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Tag: clemency
Yes, Kim Kardashian Is Trump’s Smartest Adviser

Yes, Kim Kardashian Is Trump’s Smartest Adviser

The nation’s foolish and costly “War on Drugs” has destroyed so many lives — taking fathers and mothers from their families, condemning parolees to lives on the margins and decimating entire neighborhoods, especially in poor, black areas. It was uplifting, then, to hear that 63-year-old Alice Marie Johnson, who served 21 years behind bars for her non-violent involvement in a drug-selling scheme, was released from an Alabama prison earlier this week after her sentence was commuted.
Let us now praise President Donald J. Trump, whom Johnson thanked enthusiastically — appropriately so — for the clemency. Yes, there are many things wrong with Trump’s policies toward drug offenders. His attorney general, Jeff Sessions, has reversed President Barack Obama’s efforts to end lengthy sentences for non-violent drug offenders, threatening to go back to the “Reefer Madness” era.
Then there is the president’s use of his clemency powers, which have been largely reserved for celebrities and for the enemies of his enemies. It took intervention by a mega-celebrity, Kim Kardashian West, to win Johnson’s release. West had seen a viral video of Johnson telling her story from behind bars.
That said, Trump has still done something right. Even if just one injustice is corrected, the occasion is worth celebrating.
Johnson was one of the felons featured in a 2013 American Civil Liberties Union report on the lengthy prison sentences meted out to non-violent offenders. The mother of five, her life had fallen apart after she was divorced and lost her job with FedEx. She filed for bankruptcy and lenders foreclosed on her house.

As if that weren’t enough, her youngest son was killed in a motorcycle accident.
Johnson said she became involved in the drug ring as a way to make ends meet; she claims that she never made any drug deals or sold drugs herself but merely relayed messages among others involved. But federal prosecutors gave promises of leniency to several others in the drug ring in exchange for their testimony against Johnson. And, despite a clean record prior to her arrest, she was convicted of several counts and sentenced to life without parole plus 25 years. Killers have gotten less time.
It is hard to imagine that a white mother with the same clean record and minimal involvement in a drug-trafficking scheme would have been condemned to spend the rest of her life in prison. The ACLU found “a staggering racial disparity in life-without-parole sentencing for nonviolent offenses. . . Blacks are disproportionately represented in the nationwide prison and jail population, but the disparities are even worse . . . among the nonviolent LWOP population. . . .The ACLU estimates that nationwide, 65.4 percent of prisoners serving LWOP for nonviolent offenses are Black, 17.8 percent are white, and 15.7 percent are Latino.”
The popularity of life-without-parole sentences is a fairly recent feature of a criminal justice system that has become, if anything, more weighed down with unconscious prejudices over the last several decades. Sentencing felons to life without parole became more popular after the U.S. Supreme Court briefly banned the death penalty in the 1970s; it seems rational that judges, jurors and legislators would have sought out a way to confine the most violent offenders indefinitely.
But only fear, propaganda and frank racism can explain the explosion in life-without-parole sentences for non-violent crimes. In stark contrast to the sensible public conversation around the opioid epidemic, prosecutors, state legislators, police officers and members of Congress spent the 1970s and ‘80s loudly characterizing the crack epidemic as an existential threat to cities around the country — and perhaps to the nation itself. The only response, they claimed, was to lock up any and all involved for long stretches. Is it mere coincidence that the crack epidemic mostly involved black Americans?
The only glimmer of hope for those who remain incarcerated for life as a result of those wretched policies is clemency from the president. So it seems reasonable to suggest that advocates for sentencing reform round up as many Trump-friendly celebrities like Kardashian as they can — where are you, Rosanne Barr? — and show them videos of sympathetic non-violent felons. If that’s the way to get more of them out of prison, let’s get started.

On Pardoning And Commuting Prison Sentences, Obama Is Way Behind His Goal

On Pardoning And Commuting Prison Sentences, Obama Is Way Behind His Goal

As of last week, President Obama has used his clemency powers to reduce the sentences of more federal inmates than any president in nearly a century, and more than the previous nine presidents combined, according to a White House press release which announced the largest single day clemency action in 116 years. Obama commuted 214 sentences to bring his total as president to 562. He broke Franklin Roosevelt’s single-day record of 151, according to political scientist P.S. Ruckman, Jr.

But despite Obama’s recent success pardoning large numbers of federal inmates, he hasn’t come close to then-Attorney General Eric Holder‘s optimistic projections in 2011 — that as many as 10,000 people could be released early.

Since Obama began acting seriously on that projection, just two years ago (before then, he was on pace to be the lowest commuter and pardoner in 100 years, according to the Washington Post), the Justice Department has struggled to process an ever-increasing number of hopeful inmates’ cases.

And as late as January of this year, Obama’s Pardon Attorney, Deborah Leff, resigned in frustration, saying she was “unable to do [her] job effectively,” and pointing to restricted access to White House counsel and instructions she said she had received “to set aside thousands of petitions for pardon and traditional commutation.”

In her letter of resignation, Leff acknowledged the Obama administration’s 2014 pledge to focus on commuting the sentences of non-violent drug offenders who, had they been sentenced today, would have received far shorter sentences.

Clemency Project 2014, a group of non-profits and pro bono lawyers helping the Justice Department process case files, was established to support that effort. But to date, the White House isn’t anywhere near commuting the sentences of 10,000 people. That would have been a full five percent of the federal prison population.

