Over two decades ago, a teenage girl was arrested and convicted of drug charges for conspiring with her boyfriend to distribute cocaine. She was subjected to mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines, which resulted in a 15 year prison sentence. Ten years later, she walked out of prison when her sentence was commuted by President Clinton. Now, she's seeking a pardon from President Obama so that she can become licensed to practice law.

"I had always wanted to be a lawyer... I wanted to help people the way I was helped," she said in an interview recently.

Presidential pardons are difficult to get and the process can take five years or more. Pardons are handed out less frequently to minority and unmarried applicants than to white or married applicants.

Mandatory minimum sentencing requirements led a judge to give the woman a 15 year sentence. The judge later said that if mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines were not in place, no judge in America would have given her a 15 year sentence since she had no criminal history at the time she was convicted.

Cases like this highlight the difficulty of overcoming a conviction that was given at a young age. Without the help of a lawyer after she was already in prison, the woman may not have had her sentence commuted. An effective advocate helped her get her life back, enabling her to attend college and law school.

The woman, now 42-years-old, said that working as a public defender is about making a difference in someone's life, and offering others the same chance for redemption that she has had.

Source: ProPublica, "Starting Over: When Presidential Forgiveness Changes a Life," Dafna Linzer, Dec. 3, 2011