America's so-called "war on drugs" began as little more than a ploy to enable Richard Nixon to go after his political enemies, one of the disgraced President' s former policy gurus admitted in an interview which has surfaced for the first time. John Ehrlichman, who had advised Nixon on domestic policy, told the journalist Dan Baum that the drugs war was an excuse to target "the antiwar left and black people", Mr Baum writes, in a new report advocating drug legalisation for Harper's Magazine. [continues 274 words]
Man Could Remain Locked Up for Good Because of Appeal Limits The judge who sentenced Raymond Surratt Jr. to life in prison didn't think he deserved that tough a penalty. His attorneys said it was based on bad math. Even the government lawyers who prosecuted him say the sentence was a mistake. Yet they all also agree Surratt might stay locked up forever. How that came to be is at the heart of arguments to be heard Wednesday when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit takes up Surratt's case, which turns on how many times inmates can appeal a sentence, particularly if the law becomes more lenient after they are sent to prison. [continues 1072 words]
THE "WAR ON DRUGS" was actually a political tool to crush leftist protesters and black people, a former Nixon White House adviser admitted in a decades-old interview published Tuesday. John Ehrlichman, who served as President Richard Nixon's domestic policy chief, laid bare the sinister use of his boss' controversial policy in a 1994 interview with journalist Dan Baum that the writer revisited in a new article for Harper's magazine. "You want to know what this was really all about," Ehrlichman, who died in 1999, said in the interview after Baum asked him about Nixon's harsh antidrug policies. [continues 563 words]
President Obama is expected to grant clemency to another group of drug offenders in the coming weeks, part of his ongoing effort to provide relief to inmates in federal prisons who were sentenced to harsh terms during the nation's war on drugs. The White House will also be holding an event on March 31, called Life after Clemency, that will include former inmates and their attorneys, along with some prison reform advocates. The White House gathering, which is not open to the media, traces one of the president's centerpiece criminal-justice initiatives and will include a discussion on "ways to improve paths to reentry," according to the invitation. [continues 291 words]
Though Mendocino County is noted for its primacy as one of the original counties comprising the Emerald Triangle, stories about how and why this occurred are more intriguing than one might imagine. Economic and societal conditions converged to create the emergence and eminence of not one but two parallel industries-the solar industry and commercial cannabis farming. John Schaeffer, founder and owner of Real Goods and the Solar Living Center has an interesting story to tell. In 2014, when John and his wife Nantzy bought back Real Goods and the Solar Living Center from its parent corporation, the couple attempted to foresee the next wave of emerging culture. "We'd pioneered solar, sold the first photovoltaics in America, and continued to forge new ground with natural building, alternative fuels, electric vehicle consciousness, hemp clothing and permaculture. We determined the logical next step was CBD medical cannabis," says Schaeffer. [continues 1616 words]
Despite Recent Setbacks, Utah Republican Says Legislation Has Traction The co-sponsor of bipartisan legislation to reduce some mandatory minimum drug and gun sentences said Wednesday that he is hopeful Congress can still pass the bill despite recent setbacks. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) said issues have arisen that have slowed the legislation - considered by advocates of sentencing reform to be the most significant in decades. But "I don't believe it's stalled," he said at "Out of Jail, Into Society," a Washington Post Live event about prison reform. [continues 533 words]
Now a Professor, He Writes to Obama About Mandatory 55-Year Term A former federal judge in Utah asked President Obama on Tuesday to "swiftly" give clemency to Weldon Angelos, a man he sentenced to 55 years in prison in connection with selling marijuana. Calling the sentence "one of the most troubling that I ever faced in my five years on the federal bench," Paul G. Cassell, now a professor at the University of Utah's law school, said the mandatory minimum sentence he was required to impose on Angelos was one of the chief reasons he chose to step down as a judge. [continues 761 words]
Michael J. Kennedy, who as a criminal lawyer championed lost causes and deeply unpopular defendants - including John Gotti Sr., Huey P. Newton and Timothy Leary - and finally won freedom for Jean S. Harris, the convicted killer of Dr. Herman Tarnower, the Scarsdale Diet doctor, died on Monday in Manhattan. He was 78. The cause was complications of pneumonia, which developed while he was being treated for cancer, his wife, Eleanora, said. A steadfast defender of the underdog and the First Amendment, Mr. Kennedy represented radicals including Rennie Davis, Bernardine Dohrn and Mr. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party. His clients also included the Native American protesters at Wounded Knee, S.D., the family of the rogue real estate heir Robert A. Durst; Mr. Leary, the LSD guru; and Mr. Gotti, the mob boss. [continues 742 words]
The Novelty and Stigma of Marijuana Continue to Erode After Legalization Like countless commuters in Denver's urban core, Marty Otanez can't help but smell the pot smoke as he rides to work along the Cherry Creek bike path downtown. "A couple years ago it was only under the bridge at Colfax and Speer," Otanez said of the clouds emanating from public tokers. "Now it's pretty much every 100 meters." Increased pot smoke swirling around city streets and parks is one of the most recognizable effects of Amendment 64 - which legalized the recreational use and sale of marijuana in Colorado - particularly since public consumption remains illegal. [continues 930 words]
With Brown's Pardons, Ex-Felons Have Their Rights - and Peace of Mind - - Restored. SACRAMENTO - Unlike his immediate predecessors, Gov. Jerry Brown has routinely acted to grant pardons to hundreds of men and women he believes have turned their lives around. Though his Christmas Eve pardons last week included actor Robert Downey Jr., there were dozens more who received a holiday gift of being eased from the burden of a felony committed, in some cases, decades earlier. They include Aaron Malloy, 38, who now lives in Los Angeles County and is battling Stage 4 lung cancer. When a representative of the governor's office called to tell him the pardon had been finalized, Malloy said he was in disbelief. [continues 560 words]
