REVEREND DEAN: (00:00)
I am the Reverend Dean Becker guardian of the drug war. Moral high ground prohibition has no benefit. It is a fascist tool. It seeks to gain control of all our rights, the future of mankind. This is cultural baggage. 

REVEREND DEAN: (00:20)
Hello, my friends. Thank you for being with us on today's edition of Cultural Baggage. I am Dean Becker, the Reverend Most High. We've got two, uh, powerful guests with us today. Two judges, one here in Texas. 

Judge James Gray: (00:32)
I'm sorry. He is the Dean Becker. He is the Dean. Becker 

REVEREND DEAN: (00:36)
. Well, thank, we have two judges with us today. One in Texas, one in California. Uh, I'm gonna introduce the longer term. Guess though, not maybe the longer term acquaintance. Uh, judge James, James P. Gray, author of my favorite book, why our Drug Laws Have Failed, what We Can Do about It, A judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs. And then we have here in Texas, a new friend, a new ally, if you will, who I've known for all these years. And we just recently reacquainted ourselves. Uh, I wanna introduce Judge John Delaney more than 40 years, way over 500 jury trials, and both of these men are speakers for law enforcement Action partnership. How you doing, gentlemen? 

Judge James Gray: (01:26)
Life is good. We're blessed. 

Judge John Delaney: (01:28)
Feeling, feeling great today. Thank you for having me. 

REVEREND DEAN: (01:31)
Well, thank you both. I'm sorry for being out of breath, said COPD. Um, I, I, I wanna first talk about, uh, a a weekly receipt I get from Judge Gray. It's called, uh, two Paragraphs for Liberty. And, uh, one of his most recent dealt with that situation in the Caribbean where apparently, I don't know, a helicopter blew this, uh, 20 foot boat out of the water. They said it was full of drugs and 11, uh, individuals, and that they were terrorists and worthy of being murdered out there in the middle of the ocean. Is that a fair summation there? Judge Gray? 

Judge James Gray: (02:10)
I, I fear that you're right. I fear that is an accurate summation. You know, we have laws, we have a constitution. And I'm thoroughly convinced, Dean, that each one of the framers of our constitution would be outraged by, by having, having done this, we perfe per performed an act of war. And, you know, if we were at war, if we'd had a declaration of war against Venezuela, okay, that's different. But, you know, they were in international waters. Who knows where they were going, who knows what was in the boat, you know, if their drug courier is having 11 people in the boat is rather unusual. And then, as I understand it, not only did our president authorized this, but this helicopter or whatever, not only disabled the boat with the first shot, it continued to shoot into this boat and exploded it and killed everybody aboard. 

Judge James Gray: (02:59)
I'm sorry, but I cannot accept that as a, as a man of the law. It was murder. It was murder. And let's call it what it is. So I did write this two paragraphs for Liberty, and I called it, you know, there comes a time, and I ended it by saying, I don't care who did it, whether it was our current president, whether it was Martin Luther King Jr. Whether it was you or me, we have to be held accountable for what we do, and Congress should hold the president accountable for that decision, which was lawless in my opinion, regardless of what was in, you know, we need, we, we should have due process for the people that were killed. And again, they were in international water. Had they been in our waters, we certainly could have boarded them. We could have searched them. I don't think we could board them in international waters, but to have done what we did is simply not who we are as a country. Other than that, I have no opinion whatsoever. Yeah, 

Judge John Delaney: (03:53)
. 

