the JustPod

Send us Fan Mail

Josh Hoe is Senior Policy Manager at Dream.org, and the host and creator of the Decarceration Nation Podcast.  Josh, who is himself formerly incarcerated, is the author of “Writing Your Own Best Story: Addiction + Living Hope.”  We connected to discuss Josh’s recent writing, in which he argues that the so-called “National Emergency on Crime” is not real, and why we should reject it. 

Send us Fan Mail

This is Part 2 of our two-part discussion with Tom Hayes, the now vindicated former English banker, who we first spoke with in April 2025.  At the time of that earlier discussion with Tom, in Part 1 of this series, Tom was awaiting a decision of the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court on the appeal of his August 2015 conviction, arising from his work submitting rates, on behalf of his employer, a bank, that were used to determine the London Interbank Offered Rate (or, LIBOR)—a benchmark rate, to which many other financial instruments were connected.

The allegation was that Tom, and others, had manipulated their submission of rates to benefit the financial institutions they worked for.  For that conduct—what the prosecution characterized as a “manipulation” of LIBOR—Tom was sentenced to 14 years in prison, subsequently reduced to 11 years in prison, of which he ultimately served about 5. 

But a parallel prosecution in the United States against two other traders, brought by the U.S. Department of Justice, was dismissed, following a favorable decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 2022.  At the time of our discussion with Tom in Part 1, the United Kingdom remained the only jurisdiction that viewed Tom’s conduct as criminal.  That is, until his conviction—and the conviction of another trader, Carlo Palumbo—were overturned by a unanimous UK Supreme Court on July 23, 2025.  We caught up with Tom after this tremendous reprieve.

Send us Fan Mail

This is the first episode in our two-part discussion with Tom Hayes, who we first spoke with in April 2025.  At the time of our first discussion with Tom, recorded in Part 1 of this series, Tom was awaiting a decision of the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court on the appeal of his August 2015 conviction, arising from his work submitting rates on behalf of bank he worked for, which were used to determine the London Interbank Offered Rate (or, LIBOR)—a benchmark rate, to which many other financial instruments were connected.

In Part 1, we hear from Tom about his fall from the high-end life of an international banker earning a handsome salary in Japan, and how it all came to a screeching halt on August 3, 2015.  On that day, Tom was convicted by a jury, in the United Kingdom, of a conspiracy to defraud.  The allegation was that Tom and others had submitted rates to benefit the financial institutions they worked for, instead of providing more accurate rates.  For that conduct—what the prosecution characterized as a “manipulation” of LIBOR—Tom was sentenced to 14 years in prison, subsequently reduced to 11 years in prison, of which he ultimately served about 5.

Send us Fan Mail

In the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, home to Philadelphia and its surrounding counties, the U.S. Attorney is David Metcalf.  We spoke shortly after the end of the government shutdown, at a time when the U.S. Department of Justice is under great scrutiny.  The job of U.S. Attorney is always challenging, and even more so in the current climate, so we appreciated U.S. Attorney Metcalf generously sharing his time and thoughts with JustPod listeners. 

Send us Fan Mail

Mark Loughney’s art has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art (“MoMa PS-1”), and published in The New Yorker and The Atlantic.  His black-and-white ink drawings evoke a mix of M.C. Escher and Salvadore Dali, with surreal landscapes and bizarre figures.  But Loughney is also well known for his series of prison portraits.  They’re prison portraits, not only because they depict prisoners, but also because they were drawn when Loughney himself was serving a 10-year sentence as an inmate at Pennsylvania State Correctional Institution – Dallas.  That is where Loughney’s portraiture blossomed, and his exhibitions began. 

Send us Fan Mail

[For a complementary audio excerpt of Gary Tyler’s book, narrated by Cary Hite, describing the point when Tyler is considering accepting a government plea agreement, and starting life outside Angola, listen here.  Copyright © 2025 by Gary Tyler. Audio excerpt courtesy of Simon & Schuster. Audio read by Cary Hite, from the audiobook Stitching Freedom by Gary Tyler, published by Simon & Schuster Audio, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Used with permission from Simon & Schuster, Inc.]

