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http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/…..aaron.html

Life to a 20- year-old boy…

Yes. I couldn't believe it, you know. My family couldn't believe it. Today I still can't believe it. … I was 20 years old … a life sentence. I ain't even seen life. I had to strive my whole life to stay out of trouble. I ain't never even have a traffic ticket before … . You going to give me life, but give all the other guys three years, five years … .

Do you blame your friends?

At first I did. Now, I still blame them, but I can see now that a lot of them, that was their only choice, you know? Either they going to find somebody to testify on, follow the rules of the prosecutor, or they going to get stuck in prison for the rest of their life.

The prosecutor said they didn't lie…

Yeah, right. How would the judge know if they lied or not? … Either tell the truth, probably go to prison for the rest of your life, or lie, cooperate with the government, do whatever it takes to get a lesser sentence. Which sounds better? … The easy road is to cooperate with the government, do whatever the government want them to do, testify to whatever they want them to do, and in return they receive favors.

Even if the snitch is lying?

What they usually do is tell the cooperating individual what the truth is, and then he sings their song. … The government usually scripts the story and they say this is what everybody has done, and this is what everybody knows, let's all get it together. In fact, when they try people here in the Southern District of Alabama, they put all the rats and snitches together in one cell, and after they testify, they go back to the snitch cell and compare stories and compare notes and if the prosecutor's mad at one of them for having said something wrong, then the rest of them know not to say that. … It's just like a play of some kind.

Do they admit it?

Certainly they don't admit it. They don't admit that they prep anybody.

How old were you when this happened?

I was 18 years old. I had graduated high school and I had just started college. A friend of mine had called me and asked me if I could get a thousand hits of acid for him. I told him that I may be able to, but it may take me a few days. And I was kind of shocked that he would ask me for it, because I had never sold drugs before and I had never bought drugs from him before. And [shocked that he] asked me for that amount, which was a little over $1,000, quite a bit to ask somebody that you'd never sold drugs to or bought drugs from. But I told him that I might be able to do something and it would take a couple days.

So I called a friend of mine and he wasn't there. And about two days I finally got in touch with him. And the whole time, I would come home and there would be messages on my answering machine, asking me, "Did you get in touch with him? Can you get it? We need to do it now." Apparently he was buying it for a friend of his who was going to bring it back to college with him. I finally got in touch with my friend and he said that he could get me a thousand hits, that it may take him a couple days to get it. So I said, "Oh, no problem." I called my friend that I was buying the acid for and told him it might be a couple days. During that time the couple days went by and he kept calling my answering machine, wanting to know, "Where is it at, how much is there? Are you going to get it? When are you going to get it, we need it now." He was very impatient. Well, about five or six days after we initially spoke, the acid came in. My buddy had it and he told me that it was there and that I could come get it. I went and picked up my friend and we were to meet his friend who he was getting it for at a shopping mall. So we went and we met his friend. And I left them and I went to go pick up the acid. I picked it up and when I came back I gave it to my friend and his friend. I gave them the acid and they gave me the money. And at that point I was arrested.

Set up?

I was set up. Apparently he was an informant. He had been busted selling drugs … and they got him to set me up.

Wasn't he a friend?

He was a very good friend. I had known the guy for many years. We had gone out every weekend, fishing on his boat, hydrosliding, skiing. I was very shocked; it was very unexpected. It's not something you expect from friends.

What happened?

I was handcuffed and I was thrown back into the car with what turned out to be the DEA agent. And he then tried to get me to cooperate with him, to tell. He wanted me to go back to the house where I got the acid from and get something else. They wanted me to wear a wire and they wanted me to go back there … to buy some other type of drug, no matter what it was, whatever he had in the house, so they could set him up. Just a chain reaction, one gets to one, one gets the other and they just keep going. I told him that I couldn't do that, that I didn't get the drugs from that house. At that time I was really confused. I was shocked, and I told him that I couldn't do anything for him. But he kept trying, he kept threatening, talking about a lot of time. "You're going to do 25 years. You're going to be in prison your whole life." … He really tried to scare me. But I told him I couldn't do anything for him … . [Eventually] they went back to the house in which I got it from, they arrested the other guy, my friend [who I bought the acid from]. And he's now doing a 10-year sentence along with me.

Were you tempted to cooperate?

It was very tempting. I was 18 years old, I was very young. And at that time, looking at 25 years, at 18 years old … anybody put in my situation would definitely by tempted to cooperate with them … .

Are you ever sorry you didn't cooperate?

Well, now I look back and I'm very happy that I did not cooperate, because you look around and you see the people that are in here, and the majority of the people that I'm in here with cooperated. I mean, I'd say somewhere around 85% to 90% of the people in here cooperated with the government in some way. They helped set up a friend. There [are] people in here that helped set up their mothers and fathers, which is unreal. … I'm proud that I'm one of the few that didn't cooperate, that [I] didn't help them … . I didn't want to do 10 years in jail, but I also didn't want to give up one of my friends either. …

What about the people who did cooperate? Do you think they're ashamed of it?

Well, in this place, like I say, the majority of the people here … did cooperate. They don't talk about it. I've been in 63 months now and I have still never met anybody who admitted to cooperating. So it can't be something that you can be proud of. … They must be ashamed of themselves because if they weren't ashamed of themselves, they would admit that they had told on other people. … There are people that everybody knows that they told and they said, "No, I didn't, I didn't tell, I'm a standup guy." And everybody knows that they did. I mean, when a guy gets caught with 10, 20 kilos of cocaine and he's only doing two years, it's easy to tell that he cooperated.

Is that a stigma?

Well even in here the cops will get the inmates to tell on each other. It doesn't just stop on the street. As a matter of fact, I think it may be even more so in here. There's people in here that, I don't know, maybe they made some kind of deal when they came in that they could have easy time … and people could stay off their backs, [if] they would continue to cooperate in here. And they'd tell on the things that go on in here, because this is really just like fence around a neighborhood is what it is. Everyone in here, we all live together and we all eat together. And there are things that go on in here that are illegal as well as they are on the street. And the cops don't want to see those things happen, so they get a guy that told on the street … and they get them to tell in here as well. And they get them to help get rid of the people that are doing wrong in here as well.

There are a lot of people, not necessarily in this place here, but what's called a transient is when you're in process of being moved from one institution to the other. And when you're there, you're with a lot of people that are waiting to go to sentencing, they're waiting to go to trial. And in those places we have what's called … case jumpers. And what they do is they find out information about people's cases that are going to trial and they try and find out information to give to the DEA or to give to the prosecutors to help knock more time off their sentence. And they'll tell on somebody that they never knew before in their lives, which is incredible.

Is it difficult to have friends here?

It's very difficult to have friends. Mainly because of the fact that the people who do cooperate don't admit it. So how do you know that this guy that you want to be friends with, maybe he was the one that was telling on the street. And if he told there, once, he'll tell again. So it's very difficult to trust. It's very difficult to have friends because you're worried that they may do it again.

Why did they want Joey?

… They don't care who they arrest. They're interested in convictions. It doesn't make any difference who it is as long as they get convictions. The public wants that. … The public wants to know that the drug dealers are the cause of all their evils and that as long as you make type, newspaper type putting them in jail, that's what they want. They don't care who it is.

I really don't think they just wanted Joey; they wanted anyone who they could get. They have confidential informants out there and those are people who've been arrested. They work for the government. They go out and they'll set up anybody they can. They'll actually come to people and say, "Here's what you have to do, you go here, go over here, you buy these drugs, I'll give you this, I'll give you that."

Stipulating what?

Stipulating that he would recommend a 5K1 reduction for my son if I went out and did substantial assistance by implicating and arresting people who were dealing in drugs. …

Did they know you weren't involved?

Oh, they knew that all the time. They knew that I wasn't, but they said that even though you're not, it doesn't really make a difference, these people are interested in money. And you know nothing's ever going to happen, I mean, nobody's going to get hurt. I says, "Well don't people get killed when they do this?" They said, "Oh no, that never happens, don't worry about that." "Well, what happens when you set somebody else up, do they come after you afterwards?" "Oh, that'll never happen, don't worry about that either." They made it sound like it was just an easy thing to do. …

How did you feel about the fact that you were trying to set someone up?

I don't think you have a point where you have thoughts about what you're doing. I would kind of think that it's something like in the ocean, if you're drowning and a matchstick goes by, you tend to want to hold onto it even though it can't help you. Well, basically the same thing [happened] here. When you have your son or your daughter who's sitting in a federal prison and you bring your family there to see him, and you can't sit there for longer than 15 minutes without breaking down for just the sight of seeing your own in jail under those circumstances, it just leads you to do anything. You just grasp for whatever's there, even if it's right or if it's wrong, you don't really think too much about it. I know I didn't think too much about it. I have a lot of second thoughts now, but I didn't think too much about it at that time. It was just, "It's got to be done, otherwise he's going to spend the rest of his life in jail, he's going to come out a criminal." …

Are you angry?

Yes, very angry. … I'm not sure who I'm more angry at, if I'm more angry at myself, my son, or the government. … Probably myself the most and then secondly the government. I'm angry at the government for allowing myself, in particular, or even my son, to go out and put themselves in harm's way. I had no knowledge whatsoever of how to do this. I didn't know what to do. …