Morgan Godvin - Incarceration Is Not The Answer To Our Drug Crisis - Season 2 Episode 8

In this episode, Jason and Amber speak with Morgan Godvin,  a freelance writer, scholar and advocate who spent time behind bars after she sold her best friend heroin and he died of an overdose. In a matter of days, Morgan found herself grappling with the death of her friend while also navigating an unrelenting justice system. Morgan shares her story of addiction and struggle, highlighting how she quickly became aware of racial and socioeconomic disparities in the criminal legal system. She explains how our nation's reliance on incarceration exacerbates addiction and often charges family members, friends, and others who share drugs as murderers while doing nothing to help.

In February of 2020, Morgan was appointed to serve as a commissioner on Oregon’s Alcohol and Drug Policy Commission. In January of 2021, she was appointed by the Oregon Health Authority to the Measure 110 Oversight and Accountability Council where she was one of 21 Oregonians determining the grant funding that came in tandem with drug decriminalization.

You can learn more about Morgan at https://www.morgangodvin.com/

A listing of her published writings can be found at: https://www.morgangodvin.com/portfolio

Watch Morgan's appearance on CNN here: https://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2020/11/14/from-addiction-to-advocacy-for-drug-decriminalization.cnn

Transcript

morgan-godvin-incarceration-is-not-the-answer-to-our-drug-crisis-season-2-episode-8

Announcer:[00:00:00] Support for Amplified Voices comes from the Restorative Action Foundation. Learn more at restorativeactionalliance. org. Everyone has a voice. A story to tell. Some are marginalized and muted. What if there were a way to amplify those stories? To have conversations with real people in real communities. A way to help them step into the power of their lived experience Welcome to amplified voices a podcast lifting the experiences of people and families impacted by the criminal legal system Together we can create positive change for everyone 

Jason: Hello, and welcome to another episode of amplified voices.

I'm your host jason here with my co host amber Hello amber. 

Amber: Hi jason 

Jason: So today we have a special guest And her name [00:01:00] is Morgan Godvin. We first became aware of Morgan when we saw her on CNN. So good morning Morgan. 

Morgan: Good morning 

Jason: So we're going to start with the same first question that we've asked some of our other guests and that is could you tell us?

A little bit about your life before you entered the criminal legal system and then what happened that brought you into it? 

Morgan: Yeah, so In my late adolescence, I was a recreational drug user And I had a heroin overdose, one of the first times I ever did heroin. And when my boyfriend called 911 to save my life, her medics resuscitated me and police arrested him and took him to jail.

And we were given an immediate notice of eviction for an arrest being made out of the unit. He was given a felony conviction. And that really was a pivotal moment in the trajectory of my life. From there, I sort of continued [00:02:00] using, and eventually I developed an opioid use disorder. I was injecting drugs, and I lived with a severe addiction for multiple years.

And then one day, I, one of my best friends, Justin, asked me to sell him a gram of heroin. And since I didn't want my friend to be dope sick, I did. And the next night, my apartment was raided by police. I was put into handcuffs and told I was facing a 20 year mandatory minimum sentence for the overdose death of my best friend, Justin.

Jason: That's so awful and devastating. So how old were you when that happened? 

Morgan: I was 24. I was 24 and my mom had died exactly three months before of an accidental prescription drug overdose from her prescription opioids. So my mother never used drugs. My mother was career military. So she was in the air force at a time before even Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

[00:03:00] So at a time when it was illegal to be gay in the military. So when she got pregnant with me, she had to feed into a bunch of rumors about who the father was, whether it was the janitor, the commanding officer, and so I was raised with my mom living a double life. And I had to hide the fact that I had two moms from all of my mom's coworkers.

And she retired from the military when I was about 12. She had mental health issues. She had been sexually assaulted in the military and just generally struggled with severe depression. She didn't use drugs how we think of drugs, but she did have a heavy prescription load and a gambling problem. So the gambling problem really devastated her and I still have prejudice against gambling because of it because I watched.

She ended up embezzling from Kaiser Permanente and getting fired. And we got foreclosed on. So while I had a pretty stable middle class upbringing until I was about 16, when I was 16 my mom lost everything due to her gambling [00:04:00] problem and I dropped out of high school to go work at McDonald's because I needed food to eat.

And when I was 16, that same year, is when my other mom left my biological mom. To be honest, I was incredibly relieved because we had a very volatile, toxic relationship, so I felt immense relief. Looking back on it, I see that she was the one that was providing structure and discipline in my life, and when she left, I did not have that anymore.

So I was a 16 year old pretending to be a full grown adult with responsibilities. 

