How Do You Survive Solitary Confinement?

Leon Benson • 2026-02-03

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Dylan Carnahan:Welcome to the Simple Questions Podcast. This is your host, Dylan Carnahan. The question for this episode is, how do you survive solitary confinement? You will learn in this episode how someone ends up in solitary confinement, the psychological impact of solitary confinement, and the mental fortitude required to survive it. Our guest was wrongfully convicted and later exonerated, served 25 years in prison, and spent 10 consecutive years in solitary confinement. I introduce to you Leon Benson. I am a freshman in college, and I'm laying in my bed, just shivering because I have the flu. And I'm watching a documentary about prisons, and they're going through the prison, and they decide to go look at the conditions for solitary confinement. And this is one of the first times that I had actually really pondered what that is, what those conditions are, and what that would be like. So I want to start with Leon, what led to your incarceration?

Leon Benson:Hey, thanks for having me, Dylan. My incarceration is started in 1998. Unfortunately, I'm a person from urban America, and I was afflicted with abject poverty. You know, I made some questionable moves in my life, just trying to survive and feed my family, petty drug dealing and things like that. But I was living in Indianapolis, Indiana at the time in 1998, and it was a shooting that occurred in the near downtown area. And unfortunately, a young man by the name of Casey Shane, Casey Shane, he was 23 years old, according to the reports. He was shot down on the corner of 14th and Pennsylvania. I absolutely had nothing to do with the crime, didn't have no knowledge of the crime. I did hear the shots. I was in the area, but I wasn't nowhere near the scene. And unfortunately, like six days later, I was arrested by Indianapolis Police Department. And I was charged with murder. It was said that it was an eyewitness that viewed the crime and picked me out of a four-way line up. I mean, it really blew my mind. Like, I thought it was a joke. I'm like, I'm not no kingpin drug dealer or something. I mean, y'all can do better than this. This is what I thought the police angle was to try to scare me into confessing for selling some petty drugs. But it started to dawn on me as I sat in the county jail for a couple of months. I'm like, this is real. They are really charging me with this murder. And I eventually acquired an attorney and went to trial. My first trial was May 24, 1999. It ended in a hung jury. It was five not guilty, one undecided, six guilty. Then the second trial, now, in retrospect, it occurred a month and a half later, a month and a half later. And this trial resulted in my being convicted for the murder of Casey Shane. Some key things about my case, my case was predicated on one eyewitness, despite there being other witnesses to this crime that didn't come to court. This one witness, she happened to be a white woman. She was a newspaper delivery lady. I am a victim of cross race misidentification. She viewed the crime from 150 feet away at night. It's impossible. Research, I was able to reach out to Dr. Jeffrey Loftus from Washington University. He's an empirical psychologist. He had came up with a breakthrough study in 2004 about vision and distance analysis. And from his research and from the science, he showed that somebody with 20-20 vision couldn't identify somebody's face at 150 feet in broad daylight. So if the conditions of lighting was worse, that means the loss of information to the eyes would triple. So this is at night. So this is the equivalent of this woman seeing me, or the suspect, in broad daylight at 450 feet. It's like humanly impossible. And it was discrepancies in identification. You see, I'm a light-complecting African-American male. She said it was a dark-skinned African-American male. So she couldn't see anything. And then, you know, there was another eyewitness who knew the assailant, the killer, described this clothing, the same clothing that that witness had identified the suspect having. But this was like a little more deeper because this other witness, this guy named Fawton, he gave police a statement like a week after the crime, and he described the person that did it, and he said that he's seen a person with a gun. And when the detective asked this witness, like, what type of gun was it? This guy said a.380, and the victim was killed with a.380 automatic. So this is the conflict that I'm going in prison as. I've never been to prison before. A little bit of irony to it. The Gray Goose, as they call it. I'm on my way to Indiana Department of Corrections for Marion County Jail with a 60-year sentence. 60 years, you know. I was 23 years old when I got the conviction, 22 when I was arrested. And I was devastated. You know, I didn't have no sense of time as a young person like that. Like 60 years, like I'm going to be 83 when I come home, like my whole life, though. So it was life. So while we was driving on the bus, it was me and several other inmates, you know, shackled on our way to prison for the first time. Many of us scared to death, I will admit. And I was scared to death because the county jail, Marion County Jail was very violent at the time. And I figured like if the county jail is this violent, prison is going to be really bad, you know. And while we were driving down the highway, the guard was playing the radio. And on the radio, ironically, a KC and JoJo song start playing. How did I get life, life, life? And I was like, oh man. And I try, you know, I'm, you know, I'm in, I'm with the big dogs now, man. But it's so hard for me not to cry. Like, oh man, you know, and you know, you can find that song on the, on the life soundtrack with Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence from that movie. That's where the song came from. And that's how I went to prison. When I, when I got up to the gates, it looked like a big mouth gates just opening up, you know. I was assigned to a prison called Wabash Valley Correctional Facility. And that was my introduction to prison.

Dylan Carnahan:Wow. That must have been absolutely terrifying. And again, going back to like the inception of like these legal proceedings, you're not thinking, hey, this is, uh, something I'm going to be dealing with until I'm 83. This is at the time you're thinking, oh, you know, this is a front, this is a bluff of some sort, right? And then, you know, it just proceeds into something that is much larger than that.

Leon Benson:Yeah, yeah. It really go with the notion that, you know, innocence is not enough, you know, you know, because I was a poor defendant, and definitely, I was functionally illiterate of the law, like many US citizens. I was taking advantage of, you know, I just want a lot of your viewers to know that it can happen to anybody, and it happened to me. I couldn't believe it, like, and I think the fact that I was innocent, it really just made me susceptible. My naiveté really made me susceptible to a wrongful incarceration because I wanted it to be wished away a little bit. I was kind of like, man, you know, they ain't go, you know, put nobody in prison. I never knew of nobody who was wrongfully incarcerated that I really believed anyway, you know, and here it is, you know. It's me and a lot of people didn't believe me at first because people generally, people got a lot of hasty generalization, a lot of confirmation bias. So the fallacy is if you're in court for something, you did something so you deserve to be guilty. Well, guess what, everybody, nobody in the world is innocent, nobody. I know one thing, I was innocent of murder, but this is what the public would do, mainly because of miseducation, not having the time to really analyze cases and situations like that. So typically, people run with news, newspaper headlines, news headlines, they just get the sound bite of a situation and run with it.

Dylan Carnahan:There's definitely, I want to address that, which is the easy categorization and the level of ignorance. Right? And again, even as you speak for yourself, you're going, oh, that couldn't happen to me, right? That wouldn't happen. And then here you are. And again, there are people that hold that same paradigm. So how are they going to think of your innocence? When again, there's this level of ignorance that's prevailing. I do want to speak later on more about your exoneration and wrongful conviction, Leon. Something I want to discuss as you kind of went through this narrative about getting actually to prison, right? Going from the county jail. Can you talk about your time in prison and how you initially got into solitary confinement?

Leon Benson:So, I come into prison October of 1999. There's guys in there with life sentences. It's the big yard, right? I'm like, man, I don't know what to expect. I arrived at the cell house. I was greeted by cell house residents, other prisoners like, hey, what's your name? Where are you from? What cell are you going to? Some guys help me to get to the cell and put my stuff in there. When I got there, my first celly, his name is Bobby Brown, man. This guy is from Tennessee. He's an OG. He didn't have no teeth. You hear all these myths in the county jail about going to prison. If somebody put a candy bar on your bed, you better not take it. I had all this stuff going on in my head, so I figured this guy was in prison. He probably is a predator or something. This is my celly, so I got with him. And coming to find out, Bobby Brown was a real good dude. He really put me up on a lot of information, a lot of game about what was going on in the prison, the politics, who to stay away from, what to do. And he was a pretty good guy. One thing I experienced while in prison, it was like months had passed by. And Bobby Brown, he asked me, he said, he said, you know, everybody in prison, I'm Leon Benson, everybody called me LB, you know, by my initials. He's like, LB. He said, bro, you didn't been in prison for like 90 days, and you keep going to sleep with your coat and your shoes on. Like, why are you doing that, bro? And I was like, man, because they're going to come get me. They're going to come get me, bro. They're going to know they made a mistake. This is so much of a mistake. They're going to come get me. And at the time, I didn't know that I was experiencing the delusion of reprieve. It's just like a deaf road inmate is finna go to his execution, and he's thinking, it's going to happen. God is going to reach out to sky and save me. And I had that thing going on, and it didn't happen, and I had to grow out of it. And, you know, I got off into my education really early. They had a college program. I started doing that. I worked in the kitchen. I had a couple cellies, you know, at the time. You know, I worked my way around because, you know, I was really big off in the hip hop. It was a lot of people like me because I could really rap good. And I was from Flint, Michigan. You know, that was something that was really big, too, for my experience in prison. It's because I was in Indiana. So I wasn't there, you know, with people from my city or people I knew, you know. So it made it a lot harder with navigating prison organizations, whether it be the Aryan Brotherhood, the Gangster Disciples, the Vice Lords, the Bloods, the Crips, or, you know, MS-13. It was harder to navigate because people were still, you know, they knew each other. They had a connection with their hometowns, you know, in Indiana. But I just figured, like, hey, I just kept it real. You know, I got into a couple fights as well, you know, held it down, you know what I mean? But my main thing was school and working on my case. I quickly got into the law library, working on my case, sending information out to colleges, innocent projects, you know, things like that. So I learned how to read a case law, like within my first year of prison. But by the second year of prison, I was really going to school, still working on my case, doing all that stuff. And this was like my second semester of college. You know, it was really good. It was the summer of 2001. It was a crazy summer in prison. It was like, like the police got, the guards got beat up a couple of times. It was somebody that was plotting to escape out of a cell. So we was going on lockdown a lot, like towards the fall and stuff. And I think the last big thing, it was a riot that happened in the cell house. G cell house, you know. Back in the days, you know, nobody didn't want to come to G cell house. It was like, you know, one of the worst cell houses in Wabash Valley at the time, with a lot of gangs and stuff going on. But it was a big riot. It left like seven prison guards, like, critically wounded. It started on a yard and it got like a little bit in the cell house. And I can't make this up. I'm going to be real, you know, at the time, I had a lot of animosity. I'm like, I want to kick a guard ass, you know what I mean? But, you know, fortunately, you know, I wasn't involved in it. I was taking a shower. It was during a recreation period. And I was taking a shower. It was like the end of it, taking a shower. And I seen it from where I was sitting at in the shower stall. I can look down and see the front door of the cell house. And I seen, you know, guys whooping on the police. They was whooping on, whooping the guards. And I was like, man, and I'm like, oh, we on lockdown again. And so we went on lockdown for that for like three months. We got off, I was instantly back in school, wasn't thinking about it. And one day during my study session, I was in a day room of the cell house. Guards came up to me and said I was involved in an assault on staff. I'm like, what? And they took me directly to the shoot. Come to find out, it was a confidential informant who said they seen LB beating up Guard Daniel Cooper on the other side of another cell house. I'm like, come on now. And for that, I was found guilty and sentenced to one year in disciplinary segregation in Indiana's notorious Security Housing Unit, AKA The Shoe.

Dylan Carnahan:Wow. So, you are wrongfully convicted. And then, while incarcerated, have yet another witness, if you will, come forward, and now you have even further disciplinary action that results in you being in the shoe. Can, you know, when you bring up kind of what that is and kind of the notoriety of it, could you explain that to us as to what is the shoe?

Leon Benson:Well, well, the shoe is the whole solitary confinement. You stripped of all your property, no TV, no commissary purchase other than petty hygiene. You're in a cell by yourself on a range. It's a range with 12 cells, six at the bottom, six at the top. It's little holes, it's little holes, it's little holes in the door. And it's a sally port where they can put food trays through, hand you medicine, handcuff you through, you know, and every time you come out to cell, you are handcuffed, you're in shackled to your feet with a leash, like a dog leash. So the guard attached the, behind your back, attached the leash to the handcuffs and drop it down and put it through the shackles so it's controlled. So he can yanking and you just fall down or something. So he like, hey, you know, we got control, you know, behave yourself, you know, like an animal. And so in there is 23, three hours a day. You are supposed to get an hour for recreation. But oftentimes we didn't go to the recreation pad, which was still isolated. Just one person at a time on a small, probably a 12 by 12 space with a little opening that you can see the sky. That was the only little sky I can see, like a half roof and I can look. I'm like, man, it's sunny. It was no windows in there, no sun, nothing. It was very isolated. I would say when you mention that Dylan being wrongfully accused twice, I was devastated, man. I was devastated. I'm like, man, this cannot be. I was raging, man. I lost privilege to my college. I was doing good. Somebody, man, some family issues came up in December of 2001. And then 2002, my grandfather died. January 2002, my father died. February 2002, I found out that my direct appeal that I had in the courts pending for nearly two years, I was very hopeful of my case. You know, it was denied. And then on top of that, my partner at the time that was still in society who was supposed to be holding me down, you know, with finances that I left, they didn't have nothing. And so this was a huge point for me. I was devastated. I was like at the lowest of the low. I was dead. I was dead. I was dead, man. That's the only way I can explain it. I was dead. I'm in a cell, concrete and steel. I'm hearing all these crazy sounds from people around me. Many of them was mental patients. I'm like, man, guards snarling at me, playing with my food. It was rough. But during that time, during that time, for me and my incarceration, that's why I was burnt to ashes. And then I rose back up.

Dylan Carnahan:So during this time, you're facing a lot of adversity. And again, this is in hindsight, right? So in hindsight, you're like, oh, this happened, this happened, and kind of much like that, you still kind of have that paradigm. You don't have that foresight. So you're now entering solitary confinement. You know it's going to be for a year, and you don't know about these people that are going to pass away. Those events transpire. Same thing with your appeal and your partner. You know, you talk about how low of a moment that was and how you were able to come back from that. You know, what was that process?

Leon Benson:I mourned money, because I needed money. You know, at the time, you know, I was very materialistic. I figured like, you know, I was able to pay for my trial lawyers, both trials, my appeal lawyer, my direct appeal lawyer. But I ran out of finances, and I figured like the best way to get out of prison is to hire a lawyer instead of depending on a public defender. And so I was forced to figure it out. But one of the key things that helped me figure it out, I was going through this mourning process. I was figuring it out. Well, I had to accept the circumstances. If you think of the word circumstance, it's a circle around a stance. So the situation of it is a stance. The situation of injustice is there. But the things that come with it, I had to accept, you know, in order for me to not only move forward, but move forward in a way that would be conducive towards my freedom eventually. And what I was able to accept, I might, I got to accept somebody lied on me twice. I'm in solitary, people, they can die in solitary, guards beat people up. I didn't get beat up twice by the goon squad. I'm like, no, we can't do that. I can't win. So I had to accept everything that was there. And so once I accepted that, I started to be able to use the tools at my reach. I even came up with a little mantra, grasp the things within your reach, and eventually you will hug the sun at the heights of your success. So I'm in solitary, I don't have a pen, I got a rubber pencil, I don't got no paper, I got toilet paper, I don't got no stamps, but it's a guy down the range that got some state envelopes, and he'd give me five if I let him have my preface. So I wrote on that, hey, SOS, you know. And it just started to build more and more, you know, eventually I acquired the things, more things that I needed. And for me accepting that, one of the biggest things with some of the guys that was around that talked to me at the time, it was a guy named David Amos, you know, he was an older gentleman and, you know, he had done time before. He put me up on, he was like, man, you always talking about your case. You're the only one that be sending for the law library back here. They wasn't even coming back here until you came back here, you got them coming back here with the law library. You know, and he put me up on a prison pen pal thing. I didn't even know about the Internet really back then, like, it wasn't even, you know, real to me back in 98, you know. I had had a laptop, but I rarely used it, like, I just had it. But once he put me up on this prison pen pal site, I went and got a flyer from him, and I wrote an adverb about my innocence and then the things I accomplished. And, you know, it cost me my last, like, $100. It's the last $100 I had to my name. I put it in, sent it out. They sent me back a copy, I put some pictures in the article and everything. They sent me back copies of it, said it's live, this and that. And he was like, man, just wait, man, you know, maybe, you know, somebody is trying to help you. So this is like the end of 2002. And then something else happened. The day I was going to get released in November, I'm like, man, I'm ready to go back to population, man, and you know, to get some real food. So I get back, I get to, you know, the guards let me out to sell. I'm still handcuffed though, you got to stay handcuffed until you leave out the building. So I didn't think nothing of it. But they took me out, hey, you ready to go, Benson? I'm like, yeah, being ready, man. It's been a long time, man. I think I probably lost like 20 pounds back there too. And what they did was instead of taking me to prison general population, they detoured me to another solitary confinement range in the same building. I said, why are y'all putting me here? He said, you're on administration AS, statewide. What? And it comes out, you know, Wabash Prison Administration and the IDOC as a whole said, I was a security threat to other prisoners and staff. And from that classification, I remained in solitary confinement for a decade. But no, that's a lot, Dylan, that's a lot, man.

Dylan Carnahan:So, walk us through, I mean, you obviously have this progression in Solitary that first year, right? And now you've hit this milestone, right? Your term of one year has ended. And then you have really this kind of cheap trick, if you will, of this milestone, this day's come, and then you end up right in the same spot, and then it's the vultures that, is this something that you knew would last a decade? No. So, you're just placed in there.

Leon Benson:I'm just, wait, go ahead, I'm sorry.

Dylan Carnahan:Yeah. So, explain how this decade unfolds, because this is, you're right, this is obviously a very big pattern break from what you thought would occur, and you had also progressed so much in that year, having endured so much externally, and then you reached this point in hindsight, now you face an entire decade of the same circumstances.

