CTP (20251223 S3EDecSpecial5) Matt Melvin #Criminal #Justice #Reforms #GOP Perspective BTS/SP Video
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Hello, everyone. A special introductory segment before getting into the episode, the remainder of December.
00:11Merry Christmas to all. And since I'll be using this opening through the rest of December,
00:19they will be Tuesday and Thursday drops here on out for December to help me get caught up with some interviews
00:28that I've got in the pile that have been recorded, waiting to be released to help with a backlog.
00:36I'm going to do two a week now, Tuesdays and Thursdays, the rest of December, as well as January and February.
00:46So in the background here, audio only, you're not seeing it, obviously, says Merry Christmas to soldiers everywhere
00:56who can't be with their families, showing a group of soldiers with Santa and elf hats on.
01:05But anyway, or at any right, right, the ongoing, oh, I said right again.
01:13I've found I've gotten to the habit of saying, right? Right?
01:18I got to watch that. I got to stop that.
01:20Anyway, let's get on with an interview.
01:26Hello, welcome to another episode of First Tututionalist Podcast.
01:32I am your host, Joseph M. Leonard.
01:36That's L-E-N-A-R-D.
01:38It looks French. It's not. It's Leonard without an O.
01:42Well, thank you for tuning in, as Graham Norton used to say, on his show.
01:50Let's get on with the show!
01:53Hello, everyone. Welcome to another First Tututionalist Podcast.
01:59Joining me today is Matt Melman.
02:03I was just joking with him.
02:05A name I'll be able to pronounce, and now I screw it up, of course.
02:08I hit record, and the mouth stops working.
02:13Matt Melvin.
02:16Welcome to the show, Matt.
02:18Thanks for having me on the show.
02:21Oh, happy to do so.
02:23So, at any rate, I find that my audience will know that's an ongoing gag.
02:30You know, when you're a podcaster, you try to avoid the ahs and the ums.
02:36And I had the habit now of saying, at any rate, so it's kind of an ongoing running gag as my segue.
02:46But I also found I'm saying, right, a lot.
02:49Right? Am I right?
02:52Yeah, so I've got to watch that habit.
02:55But anyway, so give us a little bit about your background first.
03:02Where were you born and raised?
03:04Where are you now?
03:06Some significant places you've been to in between, that sort of thing.
03:11I was born in Lowell, Massachusetts.
03:15My parents made the unfortunate decision in 1988 to move up into Vermont.
03:19My dad got a job as a director at Franklin County Home Health.
03:25And we migrated north.
03:26And I've lived here ever since.
03:28It's very hard to meet people.
03:31People are very closed off.
03:32They're rude.
03:34So it's like being in Manhattan.
03:36Pretty much, yes.
03:38Yeah, I've only been to Manhattan once.
03:43And indeed, it lives up to the reputation of indeed most are standoffish, to put it politely.
03:53Right?
03:53They're all kind of just caught in their own little hustle and bustle of what they got going on and try to blot out the rest of the world.
04:06It's like zombies wandering around.
04:09So you're saying it's the same in Vermont.
04:11It's the same way without seeing one person after another.
04:16I mean, you do have your space.
04:18That's the big difference.
04:19I mean, there's 600,000 people in the entire state of Vermont.
04:24New Hampshire is 1.3 million people.
04:26And Vermont is a tad bigger than New Hampshire.
04:29Which is far less than even crammed into New York City alone.
04:34And I'm consciously saying it this time.
04:37At any rate, moving along.
04:39Are you a movie buff at all?
04:42I love Blues Brothers.
04:44And I love Gouttpot.
04:45Okay, because I was going to bring up the movie Dave with Kevin Kline, if you ever saw that.
04:52And we're walking and we're walking.
04:55Kind of at any rate and moving along thing.
04:59So indeed, at any rate, let's just now kind of give you the floor and tell us your story.
05:07What is it that's burning in you to share, that's bothering you, that people need to hear?
05:15I want to share that the criminal justice system needs to be demolished and started over again.
05:24In the private, handled by the private sector.
05:27Because nothing the government does helps anybody.
