A Self-Taught Path to a Second Chance: Dennis Cangiarella and His Prison-Made Passion

Episode 5 of Voices of the System features Dennis Cangiarella, whose journey through the criminal justice system reveals both its complexities and its human impact. After being sentenced to 15–30 years following a traumatic period in his life, Dennis made a pivotal decision behind prison walls: he would not let his circumstances define him. Instead, he spent years in the law library teaching himself post-conviction law, driven first by a desire to challenge his own sentence, and ultimately by a deeper purpose to help others.

In this episode, Dennis shares the story behind his incarceration, the mental and emotional factors that shaped his case, and the realities of navigating the legal system from the inside. He reflects on how learning the law transformed his life while also helping bring people home after decades behind bars.

Now working as a legal assistant in Philadelphia, Dennis continues to use his self-taught expertise to make a real impact. His story is one of accountability, resilience, and second chances. He is proof that even in the most difficult circumstances, it’s possible to find purpose and create change.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to Voices of the System, Rachel, criminal defensive civil rights attorneys in the Philadelphia area, as well as the unreal Philadelphia. We can have conversations with people personally impacted by the criminal justice system, like former and criminally incarcerated individuals, advocates, and reform leaders, we can learn from their stories of injustice and find hope for a brighter future. Thank you for joining me on this journey to facilitate positive change in our system. When we listen, we learn. Let's raise awareness together. Good evening, and welcome to Voices of the System. Tonight we have a very special guest, Dennis Cangerella. Dennis is currently living in Philadelphia and working as a legal assistant, and he has spent some time incarcerated, and he's going to talk about his experiences with the criminal justice system as well as what he's doing right now. Welcome to the podcast, Dennis.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Hi, Lori. How you doing?

SPEAKER_02 1:01

Nice to have you.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

My name's Dennis Cangerella. What I do, what I'm doing is I do post-conviction litigation, which includes uh post-conviction relief act petitions, appeals in the Superior and Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, and then uh habeas petitions in the federal courts. And as well, I've done stuff in the Third Circuit too. Um, right now, actively, what I'm doing is I'm doing a lot of work with guys that are incarcerated, currently incarcerated. Many of them have been in incarcerated for decades. Just about everybody I'm working with is at least probably 20 years in or more. And I'm helping these guys put together uh claims uh for post-conviction work. I don't get every, I don't take every case and I don't do every case, but sometimes I wish I could because I feel like you know they're gonna shortchange themselves sometimes because it's difficult to work on your own case. It's always the I've always said that to guys over the years. It's particularly difficult to write a pleading about your own case because it's very easy to go off the rails. It needs to be presented through an objective perspective. And that's that's what I try to help with.

SPEAKER_02 2:08

So I'm just gonna um go a little bit into your background and just for the listeners, I've known Dennis for it's almost five years now, since 2021. I met Dennis when he was released from a state prison in Pennsylvania, and he became my legal assistant, helping me with post-conviction cases, an area of law that I had never worked in or known about until I met him, which I'm very grateful for. Before you did your current work that you are working on now, and you worked with me and other attorneys, there was a time that you didn't even know this area of law and you were incarcerated, as you said. Could you go back to that time, well, even before you were incarcerated? What led to that incarceration and how long were you there for the first when you were first incarcerated?

SPEAKER_00 2:55

I got uh uh locked up in in 2006 um as a result of a uh a robbery spree. I mean, you can actually Google it. I had a series of robberies that I committed in like a 45-minute window frame. I was married at the time. I owned a house. I uh had four children, I worked every day, I had a bunch of money in the bank. The robbery spree, the robberies and things like that were a very unexplained event, uh, with the exception of maybe understanding that previously me and my 14-year-old son had been uh shot uh as a result of like a road rage incident, and we were both life-lighted, and we, you know, it was severe. And and and uh I was diagnosed with post-traumatic traumatic stress disorder. So anyway, I had this event, uh 45 minutes to commit all these robberies, it was a big deal. I get locked charged with uh hundreds of charges.

SPEAKER_02 3:52

And you had never been arrested for anything like this before or anything, right?

SPEAKER_00 3:58

Well, that that that's true. I mean, believe me, I was no angel. Let's not go there.

SPEAKER_02 4:01

Uh but nothing so serious.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

Correct. I mean, I I mean I I had charges, I never had any kind of violent crime like that with a gun or anything like that. Moreover, I was 42 at this time when I got locked up. And the last time that I got in trouble was when I was 18. So it had been like 24 years that I had any kind of you know legal trouble or anything like that. And I was, you know, basically a family man, owned a home in the Poconos, kids in school. My youngest was about uh eight, my oldest was uh 17, and uh went to work every day, paid a mortgage, went on vacations and all that. Uh so that was my introduction to the Pennsylvania legal system, and and and I got hundreds of charges, I didn't know what to do, I was guilty.

SPEAKER_02 4:45

What was your state of mind before this robbery? Meaning, what were were you going through anything?

SPEAKER_00 4:50

I was a victim, and and as a victim, uh and for me, because I was with my 14-year-old son, and because he got hurt so bad, okay, I felt overwhelming guilt. And and then frankly, you know, there was a civil action involved, and uh I was named as a defendant of my son's case because I he had been with me, and basically essentially he was under my care and custody, okay, and I got him involved in a shootout, which again was a road rage thing. You know, I put 15 bullets through my windshield. Extremely traumatic event. I got shut, I put my arms up and I caught two of both arms, one in the face. I could have died. And and and and and every a lot of guys in jail go through situations like that, okay, that they've been in shootouts and whatever. And and for me, it was it was more traumatic because first of all, I didn't, it wasn't like I was in the you know, uh, in the hood, you know, you know, we're in a situation that maybe would call for something like that, if anything does, but if it ever does. But at any rate, it was it was that trauma, but also the trauma of of my kid, you know, and the guilt and why his hand got mangled and and had to have all kinds of surgeries, but having to watch him for a year trying to cut his meat every night. And then the other thing, too, was the guy that shot me, he actually called the police because he felt like he was acting in self-defense, is what he tried to say. But anyway, um, his whole family lived within like a quarter mile of me in my same development. And I used to have this, you know, irrational thinking that you know, now they're gonna come get me because I'm witness. And so, like, I would when I left my house to go to work, I get up and work every day at six o'clock in the morning, and I'd like before I went out, I lived in the Poconos, it was kind of rural, and I'd look to see if somebody's hiding behind the tree or something. So, and then it and that more morphed into like I gotta get a gun. I need a gun so I can pretend this can't happen again. I can't have my you my family hit the you know, having this again. So that's what I was in my mind. I had been days previously thinking about, you know, I want to, you know, rob a rob a hardware store, rob a uh sporting goods store or a gun shop to get a gun. And that's how that episode started. And then it turned into all those charges, and I ended up pleading guilty, and I got 15, 30 years.

SPEAKER_02 7:03

It sounds like what you you said previously, in your mind, you weren't going to get that much because they only said they were going to go for a man the mandatory minimum, which is one count of five to ten years. So am I correct? You weren't expecting a sentence like that, correct?

SPEAKER_00 7:21

Correct, there wasn't. It was an open plea which gives them a uh you know a degree of latitude, and actually, you know, you know, within the statutory limitations. So it was still, you know, an open plea. But it again, because of the the nuance of we're only seeking one mandatory minimum, the fact that there were two robbery charges there seemed to be make any difference to me. I in in the course of doing these robberies, uh, and I robbed like five places in 45 minutes. The last place was a right aid, and there was two people working in the right aid when I went in. And so, as a result of that interaction, that's a very nice way of saying criminal behavior, okay. And as a result of that interaction, I got two counts of robbery. So, and that's another thing that I recognized when I was signing the guilty plea. Oh, this is the robbery of the right aide. It's one robbery, it's gonna be one sentence, and they're only gonna see one five-year mandatory minimum, so it's likely gonna be a five-year sentence. Maybe they're gonna run a couple uh years probation for something else. That was my thinking. None of that was, you know, agreed to or talked about or anything like that. But, you know, we were thinking no more than it like eight years, you know, because I asked the attorney about what do you think is gonna be. He said it could be eight, nine years.