Leon Benson:So, from this point on, it's a different torture. I'm there indefinitely. So, they had a 30-day review board there that they will review your case, the administration will review your case, see if you're ready to come back to population. It was a farce. Deny, deny, deny, you know, it got to the point I just stopped going. But the terror is, the terror to the mind and the spirit is, it's indefinite. You don't know how long it'll be. You can be there forever. And you know, I was dealt a cruel hand. So, like the administration, I go into that meeting, the evaluation meeting, to be released in. I don't even know why you coming in here, LB. You're going to be here forever. We never letting you out. You shouldn't even come back. You know, it was really cruel. And from this point, I like to introduce your listeners to a term that I was able to develop by there. You know, while in solitary confinement, I did a lot of reading, man. A lot of reading on many different subjects, many different things, you know, my mind really opened up. I did a lot of writing. But existential purgatory. I was in existential purgatory. I had read Dante's The Inferno, you know, the Italian poet, and I read his piece, his take of what heaven and hell is. And he had a part in it that talked about purgatory, like this part, people are stuck in the middle. They're not up or down. And, you know, he kind of explained this is the most terrifying part. The reason why it's existential purgatory for me, in an administrative solitary setting, where the prisoner is there indefinitely. Because you trap between their prison population, their in society, and their in death. You in between all these things, it's like juggling. You're like, what do I do? What was really helpful for me, like with some of my readings, I read a lot of African reading, reclaim my heritage, a lot of history on Europe, China, South America, North America, Central America, just everything. I just started absorbing everything. I was like, man, I missed out on a lot. And one of the books I read was WEB. Du Bois, The Soul of the Black Folk. It was a phenomenal book. I was like, man, this dude is cool. He gave me a real perspective of what history was, in the South doing slavery. Like I seen a real picture, I'm like, wow. And you know, the forward of the book, I forget the author's name, but he said something to this aspect. He said, African-American slaves was practicing existentialism way before, you know, Europeans philosophers coined the term existentialism. They learned how to find hope within a chains, they found happiness within their misery. And I, you know, I had a direct connection because now I'm like, I'm experiencing modern-day slavery, a mass incarceration, right? I'm like, I shouldn't be here. You know, I'm innocent, like, and I think like looking at that and being able to empathize with that, with the ancestors and everything, it made me do a deep dive in existentialism. And one of the first people who, one of the first philosophers I really bumped into was John Paul Satre. You know, he was a French philosopher, you know, and you know, from being to nothingness, you know, I read that piece. But the thing about existentialism that was so profound to me, that compared to solitary confinement, particularly an indefinite sentence, one of the key notes of existentialism from my reading was, existentialism proposed that we live in an absurd universe. It's absurd. It essentially has no meaning. But it was only humans that can give the universe its essential meaning. And the authentic human being is the person that realized and utilized that they have the unlimited ability of choice. And the person who lived an inauthentic life, they allow circumstances and other people in ignorance to take their choice. So I look back in the cell like this is absurd. Right? So I had to give it meaning. You know, I was able to read other stuff. Victor Franco's Man's Search for Meaning. That was very useful too. And many other books. Anthony Browder, The Browder Files. They were very, very good. You know, the Freedom Papers. It was a lot of literature that I was able to read and escape. But I was sitting in this existential purgatory. So I had to come up with a way to find meaning. Now, you can find meaning. You can throw spitballs at the wall and see if they stick. You can run around and yell. You can be angry. And I started to realize these things are a choice. I have a lot of wrath in my heart, a lot of anger. And I had to decide what choices am I going to make? Irregardless what anybody had done, to me, I had to make a choice and I developed a level of accountability. Now, this sound harsh, but it's not. I started to reframe my situations in life. How did I let myself be wrongfully incarcerated? How did I let someone lie on me? And send me to solitary confinement? Okay, this does not dissolve any of the perpetrators of their role, in the wrongdoing that they did. But this was a central evaluation that I needed to have with myself in order to do better, in order to grow from it. You know, one of Sartre's quotes had something to do with defeat. So I confronted myself in the mirror. I'm yelling, screaming, I'm mad. I even became like just very radical. I mean, you can imagine. At some point, I felt like white people did it to me. I didn't trust no white people. I'm like, white people did it. That's what it is. Right. I'm going to blame it on everybody. It's the white man. It's the white man and the devil. Yes, Satan did it too. You know, it's preposterous. You know, elements in social organizations definitely have a hand in things that happen in our lives, you know, in this country. But just looking in the mirror, I had, I was like, and just thinking about my defeat, just from what Sartre had wrote about defeat. You know, defeat becomes man's final salvation. And in my defeat, because I was defeated in a sense. I was defeated of my liberty in life. I was defeated of my ability to procreate. I was defeated from my career as a hip hop artist. I was defeated in just so many ways, you know, on education, on being with my family, being a father. I was defeated and I had to come up out of those ashes and make a choice. And the choice that I made was, truth never dies, it's only rediscovered. So that's my mantra, truth never dies, it's only rediscovered, right? So I had to absorb everything that I could out of that environment, out of my interaction with people, people who I was writing around the world about my case, books I was reading, so I can navigate up out of there. And what I did, I was able to become, what I term now as an alchemist. So I made the choice in this absurd universe to turn this sale into a legal clinic. Okay, I got tired of that, let's turn it into a gym. How about an art studio? How about, man, when I really want an event, how about a stage where I performed for other inmates? How about a Shakespeare stage? How about a healing booth? And I had to do that. But what I realize is we all have to do that. I got to do that right now. I got to do that anywhere. I truly learned that it's mind and spirit over matter. And another big thing, I became so in my defeat, I became so cynical as well that I stopped believing in God. I became an atheist for five years. I'm like, God wouldn't put nobody through this. Why God let all the people of the world die? Why God doing this? Why God let there be a devil? I'm like, man, that's bullshit. Only thing that kept me going is my thirst for knowledge. So I studied all religions. It was a great book that I really studied, that I really loved by a guy named John Jackson. He wrote it like in the 1930s. I mean, you would have thought this guy wrote this book like in the 2000s. He was talking about evolution, the evolutionary theory, everything. But the name of his book was Man, God, and Civilization. And he broke down, you know, the evolutionary process where man, mankind, humans come from. And he broke down where religions come from, where magic that turned into science come from. And I started seeing these things, and I took a deep dive in the evolutionary theory. I really believed in, you know, natural selection, the organism that can adapt, right? Outlives the others. And I applied that to humans. So you got to adapt up here. You got to adapt mentally. And taking that deep dive, ironically, it brought me back to spirituality because not spirituality, but to the belief of a creator, right? Because I was practicing spirituality in the way I was moved. I wasn't hurt nobody because I was an atheist. I was righteous dude, you know? But to believe that it's a creator, when the evolutionary theory talk about the Big Bang Theory, right? The theologian says, it was let there be light. So I had to come to a conclusion. Neither one of them people was there, right? Neither one, like neither one of y'all was there, right? But I walk out of that with empirical evidence for both the theologian as well as the evolutionist. Now, when I look in the evolutionary terms, when I looked at this universe, I said, this universe is immaculate. Wow. Look at the solar systems. Do you know if everything in the solar system wasn't exactly the way it is? We won't even be here. Like everything in the universe is moving accordingly, attentionally. It's happening. And for me, I was like, that's an intelligent design. This is a design. Designs just don't happen. It's a design. I don't know how, where. I'm the first person to tell you that. I ain't go tell you and lie to you about heaven. I ain't go tell you, man, you're going to get to heaven, and lions going to be licking on lambs. I don't know about that stuff. But you got people that got imaginations, they got visions of things like that. But I came back in a fold of spirituality with that, and that was really huge because I knew that even beyond the existentialist realms, and maybe I made meaning out of my nothingness, like early man made meaning out of their nothingness to say, hey, it's something that's out here because we can't be living for nothing and dying for nothing. Maybe that was the case, but either way it go for me will work when I grab the hold of that spirituality. I'm not no religious person at all. I'm not religious, I'm spiritual, and it's a difference. Religious is very rigid. It's very matter of factor. Religion is like, it go with this adage, fools change the facts to fit their belief, but the wise would change their belief to fit the facts. We got a whole history about the flaws of religion, from the Inquisition. We know our guy Galileo, the famous astrologer, the guy that's behind the telescope. He was like, man, look, I'm looking through the telescope, it's the earth that rotates around the sun, it was Galileo said. And he wanted to share it with everybody, but he got to the Inquisition at the time. They was like, man, it's the sun that rotates around the earth, ain't it? And Galileo was smart enough to be like, yeah, it is. And he went on and do his work on house arrest for the rest of his life. And eventually, his science came to be true. You see what I'm saying? And we can look at things like Doom Diverses, you know, that's from the churches, that's in the 15th century. For a lot of people out there that don't know, well, the Roman Catholic Church ordained the transatlantic slave trade and told those who participated in it, if you enslaved, you know, non-Christian people, Israelite people, Muslim people, that you will get a reward in the afterlife. Remember, fools change the facts to fit their belief, but the wise change their beliefs to fit the facts. So I'm spiritual. So I continued that level of logic and just natural spirituality. It was a lot of adversity in there. I became an advocate while I was in there as well. Other prisoners who couldn't read and write, I helped them over the range. We did a thing called Cadillac, and you ever heard of Cadillac? So Cadillac is like, we had dental floss. So you would get the dental floss and tie something heavy at the end, and you would have your string, or you could do it with a bed sheet, rip up a bed sheet, and under the door, there was enough room, about two inches, that you can slide some down the hall, bounce it off the wall to somebody's cell, they'll get it. That's how we was passing little letters aka kites to each other. I was helping people read, write, advocate for their cases, things like that while I was back there. I worked with different groups on the ground that was outside. I helped form like three or four organizations while on the inside. I helped form an organization called Battle Cry of Innocence, an organization called Innocent International Project with a lady out in Germany. I helped to define IDLC Watch. I can't think of the other ones right now off the top. But from this level, you see where I'm at, like this spiritual level that came. For me, it's all logical. It's all logical of where it's coming from, just having access to this knowledge. And I'm not saying that everything was any was, it made my pain less, but it gave me more hope. Hope, not no blind hope. Hope in the cause and effect of my words and my actions, no matter how small. You know?