And Obama’s record on pardons, or the full erasure of criminal liability rather than simply making a sentence shorter, is still much worse that his predecessors: The president has fully pardoned only 70 people. President Reagan granted 393 pardons, President Clinton granted 396, and President George W. Bush granted 189, according to USA Today. In fact, Obama has pardoned fewer people than any president since William McKinley, the first president for whom such statistics were recorded.

Though Obama has pledged to try and make up for the discrepancy — there were 1,378 pardon petitions pending presidential approval as of June 6, according to the Office of the Pardon Attorney — a mammoth bureaucratic process stands in his way: Pardons require a full FBI background check, and every inmate pardoned requires a huge investment of Justice Department and FBI resources.

It doesn’t help that the president is up against a political culture that has recently swung away from his favored motto on the issue, that America is “a nation of second chances” and towards Donald Trump’s: “Law and Order.”

Obama has mentioned the damaging effects of two notable cases on public sentiment towards the executive power today: Willie Horton, who committed rape and murder after being temporarily released from prison on a Massachusetts weekend furlough program, and Marc Rich, a billionaire commodities trader and Democratic donor on the lamb for tax evasion and other charges whose pardon the New York Times called “a shocking abuse of presidential power”.

Those two extremes, of the president’s clemency power as a representation of leniency towards violent criminals and political allies, may have inspired Obama’s guidelines for applying for clemency in his administration: Individuals seeking free legal help from the Clemency Project were required to have served 10 years of their sentence for a non-violent crime, without any record of significant violence in prisons and without any significant ties to gangs or cartels, among other things.

Last week, the New York Timeseditorial board, noting Obama’s broken promises, urged the president and the Justice Department to employ another tool at their disposal — the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984’s “compassionate release” provision, which was recently widened in a ruling by United States Sentencing Commission to include age, family and medical circumstances, and “other extraordinary and compelling reasons” as justification for reconsidering an inmate’s status.

Obama should act now to fulfill a central premise of his presidency — that the United States is a nation of second chances, and that it is a moral imperative to re-examine the cases of the unjustly imprisoned.

 

 

Justice Department Announces Clemency Guidelines For Drug Offenders

Justice Department Announces Clemency Guidelines For Drug Offenders

By Timothy M. Phelps, Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department announced a new initiative Wednesday to encourage nonviolent prisoners who have served at least 10 years to apply for what is expected to be a large-scale grant of clemency in President Obama’s waning years in office.

Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole announced that a new pardons attorney would take over a beefed-up office to handle requests that will be actively solicited throughout the federal prison system from thousands of prisoners who meet six criteria.

“We are launching this clemency initiative in order to quickly and effectively identify appropriate candidates, candidates who have a clean prison record, do not present a threat to public safety, and were sentenced under out-of-date laws that have since been changed and are no longer seen as appropriate,” Cole said in remarks released by the Justice Department.

The Justice Department gave no assessment of the number of people likely to receive clemency.

The move to actively solicit requests for clemency from prisoners is unusual. Prisoners will be provided volunteer lawyers working free of charge.

It is also a departure for Obama, who until now has been reluctant to use his clemency powers granted under the Constitution.

But it is very much in tune with a campaign being waged across the board under the direction of Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to scale back the use of mandatory prison sentences and reduce the prison population, particularly African-American drug offenders serving long sentences for nonviolent crimes.

The clemency program announced Wednesday is not limited to drug crimes, but it is particularly aimed at the thousands of crack cocaine users or dealers sentenced under a particularly tough law that was amended by Congress in 2010. Some 7,000 prisoners, by some estimates, would not be incarcerated today if they had been sentenced under the terms of the new law, though not all will meet the criteria announced Wednesday.

To be eligible, prisoners must have no incidents of violence on their records, both in the commission of the original crime and while inside prison. Candidates for clemency also must be free of ties to gangs or large criminal organizations, must not have “a significant criminal history,” and must have demonstrated good conduct in prison.

All must have served 10 years and be able to demonstrate they would have received substantially less time if convicted under current law.

“For our criminal justice system to be effective, it needs to not only be fair; but it also must be perceived as being fair,” Cole said. “Older, stringent punishments that are out of line with sentences imposed under today’s laws erode people’s confidence in our criminal justice system, and I am confident that this initiative will go far to promote the most fundamental of American ideals — equal justice under law.”

Photo: Cliff1066 via Flickr

Justice Department Plans For Waves Of Crack-Cocaine Clemency Requests

Justice Department Plans For Waves Of Crack-Cocaine Clemency Requests

By Timothy M. Phelps, Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said Monday that the Justice Department will announce new clemency criteria aimed at freeing potentially thousands of prisoners convicted of using crack cocaine.

To prepare for the expected flood of petitions, the Justice Department is planning to assign dozens of new lawyers to its small pardon attorney’s office, Holder said.

Holder made the announcement in his weekly video message, a relatively new feature apparently designed to get the attorney general additional news exposure.

“The White House has indicated it wants to consider additional clemency applications to restore a degree of justice, fairness and proportionality for deserving individuals who do not pose a threat to public safety,” Holder said. “The Justice Department is committed to recommending as many qualified applicants as possible for reduced sentences.”

In 2010 President Obama signed into law a measure aimed at evening out a long-standing disparity in the sentencing of users of powder cocaine and crack cocaine, with crack cocaine, used disproportionately by African-Americans, drawing significantly higher sentences than powder.

But Congress did not make the law retroactive, leaving thousands of people in prison long after they would have been released under the new law.

In December, Obama commuted the sentences of eight such people, but some advocates said that there are 7,000 more prisoners in the same situation.

AFP Photo/Al Seib