SPEAKER_02 8:32

How much time was there between the time that you went through this horrible shooting, being a victim, you and your son, between that and the incident for which you got arrested?

SPEAKER_00 8:42

About 14 months.

SPEAKER_02 8:44

So it was very close in time then.

SPEAKER_00 8:46

Well, they could some people would argue that's a long period of time, but not under the circumstances. I mean, you have to realize too what was going on. Every month they're telling us because this guy was arrested, charged with two counts of murder, attempted murder, and two counts of aggravated assault. I mean, he emptied a clip through my windshield, 15 bullets. Every month you go, you we're going to trial, we're gonna start the trial. You can't well, we're gonna full vacation, they can't go. The trial's gonna happen this month, and then they would postpone it, and then they would postpone. And this went on for a year, and then I just we don't even want to go to trial, we want to go on vacation. Can he plead guilty? And they said he didn't he is not gonna plead guilty to two counts of attempted murder, and again, I didn't know law like I did now. Attempted murder carries 20 to 40 years where there's a serious bodily injury, and there was a serious bodily injury in our case. Any other time it would be 10 to 20, but even that's a significant sentence. So I said, let the guy plead guilty to something else, he's charged with other things, isn't he? And they said, Yeah. So he pled guilty to aggravated assault. What's uh very ironic about the situation is we went to a guilty plea colloquy for him. Me, my wife, my 14-year-old son, who was almost 16 now, and an attorney that was handling the simple case for me. We're in the courtroom in Carbon County, little church old school courthouse. We're the only ones on like our side, the victim with the victim. His family filled up the whole other side of the courtroom, okay, and it was just nuts. There was news out there. We wanted we had to sneak out the side. But anyway, that was on like October 20th, let's say, something right around there, 2006. A week later, 10 days later, is when I committed my crime. And that was and nobody ever talked about that, okay? But what it was was they brought that guy in, sat him in it was like church pews, like an old school uh courthouse. We're sitting in the on the left side, me, my son was next to me, my wife next to him, and the attorney next to her. They brought the guy that shot us, put him right in front of us, sitting right in front of the uh right in the I mean I could reach out and touch him. My kid's shaking. Okay, he's all red and everything like that. They bring him up to colloquium and they call me up and they meet up there. That was a pretty you know traumatic whole thing, too. Then it was over. We had to wait, we're waiting, trying to leave, can't leave. Then we snuck out the side door. And so 10 days later is when my crime happened. And and I listen, I have a almost like it was in a blackout. I had some kind of mental breakdown. I was on medication. Okay, so there was a lot of like I don't really rem. It isn't like I haven't very vivid memory of it. It's almost like in the fog, I remember parts of it, okay. Uh it was very extreme, okay. Uh things that I don't do, but that's how that's that's was what led up to it immediately before.

SPEAKER_02 11:29

The person, the man who shot you and your son, what was his sentence?

SPEAKER_00 11:34

Yeah, that's the other thing. So, anyway, I I I get I get locked up, you know, 10 days later after he pleads guilty. Okay, so he isn't even sentenced yet. I end up getting sentenced before him because I played guilty too. I got 15 to 30, he got four and a half to nine twice running concurrent.

SPEAKER_02 11:54

Right, same time.

SPEAKER_00 11:55

Right. So I got seven and a half to fifteen twice running consecutive, and he got four and a half to nine and uh running concurrent. I mean, I'm not saying that that he didn't get enough time or got too much time, but when you could put the two together, yeah, compare the two. It was funny, like the day I got sentenced, it was like 10 of us getting sentenced, we're all caught together. They sentenced the first guy, he had third-degree murder, they gave him 15 to 30 from third-degree murder, and I was immediately the next, and I got 15 to 30 for robbery. And I was like, Judge, you know, the the one you just did, he killed somebody. And he gave giving me the same amount of time, nobody was hurt. That was my whole problem was my sentence for all the reasons that we're talking about right now. The the fact that the guy that shot me got four and a half to nine, the guy that killed somebody got 15 to 30. I got uh I had all kinds of mitigating factors, as we've kind of touched on, and that was my whole fight was my sentence, right? And that's why I got started doing along.

SPEAKER_02 12:51

Did your lawyer you know, I'm gonna use the word mitigation, meaning you obviously had a lot going on, and you said you blacked out a bit during these criminal episodes. Right before you talked about PTSD, and and do you think that was a factor? And and you also talked about medication. You were on medication. I assume that's for the pain that you were going through from the shooting, like the physical pain. Did you ever seek any? You didn't have much time, but um, did you ever get any kind of counseling for the PTSD you or your son that you went through?

SPEAKER_00 13:25

Me and my son both had uh we saw a forensic psychiatrist actually for about a year, okay, uh, individually. And um, so and and I was getting medication from him, I was getting Xanax from him, I was getting Percocets from the other doctor for the shootings, the pain injuries. I mean, it wasn't a fog. I was in a fog for like a year, and then put on top of that post-traumatic stress disorder, and then put on top of that the stuff that happened uh 10 days prior with the guilty plea.

SPEAKER_02 13:53

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

And then all that uh coalesced into you know the night's actions of November 6th. And the lawyer did try to mitigate it. Um, as a matter of fact, the forensic psychiatrist had kind of concluded his review of me and my son about maybe two weeks prior to my my arrest. And uh so there was a detailed report and it's discussed uh my post-traumatic stress disorder and things like that. So I submitted that to the court of mitigation. And the for your case, right? For your case, yes, for my criminal case. I submitted and and that the prosecutor, you know, basically shredded that saying that that that that's for a civil case. That's not that's got nothing to do with this. And and and my lawyer really didn't uh respond well enough because I mean that it it would that was drafted uh uh two weeks before my arrest. And it it it was you know a timeline of the year before my arrest and what I was going to, and and it was it was uh uh the most accurate time shot that the court could have of what was going on, okay. Yeah, they felt like it was a kind of a ploy. And what was what I thought made that more credible, okay, that report, was that I didn't go get that after I got the case. Like I got a I got this case, I got these robberies acting like a nut. Let me go see a psych and get a report that says something of what I it happened before. So they added credibility to it, and I think value. What they did was they sentenced me to the two counts of robbery consecutive, and and they can do that by law because the words of the statute matter. Okay, I learned I don't that, but that's how that worked out.

SPEAKER_02 15:34

How rare is it to have a report like that right before you were arrested to really talk about what you were going through mentally and physically?

SPEAKER_00 15:42

It was such a good uh and appropriate mitigation, and that's what and I mean I had to insist that it was in there. The law says that I can appeal the sentence because I didn't know what the sentence was gonna be. Okay, so I had to pursue those things. I didn't end up getting a relief, but I uh, you know, you know, I I didn't get any relief from the sentence. I had to do every bit of the, you know, the minimum sentence uh to the day. But I did get something out of it because maybe had I gotten the time cut, okay, then I would have never gone to the law library, never done all the legal research I did, never done all that. But then I also, you know, sometimes, and I don't often do this, but sometimes I think, wow, if I'd have got out in 2014 instead of 2021, you know, my kids would have been 12, 13 instead of 24, 25, you know, made major difference.

SPEAKER_02 16:30

Yes. Just listening to that, I mean, the judges are supposed to consider mitigation. They're that's like you as an individual and what you went through, and that this was you've never done anything like that before. Also, you said nobody was hurt. I mean, it was still a crime, but nobody was shot, assaulted, hurt in any way. Yes, that they were afraid. I'm sure it was a robbery, but it's not like a murder or a serious or physical injury.

SPEAKER_00 16:56

You're right. They were maybe placed in fear and and and no question. Okay, but there's no physical injury. But you know, which we said about judges are supposed to consider um things like that. And okay, but you know, they're to some extent, okay. Um they're they they they're controlled, they're obviously controlled by the statute, okay. Not the sentencing statute, the criminal crimes code for whatever the crime we're talking about. They're controlled by that, but they're controlled by the sentencing guidelines in the commission. Now, when you when you figure that out, they look at your background because I have a prior criminal history that is extremely dated. Okay, 22 years is uh what it was. Yeah, but my crime score, prior record score, added up to a five. Now, a five is almost as high as you can go. There's only two steps above it. Okay. Um, a five puts you in this block right here that might say, okay, this we recommend a guy with this kind of background can go, we want it to be six to seven years, sixty to seventy-two months for your minimum sentence. Well, now the judge can consider all that stuff, okay. But the guidelines say, well, okay, if you got all this stuff to mitigate, not 12 months off of that. Usually it's plus or minus 12 months. If it's aggravated circumstances, it's put 12 more on it. Okay. So, but again, so my point is even that situation, those judge could go from six years to five years. So, again, I mean, they they're they're still limited in their discretion. Now they can depart from those guidelines, but they're going to open themselves up to appeal. Okay. So they really they do have discretion. They don't have full discretion, I guess, where they they got to kind of watch their back because you could, I mean, there's situations like I mean, you can imagine hypotheticals where somebody, let's say, uh, let's say uh uh a criminal that's not supposed to have a gun, has a gun, but he saves somebody's, he saves 50 people's lives because he had the gun, whatever. You know, you're not gonna consider that, okay, when you when you charge or sentence or whatever, because you have to follow the law, but you're gonna consider that. My point is you can only they can only give so much consideration. Right. They have guidelines, they can't depart from them, they don't.

SPEAKER_02 19:06

And I was just gonna make a comment on the there's ever you know new guidelines now in 2026 that apply, and my understanding of them is that they those guidelines, much more than when you were sentenced, take into consideration those 22 years of having no criminal activities.

SPEAKER_00 19:24

It's definitely an improvement. I mean, and they can they give more more uh latitude.

SPEAKER_02 19:28

So you you you went to prison, and where did you end up serving the majority of your sentence? Um, the seven and a half years the minimum sentence that you had to to do.

SPEAKER_00 19:40

You're not allowed to shortchange people on their time. My 15-year minimum, seven and a half times two. Oh yeah, he said seven and a half years. You're not allowed to do that. Sorry about that. Anyway, my whole bid was at Greaterford. And they closed. When we closed the Greaterford in 2018 in open phoenix, we all went there. So that same uh group of guys, 4,000 was in in Gradeford, okay. Uh when we transferred, there was 3,000 when they closed it, but a lot of people. But my whole time was at Gradeford, which was a whole everybody knows Greaterford was a different is a different thing.

SPEAKER_02 20:14

And just for the listeners, that's in right outside of Philadelphia, and it's a very large prison housing a lot of uh men who are incarcerated. For how many years did you get serve in the new prison, which was Phoenix?

SPEAKER_00 20:28

Well, we opened Phoenix in July of 2018. I was there until I was paroled. I was paroled on my minimum, and my minimum was uh April 2021. So I was there for about three years. Sure. And two or two of them being pandemic.

SPEAKER_02 20:42

Yes, that made it even more difficult.

SPEAKER_00 20:45

We were we were locked down like for like three days. We didn't know why we were locked down at all. We didn't come out at all, and then we were finding we were figuring it out, and then we were getting out like 15 minutes a day, and like you had you get a seven-minute shower and a seven-minute phone call, or whatever, or maybe one or the other, and then you know, we was just it was it was basically locked down all the time, and then they expanded it, and then if somebody would get sick, they'd lock us back down again. And I seen a lot of people get sick, a lot of people get sick.

SPEAKER_02 21:13

So, what was your mindset when you first got in? And did it change? And when did you decide that you wanted to learn the law and then spend time in the law library, help yourself and help others?

SPEAKER_00 21:24

From like the day I got to Gradeford, my mindset was I'm not gonna become a victim of my circumstances, I'm not gonna make my surroundings dictate the person that I am. And then the other thing was that uh every move I make is gonna be about making my minimum. Getting out of jail as soon as I can. That translated in not being at the at the gambling tables, walking away when you maybe guy was talking a little bit of crap, staying out of the hole, not getting involved in any of the drugs or anything like that, and not, you know, you just like Staying out the way. So, and I didn't have an interest in the law per se. I had an interest in my sentence. Okay. And I had an interest in, again, getting out of jail as soon as I sooner rather than later. So I started, you know, researching what I could do about the sentence, knowing that I had a guilty plea, and that that makes a lot of challenges in and of itself. So I started reading, learning, and and and I'm I'm not a dumb person. I'm a pretty intelligent person. You know, I'm I was an auto mechanic for 30 years. I diagnosed things. I mean, I made a career up, but I wasn't like a guy that was doing breaks in his backyard. You know, I went to 60-hour work week with a shop, you know, 10, you know, dealers, all that. So like I'm an intelligent person. So I kind of I understood what I was reading on paper, okay, and under law, it's hard. Not just because the DAs are jerks and because the judges don't like me and all that other stuff. It's because we have a presumption of guilt now. Because on paper, under the Constitution, okay, we have a presumption of innocence prior to guilt, and the burden is on the Commonwealth. But now that we've been convicted, I just had somebody the other day tell me I was going over what happened at trial. And I said, Okay, so this uh we'll say, okay, the guy hit the uh baseball with a uh with a bet, right? And the guy said, Well, allegedly. I said, it ain't allegedly. I said it ain't allegedly that you're convicted. It's established. It is established. Okay, so once and that that's exactly what it is. Once you're convicted, it is established you're guilty. The burden now shifts to you. Any doubt that under on paper, anyway, under law, it went to you before, beyond a reasonable doubt. Now the doubt goes to the Commonwealth. All that translates into it's hard to get relief. Learning law is translated, that's transformed my life, okay. Um, now and even then, okay, because listen, to be the guy that did the law work, and everybody liked my law work. I everybody I would get done a brief and they'd read it and they'd be like, I'm going home, I'm going home. And I'd be like, giving their stuff away. And I'd be like, No, don't give all your stuff away. This is hard, okay. This is hard to get relief. I was it was that was a good position, like to be known. Like everybody knew who I was. Nobody, and if if you had a problem with me, there was probably five or six other guys that were probably gonna be like, Look, don't worry about that with Dennis, leave that alone. He's doing my case, he's got my legal work in his cell, you know, whatever. So it was good like that. So it really made that my my time in jail a different thing than it would have been. Because, first of all, it helped me get towards my minimum, like that was my goal. It tackled the task of not letting uh my circumstances dictate the person that I was. Here it translated into lucrative as far as financially lucrative uh career, but also something that I liked doing passionate about. When I got all that time, 15 to 30, okay, I had, like I said, four kids married. My youngest was, I think, about eight, uh, oldest was 17. When I came home, there were 22, 23, 28 grown kids. Yeah, my actions that night affected six people's lives instantly, and maybe more, but at least me and my family kids. Right. Okay. Altered the course of our lives in ways you can never fathom. Okay. And I felt bad, I always felt bad. There was another thing I felt, I felt bad about that as I always know my time. But then, you know, I and you know that uh I had a sister helping helping uh overturn uh my friend Michael White's conviction, and he got out after serving 47 years, and uh that for me, I kind of felt like that was like gave me a pass for the screw up on the 15. What happened in 2006 hadn't happened, and I didn't get 15 to 30, I would have never met Mikhail, and Mikhail might not be home right now. Okay, okay, and Mikhail always said, you know, uh Mikhail's a devout Muslim, and he always said, Oh, I put people in your lives for a reason. And and in a lot of a lot of different faiths say that, you know, you gotta put you know, God doesn't give you anything you can't handle, you know, whatever, all that kind of stuff. There's two or three other cases of guys that are home now that I was working on, okay, in different degrees. Okay, not as much as Mikhail, in some ways, in other in some one case, in some ways more than Mikhail. It's something that I'm good at and that I'm making a difference.

