Joe Hunt discusses how if had he been released, he and his wife would have hoped for children.

Transcript:

Well, we would’ve wanted to have children, we’ve discussed that. But unfortunately, that ship has sailed.

I mean, she’s four years younger than I, and so, we’re both passed that really. I mean, theoretically possible, potentially, but it’s ill-advised at our ages.

But we even had a name for our daughter, should we have one.

When we first met and shortly before we married we were talking about it. I had some hope at that time that I’d be released by action of the courts, so we had a name for our little girl in mind.

So, that’s a point of sadness and regret for me, and her as well.

Joe Hunt talks more about the Claim of Right Defense.

Transcript:

So if the jury had been properly instructed, and had received the law on the Claim of Right Defense, based upon the prosecution’s own theory of the case, they would have had to acquit me of robbery.

If I had been acquitted of robbery, and the special circumstance of robbery, I would not now be doing life without.

I would have received at most a sentence of 25 to life, and I would have been parole eligible like 20 years ago.

So, you know, this is a sort of issue, which because of legal procedural rules, the place to raise it is at trial and certain waiver and negligence documents take hold after you have been convicted. I didn’t learn of this legal theory until 1988 when I read a case called People v. Tufunga, which was a California Supreme Court decision on the Claim of Right Defense in the case of Mr. Tufunga.

Joe Hunt discusses the Natural and Probable Consequences Doctrine, which results in “aiders and abettors” of a crime getting the same punishment as perpetrators.

Transcript:
I’ve often said to some of the other men in prison that they’re my people, in that these are my peers, this is who I’ve lived with.

I’ve bonded with some of these guys, some of these men who are doing life without and are murderers are my friends.

Now a lot of them are here on this aiding and abetting theory of what they call vicarious liability in the law, and there’s several different ways that vicarious liability can be assigned but one of the principal ones is the aider and abetter rules and there’s also something called the Natural And Probable Consequences Doctrine. So under aiding and abetting if you exhort, encourage, incite or aid someone in a felony and that felony results in somebody’s death, under the felony murder doctrine and under the aider and abetter doctrine, together, stitched together, you end up with the same liability as the actual perpetrator, and this can be a travesty.

It does not, this is not the sort of travesty that occurred in my case, that’s of a different stripe, but it is the travesty that we’re giving, society is giving, handing out “life without” sentences to men who never had a moment where they crossed that line and became intentional murderers.

In fact they never actually chose to do an action that directly resulted in another person’s death. They never curled their finger around the trigger of a revolver or plunged a knife into somebody and so they didn’t have the — they never did anything that manifested the sort of depravity that you would associate with a “life without” sentence. A sort of malice of forethought or maliciousness or wickedness.

They might have done something like got talked into by their homeboys or actively decided to be a getaway driver or they might have been members of a gang and went to back to up a buddy in a confrontation with another gang and then suddenly their buddy pulls a gun and shoots somebody.

Unexpectedly to all of them and they end up doing “life without” time under the Natural And Probable Consequences Doctrine or aiding and abetting gang activity doctrine.

And it’s just so unfair because society is presuming that they are, that they were so given over to malice and depravity that they would kill another person, but really there’s no proof that they ever reached that state in their life. But the prosecution theory is otherwise.

So most civilized countries in the world, they don’t have doctrines like that and they don’t put people away for life without possibility of parole at all. Let alone in an instant where the person actually never chose intentionally.

In this interview, Joe Hunt explains the history of the “Billionaire Boys Club” name. BBC actually stood for “Bombay Bicycle Club,” but, to Joe’s embarrassment, was changed to Billionaire Boys Club in the media.

Transcript:
Well I’ve always been embarrassed by the name being in the media. I was a jerk in many ways in my early twenties, but I did not run around with a group of people called myself the Billionaire Boys Club or us the Billionaire Boys Club.

