Hey, humans. How's it going? Susan Ruth here.
Thanks for listening to another episode of Hey,
Human podcast.
This is episode 427,
and my guest is doctor Angela Myers. Angela
is a prominent expert in polymathy studies, and
polymath is a person with wide ranging knowledge
and or studies. She's worked
in the White House under the Bush and
Obama presidencies,
and she has a show on YouTube called
Polymath's
Place. I've been on her show. There's a
link for that on my susanruth.com.
Her work brought her to research polymaths in
prison,
and after interviewing the incarcerated,
one in particular stood out. And now she
has taken up another cause, fighting to free
a man whose harsh sentencing
as a teen
has seen him spend decades behind bars.
She's the founder of Help Free Shawn Rodriguez
and also the Prison Transparency
Project.
Really interesting conversation.
We have gotten together 3 times to interview,
and there were glitches every single time. So
fingers are crossed that everything worked out.
General stuff. My film, the first,
will be showing in various film festivals coming
up. I just got back from one in
Louisville
where it won 3 awards, including best fantasy
and best costuming.
That's to add to my trompe l'oeil award
that I got in Portland.
Coming up,
there is the Midnight West Fest in Cheyenne,
Wyoming, which takes place over
October 4th 5th, and tickets are through their
Facebook page.
Scream Fest in Los Angeles, California, this festival
runs from October 8th through 17th,
and my film block is on Sunday, October
13th at 8:45.
It's at the famous Chinese theater in Hollywood.
You can get tickets at screamfestla.com.
The nightmares film festival in Columbus, Ohio is
October 17th through 20th.
My film block is Friday, October 18th at
10 PM. Tickets are available at nightmares
fest.com.
Make sure to stick that s in there.
And the Rehoboth Beach International Film Festival in
Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. I'm still hoping I'm saying
that right. November 6th through 10th. Tickets are
available at rehobothfilm.com.
That's rehoboth
film.com.
And I'll put links to all of that
on my susanruth.com
and post on Facebook. Still applying to festivals
all over the place. I'll keep you updated.
Susanruth.com,
again, is a good place to keep up
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Be well. Be kind. Be love.
Here we go.
Angela Myers, welcome to Hey Human.
Thank you very much for having me. It's
nice to see you. I wanna start with
where you grew up.
Yes. I grew up in the San Francisco
East Bay Area. I was born in Berkeley
and grew up about 10 miles from there.
Did you go to school there? I didn't
go to college at UC Berkeley. I went
to the University of Southern California in Los
Angeles for undergrad and for my master's degree.
Which was in?
Undergrad, I double majored in psychology
and communication, and then I got a master's
degree in a field called communication management. I
also have a doctorate from George Washington University
too. Oh, is that all?
And the doctorate is in it's an education
degree. The exact,
title is human and organizational learning. So you
can see from my background, I just really
people focused psychology, communication, education. Like, I I
just love people, and so all my degrees
were people oriented.
Were you like that as a kid?
Yeah. I think so. I was always, like,
someone who liked to engage and talk and,
yeah, I just always liked people. It was
just innate in me.
Mhmm. Yeah. And did you self study
for a lot of things before you entered
the world of higher learning? Did you were
you one of those people, voracious readers and
Yeah. Yeah. My I was raised by my
grandparents and my dad. And my grandmother, who
I was the closest with,
was a voracious reader. She
read about a book a day. Mhmm. And
so growing up, we had many, many, many
hundreds of trips to the bookstore,
and she would always let me get any
books I wanted. So I grew up being
a reader,
and I just self directed my own learning
for a long time, and that started pretty
early for me. That was the best, to
be able to get any book you want.
No restrictions.
Oh, my gosh. What a dream.
Yeah. She was very generous in that way.
And, you know, some of those books totally
changed my life too. Like, there was one
book I got this is pre Internet, mind
you. I was born in 1981.
So I think sometime in the early nineties,
we were at a bookstore. I remember the
exact bookstore in El Sobrante, California.
And
there was a section called, like, career or
college or something like that. And they had
these massive books. Imagine, like, a book that's
about 8 inches thick. It was a directory.
I got this directory of internships.
And I took it home. I remember being
about 12 and just, like, flipping through the
all these listings of internships
in the world,
and I came across one that said White
House.
And I was it blew my mind that,
like, the White House accepted lowly interns.
This was all pre Monica Lewinsky and stuff,
so I did Yeah. So
that one book
totally changed how my life turned out. I
made my goal to be a White House
intern when I was 12.
And then when I was in my master's
degree program and I was 24,
half a lifetime later at that point, I
applied and I got in.
