I Was a Judge — Then I Got Sentenced to Federal Prison | Ryan Kamada
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I was on top bunk. He stood right up, looked me right in the face, and he's like, never say that word again in here. And then one of the toughest Mexicans was across, and he just gets out of his bed. He comes walking, and he looks right at me. He's like, you ever say that to me, I'm going to slap you. And it just hit me, you know? Ryan Kamada had it all. Respected lawyer, appointed judge, and

and a picture-perfect life in Colorado. But behind the bench, he made one decision that changed everything. As a sitting judge, Ryan committed a federal crime that landed him on the other side of the justice system, sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison. In this episode, he opens up about what led to his downfall, the reality of life behind bars, and how he's been able to rebuild his life after losing it all. This is the story of a man who went from handing down sentences to serving one.

Ryan, welcome to Locked In, man. Nice to meet you, Ian. Yeah, nice to meet you too. Straight from Colorado. Colorado. And our first judge on the show, former judge. I have a lot of firsts, Ian. First felon in my family. I've been trying to get a judge on. I was in talks with the judge from Florida that oversaw the Parkland school shooting, who had retired and is now on social media. And then her manager or whatever goes to me after a few emails, I think after I told them I was a felon too.

Um, but I've been wanting to get a judge on. I've had prosecutors, I've had, uh, lawyers, we've had everyone but a judge. Um, it would be cool to have my judge that oversaw my case on the show too. I'm thinking about sending a letter just to like, let them know how I'm doing and like paying the restitution and everything like that. I'll tell you what, I, you know, I don't know your judge, but you know, from sitting in that robe, they leave the door and you have no idea what happened to these families and people. And, uh,

From my perspective, that would have been pretty special to get an update from somebody. Yeah. Do you think many people do do that? No. I think I had – I oversaw the – kind of like family law. So a lot of dependency neglect or social service cases, child protective services, whatever you want to call it, divorce, custody, those things. And every once in a while – well, I'll tell you a story. I had a kid who was in foster care.

And there's pretty tight restrictions on kids traveling out of state when you're in foster care. And so, you know, long story short, there's a hearing on whether or not the only way this kid could go is if a judge signed off. And it was just like a vacation. It was international. And signed off, of course, let this kid go. And I got a postcard from the kid. And this kid was like eight or nine. Handwritten, old school way.

and just thanking me and telling me what a great trip he was having so I got that every once in a while I'd get a um Christmas card of a of a kid that um got adopted or oversaw some of the proceedings shoot just uh I get emotional a little bit but I like just to just before we got here I got a

high school graduation card for a kid. So yeah, that stuff touches you, right? Judges are human. Yeah, I know a lot of people don't see that. That's why it's so important to talk about it. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Did you watch Your Honor at all? No, I didn't. I need to get into TV shows. I don't watch TV shows. Conversations like this, I see your podcast or go out socially, people are talking about this.

Don't want I watch a ton of documentaries. I feel like you should see your honor because it kind of means your situation Yeah, we're just like the just everything I'm sure mindset everything is such a good show I really enjoyed it and they didn't like stretch. I think it's only like two seasons or three seasons But it was really well done the guy that Bryan Cranston from Breaking Bad is the lead. He's a judge and

All right. So it's really good. I'll download it before I hit the plane tomorrow. Yeah, watch it on the plane. That'll be perfect. So did you grow up in Colorado? Yeah, born and raised. Never really left my community. In fact, I would describe growing up like blessed, lucky, right? Great parents, one older sister, small ag community about an hour north of Denver. Denver's the city, but...

We live about a polar opposite lifestyle. I'm not saying right or wrong. It's just very different. We're near the 45 minutes south of the Wyoming border. So blessed and lucky the way we lived this. My dad, my family story is a great story. And now that I've learned about why I did what I did, who I am, after all this, that played a big role. My dad...

My mom grew up in this farming community. Not a lot of money. German and small town. My dad grew up in like when he was growing up, it's an area five points Denver. Then it was, you know, I was a bad part of Denver. He was born to two Japanese parents, obviously. And they were both interned in the 60s during the war from San Francisco area.

My grandma was interned in a Camp Amache, which is in southern Colorado. My grandpa was interned in Heart Mountain, which is far north Wyoming. And back then, cool story, our Supreme Court building is named the Ralph Carr Courthouse. Ralph Carr, right when all this is going down, was a Republican governor of Colorado who

and stood against that, I don't know, against the internment, but like he was welcoming of the Japanese as they were getting out. But a lot of them didn't have the money, obviously. So a ton conglomerated into Five Points Denver where they get some jobs and stuff. And that's, my grandma and grandpa met there when they came to Five Points. I had my dad, graduated from Manuel High School for just right near where Chauncey Billups grew up. People are sports fans. Um...

And my dad was a pretty good athlete, and he came to northern Colorado. There's a school there called the University of Northern Colorado. Played football. Got injured right away. Now this, back then, Ian was like a very conservative, mostly white community. And my dad moves into this community, starts dating this farm girl, my mom.

And my dad was really good with cars. He grew up loving cars. In fact, before he died, he was a director of marketing, but he was a really, really good world-class motorsports announcer, sports announcer. And we had a local track, pretty big, Bandimere Speedway, where he ended up announcing there for years and years before he died. At any rate, my dad started working for...

small parts store in this little town, but this part store was like where all the farmers got their stuff from and He ended up buying that part store man I was born and raised in that part store pretty much and that was where all the farmers hung out coffee doughnuts taught me bad language You know that that's where it was

So I was so lucky and when my mom and dad got married, so far this community's come, there wasn't a church in town that let them get married because of interracial. It's crazy, you know, like, and now you don't even, you know, I grew up in this small town. We didn't see color. We didn't see money differences. Spend the night, one night with the kid.

who I swear their family probably struggled to order that Domino's pizza we had. Next week, I'm at a very wealthy... We just didn't see the socioeconomic difference. Man, I was lucky, Ian. God bless me with a great family, a great place to live. Was anyone in your family in...

the attorney world, law enforcement, anything like that? My dad did politics as a mayor of our small town for 10 years. That's as close as it got. I didn't know a single lawyer. I didn't know. Like we didn't, we just didn't, we didn't interact with, you know, there's a little bit larger city right by us, but still small city. Like, you know, we,

We didn't cross paths with that. We didn't need to, really, I don't think. I never saw it, you know. So, no, I never knew a single lawyer growing up. What were you like in high school? Again, blessed and lucky, right? Like, totally lucky that somewhere along the lines, I got passed along, school came pretty easy to me. I got really good grades. I was a really good athlete, you know. Stupid Uncle Rico stories, you know what I'm saying? Like, you know, like...

All-state football, Conference III sports, all that stuff. And just an incredible good neighborhood and friends. Friends that stuck by me through this. I probably put some of them in bad positions. But yeah, man, they're back home still my biggest fans. Good people. Did you know what you were going to do when you grew up? Not really. You know, I was...

you know i got involved in drag racing young they had like a program for kids and um somehow i was pretty good at it and so that was kind of where my thought was is i wanted to be a professional drag racer and one day my dad tells me tells me he's like you know look you're gonna be sweeping floors at some guy's mechanic shop during the week and then you're gonna hit the road and live that he's like you need to go to school and so uh it's like all right um

You know, again, then my mind switched to I just wanted to play a sport. I wanted, I want, that was me. You know, I wanted to play sports. I was looking at, you know, about 5'10", man, you know, 150 pounds soaking wet. There's not a lot of college spots for kids like me. But I was fast and played hard. So I started getting recruited. Got an offer to play football in South Dakota. I was looking to go play basketball at the Coast Guard Academy.

Then I got injured real bad my senior year. I didn't know if I was going to run again. I got my foot ran over by an F-350 farm truck. But it went real well. I got five screws in my foot. I missed like a month of baseball. So I was kind of in the air there. I got accepted then right before I graduated to a really good engineering school. It's called Carl's School of Mines. And my dad was like, you're going there.

Like you, you know, the, you know, I was raised with a lot of Japanese values, culture. My dad kind of really assimilated my dad's family, you know, never complained about the internment and stuff. But one of the things was, is that did get passed was you do something for the next generation. You know, my parents, you know, they didn't get graduate college, but they gave me the foundation to do that. So my mind was, all right,

My pass along was back then probably immaturity and stuff, but I'm going to make enough money and my kids don't have to take school loans out if I'm blessed to ever have kids at that time. That was my mindset. So money was a driving factor. I was good at math and science. So I go to this engineering school and lucked out. I got a baseball scholarship to play there. And it's only about $1,000.

An hour from my hometown, Division II school. So I went and got an engineering degree and played baseball, man. How did your dad feel about you and sports? My mom and dad and my sister, my older sister, they were everything. My dad was so busy. He was commuting an hour and ten minutes to work every single day, Monday through Friday, the weekends he was announcing the events. I mean, busy. My mom was busy. At that time, she had gotten a government job.

But, Ian, they were at every single sport. One of my biggest regrets, Ian, is, you know, you lose a game, come off the field, and you're in a bad mood. You know, I wasn't thanking them. Like, you know, thanks for being here because, you know, you're either too cool for that or you worry about the sport. They're excellent.

Biggest cheerleaders. Biggest cheerleaders. Yeah, my mom and I were just talking about that last night, how kids love their parents growing up, and then they get that teenage 20s, and they just didn't want nothing to do with them, and they don't realize until later on how important that relationship is and how close they are with them. Right. But I also think that's healthy, too. Like, you raise your—you know, I hope one day I raise my kids the right way to where they want to be away from mom and dad and—

You know, push boundaries a little bit. Get out there. It's a huge world. You know, but then it comes back around. You're like, gosh, darn it, man, like the sacrifices they were making. I mean, you know, every time my son says, let's go play catch. My son's 12. Let's go play catch. Or I want to play baseball or basketball. Man, I'm there. You know, I do not want to be like, man, I'm tired. I worked all day. No, I'm cherishing these times because I think that's what my parents gave me.

