Pubdate: Tue, 14 Jul 2015
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2015 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Authors: Timothy M. Phelps and Colin Diersing

OBAMA COMMUTES THE SENTENCES OF 46 DRUG OFFENDERS

WASHINGTON - President Obama commuted the sentences of 46 nonviolent 
drug offenders Monday, doubling the number of clemencies he has 
granted as the administration seeks to correct what many see as the 
wrongs inflicted by mandatory minimum prison sentences.

The latest clemencies brought Obama's total commutations to 89, the 
largest number since President Johnson's 226.

Decades after the tough-on-crime era of the 1980s and 1990s, the 
Obama administration is hoping to combine the president's commutation 
powers with Justice Department reforms and support from sympathetic 
Republicans in Congress to change sentencing policies that have had a 
disproportionate effect on African Americans and Latinos.

"These men and women were not violent criminals ... their punishments 
didn't fit the crime," Obama said in a Facebook video posted Monday 
that showed him signing the commutations. "I believe that America, at 
its heart, is a nation of second chances, and I believe these folks 
deserve their second chance."

Obama plans to lay out the case for comprehensive criminal justice 
reform in a speech to the NAACP in Philadelphia on Tuesday. In 
Oklahoma on Thursday, he will become the first sitting president to 
go inside a federal correctional facility.

Noting that the U. S. spends $ 80 billion a year on incarceration, 
Obama said many drug offenders convicted under old laws were serving 
20- year sentences, or even life terms, for crimes that would receive 
far lesser punishments under current guidelines.

One of those granted clemency Monday was John Wyatt of Las Cruces, N. 
M. He was sentenced in 2004 to 21 years for possession of marijuana 
with intent to distribute. The sentence was longer, in part, because 
he had previously walked away from a halfway house.

Another was Telisha Watkins, who according to the advocacy group 
Families Against Mandatory Minimums was addicted to drugs by the age 
of 14 and dropped out of ninth grade while pregnant. Because of 
previous drug convictions and mandatory minimum guidelines, she was 
sentenced to 20 years in 2007 for acting as an intermediary to help a 
friend buy 18 ounces of cocaine.

Obama has commuted more sentences than his past four predecessors 
combined, but he lags far behind most of them in granting pardons. 
Although a commutation shortens a prisoner's sentence, a pardon wipes 
clean the offender's record. But pardons are usually more 
controversial, such as those granted by President Clinton on his last 
day in office.

Obama's clemencies constitute a fraction of the 7,889 clemency 
petitions pending from prisoners, according to the Justice 
Department. His efforts have so far fallen short of expectations set 
last April, when the Justice Department announced the most ambitious 
federal clemency program in 40 years and invited lawyers across the 
country to help tens of thousands of federal drug offenders apply.

Liberal advocacy groups welcomed the announcement, but said the 46 
acts of mercy were "a drop in the bucket" compared with what they 
hoped Obama would do before he left office.

Jeremy Haile of the Sentencing Project in Washington said there were 
7,000 to 8,000 prisoners still doing time for convictions involving 
crack cocaine who would not be in jail today under the 2010 reform of 
crack cocaine laws.

Before that, those convicted of possessing crack were subject to 
sentences far longer than those imposed on people who possessed the 
powder form of the drug. Since crack use was more common among 
blacks, African American drug offenders received longer sentences 
than white offenders, who tended to be convicted in cases involving 
powder cocaine.

A new private initiative to process clemency petitions, called 
Clemency Project 2014, bogged down after a series of unexpected 
obstacles, including difficulties in finding old paper court files in 
storage, said Cynthia W. Roseberry, the project manager. Also, 
federal public defenders were advised by courts not to get involved 
because they were already overburdened helping current clients, she said.

Only four of the 46 commutations ordered Monday came through her 
group's efforts, Roseberry said. The group has received 30,000 
applications and so far has forwarded only 50 to the Justice 
Department's pardon attorney. Nearly half of the applications have 
been rejected as not meeting Justice Department guidelines, she said.

To be eligible for clemency, the prisoners must have served at least 
10 years, had a good prison record and not been convicted of a 
violent offense. One of the toughest criteria to meet is that 
prisoners must be serving a longer sentence than they would receive today.

Most of those who received clemency Monday were convicted of selling 
crack cocaine. Fourteen of the 46 had been sentenced to life in prison.

Two years ago, former Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. told prosecutors 
across the country to stop using mandatory minimum sentences against 
lower-level, nonviolent offenders. At the same time, the U. S. 
Sentencing Commission revised downward its sentencing guidelines for 
some drug offenses.

But the White House and sentencing reform advocates say large-scale 
reform must come from Congress.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Monday that Obama 
"doesn't want to just have to rely on his constitutional authority as 
president of the United States to offer commutations. He actually is 
hopeful that we can develop and implement a legislative solution that 
would have a broader, more far-reaching impact in bringing greater 
fairness and justice to our criminal justice system."

Legislation that would free large numbers of prisoners and reform 
sentencing going forward has stalled in the Senate Judiciary 
Committee and in the House, despite support from some Republicans, 
including several presidential candidates.

Part of the problem has been a cautious response by Senate Judiciary 
Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley ( R- Iowa) and House Judiciary 
Chairman Robert W. Goodlatte ( R-Va.), but activists hope both men 
can be persuaded. Key Democrats, including Sen. Charles E. Schumer of 
New York, have also expressed reservations.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom