This is the complete, edited & augmented transcript of e006 of the PSK Podcast, in which Graceann Bennett interviews author Gregory Roberts about topics and details of his True Crime / Prison memoir, Pirate Soldier King. This segment focuses on Lawyers, Judges, Jails, Camps, Prisons and Pens… in other words, the overall structure & flow of the American Prison-Industrial complex, who flows through it, and what actually goes down at the various levels.
INTRO
Graceann Bennett (00:20)
All right, it’s Graceann Bennett. I’m here with Gregory Roberts, the writer of Pirate Soldier King. So we’re going to get into some legal stuff because legal system can be kind of crazy and we don’t even know what’s going on…
Gregory Roberts (00:36)
It’s complicated.
Graceann Bennett (00:43)
Yes, it’s complicated. We watch all the TV shows and you see people in the courtroom all the time… So we’re watching all those TV shows, but we don’t know what’s actually really happening. So you talk about a lawyer you had for federal court, right? And her name was Kate, I believe.
Gregory Roberts (00:55)
Yes, Kate Berry.
Graceann Bennett (00:57)
Kate Berry, right. Okay. So tell me a little bit about how, Kate helped you and the legal system and lawyers and all that kind of stuff
Gregory Roberts (00:59)
Sure. Yeah, well the first time I was arrested for bank robbery — the first time I was seriously arrested for bank robbery, was in Huntington Beach. I was actually arrested at LAX, but the legal stuff went down in Huntington Beach (Orange County), because that’s where the crime was committed. And that courtroom? It was a zoo… and a jungle.
There’s the official courtroom that the people see and they come in the front door and that’s bad enough because they, you just like traffic court, they do like 30 criminal court cases in a day and all the families there and all the victims are there and all the lawyers are there and they’re all crowded in this dirty courtroom with fluorescent lights and a low ceiling. And what the people there don’t know, or many of them don’t know, is that the prisoners –we’re all shackled to each other in the basement.
We’re in these huge rooms, and we have leg irons on and handcuffs on, and we’re thrown in through the cage, bag lunches, you know, every five hours, and we sit down there and wait for anywhere between an hour to seven hours to get up into the courtroom. And so we come in the side door of the courtroom into a cage. Like, we’re in our cuffs and our leg irons in our orange jumpsuits that say, you know, inmate on them.
Graceann Bennett (02:14)
Wow.
Gregory Roberts (02:24)
and we’re in a cage and I’m like, this is supposed to be a fair trial? Like, this is not good optics. In addition to that, as you may have heard on TV if you cannot afford a lawyer, you have the right to have one appointed to you by the courts. In state, that’s usually a completely overworked and often under-qualified lawyer. So they’re running more…
Gregory Roberts (02:49)
…more cases than they can handle at once. Some have dozens, some have hundreds. And really, their only role in the state system is to rapidly negotiate a plea agreement for the prisoners. So it’s like, they’re not exactly on your side. They just want to get you through and make their quota. Which is why, like, a status symbol in prison or jail is, “hey, I got a paid lawyer, yo. “Like, I’m paying, my guy’s professional. I am paying him.”
Graceann Bennett (03:06)
And what percentage of people are actually paying for lawyers in there?
Gregory Roberts (03:20)
It’s actually fairly solid because, I mean, I say solid amongst the higher-end criminals, like the real criminals, because the real criminals have obtained significant amounts of money from their crimes. So they have savings accounts for that specific purpose, as do their gangs. Like sometimes the gangs just pay for the lawyers on behalf of someone who was working for the gang. It’s a racket.
Graceann Bennett (03:31)
Okay, got it.
Gregory Roberts (03:46)
The whole point being is I did get a paid lawyer in state of California. He was still horrible. I had to pretty much like overtly threaten him to get him to work on my behalf. It was super high stress negotiations. In the end, he did his job. I will give him that. And I got a really reduced sentence in California. But it was just like he asked for a significant amount money upfront as a deposit. And then we were only like a month in. He said, we ran through that money. We need more.
Graceann Bennett (03:46)
Ha!
Gregory Roberts (04:17)
And we’re talking about like house levels of money. So when I got to the Feds, I didn’t know any other criminal. I mean, I a few others, but I was like, hey, call that guy again. Because even though I was angry with him, he got his job done and he did it. he was like, “This is a federal case. This is serious!” He goes, “We’re going need a $250,000 deposit… and the entire case will probably run you $600,000 once you’re all done. Oh, and just to be clear: that doesn’t include going to trial… trial in federal court is a whole ‘nother ball game.” And I was like, that’s now serious money.
Graceann Bennett (04:48)
oof! Wow, a lot of money. Woah.
Gregory Roberts (05:11)
I mean, hell: It might be worth doing a year extra in jail or in prison rather than spend $600,000… just doing that calculus.
