Article from Fox News by Caleb Parke.

Matthew Charles watched President Trump sign the First Step Act into law from behind bars. But thanks to the overwhelmingly bipartisan bill that passed late last year, Charles was able to watch the president address the nation in person Tuesday night — as a free man who had been given a “second chance at life.”

Trump, who invited Charles as a guest to his speech, highlighted Charles’ “story of redemption” while talking about criminal justice reform, saying the former inmate who is now the face of the First Step Act “represents the very best of America.”

“It was a remarkable time,” Charles told “America’s Newsroom” Wednesday morning. “Something I’ll remember for the rest of my life.”

And it was a moment that Charles said was only made possible by a decision he made exactly 23 years ago. He was sentenced to 35 years for selling crack cocaine and other offenses in 1996 when a friend gave him a Bible and he heard a minister share about how to come to Christ.

Read the entire article at Fox News.

By St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons