The Sunday Read: ‘I Write About the Law. But Could I Really Help Free a Prisoner?’

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 15 August 2021

⏱️ 66 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 2019, Emily Bazelon, a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, began communicating with Yutico Briley, an inmate at a prison in Jackson, La. Mr. Briley first reached out to Ms. Bazelon after hearing her on the radio talking about “Charges,” her book on how prosecutors have historically used their power to increase incarceration. At age 19, Mr. Briley was imprisoned and sentenced to 60 years without the possibility of parole, in part, for a robbery he said he did not commit. Ms. Bazelon decided to become involved in his case in a way that she had never done before.

Transcript

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0:00.0	So much has changed over the past few years.
0:03.4	Oh yeah, the shift to remote work, supply chain demands, sustainability concerns, it can
0:08.5	be tough for leaders to keep up, but we're here to help.
0:11.6	I'm Elise Hugh.
0:12.6	And I'm Josh Klein.
0:13.9	We're the hosts of Built for Change, a podcast from Accenture.
0:16.9	On Built for Change, we've talked with leaders from every corner of the business world,
0:20.6	to learn how their harnessing changed to totally reinvent their companies and how you can
0:24.7	do it too.
0:25.8	So subscribe to Built for Change now to get new episodes whenever they drop.
0:30.2	So one day in the summer of 2019, I was in the airport and I was killing time because
0:35.9	my flight had been delayed and I saw an email in my inbox from an address I didn't recognize.
0:43.0	It was from a retired librarian and she said she was the pen pal of a man in prison in Louisiana.
0:50.7	His name was Udico Riley.
0:53.3	And she was getting in touch because Udico had sent me a letter and he wanted to know
0:58.4	whether I'd gotten it.
1:00.8	I'm Emily Bazlon.
1:02.4	I report on the criminal justice system and I'm a staff writer at the New York Times
1:05.9	magazine.
1:07.2	I get a lot of letters from people in prison and they're hoping I can help them.
1:12.0	Some of them see me as a kind of last chance.
1:15.1	But even though I want to, I can't respond to everyone and that makes me feel terrible.
	...

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