Commuted

synopsis

In 1993, Danielle Metz was a twenty-six year old mother with two small children, who was labeled a drug kingpin by the US Government as a part of her husband's drug ring. She was sentenced to triple life plus twenty years for nonviolent drug offenses, and sent more than two thousand miles from her family in New Orleans to serve our the remainder of her life in California at the Dublin Federal Correctional Institute. After serving twenty-three years in prison, Danielle's sentence was commuted in 2016 by the Obama Administration as a part of the Clemency Initiative to address historically unfair sentencing practices during the "war on drugs." Now back home, Danielle is trying to start life over again in her fifties while working to help other women avoid her fate. But perhaps Danielle's toughest challenge of all is living the dream that kept her going while in prison - that of being a united family again with her two children.