05:30It always is over budget.
05:35And unlike a private organization, if you're over budget, you go out of business.
05:39I hear you.
05:41I have been on criminal justice reform.
05:46Not the left version, though, where their idea of reform is, hey, just let everybody out of prison.
05:52That may solve the budget issue temporarily, but then crime quadruples.
06:03So you're certainly not saying that either.
06:06Absolutely not.
06:07Violent offenders should never be let out.
06:09Especially sex offenders.
06:11Sex offenders should be thrown in the Everglades, as far as I'm concerned.
06:14We got alligator algotras, but that's a whole other temporary ICE facility story going on there.
06:23I agree with you.
06:25One thing I believe we absolutely need back is three strikes legislation that the Biden administration and the Democrats actually initially passed under Bill Clinton, a Democrat, undone by Joe Biden, the Democrat.
06:44What is your position on three strikes?
06:48I am in favor for it, but only for violent offenses.
06:53That's a start in my book.
06:57Absolutely.
06:58If any one of them, in my opinion, is a violent offense, the third strike, I think, is.
07:06Because if the first offense is violent, but the next two are not, there's still the violence, propensity, or chance in that history to weigh that they possibly, I don't want to say probably, would re-offend in a violent fashion.
07:29I completely agree.
07:30If somebody hits their partner, the propensity for them to hit somebody else is far greater.
07:38Yeah.
07:39And I'm willing to bet, but I don't want to, right, don't assume, do this crazy thing called asking, right?
07:48It is my, and I forgot where I was going with this.
07:53Oh, my position, I take it yours, but I ask this as a question.
07:58We see leftist prosecutors and DAs not only letting people out with the no cash bail failure, but also playing down gun offenses.
08:14We hear from the left every time there's an assault with a weapon, we need more gun laws, but they don't enforce the ones we already have.
08:25An offender may commit a crime with a gun, they plea away the gun offense that would lock them up longer, and they're right back out on the street.
08:37So the plea bargaining of gun offenses on repeat re-offenders criminals would keep them in longer, yes?
08:52I believe that anyone who uses a gun should never be let out again.
08:59It's not the gun that is the problem.
09:03It is the person that has the gun.
09:07If you look at Chicago, they have some of the strictest gun laws in the world.
09:13However, they have more murders than any place else in the country.
09:22And the reason is because of a heavyweight individual named J.B. Pritzer, who has never had to work in his life.
09:33He comes from the Hyatt money, the Hyatt hotels.
09:39His life is very different than everybody else.
09:42Joe, that is the issue.
09:44Our politicians are very rich.
09:46They're very well off.
09:48And they don't see the same reality that everybody else sees.
09:53That is the issue.
09:54Whether it's judges, lawyers, cops, they all live in a different bubble than everybody else.
10:01They're protected.
10:01If a prosecutor does something wrong in a case, they are covered under what's called sovereign immunity, which means they cannot be sued.
10:13They're absolutely abysmal.
10:16And judges are protected in the same fashion.
10:19Jumbo Fatsker, as I jokingly call them, ruling elitist.
10:25When the DNC came to town, interstate, he called out the National Guard to protect him, his buddies, his family, his friends, his donors.
10:39But the rest of you in Chicago and beyond, to heck with you.
10:44National Guard for you?
10:47No.
10:48For him and his buddies?
10:49Yes.
10:50To protect you?
10:52No.
10:52Double standard hypocrisy, that ruling elitist mentality.
10:58He's far more important, you don't matter attitude, yes, is what you're referring to.
11:04Right.
11:05He has never had a real job.
11:07He's always come from money.
11:10And he's always been in a position of power, whether it's as CEO of Hyatt Regency or whether it's as governor.
11:18And that brings up another point.
11:21And Illinois is one of 13 states that does not have term limits on governors.
11:28Guess what?
11:28Vermont is another one.
11:30We have had Phil Scott in office since 2015.
11:35He has not issued one pardon while he's been in office.
11:39He has done nothing.
11:40He's a rhino.
11:41And he believes in pro-choice.
11:44Joe, you cannot be a Republican and be pro-choice.
11:47Democrat or Republican, Christian show, to me, you can't be a real Christian and be pro-baby murder, right?
11:58I mean, some are willing to concede in the rarest of situations, the life of the mother.
12:07But C. Everett Coop had exposed that fallacy that his entire life he'd never seen a case where actually murdering the baby somehow preserves the life of the mother.
12:23But if we were to even give the exclusion of rape and incest, that would eliminate 99% of abortions, which are for convenience.
12:39But it's impossible, it seems, to even get that.
12:45But I want to go back to your point about what we're talking about.
12:50It isn't the inanimate object's fault.
12:53The gun.
12:54The gun does not pull its own trigger.
12:58It's just a tool.
12:59As a Christian show, I like to joke and say, maybe we should ban assault trumpets.
13:08Now, what do I mean by that?
13:11Obviously, I'm going back to Jericho.
13:14Brought down the walls, right?
13:17God ordained, wander around the city with the horns.
13:22And on the sixth or seventh day, it's not like I've got the Bible fully memorized or anything like that.
13:31I'm not perfect.
13:32I have holes in my memory like everybody else.
13:36If we're to use the woke mindset, if it could just save one life, we should ban all guns.
13:44Okay, well, the descendants of Jericho who had members killed in that Jericho seas where the trumpets brought down the walls,
13:57maybe we should ban assault trumpets.
14:00It's not the object.
14:03Cain killed Abel with a stone.
14:06David slew Goliath with a slone with the aid of a sling.
14:12It's not the object.
14:14Yes?
14:15Absolutely.
14:16Now, do you know that Goliath tried to kill David with five stones?
14:21Do you know?
14:22They were all flat stones.
14:23Do you know what the five stones represent?
14:26Where are you going with that?
14:28Goliath had five brothers.
14:30A lot of people don't know that that is the significance.
14:33Every detail in the Bible, there is a lot of significance.
14:38It's not coincidence.
14:40There is nothing in the Bible that is coincidental.
14:43It's not a mistake that Saul sinned, and it took 15 years for Saul to be killed.
14:54God took Saul out.
14:55Why?
14:56Because Saul did not listen to God.
15:00He allowed the Amalekites.
15:03He killed off most of the Amalekites, but yet he kept the leader.
15:08He took all the blunder, and he kept the livestock.
15:13And I love it when he's confronted, and he says, oh, yeah, I got rid of that.
15:23And the prophet, I believe it was Elijah?
15:29Elisha?
15:30I'm not.
15:30Isaac.
15:31I think it was Isaac.
15:32Isaac was the one.
15:33Again, to my point, we're human.
15:36Yeah, we're human.
15:38Our memories are certainly not endemic, photographic, perfect.
15:43So we might get a little detail wrong, but the point of this show often is the proper context of it all, as you're talking about here.
15:54Not picking one minor point and another and ignoring all the other things that put it into context.
16:03And when Saul was confronted by Isaac, he said, oh, I killed off the Amalekites.
16:12Isaac says, well, how come I hear sheep bang, buying, and cows mooing?
16:23And yet Saul still continued to lie, even when he was confronted with the truth.
16:33God could have gotten rid of Saul immediately, but yet he gave him 15 years to repent.
16:44That is a merciful love to God.
16:46I think about how many times God told me to repent of the stealing, the dishonesty.
16:54And then I had a near-death experience in August 2015 where I was almost killed by an out-of-control driver.
17:01That was my wake-up call.
17:04If I didn't repent from my sins, God, I guarantee you would have taken me out.
17:09Second chances, grace, all that.
17:14And indeed, but you raise an important point here to tie it back to the justice.
17:22God's justice is one thing.
17:25Like Matthew 7 is really condemn not lest ye be condemned.
17:29There's more than just seven words there.
17:32And there are 12 other biblical scriptural items that tell us to judge.
17:39Again, that whole context.
17:41And that is different than worldly human justice.
17:47Jesus, as told to us by Matthew 5, 17, I am here to fulfill the scripture.
17:54I'm not here to replace the prophet or replace the law and indeed turn the other cheek and grant grace and second chances is the first preferred method.
