Pubdate: Wed, 21 Feb 2001
Source: Des Moines Register (IA)
Copyright: 2001 The Des Moines Register.
Contact:  P.O. Box 957, Des Moines IA 50304-0957
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Author: Neal Peirce

PARDONS SHOULD GO TO THOSE CAUGHT IN THE 'WAR ON DRUGS'

Almost as troublesome as the last-minute pardons President Clinton 
decided to grant rich, powerful and connected figures like financier 
Marc Rich are questions about the pardons he failed to issue to 
hundreds of very ordinary people caught in the legal traps of our 
misguided "war on drugs."

The number of Americans incarcerated for drug offenses has spiraled 
upward tenfold since 1980. Some 500,000 are now held - 80,000 in 
federal prisons. Many are serving extremely long sentences - 20 
years. 25 years, life - with no chance of parole.

Under the mandatory sentences enacted by Congress in 1988, federal 
drug offenders typically serve longer than people convicted of rape, 
assault or robbery - often longer than murderers.

Bill Clinton knew all this.

In the same "Rolling Stone" interview in the magazine's January 
edition in which he supported decriminalizing possession of small 
amounts of marijuana, he acknowledged that many drug sentences "are 
too long for non-violent offenders."

The great majority of federal judges, he noted, now want to do away 
with those mandatory sentences.

Additionally, an intensive campaign was launched to persuade Clinton 
to grant clemency to nonviolent drug offenders - smalltime users or 
carriers - who have ended up serving decades-long sentences under the 
mandatory federal sentencing guidelines.

In the final weeks of his term, Clinton received an eloquent plea 
from 675 leading clergy of all denominations. They proposed that he 
commute the sentences of virtually all low-level, non-violent drug 
offenders who had served five years of their terms.

Not only are the sentences excessive, the clergy noted, but thousands 
of the offenders are parents whose children are deeply hurt by the 
separations.

A prisoners' rights group, Families Against Mandatory Minimums, even 
supplied Clinton with a list of the nearly 500 prisoners who would 
have been released had they been convicted following (and not before) 
a 1994 "safety valve" law that allows judges to be more lenient on 
first-time offenders.

So what did Clinton decide? In his final day in office, following up 
on a handful of earlier drug-case pardons, he included 22 drug 
offenders in his final pardon list.

What a dismal showing, when one considers that Clinton could 
legitimately have pardoned hundreds, ideally thousands!

Even worse, it turns out that one of the lucky 22 who received a 
presidential commutation looks more like a drug kingpin than an 
innocent victim. His name: Carlos Vignali Jr., a major player in a 
Twin Cities cocaine ring before his 1994 conviction and 15 year 
sentence for a major interstate cocaine shipment. Vignali's father, 
Minnesota newspapers report, donated $160,000 to Democratic 
officeholders after his son went on trial.

Said a disappointed Eric Sterling, president of the Criminal Justice 
Policy Foundation that worked with the clergy on their appeal: "We 
were hoping to elevate the thinking of the president about these 
issues. To reflect on the appropriate and merciful and just use of 
the pardoning power. To leave a just legacy. It's evident he didn't 
care about that."

Had Clinton worked to pardon several hundred deserving minor drug 
offenders, Sterling suggested, he would have received press accolades.

Even more important, Sterling said, "It would have been an extremely 
powerful policy message to the new president - and Congress-that drug 
sentences are an issue that needs serious attention."

Without that, one can at least detect other signs of a reform tide sweeping in.

George W. Bush hardly championed reduced sentences for anything as 
governor of Texas. Yet if the new administration has its ears open at 
all, it will hear some of its friends urging radically new drug 
policy.

Seven Republican governors are now supporting less jail time and more 
treatment, supervision and community service for drug' offenders. The 
guiding concerns are: prisons crowded with inmates who have chronic 
alcohol or drug problems; the high costs of prisons - to build them, 
to maintain them; and the blatant failure of nearly three decades of 
a furious, punitive war on drugs.

Also dying an overdue death is the idea that cutting off foreign drug 
supply will happen, or make a difference.

Mexican President Vicente Fox tells the truth here: The United States 
"has shown a grand inability to reduce drug consumption. It has shown 
a grand inability to prevent drugs from entering."

America's entire anti-drug strategy needs revamping. Clinton had a 
chance to start with the humblest victims. He failed. But the 
rationale for the status quo is crumbling.
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