Life in the Feds [Video]

Life In the Feds is the story of Kendrick Fulton and his resilience in the U.S. criminal justice system.

Kendrick spent half his life in prison serving a stacked sentence. During the pandemic, he was released to home confinement. Since then he’s successfully re-entered his community and has thrived at work and at home as a father.

Kendrick deserves the freedom to keep thriving and the peace of mind that only clemency can give. His story is just one example of thousands who should be granted clemency now. Join COC in the fight to keep them free. https://coc.is/CL

Transcript provided by YouTube (unedited)

0:07
i took a job with a temporary agency i
0:10
interviewed
0:11
you know had three people in front of me
0:13
i’m talking to these guys
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and they so they asked me all these
0:16
questions
0:17
and i just basically telling my story
0:19
like listen you know by the grace of god
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i’m here july 24th they gave me a job
0:24
offer for like 24 hours an hour
0:28
my name is kendrick fulton
0:30
i’m from texas i’m 48 years old
0:33
in 2003 i was sentenced to 400 months in
0:36
federal prison
0:38
i was released in september of 2020
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after serving 17 years to home
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confinement under the keras act
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january 2020
1:01
the federal bureau of prisons implements
1:03
a pattern score they score you as a a
1:05
minimum risk a low risk a medium and a
1:08
high risk
1:09
april
1:10
2020 then attorney general bill barr
1:13
puts out a memo
1:15
he says that everyone with a minimum
1:17
pattern score
1:18
who has served 50 of their sentence
1:21
who has an underlying health condition
1:23
can be put in for home confinement i
1:25
mean you couldn’t have anything in your
1:27
background to be eligible for this
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program
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[Music]
1:50
if you were a minimum pattern score and
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you came up on their list in dc
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they were called an institution like hey
1:57
get why is this person still here get
1:59
this person out of here each case is
2:01
different
2:02
you know in my particular case you know
2:04
i’m at right now 18 years and five
2:06
months with another decade left i knew
2:09
something was going to come up they were
2:11
going to come say we made a mistake and
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you can’t go home the way my case
2:14
manager was scoring me he was treating
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all drug crimes as violent
2:19
if you had a drug case
2:21
it was violent in all fairness to him he
2:23
didn’t know
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so
2:25
i had to take him to the statute you
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know we showed him hey listen even the
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federal government
2:30
doesn’t treat drug crimes as violent
2:32
beginning in the early 1990s
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congress enacted a law that treated
2:36
kraken powder differently
2:39
crack was treated 100 times worse than
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powder
2:42
so basically if you have five grams of
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crack
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which is maybe
2:48
a package of sugar or if you had a pound
2:51
of cocaine
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which is 500 grams
2:54
you were treated the same you associate
2:56
the same mandatory minimum which was
2:57
back then was five years
3:00
i was sentenced for 50 grams of crack
3:04
which at the time was only subject to a
3:06
mandatory minimum of 10 years
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but the way federal law works once the
3:10
jury went home
3:12
they loaded me up i went from 50 grams
3:15
to 10 000 grams as sentencing
3:18
so in other words i went from 10 years
3:21
to 33 years
3:25
[Music]
3:32
[Music]
3:41
[Music]
3:43
typically i have a 300 feet radius
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and if i go more than 300 feet from the
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house my monitor
3:49
starts to alert i can only travel 100
3:52
mile radius
3:53
like when i’m at work i can go no
3:54
further than in san antonio so
3:57
those are my limitations right now home
3:59
confinement and i’m hoping that those
4:00
will change soon
4:03
right now i want to pick up my son
4:05
kendrick
4:06
so yeah i’m going to pick him up he’s
4:08
flying in from houston my oldest son i
4:10
hadn’t seen him yet
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he hadn’t had a chance to come down so
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my first ministry is the family that’s
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first and foremost just
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being around my kids you know it’s not
4:29
too much i can do to make up