REVEREND DEAN: (03:54)
All right. And, uh, John Delaney, uh, sir, I want to ask you this. He, he mentioned the word, uh, due process because that's what has become missing here in the United States for I think, hundreds if not thousands of arrests that are going on now. Um, someone is, looks Hispanic or speaks Spanish. It's, it's a, it's like a, a search warrant immediately that the cops can grab them, throw 'em in a car, ship 'em to another state or to to another country. Uh, your response to this lack of due process, sir, 

Judge John Delaney: (04:26)
I want to piggyback on what Judge Grace said about the incident in the Caribbean, because that is, um, an, an outrage without borders. It seems to me, if it's acceptable to find a, uh, 12 meter, 39 foot skiff, uh, in open waters and execute all of the occupants without attempting to stop the, the vessel, make inquiry and maybe detain them, confiscate their illegal contraband, if any, but just simply execute them without trial. If that's an appropriate act of American military, uh, acting as quasi law enforcement, which they're not intended to be, not trained to be, then it seems to me that it would be also perfectly acceptable, appropriate to, to pull over a, a driver of a vehicle on a, on a state highway by, by state police, and immediately kill all the occupants because it was determined that they had drugs onboard the car. What's the difference? Uh, one happens to be in the United States, one happens to be, uh, in international waters, but we know they're dealing drugs, right? So they get what's coming to them, right? That's not America. 

Judge James Gray: (06:00)
And, and Judge Delaney, they 

Judge John Delaney: (06:01)
Were, here's a scary, here's a scary thing. One of my very best friends that I play golf with almost weekly when discussing this incident, said, but John, they were, they were dealing drugs. They were coming, taking drugs to our country to kill our people. I said, okay, we arrest them, we put 'em in prison. Th those people were administered the death penalty for a crime that does not carry the death penalty. 

Judge James Gray: (06:31)
Of course. 

Judge John Delaney: (06:32)
And you can argue, you can argue, well, maybe it should, but it does not. 

Judge James Gray: (06:36)
The administration was saying, oh, there were tons and tons of cocaine or whatever it was, fentanyl in this boat. What's the cutoff? What if it was half a ton? What if it was a hundred pounds? What if it was 10 pounds? What if it was 10 LI mean, what are you gonna do? You need to have some laws. And, and, and what if nothing like that carries the day? 

Judge John Delaney: (06:54)
What if those 11 people whose bodies were not even recovered by the, our Navy, but but by fishermen from the village there, they came from, I say fishermen, I don't know that to be true, but the village people went out and recovered bodies and brought in, how do we know that multiple people among those 11 were handcuffed hostages, pregnant women who were being taken somewhere, young girls being taken somewhere to be trafficked, had got, had, had no culpable role at all in the trafficking of drugs. But these are just minutia it, even if all 11 of them were serial drug dealers, it's inappropriate for our country to have engaged in the conduct that it did. So I'm a, I'm a former naval officer, and I immediately put myself in a place of the skipper on the vessel that, uh, launched the, the, the fatal strike. Oh my gosh. I should have known better, but then I have to follow orders. 

Judge James Gray: (08:03)
No, you 

Judge John Delaney: (08:03)
Don't. Up to a well, up to a point, right? I would like to know the inside story behind what that skipper know, knew what he was told and who told it to him, and what's the source of their information. It's, it's, it's, it's a, it's a total outrage. 

Judge James Gray: (08:21)
It's not who we are as a country. 

Judge John Delaney: (08:23)
It's not who we are as a country, and it, it can't be buried. And that's one reason I agreed to come on the show this morning, because this deserves the widest possible discussion in this country. And it's, it's a terrible thing that a political activist gets murdered. Awful. But the real story is how this country is employing, uh, its, its revered military resource to execute people on the high seas. That's not the United States of America. We, we, we talk about the land of the free and the brave. Well, in this case, we ain't so brave. 

Judge James Gray: (09:03)
Well, and I, I had a friend the day after I wrote this two paragraphs article. Um, you know, there comes a time who said, oh, Jim just doesn't like Trump. I think that has nothing to do with it. This could have been my father, it could have been my brother. You know, who would be wrong? You hold people accountable for what they do. Had nothing to do with who I like or who I don't like. 

REVEREND DEAN: (09:24)
Let me put in 2 cents here. I I observe what goes on in the Caribbean. You guys probably do too. But you see the instance where they have a boat that pulls up, besides these submarines that are traveling, drugs northward, and a a, a Marine will jump onto the submarine and, and hold a gun to the people's head, and they'll stop the boat and they'll get the cocaine and they'll get the people. And that goes on time, after time after time, over the decades now. And yet we have a, uh, I, I don't wanna point at him, but we have a administration that wants to deviate from what has been standard practiced and lawful over all these decades. And they now, I think, want to escalate. They want to create a situation of violence, of response, uh, to what they're up to. And I think it's just an attempt to stir the pot, so to speak, to agitate. 

