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Editorial: Obama's good call on clemency

 
Published Oct. 3, 2016

Nowhere is President Barack Obama's Clemency Initiative having a greater impact than in Central Florida. The initiative, which has freed hundreds of federal prisoners serving long sentences for nonviolent crimes, has the support of the area's U.S. attorney as well as a dedicated cadre of lawyers furiously filing clemency petitions for review before the president leaves office in January. But the effort doesn't have to end with Obama's term, and the next president should continue commuting sentences for people whose long-ago crimes do not warrant keeping them behind bars.

Beginning in 2014, Obama directed the Justice Department to invite petitions from prisoners who have served at least 10 years for nonviolent offenses, would be facing less prison time if sentenced under current guidelines and have behaved well in prison. So far, Obama has freed 673 people nationwide, far more than his recent predecessors. It's an admirable piece of his legacy, its biggest flaw being a cumbersome bureaucratic framework that has prevented more people from gaining release.

Many who have won clemency were low-level drug offenders serving mandatory minimum sentences under tough guidelines from the war on drugs era. Some cases drew automatic life sentences because the defendant had prior drug offenses. They also include defendants caught in the punishment disparity for crack cocaine vs. powder cocaine, which led to disproportionately long sentences for African-Americans. In 2010, Congress passed and Obama signed into law the Fair Sentencing Act, which helped correct that imbalance. But thousands of prisoners are still serving time under the old guidelines. They are prime candidates for commutation or clemency.

Tampa Bay Times staff writer Laura C. Morel recently reported that Florida leads the nation in clemency cases, most of which originated in the judicial district that includes the Tampa Bay area. The region's ports and Florida's outsize role in drug smuggling operations no doubt are factors. And local attorneys are stepping up, including some who do not normally practice criminal law, to file the paperwork and make the case for clemency for no charge. The individual stories are gripping: prisoners who thought they would die behind bars walking free; defendants whose lives were eclipsed by mandatory minimums now seeing that injustice corrected. The U.S. attorney in Tampa, Lee Bentley, rightly pointed out that beyond the compassionate case for freeing these inmates there is an economic one. The United States simply cannot afford to warehouse people for life who pose no threat to public safety.

The Obama administration has made significant progress in criminal justice reform, and the president's clemency initiative may be the most important of all. But the work has only barely begun. Some 36,000 federal prisoners have petitioned for clemency — far more than the White House can possibly review in three months. It is incumbent upon the next president to take up this historic cause.