President Obama is often accused by conservatives of being a failure. I respectfully dissent. The President is actually a remarkable success -- at what he wants to do.
One of those things is abrogate hundreds, if not in the end thousands, of legal sentences for trafficking very dangerous drugs. Hence today's latest installment of the mass jailbreak:
President Obama commuted the sentences of 214 people serving federal sentences on Wednesday -- the most commutations issued by a president in a single day since at least 1900 -- White House officials told BuzzFeed News.************************
Including Wednesday's commutations, Obama has granted a total of 562 commutations -- a number that the White House says is more than the previous nine presidents combined but that has been questioned by some advocates...
Now, when a President commutes more sentences than his nine predecessors combined -- that would be going back more than 50 years -- some might say that this reflects an extremist view of clemency. But no! Barack Obama is the only one marching in step! Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush II were all out of step.
Now I understand.
It might be that some of those given cuts to their prison terms were college kids caught smoking a joint, but I have my doubts. The source of my doubts is not having read the full list of commutations, which I have not done. It's that over about two decades as a federal prosecutor in a conservative jurisdiction, I never saw a college kid or any other kid get a prison term just for smoking a joint.
It doesn't happen. It is, like so much else the sentencing reform movement claims, made up.
I did take a very brief look at the list of commutations, but got no further than the second entry, which is as follows:
Asher Adkins - Columbia City, IN
Offense: Distribution of methamphetamine and aiding and abetting (two counts); distribution of methamphetamine (three counts); use or carrying a firearm during a drug trafficking crime (two counts); distribution of more than 100 grams of methamphetamine (two counts); Northern District of Indiana
Sentence: 624 months' imprisonment; five years' supervised release (January 3, 2000)
Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on December 1, 2016.
The man is packing heat while dealing meth. What could go wrong?
And when he (or one of his buddies on the list) kill someone with a gun, the gun will be blamed.
I think it's more likely that the story will simply be deep-sixed. Eager as the press is to blame the gun, it's even more eager to bury any adverse consequence from early release, just as it has buried the Wendell Callahan story.
P.S. Where have you been??
Here's a free link to the Court of Appeals' decision regarding the Adkins case.
http://openjurist.org/274/f3d/444/united-states-of-america-v-asher-adkins
Thanks.
Three things now strike me about this case: (1) the guy was a fugitive for six years, having skipped out on the last day of his trial, (2) Obama sliced his sentence by more than two-thirds, and (3) he had already obtained sentencing relief from the Seventh Circuit.
I'm happy, in a way, that I am no longer a federal prosecutor, to see legal and legitimate outcomes my colleagues worked to achieve undone by Obama to an unprecedented (in the post-Sixties world) extent, and solely for ideological, drugs-aren't-that-bad, reasons.
Why more AUSA's don't quit is beyond me.
I am going to take a little bit of a different tack---first of all, Obama's jailbreak is coming at the expense of people who made a mistake and have lived a law-abiding life for years after the crime--pardons are down. That's unfortunate.
Second, Obama's aggressive commutation stance is still a very small number of criminals. What that means is that there are very very few people in federal prison who, under even the view of Obama, shouldn't be there.
Third, I am willing to accept that the President has determined that these people can be safely released. Mr. Meth Guy will have served 16 years of hard time when he gets out. That's not an insignificant amount of time. Moreover, to my knowledge, none of the Obama clemency criminals have re-offended since release.
What is truly galling about all this is Obama's holier than thou sneers and casual imputation of racism on the part of those who have put people like Asher away.
Reinaldo A. Arocho – Lake Station, IN
Offense: Drug conspiracy; maintaining a drug house; distribution of crack cocaine; carrying a firearm during drug trafficking; attempting to corruptly persuade a witness; Northern District of Indiana
Sentence: 387 months' imprisonment; 10 years' supervised release (January 19, 2000); amended to 300 months' imprisonment (January 18, 2011)
Hmmm. I wonder what he did to attempt to corruptly persuade a witness.
Probably gave him a bouquet of violets.
There appear to be some felon-in-possession convictions in that batch--I guess we're a nation of more than second chances.