Judge James Gray: (10:19)
Well, I, I'm not gonna get into motives. I, I don't know. Yeah. I, I fear that we have an administration of yes, men of people. If you don't agree with me, you're fired and you've gotta have discussion. And, and we're getting away from that so much, not only in the government, but in our country. In fact, I look back, we're so polarized, Dean, unlike any time in my my life, I've been around for a while, and how did we get polarized? And my view is, wow, when we first got these, what, 300 cable TV channels, I thought, wow, that's gonna be great. We're all gonna get a variety of information, a variety of news. And boy was I wrong, because now what happens, you'll have these individual cable TV station that figure out your biases and cater directly to your biases. So in law, now, if you disagree with me, again, not only am I wrong, I'm evil. And that's where we are. We can't talk with each other today. I can't point to almost any publicly elected official that's willing to discuss these issues. You know, I don't have all the answers. This is the problem. These are the victims. Let's discuss them and come up with some resolution on it. We don't have anybody in our country doing that. And it's to our detriment. 

REVEREND DEAN: (11:30)
There's a, 

Judge John Delaney: (11:31)
I'd like to, I'd like to throw in one little fact that is, is just a factoid, apparently having to do with the, uh, Caribbean drug boat incident, alleged drug boat. Uh, there's a report out of news, various news media as of yesterday evening that this particular vessel that was shot up by our Navy had turned around, had reversed course, and was heading back to port. And it, it appears that possibly they had thrown away some of their cargo. Maybe, maybe not. Uh, certainly the pictures, um, that we've seen, the video doesn't appear to show a large cargo on there. Uh, probably just enough cargo to account for the amount of fuel it would take to power these four, 200 horsepower outboard engines, which are easily disabled, by the way. And with traditional drug interdiction methods. They put a, a sniper, uh, on, on the Coast Guard cutter or any vessel and u use a 50 caliber sniper rifle and shoot into these, uh, outboard engines, stopping them pretty quick so that you can go on board if you, if you have to resort to that. 

Judge John Delaney: (12:57)
But to execute 11 people that are unidentified to us, it's just beyond the pale. The larger story that Judge Gray and, and you Dean are talking about is that it's kind of, this kind of conduct is kind of emblematic of our political violence, spoken and unspoken. That is a cancer in our country. And we can't just wr our hands and say, oh my gosh, we gotta stop this. Uh, nobody has the solution except to do small acts of deescalation. That's why you won't find me saying anything complimentary about Charlie Kirk. Uh, that was another outrageous act of political violence by a deranged individual, not some political movement that opposed him, but people reacting that way, way because of the atmosphere. Yeah. That seems to suggest that violence is necessary to, uh, ward off evil or to promote your righteousness, one or the other. And I feared that we're just gonna have to live through it and hope that, uh, the next generation finds a different world to live in. I don't see any end in sight. 

REVEREND DEAN: (14:35)
Just a reminder, that was Judge John Delaney based here in Texas, and our other guest is Judge James P. Gray, based in, uh, California. 

Judge James Gray: (14:45)
Some good thing happened yesterday, judge, and that is that this commentator, commentator from M-S-N-B-C who made these just despicable comments about Charlie Kirk. Oh, the, the bullet came from heaven, or, you know, I don't know what he said, he was fired. So at least that's a small act toward getting responsibility back in journalism, but we need a lot more of them. 

Judge John Delaney: (15:08)
Ironically, my reaction to that is that the firing of that person was another act of violence. 

Judge James Gray: (15:16)
I like, I believe it, it's accountability. I, I disagree with you on that. 

Judge John Delaney: (15:20)
People in the people in the military are being demoted because they go online and make comments, uh, about the Charlie Kurt killing. 

