In the days after President Obama granted her early release from prison, Mandy Martinson drifted from joy and gratitude to guilt.
She felt blessed that her 15-year sentence for playing a small role in a methamphetamine ring had been cut short. But she also puzzled over why she received such a gift while thousands of other federal drug offenders were seeking the president's mercy, NBC News reported.
Some were on her housing unit at Waseca Federal Correctional Institution in Minnesota. They included lifers who saw Obama's ambitious clemency program, focused on low-level, nonviolent drug offenders, as their only hope at avoiding death behind bars.