Dylan Carnahan:What I'm hearing is that something that you came to your own conclusion and kind of helped you during this, what would be 10 years, is this kind of ideological framework, right? So you're reading, you're getting exposed to these different ideas and different historical facts, and upon reflection, you kind of get a hold of this ideology of existentialism. And although you're like religious and spiritual journey, also you kind of have that framework for thinking to kind of come back to kind of your spirituality. And so now that you have this ideological framework, this kind of gives you more of a purpose, more hope, more agency over your situation. Leon, through telling your story, you're not getting a lot of external hope here, right? You've been wrongfully convicted, you've been now you're in solitary confinement, to then go out on this indefinite solitary confinement. And you're just trying to you know, you're you're you have this ideology, you've kind of grown to adopt, you're advocating for yourself, you're making you're making all these moves. How does this progress? You know, because you are an exoneree. How do you even get out of there?

Leon Benson:So go back to that that point of acceptance. Think about it, you know, to accept like I'm talking about accept the right thing. It's kind of like the serenity prayer. God, give me the strength to change the things I can and accept the things I can't in a wisdom to know the difference. Man, that's existential, man. That's right there. That's right where I'm at. The science of it is trial and error, empirical. You got the test. I'm like, that ain't working. Let me go over here. I'm going to look up under every rock. I looked up under every rock. I wrote every Innocence Project. I had done so many things. I'd done artwork. I'd done music. I'd done podcasts while I was on the inside in Solitary. And one of the things what progressed is my approach. It's kind of like a spiritual martial arts. Be like water from the famous words of Bruce Lee. Be like water. And so you start to do this dance, right? I started to chip off the SS, the SS anger, things like that. I realized how much power that I had in a space. I started studying like the law of attraction. The law of attraction isn't nothing magic. I sat, I'm gonna give you an original idea. Nobody ever told you this. This is straight from me, from my pain, where my jewels was burnt out up. So I thought about law of attraction. I'm like, law of attraction, okay, if you thinking it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen for you, what you think you're gonna attract it, like how does this work? Like what? And it dawned on me. Dylan, what was your first car you ever got? The first car you ever purchased that was yours?

Dylan Carnahan:I think it was a Ford 500.

Leon Benson:Ford 500?

Dylan Carnahan:Yeah.

