Alice Marie Johnson, the Tennessee great-grandmother who spent more than two decades in jail for a drug offense, is receiving a full pardon from President Donald Trump.
Johnson praised Trump during Thursday night’s conclusion to the Republican National Convention. Trump had already granted her clemency after a plea from reality TV star Kim Kardashian West.
Johnson was convicted of cocaine trafficking in the 1990s and sentenced to life in federal prison.
Johnson has already been a presidential guest at the 2019 State of the Union speech and appeared in a recent Super Bowl ad.
“When President Trump heard about me, about the injustice of my story, he saw me as a person. He had compassion. And he acted,” said Johnson, 65.
Johnson described a metamorphosis that began during her more than 20 years in prison, one that included working with the disabled, in hospice care and as an ordained minister. She even became a playwright, she told the convention audience.
Her fall into despair began in Memphis, Tennessee, in the 1990s as a single mother of five children; she buckled under the weight of unemployment and gambling. She joined a cocaine distribution ring, before being arrested in 1993 for transporting the drug from Houston to Memphis. Under mandatory sentencing guidelines, her conviction for cocaine distribution, money laundering and conspiracy led to a sentence of life in prison without parole.
A 2018 video of Johnson explaining her struggle went viral, catching the attention of entertainer Kardashian West.
The reality TV star soon visited Trump at the White House to plead for leniency. In short order, he commuted Johnson’s sentence.
Her story became even more widely known in February, with a Trump ad that reached more than 100 million Super Bowl fans. On-screen chyrons proclaimed that “Politicians talk about criminal justice reform” while “President Trump got it done.” Between those declarations, a tearful Johnson thanked the president. “This is the greatest day of my life!” she said.
Trump and the GOP put the spotlight on his criminal justice record at the Republican National Convention on Tuesday by showing a video of him pardoning a former inmate who started a reentry program for former convicts.
The full pardon for Jon Ponder aired during a segment in the first minutes of the RNC’s second night.
“Jon’s life is a beautiful testament to the power of redemption,” Trump said in a video first released by the White House on Tuesday. The president appeared with Ponder, his wife and Richard Beasley, the now-retired FBI agent who arrested Ponder for bank robbery in 2004. Ponder and Beasley have since developed a close friendship.
Last month, Trump commuted the sentence of Roger Stone, just as his longtime adviser was about to face 40 months in prison for lying to federal investigators, witness tampering and impeding a congressional inquiry.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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