President Obama announced on Friday that he had commuted the sentences of 95 federal prisoners and granted two pardons, White House officials said, building on his push to re-orient the nation’s criminal justice system with a year-end stroke of his pen.
The commutations are the most that Mr. Obama has done at a single time, and will more than double the number he has granted since taking office. Forty prisoners serving life sentences will be freed.
The commutations on Friday were more than the last four presidents did in their entire time in office, but the action was minuscule in the context of the tens of thousands of federal inmates who have applied for clemency as his administration has aggressively sought to correct the excesses of the past.
The move comes as Mr. Obama is pressing for a rewrite of criminal justice laws that would reverse a decades-long trend of steep penalties for nonviolent offenses that has swelled the nation’s prison population, disproportionately impacting African-American and Hispanic men.
“I am granting your application because you have demonstrated the potential to turn your life around,” Mr. Obama wrote in separate letters to each of the prisoners, which he signed one by one in the Oval Office on Thursday. “Now it is up to you to make the most of this opportunity.”
He said the road ahead “will not be easy, and you will confront many who doubt people with criminal records can change.”
“But remember that you have the capacity to make good choices,” the president wrote.
The vast majority of Friday’s commutations went to nonviolent drug offenders who have been imprisoned for more than a decade, behaved well in prison and would have been sentenced to less time under current rules. Many of them will be released from prison in April.
The issues of crime and punishment have particular resonance for Mr. Obama, who has spoken in increasingly vivid terms this year about race and injustice in America. In July he became the first president to visit a federal prison, where he spoke with inmates and reflected on how close he might have come as a young black man to sharing their fates.
With Republicans and Democrats coalescing around steps to revamp sentencing rules, Mr. Obama believes he will be able to sign a new criminal law during his final year in office, his senior advisers say. The move would dovetail with the president’s “My Brother’s Keeper” initiative, which is geared toward helping young men of color surmount obstacles and succeed and is expected to be a central focus of his work when he leaves office in 2017.
Mr. Obama has been criticized for the paltry amount of pardons he has granted, which after Friday’s action stands at just 66, a fraction of most modern presidents.
Still, White House officials argued that Mr. Obama’s use of clemency — he has now granted it to 184 prisoners during his time in office — has put human faces on the criminal justice issue and highlighted worthy cases as he pushes for enactment of a new law that would have more sweeping effects.
“The theory is not that this by itself is going to make a dent in the prison population — this is part of an overall approach,” W. Neil Eggleston, the White House counsel, said in an interview. “He thinks it fits into the broader effort of criminal justice reform. What it does show is, on a very individual basis, the way some sentences in the past have been excessive and far outweighed the seriousness of the crime.”
The Constitution gives the president the authority to issue “pardons for offenses against the United States,” an act that wipes away any legal liability from a criminal conviction, or to commute federal sentences. Mr. Obama has made it clear he wants to use the power more freely during his second term.
“What he’s really looking for is people who have shown that commitment to turning their life around,” Mr. Eggleston said.
Last year, after Mr. Obama signaled he wanted to broaden his use of clemency, James M. Cole, the deputy attorney general, laid out criteria for who would qualify, and a consortium of lawyers calling itself Clemency Project 2014 began helping to prepare applications, quickly drawing tens of thousands.
Many of the prisoners whose sentences he has commuted have completed high school equivalency or other educational programs, administration officials said.
Republicans and Democrats alike have expressed a desire to confront the issue of prison overcrowding and excessive sentences, forming an usual alliance of liberals concerned about civil rights and the plight of men of color, conservatives who oppose costly federally funded mass incarceration, and libertarians suspicious of government control. Presidential candidates in both parties have endorsed the effort, and members of Congress have teamed to negotiate a legislative package that the White House hopes will yield a law as early as this spring.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/19/u...column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
The commutations are the most that Mr. Obama has done at a single time, and will more than double the number he has granted since taking office. Forty prisoners serving life sentences will be freed.
The commutations on Friday were more than the last four presidents did in their entire time in office, but the action was minuscule in the context of the tens of thousands of federal inmates who have applied for clemency as his administration has aggressively sought to correct the excesses of the past.
The move comes as Mr. Obama is pressing for a rewrite of criminal justice laws that would reverse a decades-long trend of steep penalties for nonviolent offenses that has swelled the nation’s prison population, disproportionately impacting African-American and Hispanic men.
“I am granting your application because you have demonstrated the potential to turn your life around,” Mr. Obama wrote in separate letters to each of the prisoners, which he signed one by one in the Oval Office on Thursday. “Now it is up to you to make the most of this opportunity.”
He said the road ahead “will not be easy, and you will confront many who doubt people with criminal records can change.”
“But remember that you have the capacity to make good choices,” the president wrote.
The vast majority of Friday’s commutations went to nonviolent drug offenders who have been imprisoned for more than a decade, behaved well in prison and would have been sentenced to less time under current rules. Many of them will be released from prison in April.
The issues of crime and punishment have particular resonance for Mr. Obama, who has spoken in increasingly vivid terms this year about race and injustice in America. In July he became the first president to visit a federal prison, where he spoke with inmates and reflected on how close he might have come as a young black man to sharing their fates.
With Republicans and Democrats coalescing around steps to revamp sentencing rules, Mr. Obama believes he will be able to sign a new criminal law during his final year in office, his senior advisers say. The move would dovetail with the president’s “My Brother’s Keeper” initiative, which is geared toward helping young men of color surmount obstacles and succeed and is expected to be a central focus of his work when he leaves office in 2017.
Mr. Obama has been criticized for the paltry amount of pardons he has granted, which after Friday’s action stands at just 66, a fraction of most modern presidents.
Still, White House officials argued that Mr. Obama’s use of clemency — he has now granted it to 184 prisoners during his time in office — has put human faces on the criminal justice issue and highlighted worthy cases as he pushes for enactment of a new law that would have more sweeping effects.
“The theory is not that this by itself is going to make a dent in the prison population — this is part of an overall approach,” W. Neil Eggleston, the White House counsel, said in an interview. “He thinks it fits into the broader effort of criminal justice reform. What it does show is, on a very individual basis, the way some sentences in the past have been excessive and far outweighed the seriousness of the crime.”
The Constitution gives the president the authority to issue “pardons for offenses against the United States,” an act that wipes away any legal liability from a criminal conviction, or to commute federal sentences. Mr. Obama has made it clear he wants to use the power more freely during his second term.
“What he’s really looking for is people who have shown that commitment to turning their life around,” Mr. Eggleston said.
Last year, after Mr. Obama signaled he wanted to broaden his use of clemency, James M. Cole, the deputy attorney general, laid out criteria for who would qualify, and a consortium of lawyers calling itself Clemency Project 2014 began helping to prepare applications, quickly drawing tens of thousands.
Many of the prisoners whose sentences he has commuted have completed high school equivalency or other educational programs, administration officials said.
Republicans and Democrats alike have expressed a desire to confront the issue of prison overcrowding and excessive sentences, forming an usual alliance of liberals concerned about civil rights and the plight of men of color, conservatives who oppose costly federally funded mass incarceration, and libertarians suspicious of government control. Presidential candidates in both parties have endorsed the effort, and members of Congress have teamed to negotiate a legislative package that the White House hopes will yield a law as early as this spring.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/19/u...column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
