so my name is Bola Odetokun
i'm the CEO and founder of
parenting resources and initiatives
it was started sometimes in 2012
and basically we provide resources
to families parents and youth alike
especially people of color and
immigrants because we understand that
these
categories of people have um
i don't want to use the word a word that
is incorrect
but for many of us we we still try to
understand the system
and we found out that if parents don't
even understand the system there's no
way they can help their youth they can
there's no way they can help their young
children
adapt and adjust and thrive in the
system
so our core mission is to help families
we do seminars we do calls like this
we do sometimes we actually do
in-house visits to help at risk youth to
you know sometimes it's communication
between
parents and children and we also have
some
uh specialized resources like we have
counselors we have therapists
that volunteer their services from time
to time to help us
when the niche arises so that's
basically what um
pri does Bola Odetokun  i
i'm an i.t person i i'm an oracle
database administrator i've been in that
field
in the u.s for over 14 years now
i've worked with top it consulting firms
but i currently work
with general motors i have two young
adult children who are doing well by the
priests of god
and they are part of my journey you know
they call me to order
every now and then you know and i'm glad
that i have them in my life
you know um i wouldn't i wouldn't do it
another week there's no child that is
perfect there's no youth that is perfect
but we
have to always strive to understand them
and
be in their corner to the extent that we
can understand them that's how we can
help them
you know and um i've written
many articles on parenting and family
issues and i
do seminars across the u.s canada
nigeria
so i'm your host for today
i have a distinguished panel
with me here today and um
i'm going to start introducing them
um Attorney Lawrence Lewis um i'm not
going to read through the entire
the entire um bio but he used to
live in new york city he graduated he
did his undergrad from pace university
he graduated um in 1989 with a degree in
marketing and psychology
and then he did grad school at new york
university
he has worked um in
several areas he has worked for as an
investigator for the new york society
for prevention
of cruelty to children he also
he completed his course work at new york
university in the fall of 1991 and
attended the officers basic course
in fort sale oklahoma before starting at
cornell
um he's um during the winter recess of
his first day at cornell he also
completed his dissertation for grad
school
and he was awarded his master's degree
in philosophy in may of 1993.
two years later he graduated from
cornell law school
after graduation he accepted a position
as an assistant district attorney at the
philadelphia district attorney's office
where he spent
three years as a prosecutor his three
years was spent prosecuting thousands
of his dominoes conducting thousands at
opening
preliminary hearings for felony cases
and
hundreds of felony bench trials um
in july 2020 he and his wife will
celebrate their 29th wedding anniversary
you deserve an applause for that
you know they have been blessed with two
boys alexander who is 18 and andrew who
is 15.
please welcome anthony lawrence lewis
thank you um next person
um is Professor Jonathan rapping um
Jonathan rapping is currently a law
professor at atlanta's john marshall law
school
he attended the university of chicago
and received his ba
he then went on to attend grad school at
princeton
university and obtained his mpp after
graduate school he decided to go to law
school and attended george washington
university law school
in 2007 he served as an office
so he started as the training chief for
the
orleans public defender program working
to rebuild new orleans public defender
office in the wake of hurricane katrina
um in the years and ten years prior to
his work in new orleans he served in the
public defenders offices of georgia and
washington d.c
developing and implementing public
defender training programs and handling
a case load of serious felonies
uh something that i would really like to
highlight about um
professor rapping is the fact that he
founded the gideon's promise
which is um um is featured in the
award-winning hbo documentary gideon's
army
professor rapping organization the
gideon's promise partnered with the
maryland office of public defender
and the partnership will help the opd to
improve the quality of representation
in that state this is a huge program and
for which he has also won
an award um he was named a 2014 mark
ortho foundation sorry this is a bit
tiny uh genius award a junior's fellow
for the impact his non-profit
organization the curious promise has
made on society
uh the mark author fellow program awards
unrestricted fellowships to talented
individuals who have shown extraordinary
originality and dedication in their
creative pursuits
and a math capacity for self-direction
please
welcome with me today professor jonathan
wrapping here
the next person is Dr Robert Gueh