Jason: Wow, so at 16 you have to figure out what's next for you and that's when the drug use for you started 

Morgan: Exactly everything, you know crashed down sort of at the same time and I started partying Recreational drugs cocaine ecstasy and at the time it was a lot of fun You know i'd been an anxious shy kid my whole life And then finally I found this drug [00:05:00] subculture that welcomed me for who I was Mind you I had two moms before that was common I didn't know anyone else with queer parents and I was bullied I got cyberbullied before that was even a term.

Someone hacked into my Facebook, changed my sexual orientation to lesbian, and edited all my pictures to make me look obese. And then changed the password to my Myspace. And at the time, like, Myspace was brand new. Social media was brand new. We didn't have the term cyberbullying. But, you know, those are the things that happen to me.

So I have this social anxiety that I've lived with my whole life. And then when I found not just drugs, but people who do drugs, who are welcoming and open and non judgmental, I felt at home. I felt a sense of peace and belonging that I've never had before in my life. I was finding that sense of community while my own family structure dissolved in front of my eyes.

Jason: Was that like a new family to you? Like you were looking for that and you found it? 

Morgan: Exactly. [00:06:00]

Jason: So what was a day in the life? What did you do for money? What did you do for food? What did you do for sleeping? What did you do for entertainment? What was your life like? 

Morgan: Yes. I still live with my mom who just, you know, took her clumps in and then would wake up and go gamble or do whatever it was that she did.

I would go to work. So I would stay up really late, but then I'd be like, go to work. So let's say my shift was 12 to eight, or then I got a new job at Dairy Queen. And my shift was like one to 10 and I always went to work. And then when I would get off work, we would do drugs. Whether that was ecstasy pills, or just do some cocaine and hang out, stay up till 2 or 3.

I wouldn't always sleep, I would just go to work. And I would eat, mostly, food from work. I have an aversion now to fast food because when I worked at Dairy Queen, you could bill food to your account with the employee discount. If I was flat broke and had no money, the only thing I could eat was Dairy Queen [00:07:00] charged my paycheck.

And so me and my hungry, broke friends would go to Dairy Queen and charge the food to my account, and that was all we had to eat. And somehow we were content anyways. 

Jason: And how long did that go on for? 

Morgan: That went on for about three years until I got my adult high school diploma through the community college.

My mom had a master's degree, right? Despite the fact we were broke and facing acute adversity, I knew better. Part of me had been taught better. I knew better. And so I was able to essentially manipulate the bureaucratic system well enough to get my high school diploma by paying 250 and filling out some packets.

And that's because, you know, I had that middle class upbringing, I knew how to work the system like that. And because I had gotten my high school diploma, I was eligible to join the Air Force. Like my [00:08:00] mom, where my mom had served for 20 years. She didn't convince me, she didn't encourage me. I just woke up one day and I had done nothing with my life.

And it's been like three years since I'd gone to high school. And I realized I was on the wrong path. And I just wanted someone to tell me what to do and when I didn't want to think about it anymore And so I joined the airport. 

Jason: And so what was that like? 

Morgan: Well, I got kicked out of basic training I got deemed medically unfit for service after getting an injury getting admitted to the hospital actually for staff and then For unrelated reasons.

I was determined to be medically unfit and I was discharged and sent right back home I put all my eggs in one basket, you know, it took me like nine months from the time I enlisted to leave for basic training and in that nine months I felt this sense of peace that I'd lost years before because I'd lost my sense of purpose and direction and I felt such peace and then two months later I'm back at home and I [00:09:00] again have no plan for my future, no sense of direction or purpose.

But I was able to get a disability rating for the injury that I incurred technically while on active duty, even though it was basic training. And so that opens me up to getting VA healthcare services, which I still access today. 

Jason: So your whole identity was shaken up because you're like, this is who I am.

And then now this is not who I am. 

Morgan: Exactly. And to combine those problems, for the final month that I was in the air force, I was being prescribed 30 milligrams of Oxycodone a day, plus. And so I was already almost physically dependent on opioids while again, my sort of identity just crumbled around me. 

Amber: So making the decision to go into the military is a big one, right?

You said, okay, for nine months you were building up this [00:10:00] identity. Then you ended up kind of the wind being taken out of your sails by an injury and then adding the substance on top of that. What happens then? 

Morgan: Well then I started doing heroin every day. Pretty much right away. Oxycontin had gotten really expensive.

They tried to control the rash of opioid overdoses that was occurring and essentially, you know, the DEA just switched a whole generation of people from Oxycontin to heroin. Myself and all my friends included. Yeah, my purpose every day Just became, you know, getting some heroin and getting high and numbing out, you know, I was still having economic issues and had no plan for my life.

So I could only see maybe 48 hours at a time. I wasn't conceptualizing long term consequences or abstract life [00:11:00] desires. I was stuck in the moment because that's as far as I could see, because I had acute unmet needs, whether they be psychological or physical. 

