feel?
[00:23:11] Speaker C: It was the worst feeling that I.
That I think a human being could possibly feel.
It's something that I don't ever want to see anyone have to go through.
[00:23:21] Speaker B: Yeah. What I was telling a lot of people before I came on the show here is that, you know, I've been doing this for 22 years, and this case is probably one of the saddest cases that I've ever dealt with because, you know, not only do we have, you know, a father who is responsible for the death of his four and a half year old, now we have, you know, young kids who potentially could have their father taken away for the rest of their life. Right. So they lost their brother, and now they could lose their father for the rest of their life. And as I explained earlier, now we're in this whole new realm of Watson murder. Right? You had a prior DUI.
You have a new DUI.
Somebody's dead.
The DA's office could file murder charges on you. And I had several meetings with the DA's office prior to, you know, this case being filed. And, you know, my main concern was just file vehicular manslaughter charges, do not file Watson murder. And thankfully, on the eve of the arraignment, you know, at them, I remember being in the office.
It's around 12:30pm I walked out of her office, and luckily for all of us, we had a very reasonable DA, because. And I don't say that a lot about DAs. Right? She was a very reasonable DA, because if it was any other DA, I'd say about 90% of the other DAs that had this case, you and I wouldn't be here today.
[00:24:50] Speaker A: Right.
[00:24:50] Speaker B: You'd be in prison right now doing 15 to life. But luckily, you know, based on all the circumstances, we had a very reasonable da. They did not file murder charges against you. They filed vehicular manslaughter charges, and you were sentenced to six years. Right.
Still a long time, but nothing compare to what could have been.
So now you're sentenced to six years, you're on your way to prison.
[00:25:27] Speaker C: Right.
[00:25:28] Speaker B: Talk about the classification process.
[00:25:35] Speaker C: So I spent a month in jail in county jail before I Got shipped off to North Kern State Prison.
And that's when you get classified and you go through the whole ordeal, figure out where you're going to spend the majority of, of your term at.
And thank God I had a very sincere, sincere counselor at North Kern and she, and she got me into a minimal security prison that wasn't even ran by the state.
The state oversaw it and the state had a sergeant on hand in the facility at all times.
But it was ran by private security known as geo. Capital G, capital E, capital O.
They are a. From my understanding, they do a lot of private security on the west coast, not just state prisons.
So I got housed in a very minimum security at geo. Unfortunately it was north of Bakersfield, so it was quite a ways from San Diego.
[00:27:00] Speaker B: What was your classification?
PC.
[00:27:05] Speaker C: I was in PC.
[00:27:07] Speaker B: My counselor tell the viewers what PC means.
[00:27:10] Speaker C: So PC is protective custody and what that means is I'm not going to be with, I'm not going to be in the other. The other classification is gp general population and general population is mainline. That's where you have all of the gang members of the.
Who just the baddest of the bads really.
Protective custody is on the other side of the wound of the. Of the realm.
But you are locked up with people who I don't associate with.
We're talking sex offenders, we are talking child molesters, rapists,
[00:28:10] Speaker B: gang dropouts.
[00:28:11] Speaker C: Gang dropouts.
And then you got people who you don't know what they did that are in there.
Fortunately, I was able to surround myself at every place I went with people who I got to know.
I got to know them and they got to know me.
And we didn't associate with everyone else that was around us.
And that's pretty much how the entire, my entire prison term was.
[00:28:45] Speaker B: When you were in PC, did other inmates, gang dropouts, rapists, etc. Did they think that you were there for something else like child molestation?
[00:28:56] Speaker C: Yes, yes, they did. Especially when I was at George Bailey. I was in a dorm and the trustee who ran the dorm confronted me and said, you have to tell me what you are in here for, otherwise I'm going to get you kicked out of the dorm.
[00:29:16] Speaker B: This was before you got shipped off?
[00:29:18] Speaker C: This is before I got shipped off.
[00:29:20] Speaker B: When you went to state prison, did anybody know why you were really there?
[00:29:23] Speaker C: So yes, after I had this conversation with the trustee, he's the one that told me that no one would bother me if I told them the truth on my case.
