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Bruce Bryan

Bruce Bryan is a Client Advocate at Queens Defenders who was wrongfully convicted of murder and served nearly 30 years in New York prisons before being granted clemency by Gov. Kathy Hochul in 2022.

Sep 9, 2026

39:21
Okay.
39:21
Trial was about to happen, but you's looking at how the cards playing, you're like, "This is not going well at this point." I think right after trial and you're convicted, you realize, a light bulb goes off, and you say to yourself, "Well, I'm gonna keep trying to change my condition, but in the meantime, if I can't change my condition, the one thing I can change is myself.
39:47
I can change my mindset.
39:48
I can change how I view my situation," right? So I can start looking at this cell that I, that I'm in as a office.
39:55
I can start looking at that yard as a workout station.
40:00
I can look at the school building as a study hall, and I can begin to shift the way I see this entire environment.
40:07
And you know, the guys around you, you can say, "Well, this ain't just a bunch of prisoners.

7 MINS LATER

46:48
So that two-year period when you're sitting there, what are they telling you? Like, that's two years of your life.
34:37
How many suspects did they have?
34:39
They had several suspects.
34:40
I'm, I'm saying they had...
34:41
I mean, three of us were arrested, but it was, this area was like a open drug market, so so many people were being investigated and interviewed at the time that they should have done a much deeper and in-depth, um, investigation than what they've done.
35:03
When-- But when crime happens in the inner cities, in the margins of society, in these, um, pocket communities that are often, you know, impoverished and overlooked, the, the officers that police these areas, they don't really have an interest in who did what.
35:19
They have an interest in an arrest and a conviction.
35:22
Because again, these people are incentivized.

46 MINS LATER

81:50
See, after the twenty-nine years in prison, wrongly convicted, see, when you eventually get told you were going to be a free man, how did you feel that day?

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