Judge James Gray: (15:30)
Yep. That's different. They're not, they don't, they're not public. But I, by the way, I was a Navy JAG officer. I was in Navy also and take my responsibility quite serious. In fact, I will go so far as to say I, I joined the United States Attorney's Office. I was a federal prosecutor, and in my process of application, the chief of the criminal division took me aside and said, Jim, as a federal prosecutor, you will do the right thing for the right reason. Every time you make a mistake, we've got your back. But if you do things for personal reasons, political reasons, you are going to be held accountable. And I've had a opportunity to speak with police officers and prosecutors and everything since then, and that's what I remind them. It's absolutely true. In fact, if you don't believe in a prosecution, you should not do it. Give it to somebody else. But we have to have, we have to have the system stand up and have people believe that it's doing justice and doing the right thing for the right reason. And that includes the military. It includes the higher rank you have as such as President, the more accountability that you should have 

Judge John Delaney: (16:37)
As a JAG officer, former Jag Officer Jim, I wonder what you would tell that, that captain, if, if you were his lawyer and he, he calls you up on the starlink phone and said, I've just been given orders to blow up this drug boat. What do you think, Jim? 

Judge James Gray: (16:53)
The uni, the Uniform Code of Military Justice says that you will not commit an illegal act even if you're ordered to. That's what I would tell him. If you believe it's illegal, do not do it. And I convinced that I would've told him, I think it is, I clearly think it is not legal. Do not do it. 

Judge John Delaney: (17:11)
You would be at apparel and you would be happy to defend him at his court martial. 

Judge James Gray: (17:15)
The answer is not only yes, but hell yes. That's a legal term. 

Judge John Delaney: (17:19)
. 

REVEREND DEAN: (17:19)
Okay. 

Judge John Delaney: (17:20)
Um, well, good for us. I'm sorry, Dean. I, I, I, I'm so outraged about this. I had to 

REVEREND DEAN: (17:26)
No, that's, that's fine. I look, we're entitled to our opinions in this country. Okay. I I wanna ask you guys something about this. What are inalienable rights? Aren't they just God or just born with them? Are, are they from somewhere? What are they? 

Judge James Gray: (17:42)
It's called from the Constitution. It says that you have the right to due process of law. It also says the federal, it delineates what powers the federal government has. By the way, there's nothing in that in the Constitution that allow the federal government to be involved in healthcare, for example, or education. You can look in the Constitution and never find anything like that in there, from my standpoint. So inalienable rights, no, they're not given from God. They're given from the Constitution, and that's our principle source of law in our country. And it is in Violet. And if you don't agree with it, and the framers knew that people, it may be wrong, you have to amend it. And that's fine. There's a provision for doing that. We've done that a few times. Good. But in the meantime, if it's, if that's what the Constitution says, that's the Inviable law of the gland, 

REVEREND DEAN: (18:31)
Uh, what the reason I bring that up is I, I'm watching these news stories and these ice agents are going around and they're arresting daddy and putting them in a van and hauling him away. And the kids are crying and they're pointing guns at the wife. And all of this is going on, and they don't have a search warrant. They don't even know the name of this man that they're putting in the car. And yet now, the Supreme Court says that, uh, it's, it's a, a, a right for these police to do it. That somehow the Constitution has been voided, that that due process is gone because these people are Hispanic. But please address that gentlemen. 

Judge James Gray: (19:06)
I, I'm, I'm terrorized by that. You know, our police have to have probable cause is, is more than they should have to have. But they have to have some articulable suspicion, some articulable reason that, okay, this person's Hispanic and speaks Spanish. Okay, Joe esp, you know, I mean, just 'cause I speak Spanish doesn't mean that you could, that I'm not a citizen. If you, if the, by the way, if these people are here illegally, we have to control our borders. We have to control who is here, who stays here, et cetera. But if you're here, you're working, you're supporting your family, don't go out and arrest 'em and all this stuff. Send 'em a letter saying, come on in and let's talk about it. And that's fine. But, but this arbitrary, and it is arbitrary arrest by people in plain clothes, in masks. I mean, it's just not who we are. And I disagree with the United States Supreme Court. They're the law of the land. And until they're overruled, that's still going to be the law of the land. But I think, uh, allowing these ice raids without any evidence, without any probable cause or articulable suspicion, is simply wrong, unconstitutional, and wrong. 

