Continuing to aggressively target long prison terms for nonviolent drug crimes, President Barack Obama commuted 214 sentences for federal inmates Wednesday, including an Austin man who sold drugs after losing his job and another Texan who became a dealer to pay for his son’s life-saving medical procedure. He says those receiving commutations were imprisoned under antiquated, overly harsh sentencing laws.
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“Unfortunately, history and common sense tell us that rushing to release federal prisoners will have long-lasting, harmful consequences, particularly for our nation’s most vulnerable communities”, Sessions said.
Obama has now used his constitutional clemency power to shorten the sentences of more federal inmates than any president since Calvin Coolidge. Of those, 197 were serving life prison sentences. Given a 20-year term, Goines had been expected to be out in 2026.
The Obama administration has also expanded criteria for inmates applying for clemency, prioritizing nonviolent offenders who have behaved well in prison, aren’t closely tied to gangs and would have received shorter sentences if they had been convicted a few years later.
Sentenced to 262 months’ imprisonment and five years’ supervised release on February 12, 2008 on drug-related charges. “These 214 individuals are not so-called “low-level, non-violent” offenders – which simply do not exist in the federal system”, Sessions said in a statement.
Andrew Crumbly, of Fort Myers, was sentenced to almost 20 years in prison on February 14, 2006 after being convicted of ‘possession with intent to distribute a detectable amount of cocaine base, crack cocaine (three counts)’. In Wednesday’s batch, 67 convicts were serving life sentences. He was sentenced to 262 months in prison, to be followed by eight years of parole supervision. Jackson’s family says he started transporting meth on his truck routes in the 1990s to pay for his son’s bone marrow transport. Choice’s term will end December 1.
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Nearly all the prisoners, including 67 with life sentences, were serving time for nonviolent drug crimes, reflecting the president’s long-stated view that the US needs to remedy the consequences of decades of sentencing requirements that put tens of thousands of Americans behind bars for far too long.