Do you end up finishing your degree for engineering? Yeah. So I was in my – so this is a pretty tough school. Most students, especially athletes, don't finish in four years, usually four and a half or five. So I played my four years of ball and I was on my fifth year finishing up. And at this school back then, I don't know if they still do it, but the different sects of engineering, so mechanical, electrical, civil –

You get a team of one student from each sect and you do a senior project. And we're working on our senior project and we started exploring the idea of patenting this project. And we met a couple of times with this guy and he's pulling up in a BMW, Mercedes. Finally, one day I'm like, what do you do? I'm a patent lawyer. Yeah.

just started BS-ing about that. And he's like, you know, you got to pass the bar to be a lawyer. Yeah, I know that. But there's a separate bar exam to be a patent lawyer and you have to have a technical degree. It's like, if you're thinking about law school, we need technical degree based applicants. And I was immature in the sense of, you know, I was single. I wanted to make money and I didn't see myself, nothing wrong with this, but I'm somewhat of a social guy. I didn't see myself like

drawing, clicking AutoCAD all day. And I know there's other jobs, but in my mind, that's what engineering was that I was exposed to. I've never exposed engineers either. So I drove to my dad's office and said, "Dad, I'm gonna go to law school. I'm gonna apply." He's like, "What?" I'm like, "Yeah, I'm gonna apply." He's like, "Well, how are we gonna afford this?" I was like, "I don't know. We'll take loans. We'll figure it out." He's like, "All right, man. I'm getting my biggest cheerleader. Let's rock and roll."

So I'm literally like, and back then it wasn't, you know, it's not that long ago, but it is in the sense of the internet. Like, I didn't know he had to take a test to get into law school, how to apply. So I've literally learned how to, that I had to take this entrance exam, the LSAT.

Ian, I'm not kidding you. I literally went to Barnes & Noble, took a book off the shelf, didn't even buy it, bought a cup of coffee for three nights in a row and just read like how the LSAT worked and practice questions for like three nights. Never bought the book, took the test and got accepted into the University of Denver. And you passed with a high score? It's just a score. I don't think I scored that high because I didn't get into like –

you know, the, um, I didn't really apply. I, I'm a hometown guy. So I wanted to go to somewhere in Colorado, but I did visit like ASU and stuff like that. I had some friends living there, um, took one foot on that campus and I knew I would not be successful at that school because of the environment, you know? Um, uh, and so, uh, I just applied to DU. That was it. Like got in and, you know, and I, uh,

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Go to Ridge.com and use code LOCKEDIN at checkout. That's Ridge.com, code LOCKEDIN. And when they ask who sent you, make sure you mention your favorite podcast, LockedIn. It helps keep this show going. If your wallet's still living in the past, now's the time to upgrade. Now let's get back into today's episode. Did you know what kind of law you were going to do? I was going to do the patent because they make really good money and we need them. They're really good money, but my second year...

I got a job and this Danbury is included in this story. Okay, great. So I get a job with a small company owned by GE and like in their in-house division. Worked there my second year. My third year's starting to get, you know, last semester and now I'm like, all right, you know, I got to start thinking about jobs.

God bless me, got a job offer with GE. I'm excited. I opened the email and it was in Danbury, Connecticut. And I had never heard of Danbury. Little did I know that this is like, you know, Fortune 500. There's a lot of big, big office jobs here. But again, my friends, my community, my family. I mean, you're still in your town, you know. I didn't think I'd be happy.

And I don't think my son will ever believe the next part of this story, but this is the honest to God truth. I literally opened the phone book back then and started calling every law firm that was listed in there in this city that's by our town called Greeley, Colorado. Girl picks up the phone. Ryan.

She's like, this is Carla. This is a girl I went to high school with, a friend of mine. And I'm like, Carla? I'm like, I'm looking for a job. Like, I'll work for free until I, you know, this summer while I'm studying for the bar exam. She's like, you can't go to lunch with these guys. They're great guys. Worked for a couple months as like an intern. They started paying me after I took the bar before the results come out. Got a job with them. Four years after that, I bought a third of the company, the law firm.

Yeah. I mean, I literally phone booked it. And that whole law firm was just patents? No. So I forgot that part. No. I mean, there's no real intellectual, real big intellectual property work in that area of Colorado. I mean, we're by Denver. There's some IP lawyers. I'm not knocking them. They do a good job and stuff at all. But, you know, for young, you know, fresh off the bar exam, there was no job. So it was like...

First case I get, you know, I think, I don't know what it was, you know, family law or like DUI or something. And I go in the courtroom and I'm like, I want to be in the courtroom. For me, like, you know, I love wins and losses kind of drive me. Like I'll prep better. Just that adrenaline. Something at stake. Yeah. Something at stake. You know, and I want to, I was like, I love the courtroom. So if you want to be in the courtroom as a young lawyer, you do family law. Because that,

There's, you know, there's a ton of cases. You don't have to market a lot because of the mass amount of cases and you're in court. And they're big, they're good trials. You know, you take your average divorce with a house with some equity, a couple of cars. I'm not even talking kids. You got a retirement, you know, that's a, that's a decent size money's at stake, you know, and you adding kids, that's the real deal for court from,

for my emotions, the way I'm built. And so that's what I did. One day I'm sitting in court waiting for my case to get called and there's a child protective services case going on. And in Colorado, the parents in a child protective services case get a state appointed lawyer. It's a great program under certain financial guidelines. In Colorado, I don't know other states. In Colorado, the kid gets a state appointed lawyer that represents the best interests of that kid.

And I'm watching this and I'm like, I want to do that. I want to represent these kids. Hearing's over. I walk right up to the judge. Kind of out of my character is Judge Loewenbach, who's now a retired active judge still. And I said, I want to do that. And again, I got lucky. Like I'd just done a case where I did pretty good. He's like, yeah. He's like...

But everybody wants to represent kids, Ryan. Like you got to get, you got to build your resume. And he's like, nobody want to represent parents. And I am changed man to this day. He said, I'm going to start appointing you to represent these parents. Nobody wants to represent parents that got their kids yanked from them. You know, it's worse than public perception than a public defender. And God bless those great lawyers that do that good work.

It changed my life, man. Like, you know, yeah. It's just like prison. Like, there's parents that should not be parents. It's a small percentage, Oli. And like, you get these parents' stories and you start fighting for them, try to help them somehow. And I just, that's why I describe my childhood as lucky and blessed because I see these stories. I'm like, man, these parents never had a shot. Let's see if we can help them. You know, we've got some services so we can help them. So I did that for a few years.

And then the opening came to represent the kids and got the dream job. Representing, you're not going to be rich, but I was okay. Representing these kids from infants to 18-year-olds. Man, I miss that. Why do you think you didn't get into criminal law? I did. I did do criminal law again because that's what's walking in the door. So, yeah, I did criminal defense, defense.

Yeah, I handled, I think, which is a lot for a private attorney that young. I think by the time I got to the bench, I'd done like 30-some jury trials. Really? Yeah, that I first chaired. Yeah, you know, I did felonies, but nothing. Didn't do anything, you know, no homicide cases or anything like that. Probably a lot of DUIs and stuff like that. Yeah, DUIs, assaults.

And again, that's what's walking through the door. And look, you know, the way I grew up, you're friends with everybody. I was so lucky. I don't care what side of the tracks you're on. We're friends. We ran around together. You know, everybody from the well-to-do to the not. I don't know what it was about back then. Or maybe it was just that. I don't know. So, you know, I didn't have to. My phone's ringing off the hook. Hey, my cousin got in trouble. Hey, uncle's getting a divorce. Yeah.

Hey, man, me and my brother, we tried this business, it failed, and now we've got debt. So my phone's ringing to do everything. And I loved it. Loved it, Ian. Just being with your friends, helping your friends. There's kind of a taboo about representing friends and family. Some people say you shouldn't do it. I think everybody's different. For me, it was just...

I didn't have to advertise. So anything that came in the door, I was willing to dive in and learn and do it. When you represented clients in criminal cases, did you ever think to yourself you would never be one of those clients? Absolutely, man. Like I never thought in a million years, and this is no knock to people, but, you know, Ian, despite the sprinklings of drugs on people,

that my personal case was in the shadows of I've never even seen a drug other than marijuana I've never even you know and of course I got friends that I was growing up with that were getting involved and again I'm not knocking people at all my dad had a saying of daytime friends like when the sun's up you do what you want with these people you hang out man you love them

You'd be loyal friend. Small percentage of these guys, Ryan, that when the sun goes down, you're not part of it. And even those sundown friends to this day are still some of my best friends. But I was just able with my parents' upbringing to keep an arm's distance. I never thought in a million years I'd be in that place. Never. In fact, you know, I was teaching...

lawyers ethics you know I was rising the ranks quick you know as part of all these continuing legal education and I'm on every board in the in the community yeah man no no never how does your career shift from attorney to a judge and so quickly and so young it was very quick um

probably an ingredient that led to my situation that the and i don't want to say immaturity as this cheesy pass off that you know you know i did what i did i own it to this you know i'll own it be transparent but uh it was quick again lucky i got the thing about being an attorney is yeah there's guys that know the law inside and out

And I put myself in an average category back then of knowing that I was a little above average, I think, on the rules of ethics. But I'd out-prepare everybody in the courtroom. And so I was winning. Winning is a bad word. I was doing well to the judges. And I think it caught our chief judge's eye. And I know it did. And other judges. And I don't know. I think I'm lucky from...

Some gene that my parents passed along and I'm pretty easy to get along with pretty easy team member to work you know on a team and A few years go by and the chief judge and some other judges are talking to me like do you want to have you ever thought about? Getting on the bench like no, I don't have an Ivy League law You know like and then I'll never here's what here's what changed me. I'm in a trial and

And this is a termination of parental rights. In my opinion, other than the death penalty, there's no other more serious order a judge can make than terminating a parent and a child's relationship. So I'm in a trial and I'm representing the dad who was incarcerated many years. He didn't have a chance in this case. But the mom was just trying, you know, and day one of the trial ends.

And we're a little behind schedule. So the judge says, hey, guys, instead of 9 o'clock tomorrow, I'm going to start at 8 o'clock. I want everybody here to get rocking and rolling at 8 o'clock. Get the hearing done on schedule. And the lawyer for the mom stood up. I'll never forget this. I'm sitting right next to the mom. So it's like me, mom, her lawyer. And the lawyer stands up and she goes, judge, I'm not really a morning person. And the look on that mom's face. And

I'm just like, I need to get in a spot with power up there. This isn't right. And so then I started diving in. I started studying how do you become a judge? What's the application process? I don't know who appoints judges. And then I get a call one day, and it was a magistrate. He's still practicing, a good friend of mine. And he said, get your application ready. Somebody's going to retire soon.

And this is for a magistrate spot. So we've got magistrates and judges, not a big difference. One big difference is who picks the magistrate. Judges are appointed by our governor through a merit selection process. Great process. Colorado is the epitome of how to appoint judges. It's not political. It's not a vote, raising money. But the magistrates are appointed by your local chief judge. So I knew I had a shot.

