Former Fort Worth inmate Sharanda Jones rebuilding her life

Sixteen years and 9 months.

That’s how long Sharanda Jones sat in prison, expecting to die behind bars.

The former inmate at the federal prison in Fort Worth was a first-time nonviolent offender serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

Thanks to help from an SMU student, she got the attention of President Barack Obama, who eventually commuted her sentence. That happened in December, and Jones is now rebuilding her life in Dallas.

“She’s such a spirit of light,” Brittany Barnett-Byrd, the former SMU student who now works as her attorney, told The Dallas Morning News. “Words can’t even begin to touch how joyous it is for me to see her have another chance at life.”

In 2009, Barnett-Byrd discovered Jones’ case while researching disparities in the sentencing for different types of cocaine.

“At the time, crack cocaine was punished a hundred times more than powder cocaine,” Barnett-Byrd told FOX4. “Sharanda was sentenced under the harsher penalties.”

She learned of Jones’ story of growing up poor and how her mother became a quadriplegic when Jones was 3. When she grew up, Jones said, she worked as a go-between in the cocaine trade to provide for her family.

“Life was very difficult financially,” she wrote on her website. “In an attempt to overcome the hardships that accompany poverty, I made a bad decision and began dealing drugs out of desperation to be able to sufficiently support myself and my family.

Barnett-Byrd filed a petition for clemency in November 2013. They heard back in December that Jones would be freed.

“I take full responsibility for my actions and know that I deserve to be punished for being involved with dealing drugs and having such a negative impact on the community,” Jones wrote on her website. “But for the rest of my life for my first ever arrest and conviction? I do not deserve to die in prison.”

Jones was one of 562 convicts granted a commutation by Obama; 197 of those were serving a life sentence.

“It was a smiling moment at first, and then it was a praising and thanking God the second,” Jones told FOX4 of her reaction when she heard the news.

Her first taste of freedom included a trip to Pizza Hut and trying on new clothes at Target.

She has since become a champion for change in the criminal justice system.

Barnett-Byrd told FOX4 that she left her job to help others like Jones secure clemency.

“Our system is broken,” Barnett-Byrd told the station. “And there’s a lot of work that needs to be done.”

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This story was originally published August 20, 2016 at 8:01 PM with the headline "Former Fort Worth inmate Sharanda Jones rebuilding her life."