SPEAKER_02 26:22

Yes, you just said what it feels like to make a difference in someone else's life. What does that feel like and how did that impact you?

SPEAKER_00 26:32

I feel like I'm like I'm making a difference. I'm making a mark. Maybe it's it's it's self-centered, but that was what I was gonna say. I read a book when I was a kid about like a person's gotta take a stand in life and make a mark. And and what's your mark gonna be?

SPEAKER_01 26:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:47

Like I probably like, I mean, of course, everybody's got well, I got kids, I did this, whatever, but you know, and that's all I be, but I feel like you know, I'm making a mark with this type of stuff, you know, and and and I feel and and and I love seeing guys home from prison, whether I had anything to do about it or not. I remember being on Broad Street and I seen uh Will Beasy. I knew the guy, Will Beasy. He got out and he'd been out for a few years. I came home, I was home, I was in center city, I'm standing there in front of my office and I'm in a suit and stuff because I'm a you know fake ass lawyer. He pulls up and it's like, oh man, and I'm like, hey, what's going on? You know, I said, and I said, Man, you look great. I'm so happy you're home. And I say that to a lot of people, and I've had the opportunity to say it a lot more than I ever thought I would be able to. There's a couple of different avenues that have gotten guys relief, and you know, to whether it be commutation or whatever. But man, I I've always had when I'm happy to see you home, you look good out here and not in rounds. I used to think, well, I'm gonna try to get a job at a law firm, but I don't know if I can. I mean, I'm good around a bunch of convicts. I gotta do this without a bunch of lawyers. And and I said to one lawyer one time, I said, you know, talking about different law and stuff, and whether it's federal or PCR or whatever. And he's like, Well, you sound like you know what you're talking about. And I said, Yeah, well, I mean, everything I'm saying, you could look up. And he said, Yeah, but you know it off the top of your head. That's good. He said, Good. Okay, absolutely. And and and and I found out that that does make a difference because when you know that stuff off the top of your head, you don't it's you ain't gonna miss it. You ain't gonna know that they can't, they're wrong about what they're saying. And if you don't know that off the top of your head, you might not find it in your research.

SPEAKER_02 28:29

And let's be real, and Lisa, and I think you'll agree with me, there are not that many attorneys who know this area of post-conviction law, who know it as much as you, honestly. You not only introduced me to this area of law, you introduced another lawyer to this area of law who didn't know it. And we both, myself and the other lawyer I know, rely on you to when we need guidance in this area. And you, it's it's just a pleasure to be able to rely on you and and trust you and have you uh, you know, to support and guide us on these the issues that come up. So that's just such a great accomplishment.

SPEAKER_00 29:08

Thank you. You know, and I uh people, you know, I I went to the doctor the other day, so I was working for home. He said, What do you do? I said, Well, I do criminal law, post-conviction work, stuff like that. And he's like, Oh, yeah, where'd you get your training? And that's all right. You know, I didn't I didn't hesitate, but maybe a second. And I just said, I was I did I just said I was in jail in a bunch of time. And he's like, Really? And the the uh assistant was there and whatever, and she they were like, keep up the good work. They were pretty impressed by it. That's 17 years of six hours a day in the law library about really doing nothing but like I do now, nothing but law. There's no losses, you know, failures, there's experience, there's lessons to have that ability, okay, whatever, it's it's worked out to my benefit. I'm I'm blessed, you know, to be able to help people, but it's also like I said, I mean, I'm 61 years old. I can't be I'm so I can I I really believe that I could fix cars today, okay, as far as the knowledge, okay, because I mean I understand it's 2026. I understand that there's you know four-wheel steering and all that kind of stuff that there wasn't in 2005, but a diagnostics flow tree is the same in 2026 as it is except you're just doing it on a different system. But I can't do the I don't think I can do the pulling engines and the 50 and all the physical stuff that I used to do before you're glad that changes.