I applied. I got the gig as a magistrate. So I do that magistrate for, I don't know, I'm terrible with time, three, four years. And one of them are district court judges. District court in Colorado is the highest level of trial court before the court of appeals. They're retiring and my chief judge says, man, you got to apply. So I applied. It's a selection process where it's like, I'll get this wrong, but it's like,

Three non-lawyers, three lawyers, two community members or whatever. It's this big group you sit at a table. Half Republicans, half Democrats, certain percentage independents. And they narrow that process down to three people who then go up to the governor and get interviewed by our governor.

And then the governor appoints that one. So then I get the gig. So the magistrate, when you get picked as a magistrate, it's not like it circumvents the process at all because the governor still has to pick. Exactly, to be the judge. Do you have the upper hand as a magistrate already practicing? You're working with the other judges? I think it's a double-sided sword. A lot of people ask, like lawyers that want to become judges ask me that. I think it's a double-edged sword for one of two reasons. A is...

If you have weaknesses, they're going to be exposed as a magistrate and every lawyer is going to know it and they're going to give that opinion to the governor or the local selection committee. The other side of it is if you're doing well, yeah, it's going to help you get up there. I mean you're tested and proven at that point. You're doing everything a judge does except an actual jury trial. You're still doing all trials to the court. You're doing everything except a jury trial as a magistrate.

So yeah, you're time tested. Yeah. So in federal court, like the magistrate, you see the magistrate first for bond hearings. They deal with all the pretrial stuff until it gets scheduled for trial and then the judge kind of takes over. And even some cases, the judge will still refer like bond motions when I had bail motions and stuff.

He always referred it to the magistrate. He never got involved until even after the trial was over. Yep, super similar. Yeah, it's similar. Yeah. And now is the pay scale the same or are you paid less? No, you make more as you go up. Magistrates make a certain amount and then a county court judge, which is like misdemeanor offenses, they don't – county court judges do not do family law cases. Right.

But they will do – again, I will get this wrong but civil controversies under a certain amount. I can't remember what it was, 20,000, whatever. Then there's district court that does the felonies, the big money cases, all the family law docket and that was the opening that was there. So I applied for that district court. Trevor Burrus: So it was a state district court position? Jason Kuznicki: State district court. You got it. Trevor Burrus: How old were you when you got the magistrate? Jason Kuznicki: Oh, man.

Well, I'm 46 now. It was, geez, I can't even remember now. I was in my late, mid-late 30s. Wow. I was young. Yeah. I was really young. So I was telling you earlier that I read John Grissom, and he has this book about a

a judge who was the youngest judge picked in his area. He was like early 30s, but he became a serial killer. So he was an active judge and a serial killer at the same time. But you remind me of the age thing, not the serial killer part. Yeah, I was definitely one of the, if not the youngest judges ever appointed and first Asian in my community. How did your family feel about you becoming a judge? Proud, you know, darn proud. I

And I'm not saying this, but, like, I think my parents and my sister and my friends, like, expected me to do something bigger. Like, something pretty. And I don't like saying that because, you know, a judge ain't no different than some...

guy working that, that cornfield. They're not, you know, but to society, I guess, you know, you have a lot of responsibility and power. I get it. But they, I think they expected me to do something. And when it happened, yeah, just really proud. You know, I felt like, you know, my friends and like, I was doing this with my friends and my family too. Like,

My dad was annoying because my dad bragged about me to all of his, every time I meet somebody, man, your dad sure brags about you. Did you start to build a family of your own? Yeah. Oh, man, they're down in the city, New York City right now at the 9-11 Memorial. My last year of law school, I met my wife of, oh, no, 16 years now. She's a NICU nurse.

We have two kids, 12-year-old and an 8-year-old. Oldest is a boy, youngest is a girl, race and madden. And, yeah, we... Ian, I don't know how anybody in prison can do it without that. Like, you know, my wife is the rock, man. We have such a great marriage relationship. She worked overtime to get through it. You know, she...

You know, raised our kids the right way through this. You know, I know we'll talk about it, but when I told her what I did, of course you did. Like, how would it matter? You had not done that, you know. She's a rock, man. She's a stud. I just feel bad for those guys in there right now, my old friends and stuff that don't have that, you know.

Tell us about your time as a judge, what kind of cases you were overseeing, what that looked like. Yeah, it was the greatest job I ever had. It wasn't a day that went by. I know my old judicial clerks would vouch for this to this day. You know, I would walk in. I said, this is the best job I've ever had. I mean, that was it, Ian. You know, I didn't want to go to the Court of Appeals. You guys would bug me about that. This was it. I handled most, a large percentage of the family law docket.

And no judge wants that docket. You can knock government workers all you want, and I know the public perception. It's 9 to 5. That family law docket in Colorado is a monster. You're working many hours, writing orders on the weekends, at nights, 3 in the morning in the office, whatever.

It's a monster. Nobody wants that. And it's family law. I loved it. Like, I loved it. Like, because I just always thought that I'm a normal person and I'm going to make an order to help you guys. I know you guys can't see it right now or your kids are struggling. Like, I think this parent has these strengths. This parent has these strengths. Let's make something here that gives your kids the best foundation possible.

Moving forward after this traumatic separation on them, like, I really cared, man. I'm not just saying that, you know? Foster kids, you know, kids that have been abused, like, I really tried, Ian, just because... I think I associate myself or feel more comfortable with people of that demographic than the big-time, you know, big civil cases and stuff. And those lawyers are amazing, don't get me wrong, but I just...

you know i try to you know one kid comes in i try to take good notes i know that kid's a chicago bears fan or walking hey did you watch the bears game you know and i really really tried um so i loved it and when i was interviewing with the governor's office you get the standard question why you want to do this and i don't mean this to sound pompous but this is the truth like i want to do this because i don't trust other people making these decisions there's great judges

good judges and then it goes down right any other industry and um some judges I would come in front of with families they just I could tell it was their job it's standard order standard language you know I I just I trusted myself making these decisions more than just because I cared I think so that so I never wanted to leave that docket and that's where I stayed

Did you have a lot of individuals that were formerly incarcerated in front of you? Yeah. In fact, going back even to when I was an attorney represented when I was representing parents, a lot of them were incarcerated because they qualified for a state paid lawyer, obviously. And then that carried over. Yeah. A lot of guys, you know, like a lot of parents that had criminal records that obviously the other lawyer is going to use against them in their custody fight.

All the time, probably on a daily basis. And again, I don't want to... The pendulum can swing too far sometimes. But I will say, there's some people with decorated histories that are darn good parents. And there are some that are not. And I think...

I'm pretty well at recognizing the difference. You know, not painting with that broad brush that we all as a society, including myself, are susceptible to because we got to get cases going. We got to get through the docket. You know, that's the part I refuse to do is, you know, all right, you know, you got this criminal history. Tell me about it. It changed or what'd you learn or, you know, do you know your kids, uh,

kindergarten teacher's name. You ever taken him to a doctor's appointment? You know, like things like that. Are you dad? And if you are, it's rock and roll. You know, you're going to keep being dad.

What was your personal perception of those individuals? Maybe ones that, you know, abandoned their kids and ended up in prison or battled addiction or anything like that. I mean, individuals that we see on the show all the time, nine times out of 10, they lost their kids throughout the process and they're doing great now. But there was a point where I'm sure those types of individuals appeared before you. All the time. My idea was this, and I think I probably said, probably lawyers got sick of hearing this is,

If you want to be a dad, even if you haven't, or a mom, whatever, you want to be a parent, even if you haven't, now's the time you're in front of a court, kind of a crossroads in this situation. I'm going to give you a rope. And here's the rope. You can pull yourself out of this hole or you can hang yourself with it. But I'm going to give you that rope. That was my thought about that. And I wanted those parents to walk out the courtroom understanding why I did what I did

And I want them understanding that here is the consequences, good or bad. You're going to keep using. You're going to keep not showing up. You know what the order is going to look like on a permanent basis, semi-permanent basis. How does it feel to have that much power? You know, as a judge, you can affect the outcome of someone's life for the immediate or the long-term future.

Is that a weight on your shoulders? Yeah, it's a big responsibility. And there's no doubt that a lot of sleepless nights, if you care, a lot of tears. I'm an emotional guy. Tell a lot of tears, you know, grumpy nights that my wife stuck by me, you know, like, you know, I just want to go to my bedroom, watch something stupid on TV, you

But, Ian, like, again, I don't want this to sound pompous. I trusted myself. You know, I was ready to make a decision. And I will live with the consequences of every decision I make if it's an area that I know something about. I'm not ignorant. It's pretty easy to say, I don't know. Go hire somebody. But I wanted to make those decisions. I wanted that responsibility. Yeah.

Did you ever make a decision and then reflect back on it and realize that was the wrong one? You know, I think I'm I am confident in my decisions from what I knew at the time. What I there there are some situations that I look back that I'm disappointed in the way I communicated that decision to the person.

Because it was important to me that if you agree or disagree with me when you walk out the courtroom, you know why I did what I did. So I think there were many situations that I didn't take the time to communicate because they're just case after case. And you may not – sometimes it's getting to be 430 and you got staff that needs to go home. You got the sheriff's office telling you to close up the courtroom. We got to get everybody at – we got to get home. So I may have –

cut people short on the communication process. What do you think is the biggest misconception that defendants or even plaintiffs have about judges? That everything's rubber stamped. There's a cookie cutter formula for your bond amount, for your sentence, for your, and that the judge imposes that and they go home and live their fancy country club lifestyle. You know, that is far from the truth. Like, you know,

you go home and you dwell on those decisions and you struggle with them. And, you know, maybe I would tell somebody, hey, I'm going to get you this order by Friday. Friday comes and I'm working on it. I'm like, I've got to take more time on this, you know, so the weekend passes and it's late. You know, the order's late, comes out the next week. But I think there is a perception, and maybe some don't care. You know, maybe some don't. But for me, that bothered me.

You know, I care what other people think of me, unfortunately, maybe too much, you know, that, that, Oh, he's just going to set this spot. I'm like, no, man, I want to hear like, do you have a job? Am I going to, if I give you too high of a bond, are you losing that job? You know, on the other hand, like this guy, even though the crime he's charged with or girl is, is not that serious. They're dangerous. I'm going to set a high bond again, that, that don't paint with a broad brush, hear it out, get the facts. Um,

I think there's that perception that, oh, no, you have this crime previously. You're charged with this. Here's your bond. Here's your sentence. No. We need to be very specialized. We have the greatest system in the world, Ian. It is not perfect by any means. You and I both know that. But it's the best when it's done right. Did you oversee a lot of criminal cases? No, I didn't.

