Charles “Fred” Cundiff received word Friday that President Barack Obama had cut short his life sentence. The 69-year-old logged onto his prison email and thanked Beth Curtis, who had stumbled upon his case years ago as she advocated for her brother, another senior citizen handed a life sentence long ago for nonviolent marijuana crimes.

In his email, Cundiff asked Curtis to convey his gratitude to two others who clamored for his freedom. The email system he was using costs inmates 5 cents per minute and, he told Curtis, “[I] don't have enough money to take care of all this.”

Cundiff has been behind bars since 1991 and will need to pinch nickels another year.

His reprieve takes effect Dec. 18, 2016, a full year after his name last week made a list of 95 people getting out early thanks to presidential action.

The former construction and nursery worker's life sentence began in 1992 after he was busted attempting to buy marijuana. He was charged with conspiracy and, despite prior convictions for growing or possessing marijuana, chose to go to trial. Others took plea deals and got less time.

In the following two-and-a-half decades Cundiff got divorced, developed skin cancer, had a bone near his eye partially disintegrate from an infection and underwent back surgery. He now shuffles about using a walker.

Charles "Fred" Cundiff

Bureau of Prisons

It’s not clear why Cundiff must wait a year before the commutation takes effect. Another man serving a federal life sentence for marijuana, William Dekle, 66, will get out in April after being named by the White House on Friday.

The Justice Department, which includes the Office of the Pardon Attorney, did not respond to a request for comment on how the effective dates were selected.

Curtis says she wishes Cundiff would be released immediately but has trouble criticizing the delay. She says she primarily feels grateful and hopeful more commutations will come from Obama, particularly for marijuana offenders who she says are unlikely to benefit from pending sentencing reform legislation in Congress.

Curtis’ brother John Knock, 68, was not on the list Friday, nor were several others whose profiles she seeks to boost on LifeforPot.com, or Timothy Tyler, serving life for selling pot and LSD, whose sister gathered nearly a half million petition signatures for his freedom.

“When the alternative was dying chained to a hospital bed, it puts it in a little different context,” she says of the one-year delay for Cundiff. “If I didn’t know there were so many [inmates] in that situation who weren’t going to get out at all, I would probably protest the one-year wait.”

Curtis came across Cundiff’s name while researching cases that she wanted to include in a 2012 group clemency request from elderly marijuana inmates serving life in prison. He almost wasn’t included in the group petition, which was rejected, but was added after one of the original five received a sentence reduction.

Nobody had been advocating for him, she says, and without an official list of nonviolent marijuana-infraction inmates she had to pore over legal records to find cases that met her strict criteria.

“You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find them, because lots of them have robbery priors or cocaine priors and I wanted them to be strictly marijuana offenders with life without any priors that would muddy the water -- so that’s how I found him,” she says.

It took a while to establish contact with Cundiff, Curtis says. She ultimately succeeded with the help of one of his friends from high school.

“He’s very sick and now he has advocates because he’s gotten publicity," she says. "But I think my priority would not be complaining about the fact that he’s not getting out soon enough. You’re asking for mercy, and if you complain you’re complaining about the people you’re asking a favor of. It’s a Catch 22 and I've chosen my side, not to sully the people we have to depend on for mercy and compassion. It’s hard to stay on that track, but it’s where I've got to be."

Marijuana possession for any reason outside limited research remains a federal crime, but state-level reforms largely have been tolerated since the late 1990s, when California rolled out a state-legal medical marijuana market. The Obama administration since 2013 has allowed state and tribal government to regulate sales of recreational marijuana, despite the laws that gave an earlier generation life sentences remaining on the books.