Recently in Clemency Category
A convicted cocaine dealer released from prison early by former President Barack Obama is going to be an inmate again after getting arrested for theft and violating the terms of her release.
Carol Denise Richardson, 49, was arrested by the Pasadena (Texas) Police Department on April 13, less than a year after her life sentence for cocaine trafficking was cut short. She was placed on supervised release for ten years and the arrest and probation violations, such as quitting her job, will send her back to federal prison for 14 months.
In a Thursday hearing, assistant U.S. Attorney Ted Imperato said, "This defendant was literally given a second chance to become a productive member of society and has wasted it. She has shown a willful disregard for the law and must face the consequences for her crime."
Obama commuted a record amount of convicts, 1,715, and Richardson is at least the second of the bunch to have been arrested after their release. Robert M. Gill, another drug dealer, was arrested with two pounds of cocaine more than a year after his release, according to the New York Post.
With a sky-high recidivism rate for drug offenders (a rate Obama kept out of sight while on his clemency binge in favor of Happy Face statements he knew would never get pinned to him), what were we expecting?
Paul suggests that the Vice President should be in charge of pardons. He would, of course, need a staff or a board to advise him, but the Veep would make the short walk to the Oval Office with his recommendations on who among the many applicants would actually get clemency.
I worked with Paul many years ago and have always respected his work. His idea is worth considering.
Robert Gill, whose life sentence for cocaine and heroin distribution conspiracy was commuted by President Barack Obama and expired in 2015, was back before a federal magistrate on another drug charge.That's the steely reality of clemency.* * *Gill is charged by Homeland Security Investigations with possession with intent to distribute 500 grams or more of cocaine. He faces 5 to 40 years in prison now.
President Obama on Tuesday commuted the prison sentence of former Army soldier Chelsea Manning, according to the White House.
Manning was convicted in 2013 of leaking classified information about U.S. national security activities that were later disclosed by WikiLeaks. The 35-year sentence Manning received was the longest ever imposed for a leak conviction. Manning has already served seven years of her sentence and will now be released on May 17, 2017.
She was originally set to be released be released in 2045.
Yup, getting your sentence chopped by 80% for grossly compromising national security while you're serving in the armed forces is just what the doctor ordered.
By any sane reckoning, this is a scandal that exponentially dwarfs the Marc Rich affair. No wonder Obama waited until about 70 hours before he exits the White House.
UPDATE: I was quoted on this commutation in the up-to-the-minute journal, Lifezette, here.
President Obama has charted new levels of executive defiance, but even he hasn't refused to obey a Supreme Court ruling. Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe has sought to follow Mr. Obama's executive hubris, and now he's gone further and is acting in contempt of the court that has rebuked him.
In July the Virginia Supreme Court struck down his executive order restoring voting rights to 206,000 felons. Under Virginia law the Governor can grant clemency on an individual basis. But the justices wrote that "Governor McAuliffe's assertion of 'absolute' power to issue his executive order" runs "afoul of the separation-of-powers principle" in the Virginia constitution. The individual clemency power, the court admonished, "does not mean he can effectively rewrite the general rule of law."
Mr. McAuliffe replied that he "cannot accept" the ruling...He has since acted on his defiance by restoring rights to some 13,000 felons who had already registered to vote when the state Supreme Court's decision invalidated his executive order.
If anyone on the Left has denounced McAuliffe for his open defiance of the rule of law, I haven't heard about it. But being pro-criminal in Leftist culture means never having to say you're sorry, court order or no court order.
We had thought that breast-beating exhortations like "extremism in the defense of liberty" had seen their last when Barry Goldwater's landslide loss put extremism in the cold light of a sober nation's reflection.It is true that crime had risen to unacceptable levels during the George H.W. Bush Administration, but we have made six years of progress in scaling it back without President Dole's resort to criminal justice extremism.A balanced and mature approach to justice requires that a President show at least a modicum of respect to a consensus that has lasted for more than 50 years, through prior administrations and political climates of all stripes. When, to the contrary, a chief executive's sentencing outcomes push past those of his nine predecessors combined, he has simply gone off the deep end, there's no other honest way to put it. This is not a defense of liberty. It's a defense of the President's out-of-the-mainstream ideas, a sop to the most extreme elements of his base, and it has to stop.
Rep. Bob Goodlatte said he is "deeply concerned" about the size and scope of those commutations -- including the 214 approved Wednesday -- saying the president's actions are a "blatant usurpation" of Congress's authority....
President Barack Obama commuted the sentences of 214 federal prisoners yesterday, part of his ongoing crusade against a criminal-justice system he regularly declares racist and draconian. The White House trumpeted the fact that this was the largest one-day grant of clemency since 1900....
Many of the commuttees possessed stolen firearms or firearms with their serial numbers obliterated. Some were in violation of National Firearms Registration, which can mean possession of a federally prohibited weapon, such as a machine gun, silencer, or sawed-off shotgun. We don't know how many guns the offenders actually had; a commuttee during a previous batch of commutations had 40.Nor does the Justice Department's press release disclose the actual incidence of firearm possession by these federal convicts. Gun possession can be used to increase a federal sentence under the federal sentencing guidelines without a prosecutor's actually bringing a formal charge. A gun charge can also be plea-bargained away. Many advocates of criminal-justice reform believe in maximum gun control, yet White House press releases on the president's commutations have been silent on the widespread incidence of illegal gun possession.
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...