I knew I wanted to because I wanted to build my resume to where I could cover anybody's docket and stuff. So I was starting to. But what I did do is this. And this will eventually be part of the story. Every judge gets what's called an on-call assignment, which means you are on call to law enforcement 24-7 for a week, two weeks, whatever the time period, however your district runs it.

And when you're on call in our district, we were so busy that we had to run bond hearings on the weekends. So I would do all those bond hearings on the weekends out at the jail. You walk into the jailhouse sitting from me to you, somebody charged with anything and everything, and you set their bond. The other thing when you're on call and even when you're in the courthouse, you got to sign the search warrants, um,

for an emergency or something, law enforcement will call you at two in the morning, be like, hey, we need a search warrant. Here's what's going on. Okay. Email me the affidavit, blah, blah, blah. Sitting there at the courthouse, we'd get an instant message, any job available, any judge available to do this search warrant or, you know, whatever, arrest warrant. And boom, if you're, nobody's in front of you, boom, yep, I'll do it. So

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facets of the criminal case I did. Is it hard mentally to set bail and let someone go free? I mean, we see all the time the judges will let someone out and then they'll go and commit another crime. And then we also see it reversed where the bail is set too high and that person didn't do the crime or, you know, it just... You get it. You get it. You get the ping pong. I feel like society, everybody picks a side of that. There's no right side here.

You know, yes. And when you're setting 30 bonds in an hour, like you, you know, there's factors. Are you a flight risk, your criminal history, the allegations against you? Like to gather all of those facts, analyze them and set the best bond we can for that person and society to protect them is hard. And that's a problem, you know.

What's the solution? Of course, more resources, more judges, more time. I get that. But shoot, Ian, I try to stay down the middle and when I get friends, family, social interactions that are so one-sided, well, that judge let them out and they commit a murder. Yeah, I get it. That's a problem. But what you don't see is that person that has been sitting there for eight months in jail, lost their job, and they beat the case or anything.

You know, it's a very low level case. There's just I don't have the solution. I wish I could sit here and talk to the bond commission and tell them here's the solution. There isn't. So the best thing we can do is hire judges that care and give them the time and resources to make the best decision they can.

I do like the federal systems bail system where it's not based on money. It's based on are they a flight risk? Are they a danger to the community? And they're looking at other examples. Sometimes prosecutors reach a little bit with what those examples are. But for the most part, the judge can look at like if he's charged with a crime from two years ago and he's working a job now, the chances are is not dangerous, a danger to society or a flight risk. And there's also, you know, good reasons.

There's prosecutors that you also don't, a lot of societies that doesn't see that part that they actually asked for a lower bond because they're trying to do the right thing too. You know, they are. And then you'll get good defense attorneys that are prepared for that. They've got their boss ready to tell the judge, Hey, this guy's a great worker. He hasn't missed a day of work in two years, you know, you know, so the attorneys need to take some responsibility, not just the judge too. It's a whole system. Um,

Yeah, and you know, we're in this society of headlines. And yeah, there's mistakes that get made. There's no doubt, Ian. But man, it's just...

It's hard. You know, try to do the right thing for both sides. How long were you on the bench for before your situation came about? Almost five years. As the actual judge, not as a magistrate. So I was a judge for, I mean, it was, now granted, I say five years because literally I was doing the exact same thing as a judge, as a magistrate. You know, they're very commingled. I was only sworn in as a judge for less than a year. When your incident happened. Yep. Wow. That was quick. All right.

All right. So tell us about what exactly happened. Yeah. Unfortunately, for the entertainment factor of your podcast, it may not be that entertaining because. All right, man. I get a call as the on-call judge.

Hey, Judge, we got a – he called it, if I remember right, I think the term is wrong, a tracker warrant. I really didn't really know what a tracker warrant was. I figured it would be a cell phone or a vehicle device to track a vehicle, whatever. And the law enforcement officer says, yeah, it's a drug case and I don't know if you want to do this one. I'm like, yeah, what's up? And he said, well, you're friends with the target on Facebook.

Now, again, he and I grew up here. So I'm like, you know, friends with people, you know, I'm not that active, but I have accounts and, you know, post, you know, my little boy hitting a home run or my daughter graduating preschool. You know, but I said, well, who is it? You know, because I'm friends with everybody around here. And he says the name. Yeah, I know the guy went to high school with him again. He was a daytime acquaintance. I wasn't friends with the guy like that.

I knew him. We see each other. What's up? You know, how you been? Always knew he was probably into some drugs and, you know, just the reputation in the community. I knew he was, you know. Didn't know to what extent. I didn't think it was anything big. You know, I didn't know. But this particular person, my – at that time, my best friend – I mean, family trips –

Talk every day, play video games at night, you know, travel. His wife, my wife, good friends, grew up in the same towns. My best friend still hung out with him. Not with me, but like, and I knew it was kind of a problem in his marriage because his wife, great lady, great job, didn't like he would hang out with him.

Again, we are the type, we're similar, me and him. We don't knock, you know, we don't, we're friends with everybody, man. And he would still hang out with him, you know, meet up for a beer, I thought. And so, and my friend had just gotten appointed as a local principal. So he was on his way up too, he's younger than me, he's on his way up too, doing good stuff. That was it, literally. Yeah.

Sorry, it's anticlimactic. That was it. So I tell the on- going back to the on-call law enforcement. I'll be real. It was like 10 o'clock at night. I was getting kind of tired. Yeah, I'm friends. I'm like, yeah, give it to the next judge. That happened a lot, especially with me because growing up there, you had a lot of conflicts of interest. I was like, yeah, give it to the next judge. We had, you know, a ladder of when that happened. It happened often.

That's the last I really thought about. I never opened the warrant. To this day, I've never read it. The next morning, my best friend would work out real early in the morning. I'd get up early too. I call him. I'm like, hey, man, this is my crime right here. Hey, man, cops are after so-and-so. Stop hanging out with him, dude. Like I don't want you sitting next to him when they arrest him and then you're in the newspaper or something.

You just got a good job. Stay away from him. Now, you know, that was, I think if I remember right, early spring. It's the last thing I ever thought about that case as far as what I actually did. Now, I would say this about my friend. You know, he made me a better father. He's a great son to his parents, made me a better son.

He's one of those guys who was there to help his parents move and just good kid to his family, very family oriented. So I loved him. And my during this time, right before that call, my dad had a stroke and essentially had a slow death for eight months in and out of assisted living and hospitals. And that kid would in what I don't know why.

I never wanted my dad to eat alone in these places. He's a sister living. That kid and his brother, I would go eat breakfast with my dad at like six in the morning. Just, I didn't even know they went because they knew, you know. And I love this kid. This is my friend. And so along the way, months go by and every once in a while,

He would say, hey, what's going on with so-and-so's cases? I didn't know. I literally lied to him. And I'd be like, man, everybody's rolling on each other. Stay off the phone. Do not associate with those guys. I just lied to him. Keep them away. And it was June, July 2019. I'm working in my chambers. Hey, Ryan, cops are here. They need to talk to you. I thought they were just going to check in, like security, everything going okay.

Like, yeah, come on in. Sit down, guys. What's up? Hey, do you know so-and-so? That's my friend. Like, yeah. What'd he do? You know? And, uh, like, did you tell him about, um, a warrant against the target? I'm like, I can't, I didn't think anything of this. And I'm like, yeah. Yeah, I told him. I told him to stay away from that guy. Friend doesn't need to be with him. I was like, my friend's a good, good guy, guys. Like, he...

You know, I spent a lot of time with this guy. He ain't involved with whatever's going on. I can trust you that. Or I can tell you that. Again, I'm thinking it's him. And then they just say, one, I think it was an FBI agent and then a local officer. And I said, well, your friend informed the target that we were going to arrest him with the information you gave him and the target prepared for our, when we went in.

And he cleaned everything up. And the first thing they said was, do you understand our law enforcement could have got hurt? And then it clicked. I'm like, oh, my God, guys. Like, no, I never even thought about that scenario. And, you know, admitted everything I did. And I'm not...

I do want to say this. There's people out there that treated their criminal case differently. You and I treated very differently, your case and my case. There's no right or wrong. It's right or wrong for you as a person. What was right for me was I'm an open book. Here's what I did. Bring it on. What do you guys want to do? I need this over with because I got a family and I'm not leaving them in debt. Like fair or not fair, I just want the finish line. But that's just the way I – when it clicked with me, it was like –

Do I go into criminal defendant mode that I've been advising people to do? You know, shut up, invoke your fifth. And that's not, it's probably right in 95% of the cases. But I don't know what it was. It was just like, zone it. And I didn't. I just said, no. Like, I told him to stay away. I'm sorry. I didn't even think about this maybe endangering law enforcement. Best man in my wedding is a cop in that force. You know, I...

And I just told him exactly what I just told you. Wait, why did so much time pass? Like you passed on, you declined to sign the warrants. Shouldn't have went to another judge that night. They sign it and then the arrest is made within 24, 48 hours tops. So here's what it, unlike maybe your case, I never got the discovery on my case. That was one of the deals they said, we're not giving you discovery or we're not giving you this plea agreement. So what I believe happened is,

Is that this warrant was to track his car so they were building the case over and over and over and I believe He was actually going through a grand jury indictment not they weren't just gonna do a F affidavit of arrest that's what I believe is going on all these months and was it a federal case or no, this is the local case my backyard and

So did this guy flip on you then? So what happened then, he gets arrested. They had enough on him to still arrest him obviously because it was an investigation. And he was a much bigger dealer than I ever knew about. Connections down south, the whole thing. He gets arrested and he does what most, many, some criminal defendants do. How did you – they thought they had a dirty cop. Yeah.

Because this guy was, this target was like a philanthropist. He was in, he was a, you know, friends with the mayor. He was all over the town. And give me a deal and I'll tell you how I found out. So he says, so-and-so, my friend, told me you guys were coming after me. We're real close. And he got that information from a local judge.

