Geneva Cooley: Leaving Prison At 72

Geneva Cooley, 72, embraces her son, Lamont Whealton, white shirt, and two grandchildren Lamonte Green and Lamisha Alonzia, in front of the Aid to Inmate Mothers home, four days after getting released from a life sentence without parole in Montgomery, Alabama, October 11, 2019. Cooley had not seen her son since 2005, shortly after she got life without parole for carrying a sock full of heroin in the state of Alabama in 2002. She spent most of her 17.5 years of time at the Julia Tutwiler Prison in Wetumpka, before a team of lawyers from the clinical program at the Culverhouse School of Law at the University of Alabama fought an appeal for her release based on the sentence she would have been given if she had been convicted today. She was released into the Aid To Inmate Mothers house in Montgomery, Alabama. Her lawyers are now trying to get her parole shifted to New York, where she is from. (Photo by Lynsey Addario/Getty Images Reportage)