And so I ended up with what’s called a public defender. Which is essentially like in the state, where there’s a state appointed lawyer. In the feds, there’s a federally appointed lawyer. They actually work for the Department of Justice; they’re called Public Defenders. But I wasn’t at all excited about the prospect, having already seen the bullshit that went down in the state courts.
But actually, when I met my Public Defender, I was massively surprised… and honored and humbled. My attorney appointed to me was a woman by the name of Kate Berry. Now: I’ve worked with a lot of lawyers in my life across my private companies and some criminal cases and things that I’ve had to deal with just personally. Kate, by far, is like the rock star of those people. Like, I was like, whatever God gave me this lawyer, I’m praying up and down. I wasn’t really into Jesus yet, but I was just like, this is…
She’s amazing. And she brought in another lawyer And this guy was a shark. His name is Christian. And she was like, look, I’m the motions lawyer and I’m going to work with the judge and things and we’re going to get you the lightest sentence possible. And I’m also going to go to lock horns with the prosecutor. If we go to trial.
Graceann Bennett (05:46)
Mm-hmm.
Gregory Roberts (06:04)
Christian’s gonna step up, because he’s the trial guy. Because he was just slick and in Gucci suits and like, clearly he was one of those, it’s called a litigator, right? The guy who will go up there and just go to bat for you and make it dramatic. And that is like it is on TV, where they’re making these amazing speeches and things. So I had that one-two punch of Kate and Christian. yeah, I tell Kate, Kate, I want you to be a judge on the Supreme Court.
Graceann Bennett (06:14)
Thank
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Gregory Roberts (06:30)
And I asked her at one point, why? so I should say, you don’t pay for a federal public defender, like overtly. mean, everyone’s tax money pays for it, but it’s a service to make sure that criminals at the federal level are adequately represented. So I asked Kate, I just want to know, like, her motivation. I was like, why are you doing this? Is this just like your job or? And she looked me in the eye and she said,
“I don’t believe any human on earth should be put in a cage.” I was like, you mean you’re for the abolishment of prisons? She was like, absolutely. And I was like, that’s my lawyer. Go get him, Kate. And she did. She tore it up.
Graceann Bennett (06:56)
Wow.
Wow.
I knew people that were not against the death penalty, but I didn’t know that there were people against prison altogether.
Gregory Roberts (07:18)
It’s a movement, yeah, there’s nonprofits around it. There’s a great book called “No More Prisons” by William Upski-Wimsatt. I’ll put that in the comments.
Jails, Camps, Prisons and Pens
Graceann Bennett (07:23)
Really?
Okay,
that could be another rabbit hole. can go down. Okay, great. Okay, you get through the legal system, right? And you get your prison sentence or like then what happens and how do you get, and then there’s a difference between jail and prison and then you’re talking about the Ivy leagues. And I was like, Ivy leagues and prisons? Like, how’s that even a thing? So tell us how the whole system works.
Gregory Roberts (07:46)
Good question. Yeah. So
I think most people, at least like in my family and friends, don’t even understand the difference between jail and prison. It’s very significant. Essentially, you are arrested on suspicion of committing a crime. And they read your Miranda rights, which famously say you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.
You have the right to a court appointed lawyer if you cannot afford one, et cetera. And what that sets up is that they can detain you until you go to trial.
In most but not all cases, you can post a bail. When I was in California, because they thought I was a notorious bank robber, they set my bail at a million dollars. And so I couldn’t post bail. Like that’s not standard. A standard bail for a bank robber would be like $50,000. But they just jacked mine up because they were like, this guy is a flight risk. We arrested him at the International Terminal. He’s not getting out.
And so in the Feds, they call that bond. a similar thing. You post the title to your house or your cars or whatever it is that are cash equivalent. And if you flee and don’t show up for trial, then the Feds, they take that. They take your property or your family’s property.
Graceann Bennett (09:06)
Yeah. Wow. Well, how did you get, I think we talked about this a little bit before, but we didn’t talk about all of the different prisons you’re in and how you got to all of them. And I think there are a lot, a lot of different systems. Cause you were saying there’s like some dorms and there’s like all these different configurations of them. So what are all the, like, can you lay it out in terms of all.
Gregory Roberts (09:31)
Yeah, yeah.
I was not granted bonds. That meant I had to wait for trial. We tried for speedy trial, but there’s always a million excuses the prosecutors use. So we didn’t get a speedy trial. In the feds, that means you’re going to go to trial in about 18 months. So you’re basically going to be detained, which is sitting in various jails, sometimes detention centers, which are like micro prisons, for 18 months until you go to trial.
