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| The Idiot. |
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.
"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 as
second chance."
For Obama, it was the last time he planned to
exercise his presidential powers in any significant way. At noon on
Friday, Obama will stand with President-elect Donald Trump as his
successor is sworn in and Obama's chapter in history comes to an end.
Even as Obama issued the commutations, the White
House had been mostly cleared out to make way for Trump. In between
carrying out their last duties, the few remaining staffers were packing
up belongings as photos of Obama were taken down from the walls of the
West Wing corridors.
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.
For Bernard Smith, it's a long-awaited chance to start over after 13 years away from his wife and children.
Smith was working at a restaurant in Maryland in 2002
when his brother asked him to obtain marijuana for a drug deal. Though
it was his brother who obtained the crack cocaine that the brothers then
sold along with the marijuana to undercover officers, Smith was charged
with the cocaine offense, too.
His 22-year sentence was far longer than his
brother's, owing to what the court called Smith's "extensive criminal
history" prior to the drug bust. Smith still had 10 years on his
sentence when he was notified Thursday that the president, on his last
day in office, was giving him another chance.
"He's looking to turn his life around," said Michelle
Curth, his attorney. "He's a good person who, like so many people, got
involved in something he's been punished for already."
Curth said that Smith had learned his lesson and
owned up to his crime — he asked for a commutation, she noted, not a
pardon, which would have erased the original conviction. She said Smith
hopes to get licensed in heating and air conditioning maintenance and
has lined up family members to help with his adjustment.
But freedom for Smith is still two years away. Rather
than release him immediately, Obama directed that he be set free in
January 2019 — two years after Obama has left office — and only if Smith
enrolls in a residential drug treatment program.
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 personally reviewed the case of every inmate
who received a commutation, often poring over case files in the evenings
or calling his attorneys into his office to discuss specifics. Although
a backlog of cases remains as Obama leaves office, his administration
reviewed all applications that came in by an end-of-August deadline,
officials said.
Eggleston said Obama had been particularly motivated
to grant clemency to inmates who had turned themselves around in prison.
He said one inmate had trained and obtained a commercial driver's
license through a prison program, despite having a life sentence that
all but assured he'd never get to use it.
"The ones who really stuck home for the president and
me are the ones who got their GED, they worked, they took courses in
anger management, they took courses in getting over drug abuse issues,
they remained in contract with their families," Eggleston said.
Obama has long called for phasing out strict
sentences for drug offenses, arguing they lead to excessive punishment
and incarceration rates unseen in other developed countries.
With Obama's support, the Justice Department in recent years directed
prosecutors to rein in the use of harsh mandatory minimums.
Earlier in the week, Obama commuted most of the rest
of convicted leaker Chelsea Manning's sentence, arguing the Army
intelligence analyst had shown remorse and already served a long
sentence.
Yet 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.
