Positivity: From Prison to Law School Grad

Yes, there are some presidential pardons that work out well, with the help of an interested attorney and the judge who sentenced her:

From prison to law school grad
Clinton pardon helps make an ex-con’s dreams come true

Michael H. Hodges / The Detroit News
May 5, 2006
She spent 11 years in a federal prison for her part in a cocaine deal.

Tomorrow she graduates from the University of Michigan Law School.

Serena Nunn’s story is one of a catastrophic mistake made while young — she was 19 at the time, a good student who’d never been in trouble — followed by years of penance, patience, determination and grit.

In many ways, it’s a real-life Cinderella story — had Cinderella done hard time.

In her case, Prince Charming came in the form of a pro-bono attorney who filed a petition for clemency — which President Clinton granted in 2000.

Reached through his New York office, Clinton says, “I’m very proud of Serena. Her accomplishments show that giving her a second chance was the right thing to do.”

Nunn, 36, is simultaneously untortured by her past and unsparing of herself.

“It took me awhile to get comfortable in my skin,” she says, chatting at an Ann Arbor coffeehouse. “But so what? You made a mistake. You went to prison. You paid your debt. Now get on.”

David Santacroce, who taught Nunn at U-M, calls Nunn “a really special and gifted student.”

Nunn’s troubles started in her hometown of Minneapolis in 1988, when she fell in love with Monte Nunn. (The two weren’t married — coincidentally, they share the same last name.)

In 1989, Monte was busted buying 20 kilograms of cocaine from a government agent.

Serena’s attorney said the evidence against her included driving Monte to a drug meeting, telling people in taped calls that they owed him money, and allegedly threatening a witness. She was convicted of conspiracy to distribute 20 kilograms of cocaine, as well as possession of 6.5 grams of cocaine and 4 grams of crack found in her bedroom.

She doesn’t dodge her guilt.

“I never try to come across as some naïve innocent,” says Nunn. “I just think the punishment should fit the crime. I deserved punishment. But to lock me away for my entire 20s?”

The judge had no choice. Because of the amount of cocaine involved, federal mandatory-minimum sentencing rules dictated she serve almost 16 years.

If such rules did not exist, wrote U.S. District Court Judge David S. Doty “no judge in America, including me, would have sentenced Ms. Nunn to 15 years.”

Friends were stunned, says high-school pal Jennifer Siems Ford, “because she’s one of those people — you never expect that. She was the homecoming queen.”

Then there was the sentence.

“You tell the average person you had a 16-year sentence,” Nunn says, her hazel eyes direct and frank, “and they figure you must’ve murdered someone.”

Coming from a deeply religious family, Nunn says she was sure she’d eventually be blessed by some sort of miracle.

She just had no idea what.

Her road out of federal prison began seven years into her sentence, when attorney Sam S. Sheldon read about her case.

“Her story was so compelling,” says Sheldon from San Diego, “about wanting to be an attorney all her life. So I wrote her.”

When they met, “There were no half-truths, no blaming anyone else. I realized this was a person I wanted to help.”

He started by helping find the money for Nunn to continue college. In 1999, Nunn became the first prisoner at the women’s minimum-security federal prison camp in Phoenix to earn a community college degree.
But she was still staring down another 7 years of incarceration.

Of clemency, Sheldon says, “I just didn’t think we had a snowball’s chance in hell.”

Then her grandmother died. Distraught because she couldn’t attend the funeral, Nunn told Sheldon she didn’t care what the chances were.

Sheldon approached Doty, who had sentenced Nunn, as well as the prosecutor in the case.

For the first time in his career, Doty — a Reagan appointee known to be a hardliner — wrote a letter in support of clemency.

Sheldon also got letters from the prosecutor, then-Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura and the state attorney general.

On July 7, 2000, Nunn was “going about my little prison duties” when the loudspeaker ordered her to report to the administration building.

“They asked me if I was planning on going anywhere that day” — she smiles at the absurdity — “because they’d gotten a call from the White House, and that I might be released today.”

The White House doesn’t call if it’s a “maybe,” she thought.

Word rippled like static electricity through the entire prison.

“People didn’t go to lunch,” Nunn recalls, “they just hung out at the receiving and discharge area, right at the front door.”

She called her mother. She called her sister. She called Sheldon. Nobody was home. She left messages garbled by tears.

“I walked out the door and kissed the ground. And everyone inside went nuts.”

Sheldon, with Nunn’s mother and sister, Charlita, in tow, rented a limo to greet the freed prisoner in style. Charlita, a Delta flight attendant, laughs. “It was almost like Mandela getting released from prison.”

Nunn enrolled at Arizona State and finished her political-science degree. Then she applied to 12 law schools, with Michigan being, she says, “my dream school.”

You might wonder how much luck ex-cons have getting into law school, but it surely helps when you have an enthusiastic recommendation from the federal judge who sentenced you.

And, perhaps, when another one comes from the previous president of the United States.

….. Sheldon is flying in, as well as the woman at the Phoenix car-rental agency who gave Nunn her first post-prison job, and the Arizona State professor, Peg Bortner, who oversaw the prison education program.

Nunn hasn’t quite ironed out her immediate plans. She’ll either do a judicial clerkship, she says, or go where her heart really leads — representing the indigent as a public defender.

Meantime, she’s studying for the state bar exam in July and taking care of her 6-month-old daughter, “who is just the joy of my life.”

She shakes her head. “I have been extra-blessed.”