In 1974, at the age of 16, Gary Tyler, who is African American, and was born in St. Rose Parish, Louisiana, was convicted by an all-white jury of a crime he did not commit:  the murder of a white teenager.  Tyler was sentenced to death.  He was sent to Louisiana’s infamous Angola prison, where he was the youngest person on death row in the United States.  A song by the British reggae band, UB40, titled in his name, “Tyler,” captures the injustice.  

But Gary Tyler survived to tell the tale, and to write a magnificent book about his life experience:  Stitching Freedom:  A True Story of Injustice, Defiance, and Hope in Angola Prison, written with Ellen Bravo, and published by Simon and Schuster.  

Gary Tyler was released from custody in 2016, having spent four decades in prison.  Despite the compelling evidence of his innocence, he has never been exonerated.  We had the honor of recording our discussion with Gary on October 6, the day before his book’s release, and the October 7 anniversary of his arrest, decades later.

Send us Fan Mail

The honorable Mark W. Bennett is a retired U.S. District Court Judge, and the former Chief Judge of the Northern District of Iowa.  Judge Bennett retired from the federal bench in 2019, and is now Director Emeritus of the Institute for Justice Reform & Innovation at Drake University Law School.  

Judge Bennett is known for his advocacy for sentencing reform—including his criticism of the federal sentencing guidelines and statutory mandatory minimum sentences—for his research on implicit bias, and, unusually, for his prison visits to check up on hundreds of the defendants he sentenced.  For some of those inmates, Judge Bennett has written, he is the only visitor they have ever had.  Equally unusually, Judge Bennett has often met with the families of those he’s sentenced, at their request, to explain his sentences.  

We were honored to discuss with Judge Bennett his own quest for justice, his experience sentencing thousands of federal criminal defendants, and so much more.

Send us Fan Mail

Joseph De Gregorio, a federal sentencing strategist and now the Founder and President of Sentencing Advocacy Group, joins the American Bar Association Criminal Justice Section’s JustPod to discuss his journey from Wall Street through a federal conviction and incarceration to helping defendants and families navigate the federal criminal justice process.

In this conversation with hosts Justin Danilewitz and Geonard Flay Butler II, De Gregorio reflects on accountability, rehabilitation, sentencing preparation, incarceration, and rebuilding after release. The discussion also addresses the First Step Act and the experiences that inform his work in federal sentence reduction and early-release planning.

Sentencing Advocacy Group provides federal sentencing consulting services alongside defense counsel, including sentencing mitigation development, presentence interview preparation, federal prison preparation, and reentry planning.

Explore Joseph De Gregorio’s published federal sentencing analysis and media appearances, including contributions to Bloomberg Law, Bloomberg Tax, Law360, and the American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Magazine.

Originally published October 27, 2025.

Send us Fan Mail

Joe Whitley (Womble Bond Dickinson) discusses the ABA Criminal Justice Section’s International White Collar Crime Institute (a special convening of the Global White Collar Crime Institute and the London White Collar Crime Institute) in Geneva, Switzerland on November 17-18, 2025, with Nina Marino (Kaplan Marino) and Lucian Dervan (Belmont University College of Law). Registration is ongoing at Criminal Justice Section Events.

Send us Fan Mail

Elie Honig is CNN’s Senior Legal Analyst, and a former federal prosecutor.  He is the bestselling author of Hatchet Man: How Bill Barr Broke the Prosecutor's Code and Corrupted the Justice Department (published by HarperCollins in 2021), and Untouchable: How Powerful People Get Away with It (also published by HarperCollins, in 2023).  Elie is most recently the author of the recently released book When You Come at the King: Inside DOJ's Pursuit of the President, from Nixon to Trump, a history of the Office of Independent Counsel and Special Counsel investigations.  We recorded a lively discussion with Elie shortly before the book’s release.