President Obama on Wednesday commuted the sentences of 214 federal prisoners -- one of them the grandmother of Laurens County NFL star Demaryius Thomas.
In 2000, Minnie Pearl Thomas was sentenced to life in federal prison on cocaine charges.
The White House says many of those receiving commutations were imprisoned under antiquated, overly harsh sentencing laws.
Last year, Obama also commuted the sentence for Thomas' mother, Katrina Stuckey Smith.
She was sentenced to more than 24 years in federal prison in the same case as Minnie Pearl Thomas, also on drug charges.
When Demaryius was 11, and his sister only 3, police knocked down the door of their home in Allentown, in Laurens County, and arrested the two women.
The two kids were split up once their mother, Katina Smith, was sentenced to federal prison.
Thomas wrote about the experience in a college application essay to Georgia Tech.
Two years ago, a Laurens County High School teacher who proofread Thomas's essay told 13WMAZ's Wes Blankenship that that's the first time he learned that the star wide receiver's mother was in prison.
And in 2014, before he played in the Super Bowl, Thomas told USA Today that his mother and grandmother had never see him play a game in person, but he knew that they follow him on TV.
"That drives me more, to know that they're in there and they're watching me," Thomas said. "I try to go out and play my best, because I know they're going to talk about it to all the people in the jailhouse."
A commutation leaves the conviction in place, but ends the punishment.
Smith was convicted of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine and cocaine base substances.
Minnie Pearl Thomas was sentenced to life in prison, with 10 years' supervised release, for conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine and cocaine base; distribution of cocaine.
She is scheduled to be released from prison December 1.
