I Was Ready to Go to Prison for My Anti-War Beliefs. Then One Man Changed My Life.

To protest the Vietnam War, I broke into a federal building. Half a century later, I finally got the chance to ask the judge why he made the shocking decision to let me walk.

Illustrations by Jon Marchione

On a warm spring morning 44 years ago, I stood before a federal judge who was about to sentence me and four friends for crimes we freely confessed to having committed. I was 22 years old, a draft card-burning, long-haired hippie, anti-war activist college dropout, and now, a convicted felon. We’d been arrested nine months earlier, in the dead of night, inside a federal office building in my hometown of Buffalo, New York, charged with crimes that could send us to prison for twelve years.