We had a company called BBC Consolidated North America and the initials were taken from something called the Bombay Bicycle Club which was a restaurant with some video games in Chicago, and when Dean and Dan would come out to Chicago, we would go to the Bombay Bicycle Club and I just hung out there. So in a bit of whimsy, we decided to name the first company BBC Consolidated North America.

Now I’ve heard transcripts of some interviews that Tom and David may have given to IPC productions before the 1987 mini series, and told IPC productions that we would sometimes jokingly or boastfully refer to ourselves as the Billionaire Boys Club, but I don’t recall that, I just don’t.

I don’t have any connection with that name until seeing it in print with the media, and I wouldn’t have named us that, and I don’t like the name.

Certainly my own background is not from wealth and privilege. We grew up in Van Nuys, a block away from the Van Nuys Junior High, in a lower middle class area. And you know I remember there were a couple years when my dad was on food stamps. My family was on food stamps, so we were not from a family of riches and privilege.

The name “Billionaire Boys Club” has become associated with scandal, but in this interview, Joe Hunt describes all of the legitimate business enterprises his organization — actually named BBC, which stood for the Bombay Bicycle Club — was pursuing.

Transcript:

We were organized to do legitimate business. Businesses at the outset of BBC ranged from a car company called West Cars of North America that were importing grey market automobiles from Europe so these were cars that were not up to EPA and American Department of Transportation or DOT spec.

We had a warehouse in Gardenia with a lift and a 2 gas analyzer. We had an employee named Frank Rabinsky who was our mechanic and it was our intent to import these cars from Europe and bring them into compliance and sell them. At the time there was a significant difference between what cars were selling for Europe and what luxury cars were selling for in the United States. It was an attempt to arbitrage that difference and secondly we have a company called Microgenesis of North America.

We hired a guy named Eugene Browning to build a sophisticated sort of rock pulverizer called a cyclotron and our goal was and we ultimately did. So some men go under contract with a group that was doing gold mining and wanted to use those same connections with them.

We also had Financial Futures Trading of North America which was a legitimate way to manage money for people by trading spreads in the interest rate futures market at the New York Mercantile Exchange and in the Chicago Mercantile exchange.

Joe expresses hope that society will understand that those who committed crimes as teens or young adults may grow to become profoundly different people by middle age.

Transcript:

I do I hope that attention is drawn to the fight of people who have life without the possibility of parole. Because there is a Japanese philosopher that wrote that Enlightenment, once it’s achieved, amounts to the same thing no matter how you got there.

In other words, you could have come through a life of sin and wickedness, but at the point where you wake up and you live up to the potential of the human being — so you have compassion for other people, you have a conscience, you have a desire for selfless action — when you have gotten over yourself and you’re feeling the (value) in other people, and you reach the point where you are willing to sacrifice on behalf of others for the greater good, when you get to that point, no matter how you got there, that consciousness is the same. Regardless of your past.

I’ve seen — this forget about me for a second here — I’ve met other people who have life without (parole) that are actually profoundly good human beings. They’ve reorientated themselves and they did so, the ones I that I know, before there was any possibility of commutation. They did that work, and it was difficult work for them, of redeeming themselves and resurrecting the spirit within them and reaching their potential as human beings. Without any thought of using it as a way to get out, but merely because there was a call in their souls when they woke up to do so.

So a lot of men got their cases when they were 18, 19, or 20 and when they are 35 or 40, their orientation has absolutely no relationship to where they were as teenagers.

So I do hope that society as a whole becomes acquainted with this fact and thinks about it. And this being primarily a Judeo-Christian society, that they make room for the fact that the suffering of these men, and the work they have done, is redemptive, and possibility invite them back to that role in society.

Joe Hunt answers the question, “If you had had a child, what would you have named her?”

Transcript:

J: Mary, we’re gonna call her Mary. Mary Catherine Hunt. Catherine being my sister’s first name. An homage to the wonderful sister I have.

H: And Mary, why Mary?

J: Mary? Because of Mary’s place in the bible…But because of some of the experiences Jamie had when she was young with praying to the Virgin Mary.