And you’re still innocent because you’re innocent until proven guilty But pretty much, you know, you’re you’re already serving your time So even if you win a trial like you’re not getting that time back And to your question of like where was I? Well, I had a complication of The the FBI was charging me for bank robberies in two separate states so in Nevada and California and They refused to combine the cases which meant that I had to go to court
in the federal courthouse in Orange County, California. I also had to go to the federal courthouse in Reno, Nevada. And since I hadn’t been sentenced yet, I couldn’t go to a prison. So you’re held in federal detention facilities, which generally are special parts of a jail, which are where low-level offenders get put. If you just get caught on drug possession, you go to jail. You normally stay there for like 30 days, and then they say time served, and you go out, and then you
you know, come back in 60 days and you get caught for drugs again. it’s this like, jails are like the low end of the whole incarceration system. It’s where all the derelicts and drug addicts are. it’s hard to get drugs. It’s not super hard, but it’s difficult to get drugs in jail. So most people are on come down from meth or heroin. And they’re like shaking in their cells and screaming and you know, being all ridiculous because their high as bat shit when they get in there.
So it’s just a rough place to be because no one other than the federal detainees like me are going to be there longer than like two months.
Graceann Bennett (11:26)
But then you talk about prison and then you talk about all that everybody has drugs over there. have drug dealers.
Gregory Roberts (11:31)
Well, yeah, yeah. So let’s hold that off for a second. I prison is a whole other thing. Prison is essentially the destination. Like, if you’re going to get sentenced, or if you’re going to enter a plea of guilty, which is usually wise, the feds convict 92 % of their cases. So if the FBI takes you down 92 % of the time, if you go to trial, you’re going to lose. Like, that’s how they’re very, like,
Graceann Bennett (11:34)
I hope.
Gregory Roberts (11:58)
Police are not really skilled in the law, but the FBI is basically trained lawyers who are also super athletes with guns. Like the FBI are badasses. So when they arrest you, their case is pretty much dialed in. Like they know what they’re doing. So most people plea. And then so I had to shuttle between detention facilities between the two states.
which ended up being Santa Ana jail for 18 months, a place called MDC-LA, which is like a skyscraper in the middle of friggin’ Los Angeles that is actually a prison that I’m not sure how many people are aware of it, yeah. So I was on the seventh floor there for a little over a month and just kinda getting shuttled around and finally I got sentenced in both of my districts at which point they say,
Graceann Bennett (12:32)
you
Gregory Roberts (12:47)
Now we’re gonna ship you to a prison and we’re gonna figure out your destination prison and you actually apply to like, here’s the prison I wanna go to.
Graceann Bennett (12:54)
wait, you should, I’m sorry to cut you off, but you got to go into the application process because you have that whole thing where you got the book of prisons. So like you’re going to college, you’re going to like a vacation. Yes.
Gregory Roberts (13:02)
Yeah, that was…
That was one my great excitements of the entire
journey is that Kate told me, “Look, you get to submit your choices to the judge of where you want to go to prison.” And generally, it’s like you’re supposed to be put in prison within 500 miles of your closest family. And I have family all around the United States. So I was like, “Well, Kate, how do I know? I don’t know anything about the prison system, other than the rumors I hear from other people who have been in
in federal prison before” — which are you know, one out of 300 inmates or something. And she’s like, don’t worry. There’s a book. Or I’m sorry, there’s a website. And I’ll print it out for you. And so like three days later, I get this packet, 700 pages of printouts of the Bureau of Prisons BOP.gov website, which outlines every single prison in the system and
all their facilities and amenities and things. And I’m reading like welding classes and like tennis courts. And one of them has this program where you can take horses that are like race horses that are going to be killed and you can take care of the horses. And I’m like, hells yes. I’m going to be like a cowboy. I’m going be taking care of horses. And you know, so I
Graceann Bennett (14:20)
Hehehe.
Gregory Roberts (14:25)
I read all these, I felt like I was reading a Fodor’s Guide to travel through Europe, like picking my hotels I’m gonna stay in. And I got all excited, I read the whole thing, it took me like, I don’t know, two weeks to read it all. And I marked it up and I made notes. I was like, okay, Kate, here’s my top three choices. I was really excited. They were all FCI’s, by the way. there’s, the federal prison system has three levels of security. There’s camps.
Graceann Bennett (14:46)
hope so.
FCI.
Gregory Roberts (14:53)
which don’t even have fences. Like, you just serve your time there and you can walk off if you want, but you get a year and a half pegged to your sentence when they catch you. They’re called camps. They’re like the lowest level of security. You do your time there and you go away and it’s fine. Then there’s the FCI’s, which are Federal Correctional Institutions, also called Level 3’s. That does have fences, but it’s pretty chill. It’s like, I don’t know.
people with medium level offenses, a lot of drug stuff and things. And then you have the penitentiary, also known as the pen, so level five max, or also called a USP, United States Penitentiary. And that’s like the serious, like that’s where the murders happen, that’s where like people who doing life sentences go there, standard sentence there is like, I’d say 15 to 30 years. Like that’s a pretty serious place.
Graceann Bennett (15:19)
Mm-hmm.
Gregory Roberts (15:43)
And again, it’s less and less transient as you go up that chain. Like in jail, 30 to 60 days, constant turnover of population. In a camp, maybe one to two years, three years max, constant turnover. FCI, three to five years. a prison, a penitentiary or serious federal prison is like people have lived, like you meet people on the yard who have lived there for like 20 years and never left the yard. Yeah.
Because of all my escape attempts, we didn’t know, but I was being sent to an USP, to a penitentiary, to the max, and not to an FCI. So my whole list was FCI, and in fact, the judge actually recommended, he was like, yeah, okay, I’ll recommend that you go to this cushy-ass prison in North Carolina, you know, might have horses. I was like, yeah, woohoo! But COVID was happening, so the whole…
Graceann Bennett (16:35)
home.
Yeah.
Gregory Roberts (16:41)
BOP system was on lockdown. So it took me, I think another close to a year after I got sentenced to actually arrive at my prison. And along the way, I ended up at Victorville USP, just in a holding pattern. And while I was at Victorville, like my celly was a serious, like insane gangster, like had been in multiple gun battles with automatic weapons with the police. Like he was just, he was a straight psychopath. And
Graceann Bennett (17:07)
Who’s
your roommate? You’re Celly, Okay.
Gregory Roberts (17:10)
know, my celly, yeah. Mm-hmm.
And so we exchanged stories and at the end of Victorville, we were supposed to get our assignments. And I kept asking my counselor, like, you you send the Kites, like, paper messages to your counselor. I kept asking my counselor, like, I need to know where I’m going so I can tell my family. You know, I need to where I’m going and when I’m going. And my counselor was like, he literally said, like, he wrote me a note, I wish I had it, I might show it later. But he said, “Dude, you keep pushing me?
I’m gonna push back. Stop asking.” I was like, “okay!” Well, they finally come to our cell like three or four months later. They’re like, all right, all right, we got your assignments. Transport’s happening this week. And we’re like celebrating, like yeah. And they give us these slips of paper and it says, Roberts: USP, Zagreb: FCI. And I’m like,
Graceann Bennett (18:06)
Whoa.
Gregory Roberts (18:07)
We look at him and he looks at me and he just starts laughing, my celly. I look at him I’m like, they mixed these up. He’s like, hey man, you don’t throw me under the rug. I’m like, bam, bam, bam. I’m slamming on the door. like, yo, counselor, come back here. And he finally comes back and I’m like, dude, this says USP. He’s like, yeah, Roberts. I’m like, what are you talking about, me? He goes, yep. He goes, the marshal said you are a high security risk and that’s where you’re going. Enjoy it. Boom.
Graceann Bennett (18:11)
Yeah.
Gregory Roberts (18:39)
And so again, my celly, he just laughed his ass off because he was a genuine public enemy number one. And he’s going to friggin’ FCI. And I went to USP Beaumont.
Graceann Bennett (18:38)
Okay.
wow, okay. And then that must have been wild. So is that where you had the first experience on the yard? Like when you get onto the yard. So tell us a little bit about how, what that experience was like.
Gregory Roberts (18:59)
Yeah, so there’s
a thing in, in jail, people– hardened criminals. many people in the criminal justice system are in and out. Like, they’ve been gangsters for life, they went to juvie as a kid, they already got in drug rings and things, and they had one year out, then they went to state prison for a while, did a five-year sentence, then they were out another year, then they…
go to another state prison, et cetera, and finally they go to federal prison, which is like, you talked about Ivy League, like, jail is like elementary school, state prisons, and California and Texas may be the exception to this, because those are serious, like, gang states, but state prison is kind of like high school, and then federal prison is like college. Like, that’s the top of the top of the criminal food chain.
Graceann Bennett (19:49)
and did it feel at all elite, like you got to this elite place?
Gregory Roberts (19:53)
Oh, for sure. Yeah. I mean, as
Check the Paperwork
soon as I got into the federal detention centers and out of the jails, I was like, this is a whole new class of criminal. Like these are people who are doing like 200 million a year in cocaine deals, cash, you know, people with like, so we all have our, what’s called our discovery, which is our paperwork, which basically like that’s all the documents that the FBI has compiled on you to make their court case.
Graceann Bennett (20:17)
Mm-hmm.
Gregory Roberts (20:23)
So everyone carries around like 200 to 2,000 pages of all the evidence against them. And you use that to prove to your fellow inmates that you’re not a snitch, and you’re not a rapist, and you’re not a child molester. And also just you research it because that’s the evidence against you, and that’s what they’re gonna use. And sometimes just for fun, you share it with each other. So we got to the feds. Like I said, one guy had $200 million of
Graceann Bennett (20:30)
Hmm.
