After serving 10 years of a 292-year sentence for nonviolent offenses, an Arizona man has been released from prison. Atdom Patsalis, who was granted clemency and sentence to house arrest, was greeted by family and supporters as he walked out of a community reentry building in Phoenix last week, the Arjzona Republic reports. He said it felt surreal to finally be free. "I had absolutely accepted the fact that I would spend the rest of my life in prison," Patsalis said. "So this feels like a dream." In 2015, Patsalis was convicted on 25 felony counts stemming from a string of residential burglaries in Bullhead City over three months in late 2013 and early 2014. He was in his early 20s at the time, homeless and struggling with drug addiction. The judge ordered all convictions to run consecutively, turning a series of lesser sentences into a life sentence.
Patsalis spent years appealing the convictions but was unsuccessful. With the help of the Arizona Justice Project, a Phoenix-based nonprofit that advocates for the innocent and wrongly convicted, Patsalis secured a shortening of his sentence through the clemency process. After a final hearing this month, the Arizona Board of Clemency agreed to release Patsalis to home arrest, subject to electronic monitoring. Patsalis will first live at a reentry center. He hopes to find work in the automotive field, with a longer-term goal of getting a real estate license. "I don't think that the justice system is supposed to be about locking people up and taking people's hope away," Pastalis said. "It's about giving people the opportunity to make different choices and decisions. Giving them an opportunity to have a second chance."
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