he's um the founder of brothers making
moves
which is considered a revolutionary
movement
he is currently a professional school
counselor
at lanier high school and he's the
founder he already said he's the founder
of what i make it brother's making his
organization
he's been a school counselor for 18
years in both new jersey
school system and the gwinnett county
school system he's a professional
sorry
i i'm sorry his professional experience
includes working as a counselor for
young men in the prison system
and then in new jersey
and he also works as a family advocate
for the juvenile justice
commission of new jersey and he runs
several mentoring programs for youths
and men in grenada county and new jersey
area
Dr Gueh is married to his
beautiful wife here and
they have three
he has three songs um in his spare time
he enjoys playing and coaching
basketball
reading and volunteering and
his time in various humanitarian courses
uh please welcome with me
um the next person is Coach D  as it's
popularly called
um he's stratified mentor life coach and
basketball player development trainer
he's a 2019 humanitarian award recipe
and he co-founded a nonprofit
organization called
here to help in 2006. um
h2h incorporated itself about 20 000
people a year through various programs
and initiatives you can see more
information on their website
h2h or here to help
welcome with me coach d and we have two
moderators today Joshua Elbaz and Albert
Thompson
Joshua was born in Atlanta Georgia in
march of 1991 he grew up in
lawrenceville
and he is the middle of three children
and
tragically lost his older brother
brendan in september 2011
and he also recently lost his younger
brother alex in
february of this year these tragedies
have foreign career in criminal
defense to provide underprivileged
people an opportunity for a second
chance
at life joshua attended high school at
northwind
high school in suwanee georgia and he
graduated in mid-2009
he then attended georgia go net college
in maureen's
majored in business administration uh
he's currently a rising to a law student
at
atlanta's john marshall law school where
he's currently
has taken a keen interest in criminal
defense Joshua is
currently interning with attorney
Lawrence Lewis you see the connection
where he's hoping to obtain as much
knowledge as he can
while gaining practical skills and trial
work and criminal
proceedings he enjoys watching and
playing basketball tennis and boxing
joshua is a remarkable young man who has
gone through a lot
and he could have used those you know
tragedies as the excuse you know for
misbehaving
but it's not worthy that he's got his
life on the right path
and he's actually looking to use those
experiences
to help you know his generation and
other people please welcome with me
joshua elves
next person is Albert Thompson Albert
was born and raised in Atlanta Georgia
he completed his four years of
undergraduate
at foreman university where he received
his bachelor of science in neuroscience
albert comes from a science background
but has always had an underlying
interest in law
prior to attending john marshall law
school he spent time
working in the medical field he hopes to
practice medical malpractice litigation
representing those that have been
catastrophically injured um albert and
joshua will be moderating the event
today and i will just be
in the background facilitating again
you're all welcome
to this um event we hope you
learn a lot like maya angelou said when
people know better
they will do better we hope you will go
away from this event today
um with a lot of information with a lot
of insight
that we can all turn around and use
for our society for our communities um
i'm
turning it over now to joshua and
because of the meeting please feel free
to post your questions
in the chat room basically send it to me
below the talk
auto parenting initiatives and we'll
pick them
you know intermittently thank you and
have a nice time we're glad to have you
there
well back to you joshua all right first
i just want to say thank you to
everybody who's joining us here on live
youtube and zoom
i worked really hard to try to put this
event together with
the parenting initiative and i just
wanted to say thank you
for joining us today me and my colleague
albert
uh as uh she previously stated we're
both currently
rising 2l uh law students so the way
that the panel is going to work is we're
going to go ahead and just
ask certain questions to individuals
more of a team pattern so like you know
the
there's going to be certain questions
that i'm going to have directed towards
attorney mr lewis
uh and professor jonathan rapping and
then albert will go ahead and
ask certain questions um for dr bobby
gway and for coach d
um and then we're gonna obviously the
questions are not just for those two
individuals where this is a
discussion so we want to talk uh we want
to cross
conversations here so i'm gonna go ahead
and get started
we're gonna go ahead and ask the first
question
that's going to be directed towards
lawrence lewis and professor rapping
i want to start with you mr lewis
the first question i want to ask you is