REVEREND DEAN: (20:15)
Uh, judge, uh, grave I both you judges, I, they, they grab these people when they're leaving the courtroom trying to go through the process to become citizens, to, to follow the rules. And they're arresting them in the courtroom hallways. 

Judge James Gray: (20:29)
It's out of control. It's out of control, and it's wrong. 

Judge John Delaney: (20:33)
It's an example of the end justifies the means, which is not our process. Then the next step is to have summary execution of these folks, 

Judge James Gray: (20:46)
Or, or deportation. I mean, just deport them just without a hearing. No, the answer is no. Categorically the answer is no. 

Judge John Delaney: (20:55)
And thank goodness for the federal courts, they are standing up and saying, you can't do this. Dean, to address your question, there's an old saying that I learned in law, school law that goes something like, um, what's constitutional is what the Supreme Court says is constitutional and unconstitutional. We happen to have a diff a different point of view on the, on the current Supreme Court that exalts the power of the executive in certain areas at least. But it's not, it's not, um, it's not universal. There's a stopping place. We're, we're rapidly getting to a stopping place where the Supreme Court is gonna say, not there. 

REVEREND DEAN: (21:36)
Um, this, this also brings to mind, I've been observing, and again, just because he is always in the news, he wants to be in the news that, that Trump is always avoiding justice. And, and I, I look at the way the, the laws have been slanted to protect the innocent, and this is all well and good, but it seems that it, at some point, it's gone beyond to where, uh, it protects the guilty due to the delay, uh, before they go to trial or before the justice system rolls forward. I'm not saying I want people to be expedited and, you know, deported immediately, like you kind of referenced there, judge Gray. But it's, it's just that, uh, criminals use the justice system to delay justice. Can we talk about that? 

Judge John Delaney: (22:25)
It's a, it's a well recognized concept in the defense of people charged with crimes that you can never go to prison if you don't go to trial and delay works to the advantage inev inevitably of, of the defense. So it's a legitimate, uh, defense, if you will, if you don't lie, cheat or steal in the process or break other laws. Who do you, who do you have in mind, Dean, that is delaying their visit to the courthouse? 

REVEREND DEAN: (23:02)
Well, I don't know. I, I was just talking about the situation that as this last election was rolling forward and Trump was about to be indicted and put on trial, and then suddenly he gets elected president, and now he's free and clear and the, the law, the, uh, crime goes away. I 

Judge John Delaney: (23:19)
Don't know. Well, that has to do with the Supreme Court, you know, sort of creating this presidential immunity doctrine. Yeah. Which is gonna be gonna gonna be examined for decades and decades. 

Judge James Gray: (23:33)
I, I'm gonna, I'm gonna tell you a secret I'm sure you've never thought of before or our listeners either. Life is complicated. I'm sorry to be so blunt, but, you know, there's a lot of stuff going on. And I personally think, and I don't know that much about it, that that prosecution in New York against Trump was politically motivated, was politically carried out. You know, it's wrong. I don't care who it is. And, and by the way, if somebody is in prison or in pre pretrial custody, they have no real vested interest in delaying the trial either. It, there, it, there's a lot of stuff going on in this world, and it's complicated. 

REVEREND DEAN: (24:07)
Okay? Okay. I look, I, uh, as a layman, you know, it's just hard to see how the rich, the connected, can stay out of jail, can afford bail, can delay justice. Whereas, uh, many of my friends have been busted for minor amounts of drugs, immediately handcuffed, thrown in a car, beaten if they needed it on the way by the cops, and, uh, thrown in a cage. 

