Amy Goodman
@DemocracyNow·3.2M subscribers·19.4K videos
"I'm Not Really Free": Pulitzer Winners "Suave" & Maria Hinojosa Examine Life After Prison
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April 14, 2025
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As the Pulitzer Prize-winning podcast "Suave" returns for its second season, we speak with journalist Maria Hinojosa and David Luis "Suave" Gonzalez, the subject of the series. Gonzalez was sentenced to life in prison at age 17, but got an unexpected second chance when he was paroled in 2017 following a Supreme Court ruling that found sentences like his unconstitutional. The first season of the podcast followed Gonzalez's case, his decadeslong friendship with Hinojosa and his eventual release from prison. The second season looks at how his freedom is complicated by the long shadow of prison. "I'm on parole for the rest of my life. That's not freedom," Gonzalez tells "Democracy Now!," "If somebody makes a false phone call and says, 'He looked at me wrong, I feel a threat,' I could go back to prison. … When the United States Supreme Court said that it was unconstitutional to keep a juvenile in prison for life, then it should be unconstitutional to keep that same juvenile on parole for life."
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