is what do you believe the role of the
criminal justice system is today
can you hear me i can fantastic um
this is what i'll tell you the the the
criminal justice system has
uh its own idea of what's supposed to
happen in the criminal justice system so
i would say
the the in law school you learn that
there is
retribution punishment general
deterrence
um specific deterrence um i would
suspect that
if you speak to the judges and you speak
to the prosecutors i would suspect that
they would indicate to you that the
system itself
uh is meant to um to address uh general
deterrence
um to the extent that if a person is
prosecuted
it would serve as notice to other people
of what behavior would ultimately be
acceptable what what behavior would not
be acceptable
i suspect they also might say that it
would be a specific deterrent to the
extent that a person would be in custody
um and hopefully that being in custody
would show them that
ultimately they need to change their
behavior for me
having uh worked uh five years as a
prosecutor 20 years as a defense
attorney
the system for me uh is really just a
way
of um dealing with dysfunction that has
gone
past a certain point i probably
represented about 4 000 clients over the
last
20 years uh and those cases break down
into one of three areas number one drugs
and alcohol drugs and alcohol probably
touch about 70
of the cases that i'm involved in
doesn't matter what the charge is
murder uh burglary armed robbery drugs
and alcohol is there
another 25 percent is most of the
defendants are men
i'm with the wrong woman uh she i have
beer money and she has champagne tastes
and so i have to do uh some other things
to try to make up the difference between
what i can give her and the type and the
type of person she is
what it is that i think that she needs
that last five percent that's mental
health
the interesting thing about mental
health is i would say
half of the mental health problems drug
and alcohol related
half of the mental health problems come
from
me being with the wrong woman too long
so i would say
a lot of the criminal justice system
when you start talking about
even mental health organic mental health
is probably a very small percentage in
terms of what i've seen
uh drugs and alcohol and i'm just not
with the person that that i need to be
with
and so the criminal justice system is
addressing
the dysfunction of the alcohol
and drug use it's it's addressing the
dysfunction of you being with the wrong
person and that's what i see um
as being really the role of the criminal
justice system they're dealing with that
that's what they're dealing with so if
you if as my as my 15 year old said when
he was 12
inside the qt so if i don't drink drugs
and alcohol and i marry the right woman
i won't ever be in the criminal justice
system that's pretty much it
that's it in a nutshell no drugs and
alcohol
marry the right woman you won't be in
the criminal justice system
thank you mr lewis and i want to
redirect that same question to professor
rapping
for for you to be able to answer that
and also for a rebuttal
if necessary well let me first say i'm
i'm really honored to be here in this
space with you all um i appreciate
attorney lewis's response i don't know
if i'd say um so
so i uh you look we have some democratic
ideals we have ideals we teach in law
school we have ideals
about what justice means about what due
process
looks like we we ideally
strive for equal justice that that is
applied in a manner that doesn't
discriminate based on income and race
in reality our criminal justice system
looks nothing like
those ideals so so if you ask what our
criminal justice system is supposed to
do i think i would answer it like this
i'm a parent um i have two children a 15
year old a 12 year old
i have rules in my house and i expect my
children to follow the rules
and when they don't follow the rules
there are consequences i don't even like
to say punishment i see there are
consequences
and uh and my wife and i designed
consequences
to try to ensure that our children
continue to grow as
healthy uh productive contributing human
beings we never design
consequences that are meant to crush our
children
cripple our children render them unable
to have
meaningful lives and i believe our
criminal justice system ideally
would be a system that treats every
person's children
the way we would treat our own in
reality we have a criminal justice
system that is
really um almost reserved exclusively
for poor people 80 percent of the people
charged with crimes in america are so
poor they qualify for
court appointed lawyers in many places
that is
literally that means they are living
below the poverty line
disproportionately people in the
criminal justice system
are black and brown people you are six
times more likely all else being equal
to end up in the criminal justice system
if you are black
than if you're white um and and
and the system really is a system that
applies
um very punitive responses to our most
marginalized communities so
so my work is building a community of
public defenders to try to transform the
criminal justice system
because i think when you work with