And that totally changed the trajectory of how
my life turned out. And what did you
do at the White House? Well, I was
an intern in the White House Fellows Office
in the summer of 2,005.
George Bush was president at the time.
And I had a great experience. I got
to rub elbows with a couple of people
who later became governors and CEOs and big
wigs, those White House Fellows really. You know,
I mean, they're they're chosen because of their
future promise, and a lot of them who
I became friends with turned out to be,
you know, movers and shakers in the world
for sure. But I had to go back
to Los Angeles to finish my master's degree
after that White House internship,
and I loved DC. So when I finished
that master's degree, I didn't really wanna go
back home to the Bay Area. So I
pretty much just got in my car and
drove to Washington DC, and
I was in town looking for a job.
I just naturally was drawn back to the
White House Fellows office. I had had a
really good rapport
with Janet Eisenstadt, who was the director of
the White House Fellows Program at the time.
And I I was like, hey, I moved
here. I live here. I'm looking for a
job. Here's my resume. And she really did
like me. Like, we're still, in periodic touch.
She lives in the area. And, yeah, she
did forward my resume around, and that led
to me being hired at the executive office
of the president as a non political career
civil servant. So I was there regardless of
who was president, which was great. So I
was there for the historic transition
to Obama, all of his first term, a
bit of his second term. It was such
a cool gig. I loved it. But
my real passion was learning and self improvement.
I worked in the finance office there. Like,
a lot of people don't know
too that at the executive office the president,
it's not just like the White House and
a few people in the West Wing. Like,
there's about 3,000 people who work at the
White House complex,
if you include all the Secret Service and
everything.
And,
I mean, it's a it's a big complex,
and it's a big,
you know, effort,
including people who who stay no matter who's
president. So people in finance, HR, IT, like,
you gotta keep the office itself running. So
I was one of those employees at the
office of the president. I got so many
cool experiences. I met presidents and went to
cool events, and I'm always super grateful when
I think back on my time at the
executive office of the president. But my real
passion wasn't finance. It was self improvement, learning,
growth, evolution.
So after almost 6 years
working at the executive office of the president,
I ended up moving over to a place
called the Center For Leadership Development,
and I managed training programs for learners from
across the federal government almost for a decade.
And while I was there, that's when I
got my doctorate
in human and organizational learning as well.
What was something that surprised you as you
spent that time at the White House about
how it functions? Part of what I didn't
realize until I worked there was just how
big it was. I mean, the executive office
of the president has, I think it's, like,
10 or 12
what they called or they still call, I'm
sure, components.
So within the executive office of the president,
there's the White House, there's the office of
the vice president, There's the office of administration,
where I worked, the office of management and
budget, the council of economic advisors, the office
of national drug control policy, and on and
on and on. Like, the it's not just
the White House. And I guess that was
the thing I really learned when I got
hired there is, like, it's not just a
few people in the West Wing. Like, it's
a whole
system.
And I was honored. I was really honored
to be a part of that. Add you
the opportunity to get to walk into the
Oval Office. I've heard that that is breathtaking.
Yeah. I've I've been in the Oval Office
a lot of times, because one of the
perks of working there was that I got
to take friends and family on West Wing
tours. Like, as an employee, I was able
you know, and and there's especially under the
Obama administration,
they really encouraged staff to, like, take friends
and family to see the Oval Office. And
it was in evening hours and weekends. Like,
it wasn't during work hours. But, yeah, I've
seen the Oval Office many times. I've had
lunch in the West Wing. I've rubbed elbows
with big wigs periodically over there. And it
was just a magical life changing experience.
Is there a gravitas
to it when you walk into a room
like that with all the history?
Yeah. There's an energy there.
You feel I mean, even, like, the physical
structures
were impressive. And then some of them were
also rinky dinky too. Like,
the West Wing itself,
you know, it sort of got built over
time. So the main part of the White
House is like big and stately and presidential.
And the West Wing, like the Oval Office
is very stately and presidential, but there's also
like rinky dinky little offices and, like, rinky
dinky little hallways. And, you know, there's in
the the a lot of people don't know
the press briefing room
used to be an indoor swimming pool. So
the press briefing room is built over
what the the pool is still there. It's
just they covered it up. So, yeah, I
learned lots of cool little things about the
history of that that building, and
the office of administration included people who worked
in facilities. So I my colleagues helped maintain
the facilities of the West Wing. So I
got to see, like, insider stuff from my
buddies who worked in facilities, and it was
just yeah. I got such an insider view
of the presidency,
which was such a cool way to start
my career.
Your description of the various rooms reminds me
of that TikTok that says,
look, a strawberry.