Jason: And so your life was like that for the next few years until you were 24.

So is that correct? It kept escalating or? 

Morgan: Yeah, you know, I always held a job. That's something I was always able to do. So, you know, I went back to delivering Pizza, so that spared me from like the worst of the worst because I was able to get cash tips every day And I kept a pretty good handle on my drug use But then one day I woke up and I couldn't breathe and I had a bacterial infection in my lungs and the doctor actually told me to stop smoking heroin because it was damaging.

So I'm on oxygen with a nebulizer and he's like, you can't keep doing this. And so that's when I started injecting because I was physically dependent. I couldn't just stop smoking one day to the next. 

Amber: And at that point, Was [00:12:00] there anything available to you in terms of assistance or addiction assistance, or is that something that's not even in your mind because you're living moment to moment?

Morgan: Physical dependency really makes you think about it because some days you just don't want to use and you have to anyway. And at that point, this is just after the Affordable Care Act, but before it's been modified to apply to the Department of Defense. So because I was on TRICARE, Military Retiree Dependent Insurance, I did not have health insurance.

So there's nothing available to me because we live in America. 

Jason: How was your relationship with your mother at this point? Were you living with her? 

Morgan: I would go back and forth with living with her. You know, she was sold the narrative of tough love on how to deal with substance use. And so she would kick me out.

Periodically, and I would go live somewhere else and manage to pay rent for a few months or [00:13:00] whatever until she would either allow me to come back or ask me to come back because she was worried about me and preferred to at least see me and know where I was. Our relationship was better, if not strange.

So at this point, you know, I had a substance use disorder. She still had a gambling problem. But she always loved me unconditionally from my earliest memories, all through the worst of my addiction. I always knew that my mother loved me unconditionally. And the boon to my self esteem from that is enormous.

And it's something I think about all the time in the ways that she saved me. Also, just having her there was able to insulate me from some of the harm that I was Uh, either drug policy, you know, it kept me out of the criminal justice system because I was in a middle class home indoors, housed, and then my addiction itself, because she had to call 9 1 1 to resuscitate me several times with my overdoses and things like that.

So our relationship was strained and complex, but full of [00:14:00] love. 

Jason: And then one day she passes away and you were devastated. 

Morgan: Yeah, you know, for the five years before she died, I used heroin. Then I was an injection drug user and she's calling 911 to resuscitate me. I was supposed to be the one that died. And I was so depressed and at times suicidal that I was okay with that.

I really thought I was going to die from heroin, especially after I got into the criminal justice system, started going to jail a lot, I lost my job. For the first time, I didn't have to go to work every day. I stopped showering. I just wanted to die, and I never thought my mom would be the one. By no stretch of the imagination was my mother healthy, but she was 56.

Right. And she didn't use drugs. And so it was shocking. It was absolutely shocking. And then the regret of knowing that her last five years of life I spent it being a terrorist. It's something that still eats me up. [00:15:00]

Jason: Do you have other extended family or was it just the two of you? 

Morgan: I do have some other family, but it was mostly just the two of us very american profile there Even though her sister lived right across the river.

We very rarely saw my aunt My non biological mom and I are not close at all. Some of her family, I do consider my family, like I have an aunt and a grandma on my non biological mom's side. So, you know, I have family, but we're not super close, I'll admit. 

Amber: So when you lose the person who is pretty central to your life, in your mom, obviously that was a very difficult time.

In an already difficult time that you were living in. Tell us about how you process that. 

Morgan: Oh, heroin mostly. Cause I was already suicidal when she died. Then after she died, I didn't see a reason to live anymore. [00:16:00] Fairly objectively looking at my life, there wasn't much of one. So I became incredibly actively suicidal, and thank God that a shot of heroin was always a little bit closer than suicide.

It was just a little bit more convenient. And I wasn't sober for one second after she died until I was arrested. 

Amber: I think it's important to acknowledge what you went through and how that affected you. It was a lot to take in and I'm so glad you're here with us today to share this with somebody who might be experiencing something similar who's listening today that can see that there is a way forward.

So take us through what happens at the point where your friend. Yeah, 

Morgan: so they raided our apartment that night. And I lived with my friend, who was also my dealer. He was like a mid level dealer, mostly just my friend. [00:17:00] And so they got him in the same ring. And he had a few ounces, and there was a few guns in the house.

And so we were in trouble. We knew that. We all had felony convictions, and there was multiple firearms in the house. One of which I had just intended to kill myself with. I didn't get the chance. Yeah. So they don't arrest us that night. And that's a part of the story I'll never quite understand. I thought they were taking me to jail and they took me to a Taco Bell and undid my handcuffs and said, have a nice night.

