Coronavirus Ended His Shot at a Second Chance

When Patrick Jones called his family members from a federal prison in Louisiana, he’d talk about how hard he was trying to get out. He wanted to return to Texas and open a restaurant, serving everything from tacos to brisket to soul food. He’d even learned to make pastries while inside.

But most of all, he was worried his own son might be on the path to prison, and, having spent so much of his own adult life in and out of trouble, he wanted to get out in time to intervene. “Patrick’s goal was to get out to try to stop him from living that type of lifestyle,” recalled Jones’s stepdaughter, Lateasha Crumpton-Scurry.

Jones was serving 27 years for selling cocaine in Temple, a small city between Austin and Dallas, in 2007. Over the last year, his lawyers had been asking a federal judge to let him out under the new terms of the First Step Act, the bipartisan criminal justice reform bill signed by President Trump. “Patrick deserves another chance at life,” one lawyer wrote. The judge denied the request, but Jones told his family he would appeal.

“I could hear