Trump did a good thing for Johnson
As I’ve written before, I am no fan of the current occupant of the White House. I could easily make a list of the top 10 outrageous/shocking/horrifying things that President Donald Trump said or did in the past week.
But I’m not going to do that right now. Sunny optimist that I am, I’m going to write about one good thing Trump did last week for which he deserves praise. That’s his commuting the life sentence of Alice Marie Johnson, a 63-yearold African-American grandmother who served 22 years in federal prison for a nonviolent, first-time drug offense. She was released on Wednesday from prison in Alabama.
Here, I’ll say it: Thank you, Mr. President.
The way that Johnson’s plight came to Trump’s attention was unusual to say the very least. Her cause was championed by none other than Kim Kardashian. Yes, that Kim Kardashian, who visited the White House last month to ask for clemency for Johnson.
Apparently Trump listened. Maybe it’s because Kardashian’s husband, Kanye West, in recent weeks has been a vocal Trump supporter. (Flattery will get you everywhere with this president.) Maybe it’s because Kardashian is a fellow reality TV star — in which case I urge Snooki, Tila Tequila and Honey Boo Boo to look for and adopt their own victims of drug-war overkill and go talk to the president.
Before Johnson’s commutation, the highest profile recipients of executive clemency from Trump were rightwing celebrities who had been convicted of federal crimes — former Dick Cheney aide Scooter Libby, former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio and conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza.
Trump critics say the pardons might be the president’s way of assuring his allies like Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn who are ensnared in the Russian election interference investigation. Trump wants them to know — this line of thinking goes —that if they don’t testify against him, he’ll pardon them for any convictions. Only time will tell if this is true. In another case with racial overtones, Trump also recently pardoned another African-American named Johnson, the late former heavyweight boxing champ Jack Johnson, who was convicted in 1913 by an all-white jury for traveling with his white girlfriend. Jack Johnson, his jury determined, had violated the Mann Act, which made it illegal to transport women across state lines for “immoral purposes.”
That case came to Trump’s attention via another celebrity, actor Sylvester Stallone.
What’s hopeful about the Alice Johnson case is that it seemed to go against the Trump administration’s hostility to criminal justice reform.
Remember criminal justice reform? That was a bipartisan movement to put less emphasis on incarceration for low-level and nonviolent crimes and more on rehabilitation. Reform advocates favored reducing harsh sentencing laws. Both liberals and conservatives pointed to successes in deep red states like Texas in implementing such policies. This was one area in which the American Civil Liberties Union was in agreement with the Koch brothers — those conservative Kansas industrialists who Democrats love to hate.
But all this came to a crashing halt after Trump was elected and Jeff Sessions became attorney general.
After Trump’s first year in office, the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School released a critical report that said Trump’s policies have “built a more draconian vision of law enforcement” that could reverse any progress made in reducing prison populations.
If his action on Ms. Johnson’s prison sentence is a reversal on this policy, it’s a small step.
As Kardashian pointed out in tweeting her gratitude to Trump, Johnson is not the only one who was serving a severe sentence. “Her commutation is inspirational & gives hope to so many others who are also deserving of a second chance.”
As I said, Trump deserves our gratitude for what he did for Alice Marie Johnson. But he could earn a lot more gratitude if he takes action on other deserving clemency requests and — more importantly — if he decides to work toward doing away with these insanely harsh sentences.