18:10But he didn't supplant the entire Old Testament, Genesis, Leviticus, and Numbers that justify a worldly death penalty still apply, which takes us back to three strikes.
18:26If you're a serial killer, I have no problem putting you to death for those multiple deaths.
18:33If a, you know, multiple offense also in not all at one time or in secession, a death penalty can and still does apply.
18:47Yes.
18:48Absolutely.
18:49Yeah.
18:49So Billy Graham spoke at Bill Clinton's inauguration just about when he had had the affair with Monica Lewinsky.
19:00And he said, God's job is to judge and our job is to love.
19:05And that is a challenge for all of us.
19:08If we saw how Jesus treated Judas at the Last Supper, he knew that Judas was going to betray him, but yet he treated Judas the same way he treated everybody else.
19:21And that's what we are called to do as Christians is to love.
19:24It's not that we condone the behavior, but we love the person.
19:28God came to, he loves the sinner, but he doesn't like the sin.
19:32Yeah, that doesn't mean we tolerate and allow criminals to keep re-offending.
19:40I get what you're saying, right?
19:41Turn the other cheek, right?
19:44If we're talking the face, you've got one other cheek.
19:47Second chances, a chance at redemption.
19:51Everyone's entitled to a bad day and just doing something wrong out of desperation.
19:58But as long as you want to reform and you want to repent to give that chance, I was going, where was I going?
20:11Oh, yeah, the turn the other cheek thing, right?
20:13It doesn't, Jesus never said continually be abused.
20:20He doesn't say that.
20:22That's not what we're taught, right?
20:24If you're going to continue with your free will, continue to choose acts of evil, you will be punished on this planet for it.
20:37And final judgment, though, is for the Lord to determine your final fate.
20:45Yes, but that's why we have a criminal justice system on this planet.
20:51It's why we indeed God agrees with and allows.
20:58It's like the commandment also.
21:00It's not thou shalt not kill.
21:03It is thou shalt not murder innocents.
21:06Exodus 22.2 alone, a thief in the night dealt a fatal blow.
21:12You didn't murder.
21:14You killed, but you didn't murder.
21:17And why the death penalty from the Old Testament still applies.
21:23We can kill that person.
21:26We can put that person to death as part of justice and not be guilty of murdering innocents.
21:35And other examples in the Bible where killing is authorized.
21:40A major distinction.
21:41Part of that is earthly justice, man's justice, as humane and Christian-like as we can be, but yet needing to keep order in this fallen world.
22:06Absolutely.
22:07We always need order.
22:08So when you're saying justice reform, again, this crazy thing, don't assume, ask.
22:16I think we're on the same page.
22:18We both, I think, would agree, and you could correct me if I'm wrong, that there are indeed some minor offenses we might be able to not look the other way,
22:32but not jail for, that turn the other cheek and chance at another chance and redemption.
22:40But if you re-offend, that goes back to two or three strikes, then we throw the book at you and we lock you away for a long time.
22:49So certain offenses we perhaps should go lighter on, but other offenses, like those who keep re-offending, we need to be much harder on.
23:01And it goes back to this predates Rudy Giuliani, but he's associated with the broken windows concept, right?
23:11When you catch somebody early for minor offenses and you at least make them pay with 30 days in jail rather than slap on the wrist and go,
23:25ah, just please don't do it again.
23:27If you're weak on crime, they see you're weak on crime and they've got no reason to not re-offend.
23:35Yes?
23:36Absolutely, yes.
23:38So criminal justice reform, I think, again, we're on the same page.
23:42Some things, yes, we can be a little more lenient on, like first-time pot offenders, right?
23:50The libertarians are always screaming about that, and that's one I can agree with.
23:57The dog dealers that got the money, they're seizing the money, and they seem to be let off pretty easy.
24:04But there are people who are clearly caring for minor offenses, minor personal use, that are getting locked away for,
24:14and there doesn't seem to be any common sense in any of that.
24:20Well, the Republicans are the party of common sense.
24:22Try to be anyway.
24:24Not all of them, but try to be.
