Pubdate: Thu, 02 Apr 2015
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Copyright: 2015 Hearst Communications Inc.
Contact: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/submissions/#1
Website: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/388
Author: Debra J. Saunders

JUSTICE AND MERCY MEET ON A SLOW ROAD

In commuting the sentences of 22 federal drug offenders Tuesday, 
President Obama has begun to take the unfettered power of executive 
clemency embedded in the Constitution to the place where it belongs. 
"I've been a cynic on the Obama administration for a while," 
University of St. Thomas School of Law Professor Mark Osler told me, 
but with these commutations, which doubled the president's total, 
"it's hard for me to be cynical about what's happening today." 
Finally, the administration is demonstrating how pardon power should 
be used, with, as Osler put it, "the most powerful person in the 
world freeing the least powerful person in the world."

In a nice personal touch, Obama sent letters to the 22 urging each to 
act on their "capacity to make good choices" and "prove the doubters wrong."

In his first term, Obama commuted but one sentence - half the meager 
two meted out in the first term of President George W. Bush. Pardon 
Power blogger P.S. Ruckman charged that inmates seeking mercy from 
Obama stood "a better chance of getting hit by lightning." Apologists 
justified Obama's sorry record as an exercise in political 
self-defense. No politician, after all, wants to be tied to a 
preventable crime spree as former Massachusetts Gov. (and 1988 
Democratic presidential nominee) Michael Dukakis was to Willie Horton 
- - a convicted murderer who in 1987 raped and assaulted a woman after 
he was furloughed from a Bay State prison.

President Bill Clinton's pardons unfortunately cast a dark shadow 
over the process. To his credit, Clinton freed a number of low-level 
drug offenders. But then Clinton turned the selfless gift of mercy 
into a tawdry political spoil when he issued a pardon to fugitive 
gazillionaire Marc Rich and other politically connected unworthies.

There always has been a clear path to doing clemency right. A savvy 
president would use the process regularly to correct sentencing 
excesses. After decades of a drug war run amok, the demand for relief 
is pent up. Seven of the new batch of commutations went to inmates 
serving life sentences for nonviolent drug offenses. Yes, life sentences.

After years with sparse mercy, Obama's Department of Justice 
announced a new Clemency Initiative with tough objective criteria 
last year. To qualify, inmates should be low-level nonviolent 
offenders who served at least 10 years in prison with good-conduct records.

The American Civil Liberties Union, the American Bar Association and 
Families Against Mandatory Minimums helped form Clemency Project 2014 
to assist the feds. The group says it worked with four of Tuesday's 
22 recipients. That's nice, except what looks like progress may in 
reality be a new bureaucracy that is unaccountable to the public and 
works at a glacial pace. FAMM's Mike Riggs thinks thousands could 
qualify. But at this pace, they could die in prison.

Steve Cook of the National Association of Assistant U.S. Attorneys 
told me his group is going through public records. Already, they see 
one recipient was convicted of possessing an illegal firearm and 
intent to distribute crack cocaine. Those I describe as nonviolent 
offenders Cook sees as "high-level traffickers." I hear that, but 
even if they're not kingpins, they are serving mass-murderer 
sentences. That's wrong.
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