Current Events –
Pardons Issued By Obama
No one can say President Obama hasn’t been making the most of his final year in office. His latest move: issuing pardons to 61 non-violent drug offenders.
Sadly, American prisons are filled with those convicted of low-level drug charges. Men and women, teens and senior citizens have been imprisoned for decades and placed among murderers and thieves — sometimes simply because they were caught carrying a few ounces of marijuana. Well, President Obama vowed to make a change and last week, he kept his word.
“The power to grant pardons and commutations . . . embodies the basic belief in our democracy that people deserve a second chance after having made a mistake in their lives,” the president wrote in a letter to those who received clemency.
Following the pardons, Mr. Obama took 7 of the former inmates out for a meal. Among them was Serena Nunn, who was serving a 15-year sentence for a cocaine-related offense, as well as Kemba Smith, who was 7 months’ pregnant when she turned herself in on crack- cocaine charges during the ’90s.
Nunn has since earned a degree in political science at Arizona State University and is now a lawyer. Smith studied social work and has made a name for herself as an advocate for criminal-justice reform.
“Their stories are extraordinary. We’re all imperfect. We all make mistakes,” Mr. Obama said. “It does not make sense for a non-violent drug offender to be getting 20 years, 30 years, in some cases life in prison. That’s not serving anybody.”
During the luncheon, the president highlighted the story of Phillip Emmert, who was convicted in 1992 on a charge of conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine.
Emmert wiped back tears as Mr. Obama told his story. He served 14 years in prison, but got clean from drugs, took job training in prison and now maintains air-handling systems at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Iowa City, Iowa.
“They’re Americans who’d been serving time on the kind of outdated sentences that are clogging up our jails and burning through our tax dollars,” Obama wrote before meeting the inmates. “Simply put, their punishments didn’t fit the crime.”
Current Events
In 2014, the Obama administration launched a program to identify prisoners serving time under laws that have since been changed to carry less severe punishments. Applicants qualify if they have no record of violence, no significant ties to a gang or drug cartel, have been in prison at least 10 years and have demonstrated good behavior.
Since launching the initiative, President Obama has commuted the sentences of 248 inmates — which is more than the past 6 presidents combined! According to the White House, the president hopes to issue more pardons and commutations during his remaining months in office.
Efforts on Capitol Hill to change laws reducing mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug offenders have stalled. However, Mr. Obama remains hopeful that Congress will act before he leaves office in January.
“It is my strong belief that by exercising these presidential powers, I have the chance to show people what a second chance can look like,” Mr. Obama said.
First: Thank you DJ for this post. A much needed topic of discussion.
Of the many great things Pres. Obama has done, and his tried to do, throughout his presidency..THIS is right up there among the top. I am of course, heartened by the fact that the President has taken this step.
However, I am also disheartened, moved to Anger even, when I think about how We (Black Americans) have time and time again throughout American history been deliberately and systematically targeted to suffer ALL manner of injustices at the hands of White Supremacists, from the White House-to-the Out-House, and their Jim Crow laws.
The so-called "War On Drugs' may have started under Pres. Nixon but it was Pres. Bill Clinton who took it to a whole nother level on steroids to save his own sorry, no-good, azz.