24:26When I say criminal justice reform, I am specifically talking about mental health, people who have mental health needs.
24:35I was one that had, I have Asperger's and I'm on the autism spectrum,
24:41but yet Judge Jeffrey Crawford and Bob Wolford both chose that, decided that I didn't meet the criteria to go through the mental health court.
24:50If I was allowed to go through the mental health court and completed it successfully,
24:54we probably wouldn't be talking today because I wouldn't have a record.
24:59Yeah, it would be a very different conversation.
25:02I would hope we'd still be having the conversation.
25:05Yeah, it would indeed be very different.
25:07And yes, I agree with you.
25:09Most people are concerned.
25:12You know, I hate to do this.
25:13Some people say kind of BS, but I myself am indeed concerned you got mistreated.
25:23You kind of fell through a crack.
25:25You needed help, and help could have been made available.
25:29Would have made a very different situation.
25:32I am worried, as are some others, those who try to use a mental health, you know, plea insanity as a way to game the system.
25:47So there's, it's, whether there's trusted people, like you said, had you gotten the proper diagnosis and been referred to people who would have helped,
26:02corruption is what I'm getting at here, I guess.
26:05How do we safeguard so people get the right diagnosis and help,
26:11and those who can be put into a mental health outcome situation and be reformed and helped through that aren't also abused,
26:24and it's used as just another money laundering operation for politicians.
26:29Oh, so-and-so's got a, was a health agency, so a judge keeps funneling people to them because they're getting kickbacks.
26:39This is, this is a fallen world, it's imperfect, it doesn't mean we don't try amidst known corruption.
26:49I make sense of that, all that.
26:53I made a mess, cleaned it up.
26:55The entire system needs to go to the private, needs to be handled privately.
26:59It's just a disaster.
27:01The, you know, all of these people, whether it's the lawyers, the judges, the cops,
27:06they're all incentivized to get convictions.
27:10That is why more people in our country are in prison for,
27:17because they were at the wrong place at the wrong time.
27:20You know, there's these innocence projects that are going on throughout the country.
27:24We hear almost every day about an individual that was in prison for 40 years,
27:29and he didn't do it.
27:31DNA.
27:31DNA.
27:32Yeah.
27:32And the problem is, is that these police officers want to close a case,
27:37so they rush through and just try to find anybody and anybody so they can make their quota.
27:43On the one hand, I want to agree, and on the other hand, I would say evidence shows otherwise, right?
27:50In certain cases, I'm in agreement with you,
27:54and I am a big supporter of the different innocence projects,
27:58because indeed, if someone is truly innocent, I don't want them locked up, right?
28:04The whole to kill a mockingbird, Atticus Finch kind of mentality, right?
28:10Innocence is innocence.
28:11Guilt is guilt.
28:12We want to punish guilty.
28:14On the other hand, we've already talked about Soros-backed DAs constantly letting people
28:23who are absolutely positively guilty of offenses being let right back out to re-offend.
28:30So they're incentivized to convict, maybe some places, but yet other places, there's the incentive to just continue a revolving door.
28:43And I'm against federalizing everything, but short of one dictatorial kind of ruling on that,
28:55how do we fix the broken areas?
28:58Hiring every person that's in office and starting over.
29:02There is, you know, the government has this attitude and that it's a retirement center.
29:11People come in and they spend decades and they don't do anything.
29:17In the private sector, if a CEO, if he doesn't do it, he or she doesn't do his job, they're gone.
29:23But government, you can make your own rules, you can show up when you want, and there's really no consequences.
29:31And then you get this lush retirement that nobody else gets.
29:36Yeah, I responded on the Nextdoor app.
29:41I don't remember if it was the Detroit Free Press or some other organization reported on a bunch of retirements.
29:50Out of, right, politicians retiring.
29:53That doesn't mean that then two years from now they don't run for something else, as you said.
29:57I say if our founders had a glimpse of the reality of today, they would have put term limits in the Constitution.
30:08They were brilliant in understanding human nature to a large degree, which is why we've got the system we've got and the protections we have and the safeguards.