When I told the trustee the truth about my Case, he kept it to himself and he told the rest of the dorm not to bother me. He goes, I talked to him. He, he's a good kid.
He shouldn't be in here, but he is.
And he's a friend of mine now.
And the trustee told me when I go into prison, because he had already been in and out of prison, he knew how the prison system runs.
He told me just to be honest and that because of my case, because I wasn't a trial magister, because I wasn't a rapist, because this was in fact an accident, even though it, you know, involved the death of my, of my son.
He said, everyone that I tell this story to is going to look at it as an accident.
And that's exactly how everyone viewed it when I talked to. When I was locked up.
[00:30:34] Speaker B: When you were in state prison, were there ever any fights in PC with gang dropouts against the molesters?
[00:30:47] Speaker C: No.
And that's basically because of the yard that I was on, because I was, because I was in minimal security ran by geo.
There was sort of a clause that if, if your points got to a certain, to a certain height, you are going to get, you, you're going to have to leave, go, and you're going to go to an actual state prison.
You would still be in, you would still be in protective custody, but you're going to go to a main 1, 2, 3 prison.
So there wasn't very many fights where I was at once in a while. Once in a while, a fight would break out. All the fights were typically one on one, but the fights were not necessarily an ex gang member fighting a rapist.
[00:31:42] Speaker B: Did you see any drugs in jail
[00:31:46] Speaker C: where I was at?
No.
It was hard enough trying to even get a cell phone in jail.
In the four years that I was at geo, I saw one cell phone get snuck in.
I never saw drugs.
I saw cigarettes get, get snuck in and I saw people trying to make wine and that didn't go over too well. We got, they got busted immediately.
[00:32:21] Speaker B: What do they call wine in jail? Pruno.
[00:32:23] Speaker C: Pruno.
[00:32:24] Speaker B: Did you taste it?
[00:32:24] Speaker C: I did not.
[00:32:25] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:32:26] Speaker C: Good smelling? It was bad enough. Good.
[00:32:30] Speaker B: So now you're in prison, who's putting money on your books?
[00:32:35] Speaker C: For the most part, just my dad.
[00:32:38] Speaker B: Did your wife at the time ever come visit you?
[00:32:41] Speaker C: No.
[00:32:41] Speaker B: What about your daughter?
[00:32:43] Speaker C: No.
[00:32:43] Speaker B: What about your oldest son?
[00:32:46] Speaker C: My oldest son came up with my best friend Jim.
Jim got the approval and went through all the paperwork, necessary paperwork to be able to bring him up to see me because he was a Minor.
There was a bunch of paperwork that had to be agreed upon.
But all that got figured out. And once that got figured out, Jim was bringing my son up two to four times a year to see me.
They were making that drive all the way up. Then they would spend the night in a hotel and then drive back home.
[00:33:22] Speaker B: While you're in prison, something happens to your wife.
[00:33:29] Speaker C: My wife got involved in a very abusive relationship.
She started to get beat up.
She got addicted to drugs.
She was having a very hard time coping with Korton's death, and she was finding ways.
She thought she was finding ways to deal with it.
[00:33:56] Speaker B: She tried to kill herself.
[00:33:57] Speaker C: And the drugs and the addiction and the abuse that she was going through ended up leading her to commit suicide.
And when she tried and when she committed. When she attempted suicide, Child Welfare Services immediately got involved, took away the kids.
[00:34:17] Speaker B: And who'd they give custody to?
[00:34:19] Speaker C: Fortunately, my stepson.
His dad came over to the house immediately upon hearing of this.
When he got to my house, Tri Welfare Services was already on the property with the kids.
They agreed to allow Juan. That's. That's my stepson's dad's name, allowed Juan to go ahead and take the kids back to his house until they figured out what they were going to do.
[00:34:50] Speaker B: So she's having a difficult time, you know, coping with, you know, the death of Colton.
She goes on this major spiral, tries to kill herself, gets her kids taken away.
[00:35:02] Speaker C: Mm.
[00:35:03] Speaker B: You're probably gonna get released soon.
What happens at that point?
[00:35:11] Speaker C: I'm not necessarily getting released soon. I'm only about halfway through my prison sentence.