Leon Benson:Why? After you got that Ford 500, you started to see a whole lot of Ford 500s then, right? Right? Well, the law of attraction isn't necessarily the law of attraction, it's the law of focus. When you focus on a thing, you will start to see the things that's connected to it. So if you're just thinking about negativity, you will find negativity out of it. But if you're thinking about positivity, if you're thinking about freedom, you're thinking about the uptick, you will start seeing things. And guess what? Thought, right? First, thought is the cause of it all. So you must control your thoughts because they dictate your words. Now you must control your words for they dictate your behavior. You must control your behavior because they dictate your habits. And your habits dictate your character. And your character dictates your destiny. I seen it, man. I'm not saying I'm perfect, but I had those moments, those Zen moments. And I started doing little things like, how you doing today, officer? Who's new does that, right? The guard coming in with a bad mood. I'm like, how you doing today, officer? What's up, Officer Roberts? What's happening, man? You all right? Hey, you have a good one. Or I see a new guard that's coming in that's looking like he's full of crap or she's full of crap, and I run this gambit on him. Hey, what's your name? Don't I know you from somewhere? I know you from somewhere. I can't put my name on. I know you from somewhere. I put them on their toes. What's your name? Because I know now, I've been built the reputation of filing lawsuits, advocating for prisoners, so they don't want no parts and no legal guy in there. I found a way to give myself space, but I started to look at, I didn't know it was trauma. I didn't have that terminology at the time, but it was trauma at the time that I seen that was keeping a lot of people back on the shoe. You know, they was hurt, they was angry, they lash out. And so what I did was I took that approach. I stopped going to the review board. I said, I'm just figuring out right here. I don't got time for that nonsense. I'm steady working. I ate an internal unfair study coming to my seal. Like, fight me because I'm fighting for my case. Can you believe that? Oh, why are you writing all these people? I see you get a lot of letters. You do this, you do that. And, you know, I just laugh. I'm like, I got to the point, I stopped sealing my letters. You can read them, read them. Truth never dies. Hey, all truth can stay in investigation. And, you know, out of that came, a different energy, man, a different energy, a different respect. Now, I can say this, and I got witnesses to it. By the time I get to the 10th year, probably within the 7th year of solitary confinement, I'm respected by the staff and not from licking boots, but for being a righteous adversary. They respected me. Mr. Benson, when they come on the range, I'm like, man, leave him alone. I'm there. I ain't touching nobody. I'm in a cell. I feel like Professor X, man. You know what I mean? I'm like, for real, right? And so from that progression, I eventually just got spit out the shoe. I was rebirthed out the womb of the beast. You know what I mean? I call solitary confinement the womb. You know, people, I think Che Guevara, you know, a Cuban, a Argentinian revolutionary, I believe. You know, hey, correct me if I'm wrong. But he said that America was the belly of the beast, like with capitalism. He was one of the first people to use it. But we know that the term come from the Bible, with Jonah that got caught in the whale, you know what I mean? So the belly of the beast has been used, you know, throughout hip hop and everything. It's just, it's like a term that's for prison now. I mean, he's in the belly of the beast, she's in the belly of the beast. But I call solitary confinement the womb of the beast, because when you go inside there, as I sat there for nine years and seven months, nine years, right, I gestated for nine years. I gestated for nine years, what, what I become? No one knew. You know, some people are birthed out of there, really, really effed up, man. But everybody is affected. It ain't no nurturing, and beyond it, and beyond it, fluids that, that, that a mother, a caring mother will have in her womb, you know, for a child. But this is just psychological, you know, toxicity just flowed and everything. That Sally Port is the umbilical cord. And so as I was re-birthed back into population, I really didn't know. It was my first reentry. It was my first reentry. I'm back in population. I'm like, what? Like it never happened. Like I'm in population. I'm seeing people that I met 10 years before. They like, oh, man, we ain't know what happened to you. Somebody said you was dead, bro. I'm like, what? Man, they had you back there, man. You ain't even do it. Ain't nobody in prison. No, I didn't do that. I didn't include this. Hey, one of the high-ranking members of the Aryan Brotherhood. Now, don't get me wrong, I mean, we ideologically enemies. You know what I mean? I oppose anything like that. But we in prison and it's a level of respect with everybody. You know what I mean? Hey, but stay in your place. Don't get too far. Every group is like that. But one of the main leaders of the Aryan Brotherhood, hey, he wrote me a statement. He said it was us that beat up Danny Cooper. And I also found out and I got the statement, a confidential statement from Danny Cooper himself, the guard who I was supposed to have assorted. He said it was all white prisoners. So, look, so, you know, I got this funny thing, right? First, I'm accused of being a dark-skinned black dude, right? Now I'm accused of being an Aryan brotherhood. Like, what type of shit is this, right? Come on, man, you know? Hey, you know, hey, you know, the older we get, the more life is funny. So I had to laugh. I had to laugh it off, like, and just keep it moving. So, you know, in Population, I worked my way around. And I will admit, I wasn't as... I learned a lot there, but I was chasing money. And, you know, I got into some things, you know, in prison, you know, trying to make money, raise money for a lawyer. So I got into the contraband, you know, into hustling. And, you know, I was able to get a hold of cell phones and things like that. And, you know, try to get a few dollars rolling in, you know, but it was nothing good that came from it. Every time I got a lawyer, it was a bad lawyer. I eventually got a lawyer. He wasn't the right lawyer. Appeal got denied, got another lawyer, wasn't the right lawyer. Next appeal get denied. And now I'm in a situation where I exalted all my legal remedies. So I'm in prison and I'm at, I'm at Penalty and Correctional Facility. The thing about Penalty and probably like, I got there in 2011, it's when I got out the shoe and was shipped there, their general population. So from 11. To 16, I was scrambling in the low, like trying to figure it out. And then it just hit me. It's time to go legit, Leon. You was sitting here to do something else. By this time, you know, I'm OG. They're like, man, what's up, OG? You know what I mean? I'm like, damn, you know what I mean? You know, I got a lot of respect throughout, you know, the prison, from all organizations, all of them. You know, they definitely respect me, you know, for my particular walk through the system. They know I was silent as they come. And I just started, man, I realized I had so much knowledge, right? From being in solitary, I had so much knowledge, right? Way more than a lot of the prisoners. Like, it was probably like about five people on the camp that could really, we could rotate that. We just on the level of intellect, you know? Probably more than that, you know, cause some guys, they didn't come out. I didn't know everybody, but I didn't ran across some very intelligent individuals in prison, man. I'm telling you, some top tier, everything in prison. And so what I did, I started mentoring, man. You know, people, I was encouraged, you know, by others that I had a voice, that, you know, people listen to. A lot of the young guys listen to me. A lot of, a lot of guys, that was my age at time, they were scattered, more of the younger guys. I never wasn't, you know, I never forgot where I came from, you know? And, you know, I really, you know, you know, taught them. I did tutoring, help people with their GED, but 16 was really like just crucial. I was able to participate in programing that was created, you know, by us, for us. You know, I met a guy named Larry Hancho, and he was, you know, he was doing this thing, you know, and at the chapel we're creating programs. And once I seen what he was doing, I got a board with him, and we got together this team of like reform guys. Like, if it, we was all 48 law, a power of figures, you know what I mean? Like, just in one group, this is like the A1 team, you know what I mean? Like, you know, for different things, like we just reformed ourselves and was really just trying to make a difference. So, we helped create this program called True Self. True Self, man. True Self is a program that will start out for, how do we capture somebody entering prison and give them the best information going through? And that's what we were doing. And, you know, I became a mentor. I got a lot of literature in it. One of my key cabinets or departments in True Self was Changing Lives Through Literacy. Go figure, right? Go figure. And it happened to be the best, most impactful program. I wouldn't say the best. I think everything in True Self was very valuable, even beyond just the literature class that I had. But it was based on the principles throughout the True Self program. It was powerful. And then we did the Toastmasters. I learned that I was a great speaker. I learned how to speak, train speaking, where I probably did like 80 trained speeches to become a goal communicator, which is a professional speaker. We had a real Toastmaster club. And eventually, I became the president of the club. I became the president. We were able to teach students from Indiana University, how to public speak. And in a moment, a moment of that was very... Now remember, I'm still fighting my case all the way through. I'm not stopping going to the law library. I'm not stopping writing people, calling people, doing what I do. But this is the thing that I'm doing on the inside for myself, the real, you know, the stuff for me, you right? This is like for me, this is my practice. I got up at 6 in the morning, I ain't come back to 9 o'clock at night for years, like working these programs and doing things. But the kids at that Inside Out program for Toastmasters, we actually did three semesters with them. But that first semester, it was very eye opening for me because the students was assigned, they were assigned, their last assignment was, their final assignment was to make a video, to make a video about their experience with learning public speak from Toastmasters that were incarcerated. You know, they came into the prison and everything, and I remember this, man. This is a proud moment for me. The teacher, the professor, her name is Crystal Garcia, shouts out to Crystal Garcia. She's since retired, but she came up to me, you know, the final day that we was there, where they was going to unveil their final video assignments. She said, Leon, let me pull you, she pulled me to the side. She said, Leon, I've been doing this for 30 years and this has never happened. I'm like, what? It's like the M&M eight mile moment. I'm like, what? Right? She said, out of 60 students, 58 of them dedicated their video final assignment to you. They said that you were the most impactful person in the world. She said, we only can present three of them. So I'm going to present two and I'm going to present one with somebody else just to be fair with it. That was very powerful for me. It really let me know my impact and everything. It made me feel valuable and it brought on, I had to learn responsibility of that too. Responsibility came with that as well. Wow, I got this influence. This is a good thing you do. I got to keep polishing myself up.

