Pubdate: Wed, 03 Jan 2001 Source: Blade, The (OH) Copyright: 2001 The Blade Contact: 541 North Superior St., Toledo OH 43660 Website: http://www.toledoblade.com/ Note: Originally appeared as a Washington Post Editorial, 01 Jan 2001 PRESIDENT COULD DO GREATER GOOD WITH PARDONS ALMOST all of the 63 executive clemencies President Clinton granted recently -- including the one granted former House Ways and Means Committee chairman Dan Rostenkowski -- were fairly ordinary holiday pardons of people who already had served their sentences. That meant they were largely symbolic gestures of forgiveness requiring little in the way of presidential courage. But four were in a different category, involving people still in jail or, in one case, a man who had yet to serve a sentence. Of those four, the most significant were the most obscure. Mr. Clinton commuted the lengthy sentences on drug charges of two women, Dorothy Gaines and Kemba Smith. Both had been bit players in crack rings, yet had received hugely disproportionate prison terms of 19 and 24 years respectively. The commutations point out the excesses that federal drug sentencing laws are capable of producing, and they also remedy serious individual injustices. In his weeks Left in office, Mr. Clinton would do a great service if he found other such cases where clemency is appropriate. We have in mind not the cases that likely would make headlines. Mr. Clinton reportedly is considering pardons for Whitewater criminals Susan McDougal and Webster Hubbell, for example, and has said he would consider the possibility of clemency for Leonard Peltier, the Native American activist convicted of killing two FBI agents back in 1975. Those would be one-time-only political acts. Where the pardon power could make a lasting difference is in regard to nonviolent drug offenders. By letting more go, the President can draw attention in his final days in office to the injustice of a distorted federal drug sentencing system that does no one any good. The commutations the other day -- along with a batch over the summer -- were a good start, but the recent commutations also were buried beneath the group of Christmas pardons that conveyed a far more general message. Mr. Clinton could do much worse than to go out with a strong statement that we need to reexamine this area of criminal law. - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D