That was it. And I walked back home to the apartment and it was tore up. They had cut through the couch cushions, thrown the ashtrays around, just left their mark, put everything in piles in the center, and I said, I'm leaving. I'm not staying here ever again. And I left and they just continued on sort of like life is normal and like even went back to selling [00:18:00] and I was like y'all are nuts because I was on probation, so my PO was going to get a ping that I had had police contact, and she was going to read the police report, so I knew one way or another.

I was going to jail, but then I called my PO and she said, you know, we can recommend you for this diversion program with the state. I don't want to see you go to prison over this. You've been compliant up till now. I know you've had, you know, traumatic loss of your mother and I know you're using, but you're still like checking it.

And I, I thought, well, that's so nice. You know, I was like, okay, I'm still not going to come in for my check in because I'm pretty sure you're but that was so nice of you to say that. And then. A few weeks later, we got arrest warrants, and I only know because, so I had been driving my mom's car, and I let my friend drive my car, and they descended on her, pored roll, this little girl, got like descended on by the SWAT team, trying to arrest her.

Amber: Oh no. 

Morgan: Guns a [00:19:00] blazing, and when they verified her identity that she wasn't me, she ended up coming to tell me, she's like, I don't know what you did, but you are in trouble. And I knew. I knew right away. And so I spent six weeks on the run, some of the most traumatic weeks of my life, because you don't know if they're tracking your phone, if they're listening, are they watching me?

And then the United States marshals got me. They won. You don't win against the U. S. Marshalls, you don't. And so they arrested me and took me to jail. And that's when I knew that the diversion program mentioned by my P. O. was off the table because I was not being charged by the state of Oregon. I was being charged by the United States government.

My paperwork read Morgan Godwin versus the United States government. 

Amber: And did you, at that point, know exactly what you were being charged with? 

Morgan: Yes, [00:20:00] I was being charged with delivery resulting in death. I was assigned a capital punishment attorney because that was the sentence severity that I was facing.

And he informed me about the 20 year mandatory minimum. After I'd been in jail a few months, I remember him coming to tell me that if we could get this plea down to 10 years, it would be a good day. And that was him telling me good news. I was 24 years old, and my mother had just died, and that was the good news.

Jason: Jeez. So, I think I know the story, but I want to make sure that it's clear for other listeners. He was a friend of yours, and you gave him some drugs. He took those drugs, he died, and you were liable because you basically were the middle person for him getting those drugs. 

Morgan: Yeah, that's exactly correct. so much.

Jason: And you were not there when it happened. 

Morgan:[00:21:00] Unfortunately, no, or else he would still be alive today. 

Amber: For those listening that are not familiar with how the law works in this area, tell us a little bit about how that works, people being held liable for overdose deaths, in terms of the law and how you were charged.

Morgan: So the law comes from, The death of basketball star Len Bias, who is America's golden boy, indicted of a cocaine overdose in the midst of multiple drug moral panics and the crack scare. And in the name of doing something, politicians do something. They did this, which was created a federal statute to charge anyone who provided the drugs off of which someone overdosed to charge them as a murderer, second degree murderer, and it's strict liability.

There are no mitigating factors. Nothing else [00:22:00] matters. It doesn't matter if you were the one who called 9 1 1 and tried to save their life. It doesn't matter. It has a 20 year mandatory minimum sentence. The feds started it, and it was almost never used. And then you start to see a proliferation of it in state houses.

So then states start to replicate the federal law. As the news headlines are talking more and more about the opioid crisis, the opioid crisis. Because people are angry, right? Constituents are mad. So they're calling up their politicians and they're saying, do something. Well, doing something is not the same as doing something effective.

And so we just relied on the same carceral politics that failed us so miserably and got us into the overdose crisis in which we currently find ourselves. But they just doubled down on that same crap. Right. And started charging friends and boyfriends and girlfriends and brothers and sisters as murderers.

When they share drugs, if someone overdosed. [00:23:00]

Jason: And you found out of the fact that your friend had died at the time you were arrested. 

Morgan: Yeah. That's how I was informed. I was arrested for his death. 

Jason: So you were already grieving for your mother and now you've lost one of your closest friends and you're being faced with the potential for a capital crime.

You don't have time to even think or process what's going on. 

Morgan: Yeah, that's correct. At that point, it felt too real. It felt like I was living in a nightmare. I'm like, I was just going to wake up, this cannot be real. Such statistically improbable, horrific tragedies cannot occur with such rapid succession.

Right. It is real. 

Jason: How were you treated by the officers? 

Morgan: The jail treats you badly. They make you kick cold turkey even though they have buprenorphine, they just refuse it to give it to you, which is torture. But the jail treats everyone badly, and probably I was treated a [00:24:00] little bit less badly even because I speak the same dialect of English as the guards, and I am a white person.

And so, yes, the jail treats everyone like scum, but I wasn't treated especially badly, especially when you have federal charges, because there's no federal women's jail in Oregon, so they just contract with the county jails. The county jail couldn't even see my federal charges, it just says United States Marshal Holt.

So it could have been anything. But anyway. And they also didn't know the sentence length that I was facing. 

Jason: So now you have to go through withdrawal and coming off of that with no support and nothing. 

Morgan: That's correct. Withdrawing, grieving, and suicidal. 

Jason: And so how did you get through it? 

Morgan: You have no other choice.

As much as you wish you were not so, the earth just keeps spinning and the sun comes out tomorrow. And then I started talking to the women [00:25:00] around me. And their life stories were so horrific that they haunt me to this day And I realized that the childhood that I had thought was so terrible Was actually quite privileged in comparison to the women around me in jail 

Jason: Was that the spark for your advocacy today?

Is that where it was lit? 

Morgan: Yeah, that's exactly correct So it was watching people who were functionally illiterate try to write their own court papers Or not lose custody of their kids Or try to put in a medical request form to get urgent medical care, but they couldn't articulate their words well enough in the written form to not immediately be disregarded by the triage nurse.

It was seeing hundreds of women that were so obviously victims being called criminals by the justice system. And that's when my [00:26:00] sense of true justice was really awoken. 

Amber: And so, tell us a little bit about the process and how long you spent in jail, how your case progressed as you're going through this process.

Morgan: So I had five co defendants because they traced it all the way up the chain. So that slowed down my court process. And so I was in county jail awaiting sentencing for nearly two years. Average jail stay is two weeks. It's not designed to house bodies for that long. If I was a man, I would have been in the federal detention center, which has way better resources, recreation, fresh air, education.

But because I am a woman, I was confined to a one room dormitory for almost two years. Never seen the moon. 

Amber: What did you see the other women experiencing in terms of, were there mental health [00:27:00] services? Were there other services that were there at the jail? You mentioned it's not meant for long term. 

Morgan: There was effectively nothing.

You can get on the wait list and see the mental health counselor once every six to eight weeks. But again, average jail stay is two weeks. So what did I see? I saw women being brought in just long enough to be destabilized from their lives or just long enough to like detox from heroin and then let back out.

That's all that I saw. There was no rehabilitation. There was no treatment occurring in that space. There wasn't even medications for opioid use disorder. Girls would come in that were actually actively on methadone and just be forced off of it and would be in withdrawal for weeks and then released and expected not to overdose.

Amber: Right. So individuals who are actively in treatment doing better and then abruptly thrown into a system that says, This is not available to you. Just fix it. [00:28:00]

Morgan: Exactly. And, uh, some of them died. 

Jason: Were you able to help other people that were coming through that were struggling, or not really? 

Morgan: No, you can't do anything.

I mean, you can't help people with withdrawal. I couldn't find those girls housing. I can't heal their 12 years of sexual trauma. I mean, nothing. 

Jason: That's a lot to carry around even now. I mean, for somebody who's recovered and everything, it's got to weigh on you as emotional toll that, you know, most people haven't ever had to even see it.

And you have it with you. 

Morgan: It motivates me to do the work I do every day. It's the fuel for my fire. 

Amber: Absolutely. 

Jason: So at that point, would you go in front of a judge and it would get continued and it took a while for this thing to actually go through? And then what was the experience and the outcome? 

Morgan: I signed a plea for five years in federal system pleaser non binding.

My attorney was hoping that the judge would actually sentence me to less, but the offense level is so high. The [00:29:00] guideline range is exponentially higher than most crimes of violence. So the judge recognized that and he said, you know, in the interest of justice and fairness, I can't go so far below the guideline range.

And I was sentenced to the plea that I had signed for five years. And at that point, I'd already been in custody for two years. 

Jason: So you were in for another three after that? 

Morgan: I was in for another two years after that, you know, you get some halfway house time and some good behavior time. Again, I just could not believe my little middle class privileged brain could not believe that there was no educational opportunities available to me in prison.

California residents were able to do correspondence classes because they had the Board of Governors waiver for tuition, but as an Oregon resident, there was just nothing available to me. And not only that, [00:30:00] the guard Federal prison guards treated us horribly, much worse than I'd ever seen in my two years in county jail.

Amber: You were serving time in a federal prison in California, is that what you're saying? 

Morgan: Yeah, the nearest women's federal prison to Oregon is there in the Bay Area of California. So, you know, I was out of range for family visitation. They put me there in California and it was just super shocking to me that the federal correctional officers treated us so badly and were able to scream and curse at us.

I just remember one of my first week, my counselor screaming at me at the top of her lungs, Oh, you retarded. And it just like gives me pause, you know, and they have the American flag patch on their shoulder. That same flag that I swore to defend, the same flag that my mom served, was now sitting on the shoulders of people that were just degrading me and cussing [00:31:00] me out.

It was such a strange experience for me. 

Jason: Did you fear for your safety? 

Morgan: When I first got there, I did, enormously. Because of how my case had been adjudicated, I had received death threats. And so I got there and I thought that somebody was going to try to kill me But then I got there and I just found a whole bunch of people like me And I realized that was irrational and then most of the Violence at the women's prison was related to either relationships or gambling or death and you know I'm not a gambler because I got it.

I got this thing against it So that wasn't me And i'm not super messy in my personal life. So I wasn't getting in fistfights over any girls. So It's relatively safe in that regard people might steal from me. I got stolen from a lot 

Jason: You're living this miserable existence day to day where They're treating you like you're less [00:32:00] than human and you've got to do this for a few years 

Morgan: Yeah, except all dates come, you know, I had a date and it was pretty soon There were women around me again because it's at a higher security level that had l walk How can you complain about the two years left you have to do?

If the girl next to you has an l walk or a 22 year sentence and she's younger than you No complaint about that people weren't doing months people were doing years 

Jason: And then you got out. So where did you go? I 

Morgan: went to the federal halfway house in Portland, which is actually one of the best halfway houses in the country.

It has incredibly progressive policies and offers a wide range of wraparound support services. I was there for six months and then I transferred to house arrest with a GPS ankle monitor for six more months. GPS was horrible. I had to plug my body in like twice a day. Oh, God. And then one time, the thing fell off my ankle.

It [00:33:00] was my 29th birthday. My phone just freezes and refuses to turn back on. And then like 10 minutes later, my GPS ankle monitor, I clicked it on my bed frame and it just fell off. Just like, like nothing. I was so sure I was going to jail. Because my phone wasn't working, they couldn't call me. It was going to show that my ankle monitor had been removed.

I drove right to the halfway house and was like, Don't trust me, here I am! Yeah, 

Jason: no stress there. 

Amber: It's important for people to understand that living on an ankle monitor is seen as this alternative oftentimes to incarceration. They use it in the context of pre trial, things like that, is really living in a constant state of fear.

Morgan: Oh yes, the psychological trauma of living on a GPS, it was unlike anything before or since. Even the halfway house was more calm than that, because the GPS ink monitor was permanent, and people would see it on me in public, and [00:34:00] the zoom, Whatever it was that they would assume. I went to an Ethiopian restaurant one time and my GPS dot showed me in a home and they had to call me in for that and interrogate me over it.

It was an Ethiopian restaurant. I don't know what to tell you. Traumatizing levels of fear. Supervision in and of itself is living in a state of fear, but the GPS is exponentially worse. 

Jason: While you're on the GPS, are you on parole or probation? 

Morgan: I'm still a BOP inmate. I'm in Federal Bureau of Prison Custody being supervised by the halfway house that's operated by a non profit.

Okay. But I am still like under the authority of the BOP. At the termination of my sentence, my prison sentence ended, and then that day they cut the ankle monitor off me and my supervision term began. 

Jason: Was that considered probation at that point? Are you still on probation? 

Morgan: I'm not, [00:35:00] I was able to petition for early termination and I was awarded that.

Jason: Let me just recap a second. So you have a high school degree, you spent a little bit of time in the air force, and then you have these jobs working at places like Dairy Queen. You go to prison, you come out of prison. And of course, The prison the halfway house and the probation have helped you in terms of transitioning To get a new job and housing and they've really set you up with all these great programs, right?

Morgan: It's so funny

When I was still in prison, I filled out my FAFSA on paper. I had a friend of mine send it in. I then let my friend pretend to be me on a 3. 25 phone call and he was able to register me at Portland State University and pay the fees on his credit card and I was able to pay him back. I paid [00:36:00] cash for my first two classes at Portland State University because I still had a little bit of savings from my mom's death.

I got a job at a pizza place because that's what i'd always done, you know As soon as I turned 18, I stopped working fast food and started delivering pizzas because the money was better and i'd have some community college credits too because Before when I was addicted I would enroll at the community college and I got my emt license And I wanted to go to paramedic school because I thought if I could create a life worth living I would stop doing drugs But it just never quite worked out like that And I knew I couldn't do medicine now that I had felony So I registered for Portland doing all of this on my own.

Like if I wouldn't have known to fill out the FAFSA months in advance, I wouldn't have been eligible for financial aid upon release from prison. There was no support. I found my own job. I enrolled in my own classes. I mean, pick yourself up by your boots, Scott, or you drown. That's re entry. 

Jason: Yeah, and so, at any one of those points, it [00:37:00] could have been very tempting for you to go back to that lifestyle you had before, yet you were able to somehow overcome all of that.

I mean, that's remarkable. That's a remarkable success story. 

Morgan: Hello again, racial and class privilege. I was able to step back out into a middle class life with middle class family and friends to support me. I was not a first generation college student. I knew how to write my own resume. I know how to interview for jobs.

My mom worked in human resources her whole life. She taught me all the tips and tricks. So these things were not as hard for me as they are for many people leaving prison. 

Amber: So you mentioned you had friends that were supportive of you, someone you could call? 

Morgan: Yeah, my godmother had taken power of attorney over my bank account while I was incarcerated and she is currently my primary family member.

I still live with her in [00:38:00] Portland. She was there for my entire incarceration. That's where I lived when I went on to house arrest with the GPS. And I also, you know, reconnected with my other family members and I have friends who were not on drugs. 

Amber: Yeah, that's wonderful. And so the people that you were friends with prior to your incarceration that were also kind of caught in a cycle of addiction, did you communicate with those folks?

Most of them died. 

Morgan: My friend Jesse was the one I shared a birthday to the day that I'd gone to school with him, eighth grade. He died while I was in prison. 

Amber: I'm so sorry. 

Morgan: Of the ones that lived, all the ones found recovery. In various forms. 

Amber: That's wonderful. 

Morgan: Yeah. They passed around the terrific myth when you're on heroin that like 80 percent of people never get clean.

It's nonsense. Like so many of my friends are in recovery and absolutely thriving. [00:39:00]

Jason: You ended up graduating from college with an undergrad degree. 

Morgan: I am a full time student to this day. And you know, I've only been out three years, so I haven't had enough time to finish my bachelors yet. I graduate in August.

Oh, that's exciting. Yeah, I'm very excited. I'm so tired because I can't take summers off. I get military benefits for going to school. It's my only source of income. And so, familiar to anyone else who gets military benefits to go to school, I can't take summers off. I haven't taken a single quarter off since releasing from prison.

Amber: I do understand that struggle having used military benefits to go to school myself. 

Jason: Have you had a favorite course? 

Morgan: I've had lots of excellent courses. Languages of the World really played to the linguistic nerd of me and I still think about it all the time. And there's a little bit linguistics and a little bit culture, and we just learned about the different families of language [00:40:00] throughout history, different phonetic sounds, and I'm a nerd, so I really love that.

I also really enjoy some of my public health classes, global health, got to focus on Latin America. I also am getting a certificate in Latin American studies. And then, you know, I, I never thought I would be a lawyer until I took a public health, law, and policy class. And out of the 30 people in the class, I was the only one that enjoyed it.

And I was like, what's wrong with you? This is fun! And they were like, reading when people breathe is not fun. 

Amber: So tell us a little bit about how you go from re entry, you're going to school, to finding yourself on CNN. What was that journey like? 

Morgan: Well, Twitter is a big part of it, actually. I started writing.

While I was still in prison, I had a piece published by the Marshall Project, thanks to Debbie Kimball at FAMM, organizing that for me. [00:41:00] And, you know, I've been told before by college professors that I could write, but I felt they were placating me. But then I got that piece published and I just sort of never stopped writing.

Even though I was in school full time, I kept writing. Oregon tried to introduce their own delivery resulting in death law, which promptly inspired me to write an op ed for the first time in my life. And it was published in the paper and, you know, that got some media attention. And I just kept having these, like, Burning desires, the things I needed to say to the world.

I never set out to be like a freelance writer. I just have a lot that people need to hear. I don't know. I think you do. Yeah. And my voice has been silenced for so many years, incarcerated, you know, where I was made to feel like I didn't exist. And I really thrived on being able to share the messages with other people because the government doesn't want you to know these things.

And so then I got on. [00:42:00] Twitter and got more and more vocal. How I actually got on CNN was I wrote a tweet about measure one 10 passing after the election, which is decriminalizing drugs in Oregon. And then a Blair send it from the Portland Mercury, a local alt bi weekly was like, Hey, if you want tweet into an op ed, we could probably run it.

And I did. And they ran it. And apparently some turn at CNN is reading Portland Bi Weekly and they called me in for an interview. 

Jason: Oh, that's fabulous. If we look back over your life and where it took the turn, are there things that could have happened that would have gotten you to the same point where you are today, but without so much trauma?

Morgan: Oh God, yeah. Not to the same point where I am today. One of the first times I ever did heroin, I overdosed because I had benzodiazepines in my [00:43:00] system. No one ever taught me about polydrug overdose, and so I overdosed. I didn't know you could overdose by smoking. That was another thing, you benzodiazepines in my system and I was always smoking.