30:21They still, though, unfortunately tried to cling to the belief the better part of our nature would be in our politicians, and unfortunately not, right?
30:35There will always be some wanting to lord over others and want to make a career.
30:42Career politicians is what we're talking about here.
30:45And I responded to on Nextdoor, the Free Press and Water, many are retiring.
30:51I'm good, right?
30:53Left, right, Democrat, Republican.
30:55I don't care why they're going.
30:58Just GTFO, right?
31:01STFU and GTFO.
31:03Go away.
31:04You've been there too long.
31:07Go away.
31:09Once somebody's been in a position for a long time, they get in comfort, they coast,
31:14and they don't do anything.
31:16Whether it's sales, whether it's government, people who have the best ideas are fresh people.
31:24They're trying to make a name for themselves.
31:25They're trying to build credibility.
31:27They're the innovators.
31:29Folks that have been doing the job for 40-plus years are just trying to get close to retirement.
31:34They're doing as little as possible.
31:36We covered a lot of different ground.
31:39It can make for a bad show, but yet at the same time, it's what I pride myself in.
31:45Whatever the rabbit holes open up are where we go.
31:49We don't do pre-interviews here.
31:52I don't send questions ahead.
31:54I don't research the guests a whole lot.
31:57I don't know.
31:58I don't want to know because I want to go with flow with the go, as I joked earlier, right?
32:05We just start a conversation, and then we go where it goes.
32:11If people want to reach out to you, do you have a website for them to do so?
32:17One of my inspiration is Forbes Riley, Dr. Forbes Riley.
32:21She always says, I don't have a website, but I have a website.
32:25It's bullybehindbars.com.
32:28I'm sorry.
32:30Bullybehindbars.com is my website.
32:32My email address is bullybehindbars at gmail.com.
32:37You can find me on Instagram, bulliedbehindbars, x, barsbullied, facebook, matthew.melvin.5621.
32:46Okay.
32:47So is it B-U-L-L-Y or B-U-L-L-I-E-D?
32:53B-U-L-L-I-E-D.
32:55Okay.
32:56It's the name of my book.
32:57Oh, yeah.
32:59I would wrap it up.
33:01But, yeah, we didn't really get a chance to talk about the book.
33:05Go ahead and tell us about the book a little more.
33:09I wrote my book the second time I was in prison.
33:12I went to 10 different institutions.
33:14I was put in solitary confinement a lot because the guards and the inmates were in cahoots.
33:21They would, inmates would lie to the guards.
33:23They would try to tell them that I tried to proposition them.
33:26Then they would put me in solitary confinement.
33:28But the prison did not have my mind.
33:32They may have had my body, but they didn't have my mind.
33:34And that's really where I started doing my research, reading my Bible, praying, attending every Bible study.
33:40Because in prison, a lot of times they sent in volunteers from cults like Jehovah's Witness, Christian science, Scientology.
33:46So I was really able to sharpen my saw and get up to speed to where I need to be to be able to go out and administer the word every day.
33:56Available on Amazon.
33:58Of course, yes.
34:00And showing a copy here for those looking behind the scenes video, I get a reasonable amount of views on the bit shoot.
34:10But the show is primarily carried audio only across 25 plus platforms.
34:18So it is bulliedbehindbars.com.
34:22Thank you, Matt and Elvin, for coming on.
34:25I encourage people, of course, to check out the site, check out the book, reach out to you if they want a further discussion.
34:35Thank you so much for having me on.
34:40Merry Christmas.
34:41Oh, same to you, sir.
34:43And indeed, like with most guests, we could talk for three hours or three days, but then it would be too long.
34:52All right.
34:53Thank you all for tuning in.
34:54Take care.
34:55God bless.
34:56Love you all.
34:56Like and subscribe to Christitutionalist Politics Podcast and share episodes.
35:04We need your help.
35:06Thank you for having tuned into another Christitutionalist Podcast show.
35:13I really appreciate that you stopped by.
35:17Again, please like, share, subscribe.
35:20We need you to help spread the Christitutionalist Movement.
35:25Thank you again.
35:27Take care.
35:29God bless.
35:30Love you all.
Be the first to comment