Look, a strawberry. A strawberry.
Where it just gets progressively the dog gets
more and more,
hilariously.
How did you start dipping your toe in
the realm of polymathy?
I don't even know if that's a word,
but I'm gonna say it anyway. Polymathy. I
haven't heard that one. I love it. Good.
So for anyone who's listening, I let me
just explain maybe what what polymathy is, and
and I'll tell you how I got into
it too. So
polymathy means many learnings. It's being a Renaissance
person, multi capable. Lifelong life life wide learning.
And the reason I got into it is
because when I was in my thirties, I
decided to get my doctorate in education. At
that point,
I had worked in the field of adult
education in the federal government,
and I wanted to have that
union card, that degree, that piece of paper
that told me I was super legit, you
know?
So I I decided to get a doctorate
in education.
The professors told us, pick something you're really
passionate about for your doctoral dissertation topic. It's
not easy to complete a doctoral degree. I
mean, you have to do research, you have
to write a book, and there are a
lot of people who become what they call
ABD, all but dissertation,
which is heartbreaking because you go through all
the classes, the comprehensive exams, and then, like,
to not get the degree is heartbreaking. So
I really took their advice seriously. Like, I
better pick something I care about because I
really must finish this.
And when I thought about what I cared
about, what I was curious about, what I
wanna be in my life, what I wanna
understand,
I I didn't know what it was called
at the time. I thought it was, like,
being a Renaissance woman.
I thought maybe I could conceptualize it by
calling it intrapersonal
diversity, like, being diverse within your own personhood.
And then eventually, I came across this very
ancient
and precise word called polymath.
You know, polymath means many learnings. It was
a word that was formed in ancient Greece.
It's been around for a long time. Modern
people don't really know that word,
but it is a thing, even for modern
living people. It's not just just for
dead geniuses from history like Leonardo da Vinci
or
Benjamin Franklin or, like, the people that we
typically have thought of as being
polymaths.
Like, modern people can be polymathic,
and all of us can choose to lean
into that capacity for lifelong and life wide
learning. And it comes with a whole host
of being
alive.
It's associated with
authenticity and bravery.
And, you know, when you have lots of
tools in your toolkit
and you're dealing with issues, you can often
innovate at the intersection of multiple disciplines. You
can do analogical thinking and take tools that
work over here and apply them in a
new way, and that's really how we get
to innovation nowadays, which our world really needs.
Like, in order to solve problems, we've gotta
learn our way to them. And polymathy is
a way of thinking about how we
take in all the information,
many learnings, rather than putting on the blinders
of specialization,
which has been the dominant narrative
for my whole life, pretty much. We've lived
in an age where the dominant narrative said,
pick your one thing and be excellent at
that. Get in the cage of specialization. Get
in your swim lane. Get in that silo.
And I just always felt like,
why would I wanna do that with my
life?
No. I'm not I I refuse.
My brain never was such that it could
just do one thing. I was always drawn
to something else. And those are the kinds
of people I find most fascinating too, the
the curious that
that walk through all the different fields.
Yeah. Exactly. To me, it's the natural way
of being.
Throughout most of human history, we were, you
know, versatile and adaptive. Like, that that was
part of what made you more likely to
survive,
was being multi capable and having safety nets
in your multi capacities.
But in the age of specialization,
Ford's assembly line and efficiency,
and even as back as the Victorian era,
we just as what we knew as
knowledge grew and grew, humanity's response to that
was, well, let's slice and dice it up.
Mhmm. But there were unintended consequences of that.
If everyone's wearing blinders, well, then who's really
seeing the whole system and understanding the interdependencies?
And I really think a lot of the
reason we have a meta crisis today
is because of the age of specialization, because
everyone was thinking about their own little industry
and not really considering
the unintended consequences of what they were doing
professionally or otherwise.
And so now now I think there's a
resurgence of wanting to go back to our
full, versatile
selves
because we see that the narrow mindedness and
the myopic
viewpoints, and if everyone's
specialized or even hyper specialized,
it kind of makes us dumb in some
ways as well. It makes us really smart
in one thing and really dumb in a
whole bunch of others. Or certainly ignorant. Ignorant.
Ignorant is a better way of thinking of
it. Yeah. While you were working on your
dissertation,
it's my understanding that the professor
came to you, or maybe you had it
the epiphany on your own that
you were
studying
elite polymaths
and realized that
there are polymaths in other areas of humanity
that don't get talked about or aren't investigated.
Talk about that research.
Yeah. So when I was working on the
dissertation,
of course, I was I was under the
guidance of a committee and a committee chair.