But the fact that my boyfriend got a felony conviction for that, and he got evicted from our apartment, and he got fired from his job. Could you think of any worse intervention to give, like, 19, 20 year old kids than destroy their hope for their future? And so the drug policy reaction was so outside in comparison to our actual drug use But at the time I couldn't see that I thought oh my god, look at all these consequences from my recreational drug use They were right recreational drugs are bad or whatever But looking back i'm like none of that needed to happen and none of that would happen under today's law At first advocates changed the good samaritan law protecting anyone who called 9 1 1 during a drug overdose from arrest then You Drug possession was reduced from a felony to a misdemeanor.

Now it's fully decriminalized if it's less than [00:44:00] a gram, apparently. So under today's law, that would never happen. I don't know where I would be today. I don't think I probably would have even ended up with an opioid use disorder. I think it was all those like negative consequences and really losing hope for our future that sort of pushed us on the path towards dependency in the first place.

Maybe not. Maybe I had social anxiety and I was going to end up addicted anyway. I can't say, but trauma is never an appropriate response to addiction, which is so often a trauma response. Sure. 

Jason: So what's next for you? 

Morgan: I am signed with a literary agent, and as soon as I graduate, I will start writing a book.

And then next year I go to law school. Wow, I'm excited about all of that. 

Jason: Isn't it really cool that you started by saying if I had asked you when you were 16 19, where's your life going? You would have said I can only think for the [00:45:00] next 24 48 hours But you've got some really great ambitions that we're all excited to follow and be part of 

Morgan: I try to make sure all that suffering was not in vain And all the friends I lost of overdose, every overdose is a policy failure.

Overdose is a preventable death. So I just try to make sense of all the suffering of all the loss and translate that into purpose and progress for the future. 

Jason: Great. So is there anything else that you want to share that we didn't ask you about? And then also, if there's anything you want to push, like if you want to tell people how to find you on Twitter, or if you've got an organization that you're particularly close with that you want to give a shout out to now's the time.

Morgan: I'm most active on Twitter at Morgan Godwin, G O D V I N. I want to push the Health and Justice Action Lab at Northeastern University. I work there [00:46:00] as a researcher, and for my job, I get to fight drug induced homicide laws across the country, in addition to a wide variety of other drug policy and criminal justice policy reform efforts.

And that is just the coolest thing. If you would have told me that when I was in prison, I wouldn't have even believed you. Sure. 

Amber: I have one last question for you. If you had any sort of advice for someone who is finding themselves in the throes of addiction or caught up in the legal system because of an addiction, what would it be?

Morgan: That they're telling you there's no hope for your future. That this is a government disinformation campaign. Yes, a felony does create some barriers in your life. Many of them can be surmounted. And if you're in your addiction, and you think you want your life to end, [00:47:00] it is not life itself that you want to end.

It is life as you know it. But you can create barriers. better life than you've ever known. When I was in prison, I couldn't even conceive of the life I live today because I could only pull from my memories of the past. As humans, we really lack very much potential for imagination. And the life I live today is so different than anything I've ever lived before.

And I have such hope for my future, despite the fact that I have felony convictions or, you know, a history of addiction. Don't let the government win. We're changing the system. Since I've gotten out of prison, Oregon has decriminalized drugs. And I got to volunteer on that campaign. And now I get to sit on the council that implements it.

How amazing is that? I've seen rapid policy change for the better. So do not [00:48:00] let the government win.

Amber: I thank you so much for everything that you're doing and the hope that you're providing for people and for yourself and all of the changes that you've been a part of combined with so many other people out there that are doing this good work. 

Morgan: Yeah, thank you. It feels really good to be able to be in the spaces that I knew about 10 years ago, I probably would have been excluded from, but society is changing because we're changing it.

Jason: As you were giving us that wrap up, I was thinking about the fact that your mother would be so proud of you if she were here. 

Morgan: Thank you. I think of that often. I wish she could see it, you know, but I'm just using the skills that she taught me and that makes me feel better because if she couldn't see it, she would know that she did that.

She had a lot of guilt about her gambling and my childhood, but if she could see me now, I think it would really absolve her [00:49:00] guilt because I'm using the life skills that she taught. 

Jason: She's left a great legacy. So thank you so much for coming on and talking with us. I feel I got to know you a little better.

Hope our listeners can take something away from this positive. I'm sure they will. And with that, I'll say until next time, Amber. 

Amber: Until next time.

Announcer: You've been listening to Amplified Voices, a podcast listing the experiences of people and families impacted by the criminal legal system. For more information, episodes, and podcast notes, visit amplifiedvoices. show.