Axis Front Running Case

(dramatic music) Hello everyone, I'm Jaihi and welcome back to the For My Man podcast. I'm here with my co-host, Crystal. - Hello everyone. - And our special guest, Trace Smith, what's going on? This is one of those stories where the more you think about it, the more questions you have. Not just about what happened, but how it happened and why. There are a lot of directions we can go with this. So we'll start here. Desiree is 26, a mother in Charles Camp, it's 48 with a criminal pass. When you hear that dynamic, what's your immediate reaction? And whoever wants to start, mate. - Always like to start with ladies first, so go ahead, Crystal. - I knew that was gonna happen, but no, my first initial thought was like, don't do it. Like, don't do it, you know? But it knew it was gonna be bad. I mean, we hear a lot of these stories all the time, but I mean, of course, criminal, it's gonna be bad all the way around, so. - Drey, what about you, man? - I don't know. I feel like at some point, you gotta always ask why me. Like when things don't make sense, you gotta ask yourself is like, all right, there's a normal way in order that things happen, right? So it's like, hey, I'm in college, and I meet one of my classmates, if we fall in love and we get in a relationship, normal, right? Hey, I'm out of mutual friend, introduce me to somebody that's around the same age. We click, it's a good time, normal. Now, you gotta look at this situation where it's like, I'm at work, this man, basically twice by age, damn dear, is coming up to me and trying to get with me. When it's not the normal situation, you kinda gotta ask, you know what, let me just take a step back and ask why me? Like why at your big age of almost 50, do you want me at 26? And I got you kids. - Right. - Two different kids, like why me? So then that would allow you to further investigate a little bit as to what is really going on and who is this man and what the intentions are. - Yeah, absolutely. To me, first and foremost, I think Desiree made a lot of bad decisions like from jump. Like she's not a good decision maker. So when she meeting this guy, I don't think any man that she's gonna meet at this point is good because she met this man in a welfare office where he was getting a check. He's really not in the best place right now to where you should be trying to date him and he should be trying to date you. You're in a better position and he is and he's 48. So you have to really think about that first. You have to really think about like, let's just look at this. Exactly what Desiree said. So because of that age difference, her parents didn't approve early on or that they didn't approve at all. If you're in that position, who are you choosing your family or your partner? - I mean, can we call them a partner at this point? - Well, it was a weekend at first. - Yeah, and that is not a part of the meet. That's a little thing. That's all that it is. So I mean, you're grown and grown people could do whatever they want to do. And obviously Desiree already had two kids. So she'd be doing her own thing and has always done her own thing and beat her on drum. And I'm sure that this isn't the first time her parents have tried to instill some type of wisdom or thought into her to say like, maybe you shouldn't do this. Maybe you shouldn't talk to that person. But I say you tend to rely on the opinions of people who love you very much and who care about you and want to see the best for you, especially when you might look at your track record and say, I may not have made some of the best decisions in the past. So I think in this particular situation, you side with your parents. However, if you're married, right? And let's say somebody's mom or father is causing division within a relationship. And we've all seen those situations where a parent is clingy to the child, right? And they don't want to let them go to the woman, the new woman, or maybe the new man. That's when you can kind of distance yourself from your parents and lean more on your partner. But this situation, yeah, she need to go with her parents. But we see as the episode goes that she got her on set of issues when it comes to that. Absolutely. Absolutely. Crystal, how about yourself? What do you think? Well, you know, Jaihi, not any amount of welfare money will allow me to not go side with my parents on this point. I just, I can't. Like, no, there's no. We're talking millions. That's a little difference here. But no, thank you. And then you have the background. I mean, you're older than me. And I would really think you were old if you're bringing in a welfare check. Like, what? Like, I'm, I would side with my parents. I'm 26, like, I'm done. Yeah, yeah. I think what she did was, she voted against her business. So, and she made decisions based on that. And as you can see, this will happen. And she chose who she chose. And they were sleeping in a car at one point. Her car to be exact, not just a car, her car, not his car because he didn't have one. And this is someone who had support. She had a family. She could lean on that family. So how do you make sense of that? When your life shifts that drastically and that quickly does it wake you up or does it start feel like something you have to push through? You know, like, like another challenge. I feel like my, my biggest thing in life is if you got to try to make it make sense, it probably don't make sense. And it's like, if you have to figure out how two people are going to live in one vehicle, first, a car is not even meant for one person to live in. I think, right. I'm even trying to think like let alone two. Are we reclining both front seats back? Are we trying to like lay down the back seats and kind of cuddle up with each other? Like how does that even work? And the fact that you chose a warm home, a bed, like a place where your parents are, like, said, childcare, all those things. And you elected to sleep in your car with another man who owned welfare, who was living with a sister and a W.A. like that. They ain't ring rings a bell off in your head that maybe this isn't what I should be doing or they say right. So I don't necessarily, you know, understand that choice. She continues with bad decisions. But that was one of the biggest ones there that I don't understand. I don't think most people would resonate with or understand. Right. Right. Absolutely. Do you make sense of any of this? Or can you make sense of any of this? You know, no. I can't because what really what kind of got me when I first was thinking about it, it wasn't even necessarily the fact that, you know, of course we know she has horrible decision-making skills, right? My biggest thing was, where were your kids? Where you had one child at what, 14? 