And, of course, when you're studying a phenomenon,
especially at the doctoral level, you wanna find
the strongest examples of that phenomenon
so you can really understand the essence of
it.
So I was encouraged for my research to
find, like, the most strong, capable, modern polymath,
not celebrity level,
but, like, real movers and shakers, people who
had written books and given TED Talks and
started companies and, like, across multiple industries had
made contributions.
So it was really cool to hear from
them.
But then at my dissertation defense,
one of my committee members said,
you know, well, what about, like, the mechanic
who gardens
who knows how to change, you know, tile
in the bathroom and
change their oil? Like, what about those versions
of polymathic intelligence?
I sort of felt like
my work was
elitist, and, you know, he was right. Like,
my dissertation was looking at highly accomplished elite
polymaths
and not the everyday versions of it. So
I walked away
from my defense feeling like I need to
do work on
the non elite, not fancy versions of how
human polymathic intelligence can show up. So that
was my goal. At that time, I didn't
know how I would do
it at first, but after reflecting on it,
like, where's a non elite place
where people are working on learning and self
development,
and maybe that has ties to creativity and
innovation? And, like, I as I wracked my
brain, I realized, oh, that's prison.
Prison's non elite.
It's associated with creativity and innovation under duress,
like the kinds of scrappy creative solutions people
come up with when they don't have resources
are notable in a in a prison context.
And yeah. So I I decided at that
time,
I wanted to understand polymaths in prison and
write a book on it. I write books.
That's you know, I'm a writer. That's part
of what I do. And I didn't know
where to start at first. I was like,
well, I've never been in a prison. I
don't know anybody in prison.
So I did what modern people do, and
you
go to YouTube.
You know?
You go to Google. You see what you
can find.
And I came across a video
on YouTube, it's still there,
of I think it was filmed in 2016
or so of a prisoner
doing tutorials
from from a prison cell.
And I was really impressed by the articulation,
the skills.
This in this one video, for example,
Sean Rodriguez, that was the guy in the
video,
had built a soldering iron. This is a
tool that melts metal.
He had made it handmade, an electronic tool
by hand using random spare parts.
And then he had also built a speaker
box using cardboard, and I think speakers from
old televisions or something, I'm not exactly sure.
He had made a speaker box, wired it,
and then he was doing a tutorial
of how he was soldering the wires
so that he could amplify sound from his
boom box television or cell or the cell
phone that he had access to at that
time. And by the way, it's not proper
to have a cell phone in prison. As
long as I've known Sean, he never has
had it. I did find the videos that
he had created from from the time when
he did have access to a cell phone.
And Well, and they get iPads.
They're what they're like iPads.
Yes. Nowadays,
prisoners have tablets that are given to them.
Yes. Yeah. They're also doubled as as phones.
Now that's a part of prison culture, but
you have to get the ones that the
prison gives you. You can't get the ones
that the guards sell to you at a
markup to make a bunch of money. If
you if they find you with those, then
you get in trouble. Yeah. There's that cycle
is so the guards selling you the the
iPhone and then rating it, taking it back,
and then selling it to you again.
Yeah. Exactly.
Exactly.
We talk about that on other shows. Yeah.
Just to give insider
you guys an insider
understanding,
prisoners who get caught with a cell phone
in prison, it's a 5 year parole denial.
And that cost taxpayers of California
$132,000
per year.
So for having a cell phone, which is
not a crime, it's just against the prison
rules, taxpayers are spending
multiple six figures to punish someone for having
a cell phone that they got from a
staff member. It's tricky. Right? Because some incarcerated
individuals shouldn't have phones. They shouldn't because of
the damage
Isn't that good? They could still monitor, but
anyway, that's a whole other topic we can
talk about later.
So you started so you reached out to
Sean, or how did you develop this? Yeah.
Yeah. So the video that was on YouTube
of him, like, doing the tutorial with the
soldering iron and the speaker box
had his inmate ID.
And I didn't really know what I was
doing, but I did a little bit of
research, and I found out, oh, well, I
can go to this website and look up
him, his name by his prisoner ID or
his name. There was a way to send
an electronic message to him at that time,
and the way it worked is the prison
would print it and give it to him.
So I decided to send a message. I
was a little bit nervous
to reach out to someone in prison because
I didn't know this dude. I I will
say though, I did quite a bit of
reading on Sean Rodriguez before
reaching out to him through that electronic message.
And I read about his case, and I
could see right off the bat that he
was excessively sentenced. Like, he had participated in
a robbery,
but he was given a 25 to life
sentence, and it just seemed like super overblown
for what he had done as a 19
year old homeless. I didn't he wasn't a
serial killer. That was my check. Like, is
this gonna be someone I need to be
afraid of?