Big Business 'Who Better Would You Want to Oversee Your Compliance Than a Cop?' COLLINSVILLE, Ill. (AP) - With fewer than 4,000 approved patients, the nascent medical-marijuana business in Illinois is off to a slow start. Yet it hasn't kept away a cadre of cannabis entrepreneurs who once relied on guns, badges, tough drug laws and lengthy prison sentences to fight pot. STEVE NAGY / BELLEVILLE NEWS-DEMOCRAT Scott Abbott, a retired Illinois State Police colonel, speaks with Mark Lewis, left, and Jeff Greer in September at the new medical-marijuana dispensary being built in Collinsville, Ill. [continues 807 words]
SACRAMENTO (AP) - The governor of California pardoned Robert Downey Jr. on Thursday for a nearly 20-year-old felony drug conviction that led to the Oscar-nominated actor's imprisonment for roughly a year. Downey was among 91 people granted pardons for criminal convictions after demonstrating they had rehabilitated themselves and been out of custody for at least 10 years, Gov. Jerry Brown's office announced. The pardon does not erase records of a conviction but is a public proclamation that the person has remained out of trouble and demonstrated exemplary behavior, according to material on Brown's website. [continues 225 words]
At 9:10 a.m. Friday, the intercom blared at the federal prison here as Weldon Angelos walked the track on this sprawling campus of drab gray buildings in California's Central Valley. The booming voice of a prison official called an inmate to the main office. About 25 minutes later, the official came on the intercom again, summoning another prisoner. Angelos knew exactly what was happening. The prisoners had heard a rumor the night before that President Obama might grant early release to certain drug offenders before he left Washington for the holidays. Angelos was excited, anxious. This was it. The lucky inmates on Obama's list were being called inside to take phone calls from their attorneys, who would tell them the good news. [continues 1532 words]
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama on Friday commuted the sentences of 95 prisoners and pardoned two more, part of a broader effort to rethink a criminal justice system that critics say has resulted in overly harsh and expensive sentences for thousands of drug offenders. The commutations, the most Obama has issued at one time, mostly benefit nonviolent drug offenders many of whom are serving long sentences for cocaine and crack crimes. Obama is also pardoning an Ohio man sentenced to probation in a counterfeiting case and a Virginia woman sentenced to home detention and supervised release in a bank fraud case. [continues 63 words]
WASHINGTON - President Obama ended a tumultuous year in the nation's capital by commuting the sentences of 95 federal prisoners and granting two pardons on Friday, building on his push to reorient the nation's criminal justice system with a holiday season stroke of his pen. The set of commutations was the largest of Mr. Obama's presidency, and it more than doubled the number he has granted since taking office. Most of those who will be freed are nonviolent drug offenders given long sentences during an earlier crackdown on crime. Forty of them will be spared life terms. [continues 969 words]
Third Time This Year Obama Has Commuted Terms Under Initiative President Obama commuted the sentences of 95 drug offenders Friday, more than double the number he granted this summer, in an effort to give relief to drug offenders who were harshly sentenced in the nation's war on drugs. It is the third time this year that Obama has used his unique clemency power to release federal drug offenders, whose harsh sentences have contributed to the phenomenon of mass incarceration. The commutations are a centerpiece of the president's effort to make the most significant changes in the nation's criminal justice system in decades. He and former attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr. have spoken passionately about the need to fix what they say is a broken system - one they argue has subjected too many nonviolent inmates to decades behind bars, disproportionately hurting minority communities. [continues 1185 words]
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama on Friday commuted the sentences of 95 prisoners and pardoned two more, part of a broader effort to rethink a criminal justice system that critics say has resulted in overly harsh and expensive sentences for thousands of drug offenders. The commutations, the most Obama has issued at one time, mostly benefit nonviolent drug offenders - many of whom are serving long sentences for cocaine and crack crimes. Obama is also pardoning an Ohio man sentenced to probation in a counterfeiting case and a Virginia woman sentenced to home detention and supervised release in a bank fraud case. [continues 125 words]
It wafts down the pavement, an unmistakable odor more Haight-Ashbury than New York - the tang of marijuana smoke in the city's streets. If the smell (and the lightheadedness a passer-by may feel) is anything to judge by, lighting up and strolling around seems increasingly common in pockets of Brooklyn, on side streets in Manhattan and in other public spaces. Street smokers say they are emboldened by laws that have legalized the recreational use of marijuana in other parts of the country and by the relatively low-key comments by New York's leaders, including the police commissioner, about the drug. [continues 1032 words]
A Nonviolent Drug Offender Granted Clemency After 2 Decades Behind Bars Adjusts to Life on the Outside DALLAS - The recently released federal prisoner sat down at his sister's dining room table. He pulled out a legal pad and began the letter he had been turning over in his mind for several months: "Dear Mr. President, I am writing you today with the utmost gratitude to personally thank you for granting my petition for clemency on March 31, 2015. Your actions have given me a second chance to start living life normally again and mere words can't express how truly grateful I am for your making this moment possible. The Bible says, 'To whom much is given, much is required,' and I vow to make the most of this unique opportunity that I've been given." [continues 2021 words]
WASHINGTON (AP) - A push to overhaul criminal sentencing is prompting the early release of thousands of federal drug prisoners, including some whom prosecutors once described as threats to society, according to an Associated Press review of court records. About 6,000 inmates are due to be freed from custody in the coming month, the result of changes made last year to guidelines that provide judges with recommended sentences for specific crimes. Federal officials say roughly 40,000 inmates could be eligible for reduced sentences in coming years. [continues 923 words]
