When Thomas Barnes was 23, he was convicted on low-level drug charges. He never went to prison, but for years he was serving a life sentence anyway – one that affected nearly every aspect of his experience – because he had a felony on his record.
In 2003, police broke into the house where he was staying in the Detroit area. There, they discovered small quantities of marijuana. The drugs weren’t his, but he wouldn’t offer up those close to him to the police.
