Fresno woman adapting to life after clemency

Earlier this month, President Barack Obama granted clemency to 46 nonviolent drug offenders. One Fresno woman knows well the struggles they will face over the next several months.

Barbra Scrivner is now 49. But at the age of 27, in January of 1994, she was arrested in Portland, Oregon on suspicion of conspiracy to manufacture methamphetamine.

Scrivner found herself in dire straits at that time. A victim of sex abuse as a child, she had fallen into drug use. She had pawned her possessions to pay the bills, but still needed more money. She called her then-husband, who is still in prison, to see if one of his friends might help. Instead of money, a friend dropped off an ounce of meth for her to sell. Scrivner herself was on probation for a drug conviction and had been clean for almost three years, but, financially desperate and with a 2-year-old daughter, she sold the illegal drug.

In 1995 she was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison, the mandatory minimum sentence for methamphetamine manufacturing. Fast forward to Dec. 17 of last year: Scrivner was granted clemency by the president on the basis of her crime being nonviolent.

Two weeks later, after 20 years, 11 months and three days behind bars, with $185 to her name, Scrivner was released into a changed world and an uncertain future.

“It was a little hard, because I don’t know Fresno,” said Scrivner, a Portland native who moved to the Valley to live with her daughter, Alannah, who grew up here with Scrivner’s father. “I had to take a bus everywhere to try to do a job search.”

Her incarceration meant other challenges as well. “I didn’t know how to work a computer. I barely knew how to work my (cell)phone, because they didn’t have any of that technology when I got arrested.”

To find a job, Scrivner would walk to businesses and attempt to apply in person. She would routinely be directed to apply online, something she had never done before. Her criminal past also haunted her search for work. In one instance, she was turned down because of her conviction.

Scrivner eventually found work with a commercial cleaning service and said she enjoys her job, but her time in prison still weighs on her.

“It’s going to be a stigma. It’s going to make me feel less human, like less of a respectable person in society,” said Scrivner, tears welling in her eyes. “I feel like that 20 years is going to stick with me for the rest of my life.”

Fight for freedom

Scrivner’s struggles as a free woman, though, are small compared with her fight for freedom. A failed appeal in 1996 left her upset. Even though her father and young daughter were in California, Scrivner needed a change of location. So she volunteered to be transferred from the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin to a women’s prison in Tallahassee, Florida for six months.

“I thought ‘I need to go somewhere, I need to do something,’” said Scrivner. “I thought maybe a change of pace would be OK.”

When the six months was up, she asked to be transferred back to Dublin. Her request was denied. Feeling defeated and hopeless, Scrivner attempted suicide.

“I was like ‘There is no way I can play this federal game for 30 years,’” said Scrivner. “They have a building that is like four stories, and I got on the roof of it and I cut my throat and jumped off.”

Scrivner was able to get to the roof through an unlocked window she found while working as part of an H-Vac crew in the prison. After her suicide attempt she was hospitalized for several months, suffering severe blood loss, a broken leg, a spinal fracture, a crushed ankle and a ruptured bladder. Upon release from a federal medical center in Texas, she returned to Dublin.

In 2004, Scrivner started filing for clemency. A request filed during the Bush administration was denied. After a second denial in 2010, Scrivner tried to take her own life a second time, this time with a handful of pills.

“I really, honestly believed in my heart that I was going to get it,” said Scrivner. “There was no way they were going to say no, they had to say yes. I had all this support. Everyone who put me into prison was writing letters. When it was denied, I was just like ‘I can’t take this anymore.’”

Clemency at last

When her attorney said he wanted to file for clemency a third time, a dejected Scrivner said yes, but asked to be kept out of it. About a year before being granted clemency, Scrivner began to hear rumblings of it being a possibility. After being let down so many times before, she struggled to keep her expectations to a minimum.

“I really tried not to focus on it so much,” said Scrivner. “A lot of clemencies are done in November, so I started really thinking about it in September. People all around me started saying ‘You’re going home! You’re going home!’ Then November came and he (the president) didn’t grant any and I’m like ‘Oh no. Here we go again.’”

A month later, Scrivner got word that her clemency had been granted. Even then, she had trouble believing it.

“I was still skeptical until about two days before I walked out,” said Scrivner. “It was very, very stressful because everybody was like ‘You’re leaving! You’re leaving!’ and I was like ‘Yeah, but I don’t know when.’”

Scrivner’s warden wanted to get her release location changed from Portland, where she was arrested, to Fresno, so that she could be with her daughter. Scrivner’s father died in September of 2014.

Relocations can take a long time, but Scrivner’s warden was insistent that Scrivner be released as quickly as possible.

Reunion with daughter

On Dec. 30, Scrivner stepped off a bus in Fresno and for the first time in more than 20 years, greeted her daughter as a free woman.

“It was a little ... I don’t know if I want to say tense, but I didn’t really know her that intimately as a person,” said Scrivner, who moved in with her daughter after a brief stay in a halfway house upon her release. Contact with her daughter was limited to three to four visits a year while she was incarcerated.

“I know she was a little nervous and apprehensive because she didn’t really know how I was going to be. So it was a little difficult at first and there were a few bumps and problems, but we got through them,” said Scrivner. “I love my daughter. She’s a good girl.”

Scrivner hopes that the president continues to offer similar opportunities to others.

“He’s absolutely doing the right thing,” said Scrivner. “There’s just too many long sentences of non-violent offenders that are clogging up the system for no reason. I think America locks up too many people for not the right reasons.”

She also has some words of advice for the 46 non-violent offenders recently granted clemency as they prepare to take their first steps down a road she already has traveled.

“You don’t give up. Because sometimes it gets discouraging and you feel like you’re not going to be able to make it. It is going to be hard. I didn’t think it was going to be hard,” said Scrivner. “I just hope that they can understand that and keep barreling through. Do not give up.”

This story was originally published July 24, 2015 at 10:28 AM with the headline "Fresno woman adapting to life after clemency."