The Wolf Law Building on the University of Colorado Boulder campus. (Courtesy of University of Colorado)
After 10 years behind brick walls, the world had changed a lot for Stephanie Shepard. In the car on the way to her parole office, Shepard took in the sites of the world she had missed for a decade when a billboard caught her eye. “Fire AF, we deliver.” After spending the last 10 years of her life in prison for conspiracy to distribute marijuana, this was how she found out that people could now have the drug delivered to their homes.
“I was unaware of what the industry had become while I was away,” she said.
This year, the University of Colorado Boulder’s CannaBuffs club invited Shepard to speak at the tenth annual Cannabis and Psychedelic Symposium that will be held at Wolf Law on Wednesday.
According to the club’s co-founder and president, Maya Bliss, the club provides students with avenues to engage in the push for decriminalization, opportunities to explore careers in the sector, gain perspective and find a like-minded community.
“Our mission is to reshape public perceptions of cannabis while delving into its properties. We’re thrilled to cultivate a network committed to research, social innovation and entrepreneurship,” Bliss said.
Shepard, now a decriminalization and reform activist, will share her experiences at the symposium. Her main goal is to educate and provide hope that no one else has to lose as much of their life to marijuana charges as she did.
For a first-time, nonviolent charge, Shepard received a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in federal prison with a five-year probation period. She was officially released from prison in 2019, but she has not and will never feel the same freedom she felt prior to her conviction.
“I will always be stigmatized as a felon. Whether we are able to get my records expunged, I will still be a felon. I will never fully feel free,” Shepard said.
A person convicted of a felony can lose voting rights, the right to travel abroad, parental rights, the right to bear arms and social benefits including housing.
Federally in the U.S. 60% of the released population is reconvicted after 2 years of release according to a National Library of Medicine study.
Shepard’s time spent in prison was largely a negative experience. But, despite having lost 15 years of freedom to the prison system, she hopes to look for the positives.
“I came out with a new sense of humility. I realized what was important in life. I found something that I am passionate about,” she said.
Once she got out of prison, Shepard discovered The Last Prisoner Project, an organization dedicated to assisting people convicted of cannabis crimes. The program is important to her because “they are everything that I didn’t have while I was inside,” she said.
The organization’s work includes finding pro bono lawyers and financial aid inside prison, assisting the families of incarcerated people, creating a sense of humanity for prisoners and working to change laws and pass bills. The organization has worked on legislation in Hawaii, Connecticut, Virginia and at the White House.
“If I had had an organization out there saying, ‘We want to take the financial burden off your family. We want to put this money in your account so you can buy that extra chicken or soap or laundry detergent,’ it would have taken a lot of the burden off of my family,” Shepard said.
The Last Prisoner Project also has a letter-writing campaign designed to bring a sense of humanity to the inmates inside. The program has been able to send over 19,000 letters to inmates, not including partnerships with dispensaries and other businesses.
“Your first year in prison, you have support. You may have some support [in] year two, but by year three or four, that support dwindles,” Shepherd said. “The impact of having a connection to the outside world is extremely important, even if it’s people you don’t know, getting your name called at mail call is essential.”
Simple efforts such as signing petitions, writing letters and calling representatives, are all activities that take five minutes, but they remind someone that they matter, Shepard said. While changing laws, paying for lawyers and financially supporting prisoners is an important part of the Last Prisoner Project’s mission, according to Shepard, giving these people back a sense of joy, hope and humanity is just as important.
Shepard’s goal is to educate the public and influence policy changes so that people will get the resources and the treatment that she never had so that no one else will have to give up 15 years of their life to cannabis incarceration.
“I vividly recall learning about Stephanie Shepard as we planned for the symposium months ago,” Bliss, the president of CannaBuffs, wrote in a statement. “Shepard’s presence at the symposium is remarkable; her firsthand experience coupled with her transformative activism and ability to turn her experience into motivation to change the system exemplifies resilience.”
Shepherd’s role as a keynote speaker is essential to foster meaningful dialogue, promote awareness and empower individuals to advocate for change within their communities, according to CannaBuffs.
“If I had to do it again I wouldn’t have done anything differently. In a perfect world, I wouldn’t have gone to prison obviously but that was the outcome of standing with the plant, believing in taking accountability for my actions and not throwing others under the bus,” Shepard said. “I’m passionate about a multitude of things, but my passion for social justice has greatly increased with the eye-opening hypocrisy I’ve seen since my release.”
Community members can hear Shepard tell her story in person on the CU Boulder campus in the Wolf Law courtroom on Wednesday at 5 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. Community members can find a detailed schedule of the day’s events, which include additional speakers, an activism workshop and an information fair, on the symposium’s website.
Contact CU Independent Guest Writer Emma Greene at emmafgreene@gmail.com.