14. You're now 26. Your kids 12 around there. And then you had another child, which was three. So you, what did you decide to do at that moment? Did you just say, you know, I'm going to go stay in this car with my man making his $500, maybe less than welfare. We're going to be living larger than charging. My car and my kids are just going to be with my parents. Like what would happen there? And I think that's the part that I can't really sit with because even your mother's instinct didn't even come in that moment. I understand you work. Child, when you had your first kid. And then you would think you would grow up a little bit, which is probably still hard. You were 14. But then once you kind of hit 21, and you still, again, had a loving family who was there to support you and your kids. And you didn't grow up not even a little bit after having your second kid. And then this is what you chose to do. I just can't-- yeah, that's kind of what went through my head because it's really more like where you didn't even think. I have children, let alone kids who look up to me, who I need. Then they need me. You just were so concerned about yourself because maybe you were a little selfish. Maybe there's some-- I don't know what's going on. Maybe you felt like, well, my teenage years were gone because I had children, which, again, was your problem. You did that. And now you're running away with a man with no money. I mean, I'm sorry, ladies. You're listening to me. Hear me out right now. If you're going to side with somebody and go away from your parents, don't do it with someone who's sleeping in your car, and I give you no money, please, I just can't. No, absolutely. And one thing that I can't make sense of is that did he lose his welfare check when she lost her job at the welfare office? Like he should still have at least something coming into where they have to point with it. They have zero dollars, and they can at least get a room for $75 a night, or something like that, or $50. I don't know how those nightly rooms work right now. That's a good question. So I've been trying to make sense out on a lot of different things. And it was hard for me to really pinpoint the-- actual part that made any type of sense at all. I couldn't come at any point to me that said, hey, this seems like the right move to do. - Yeah, I add to that too, is like, well, one thing that I thought about this, and this is the only thing that not necessarily siding with Charles, not doing that at all. But the one thing that I will say is that we have to figure out this whole criminal justice system and people being able to get jobs after they've been incarcerated. - Absolutely. - Because a lot of times, if it's supposed to be rehabilitation, right, then they should at least be able to come out and be employed. But if somebody is applying, applying, applying, applying for job, and they can't get a job, the odds are much higher that they'll revert to crime, because that's the only way that they feel like they can get any money. So not saying that what Charles did is right, but it did say in the episode that he was applying for jobs and couldn't get jobs because of his criminal history. So the hope would be that if he had more opportunity to be employed, that maybe this wouldn't be the route that he took, because I mean, we heard the episode. They went robbing high level banks, and not at all. - Not at all. - Not at all. - No, not at all. - And don't if a hundred is a dollar. - Yeah, not even a hundred. The first one was a hundred dollars. - A hundred. - A hundred dollars. I did a little bit of research. They were robbing subways and gas stations and, you know, convenience stores and stuff like that. So no, they weren't getting a lot of money. And one thing that you did say about Charles, he actually, not to, you know, stick up for Charles anymore, but he did try to take the blame. And Desiree was offered a deal that she did not take back to bad choices. How do you interpret those choices? Loyalty, influence, or is it just misjudgment? - The thing I understand, right, is, and I'll be pissed off if I was Charles a little bit, right? You know, is that you chose to sleep in your car for this man. You chose to not offer help. So you down for the cause and you loyal all the way down to sleeping in your vehicle. That's yours, like Crystal said. But then when the police come, you want to start throwing me under the bus, like if you're gonna be loyal, you gotta be loyal. It doesn't make sense that you willing to sleep in your car but you ain't willing to take a charge for me. You know what I mean? It's like, come on. Like where does the loyalty stop in that range? But it all in all is just a bad decision by her. Like I don't, the sleeping in the car is one thing but then to turn down the deal, I didn't even know you can get 16 years from actually not even harming somebody. And the fact that she got 40 is insane. In the episode it said that she's missing a large part of her kids life. No, she's missing their life. - All of it. - All of it, like all of it. - It's not there for none of it. 40 years and the kid already 12. Like she gonna have, might have great grandkids the day on the time she was on when she was younger. Like by the time she get out, which is very possible that they will be. - And why would they want to have anything to do with her? It's like you, especially the 12 year old, you left me with my three year old, you know, sibling, just to go run off with some man to rob people and you're not even robbing banks. So you're out of my life by doing very petty crimes and then you were dumb enough to not take a deal. - And knowing that I did it too. Like it's not like it's not like I'm like I would go here and it's like no, I'm gonna fight the system. I'm innocent. No, she did this. I know I did this. - You know what's wild about it? It's like basically, it's said that Jerry took 20 minutes. It's like the lawyer was probably breaking down like, so this is how the process normally works. Oh, they back. Okay. Well, yeah, guess we'll see what they say. It's like you need to get a chance to really take a break. - Yeah, it's like one of those situations like again, with the bad decisions that you're making. It's a bad decision thing here and you had not a way out. I don't want to say way out because 16 years is still 16 years. But 16 and 40 is a big difference. You know, and even with that 16, you might have got time