Written by Jimmy Jenkins, Arizona Republic
Originally published Sept. 20th, 2024
After serving 10 years of a 292-year sentence for nonviolent offenses, an Arizona man has been released from prison.
Atdom Patsalis, who was recently granted clemency and sentenced to home arrest, was greeted by family and supporters as he walked out of a community reentry building in Phoenix Thursday morning.
He said it felt surreal to finally be free.
“I had absolutely accepted the fact that I would spend the rest of my life in prison,” Patsalis said. “So this feels like a dream.”
In 2015, Patsalis was convicted on 25 felony counts stemming from a string of residential burglaries in Bullhead City over three months in late 2013 and early 2014. He was in his early 20s at the time, homeless and struggling with drug addiction.
The judge ordered all convictions to run consecutively, turning a series of lesser sentences into a life sentence.
Patsalis spent years appealing the convictions but was ultimately unsuccessful. With the help of the Arizona Justice Project, a Phoenix-based nonprofit that advocates for the innocent and wrongly convicted, Patsalis recently secured a shortening of his sentence through the clemency process.
After a final hearing earlier this month, the Arizona Board of Clemency agreed to release Patsalis to home arrest, subject to electronic monitoring.
Atdom’s mother, Daina Patsalis, said it felt good to hug her son again after she embraced him outside the parole building.
“We’re so grateful because he gets to have a life now. He wants to get a job, meet somebody, fall in love, have children — give me some grandbabies,” she said, laughing.
Shawnee Ziegler, the Arizona Justice Project’s director of operations, worked on Patsalis’ case and credited the Arizona Board of Executive Clemency for looking at who Atdom had become, not just the person who committed the crimes.
“Atdom’s case was one of the worst cases of manifest injustice that we had seen in the 26-year history of our project,” she said. “So being here today to watch him walk out is just a miracle.”
Lindsay Herf, executive director of the Arizona Justice Project, questioned the purpose of such an extreme sentence.
“What purpose does it serve the community? Maybe it’s not the best idea to send someone away for the rest of their life, not knowing what change is possible,” she said.
In four months, Patsalis will have an opportunity to go before the Clemency Board again to potentially be given general parole without any monitoring. Eventually, he could see an absolute discharge of his sentence.
Patsalis said he plans to record songs he wrote about his experiences while in prison.
Patsalis will first live at a reentry center. He hopes to find work in the automotive field, with a longer-term goal of getting a real estate license.
“I don’t think that the justice system is supposed to be about locking people up and taking people’s hope away,” Pastalis said. “It’s about giving people the opportunity to make different choices and decisions. Giving them an opportunity to have a second chance.”