Gregory Roberts (20:49)
cocaine and ecstasy that he was busted for. Yeah, a year. Another guy who was busted with, I think, 16 automatic weapons and two rocket launchers in downtown LA, he was Armenian, like Armenian mafia, and I was like, “dude, what the fuck do you need rocket launchers for?!?” He’s like, “cuz if it comes down to it and they raid my house, I’m just going to blow the shit up.” I was like,
Graceann Bennett (20:53)
$200 million a year.
No.
Gregory Roberts (21:16)
I’ve never heard of a rocket launcher being used in a domestic US city, you know, he’s got his discovery right there. The pictures of him and everything with the RPG heads and everything. was like, Jesus Christ.
Graceann Bennett (21:25)
Well.
And what did they think about you when you showed them your stack? What were they thinking?
Gregory Roberts (21:32)
Ironically the biggest the most common comment people said to me are damn — My name on the inside was Phoenix — “like damn Phoenix. You got balls. I would never do that!” I’m like “you’d shoot a rocket launcher at a fucking cop, but you wouldn’t rob a bank?!?” like My head but that was yeah, they were basically like “you’re crazy! like you going to a bank — like we got gangs behind us — You know, we got armies. You’re just this wild… You know wild lone wolf!” so
Graceann Bennett (21:43)
You
Yeah.
Because ‘cuz
you’re by yourself, going into a bank and they’re thinking you just go, no gun, into a bank, by yourself and grab some money. they, okay, so. Go grab it. Right. But so you had respect for being a bank robber on the yard? are they sizing you up or figuring out?
Gregory Roberts (22:06)
Yeah. Yep.
Yeah, well you demand the money, you don’t just grab it, they give it to you.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, they’re definitely
sizing up. And most bank robbers, I’d say 90%, use notes. Like they literally walk into the bank, they wait in line with like a baseball cap on, like this, and sunglasses. And then, you know, when they come up to the teller, they just pass them a note that says like, I have a bomb, give me whatever it is. And then the teller quietly does that they walk out and there’s still customers in the bank. Like, when I went to the bank, I was like, motherfuckers, everybody on the ground, let’s go!
Graceann Bennett (22:34)
Mm-hmm.
You did.
Gregory Roberts (22:53)
I’m like,
yeah. I just wanted to be in and out fast. I wasn’t like dicking around.
Graceann Bennett (22:59)
So you didn’t want to the note plan. Did you meet anybody?
Gregory Roberts (23:01)
No, and I also like,
don’t know, I’m a little bit of a romantic and I was like, I am not going in with passing a note to someone. there’s no honor in that, I don’t know. That’s not my M.O.
Walk the Yard
Graceann Bennett (23:10)
Yes.
So what was your M.O. when you got to, so one of the chapters you talk about getting onto the yard for the first time and then that is how like everybody figures out where you are in the pecking order and how the, because you’re ruling the prisons, you know, the guards are there just to like reduce the body count as you would say.
Gregory Roberts (23:38)
Yep. The prisoners run the prisons. That’s the truism.
Graceann Bennett (23:43)
So it’s a whole, you know, just like Burning Man’s a whole micro community, right? This is run by the prisoners. So what, what ended up, like, what was that experience when you first got onto the yard and then what did your role end up being? Like what do you naturally kind of got, got into your role within this new society?
Gregory Roberts (24:02)
Yeah. So “the Yard” is like this magical word that you hear about before you go to prison. And it means a lot of things. But what it basically means is the one open space where all the inmates in the prison can get together all at once. So you’re often locked into your cell with just your celly. Sometimes when you’re in lockdown, they let out like four cells at once. There’s like eight people who you’re tight with. It might be multiple races.
Graceann Bennett (24:32)
Gregory Roberts (24:32)
But you’re allowed into the tier at the same time. On limited lockdowns, just your tier goes out into the grassy area. But when the yard is open, it’s a really exciting thing because when the yard is open, they have up to 512 inmates all on this football field all at once. the easiest metaphor I can make is like a dog park.
You got like the little chihuahuas, you get the big friggin’ Rottweilers, you get everybody there, everybody sniffing each other’s ass. And sometimes somebody does something offensive and they get nipped. And sometimes like five dogs just jump on one dog and tear him to bits. So it’s wild. And the only thing really to keep, the guards don’t, they’re not gonna be on the yard with all those prisoners. you know, because they could easily get killed. So the guards aren’t there. There’s a gun tower in the middle.
Graceann Bennett (24:58)
I’m
Yeah.
Gregory Roberts (25:26)
which at a USP has like a 50 cal plus A.R.s in there. So a 50 cal is like a bullet that will far more powerful than a 45. Like it will tear someone’s head off or just knock your body six feet backward. Like it’s a killing gun with high accuracy. And so you can just look up at the guard tower and see like the muzzle sticking out. Like they’re not fucking around. And so…
The very first time I got, we were on COVID lockdown forever across the whole prison system. But I think about two months in, maybe three at Beaumont, they finally opened up the yard and we got to be outdoors for the first time. And, you know, first of all, that’s heaven in its own right. Like being outside of the cement box and having real sunlight on your skin. Cause there’s very, very, very few windows in prison and they’re small.
