For two years, Wilson was depressed and hopeless. He smoked weed, which was easy enough to come by, he says, even in prison. Then something snapped, and he decided he wasn't going to "[go] out like this." Sitting in his cell, he drafted a master plan for the future, which he still has. It is two pages long and lists everything he planned to do, including acquiring his General Educational Development (GED) degree, learning vocational skills, taking anger management classes and participating in group and individual therapy. He was going to get out of prison, go to college — specifically, the University of Baltimore because of its proximity to the halfway house that people in his institution were released to — publish a book, stop using the N-word and get a black Corvette convertible. He sent a copy to the judge who had heard his case.

In prison, Wilson became friends with Stephen Edwards, who was also in for life. Edwards showed him a stack of books and told Wilson he was going to teach himself programming.

“Dude, you don’t have a computer,” Wilson observed.

Edwards’ family, who frequently visited and sent care packages, informally adopted Wilson as their own. A math whiz, Edwards tutored Wilson while he was studying for his GED, using a workbook that Wilson’s father had mailed days before he was murdered. When both Wilson and Edwards were admitted into a select college program for inmates at Anne Arundel Community College, they studied together, often pulling all-nighters.

While in school part-time, Wilson proposed the creation of a foreign-language club to professors at the University of Maryland, which is how he learned Spanish and Italian. He also thought the prison needed a sprucing up, so he inquired with the administration about the inmate welfare fund, which at the time had only $600.

In order to grow that fund, Wilson and Edwards drafted a business plan, purchasing a printer and digital camera. They started taking photos of inmates, particularly during visitation days, printing them out, and selling them. Wilson says these mementos were a lifeline to the outside. In two years, they had grown the inmate welfare fund to $25,000, at which point the prison offered to place their money in the administration’s account but earmark it for inmates’ use. By the third year of this initiaitve, Wilson and Edwards had expanded their photo business to T-shirts and mugs and the fund was worth $40,000.

When they approached the prison administration about using the fund to upgrade the gym equipment, Wilson says, they were told the money was gone. It had been used to install a new surveillance system.

At first, Wilson was furious. But then he was inspired. He realized that if he were freed one day, he could put his skills to good use.

Wilson and Edwards reduced the price of their services so that inmates could still have picture souvenirs, but they would only break even, eliminating any large profits that could be taken from the account.

In 2006, on a day Wilson calls the proudest in his life, the pair received associate’s degrees from the community college.

Wilson diligently updated his judge with yearly master plan progress reports. The judge never answered. Then, late that year, at age 27, he was assigned a new judge, who heard his motion to have his sentence reconsidered. Wilson told her about the master plan and what he had accomplished. He said that even when he was 77, he’d be learning another language if he was still in jail.

After listening to Wilson and to the impassioned plea of his attorney, who broke down and cried, the judge reduced his sentence to 24 years, which would make him eligible for release in four years. When she gave him a second chance, Wilson remembers her charging him with making sure he finished his master plan.