Latest class of Obama pardons feels vindicated
As president’s term comes to an end, he issues some rare gifts
They were conWASHINGTON victed of drug dealing, eavesdropping, bid-rigging, embezzlement, auto theft, bank fraud, gambling, destroying mail, firearms offenses, counterfeiting, shoplifting — and the illegal importation of tortoises.
They’re members of the largest class of presidential pardons granted by President Obama.
As Obama has put more resources into using his clemency power to shorten mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes, he’s granted fewer pardons than any two-term president since George Washington.
Nearly 2,000 pardon cases remain pending, many since the early days of the Obama administration. As President-elect Trump brings an uncertain pardon policy to the White House, the eleventh-hour grants of presidential mercy are especially sweet to the 78 people who received them just before Christmas.
Unlike a commutation, which shortens a prison sentence but leaves other consequences intact, a full pardon represents a legal forgiveness for the crime and restores all civil rights. Many of those who received pardons said the public vindication means more to them than any of the rights they regained.
Serena Nunn got the news of her pardon from her lawyer, Sam Sheldon, who asked her, “What do you want more than anything else in the world right now?”
“The symbolism that comes with a pardon, I’m just so blessed,” she said.
Nunn was 19 when she was caught dealing drugs with her boyfriend. “I’ve never tried to come across as some super-innocent person,” she said. “You just don’t think about consequences or that certain things will happen to you.”
She received a 15-year sentence in 1990 and served more than 10 of them before President Clinton commuted her sentence in 2000. She finished college and — with the help of unprecedented character references from Clinton and the judge who sentenced her — was admitted to the University of Michigan law school. She’s a public defender in Atlanta.
Obama granted her a full pardon.
Such a double dose of clemency is rare but not unprecedented. P.S. Ruckman Jr., a political scientist who has tracked clemency from President Washington to Obama, estimates there have been more than 100 such cases in history, including publishing heir Patty Hearst, who was convicted of bank robbery in 1976, released from prison by President Carter in 1979 and pardoned by Clinton on his last day in office in 2001.
“What I will say is, both of them are extremely important, and everybody who’s been affected by President Obama’s decision to grant as many as he’s done are extremely grateful,” Nunn said.
In 1970, Sala Udin was convicted of transporting a firearm — and some untaxed homemade alcohol — across state lines into Kentucky. For that, he received a five-year sentence.
To understand why Obama granted him a pardon, it helps to know what Udin was doing in Kentucky in the first place:
Udin, whose given name was Samuel Wesley Howze, was returning north with a car full of civil rights activists who had helped African Americans register to vote in Mississippi.
“I could not prove it, but there was no doubt in my mind at the time that we were followed out of Mississippi. They knew who they were tailing. And it had to do with our civil rights activities. That was undisputed in my mind,” Udin said.
As for the contraband, Udin said, “We would rather have the police catch us with a gun than have the Klan catch us on a dark, lonely road without it.”
A bit more mischievously, he added, “Also, nobody in Mississippi passes up the opportunity for Mississippi moonshine.”
Udin returned to Pittsburgh, where he became a community organizer and served three terms on Pittsburgh’s City Council.
“Whenever I ran for office — I ran for office three times, and every time I ran for office, the opponent running against me tried to get me kicked off the ballot, based on the fact that I was a convicted felon,” he said. “Now, they’d have to say I’m a pardoned convicted felon. That is such an important personal vindication for me.
“The conviction was a blemish on that history. The pardon wipes the slate clean,” he said.