In 2001, Harry Kelso left his hometown of Roanoke, Virginia, for the big city of Richmond and the promise of an education at Virginia Union University.

“I was gonna go to school and get my degree and get out and find a technology job and have a family. … I just had dreams … [of] just having a normal life,” he told “Nightline.”

But Kelso, like many college students, smoked weed. He says he started selling it on the side while in college to make extra cash.

“It was just so open, like everybody was smoking,” he said. “It never felt illegal or criminal, but in a sense, I did know it was breaking the law.”

A few years later, he returned home one day to find police waiting outside his apartment, which he said had been “taped off like it was a murder scene — for marijuana.”

Getting busted was scary enough, he said. But when he learned that he’d be receiving a severe sentence, it was absolutely devastating.

“I never thought in history that I would ever get sentenced to 10 years for marijuana,” he said. [Read more at ABC News]