In final act
as president, Obama commutes 330 drug sentences, 1/19/17, AP
President Barack Obama speaks Jan.
18, 2017, during his final presidential news conference in the briefing room of
the White House in Washington. The next day, in his last major act as
president, Obama cut short the sentences of 330 federal inmates convicted of
drug crimes, bringing his bid to correct what he's called a systematic
injustice to a climactic close. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP), Tribune news services Contact Reporter
In a last major act as
president, Barack Obama cut short the sentences of 330 federal inmates convicted
of drug crimes on Thursday, bringing his bid to correct what he's called a
systematic injustice to a climactic close.
With his final offer
of clemency, Obama brought his total number of commutations granted to 1,715,
more than any other president in U.S. history, the White House said. During his presidency Obama ordered free 568 inmates
who had been sentenced to life in prison.
"He wanted to do
it. He wanted the opportunity to look at as many as he could to provide
relief," Neil Eggleston, Obama's White House counsel, said in an interview
in his West Wing office. "He saw the injustice of the sentences that were
imposed in many situations, and he has a strong view that people deserve a
second chance."
For Obama, it was the
last time he planned to exercise his presidential powers in any significant
way. At noon on Friday, Obama will stand with President-elect Donald Trump as his successor is sworn in and Obama's chapter in
history comes to an end.
Even as Obama issued
the commutations, the White House had been mostly cleared out to make way for
Trump. In between carrying out their last duties, the few remaining staffers
were packing up belongings as photos of Obama were taken down from the walls of
the West Wing corridors.
The final batch of
commutations more in a single day than on any other day in U.S. history was the
culmination of Obama's second-term effort to try to remedy the consequences of
decades of onerous sentencing requirements that he said had imprisoned
thousands of drug offenders for too long. Obama repeatedly called on Congress
to pass a broader criminal justice fix, but lawmakers never acted.
For Bernard Smith,
it's a long-awaited chance to start over after 13 years away from his wife and
children. Smith was working at a restaurant in Maryland in 2002 when his
brother asked him to obtain marijuana for a drug deal. Though it was his
brother who obtained the crack cocaine that the brothers then sold along with
the marijuana to undercover officers, Smith was charged with the cocaine
offense, too.
His 22-year sentence
was far longer than his brother's, owing to what the
court called Smith's "extensive criminal history" prior to the drug
bust. Smith still had 10 years on his sentence when he was notified Thursday
that the president, on his last day in office, was giving him another chance.
"He's looking to
turn his life around," said Michelle Curth, his attorney. "He's a
good person who, like so many people, got involved in something he's been
punished for already." Curth said that Smith had learned his lesson and
owned up to his crime he asked for a commutation, she noted, not a pardon,
which would have erased the original conviction. She said Smith hopes to get
licensed in heating and air conditioning maintenance and has lined up family
members to help with his adjustment.
But freedom for Smith
is still two years away. Rather than release him immediately, Obama directed
that he be set free in January 2019 — two years after Obama has left office —
and only if Smith enrolls in a residential drug treatment program.
To be eligible for a commutation
under Obama's initiative, inmates had to have behaved well in prison and
already served 10 years, although some exceptions to the 10-year rule were
granted. They also had to be considered nonviolent offenders, although many
were charged with firearms violations in relation to their drug crimes.
Obama personally
reviewed the case of every inmate who received a commutation, often poring over
case files in the evenings or calling his attorneys into his office to discuss
specifics. Although a backlog of cases remains as Obama leaves office, his
administration reviewed all applications that came in by an end-of-August
deadline, officials said.
Eggleston said Obama
had been particularly motivated to grant clemency to inmates who had turned
themselves around in prison. He said one inmate had trained and obtained a
commercial driver's license through a prison program, despite having a life
sentence that all but assured he'd never get to use it.
"The ones who
really stuck home for the president and me are the ones who got their GED, they
worked, they took courses in anger management, they took courses in getting
over drug abuse issues, they remained in contract with their families,"
Eggleston said.
Obama has long called
for phasing out strict sentences for drug offenses, arguing they lead to
excessive punishment and incarceration rates unseen in other developed
countries. With Obama's support, the Justice Department in recent years directed prosecutors to
rein in the use of harsh mandatory minimums.
Earlier in the week,
Obama commuted most of the rest of convicted leaker Chelsea Manning's sentence,
arguing the Army intelligence analyst had shown remorse and already served a
long sentence.
Yet Obama will leave
office without granting commutations or pardons to other prominent offenders
who had sought clemency, including accused Army deserter Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl and
former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. He also declined to pardon former
National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.
Associated Press
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