Here's the judge's name. And they probably think they have a corrupt, dirty judge. It's exactly the next step. You get it. They probably opened up all your cases, reviewed everything. They're like, I don't think they really knew what to do at first. And so I'm still, you know, I leave that meeting with them, call my, God bless, this is the guy I work with now for, attorney Greg Gold,

I call him when they leave and I just tell him what happened again. I don't know why. And it didn't click with me that I was in trouble. I told him what just happened. And he's like, Hey, you're in trouble. You need a lawyer. And then I'm thinking, I'm like, golly. Yeah. And this is the same day. I'm kind of in a panic mode. They came in the morning and they had, they had arrested or I don't arrested, but they FBI at the exact same time they were talking to me, they had my friend and,

is what I believe. And, you know, so they're sending, he's talking, I'm talking, you know, they coordinated this. And I'm like, you know, God bless Greg, man. He's still one of my best friends today. Text me right when I walked in here and he's like, you need a lawyer. You're in trouble. And I'm like, Greg, I, you know, Greg, I've never even seen cocaine or like, I am not involved with this stuff. Like, it's not me.

He's like, I don't know. He's like, I was like, how can I be in trouble? And, um, I mean, I was so frantic that day. Like I had my judge computer that they assigned to you, your laptop. I walked to our district minister. I said, I want you to take my computer right now. Cause I never want to get accused of deleting something, changing a case, reading something that I shouldn't be take it. Like that's how paranoid I was. Um, again, I didn't know. And, um,

They come back after that, the FBI. How long? The same day. And they said, you are in trouble. You're under investigation for obstruction of justice. We don't know if you're going to get charged. You know, this may be nothing. And again, I'm going back to your question. In my mind, all this was is, is this judge involved? Their thinking, is he involved with this drug ring? You know, so that's where my mind goes.

How do I show these people I am always, my whole life, this specific person, kept an arm's distance. Just enough that I didn't disrespect him. I liked him growing up, you know, but I wasn't, he was a daytime friend. And, you know, and then that's when life took a U-turn. Go home that night and I had no idea what was going on. And I'm not just saying this and I'm not knocking anybody out.

I, at that point when I went home, I knew what I did was wrong. I should not have told my friend. I shouldn't have told him. Come to find out, I didn't, I say he's my best friend, spend all, talk to him every day. He was buying drugs from the Target. I did not know that. And I will go to my grave. I did not know. My best friend, Greg, hooks me up with the lawyer. You know, I'm so blessed and lucky in life. Like one of the biggest firms in Colorado,

Ex-US Attorney, the whole resume. He was second chair, first chair, was a retired Supreme Court Justice, Chief Justice. He calls me, says, "I got word what's going on. I'm gonna help you." I said, "No, like, I am not putting anything on a credit card. If I have to do this on my own, I'm doing it on my own, because my family will not be in debt over this."

Like I'm thinking I'm going to go work in a nine to five making 25, 30 grand a year. Like I'm not putting my family in debt. It's like, nope, we're doing it for free. So, and this is, you know, this sometimes what gets put in the newspaper and social media is not what happened. And one of the things I knew what I was did wrong. I called the discipline committee and told them what I did the second day after

And I don't know why it gets out there that somebody else or another judge reported me. I did that. Like I have the email. I have the paperwork I filled out the next day. Again, violated everything I've ever told a criminal defendant. Shut up. Don't talk to him. I wrote it under oath what I did and sent it to him the next day. And I go to our district administrator.

And I'm like, I'm going to resign. She's like, don't resign. Just see how this, just wait. Just, we don't know anything. I said, no, those cops will never trust me again. And I respect that. Like, what am I going to do up here? Like I, and I resigned. Oh, so you didn't get kicked off. You resigned. I resigned. And again, I shouldn't care, but the newspapers and stuff is like, other judges got me. Like, no, I, I,

resigned, you know, in fact one of the sentencing letters from the other side and my sentence was, you know, he quote-unquote did what did the right thing and resigned like said in a negative tone like I that's the truth like I I knew what I did would violate trust with important people that I needed to work with for the rest of my career and I I resigned when did they decide to charge you how long months later and

And I kind of did what you did. Mindset is they think I'm part of this. I need to prove I am not part of this group. They want my cell phone. There you go. I haven't deleted text in three years since I got that phone. There you go. Handed my phone over to the FBI, gave them the password. Every text, every email, everything. Here you go. And so I'm thinking this will prove to them I'm not part of this, right? Months go by.

They're still looking. They're still thinking about indicting. They don't know if they're going to indict you. Talk about the worst time, right? When you'd have no idea what's going on, what's going to happen to you, whether you'd already been indicted. But that time lag is, and maybe some people say you asked for it. Do the crime, do the time. I respect that thought, but.

It doesn't change what you're going through. I'm sitting there gardening at my house, looking over my shoulder. Are they going to pull up? Am I going? Is there a grand jury out right now? Like, I was so scared to get arrested in front of my kids. You know, so scared. Months are going by. Now we're in COVID and, you know, I don't have a job. I can't.

Luckily some lawyers said, "Come work man." So they kind of put me to work, but I was worthless, you know? Like you're not eating or sleeping or... It's terrible, Ian. Like, terrible. And, you know, are they in a grand jury right now? I'm researching how do they arrest people. I just kept calling my lawyer and I'm like, "I will turn myself in. I don't care. Whatever decision they want, I will do it." So, lawyer calls, they want an interview with you. And I said, "Look,

Of course I'll talk. I've given you my phone. But I am not like some guy who's going to tell every secret I know on every kid I grew up with, you know, for some of your audience, you know, a snitch or whatever, you know. First off, I don't know that much. I know rumors just like from the Target. I don't know that much. I'm not – by now I had read, you know, about paperwork and stuff if I do go to prison. Like I am not doing it. Like no, they believe –

They're pretty sure you're not part of this. You know, you don't have that much information and stuff, but they still want to make sure you're not part of it. It's like, all right, let's talk. Everybody think about the stupid stuff you put in your phone. If the FBI ever got a hold of any normal human, especially guys, phone, how ridiculous the dumb stuff we tell each other. It's

I sit down. So I was like, all right, I'm ready to go do the proffer and talk with the FBI. It is U.S. prosecutor from the Washington, D.C. flies in that does the public corruption stuff. I mean, like, oh, God, here we go. Boom, sit down. Put up a text. They asked me, so how was the drugs and gambling in Atlantic City? I'm like,

What? I was like, I've never been to Atlantic City. Like, oh, really? Here's a text from so-and-so that says, can't wait to do drugs and gamble in Atlantic City, guys. And first off, it comes from a person who is straighter than I am, like as far as anything illegal or anything. And I'm like, here we go. I'm like, guys,

I don't know how to say this because the way I'm going to tell you is so cheesy and what everybody else says, you got to look at it in context. This is a joke.

And text after text after text of just dumb guys. Like, right? I come home. My lifestyle on the bench was I come home. I'm not going to the bar and BS and talking shop and gossiping. I turn on the Rockies game, sit there and text my buddies. And we're just cracking jokes, knocking people. And it just unfolds from there.

And, you know, I'm like, this isn't about me being part of drugs. This is about me, like, doing things I shouldn't have. Saying how, you know, oh, so-and-so was in my courtroom today, man. Or, you know, like, one of them, I had a dad in front of me. This is wrong. 100% wrong what I did. But, like, for example, I...

My buddies text me. They're golfing on a Saturday. Like, hey, they send me a picture of them golfing, you know, bragging that I'm working. They're having fun, right? It's jokes. And I was like, yeah, guys. And I take a picture of my desk. Like, look at me, you know, talking crap with the guys. Well, there's lit against names. If you zoom in on the photo on my computer screen, you could go online and get it publicly. But it came from me. So stuff like that starts coming out, you know.

And I'm just like, oh my God. So other ethical violations through my buddy Tex start coming out and it just goes on. Nothing about me being part of this drug ring, right? This is how bad it was, Ian.

Again, we grew up at the Target. I sent my buddy, we were getting ready to do a, me and my buddies doing a chicharroni fry, right? We do this a couple times a year, get a bunch of pork skin and hang out on a Sunday and fry chicharrones. And they were like packaged meat everywhere on my buddy's table. And I send a text, I'll bet that's what so-and-so's kitchen looks like because it looked like, you know, drug package. And it was the Target I put there. Oh, so you don't know anything? I'm like...

Guys, I don't. If I haven't earned the fact that I would tell you guys everything by giving you my phone, I don't know what's going to earn it. But I don't know anything. Stuff like that. And I'm just like, golly. So I leave that proffer and get a call a couple weeks later and said, they're going to indict you. I was like, all right. Let's get it over with. Did they let you self-surrender? Yeah. So, I mean, I did. Like, literally, I had it so organized going back to the fear of anything happening in front of my kids.

That was it. So they said, waive indictment, accept this plea. Like everything was done beforehand. And I was like, I need to get sentenced. I need this over with. And I need to start building a life that one day, you know, those kids and my mom and my wife, they can be proud of me. I got to start. That's all I cared about. It was getting to the finish line, getting to where we are now. That's all I cared about.

I didn't care what they put in the plea agreement. I didn't care. I think I made three edits to the plea agreement. Right, wrong, indifferent, I don't know. That's where my jacked up mental state was, man. It was a dark time, man, like dark. What happened to your friend? Did you ever have closure with him? You know, he took a deal. He got indicted for obstruction too. He got, I don't know, 60, 90 days. They charged him with obstruction too? I just feel like this is a very far-reaching case.

It just seems silly. Oh no, man. I, you know, that's an easy, yeah, I respect that person, but let me stop there and put it this way. This is the newspapers. If you're sentencing me, we can't have people do what I did as the judges. And we can't let this guy off easy. You know, if it got out that I didn't get indicted, I could have met, I put some people in some bad spots, right? I put a black cloud on

Whatever fa- right, wrong, indifferent. There's no way that people's society are going to know the real facts of everything. And I'm not saying they make an example out of me. That's a bad way to put it. But I respect that they had to do something to me. I can-

I can respect that. You would have thought, though, that resigning the loss of the career would have been enough. I think that would have been more than fair. And I stipulated to a disbarment, too. Gave my law license. Yeah. I feel like even something like that could have been negotiated. I try not to go there. You know what I mean? It happened. I live a blessed life now.

I'm picking my kids up from school. I haven't missed a practice in a game that I missed all the time when I was a judge working crazy hours. My wife's happier now that I'm home.

Just try to stay there, man. Yeah, you also don't know what it's prevented you from, too. Like, you never know. Maybe you could have been a trial judge for, like, a, you know, a cartel member that would have, you know, attacked you or something. Absolutely. And you sent them to prison. Absolutely. You just don't know how the universe works like that. Yeah, no doubt. No doubt. None of us do, you know. So what was the final charge you pled out to? So we worked the deal. It was obstruction. And, you know, that...