And my conclusion right off the bat was,
like, okay, he was a troubled teen who
wrong place, wrong time, some bad decisions, but
that he was excessively sentenced and over punished
for what he had done. Then when I
began talking to him, like, I just I
could tell he was just a normal, smart,
good person.
Sean was the first one I talked to,
and I didn't quite know what I was
doing. Like, I was figuring out, like,
how am I I was also figuring out
how to be a
a doctor, like, how to do research outside
of a university on my own as an
independent person.
I didn't understand Chris. And so mostly what
I was doing in the beginning was just
trying to learn who is Sean.
That's a large part of what I've done
in my research as a doctor is, like,
understand people's lived experiences. Who are you? What
have you gone through? So I sort of
just extended the type of approach I had
done in my doctoral work
and just gotten to got to know Shawn
as a person
before I dove into, like, formal
analysis and writing or anything like that. And
over the years, I've gotten to know
a lot of prisoners. I message on the
tablet with prisoners all the time.
And then I eventually, I began going to
visit,
and I met lots of prison wives and
prison moms and
all all a bunch of system impacted people.
And I got to understand
America's
prison system from the inside.
Did you get a sense that many of
the people you spoke with
had,
as children,
they
had had they been encouraged
to explore their curiosity in a positive
way, they would have been
this I'm trying to say is it seems
like many incarcerated persons
are incredibly
bright. Not everyone, but many are incredibly bright
who did not have a good focus for
their energy and their curiosity and their active
mind, and they got into trouble because of
it, because they didn't have
someone or or something shaping
that brain.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what I've seen, just
sort of off the cuff, I mean, I
haven't, like, formally documented and counted, but the
common trends I see
amongst who's in prison, well, it's mostly male.
It's mostly black men, which is really sad.
And, like, it's clearly an extension of slavery
from from our horrible past.
You find a lot of people who go
to prison, I would say between 18 26,
before their brains are even fully developed. You
find people from poverty stricken backgrounds mostly,
not educated,
traumatized.
A lot of them were born to young
parents who weren't prepared to to raise kids
in a a good effective way.
A lot of them turned to gangs because
daddy wasn't around. Generational
trauma. Yeah. It is. It's a it's such
a generational trauma. And
I didn't realize when I first began,
like, how much,
how bad, how widespread
incarceration was in our country. Like, now I
know
that of the 195
countries on planet Earth,
America has more prisoners than any of them.
America has 25%
of planet Earth's incarcerated,
even though we're only about 5% of the
population. Around 2,000,000 of us, almost 1% of
our country is
incarcerated. And it's big business.
I've learned so much. Like, I went I
went into the prison world to study my
doctoral
subject
in a prison setting
to show that non elite people could be
highly intelligent and creative and capable and, like,
to understand human versatility
in a non elite setting.
And that project totally got put on the
back burner just indefinitely because there was this
other story that needed to be told, which
is
that America mass incarcerates its citizens,
excessively sentences them, forces them to work like
slaves, and if they don't, they can stay
in prison longer so that private industry and
can profit, so that government can have kickbacks
and job security.
Like and mind you, when I was learning
all of this, I myself worked for the
federal government.
I went into government service
because
I wanted to use my life for good,
and I thought government was the place you
do that. And mind you, I worked in,
you know,
at the executive office of the president and
at the office of personnel management,
and especially at OPM, like, there there were
frustrations I had with government, the bureaucracy, the
slowness, the left hand doesn't know what the
right hand's doing.
But when I began to understand the criminal
justice system,
there there's a section of our government that
is actually malevolent,
which is victimizing
us.
That I decided basically to tell the truth
about it. So over the years, I
I started the Help Free Sean Rodriguez
campaign
because I learned he had been partly wrongfully
convicted. He was guilty of participating in a
robbery. But
in my view, America has had legalized
wrongful convictions. Let me explain.
And this applies to Sean. This is why
I fought so hard for Sean because he
was legally wrongfully convicted of crimes he he's
factually innocent of that he did not commit.
It's important to note that in Sean's case
as well
that
witnesses recanted.
And in this country, an excessive sentence for
some people have been
retroactively
they'll get released based on time served because
of their constitutional rights being
aggrieved
by extensive sentences. So I just sort of
wanna give that a little bit of backing
for the listeners.
In California and many other states, there's a
a legal philosophy.
It wasn't passed by the legislature. It's just
something that the courts began implementing through precedent.
It's called the natural and probable consequences doctrine
in California. It's called other things in some
other locations. But the natural and probable consequences
doctrine said,
if a group of 2 or more people
participate in a felony crime, for example, robbery,
that anything anyone does becomes a charge that
everyone involved can get
charged with and found guilty of even if
they themselves did not do it. So there
are many, many, many hundreds of thousands of
people
in America's prisons largely for murder crimes they
did not do, which comes with very excessive
sentencing. Like, there are people with life who
have life without parole sentences
for a murder crime they did not commit
themselves.
But because they had agreed to a robbery,
they're given the murder charge.
And that was or still is largely in
the United States. In California, it's not. But
it was seen as an acceptable practice to
give someone charges for a crime someone else
did. Sean did not commit murder nor was
he around anyone that committed murder. I just
wanna make that clear that sometimes these things
get a little blurry as we're talking.
And
in the foster care system that when you
hit 18,
you age out, and you age out without
any kind of care,
meaning
there's no job waiting for you, there's no
money waiting for you, clearly there's no family
there to support you. They just sort of
release these kids onto the street, and many,
statistically
speaking,
many of these kids turn to crime in
order to
live and exist.
Yeah. So Sean was a teenager
released from the state's custody directly into homelessness.
They they didn't even give him a jacket
or a sleeping bag, and he had no
family. He was an orphan. He had no
money.
And so he was just immediately homeless and
cold and hungry with no resources.
Fast forward,
he participated in a robbery with another homeless
teenager.
And she, in my view, was
severely mentally ill, like, probably a psychopath. Like,
just no empathy, no compassion, no concern for
the rights or
perspectives
or lives of other human beings.
And
Sean was kind of afraid of her, to
be honest. She was physically bigger than him.
And how many years ago was this? This
was in 2003.
Okay. Placer County, California was the location as
well. No it's a county just northeast of
Sacramento, the state capital. So, yeah, Sean was
a homeless teen. He found another homeless teen.
They were sort of surviving together.
And she had
a boyfriend,
39 years old,
schizophrenic,
and a known child molester. Also problematic.
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And he was hanging out
with teenagers.
Yeah. And But, again, if I'm a teenage
child you know, if I'm a child, I
don't have a lot of prospects. Those types
of people prey on
these kids also.
Yeah. And
Sean had seen
Nick Hammond make unwanted sexual advances at Anna,
and Anna wanted to rob him. Like, she
she knew he had a little bit of
money, and so
and Anna had also told Sean that Nick
Hammond had physically harmed her, that he had
burned her with a cigarette, and, like, who
knows if there was some sort of, like,
molestation thing happening.
And and she asked if Sean would be
around
just to make sure that Nick Hammond wouldn't,
like, beat her up. Learning about Sean's case
and really getting to know him
and knowing that he was excessively
sentenced
and that he's now been incarcerated for
20 years of his life plus
and that he was so young when he
went into prison.
Knowing all of this,
what
what was your next step? What made you
decide to put everything else you were doing
on hold and
found this
free Sean Rodriguez project?
Yeah. Well, just the more I learned about
his case and he had he had sent
me letters
and copies of information from the trial transcript.
In fact, eventually he sent me the entire
trial transcript. It was more than 2,000 pages,
which I read in its entirety.
And, like, the jurors said things like,
no one was hurt.
Where is the justice?
Another juror said, I believe Sean deserved, at
most, 1 year of confinement.
Another juror begged the judge to reconsider the
25 to life sentence. Like,
jurors just ex just wrote so much showing
that they knew Sean was not there for
the kidnapping.
He was in a different part of the
building with his girlfriend, Erin,
and they knew that Sean had no intent
to kill. Because Sean, by the way, was
repeatedly protecting Nick Hammond. Like, Sean was fine
to participate in a robbery and sorta
egg him on and and go along with
Anna to, like, get get money from him.
But Sean was not cool with trapping him
in a room
or hurting him or beating him up or
killing him. In fact, Sean repeatedly tried to
get Nick Hammond out of the room where
Anna entrapped him. And he did not die
also. He did get out. Yeah. He was
cold and he had had wet wet feet
because he set water off the fire sprinkler
on him when he was trapped in that
room. And PTSD, I imagine.
Yeah. I'm sure there was, like, definite, like,
emotional trauma and, like, being scared. And he
has schizophrenia, so that sort of experience was
probably extra scary for for mister Hammond. But,
yeah, Sean was given a 7 to life
sentence for a kidnapping he didn't know would
happen and wasn't present for when the entrapment
occurred. Anna did that by herself, and everyone
knew that.
The jurors knew that. And then Sean was
given a 25 to life sentence
because
according to the natural and probable consequences doctrine,
if he agreed to if he did participate
in a robbery, then he was guilty of
all the things Anna did. And Anna had
intent to kill. She wanted to kill.
