Obama commutes 330 drug sentences on last day

WASHINGTON — In a last major act as president, Barack Obama cut short the sentences of 330 federal inmates convicted of drug crimes on Thursday, bringing his bid to correct what he’s called a systematic injustice to a climactic close.

With his final offer of clemency, Obama brought his total number of commutations granted to 1,715, more than any other president in U.S. history, the White House said. During his presidency Obama ordered free 568 inmates who had been sentenced to life in prison.

The latest commutations include at least 12 people convicted in Texas.

“He wanted to do it. He wanted the opportunity to look at as many as he could to provide relief,” Neil Eggleston, Obama’s White House counsel, said in an interview in his West Wing office. “He saw the injustice of the sentences that were imposed in many situations, and he has a strong view that people deserve a second chance.”

For Obama, it was the last time he planned to exercise his presidential powers in any significant way. At 11 a.m. on Friday, Obama will stand with President-elect Donald Trump as his successor is sworn in.

Even as Obama issued the commutations, the White House had been mostly cleared out to make way for Trump.

The final batch of commutations — more in a single day than on any other day in U.S. history — was the culmination of Obama’s second-term effort to try to remedy the consequences of decades of onerous sentencing requirements that he said had imprisoned thousands of drug offenders for too long. Obama repeatedly called on Congress to pass a broader criminal justice fix, but lawmakers never acted.

To be eligible for a commutation under Obama’s initiative, inmates had to have behaved well in prison and already served 10 years, although some exceptions to the 10-year rule were granted. They also had to be considered nonviolent offenders, although many were charged with firearms violations in relation to their drug crimes.

Obama will leave office without granting commutations or pardons to other prominent offenders who had sought clemency, including accused Army deserter Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl and former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. He also declined to pardon former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.