Graceann Bennett (26:12)
Mm-hmm.
Gregory Roberts (26:20)
So like real sunlight, real wind, and just grass. And so we go out there, I had my MP3 player this time, and I was playing it on random. And like as I started, there’s a track around the grass. And as I started to walk around the yard, like Guns N’ Roses Welcome to the Jungle came on. And I was just like, fuck yeah! Like just, just looking at all that shit going on around me, drug deals and, and, and you know.
The races work out together, so like the Hispanic would have like 30 people doing burpees ferociously, all just sweating bullets. Most of these people, I mean, I have tats, but most of these people are like head to toe tattooed with prison tattoos, which are a whole other, that’s a whole other story, but they don’t look like street tattoos, huh?
Graceann Bennett (27:06)
Yeah,
we can do that. We could do something on the tube.
Gregory Roberts (27:10)
Yeah, so I’m just kind of like
looking around like I’m in a movie and the soundtrack’s playing like Welcome to the Jungle and I’m like, I have a whole new respect for Axl Rose now. And for my friend Vinny who like first introduced me to that song.
Graceann Bennett (27:19)
Wow.
my gosh. So tell me the legendary Vinnie.com. Well, so tell me what job you got on the yard or like you worked with. So there’s white, they’re all the, it’s very racial. then, you had some job as a cross communication. You’re a communication specialist.
Gregory Roberts (27:26)
Legendary Vinnie.com I should say.
Yeah, I mean, what happened was I landed on like a pretty hardcore tier again, just by the grace of God. And like I got COVID as soon as I got to Beaumont. And so my all the people who got there at once, like there was like 60 or maybe 100 people who all arrived within seven days of each other. They were all put into a new unit. But I got ejected from that unit because I got COVID. So they threw me into the quarantine unit for 14 days.
And then my cell was taken, so they, like one of the more serious gangsters in America, guy named Chris Gibson, who is now at ADX, which is like called Supermax, he got yanked out of his cell and thrown to ADX. And they put me in his cell, which is like the penthouse of the whole yard. And it was, you know, Chris had,
Graceann Bennett (28:30)
Mmm.
A Cell Full of Treasure
Gregory Roberts (28:35)
I think I already served like 25, 26 years. So it had furniture in it and clothes and like treasures and electronics. And I land in this cell with my celly. My celly is like, hey man, I’m going to, you know, I’m out of here in like 30 days. This is all going to be yours. I was just like, okay. Holy shit. Okay. And Travis was a serious like hardcore skinhead had been
in and out of prison since he was like literally I think 12 years old, know, doing juvie. He was a hardcore dude. No one can do as many burpees as Travis. I swear that man would do like at least 250 burpees a day in our cell. Yeah, just drenched with sweat and love that kid. But where I was going, this is so Chris got yanked out, Travis left.
Graceann Bennett (29:18)
Whoa.
Ha ha.
See you guys later.
Gregory Roberts (29:28)
And then there was just a bunch of like, I don’t know, normalish white people in my unit. And they were like, we need a speaker. Because Chris was obviously the speaker being like a major American gangster. And then Travis was. And I was like, well, I can either like grab this ring or be somebody’s bitch. I’m like, I’ll be the speaker. And they’re like, are you sure? I was like, I’m sure. Yeah. What do need to do?
Graceann Bennett (29:37)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Gregory Roberts (29:55)
And they’re like, well, you just talk to the heads of the other races, of the other races gangs and make sure everything’s good between the races. I was like, okay, I can do that. I’m CEO. can like, I can do that. And they’re like, when you go out to yard, you gotta talk to all the other speakers as a white units and make sure everything’s good amongst our race on the whole yard. You know, no conflicts with other races, no drug debts. Like make sure everything’s running smooth. And make sure, and make.
And the hardest thing was they said, make sure the paperwork for every white on this unit is clean. So again, like we talked about discovery, like everyone has their discovery, and it’s basically proof that when you got your sentence, you didn’t throw anybody else under the bus. So that you’re not a snitch. And the other two offenses, that you’re not a rapist and you’re not a child molester. If you’re either of those three things,
Graceann Bennett (30:26)
So what’s that?
Hmm.
Gregory Roberts (30:46)
you get green lit, is basically like, that means your race has to beat the living shit out of you or kill you. So the first thing, when any new meat comes on your tier, you go up to their cell, and it’s illegal to do this, by the way, but it’s just what has to happen and what does happen in prison, and you say, hey man, where’s your fucking paperwork? And if everybody’s lucky, then they just hand it to you.