Judge James Gray: (24:34)
Okay, Dean, I'm gonna tell you a second secret. Yes, sir. I don't mean to shock you, but sometimes life is unfair. And you talk about the golden rule. He who has the gold makes the rule wealthy have always had more power than unwealthy. It's up to us on the bench and in in our society, and we, the people to try to equalize this, to try to make the law apply to everybody equally. But it ain't all that easy. We can try and we should, and we should be transparent. So the idea, for example, in the past few years that the FBI has been politicized is terribly, terribly harmful for who we are as a country. And I fear that there's some reason to believe that that has happened wrong. We cannot do that. We need to do the right thing for the right reason in our government and the justice system. And that's, judge Delaney and I are kind of the stewards. We're kind of the supervisors of all of this in our own courtroom. And it's important that not only justice is done, but people believe justice is done. And we've taken that one on the chin rather substantially in the past few, few years. 

REVEREND DEAN: (25:40)
Well, gentlemen, these half hours go by so fast. We're about to wrap it up here. I wanna just throw one more thing in here. One more potential complication to this situation. Blowing up the boat in the Caribbeans. One thing Trump now wants to go into Mexico and take on the cartels. And let's address that one if we will, before we head. 

Judge James Gray: (26:00)
The answer is no, unless we issue a declaration of war. That's easy. That's just an easy issue. And we issue a declaration of war and war of war against Mexico, which would be a disaster. The answer is no. 

REVEREND DEAN: (26:12)
Okay, judge, uh, Delaney 

Judge John Delaney: (26:15)
Only with cooperation and the, a agreement of the, uh, sovereign Republic of Mexico should we attempt such a thing, 

REVEREND DEAN: (26:24)
Right? And 

Judge John Delaney: (26:25)
We, we've gi we've given lots of, uh, law enforcement assets to Mexico over the years through cooperative administration. So that's the way to go about it. I had not heard that, uh, Trump was interested in trying to be aggressive, uh, toward the Republic of Mexico to stomp stamp out these drug cartels. But, you know, think about, think about that event in the Southern Caribbean. I talked to you about the event that I imagined on the side of the road on a Texas highway mm-hmm . Um, what about patrolling the Rio Grande with helicopters armed with machine guns? And if you find somebody out in the middle of the Rio Grande waiting across that is carrying a bundle, or has a backpack, you could easily assume, assume that their drug traffickers and assassinate them right in the middle of the river, that would, that would do a, that would be very effective at, uh, interdicting illegal immigration. I suspect. Don't you dare. That's but that's not America. 

Judge James Gray: (27:33)
That's not who we're That's 

Judge John Delaney: (27:34)
Right. That's not who we are. 

Judge James Gray: (27:35)
Dean, as we, as we part company, may I give you a lesson in life? 

REVEREND DEAN: (27:40)
Yes, please. 

Judge James Gray: (27:41)
A lesson in life is no matter how hard you push the envelope, it's still stationary. 

REVEREND DEAN: (27:48)
God. 

Judge John Delaney: (27:49)
Okay, 

Judge James Gray: (27:50)
I'll leave you with that. I, 

Judge John Delaney: (27:52)
I'll I'll return one of my own. Go ahead. One of my favorite sayings, evil triumphs, when good men fear to act. 

Judge James Gray: (28:01)
Yeah. Here, here, 

REVEREND DEAN: (28:02)
And I'm going to add, uh, a quote of my own. This comes from Cole Arthur Riley. "Our resistance is not predicated on how likely it will be to alter the conscience of the oppressor. We resist to retain our own conscience and to awaken all others who are still in possession of their own souls. Alright? And I, I gotta close it here, gentlemen. Thank you so much, uh, judge James P. Gray and Judge John Delaney. Thank you both. Wrap it up by saying, because of prohibition, you don't know what's in that bag. And I urge you to please be careful and remember that euphoria is a blessing, not a crime, sharing their compassion for the homeless. I want to share the words of two future Trump cabinet members now working as reporters for Fox. 

FOX NEWS: (28:48)
Either you take the resources that we're gonna give you and or you decide that you're gonna be locked up in jail. That's the way it has to be now. Or, uh, involuntary lethal injection. Yeah. Or something. Uh, just kill him.