President Barack Obama issued clemency for 231 prisoners Monday. With 78 pardons and 153 commutations of sentences, the grants of mercy were the most ever announced on a single day. They brought the total number of such acts in Obama’s two terms of office to 1,324. That’s more than the previous 11 presidents combined. Here’s the complete list. Almost all the grants of clemency were for prisoners convicted under ridiculous drug laws and related low-level, non-violent crimes.
A large number of the commutations Obama announced Monday reduced life sentences to lesser terms in prison. The president has now shortened a total of 395 life sentences.
Pardons erase any legal liability for crimes. But, as Michael D. Shear reports:
Commutations are different. They typically shorten the sentences of people in prison, often by many years, but do not eliminate a conviction or restore rights lost, such as the right to vote. In many cases, the people selected to have their sentences commuted have participated in drug treatment, or educational or vocational technology courses while in prison.
One example: Anthony DeWayne Gillis of Supply, Va., was convicted in 2005 of possessing cocaine, making false statements and possessing a firearm in “furtherance of drug trafficking.” He was sentenced to 145 years in prison. Mr. Obama’s grant of commutation reduces the sentence to 20 years.
For two decades, the sentencing of those convicted under these laws has typically been far more stringent for people of color than for whites even though legislative changes in 2010 reduced the 100:1 ratio of sentencing for powder cocaine and crack cocaine, which previously had a disparate impact on African Americans.
Even though the total grants of mercy are far and away more than any other president has given, it was originally thought several thousand prisoners would quickly be aided by the federal clemency initiative designed as part of former Attorney General Eric Holder’s Smart on Crime project to bring a small measure of fairness and sanity to sentencing. But bureaucracy intervened.
In January 2016, after just one year heading the Office of the Pardon Attorney, Deborah Leff resigned, stating in her letter of resignation that the Department of Justice had "not fulfilled its commitment to provide the resources necessary for my office to make timely and thoughtful recommendations on clemency to the president." At the time, the office had just 10 lawyers.
Robert A. Zauzmer is in the post now. Although the office has hired another 16 attorneys this year, it is still overwhelmed.
As of October 1, there were 1,920 petitions for pardon being reviewed and 11,355 pleas for commutation. In May, that latter figure was 10,621. Given the staff shortage, that means each lawyer had more than 500 cases to thoroughly review in three months—an impossibility.
How many prisoners like Anthony DeWayne Gillis will be freed under the Trump administration with Jefferson B. Sessions III in the attorney general’s post is uncertain. It would not be at all surprising if the program is ended altogether.