Dylan Carnahan:There's a lot to digest there, Leon. I just really enjoy kind of hearing the journey. There's so many things that could be asked here. I'd like, I feel like a lot of people are just going to want to know, how does this, how does your incarceration come to a conclusion, right? So, you know, you've, oddly enough, as you put it, you're now having to reintegrate as someone that was in solitary confinement for nearly a decade, and you kind of, you're using everything at your disposal to have an impact, not only on the community that you're now a part of, right? But also, you know, for your own legal case. So how does this saga conclude and ultimately end with kind of your exoneration?

Leon Benson:Well, so just leaving off, I mean, starting off where I left off at, you know, those high moments of, you know, becoming a professional facilitator to write programs, curriculums, to mentor people, to do the suicide companion, and, you know, create these programs. And I still had a chance to perform. I still got to perform too, like for years, they played it on the TV and everything. So that chapter came to a conclusion in 2019. I leveled down to a lower security facility. And while I was there, I had to accept that. It make me so mad, bro, because that was a point where I almost, I almost was broken, almost. Not broken completely, but broken on the hope of being exonerating. So I exhausted my remedies. One of the reasons why I exhausted my remedies, I didn't tell you the story in 2009, while I still was on the shoe. A lawyer jumped on my case while I was litigating. My post conviction relief appeal on a state level. I was litigating it pro se on my own, and I was negotiating with a lawyer. And the lawyer, I ended up sending some money to him to get him started, and our letters crossed. The day I sent off the money to him, the next day I got the letter from him saying, hey, I think our communication is moot, meaning that it's done, I got other stuff to do. I wrote him, as well, give me my money back. Well, this sucker jumped on my case without my permission. And by him doing that, I was in the final 60 days of my evidentiary hearing. We had found the quarry fought, and the witness had finally come forward and everything, and I was finna go in. So I had to withdraw my appeal without pretentious. Because if I would have went in, I would have messed up my appeal with this guy on my case. And the court told me to file a civil suit. I did. I was unsuccessful. And so my time lapsed. So my time lapsed. So what I'm speaking to your viewers as, you got a thing called the Anti-Death Penalty Bill of 1994. It was put in place by Bill Clinton. And what it does is, you know, the federal courts were being clogged with so many filings. So it put a time limit on how you can file. So after your direct appeal, your time starts. So if my direct appeal is denied on January, and I file my PCR with the state in March, that means I just burnt two months off. So I've got 10 months left. And so on, and so on, and so on. So I left my case out of court for like three years. So I exhausted it because of that. And that's why I was in the position I was in. I only could file an actual innocence. And I was trying to perfect that, but it was too hard. So now I'm over in this lower level prison. And I'm trying to perfect this actual innocence petition to file with the federal courts to hurdle the procedural default. So I'm participating in programming. I decided that I didn't have a write up in like over eight years at the time. I didn't have a write up while I was in there. And that means in Michigan, they call them tickets, Indiana Conduct Reports. I didn't have no tickets or nothing. And I said, man, I'm going to file for a sentence modification because I seen it done. So in the midst of me doing that, I wanted to file a clemency. Right? This is during COVID. So I'm at this lower level prison during COVID. COVID hit, you know, people dying, everything. George Floyd is happening. The big, you know, civil upheaval of 2020. And, you know, I looked at 2020 like we got to have 2020 vision anyway. That's how I was bringing in the New Year's 2020 vision. You know? And so about May, before the George Floyd stuff actually happened, May, I filed a clemency. My clemency was asking for, you know, mercy. You know, on my case, let me out. You don't get no legal play in Indiana for clemency if you're not on your deathbed. So I just did it as a practice run to get to my actual sentence modification that I was going to file with the actual court that my case was litigated in. So in the course of me doing this clemency, COVID was in full effect and everything. I turned it into a campaign, mass release. I started telling everybody that I could, man, file a clemency. They shouldn't have us in here while COVID going on. You know what I mean? So I reached out to my sister's supporters, through my sister Val, and to ask them for support letters, and I received 21 support letters. I only knew four out of all the supporters I had. I was like, I only know four. But one of them was a woman by the name of Shannon Coleman. Shannon Coleman was a basketball mom from Philadelphia, and her daughter happened to work in the Conviction Integrity Unit in Philadelphia, right? Right? So I was like, she wrote a letter. I was like, wow. You know, she told me that she had helped another gentleman. Well, in her letter to the judge, she said she had helped another gentleman named Anthony Wright. Anthony Wright was accused of killing and raping her great gun. But she thought something was wrong and she helped bring him home. DNA proved that it wasn't him. Other evidence surfaced that the police set him up, and he was exonerated. I was like, wow. So I met her and we became close, called, write letters, and she had asked me everything, what I'd done on my case, I'd tell her. And she just was going through the game and trying to help me. And so by December, she reached out to me and told me it was a Conviction Integrity Unit that was coming to Indianapolis, Indiana. Right? By April, I had a questionnaire. I filled it out reluctantly. I'm kind of cynical now. By July of 2001, the Conviction Integrity Unit took my case. By August of 2001, through Shannon Coleman in connection with Laura Baszler from San Francisco School of Law. She also is the Director of the Racial Justice Clinic in San Francisco as well. Shannon contacted her, and she took my case. So now, my case is sitting on the desk of the Conviction Integrity Unit, but I got a lawyer who had exonerated seven people. You know what I mean? And I got an advocate, and I got my family. I got my sister, too. So, it just happened like that. So, they put together the petition, did the investigations, everything like that, and, you know, the rest is history. But I tell you, a perfect storm. Had I not been proactive to do a clemency the way I did it, I wouldn't have got Shannon Coleman. It wouldn't have led to this. And it wouldn't be a conviction integrity unit in Indianapolis if it wasn't for what happened to George Floyd. Because after the George Floyd incident, conviction integrity units start proliferating a lot more around a country. And that's why the Indianapolis DA, you know, at that time done that because they want to hold police accountable. It was a lot of police brutality that was happening in Indianapolis at the time too. So that's what it was put there for. And I was the first person to come through the door. And I just had the right team and right people. And then I was rebirth, you know, March 9th, 2023, you know.

Dylan Carnahan:Leon, you didn't exactly have an easy journey, but in bringing up kind of your exoneration in 2023, and again, going back to kind of this whole solitary confinement journey you went on, I guess what advice do you have for people reintegrating back into society?

