Gladys Calhoun says the day her son, Eric Whitfield, was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison changed her and her family’s lives forever.

“I just couldn’t believe it," she said. "It was so incredibly hard to accept that Eric wasn’t going to be around, that we weren’t going to see him. It really took a toll on me and on all of us.”

Whitfield was convicted under the state’s felony murder law, which allows a defendant to be charged with murder for a killing that occurs during a violent felony, even if the defendant is not the actual killer. Whitfield says that the killers of Wesley Penn received sentences ranging from 12 1/2 to 3 years, but because he decided to go to trial, Whitfield received the harshest sentence: 25 years to life.

“I was thinking that someone much smarter than me, about the law, could see through this case and could definitely see that there was some very peculiar things happening, which ended with me getting 25 years to life," Whitfield said. "And the actual participants and the actual murderers being given a, pretty much, slap on their wrist.”

Since Whitfield went to prison, he’s worked to turn his life around. He’s worked alongside the Newburgh LGBTQ+ Center, Sylvia Rivera Law Project, and graduated from the Bard Prison Initiative.

“That was from my experience," Whitfield said. "I could lend conversation to those things because they were in my experience.”

While he advocates from the inside, others on the outside, like Alisha Kohn, the director of the Newburgh LGBTQ Center's Queer Justice Committee, campaign on his behalf.

Kohn and others are pushing for Whitfield to receive clemency after serving more than 20 years of his sentence. They’d also like to see the state alter the felony murder law so that it can’t be applied to someone who did not commit a murder. A study from the Duke Center for Firearms Law found the law was applied more often to Black defendants than white ones.

“That’s destroying communities, right?" Kohn said. "If we want a sense of community safety and a sense of accountability, then the laws need to be just and hold people accountable for what they do and not for what they may have done, or because they know the person or have talked to the person and be charged for these sentences.”

Whitfield’s mom has taken up the activism effort alongside her son and others. She says as long as this law affects families like hers, she won’t stop fighting against it.

“I just know that there are other families going through this, like mine," Calhoun said. "And as long as there are, I want to make sure that no one has to go through this like we have, ever again.”

Calhoun told Spectrum News 1 she’s heartbroken by the governor’s decision not to grant her son clemency, but she said she’ll continue to fight to bring her son home.