The adult daughter of a man who has spent more than two decades behind bars in Florida, originally sentenced to life in prison on nonviolent drug offenses, has never seen her father on the outside.
"Only thing I know is his birthday and where his prison is at. I don't really know too much. I haven't had the chance to meet him outside," Jacaria Stringer told NBC Miami.
That will soon be changing, as Jeffrey Stringer, 47, an inmate at the Federal Correctional Institution-Talladega, inches toward the freedom he never thought he'd see.
After Stringer was arrested in the late 1990s in West Palm Beach, charged with manufacturing and intending to distribute cocaine, he seemed doomed to spend the rest of his life behind bars due to two prior convictions.
Stringer's case has garnered national attention as an example of a nonviolent drug offender who faced a harsh sentence based on rigid federal guidelines.
But thanks to new guidelines signed into law last year by President Donald Trump, and publicity brought to the issue by Kim Kardashian West, defendants such as Stringer are getting a second chance.
A judge ruled Friday that Stringer, who has been behind bars for 22 years, should be released based on the Trump-signed First Step Act, which allows some nonviolent offenders to earn credits for good behavior and thus an early release.
"I never even thought I'd get to see him out of prison, so it feels good," Jacaria Stringer said after the judge ruled Friday.
Kardashian West and Stringer's relatives enjoyed a celebratory FaceTime call shortly after the ruling, the family told NBC Miami.
Now the only holdup for Stringer's release is math, his Dallas-based attorney Brittany Barnett said.
Her office has calculated Stringer's good behavior credits and believe he should be let out late Monday or early Tuesday. But the Bureau of Prisons has added up Stringer's good-behavior points to equal a June 30 release.
"It's complicated," Barnett said in a statement to NBC News on Monday. "Essentially, when you have a life sentence, it's life, you don't accrue good time credit. Now that the life is off, the prison is calculating good time. It's a complex process. We are working on it now."
No matter when exactly Stringer will get out, his backers, who include the "Keeping up with the Kardashians" star, are ecstatic that it'll be sooner rather than later.
"He served too much time but it gives me so much joy to fund this life-saving work," Kardashian West tweeted Friday with a picture of the man's family.
Kardashian West has used her considerable fame and social media power to push for prison reform and back individual cases.
She lobbied for Tennessee inmate Cyntoia Brown, who as a teenager killed a man while she was a sex trafficking victim and was granted clemency by the governor.
Kardashian West also supported Alice Marie Johnson, who worked in a cocaine trafficking ring in Tennessee. Trump commuted Johnson's sentence shortly after Kardashian West personally lobbied him.
