Koch urges action on clemency cases

Few sentences pared since program began

Billionaire industrialist Charles Koch and top officials in his company are calling for the Obama administration to release from prison the thousands of non-violent offenders who qualify for clemency under a Justice Department initiative.

The push to shorten long federal sentences, mostly for drug offenses, has had a sluggish start since it was announced in April 2014. President Obama has commuted the sentences of only a few dozen inmates since the program took effect.

“I’m not faulting the administration,” Mark Holden, Koch In- dustries’ senior vice president and general counsel told USA TODAY on Monday. But, he said, “people got their hopes up. Why isn’t it going any faster?”

Koch Industries officials did not offer specific policy changes but hope their statement of unequivocal support for the clemency initiative will focus attention on the program. “When Charles says something … it helps to highlight the issue and bring other like-minded people to the table,” Holden said.

Charles Koch, whose multibillion-dollar industrial conglomerate is one of the nation’s largest private companies, has an outsized influence in Republican politics.

“We’re going to be supportive of those candidates who are supportive of the issues that are important to us,” Holden said Monday, when asked what role the clemency issue might play in the 2016 race.

Criminal justice change, he said, is a key part of Koch’s “freedom framework.”

Holden noted that Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas have pushed for changes to the system. Both have signed on to a Senate bill that would cut mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses.

“This is increasingly not a left or right issue,” said P.S. Ruckman, a political science professor at Illinois’ Rock Valley College and editor of the Pardon Power blog. “President Obama has a real, golden opportunity to exercise clemency without facing a hyper law-and-order backlash.”

Lawyers involved in the clemency initiative say the process has been slowed, in part, because the eligibility standards may be too tough for the inmates to meet.

To be eligible, inmates must be non-violent offenders who already have served 10 years and would have received shorter prison terms had they been sentenced under today’s laws.

They also must have a record of good conduct in prison and no significant criminal history.

“I’m not faulting the administration. (But) people got their hopes up. Why isn’t it going any faster?”

Mark Holden, Koch Industries’ senior vice president and general counsel