A Minneapolis man serving 27 years for selling methamphetamine and ecstasy is among the 111 federal inmates whose prison sentences were shortened by President Barack Obama on Tuesday. Deputy Attorney General Sally Q. Yates told NPR, “At our current pace, we are confident that we will be able to review and make a recommendation to the president on every single drug petition we now have”.
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Now the whopping 325 monthly total means that, in just one month, President Obama has granted more commutations than any other president has granted in a single year for almost a century, the White House notes.
Earlier this month, Obama granted commutation to 214 federal inmates. “They are individuals who received unduly harsh sentences under outdated laws for committing largely nonviolent drug crimes”. President Obama’s order sets August 30 of next year as the end of the prison sentences for both men.
“The high frequency of leaders-level engagement with Chinese counterparts has been a deliberate part of our strategy for building a more constructive and productive relationship with China”, Kritenbrink said. Mark Osler, who led an effort by three dozen law professors and advocates to get the White House to pick up the pace, estimated that 1,500 drug prisoners should win commutations based on the administration’s criteria.
“That I look forward to”, he said. “It’s a scary thing and part of it is because they’ve been given hope”.
“At this time, I’m talking to China and China wants to talk to me bilateral”.
“I think we’ll want to review the state of play as it relates to our treaty alliance in the situation in the South China Sea in that dialogue with the new president of the Philippines”, the White House official said in a press briefing last Tuesday.
He added that his United States counterpart must first fully understand the issues the Philippines is facing.
President Barack Obama toured the El Reno Federal Correctional Institution in Oklahoma previous year, the first sitting US president to visit a federal prison.
Media reports said he would also meet Russian President Vladimir Putin.
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USA Today reports that the White House is now working through a backlog of over 11,000 pending cases.