For people that have been through the system listening, there's an element of the crime that the mental state that I had intended to obstruct this case. I did not know my friend. That would have been an interesting trial. And in fact, I did a personal memo on that element to my lawyers. Their associate did a memo, and both of us came to the conclusion that the likelihood of

them proving that was pretty low. Do you know how it is? Anybody in the feds right now, their conviction rate is...

At trial, it's like 90%. Well, I went to trial. Yeah, exactly. It's hard. I mean, they just overcharge you, and then they've got so many people working for them. But long story short, I never went there. I was like, man, did I go to trial? And they weren't going to do the trial for free, and I respect that. Of course they couldn't. That's a big deal. No trial was going to cost me.

you know, 40, $50,000 I was not willing to pay. And, and Ian, I, I'm not kidding. And this is no knock to anybody. This is me. Everybody's different. I just watched my dad die for eight months, a few years before that. And you see this progression towards the end of life of having to look yourself in the mirror. And for me to look at myself in the mirror, it was admit what you did,

And just accept whatever this judge, this prosecutor thinks is justice. Even if it's right, wrong. Could be perfect. So I'm like, here's what I did. You chose to indict me. Let's get this sentencing rocking and rolling. And I will, I'll deal with it. That was just me. And I'm not...

I'm not knocking anybody that treats their case any specific way, but that was me, and I needed to get it over with, man. I was in a dark, dark spot, Ian. Anybody that goes through a traumatic event, even if you caused it, it's still trauma, right? Fight, fight, freeze. My response is solutions and a finish line.

And that was the quickest way to a finish line. And I think the right thing to do for my personality and building a future that my kid, kids, my mom, my friends can say, Ryan's a loyal guy. He's true to himself. I'm proud to be his friend. I'm proud he's my dad. How much time did they sentence you to? A year and a day. And after sentencing, how long did you have until you self-surrendered? Well, even before sentencing, we're set.

get a one sentence memo from the judge due to scheduling conflict we're continuing the sentencing so there goes another and they continued it for like six months and six months doesn't sound like a lot of time until you're in the darkest place of your life you know and you have to look at your kids every day so i get sentenced and um self-surrender i had done every piece of research you could about the federal prison system i've never worked in fed cases right

And there's a law that you're supposed to be sentenced within a certain geographic region of your support. We had two, we had a low in a camp in Colorado. So I'm, you know, I'm just telling my lawyers, and I did in my sentencing, verbalize, you know, please, you know, I got a full courtroom of people that love me and I love and I need them. And I need my kids, my wife and my mom, my sister, you know,

And I get a letter like a month later. It says you're reporting like another two months later in Yankton, South Dakota, in the middle of just as COVID was reopening. But so I got to go to Yankton, South Dakota from Colorado. And my buddy, we said goodbye to my wife and my kids. And my buddy packed me up and he drove me. Stopped and fished along the way on I-80. But it was a God blessing that I went there. It's not, I don't know how you felt.

It wasn't easy seeing people in prison. I would rather people not come see me. You know, it's hard. You know, it's COVID with glass in front of us and stuff. It wasn't like the typical camp stuff. You know, the first phone call, sitting in front of all these guys, trying to figure this place out. You know, and I knew I was going to cry when I heard the voice. I'm like, I can't talk and I hung up.

It was easier not to talk to people. So I think that was a blessing that I went out to Yankton to where people couldn't come see me. Why do people get a year and a day in prison? Good question. Because in the feds, as long as you didn't commit a certain type of crime, most of it, the biggest category, have a firearm, is you get good time. You get stuff knocked off your sentence. But you don't get good time...

For any sentence less than a year, a year or less. So you'll see judges. So they, you know, did me a good one and give me the year and a day. So I get that good time. How much time did you expect to do off that based on all your research and everything going in? Nine months. I expected to do about 80, 85 percent. And that was with halfway house or without? That was with out in camp. Expected to do eight, about nine months off.

Now, remember this time period. So this is what? 2020. This is right when the Trump administration signed the First Step Act. For those out there, family in there, it is a system that was designed, is designed, that if you do certain things, mainly classes and have a job, you earn times off your sentence. Again, only for certain crimes, which I qualified for. Ian?

You remember those days. Like, the rollout of things like that in the federal prison system is terrible. And you're messing with guys' freedom. So you got guys in there that are getting their sentencing paperwork from their case manager that shows first step credits, X days.

You get guys in there, first step credit, zero days. Now imagine going back to your prison days, how much chaos that creates in there. People are mad, happy, and this was rolling out. The implementation of the First Step Act was terrible. We didn't know if I get caught with an extra pair of shorts on my locker, does that kill all my credits?

Your case managers didn't know. Why am I getting credits? This guy's not. Nobody. It was chaos. But what I did think was if it's rolled out, I know what you get credit for. Jobs and work. Or I'm sorry, work and classes. I took every class I could. Fast forward, I earned 30 days off. The guy next to me,

or nothing and was a much a crime just like very minor crime he was a tax guy got zero and rated T for teen each year thousands of adults lose their shred it's an epidemic simply known as shred loss but it doesn't have to be this way because rekindling your shred is as easy as playing the new Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 and 4 with new parts

cross-platform multiplayer, and sick new game modes, we can put an end to shred loss everywhere. Hit the new Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 and 4 and show the world that the shred's not dead. Pre-order Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 and 4 and play the Foundry demo. So, ended up serving, what was it, eight, nine months out of everything. And what's interesting, during that time period, all the short timers like yourself, they were just putting on ankle monitors. It's almost like, why didn't the judge just...

sentence you to home confinement. Because at that time period, anyone that was in a camp, then the judges must knew of what was going on, you know? It's ankle monitor. So were you in when COVID? No, I got out in 2019. I was there when end of 2018, he passed the first step back, but it didn't affect me at all. And back before this first step back,

The programs were for nothing. I was planning on doing programs. I was like, what's the incentive? This is stupid. The intent of the program is great, I think. Well, before. Before the first step. Gotcha. There was no benefit of doing it. Their good time policy was non-existent. It was just like your standard 85%, but there was no additional benefit.

There was no incentive for anything else. So this was going on. Were you there when – I can't remember the program, but they were – like going back to ankle monitors, they were sending people home left and right if you had a certain body mass index. No, that wasn't what they were doing. I wasn't at this time, right? So they're sending people home that are overweight –

To ankle monitor. So really I thought at sentencing, I was like, I'll probably get ankle mark. Cause they don't want, you know, COVID's gone. This is after the lockdown was lifted. So that was the tail end of course, but they weren't sending a lot of people away. So I'll probably, like you said, like, you know, I'm obviously not a flight risk. I'm not violent. I thought I'd probably get ankle monitor. But again, you know, like again, I would resolve my mind to just whatever they're going to do, they're going to do. And I'm going to put my head up and,

i'm gonna go right i'm gonna go through this wall i'm gonna do it right you know how did the uh how did the inmates uh respond to finding out you're a judge so granted it's a camp and there's not like gang members but there are some drug dealers there are people right you get those yeah you get those guys people are like i think if you google yankton it was like years and years ago i mean it's the us's most cushiest prison

Like, it's still prison, guys. Like, you get guys that have been down for 20 years that just work themselves down, right? But here's what I did. And I don't like telling people I did time because I think it's a disrespect or it's a knock to guys that have done real time. Like, those guys that have worked themselves down, that's a whole different world when you're going low, medium, highs. There's a whole different world. So I know I did camp. Like, I'm no—

Tough guy or nothing, right? But here's what I did. Again, immersed myself into the federal prison sentence. Before I went, I looked up statistics of like deaths, murders, serious assaults. And here's what I came to my mind. I'm not going to get killed in there. Could I get beat up? Yeah, I can live with that. I ain't getting killed. So, Ian, I went in with that mindset. I got asked when I got there, do you want to go to PC? Nope.

And I just owned what I did. I got lucky. Cell phones are rampant, right? Somebody sneaks in a cell phone, they look me up. But thank God, instead of society, they read the article. They actually read what I did. And they were cool with me.

They're cool about it. I guess in a way, your crime benefits the criminal, so they're happy with you. That was their perception, exactly. That's like with corrupt cops, you know, as long as it doesn't go against the criminal. Yeah. Like if you weren't like, you know, over-sentencing or doing something crazy to hurt them, you were in a way one of them. Yep, yep. So they, you know, I, but there's so much about prison that ironically enough, I wish society would adopt. Like,

Like, I don't know if you feel this way, like, I'm not dumb. You go in there and you shut up. Just feel it out, right? Don't be disrespectful. Be clean. Keep your stuff clean. Don't do anything to draw attention. So I was ready. But that, it's just like going into a new job. Don't go in there and start causing ruckus. And, you know, so I went in and I did it the right way. You know, I shut up. You know, I was quiet.

And then the step, you know, the process, you know, people start, okay, this guy's all right, man. They look me up. He's all right. And you get accepted a little bit. But then the thing comes, any human you put in locked-in confinement or confinement, but you don't have freedom. But then you get to the point where you get comfortable. And I think some people get in a little trouble there. Once you get comfortable...

You know, man, and then you're willing to join a conversation, you know, and you start opening up. But if you wait, you do it like that, people know this guy's, you know, he's not a problem. And then the next step happens to where human instincts take over. You need to live. These guys are playing poker. These guys are eating good food. And again, I think people get in trouble in there. Would you get to that stage, right?

Yeah, you know, I played cards. I you know, I still got friends in there So I'm not gonna you know, so I lived um And I think some people just don't have some inmates don't have really good boundaries at that point You know, I think I did it right, you know But going back to what you said I lived with the I came to the conclusion that I'm not gonna get killed I was scared because

I'm half Japanese, half white. I look Mexican. I know everything's race-based. But what shocked me about that whole deal, about the whole race and car thing, is you forget these cars want numbers in there. So they are willing to accept you, you know? Immediately get approached in there, you know, by a certain car that wasn't my race, but when I look and, you know,

I looked the guy right in the eye and I said, here, I'm going to do my own time, but you have nothing to worry about me. I don't see nothing. I don't hear nothing. Because I'm married to a Hispanic and I grew up in a Mexican community. So, you know, and they were pretty cool about that. You know, they knew I was Hispanic.

staying back and you know not to um but here's where I got lucky again lucky blessed in my life is as you know in Yankton right there's the the car but the secondary car really is where you're from you know and I'm Colorado you know I don't know like

In Oxford, did they have like a Jersey car or a? The camp was too small for that. I know Yankton's a bigger camp, but we only had like 100 inmates, 96 inmates. But at Fort Dix, when I was at the low, there's 2,500 people that was car oriented. Yeah. So this kind of secondary car is where you're from. Ain't nobody from Colorado except like the man in one of the races that I look. He's from 10 miles from where I live.

