Richard DeLisi, 71, walked out of the South Bay Correctional Facility in Palm Beach County, Florida, on Tuesday 8 December 2020 after serving 31 years of a 90-year prison sentence for trafficking marijuana.[1] The Last Prisoner Project, whose pro bono lawyers represented him, described him as the longest-serving nonviolent cannabis prisoner in the United States.[1][2]

DeLisi had been behind bars since December 1989, when he was convicted at the age of 40 of racketeering, trafficking and conspiracy for smuggling more than 100 pounds of marijuana from Colombia into Florida.[1][2] He had been scheduled for release in June 2022, but the date was moved forward after officials found an error affecting his release credits, a corrections spokesperson said.[1]

While DeLisi was in prison his wife and a son died, and he learned to read and write and became a mentor to other inmates.[1][2] “Prison changed me. I never really knew who God was, and now I know and it changed the way I talk to people and treat people,” he told the Associated Press after his release.[1]