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lost time
4:32
but just going forward you know they can
4:34
just you know get to know their dad
4:37
and you know uh
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just get to be around
4:43
that would be good
4:46
it actually turned out to be a nice day
4:50
good time to be a nice day
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[Music]
5:00
so
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today i went and picked up this suit
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because i want to get back to
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kind of how it was before i left so
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this is what i picked up i think i’m
5:12
gonna look pretty good in it
5:15
like the color
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i think it’s gonna fit me well
5:21
feels good been a long time
5:24
about 2002
5:26
2001
5:28
20 years easy
5:31
not bad
5:35
definitely not any khaki it’s definitely
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not any
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nothing brown so
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it’s just been a long time you know
5:42
wearing khaki suits and sweat suits
5:45
jogging through stuff like that you know
5:47
this is
5:48
it’s just one step to
5:50
to being normal
5:54
bubba
5:55
come tell me what you think yeah i like
5:57
the color man you know different it’s
5:59
capacity compared to what i used to wear
6:01
easy some gators need some gatorade yeah
6:04
and i’ll be back yeah he’ll be back i’m
6:06
back yeah
6:16
[Music]
6:18
i’m definitely messing up the six packs
6:21
no captain him a bunch
6:25
it’s the best thing
6:27
and it’s the worst thing being on home
6:28
confinement because
6:30
you hear stories of people being sent
6:32
back for just minor violations so i met
6:34
right now 18 years and five months i’m
6:37
out here working i have benefits i pay
6:40
taxes
6:41
i would like to know their reasoning you
6:42
know they would say you know go back to
6:44
prison
6:48
[Music]
6:56
[Music]
7:01
so i don’t need i need to season the
7:02
chicken or what
7:05
ah nah because we it’s gonna be mixed in
7:07
with this uh
7:08
that yeah
7:12
so we’re in the culinary arts class
7:14
right
7:15
and they have a knife
7:17
you know this is prison yeah so you know
7:18
they got a knife but it’s like chained
7:20
to the table yeah we would learn how to
7:23
fillet fish
7:24
how to hold those gills back and
7:27
do all that so yeah it was
7:29
yeah i was under what four different
7:31
administrations
7:33
i’ve heard what a lot of politicians
7:34
have said
7:35
but i’ve had enough of what you say
7:38
it’s more about what you do i just wish
7:40
they would understand that these are
7:41
real people’s lives that they’re
7:43
affecting you know it’s real families
7:45
with children mothers grandmothers
7:48
daughters sons that are really just
7:50
counting on they you know they they
7:52
found their loved ones to be home
7:54
you got it it says push let me see
7:57
got it
7:58
you don’t want to mess your nails up
7:59
yeah
8:00
you got your nails done so
8:03
of all things i thought relief would
8:05
come from the courts
8:06
and they came from a emergency pandemic
8:09
over the years of dealing with the
8:11
federal government it’s kind of like you
8:12
expect the worst
8:14
you hope for the best
8:16
but you expect the worst
8:18
to me growing up i thought it was normal
8:20
to have a dad in prison like i didn’t
8:22
understand that that’s not normal so i
8:25
thought your dad was supposed to be in
8:26
prison supposed to call you
8:27
you know
8:28
the phone’s gonna hang up after 15
8:30
minutes i thought that was normal you
8:31
know but
8:32
as i got older i started to understand
8:34
that it’s not normal when my dad went to
8:36
prison i was uh three going on four
8:39
right now i’m uh i’m 22 years old
8:41
it was kind of confusing because in the
8:43
media a prisoner an inmate like that’s
8:45
like a bad person and my dad is like the
8:47
farthest thing from a bad person so it
8:50
was really confusing growing up i
8:52
actually don’t dwell on the past
8:54
too much it’s it’s already done it’s
8:56
already over when i can’t go back and
8:57
change it so i’m just looking towards
8:59
the future see what we can do in the
9:00
future together
9:03
you know i don’t have three years left
9:05
two years left four years left i have a
9:07
whole decade now
9:10
let that cook for a minute are we done
9:12
with this bell pepper
9:14
are we done cutting stuff yeah that’s it
9:16
that’s everything yeah
9:18
during the election president body made
9:20
a bunch of promises promise that affects
9:22
my sins and the sense of others
9:24
one of the promises made was to reduce
9:27
the prison population
9:29
and to use his executive authority to
9:31
bring clemency to people who are serving
9:33
unduly long sentences he could
9:36
release
9:38
more people than one day in history
9:40
so the ball is in his court
9:45
i’m hopeful he’ll do the right thing
9:46
though i’m hopeful
9:56
[Music]
10:06
you

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This post was previously published on YouTube.

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