communities impacted
and as public defenders we work
exclusively with the
lowest income members of society what
you really learn is
that we have not figured out as a
society how to deal with all of the
problems that plague
marginalized communities whether it's
substance abuse illiteracy
homelessness mental health all of those
challenges are addressed in america in
our criminal justice system
right it is the one place we have to
deal with those
issues so so i i'll wrap up by saying
this
i really think that we as a nation have
embraced a 400-year narrative
that says some people are less human we
see
uprisings going on across the nation
over the last
couple weeks because that narrative that
says some people aren't human
have led to violent killings in the
streets that have been captured
on videotape but the thing that i think
is important to remember
is that for every police killing that
happens
on the street that's captured on
videotape tens of thousands of people
survive encounters with police end up in
the criminal justice system
and are subjected to a routine violence
in the courts that is not captured on
video
that's not flashed across cnn
that is going on invisibly where they
are put in
cages pre-trial because they're too poor
to make money bond
they are overcharged they are coerced
into pleading guilty less than five
percent of the cases in our criminal
justice system ever even
have a trial despite the fact that that
is the vehicle the founders envisioned
to ensure justice was
done so i will end by saying i i think
we have a long way to go
to ultimately realize the democratic
promise
of equal justice in america
thank you professor rapping i just have
a follow-up question obviously we want
to keep the
the conversation moving and have uh dr
gray have an opportunity as well as
coach d
dr wrapping or professor wrapping excuse
me um
the one question that i do have just to
follow up on your answer is is
why do you believe that it is that only
five percent
of criminal defendants ever go to jury
trials
why do you think it is that they never
make it to a jury trial
well because we we have an ideal and
that ideal is that
justice will be determined through a
process
that includes lawyers
and juries and trials and then we have a
reality and the reality is
we punish much more behavior
than we're willing to pay to handle
justly and so there is pressure to
process
large volumes of cases we call them
cases we don't even call them human
beings
large volumes of cases quickly and
efficiently and in an effort to do that
prosecutors have found ways to use tools
like overcharging
pre-trial detention um harsh
the threat of harsh punishment to
essentially i would argue coerce people
the the cost of going to trial can be so
great
that many people just forego that right
because they feel like they have no
other option
plea bargaining is the way we have
learned to deal with huge volumes of
cases
that we're not willing to address
consistent with
our founders ideals
thank you and a quick quick quick
response if you want uh mr lewis 30
seconds
to that i got i got to be able to give
opportunities to everyone i'm sorry
i understand i understand um um
part of part of this process is me
actually listening to what professor
rapping is saying rather than forming a
response and so i like to listen to what
professor rapping is saying um i'm sort
of
in it i've been in it for 20 years um if
i
if i go see 200 people at the jail today
uh or this year 199 will say that
they're innocent
and if you're innocent you're going to
have a jury trial which is why i'm going
to drop so many speedy trial demands i'm
not going to sit around
i love what he said coerced into
pleading guilty
i'm not coercing anybody into pleading
guilty if you say you're innocent i'm
going to drop a speedy trial demand i
drip i typically drop about 50 a year
but those 50 speedy trial demands still
only turn into 15 trials why
because when the jury is standing
outside people realize wait a minute
uh this game of chicken and i'm playing
with the prosecutor it's probably not
going to work
you see the prosecutor's overcharging i
got that but the defendant's also
playing a little game where they don't
want to accept
any accountability for what they've done
either because i don't think the police
on 200 arrests all of my cases 199 they
got wrong
come on so i like dropping speedy trial
demands and then when people realize
wait a minute this cat is really going
to take me to trial
they come to the realization of what's
going on and then we start talking like
we got some sense
thank you thank you uh terry lewis um
albert i'm going to hand it over to you
for the next question
i come from a tribe called the basa
tribe
and one of the traditions in that tribe
you all have heard about the rights of
passage
their rights of passage was something
that was very very
evident in our tribal traditions
in the african tradition they would take
boys around the age of 10 11 the elder
men
in the village would take them into the
hinterland
sometime up to a month or so and during
that time
those young men would go through a mind
body and spiritual transformation
