Broncos wide receiver Demaryius Thomas may not be getting a long-term deal before Wednesday’s deadline, but there’s some other good news for him and his family this week.
President Barack Obama commuted the sentences of 46 federal prisoners on Monday, most of whom had been sentenced to at least 20 years for non-violent drug offenses under sentencing guidelines that the Obama Administration believes were “overly punitive.” Katrina Smith is one of those 46 prisoners, which makes Thomas a happy man.
Smith is Thomas’s mother and has been in federal prison since 2000 along with Thomas’s grandmother Minnie Pearl Thomas after they were convicted of drug trafficking. Smith was offered and refused a reduced sentence if she testified against her mother, who received two life sentences as a three-time offender, and was originally sentenced to more than 24 years. A previous adjustment of sentencing rules had her on track to be released in 2017, but she will now get out on November 10.
Thomas talked about the absence of his mother in the days before the Broncos lost to the Seahawks in the Super Bowl and shared some of the plans he was making for his mother’s release in an interview with ESPN Magazine last year. Those plans will need to be put into action sooner than expected, though it’s hard to imagine anyone in the family minds the change.