SPEAKER_02 30:29

We we we both know that. Is there anything that you want to comment on while you were serving your time in terms of what was going on in the prison, the conditions, how you were treated, others were treated?

SPEAKER_00 30:39

If you were in the way, if you were at the card tables getting fights, running and buying drugs, running around, things weren't were probably a lot different for you than me.

unknown 30:49

Right.

SPEAKER_00 30:49

Then you if you were in your cell all the time and scared of your own shadow and and weren't assertive or anything like that, and and and thought that then you your situation was different than mine. So I seen a bunch of stuff. I seen a bunch of stuff. I I think the the the biggest uh thing that impacted not impacted me, but I think that uh resonates with me is uh amount of guys that I seen die in prison. You know, not from violence, but just from like uh healthcare issues that were neglected. It's easy to get brought down.

SPEAKER_02 31:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:27

It's hard to stay up, it's hard to rise above.

SPEAKER_02 31:30

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 31:31

Okay, in prison. And and and again, that's why Gradifer was kind of I don't we don't want to say special because nothing special. It was a different animal because uh, you know, there were there were groups and things like that that were run by inmates, okay, that that were we felt like were peers, okay, and and the and and the that those could things help people rise above.

SPEAKER_02 31:54

Well, Dennis, this has been an absolute pleasure, and I'm so happy for you that you are doing such great work, and you really are making a difference in people's lives, and you turned something that put you down for the rest of your life and you know made yourself something. I'm just very impressed. And I was thrilled to be able to hire you when you got out of Phoenix in 21. And it didn't matter to me that you were someone who was incarcerated, but I I looked at you as a human being and you've made a big difference in my life and changed my practice a bit and and uh where I now learn this area of law through you. Is there anything else you want to say before we closed? And if anybody of our listeners want to get in touch with you, if you could provide maybe any kind of contact information or where you are on social media, that would be great.

SPEAKER_00 32:42

I appreciate Lori uh for you doing what you're doing with uh even this podcast. Okay. I mean, trying to bring awareness up and maybe and and give people different perspectives and different insights. You know, maybe uh maybe everybody that's isn't isn't in jail isn't as bad as the moment that got them in jail. Okay, they don't have to be defined by that, maybe. Okay, um, so I want to thank you for that. I want to thank you for the opportunities that you gave me. Okay, personally, okay, like you said, you hired me when I came home. I didn't have any resume. Now I got a resume a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 33:12

So I'm a little now.

SPEAKER_00 33:14

I got a little bit of a resume, but I didn't have no resume when you hired me. Uh if anybody needs help uh and would like uh some assistance uh in in litigating their issues, I can tell you that I'd be I'd love to be able to help you. Uh I'm not gonna put no BS together. We do something, it's gonna be something that's uh you know, uh it's well positioned. And and and if you want to get in contact with me, um I'm on my so I'm on the gram. Uh it's Dennis Cangarello, C-A-N-G-I-A-R-E-L-L A 7. And I'm on a Facebook, Dennis Cangarello. So reach out.

SPEAKER_02 33:50

Wonderful. Thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure and a wonderful conversation. And um, I appreciate your taking the time to come on the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 33:59

All right, Laura. Thanks. I appreciate it. We'll see you later, everybody. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 34:03

Thank you for tuning in to today's episode of Voices of the System. If you liked this episode, please be sure to subscribe. For more information on the podcasts and how to get involved in criminal justice reform. Follow us on our socials at Voices of the System.