Sean repeatedly
acted to stop a murder. Anna wanted to
throw Nick Hammond off a bridge, so he
died. Sean talked her out of it. Then
she wanted to beat Nick to death with
poles wrapped in barbed wire. Sean talked her
out of it. Sean was afraid of her.
Anna had a knife.
And
so at some point,
stupid teenage boy thinking,
Sean went, okay. I can't get out of
this situation. I'm afraid of her.
Erin's pregnant. I'm worried for her safety. I
don't want Hammond to get physically injured. I
was just here,
you know, to, like, make sure Anna didn't
get beat up during the robbery,
and now this has turned into a potential
murder scene. Like, no. This is not cool.
So in addition to trying to, like, turn
off the water and break the plexiglass and
remove the screws,
Sean also repeatedly acted to stop Anna from
killing Nick Hammond. But the stupid thing the
stupid teenage boy thing Sean decided to do
was to pretend
to gas Nick Hammond
using the car exhaust from his vehicle and
some hoses,
but Sean
did not let the gas get to Nick.
He feigned and faked
and and tried to get Anna to believe
Nick Hammond was gone, and so we can
leave, and you don't need to try to
kill him anymore because it's taken care of,
and let like, let's just go. And Sean's
plan was to talk to the the police.
Obviously, that was a stupid decision to participate
in a fake thing, but he didn't know
what else to do. It's definitely wrong place,
wrong time, wrong choices,
just a lot of bad doorways to walk
through, for sure.
I do think
people should have consequences
for their actions. I think he should have
had consequences for those choices he made. He
still
has choices.
However,
not to the excess of of a lifetime
incarceration
for when nobody died
and nobody really got
again, emotional hurt. Yes. That's probably severe. But
in other words,
there should have been a period of time
where he was brought before parole
long, long time ago
and said, look,
you know, you've done really well. You haven't
done anything bad while you've been incarcerated.
You haven't gotten into fights. You're doing the
things you're supposed to be doing.
Let's reevaluate
this
time served sort of situation.
It's not the reality, I know, but
that's
seems like that's what should have been done.
Yeah. And by the way, Sean will be
the first like, Sean has always admitted what
he did do. Like, he did
participate in trying to get Nick Hammond's ATM
card, which Anna used. And he did drive
around in Nick's car.
And he'll he'll admit it. He did. He
did. But that's not a life sentence. That's
not a life sentence. It should have been
a few years. And that's you know, that
would have been fair. He should have gotten
a few years prison time. But instead of
that, they used the natural and probable consequences
doctrine to legally wrongfully convict him for crimes
Anna did for which Sean was factually innocent.
So you've started the free Sean Rodriguez project?
Yes. I started I originally started, like, the
very beginnings of that effort. Like, Sean sent
me the box of his legal paperwork, and
I began sort of out of my home
office beginning to
support him the best I could back in
2020.
We've got a website. We've got our logo.
We have a social media following on 4
different platforms. Like, I made it a thing
to just try to bring attention to his
his case in particular,
but I think there's also lessons to be
learned for the larger collective about, like, this
is one story, but there are many stories
like this where people are sent to prison
for crimes that someone else committed because they
were associated with a lesser crime, like robbery.
And what's your ultimate goal? He's up for
parole in July. Your ultimate goal is to
make sure that that happens.
Well Are you worried about blowback with you
being an advocate for him?
Yeah. I so I actually would prefer that
Sean get out not through parole. Because what
what it means when Sean gets out through
parole
is that
the crimes that he's factually innocent of will
will haunt him for the rest of his
life. What I'm really advocating for through the
Help Free Sean Rodriguez campaign
is for a resentencing
or a retrial
or exoneration for the crimes for which he's
factually innocent, for commutation, for pardon.
That and and those are all things that
I've requested to authorities.
It's a slow moving machine. Who knows how
that will go? Placer County doesn't seem all
that,
warm or responsive to do something about Sean's
legal wrongful convictions.
So if Sean has to get out through
the parole board, it will at least he
can get out, but the sad part about
that is that he's gonna have the kidnapping
and the conspiracy to commit murder charges
on his record for all of time.
And that's not really fair in my view.
Right. It's pretty hard to get a job
with that on your record, I imagine. Yeah.
Exactly. And that was another realization too, like,
how this system
fails to rehabilitate many offenders. I mean, I
would say Sean is highly rehabilitated,
very self aware, done a lot of work
on himself, read over a 1000 books. I
can't even count the many dozens of certificates
and programs he's completed. He's an electrician. Like,
cognitive behavioral therapy he's done. Like, he's just
so self aware, and he really used the
decades he spent in prison to work on
himself.