Leon Benson:Okay, that's a fabulous question. Okay, hey, my story isn't my story. You know, we got to go through, you know, different adversities to be who we are. And I'm telling you, it's not only what you do, it's who you are. That's why that spiritual thing is so big. So it's mental wellness is the key. Currently, I am a trauma-informed reentry specialist and a peer-recovery coach. And I've been working in the city of Detroit for the past two years in the reentry community, you know, going picking people up from prison, taking them to their parole officer, helping them, you know, get their life back together, getting jobs, being a career coach, teaching them about social intelligence, emotional intelligence, how to use a cell phone, you know. And the thing about that is I'm living on an all African proverb, to teach is to learn, to learn is to teach, right? So I'm learning myself, because I'm re-entering, you know, Shots Out The Nation Offside gave me a chance, you know, to come out and do that, do that work with them. And, you know, it's spreading. So, you know, getting out, anybody that's getting out from a long period of time, they will suffer from post-incarceration syndrome. Now, post-incarceration syndrome has five legs. And what makes somebody susceptible to it is the long-term incarceration, the trauma experienced while on the inside, particularly solitary confinement and violence. So, it's five legs to post-incarceration syndrome. It's five of them. Antisocial personality disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, institutionalization, substance use disorder, and social sensory deprivation. Okay. You hear my story. You see, I didn't whip stood a lot of trauma. I'm pro-social. I didn't accomplish a lot of things that a lot of people don't accomplish while in prison, especially while being innocent at the same time. Okay. So, I'm at the high end of the spectrum. But when you go to prison, sometimes it's like putting a snake in an aquarium. For many of you that know the science of that, if you put a snake in an aquarium when it's growing up, it won't grow, it'll just stay in that aquarium. So, what happens in this long-term imprisonment, what can happen is you can have an arrested development or a delayed development. Now, it's a mystery because people getting out have to relearn themselves. They cannot measure the damage that's done to them just walking out the door. It'll be long-term. So, let's deal with that social sensory deprivation. Anybody that's getting out is vulnerable. You are vulnerable. You don't know nobody. You haven't been practicing your life skills. You got to deal with a world that's apathetic to everything you got going on. Who gives a fuck about Leon? Hey, I'm innocent. Yeah, I got to go to work. Right? Who cares that you're getting back? You're going to get a lot of microaggressions. Example, an individual looking at a menu. You're looking at a menu, you only have one or two choices on the commissary list. It wasn't that hard over those years. But now, you're like, oh man, and don't be in no fancy foreign restaurant. You're like, I don't even know what I'm looking at. You order check? Just a minute. Just a minute. Then you might get somebody that be like, I wish you would hurry up and order. You're like, I don't know what to get. You know, I don't know who to trust if I could tell you that, and you will really accept that. So you got these types of things. And so my advice is people getting out, you need therapy. Therapy. You need support groups, peer support groups, people with lived experiences. How is somebody going to tell you how to lace your shoes when they never walked in them? This is why lived experience experts like myself are thriving now, because we can put that experience to other, you know, trainings and other information to really help people out the most. You know, take things slow, you know, with relationships. Just slow down. Get yourself a chance to breathe. Put your, get yourself on your feet. And I know people got different scenarios. Sometimes whether you innocent or not, you will come back to nothing. Or you might come back to a toxic environment. Or you might come back to parole and probation. All these things. But the best thing is to, you know, hold self accountability to tell yourself that I am vulnerable. And I think one way to navigate through your relationships, which is romantic relationships, business relationships, family relationships, friendships, and your relationship to God or to yourself. That's five relationships. But you must start with yourself. And what I would like to say, start with accountability and intentionality. Be intentional. And I like to use the model of the four agreements, which are keep your words immaculate, never make assumptions, never take it personal, and always give your best. But apply that to yourself first. When you're looking at yourself, let your words be immaculate to yourself. Measure yourself with the right words, with the right information. Understand that you don't know nobody, you getting to know them. Then when your words are good to yourself, they are immaculate and they real to yourself, then you won't make assumptions about yourself, whether you this good or you that bad at something, you know what I mean? Have an accurate analysis. And when you stop making assumptions about yourself, you will stop taking it personal. Man, I was in prison, man. I got to catch up. You know, hey, you know, I didn't do this. Man, that stuff gone. You can't take it personal with yourself. You got to give yourself grace. But it comes in that sequence. Keep your words immaculate, don't make it some sense, and don't take it personal with yourself. And then you can always do your best because you're moving on a level that's yours. You're not competing with nobody. Your development is your own. And if anybody put a time limit on your development of your healing, they are not in your best interests. But giving your best means, when I was in solitary confinement, that was the best that I can give. I gave my best. When I got to population, I gave my best. Now that I'm out here, I'm giving the best that I can offer. Some days you will be sick, but you give the best that you can give. And in doing that, you won't have no regret. And you will make it through. You will make the right people. Now use this same construct on your other relationships, your family relationships, your business, your friends, your love, and especially your love. Really evaluate people. It takes time. Give yourself grace. And give the family grace as well too, Dylan. Like the families don't understand this. Families are very impacted by their loved ones coming home. I even leave you with a Martin Luther King quote. Martin Luther King said, The most dangerous thing in the world is sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. Now I get sincere ignorance. So conscientious stupidity, I kind of had to play with it. I was looking at it. Conscientious, it means to be righteous, righteous stupidity. And I came up with a scenario like maybe it's somebody that's trying to help somebody but doing it the wrong way. You know what I mean? Conscientious stupidity. You got the right direction to it, but it's off. And so I use that to divide that up. The person that's coming home is sincerely ignorant from their social deprivation. They're sincerely ignorant on these things. And the family or the loved one, most of the time, have conscientious stupidity. They've been there for us, they want to be there, and then they want to give you help that they want to give you and tell you it's cool. They'll tell you, you was in prison. You was getting three meals a day. Shit, you know, you was in there. You're like, damn, now you out here. So get it together. That's conscientious stupidity. And so I want to help to eliminate that with the work that I do, you know, within the reentry community. Also with the work that I do as the director of Solitary Justice Project that was founded, you know, here in Michigan, with a partner group, Open My Door and Citizens for Prison Reform. You know, we came together and, you know, they helped me form this foundation to reduce the harm of solitary confinement. And this is all about harm reduction. How to re-reduce the harm of wrongful incarceration, of the use of solitary confinement and re-entry. So my story is that, you know, that's what I got from it. You know, I'm blessed to be here. I'm blessed to be here to have my mind, to have my talents, to be able to help other people. I really feel blessed, you know, by that. So those are some of the things that can help somebody coming home. And if they want to know more, they can read my content on media. And Leon Benson, you know, follow me on social media, Instagram, Facebook, my website, www.leonbenson.org.

Dylan Carnahan:Yeah. And I'll be sure, Leon, to include all those in the show notes for those that are listening and watching. There are many, many things that I could again ask or that we could discuss. But I just want to say, to include things here, Leon, thank you for sharing your knowledge and time today, sir.

Leon Benson:Hey, thank you for having me. And I want to thank your listeners for tuning in. And I really pray that you glean a lot of the gems from my personal experience that's beyond trauma, that is spiritual. And we can be spiritual anywhere from a prison, solitary cell, to our living room, to the streets, to classrooms, you know? I just want to send out positive energy. And I just want to say this, truth never dies. It's only rediscovered.