Pubdate: Tue, 22 Apr 2014
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Page: A1
Copyright: 2014 The Washington Post Company
Contact: http://mapinc.org/url/mUgeOPdZ
Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/491
Author: Sari Horwitz

CLEMENCY PUSH IS ON FOR DRUG OFFENDERS

Justice Dept. Expects Thousands of Cases

Administration Effort Aimed at Nonviolent Prisoners

The Obama administration is beginning an aggressive new effort to
foster equity in criminal sentencing by considering clemency requests
from as many as thousands of federal inmates serving time for drug
offenses, officials said Monday.

The initiative, which amounts to an unprecedented campaign to free
nonviolent offenders, will begin immediately and continue over the
next two years, officials said. The Justice Department said it expects
to reassign dozens of lawyers to its understaffed pardons office to
handle the requests from inmates.

"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," Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said Monday. "The
Justice Department is committed to recommending as many qualified
applicants as possible for reduced sentences."

Holder has announced a series of initiatives to tackle disparities in
criminal penalties, beginning in August when he said low-level,
nonviolent drug offenders with no connection to gangs or large-scale
drug organizations would not be charged with offenses that call for
strict mandatory sentences. He has traveled across the country to
highlight community programs in which nonviolent offenders have
received substance-abuse treatment and other assistance instead of
long prison sentences.

Underlying the initiatives is the belief by top Justice Department
officials that the most severe penalties should be reserved for
serious, high-level or violent drug traffickers. On April 10, after an
endorsement from Holder, the U.S. Sentencing Commission - the
independent agency that sets sentencing policies for federal judges -
voted to revise its guidelines to reduce sentences for defendants in
most of the nation's drug cases.

In the meantime, however, thousands of inmates are still serving
federally mandated sentences that imposed strict penalties for the
possession of crack cocaine. The Fair Sentencing Act, which President
Obama signed in 2010, reduced the disparity between convictions for
crack and powder cocaine, and Obama has called sentences passed under
the older guidelines "unduly harsh." The law also eliminated the
five-year mandatory minimum sentence for the simple possession of
crack cocaine.

"There are still too many people in federal prison who were sentenced
under the old regime - and who, as a result, will have to spend far
more time in prison than they would if sentenced today for exactly the
same crime," Holder said Monday. "This is simply not right."

For about two decades, strict sentences were imposed on offenders
convicted of trafficking or possession with intent to traffic crack
cocaine in the belief that the substance was more addictive than
powder cocaine, inexpensive and linked to violent crime.

But in 2002, the sentencing panel found that sentencing guidelines
were based on misperceptions about the relative dangers of crack
cocaine compared with other drugs. The commission also found that the
disparity had created a racial imbalance in which harsh sentences had
been disproportionately imposed on minorities, particularly African
Americans.

In December, Obama commuted the sentences of eight inmates serving
long prison terms for crack-cocaine convictions handed down before the
2010 law was passed. Six of the eight were serving life sentences,
including two who had not previously been convicted. Each of the eight
had served more than 15 years for a crack offense.

Under the 2010 law, the same people would have received shorter prison
terms and, in some cases, completed their sentences.

On Wednesday, Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole is expected to
announce details about the new criteria the Justice Department will
use in considering clemency applications and how the department plans
to review those applications.

The department has asked the American Civil Liberties Union and other
nonprofit groups to help identify candidates for clemency. Some of
those groups are likely to help inmates submit the necessary paperwork.

"Once these reforms go into effect, we expect to receive thousands of
additional applications for clemency," Holder said. "And we at the
Department of Justice will meet this need by assigning potentially
dozens of lawyers - with backgrounds in both prosecution and defense -
to review applications and provide the rigorous scrutiny that all
clemency applications require."

White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler said Obama has directed the
department to improve its process for clemency recommendations and try
to recruit more applicants from the federal prison population of
low-level drug offenders.

In a speech at New York University's law school last week, Ruemmler
said clemency is an important "fail-safe mechanism" in the criminal
justice system.

"When a worthy candidate runs out of other options," she said, "the
president has the power to correct an injustice that no one else has." 
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D