It would actually be a lot less than half had I known I was going to be doing the entire six years. So I'm not so looking at that six year mark. I'm not even halfway through yet.
So now.
Now Juan is involved with my kids.
Him and I were good friends at the time, so I was very thankful that he was able to step in and kind of handle this situation.
But my hands are tied. I can't do anything. I have no say in any.
My rights are taken.
Being a prisoner, my rights are taken away.
So I can't say anything as to what's going to happen now at this point.
[00:36:04] Speaker B: At some point, you go to reentry.
[00:36:08] Speaker C: Eventually my counselor calls me in and says that I got approved for the re entry program, which happens to be in San Diego.
[00:36:17] Speaker B: Explain what the re Entry program is.
[00:36:19] Speaker C: So the reentry program is for inmates who have 12 months or less remaining on their sentence, and they are under good Behavior.
I never once got in a fight when I was locked up.
I never once did anything to get myself in trouble.
So I had a good track record being an inmate.
So my counselor approved of this program for me immediately.
So as soon as he possibly could get me on a van, he got me on a van and. And brought me down to San Diego.
[00:36:54] Speaker B: Where was the reentry program?
[00:36:55] Speaker C: The reentry program is down. I believe it's still.
I believe it's still open.
[00:37:01] Speaker B: It's right next to work for low.
[00:37:02] Speaker C: It's. It's down by Barrio Logan. Yeah, down the side right next to work.
[00:37:07] Speaker B: Furlough program. Right.
[00:37:09] Speaker C: I thought work Florida was down closer to the border.
[00:37:12] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:37:12] Speaker C: But I could be wrong.
[00:37:13] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:37:14] Speaker C: I thought work Florida was down by. By George Bailey.
[00:37:17] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:37:18] Speaker C: I don't know for certain. I never went to Brookfield.
[00:37:21] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay, so you get to reentry.
Explain what's the daily life of what you're doing at reentry.
[00:37:29] Speaker C: So at reentry, you're living in a big, giant Dorm with about 100 people, and you have a very strict schedule. You have to wake up at a certain time every morning.
You have to attend the morning meeting, then you got breakfast. Once breakfast is done, then you're kind of open to do your own thing.
If you wanted to leave the facility, you had to get approved the day before. Tell the facility where you're going, what you're doing, whether it was going out to get a haircut, going out to an AA meeting, which was mandatory, or going out to lunch with. With your family. Your family could come down to reentry and pick you up and take you out for a few hours.
The reentry program was meant to get us started, going back into society.
[00:38:21] Speaker B: And did that help?
[00:38:22] Speaker C: It helped a ton.
[00:38:23] Speaker B: You saw your children.
[00:38:24] Speaker C: I think it helped for everyone who was locked up in there. I was able to see my children every other weekend.
My daughter was not coming around yet, but my son was coming down every other weekend. Someone was. Was bringing my son down to see me. It was usually my best friend, Jim.
Sometimes it was one of the three pastors from church.
Sometimes it was another friend from church.
My church family started helping me out tremendously once I got back into San Diego.
[00:38:55] Speaker B: Do you think as a result of you being admitted to the reentry program, this is kind of what sparked and catapulted your ability to convince a judge to give you full custody to your children?
[00:39:11] Speaker C: To an extent, yes. The sergeant of the facility got an item in the mail from the Courts stating. Talking about my custody case and that they were. And they were going on to a.
That they wanted to move on to. On with a permanent plan.
That permanent plan could not include me because technically I am still an inmate. I am still under the cdcr.
Even though it's a reentry program, I still can't get custody.
And that letter stated there was a deadline that I had to be actually free if I wanted any chance of getting custody of my kids. That deadline was before my release date.
So now the sergeant is telling me that this permanent plan is going to be set in place if I'm not there, and I will not get a chance to get custody of my kids.
I talked to the sergeant during this conversation. I said, well, if you. If you remember, Sergeant, the first day I got here, you interviewed every one of us who got off that van.
And I showed you my associate's degree that I earned while I was at geo. The associate's degree was in pastoral ministry through a Christian cottage that my dad funded for me.
It was not offered by the state, and because it wasn't offered by the state, the state didn't want to recognize it as educational credits.
I ended up getting my bachelor's degree and moving on to my master's.
And I'm telling my counselor this, I'm telling the.
Sergeant this, and I showed to my associates. And then once I got my bachelor's, I even showed my bachelor's.
And when I first got there, he said that because.
It wasn't going to be looked at as educational credits by the cdcr.
So he originally told me there was nothing he could do. But then when he got this letter from the courts and saw what Child Welfare Services was trying to do, his heart softened up and he called me into his office to discuss this matter. And that's when I reminded him that I got my associates, I got my bachelor's, and I was currently working on my master's at that time.
I had a deadline. I had to be released within six months from the time of this letter if I was going to have any chance of getting custody. And I still had 11 months left on my sentence.
So the sergeant said, let me see what I can do.
He said, what do you. What are you doing in the next hour?
And I said, I'm not going out. I said, I'll be. I'll be. I'll. I'll be here. I'll be working on. On my. On my educate. On my education, because I'll come out and find you.
Not even 30 minutes had gone by.
He comes out and says, what if I told you I could get you out in five months?
[00:42:43] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:42:47] Speaker C: I didn't know what to say.
I was in shock and I took the sergeant. I said I would be so thankful for whatever you could do to get me to be able to make that court hearing.
[00:43:02] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:43:03] Speaker C: He signed off on the educational credits himself and got me out six months prior to what my re state was going to be.
[00:43:14] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:43:15] Speaker C: So on a six year sentence at 85%, if you do the math, I think it's five years and seven months is what you, is what I was supposed to end up doing. I ended up doing four years in six months.
[00:43:29] Speaker B: Nice. So we're, you know, we're going to wrap up here soon. I want to summarize everything before I, you know, ask you the last question. So in summary, you pick up a DUI in 2002, you're rejected, your wife, soon to be ex wife's ejected, you're injured, you're about a 0.18. You know, at the time of that case, you guys continue down this spiral, continue to drink, continue a very unhealthy marriage, decide to separate in 2014, go in separate houses, you guys are both drinking heavily.
On the 5th of July, you get in a golf cart accident where unfortunately your son passes away, you go to prison.
While you're in prison, your soon to be ex wife cannot cope with what's going on.
She tries to kill herself, she loses custody of your kids, you do your time, you go to reentry, things work out for you, you hire a lawyer. When you get out, you go to family court. Now you have full custody.
[00:44:36] Speaker C: I got full custody.
[00:44:37] Speaker B: How does that feel?
[00:44:39] Speaker C: It was a dream come true because going, going into that custody hearing, I honestly did not know what to expect.
They wanted a permanent plan to be in place and I wanted to be part of that permanent plan.
I wanted to be the permanent plan.
And thank God with the attorney that I had, the judge that I had and trial welfare services completely against us, it didn't go in favor of the cws.
[00:45:15] Speaker B: Last question I'm going to ask you before we wrap up here is, you know, you've gone through a lot obviously, right? You've gone through what most people will never go through. If there's one piece of advice that you would give, whether it's, you know, somebody young, old, our viewers, what's the one piece of advice that you have that you would give somebody, as someone who is gone through what you went
[00:45:40] Speaker C: through, addiction, is a very serious disease.
You can't foretell the future and you definitely cannot foretell the future when you're under the influence, whether it's alcohol, drugs, whatever it might be.
My addiction probably should have killed me, but it took my son's life instead, which is even worse.
As a parent, my advice is don't pick up.
You might say I'm just going to have one or two.
Well, 102 ends up leading to three or four. Three or four ends up leading to 11 or 12. One day ends up leading to consecutive days. Next thing you know, you're on this downhill spiral. Something is going to happen.
[00:46:47] Speaker B: Thank you for coming by.
[00:46:49] Speaker C: I appreciate Dodd.
[00:46:50] Speaker B: That is it for this episode of the Dodcast. Join us for another episode of the Dodcast.
Thank you very much. Have a great day.
[00:46:58] Speaker A: When freedom's on the line, the truth matters.
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