And him and I were cool. We hit it off, talked to him to this day. Great guy. He ran it clean there. Nobody did anything they weren't supposed to do if something had to happen. It happened the right way. He ran a safe place if you didn't step out of line. And so I got lucky. I got real lucky. Was prison what you expected it to be based on all your research and what you just knew about prison being a regular person in society? You know what? Uh...

like i know there's an entertainment factor about prison and stories about you know here's the one part that i didn't expect is once you get to that comfort level of having to live a little bit having to have a real cup of coffee whether it's against the rules or not having to have hot sauce on your food say we can take condiments right to our cafeteria once you get to that stage of just

minor things. And I know these guards have to run it. Like, you give inmates an inch, they're going to take a while. I know it. So I'm not saying what they do is wrong. But you know what really shocked me, Ian, was how petty it can get in there between the guards to the inmates. In the sense of, if they don't like you, and they may have good reason not to like you, you're the one who's going to get written up for having an extra pair of socks.

Like the pettiness. You know, I lived across an old man who ended up getting cancer in prison. And he gets out, died shortly after. Old man, pops, right? This old man, you know, the light goes red and you got to go. An unscheduled count. He's in the bathroom and he doesn't see the light. He's in the bathroom. Old man, right? He comes walking out. Pops, get your bunk, pops. They write him up for that.

That was, I was, it was so hard for me to live seeing people being unfairly treated. Some of them, some of them deserve everything they got from them guards. That man, that bothered me. And think of the time period for steps rolling out, rolling out every writeup, your credits are gone. So I don't know how it is now, but my assumption is if some of those guards don't like you, they can kill your freedom for petty things. And, and,

And you know what also shocked me was the, maybe some don't care. Maybe they do. I don't know. And this is not an, they got a tough job. Those guys got a tough job. There were a couple of great guards, man, that, you know, I could have, I could see myself. It'll never happen. I could see myself having a beer with them. There were some that were terrible that I would not be in the same room with them for fear that I'd do something dumb and fight them. Just bad guys. Like same with inmates. There's good and bad, right?

And, you know, but like the pettiness that you would see that shocked me. Some of the unfair like they don't understand, like the day I came in. So I reported at noon. They did a complete teardown of where I was living, my pod. And what and then I come in that afternoon. What does that tell those other inmates? Who's this guy? Why did they tear us down? Like that put me in a kind of a bad spot.

Another thing I'm sitting there in a parenting classroom, right? And I'm not talking, you know, I'm a former family law judge. These guys are, you know, some of them don't haven't seen their kids in 10, 20 years. And they're,

And the professor who was a guard was like, you never talk. I want you to answer this question. I'm just like, and it put me in a real bad spot. So I didn't even answer this question. I said, you know what my observation is? I feel real bad for a lot of guys in here whose kids are being influenced outside of here to hate their dad. And so I tried to make the best out of it, but I'm a guy who's got a great wife, stable family,

Like everything that I'm sure some of these guys wish they had and may have burnt bridges, you know? That put me in a bad spot. You know, that, like, guys, guards, stop. Like, you know, you don't understand, or maybe you do understand, but don't put me in this spot, man. You know? There's a lot of things that could get you in trouble.

What were some inmate codes that you had to follow? Like inmates make rules, you know, that you had to learn, follow, and maybe were even surprised about. That's a great question. If there's one thing, this is so dumb to probably many, many, many people out there. First off, the regular stuff's normal. Stay clean, man. Like, you know, don't draw attention. Let's get past that. Ian, I never understood...

And we do it as a joke, or I used to. And I'm scared if this ever happens to me. Another man calling another man the B word. And I know we can cuss on here, but my kids might say this. That is, you better fight if somebody says that. And that is the one thing that to this day, when I hear my friends, somebody in society, call somebody else a, here we go. Like you, you, and it sounds dumb.

But I'm wired that way in the sense of there are boundaries in this world. And if you consciously cross that boundary, we all need to. There's a reason you cross that boundary. I'm scared even if somebody ever says that to me. You know, I hear my buddies call each other that and it bothers me. That's the one thing that stuck with me.

You know? I don't know. Yeah, I had a similar experience because we were playing cards. I was like, oh, you're such a bleep or suck my bleep. And that's how we would talk in high school. Yeah, right? And these dudes don't play around with that. No. And that's where the getting comfortable and having to live a little, when you get to that point in prison, you better be sure that it's innocence, you know?

We didn't grow up in that environment, you know? And I know there's a certain sect in the streets that if you call another man that, it's on. Now I know that. I didn't know that, you know? And because I mistakenly said that. And I was lucky enough that this was pretty deep into my stay. And these guys, I was friends, and it was to my bunkie. And it was a joke. We were joking around. And he just stood right... I was on top bunk. He stood right up, looked me right in the face. And he's like...

say that word again in here. And then one of the toughest Mexicans was across and he just gets out of his bed and he comes walking and he looks right at me. He's like, you ever say that to me, I'm going to slap you. And I'm just like, and it just hit me, you know? And I'm,

God, here we go. And then you're in that stage of, well, do I prove I'm tough or do I apologize and look like a weakling? It's a tough spot to be in. You got to play it right, you know? But that sticks with me to this day. I don't like hearing that. What was your favorite commissary food? Look, I grew up, I love food. Like,

Me and my wife have probably consumed 8,000 calories each before noon this whole trip in New York City. This is the greatest food city in the world. I love food growing up. And you're in great shape for... I don't know about that, man. You know, I grew up eating anything and everything from my Japanese grandma to the crazy stuff she made to my Mexican buddies. And I love food. So for me, I knew that was never going to be a problem. I miss...

You know what I meant? Oh, I would say, well, I'll tell you this. I was conscious about my commissary. I didn't want to come off going in knowing, studying and stuff as somebody who had money. Yeah. I didn't, I have money for people in there. You know, I'm not wealthy out here. I have money for people in there. I have resources. So I would tell my wife, don't send me that much. Don't, you know, I'm going to, I'm not going to buy a lot of, so I came in, like I wasn't going to do a lot of the commissary stuff, you know?

And I went in going to be healthy. So but you know what I miss? And this is I don't know why is you got to have a hustle. Right. So here was my again, I didn't want to come off as well. So here was my hustle for Sunday football. I would make burritos and I would take those dehydrated beans and I take the meat log. Right. Dice it up.

And then crunch up pork grinds, roll it up into the tortilla, and then iron it, right? Crisp it up like the McDonald's or the Taco Bell grilled burrito, right? Those were so good, man. I miss those burritos. And I love Mexican food, but for some reason those hit.

Oh, I miss those. There's something about prison food that is just like I had ramen noodles the other night. Just like it's just I don't know. It just it hits. Yes, it works. It's good. It is, especially when you're in there. Yeah, it really is. And people are fascinated with the prison food thing. Yeah, but that's that's a good because I mean, it hits. You think about it like you're a normal person, especially like a judge or something that goes to prison. And then there you are eating prison.

You know that. It's fine, man. You know what I miss for some reason was in the breakfast days. Now, out here I don't eat it, but...

Every once in a while, you would get those Raisin Ban Clusters. Every once in a while, and the word would get back, hey, man, we got the clusters. We got the clusters. Man, that tasted so good. Fried Fish Fridays. I miss that. It depended on the fish, though. Yeah, true. Because it was so hit or miss, the patties. When I was at the camp, they had gotten a bunch of the expired McRibs from McDonald's. Oh, really? So we were eating McRibs.

like they'd put it as like a side, like as if it was like a sausage patty, they would just pass them out. Right. And so we were eating that, they would get a lot of food. Did you have, you, here's another thing I miss. Um, you get hungry, you know, especially when you're trying not to come off and you're working out a lot. Like I got hungry, like physically hungry. And, um,

The hamburgers are terrible, right? Whatever, I eat them. But our inmates, our cooks would make vegetable patties that look like hamburger patties. They would just mash up beans and whatever leftover vegetables. And they were twice the size of the regular hamburger patty. Those were good. And so I leave and I come out and I'm like, I'm going to try this Incrediburger or whatever. Nothing compared. All my meat-eating buddies, if they could try that veggie burger in prison...

That was good. When you got out of prison, were a lot of your friends and even family curious about your stay in prison? Yeah, of course, right? And so should everybody that listens to this. Your podcast does a great job of giving an insight. But I don't know about you. I don't know if I really like talking about it because I don't like talking about the fights I saw

the politics which there isn't a ton right you know you sit with the right people and stuff but it's like man talk to the guys that were in the high talk to those guys like um I feel like you know if there's any of my and I'll call them my friends that did real time that are either still there or now out and hear me sitting here trying to talk about you know prison stories like come on that's disrespect to them I don't know if respect's the right word but you know

You know, I did it the right way, you know, and, you know, I was willing to, you know, if I got tested, I was going to live with the physical consequences. You know, I can say all that. Yeah, you come out. So, but, you know, I have a buddy that we grew up with and we've never been in trouble. Like, well, tell me about this. I'm like, man, here, call up this guy. He was down for 17 and he's out now. You call him if you want to hear stories. You know, I want to talk to you about.

Couple of things. The first thing I would tell people about prison that I want to preach, you have a platform. I want to tell people this, is that if you've ever been in that prison or facing that and you have kids or friends, family, it's just my stories with my kids. Here's something you can take from it. You will never in your life ever have a harder conversation than telling your kids and wife, mom, you're going away.

Never. So when you want to make that call at work, you've been pushing off or send that email or you need to call your mom or your dad and tell them something hard or your friends, pick up the dang call, send the email. It is not hard. I preach that to these lawyers that I work with every day. Like, oh God, I got to make that call. Dude, I told my kids I was going to prison. Call them. It ain't hard. So that, I want that. I don't know if that's a big life lesson or not, but

When you experience, like, and you own it, and you're like, I didn't dance around it, and my kids were young. It's like, all right, wife, tonight's the night we're telling. You know, race, sit down. Madden, sit down. Dad made a mistake. He's going to leave for a while. I don't know how long, but probably a year. And he's going to go fix what he did wrong. You do that, man, nothing's harder than that in life. Nothing. That's what I want to tell people.

