Joliet case illustrates sentencing unfairness

They were dubbed the Hickory Street murderers. Four youths— the oldest not yet 30— charged with luring Eric Glover, 22, and Terrence Rankins, 22, to their deaths in order to rob them of money to pay for cigarettes, liquor and gas.

As if the wanton motive wasn’t horrific enough, police alleged the co-conspirators had sex on the murdered bodies.

Bethany McKee, 20 and Joshua Miner, 26, were convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Alisa Massaro, 20, who took a plea deal in exchange for her testimony against the others, got 10 years in prison, but could be back on the street in five years. Adam Landerman, 21, is still awaiting trial.

I want you to keep this macabre crime and its punishment in mind when you consider the plight of JesseWebster, a Chicago man who is serving a life sentence in federal prison on a 1994 nonviolent drug bust.

He was 26 years old when he set up an aborted drug deal to purchase cocaine from an associate who was cooperating with the DEA. Webster was later convicted of a conspiracy, attempt to possess with intent to distribute cocaine and for filing false tax returns.

“Even though no drugs or money were found and the fact that I am a nonviolent first-time offender, I still qualified for life in prison under the then-sentencing drug laws,” Webster wrote in an “Open Letter to the Young Generation” that he hopes to have published.

Jessica Ring Amunson, a young attorney with the law firm of Jenner & Block, became acquainted with Webster’s case while working on an unrelated case before the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.

“When I learned more about his circumstances and that he was serving a life sentence for a nonviolent drug crime, I just couldn’t understand it,” Amunson told me in a telephone interview on Friday.

“It seemed to me such an injustice that I approached the firm about me representing him pro bono in seeking clemency, and the firm was very happy to support me and provide resources,” she said.

Although sentencing guidelines were de- clared non-binding as a result of a Supreme Court ruling in 2005, and that helped many defendants, those sentenced before that decision were not affected.

“So at this point, [Webster] has exhausted all of his appeals and the only thing left is to ask President [Barack] Obama to commute his sentence,” his attorney said.

Jenner & Block has filed a petition on Webster’s behalf with the U.S. office of the pardon attorney. While there is no time frame for the petition to be addressed, clemency petitions are normally granted during the months of November and December.

“We have secured the support of the judge who sentenced him, and the prosecutors who prosecuted him, all of whom said a life sentence for his crime is a punishment that does not fit the crime. A more appro-

JesseWebster is serving a life sentence in federal prison on a 1994 nonviolent drug bust.

priate sentence is approximately 20 years, a time that he has already served,” Amunson told me.

Obama has “granted clemency at a lower rate than any modern president,” according to a review of pardons data by ProPublica in 2012.

But Amunson is hopeful an announcement earlier this year that the Department of Justice is focusing on the clemency process could help Webster.

“They announced some new criteria that they are going to look at and Jesse easily fits all of the criteria,” she said.

It is impossible for me to reconcile Webster’s punishment with the punishment in the Hickory Street murder case.

When it is imposed on cold-blooded murderers— even ones as youthful as the Hickory Street murderers— the finality of a life sentence is tragic, but just.

Webster’s life sentence represents a distortion of justice.