Obama clemency grant largest since ’60s
President Obama granted clemency Monday to 46 men and women who have spent years and faced decades in prison for non-violent, drug offenses.
“Their punishments didn’t fit the crime, and if they had been sentenced under today’s laws, almost all of them would have served their time,” Obama said in an announcement video posted on the White House website.
The 46 commutations — the most granted by a president in a single day since at least the Lyndon Johnson administration of the 1960s — all involved drug crimes, mostly cocaine trafficking. The prisoners, including Katrina Smith, mother of Denver Broncos wide receiver Demaryius Thomas, will be freed by Nov. 10.
Obama said the people whose sentences he commuted were not “hardened criminals,” but “the overwhelming majority had been sentenced to at least 20 years,” while 14 received life sentences for non-violent drug offenses. “I believe ... that in its heart America is a nation of second chances,” Obama said. The president also called on Congress to change inequities in federal sentencing laws, kicking off a week of events devoted to the criminal justice system. It includes a speech Tuesday to the NAACP national convention and a first-ever presidential visit to a federal prison Thursday in Oklahoma.
Obama has now commuted sentences of 89 people. He has granted full pardons to another 64 people. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., chided Obama for engaging in “publicity stunts” rather than working directly with Congress. “Commuting the sentences of a few drug offenders is a move designed to spur headlines, not meaningful reform,” he said.