This article is from the source 'washpo' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/justice-department-outlines-criteria-for-clemency-to-nonviolent-prison-inmates/2014/04/23/1c5e9932-cad7-11e3-95f7-7ecdde72d2ea_story.html?wprss=rss_national-security

The article has changed 4 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 0 Version 1
Justice Department outlines criteria for clemency to nonviolent prison inmates Justice Department outlines criteria for clemency to nonviolent prison inmates
(about 11 hours later)
The Obama administration will begin its effort to offer clemency to nonviolent prison inmates by focusing on offenders who have served at least 10 years of their federal drug sentence, do not have a significant criminal history and do not have ties to gangs or cartels. An Obama administration initiative to encourage nonviolent drug offenders in federal prison to seek clemency is likely to trigger tens of thousands of petitions and the government could be processing applications for the next three years, according to lawyers and civil rights activists.
Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole planned to lay out six criteria Wednesday that Justice Department lawyers will consider when reviewing clemency requests Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole on Wednesday laid out the six criteria that Justice Department lawyers will consider when they review clemency requests from some of the country’s 219,000 federal inmates. The initiative is part of an effort to reduce the prison population and end disparities in drug sentencing that, for instance, led those trafficking in crack cocaine to receive much longer sentences than people dealing the same substance in powder form.
from as many as thousands of federal inmates serving time for drug offenses. The applicants must also be inmates who would likely have received a “substantially lower sentence” if convicted of the same federal offense today. The low-level offenders also must have demonstrated good conduct in prison, Cole planned to say, according to an advance copy of remarks. “For our criminal justice system to be effective, it needs to not only be fair but it also must be perceived as being fair,” Cole said. “Older, stringent punishments that are out of line with sentences imposed under today’s laws erode people’s confidence in our criminal justice system.”
“We are launching this clemency initiative in order to quickly and effectively identify appropriate candidates, candidates who have a clean prison record, do not present a threat to public safety and were sentenced under out-of-date laws that have since been changed, and are no longer seen as appropriate,” Cole planned to say, according to the remarks. Offenders seeking clemency will have to have served at least 10 years of their sentence, have no significant criminal history, and no connection to gangs, cartels or organized crime. Applicants also must be inmates who probably would have received a “substantially lower sentence” if convicted of the same offense today. And to be eligible, they must have demonstrated good conduct in prison.
The Fair Sentencing Act, which President Obama signed in 2010, reduced the disparity between convictions for crack and powder cocaine. But thousands of inmates sentenced before that law are still serving federally mandated sentences for trafficking or possession with intent to traffic crack cocaine. Those inmates are expected to be applicants for clemency, but other federal drug offenders are also eligible. “We will get tens of thousands of applications,” said Julie Stewart, president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums. “This is a very complicated, many-layered project. It will go on until the end of the Obama administration.”
“While those sentenced prior to the Fair Sentencing Act may be the most obvious candidates, this initiative is not limited to crack offenders,” Cole planned to say. “For our criminal justice system to be effective, it needs to not only be fair, but it also must be perceived as being fair. Older, stringent punishments that are out of line with sentences imposed under today’s laws erode people’s confidence in our criminal justice system.” The Justice Department is planning to send surveys to all federal inmates by May 2 to start identifying applicants. Cole also sent a letter to the 93 U.S. attorneys asking for their help in selecting meritorious clemency candidates.
The Bureau of Prisons will send a notification to federal prisons next week about the clemency initiative and the availability of pro bono lawyers to inmates who want to apply. The Bureau of Prisons will send the completed surveys to Clemency Project 2014, an umbrella organization that will sift through the forms to find the ones that appear to meet the Justice Department’s criteria. The Clemency Project — composed of Stewart’s organization, the federal public defenders, the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Bar Association and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers — is working to recruit and train lawyers how to screen inmates for eligibility.
The Justice Department is also reassigning dozens of lawyers with backgrounds in both prosecution and defense to its understaffed pardons office in order to handle the expected wave of requests from inmates. Cole is expected to announce an attorney Wednesday to replace the current head of the pardons office, Ron Rodgers, who is resigning. Prisoners will be offered pro bono lawyers to help them prepare their clemency applications.
“Finding these worthy candidates within our large prison population of over 200,000 will be no easy feat,” Cole planned to say. Thousands of inmates are serving sentences for drug crimes and have already served 10 years of their sentences, but Cole planned to say that “a good number of these inmates” will not meet the six required criteria to receive clemency. “Our federal sentencing laws have shattered families and wasted millions of dollars,” Vanita Gupta, the ACLU’s deputy legal director. “Too many people, particularly people of color, have been locked up for far too long for nonviolent offenses. The president now has a momentous opportunity to correct these injustices in individual cases.”
Last week, White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler said President Obama directed the Justice Department to improve its process for clemency recommendations to the White House and try to recruit more applicants from the federal prison population of low-level drug offenders. For some of the activists, the issue is deeply personal. Stewart’s brother, Jeff, was sent to federal prison for a mandatory five years for growing marijuana.
“We are dedicating significant time and resources to ensure that all potentially eligible petitions are reviewed and then processed quickly to ensure timely justice,” Cole said. He had cultivated 365 six-inch marijuana plants in his garage in Washington state, where the drug is now legal. She thought what he did was “stupid” but assumed he would get off with a relatively light sentence because it was “only marijuana.”
The unprecedented campaign to free nonviolent offenders, part of a larger effort by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to foster equity in criminal sentencing, will begin immediately and continue over the next two years, Justice Department officials said. “The judge said, ‘I don’t want to give you this much time but I have no choice because Congress has determined your sentence when they passed the mandatory sentencing laws for drug crimes,’ ” Stewart said. “That was the spark that ignited my mission. I always thought judges judge and determine the punishment that fits the crime. But the judge couldn’t do anything about my brother’s sentence.”
With the help of two lawyer friends, Stewart found others affected by the strict mandatory sentences, organized meetings for people nationwide to share their experiences and began working to change the laws through Families against Mandatory Minimums, which she founded in 1991.
“When I started my group, sentencing reform was such a fringe issue,” she said. “Nobody knew anything about it and nobody cared. We’ve been working so hard for so many years to build bipartisan support. People are serving decades behind bars for nonviolent mistakes they made in their 20s.”
To handle the expected flood of applications, the Justice Department is detailing dozens of lawyers to the Pardon Attorney’s Office. Senior Justice Department lawyer Deborah Leff will be taking over as pardon attorney from Ronald L. Rodgers, who has headed the office since 2008.
“What the Obama administration has done today is breathe new life into this moribund office, which has done practically nothing for a long time,” Stewart said.
The Washington Post and ProPublica published a series of articles beginning in 2011 that showed significant racial disparities in the awarding of presidential pardons. One of the articles showed how Rodgers withheld key facts from the White House in the high-profile clemency case of Clarence Aaron, a first-time offender serving a triple life sentence for a minor role in a drug crime.
Rodgers engaged in “conduct that fell substantially short of the high standards expected of Department of Justice employees and the duty he owed the President of the United States,” said Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz in a report requested by Congress.