Graceann Bennett (30:54)
Wow.
Gregory Roberts (31:12)
More often than not, they’re like, I don’t have it. I need to call my lawyers. And you’re like, well, call your lawyers. You’ve got 30 days, And give me your social security number and your inmate number. And I would call people on the outside and be like, look this dude up. I want to find his court case and make sure his sentencing does not have any modifications that say, corroborated with the cops or anything like that.
Graceann Bennett (31:34)
So this
whole thing is real. what I mean, where there’s snitches, I mean, what happens to snitches in prison?
Gregory Roberts (31:41)
They get smashed out. So it’s called putting in the work. Putting in the work means beating the shit out of somebody. And everyone has to put in the work. That’s kind of like when you get on the yard, you cycle through your race. And when your turn comes up, then it’s your turn. And so whoever’s the keys or the speaker says, “hey, guys, this guy’s got bad paperwork. It’s proven.
next time the doors pop you go into his cell and you just you you put a hurting on him until and don’t stop till the guards pull you off.” and so that’s usually called like a two on one a three on one at rare times like a four on one or five on one …like if it’s an MMA fighter but you and it’s almost impossible to defend yourself against like a three on one. so that’s what happens and then so once the guards do pull you off– by the way
Graceann Bennett (32:11)
Whoa.
Gregory Roberts (32:30)
Half the time the guards already know this is gonna happen. Like, the key goes to the guards and says, look man, this guy’s bad. Like, he’s a fucking child molester. We’re smashing him out on Tuesday. And the guard’s like, okay, I’ll let you have at him for like two minutes and then we’ll come in. And so the guards already know when they come in that that guy is being pulled out of the tier and being put into P.C., which is called protective custody.
Graceann Bennett (32:33)
part plan.
Wow.
Mm-hmm.
Gregory Roberts (32:56)
And
so they basically put him in the jail within the prison, and then eventually they transport him to another prison where the same thing happens again. And these people just bounce from prison to prison getting the shit beat out of them every couple months or so.
Graceann Bennett (33:09)
Wow. Okay, well, let’s not do one of those things in life. But now that’s why all those rap songs when they talk about snitches, it’s serious.
Gregory Roberts (33:17)
Oh, it’s totally like very few. Other than a child molester, a snitch is probably like the worst thing. And sometimes depending on who you snitched on, it might be the worst thing. Like a lot of murders in prison happen because like the ones that I was privy to were mostly just fists.
Graceann Bennett (33:38)
Mm-hmm.
Gregory Roberts (33:38)
Although, USP technically has a code that is knives only. Like you’re not supposed to get in fist fights. If you’re going after somebody, you’re supposed to be stabbing them. Amazingly that that kind of keeps the peace. It’s kind of like Russia and America with mutual assured destruction. Like, you know, we’re not going to roll tanks into Russia. If we attack you, we’re launching nukes. And then you’re going to launch nukes and everybody’s going to hurt. knives is kind of the same thing. if no one’s allowed to fist fight,
it’s knives only, you can die from a knife pretty quick. Like if a knife gets under the sternum or hits your femoral artery or your jugular, you pretty much bleed out within eight seconds. So, and that can be actually accidental. Like I had a guy tell me once, he said, “look man, like we may have to do something, but don’t worry. If I stab you, I’m just gonna do it like in the shoulder and the ribs, like I’m not gonna kill you or anything.”
Graceann Bennett (34:18)
Wow.
Gregory Roberts (34:35)
And I was like, “dude, if you stab me, I will kill you. Like, I won’t be going for some, you know, like ankle or something. I’m going for your fucking heart.”
Graceann Bennett (34:39)
You
Well, but you talked about that. you’re like, I’m not going to, this guy’s going to be me and my kids. I think we talked about that in the last episode. But if you actually kill someone in prison, wouldn’t you not see your kids because you’d kill someone and then you’re stuck in jail? So that’s curious.
Gregory Roberts (35:00)
I
don’t know. It could go either way. You certainly would claim self-defense. You would go to trial, obviously. I mean, I don’t know. But I do know that if you get killed in prison, you won’t see your kids. So like…
Graceann Bennett (35:10)
Okay.
That’s true.
But it would be good to know what the rules are and like how that works in terms of like a risk reward, you know, how you play that whole situation. So, but you have no knife wounds at all.
Gregory Roberts (35:30)
No, no, I never — no. I got in plenty of fistfights, but never a knife fight, thank God, yeah.
Graceann Bennett (35:35)
Okay, well we’re glad you’re alive to tell the story and…
Fighting Irish
Gregory Roberts (35:38)
Yeah, there’s actually one of my
favorite people was a guy named Irish, who’s from SFV just north of here, San Fernando Valley. Irish became a pretty good friend of mine. He was the speaker at two of the yards I was on, at MDC-LA and then a detention center. And he, like Travis, had been in and out for years, for his whole life. But he had a good head on his shoulders and I respected him.
