Of those, 232 were serving life sentences.
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Obama has pointed to outdated, overly harsh sentencing guidelines used to send drug offenders to prison for lengthy terms as a reason for reducing the sentences.
Glidden’s 21-year sentence for manufacturing methamphetamine would have ended in 2023 and McCoy’s 18-year sentence for meth distribution would have ended in 2022.
As Congress has shortened the sentences for drug crimes, it’s also failed to make many of those reduced sentences retroactive – a disparity Obama is trying to correct by through unilaterally action.
Neil Eggleston, the White House counsel to the president, wrote on the administration’s website that President Obama will continue to grant commutations through the remainder of the year.
This condenses Haslip’s prison sentence to a total of about 14 years. Throughout his presidency, Obama has granted 673 commutations.
We wanted to hear from someone who has already had his sentence commuted.
Emmanuel Obi Maduka of Detroit was sentenced in the Southern District of NY in 2008 to 20 years in prison and 10 years of probation for conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute heroin and conspiracy to import heroin.
We must remember that these are individuals – sons, daughters, parents, and in many cases, grandparents – who have taken steps toward rehabilitation and who have earned their second chance.
Among those commuted was Theodore Johnson from Rock Island, who was given a 30 year prison sentence in 2000 for conspiracy to distribute cocaine base.
Obama announced the commutations of 111 more individuals, bringing the August total to 325.
“Mandatory sentences, and especially mandatory life sentences for nonviolent offenses, should be abandoned once and for all”, said Julie Stewart, the group’s president. Most of the prisoners are set to be released by December 28, 2016.
The president greets inmates Obama greets inmates as he becomes the first sitting president to visit a federal prison in El Reno, Oklahoma in July of 2015.
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Deputy Attorney General Sally Q. Yates lauded the move in a statement Tuesday, predicting that the president would grant more commutations in his final months in office.