He's been proudly gang free and drug free
the whole time.
He's a good guy. You know? And he
he was excessively sentenced for the crimes of
another person in addition to the crimes he
did commit
and should have received punishment for. Well, in
time served at that point. Yeah. I mean,
20 what is that? 24
years almost? Well, he's been in since 2003,
so it's been over 21 years. And by
the time he's eligible for parole next year,
it would be over 22 years. And mind
you, there's no guarantee he'll ever get out
through the parole board. One thing I will
mention to you as well is that
Sean has been a whistleblower against correctional officer
abuses in prison.
Year many years ago, he was at RJ
Donovan Prison in San Diego, and there were
severe abuses taking place at that prison. Sean
that's where Sean had the cell phone, and
he filmed correctional officers beating
inmates and got it out to an attorney's
office. And so he's received a lot of
fake write ups,
you know, out of retaliation from from correctional
officers. You can't believe the correctional officers. I
can. I can believe it because I've interviewed
other guards who are whistleblowers,
and the stories are
mind boggling.
Yeah. But very true. Yeah. Yeah. Horrifying.
Horrifying. Horrifying. Yeah. There are beatings,
murders,
fraudulent paperwork to get people trapped in like,
some Human trafficking. I mean, it's the list
goes on. Sure. The list goes on and
on. And the heartbreaking part is that this
is done to us by badge wearers, by
members of our government who we pay to
serve and protect and rehabilitate.
And instead of doing that, they're
engaging in criminal activities while on the clock
themselves, some of them. So Right. Part of
why I speak out
for Sean and for criminal justice reform more
largely is because that's not what government should
be. I know. Like, government is here to
help us. It should be here to make
our lives better.
One other thing I'll mention too, because of
everything I learned, I realized I wanted to
make
systemic change beyond just Sean's case. Like, Sean's
case obviously matters a lot to me. I've
invested heavily to, like, make a difference in
his one case.
But I've learned so much about the system
that I started the prison transparency project
as well. So I've been creating
informational reports,
slide decks. I have a survey. I'm getting
ready to launch nationwide
in the process of getting supportive partners.
And I really have,
on a voluntary basis, like, taken on,
you know, a lot of work
to bring attention to the humanitarian crisis that
we have in America. So Prison Transparency Project
also is on social media.
I really wanna bring attention to this because
it feels to me like not enough people
are talking about it, especially given how many
families and lives
are ruined
by
the malevolence
and injustice
and ineptitude
of a system that's really antiquated and harming
us. By the way, eventually, some of these
folks get out and they become your neighbors.
And would you rather they come out
rehabilitated
knowing that they were
treated humanely,
or would you rather they come out having
been treated viciously
and inhumanely? Which is the better neighbor
to have in the long run? And I
think that's something that people really need to
start wrapping their head around for sure.
Tell people how they can find you.
You can find me at doctordrangela,
angela,
meyers, m e y e r s. So
doctorangelameyers.com.
You can find
help free sean@helpfree,
s h a w n.com.
You can also check out prison transparency.com.
Am I missing anything? If you go to
Pauli Maas' Place, you'll you'll get redirected to
doctor Angel. But, yeah, I've got a bunch
of different websites. I'm all over the place.
I at the end of the day,
why I do what I do is because
my mission in life, like, what I wanna
do with my existence,
is make a difference in the world
to reduce human suffering and enhance human thriving.
And so I've done that through criminal justice
reform to reduce suffering, and I've done what
I could to promote human potential and self
actualization and lifelong, life wide learning through the
lens of polymathy.
Yeah. It's lovely. And I will put all
the information and links on heyhumanpodcast
dotcom as well so people can find them
easily if they have any kind of issues
trying to remember or whatever. They just go
right there, and it'll all be there. And
thank you so much for for your time
and,
you know, good work on you for getting
out there and and trying to make a
difference in this world.
It's tough to fight for people
who historically
have been deemed
not worth the fight. Prisoners are the voiceless.
They're easy to forget. Like, if you're not
impacted, like, you just have no clue what's
going on. There's bars and fences and gates
and locks. And so there's a lot, there's
a real lack of awareness for what the
reality is here. So I'm just doing what
I can to tell the truth.
Yeah. Well, thank you for listening, everybody.
Bye.
Thanks, Angela.
Thank you.
Rate, review, and subscribe to Hey Human Podcast
on iTunes, Spotify, Iheart, wherever you get your
podcasts. Thanks.
Bye.