Graceann Bennett (35:44)
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Gregory Roberts (36:04)
And so we would just share stories of our lives. And he was telling me about the first time that he got in a knife fight in prison. And he was like, yeah, I strapped up. I knew the other guy had a knife. And our gang’s waiting on the outside. And they put us in a cell and slammed the door shut. was me and him with a knife. And he was like, “in that moment, I knew I was a man.”
Because I’m frigging you know, with another human with a knife, like trying to kill each other. He was like, “that changed my, that experience changed my whole life.” And he was like, “I was never afraid again.” And when he told me that I kind of like was like, well, maybe I’m not a man enough. You know, I’ve never been in a cell with another man with a knife trying to kill him. Like that’s extreme. That is extreme by the way.
Graceann Bennett (36:44)
Wow.
Right.
But you did it, I mean, we talked about some fist fights. So you did get in fist fights alone.
Gregory Roberts (37:00)
Well, I actually went up to Irish like later that day and I was like, look dude, I trust you and you’re my friend, so let’s fight. Like, I don’t have enough fighting chops and I need to like, you know, understand what goes on here, so as long as you promise not to kill me, can we just fight?
Graceann Bennett (37:14)
Did you do it?
Gregory Roberts (37:15)
He was like, “dude, I love you and I don’t fight halfway. Like I will — if we go at it, I will really hurt you. And you know, if you really want to do it, like I’m not, you’re a man. If you really want to do it, tell me and we’ll go. We’ll go right now.” He goes, “but I would advise you to think about it for 24 hours first.” And I was like, “thank you!
Graceann Bennett (37:25)
out.
Wow.
Gregory Roberts (37:44)
Thank you, Irish!!” I thought about it and I was like, “yeah dude, I appreciate your stories and I respect you and we’re good. We’re good.”
Graceann Bennett (37:44)
I’ll see you when I think about it.
So you still be,
your manhood is still intact.
Gregory Roberts (37:58)
Yeah, actually it’s funny you say that because that is what was going through my head. I was like, this guy just like totally like trumped me with his story. Like I should fight him just to prove that I’m a man. Like that is actually what was going through my head. Thank you for reminding me. So, yeah.
Graceann Bennett (38:12)
I don’t know.
But you don’t need to, I mean, I guess what would be the lesson? You don’t need necessarily to do that to be a man, but what do you need to do to be a man?
Gregory Roberts (38:21)
Well, that’ll be a separate conversation.
Graceann Bennett (38:23)
Well,
yeah, because we didn’t get into it, but it just like, does seem interesting because it’s like, what kind of man are you and what makes you a man? And maybe it makes you a man to have that conversation with him and not have your ego too much into it. Like, all you can do is just say, and he’s like respecting you, but just saying, “I’m kind of built this way. You’re built another way.
Gregory Roberts (38:40)
100 % yes, there was a couple things.
Graceann Bennett (38:50)
We don’t need to do that.” It sounds like that was like a very manly thing for both of you to be able to be having that honest conversation and, and you’d be able to walk away still, still without having to fight to prove it. So that could be even a way to.
Gregory Roberts (39:06)
Yeah, yeah, to
your point, yeah, I had 10 times more respect for him after that, because I felt like that’s what a compassionate leader does. He kind of looked at the situation like, “Phoenix, I don’t know where you’re coming from, but you need to check yourself before you wreck yourself.” And just saying, another weaker man, a more insecure man, would have just swung at me right there and then. He’d be like, “You’re challenging me?!? Let’s go!” Boom.
Graceann Bennett (39:26)
Right.
But he didn’t.
Right. No, that’s good. OK, the 24 hour rule is always a good one.
Gregory Roberts (39:36)
And he was like, look, think about it. Yeah.
Yeah, it didn’t
take me 24 hours either.
Graceann Bennett (39:48)
Right. Okay. I got it. Okay. We don’t need to do that. Okay. Stay alive. Okay. Well, anyway, the moral of the story, stay alive, tell the story. All right. Okay. Well, thank you. think we’re wrapping it up. It’s the end of this. I am so excited to get into more details on our next episode of Pirate Soldier King with Gregory Roberts.
Gregory Roberts (39:49)
Yeah
Thank you so much, Graceann. It’s been a pleasure and an honor as always.
Graceann Bennett (40:14)
Thank you.
OUTRO
Graceann Bennett (37:04)
Okay. Exactly. Determination. Go time. Fist bump.
Put on the mask. Put on the costume.
Just jump in and go, go get that money and
go make your dreams come true!
All right. Okay. Well, thank you so much, Gregory. Amazing talking to you. Very inspiring! I hope everybody else is inspired too.
Here we go!
Gregory Roberts (37:10)
Yes. There it is. This is fun.
Thank you, Graceann.
.
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