Brittany K. Barnett

A law student reading a case file recognised the sentence before she recognised what was wrong with it: life without parole, a first conviction, no violence, a woman named Sharanda Jones. Brittany K. Barnett spent years on that case and others like it, and Jones walked out in 2015 when President Obama commuted the term. A Knock at Midnight, published by Crown in 2020, sets those stories beside her own: a childhood in rural East Texas, a mother who went to prison, an accountancy career left behind for the law. Barnett founded the Buried Alive Project, which works on terms handed down under federal statutes since changed, and Girls Embracing Mothers, for daughters of women inside. The book makes no claim to be policy and does not pretend the commutations reached more than a handful of the people serving those sentences.