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Local college helps inmate win clemency

A convicted felon will no longer have to spend the rest of his life in prison thanks in part to some students and staff from Catholic University.

A convicted felon will no longer have to spend the rest of his life in prison thanks in part to some students and staff from Catholic University.

Timothy Tyler has been locked up in prison since 1992. Authorities accused the Grateful Dead fan of selling LSD on three separate occasions as he followed the band across the country.

The three different cases were enough to land Tyler in prison on a mandatory life sentence.

However, the organization Families Against Mandatory Minimums took interest in his case. It then suggested that Catholic University's Innocence Project Clinic & Clemency Project look at it to see whether it could get Tyler's sentence commuted.

In 2015, Catholic University Professor Sandy Ogilvy and students Janette Richardson and Melissa Saldivar submitted an application focused on getting President Barack Obama to commute Tyler's sentence.

The group learned on Tuesday that its effort was a success.

President Barack Obama commuted the sentence of Timothy Tyler and 110 other federal inmates.

According to Ogilvy, Tyler's sentence will be commuted effective August 30, 2018, based on the condition that he enroll in the BOP's Residential Drug Abuse Program (RDAP) prior to that date. Ogilvy says he should be starting a program within weeks and will finish around June 2017 at which time he will be eligible for release to a halfway house in the community.

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