You know, if you want to talk prison and stuff, which I would have too, to somebody who's been in. I also like talking about like the things that we touched on about there's really the system at my camp. It's not reflecting anywhere else where I was. It's ran good. You stay clean. Like stuff that you don't bother other people. You're not drawing attention to other people's stuff.

You know, you live respectable, you know, holding doors. Please. Thank you. You know, you show respect in there because there's consequences if you don't. But just why do you have to go to prison for the first time in your 40s to be like, man, this is a controlled and everybody's doing their part. You pick up trash if you see it. You know, that guy mowed that lawn, pick those weeds and, you know,

So that you can live somewhat of a decent lifestyle in there. And you thank them, you know? You don't run across the flowers that this inmate, you know, just worked on. You respect it. I wish some of those aspects could be brought into society, to be real, you know?

There's a part of it, you know? TV rooms ran good, you know? I think the biggest thing is, like, you know, you got these Karens that are flipping out on, like, the Starbucks line or something that would never fly in prison. Oh, jeez. You see these people get worked up, yelling at the servers, and it's just crazy. That would never happen in prison. Right? You would get shaked. You'd wait in line, right? And you don't complain about the line or the guy that's taking forever to get the fries done. You don't cut the line.

No, we all have a place. We all have a role. That just bothers me at these places where people are just mistreating the waiter or the waitress wrong or the cashier.

Man. Yeah. I just, yeah. Mistreating service industry people is such a bad look. I was actually reading an article too. They were talking about how this new generation that works in like the cashiers and stuff are, they don't really say hi or greet you. And that's frustrating the older generation because it's just like different. But that's also like prison too because no one's in.

acknowledging you in the line unless it's like your boy that lives in your unit or something. So it's just interesting how that works too. We had a great

oh man, this, I knew I made it. I knew I was okay at this point. So we're finally getting the basketball league and I'm, I, there was this, uh, Mexican guy, right? Uh, Paisa, who's in there. And he had won the three point contest for so many years. Right. And, uh, I beat him in the three point contest. And, you know, like the rec, if you win something, you get some shebang or you get some, so big deal. Right. And so we're coming back and, uh, we get back to the unit and, um,

One of the guys in my pod's like, hey, what'd you win? You gonna sell what you won from the three-point contest? And one of the Paisa's stands up and he goes, no, you know what he got was an ass beating from the Paisa's. And starts laughing, you know? So then every time I go through the line, as soon as I get my tray, it was, shooters on the line, shooters on the line. And then the Paisa's would joke around like, okay. That's funny. Yeah, it was cool.

How do you think your dad would have reacted to you going to prison if he was still alive when that happened? I don't know, Ian. I'll struggle with this till I die. And my dad did grow up on the streets, so that's part of it. And I think he would be proud of the loyalty that I have that got instilled in me that I will die with and I'll continue to be a loyal friend. Although I've learned so much about myself, we can talk about on why I did what I did and what I'll do.

Not to put myself in those positions because I know who I am now for real. But he told me once that you can do a lot of things wrong, but don't you ever bring disrespect to our last name. I don't know if I did, Ian. I think I did. My son's the last. If he doesn't have kids, he's the last Komada in our family. I wasn't raised Japanese, but there's some certain things that get passed along, and it's one of them. Man.

I don't know. I have a little bit of life left to try to come to closure with that, but I think I've got to do it in a way that can bring back some honor to our name. And handling it like this and accepting consequences right, wrong, fair, and teaching my kids that is what I know what to do. I don't know, man. I don't know what he would have done, and that bothers me a lot. A lot.

What does your life look like now? God, man. I'm so lucky. When I went away, my wife held it down. I didn't go away for long. I get that. I get that. Hey, anything more than a few days away from your family is a long time. Dang, man. I got the best life, Ian. So lucky. My mom, when this goes down, my sister moved like five miles from my house.

Be close to my kids, get them around places. My mom lives with my sister now. We're right down the street. My mother-in-law lives with us, who's the best grandma and person and the coolest lady in the world. My kids are healthy and happy and active. The things that was, you know, Greg Gold, man, he's a lawyer in Denver, Texas.

hires me i got this amazing gig and we morphed it into this like consultant and he's like hey hit up this i'm gonna hook you up with this other lawyer darren shanker greg darren their teams are man if my kid ever got hurt or something they are the best trial lawyers in this country i am not kidding the verdicts that these guys get and the the work they do so i get put in their trial team

find this kind of weird role where I can give an attorney level product of good pleading. Um, I can, I can with some high degree of accuracy predict, you know, the judge is going to care about this or this is an evidentiary issue we need to prepare for. And it's working, man. We're knocking it out. We're getting verdicts. We're doing good work. Um,

But all that, I'm working from home 80% of the time. I'm taking my kids to school. I was so scared. I was ready to move out of my community because I was scared of my kids. You can't hang out with that race, Kamada, because it's parents. Or you can't spend the night with them. We got friends that know exactly what happened, and they're cool with it. They let me coach their kids, man. I'm like, shitty. Life is so good. It's just...

Just, I was in a bad place and I, you know, I'm not as tough as some of these guys that go through this, you know. I grew up a little tougher than I did. I'm not that tough, man. And I was ready to be gone, you know, during that time frame before I knew I was going to get indicted. And anybody in that spot, man, it was the middle of the day, hadn't eaten, slept. You know, I've been working with these kids that were ready to be gone forever.

in my career. And the question you always ask that these risk assessments is, do you have a plan? I don't know what the heck that meant when we asked these kids that. Now I know. I had a plan. I knew how I was going to do it. I knew so my family wouldn't find me, be the first to see me. I knew it wouldn't be a citizen to see me. It'd be a first responder who's trained a little bit to see that and be able to deal with that trauma. I had a plan. In the middle of the day, I just told my wife, like,

I've been the problem solver my whole life. I take control, solve problems. I told her I need help. Just do that to somebody if you're in that spot, man. My wife said, okay. She didn't know what to do. She calls up three or four best friends. Ryan needs you guys. Guys come over, man. Some still in their work clothes. Middle of the day. My boy Kyle and my wife, they load me out of the car. Go to the ER, man. We got to help. And, you know, I don't...

I don't trust that's a moment of weakness that's hard for a man who's been in my spot values solving helping people and getting through it and giving them some real solutions there was one VA psychologist that I became friends with golfing we get out of the ER um and they said look you know we're going to keep you unless you got a safety plan I said I'm gonna call this guy I go to this guy's house is it one of your psychologists that I trusted and he uh

Sat there like 10, 3, 11 o'clock at night, you know, and he hooks me up with a mental health professional, Sheila. She's got this great nonprofit, Triple T, up in northern Colorado and doesn't charge me a penny. I see her to this day. I've never gotten a bill from her. And she understood the way my brain's wired that I got to figure out why I did what I did. And she's got to get me through this time because right at a time heals, Ian. Yeah.

Like you're in that spot, you don't think you're going to get out of prison one day and live a life I live now. Never saw that. So we found ways to get me by, man. I fished every night with a neighbor, a good friend of mine, Tyler's out there. We fished every night and got through it. We talked every night, five, six nights a week. And it just time passes and it gets easier. And there's a little glimpse like, oh, Greg will give me a job when I get out.

It hit the newspapers and so-and-so is still my friend. You know? Oh, my kids still want to be around me. Oh, it's not as hard anymore to put my kids to bed. And it goes on. And then the work comes of, all right, Ryan, me and Sheila, let's figure out who you are. Why'd you do this? And she just helped me and we kept going.

Every night I think about it think about it. I'm not a big memory guy, you know playing sports and stuff I don't remember specific games or stuff the certain parts of my upbringing. I remember I remember this my dad told me a story that when he was a young boy every new year all the Japanese families would come together in five points and the men would leave and he thought they were going to the bar gonna go drink or something it would go to the garage and

And every year, every family would save every penny they could. And at the beginning of the new year, they would all take their savings and give it to one family. So this year's Ian's turn. All these guys, boom. You go start a business, a restaurant, a gas station, a drugstore. The next year is my turn. Now I go. And that story, man, like always stuck with me. And I think that value of community...

grew the roots of why I'm so darn loyal to my friends and family. And I don't think I can change that. And I've accepted that. So now it's how you're going to keep yourself out of situations that get you in trouble, you know, to where it gets tested. But, you know, so I just tell people out there, man, just don't. I don't know. I had people around me. I'm sure there are people out there who are in that state of mind who don't. You know, fake friends that aren't going to stand by them.

I don't know what to tell those people. I know what I did, and that's my story, and that's real, real solution was telling my wife, I'm ready to be gone. I need help. Now look, man, I'm in New York City. My family. I can afford it. Coaching my kid. I got a game tomorrow night with my kid. Look, my friends are still there. Shoot.

Knowing what the outcome is now, if you were given the chance to go back in time and still share your friend that information that would lead you to prison, would you do it all over again? No. I'll tell you why. I didn't know he was buying drugs from him. I don't knock people. I'm a live, let live guy. But when it comes to my kids spending the night at your house, which they did the weekend before, and...

You're buying drugs from a man who has connections down south? That's a problem. I didn't know that. And I had a blind spot somewhere on him. I still love him. And I know one day we're going to have a beer and hug. I know we will. I love his family. But no, man. You're not loyal to my kids. You and I can hang out and do our stuff, but when you're putting my kids in that environment... But I'm comfortable with what I did.

knowing where my mind was, like what I knew, you know. I should have never been a judge, Ian. I was too loyal of a guy to those people. And it is what it is. It's the truth, you know. That's the community I grew up. I'm sure you impacted a lot of people on the way, though. I think so. I think because of that, the other side, right? Like, I was a normal guy, and, you know, with foster kids, I listened to their music. I get it, you know. I, you know, I...

I grew up okay, like middle class, but my buddy six doors down struggles. I get you. I get you. And, you know.

you know what do you you know i'll meet you at the taco shop and eat menudo with you on sundays you know like i get you so i think that that was why it was pretty successful at that part of my career yeah yeah you know well ryan i appreciate you coming on the show today man man it's a blessing yeah being just so open and honest and vulnerable i think the audience is really gonna really enjoy this episode yeah you got a good you got a good thing going on here and i'm

You know, you were the one program on those late night scroll in the dark holes of the internet where I'm like, this is different. This is a little more real. And you got a good thing going, man. I wish you nothing but the best. I'm giving people like us a little bit of therapy to be able to

reach an audience and be somewhere to talk about something that I never thought I would want to share with a lot of people. So I appreciate you, man. I appreciate you, man. Good stuff. Yeah. Thank you. And enjoy the rest of your time in the city and save travels back. You got it, man.