served. You might have. - Yeah, she might have been able to get out on good behavior. You might have only did 10 of those 16. You know, so you could have been home to see at least one of your kids graduate from high school. And you didn't, and the weird thing about this, like I said, I did a little more research. They did all these robberies within 12 days. - Crombs got makes sense. If you hungry, you can go into like shoppers or grocery store and I'm not encouraging or endorsing this at all. But then people ain't gonna stop you. If you get some stuff from the hot food section and walk out that store, you know what I mean? Like that's more of a crime to commit if you like need some food versus arm robbery. - Right, right, absolutely. And Drake to your point before we talked about how much time that she got, she got 40 years, instead of doing 16. And we also talked about the prison system in a roundabout way. Now that she's having to serve decades, do you see that as the system working or the weight of a decision that couldn't be undone? - That's a good question. I don't know. I think it's, I guess it's the system working, I guess, right? She is guilty. She got to offer to take a deal. She chose to try her luck and in court, which you have the opportunity to do, right? And if there are sentencing guidelines for particular crimes, you can get the minimum or the max. So it's kind of how the system worked and it was, ball was in your court of how you wanted to play it and you played it a certain way and you lost. So it's like that is, and it's not like she was innocent, right? And she was innocent or there was some evidence that was up for question, then that would be one thing, but she was definitely guilty called on camera and I guess it's the system really being at work and operating the way that's supposed to operate. And the thing is that when you come with these things, you don't know where that jurisdiction is as far as like where crime is and what's happening in that moment because you might just be a victim of that administration or that jurisdiction trying to teach somebody a lesson trying to set a precedent. Maybe there has been more robberies and things have been happening and they're like, all right, no more. We're gonna make an example out of you. You're gonna get the max sentence for this opportunity to deter people from doing this in the future. So it's like you're all playing that game, but that's part of most people know how the system can work. But one thing that I remember a guy came into my high school and spoke to us and there was one thing that always resonated with me is like, whenever you make an action, you cannot control the consequences. Like, thank you, no, what's gonna happen? Like, but you don't know. Once you make the action, the consequences are the consequences and you can't control that. And I think that Desiree is a victim of that. That she made an action and committed action. And she thought she probably knew what the consequences was gonna be and what the risks were. But I guarantee you 40 years never crossed her brain because I would imagine if that crossed her brain as a possibility, even 15 to 15 crossed her mind as a possible consequence, she would not have been doing the things that she was doing. No, no, crystal. - Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I definitely believe it's a, it's like a two-way fold where I think, is it the system doing their thing? I mean, I do think that they tried to make an example and they probably were like, oh, you're not that smart. Where I think it, and then just talk to you something high because it's like, I gave you an option. And we've seen this before in some stories where a judge will give you an option and then you don't take it and they give you the highest of the high because I mean, one, maybe when you get out, you're gonna go back and do the same thing 'cause clearly you don't think that what you did was wrong and then I tried to not only explain you why it's wrong, I also was trying to give you a lesser sentence so that we can go through this 'cause she may not even got the full 16, you know? - Right. - Oh, once the trial and everything kinda happened, you said no and then they were probably like, okay, get her out of here. - Yeah, yeah. And no, do I think she should have got 40 years? I don't know, but it's tough because even if we talk to her right now, what she say, I am the big reason why this happened. - Yeah, no, I'm a little conflicted, right? Because, and listening to Desiree, I don't feel like she has fully developmentally. what I do think that she stayed a child. for she had that child at 14 and she's reliving those teenage years or those years that you can actually make those decisions and not have it to affect your whole life. So and I feel that she was never never fully developed into that grow woman. She stayed that kid this entire time. I don't know if you are ever familiar with people that when they're on drugs and they're drug addicts. They're pretty much the age they were when they started doing drugs so if they get clean. There if they were start at 14 they're back at that back at that 14 year age. My mindset back then so I think not to say having a baby is that for women but I think with this big situation that her having to try to 14 and then never really. Getting a footing in society. She never really able to get her foot as an adult. If she wasn't this age I would feel like the system did her wrong. In a way that how she probably was manipulated by this man but she's 26. And she has to take some accountability for the things that she did. I agree 40 years is crazy 40 years maybe a little bit too long but she is guilty. She she did this is not like she's innocent so in close of sometimes it's not about one bad decision it's about how far you willing to go. And how much you're willing to leave behind to keep going in this case the warning signs were there the choices were made and the consequences didn't come all at once they built over time. If this story made you think or shift your perspective we want to hear from you. Leave a message at speakpark.com/formyman and share your thoughts. You can listen to more episodes of the for my man podcast or an urban one podcast network or whatever you get your podcast. Be sure to follow like and share and don't forget to check out our after that story episode where we go deeper into the choices the pressure and what led to things to go too far because in the end some choices don't just follow you they define you. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time.