Trump commutes life sentence on drug charges of former south suburban resident
A former south suburban resident sentenced to five concurrent life sentences after being convicted of drug charges in 1994 had his sentence commuted by outgoing President Donald Trump, among a flurry of lastminute pardons and commutations.
Mario Claiborne, 61, lived in Hazel Crest at the time of his June 1991 arrest on charges that he was the leader of a crack cocaine ring that operated on Chicago’s South Side, in the south suburbs and Northwest Indiana.
He was charged with 23 other people, including a co-defendant who had his life sentence commuted in 2016 by President Barack Obama. Authorities in 1991 alleged it was the largest crack cocaine operation in the Chicago area.
Court documents in the case said that the ring, from 1987 until charges were announced, was responsible for sales of more than 880 pounds of cocaine and crack cocaine.
Imprisoned in Greenville, Illinois, northeast of St. Louis, Claiborne, 61, had filed a motion on his own last spring seeking to be released, which was denied by a federal judge in July.
He has been incarcerated since his 1991 arrest.
In a brief statement announcing the commutation, the outgoing president noted that during his time in prison “Claiborne has maintained clear conduct” and has “completed rehabilitative programming, including drug education.”
In October 1991, Claiborne entered into a plea agreement under which he agreed to testify against some of the other defendants, according to court records.
However, when it came time for him to testify he said he couldn’t remember certain information and alleged he was testifying under duress in that members of his family had been threatened by representatives of various government agencies, including drug enforcement and the Internal Revenue Service, records showed.
Claiborne told prosecutors he wasn’t able to testify about certain events because excessive drug use had resulted in memory failure, according to court documents.
The plea agreement was subsequently revoked and Claiborne was convicted by a jury of 20 drug-related counts and sentenced in May 1994. The government had also moved to seize assets alleged to have been purchased with drug sale profits, including homes Claiborne owned in Dolton and Hazel Crest.
In March 2017, a federal judge denied a prior motion by Claiborne for a sentence reduction. The COVID-19 pandemic prompted a motion by the inmate last May also seeking early release.
In his handwritten motion, Claiborne said he feared the coronavirus “will sweep through this prison as it has others,” and cited poor health as putting him at higher risk of contracting the virus.
In a response to Claiborne’s motion, Assistant U.S. Attorney Diane MacArthur wrote that Claiborne had not exhausted the administrative appeals process through the federal bureau of prisons and there were no records he had sought early release from the bureau.
MacArthur also noted the prison system had taken measures to control the virus’ spread within penitentiaries and Claiborne did not show any “extraordinary and compelling reasons” to warrant his release.
An early release “would deprecate the seriousness of Claiborne’s offense and undermine the sentence’s deterrent value,” MacArthur wrote in asking the court to deny the request for release.