Life for Pot - Release Nonviolent Drug Offenders
100 Hale Road,
Zanesville, Ohio 43701 ph. # 740 452 2867
To: President Barack Obama
Attorney General Eric Holder
Deputy Attorney General James Cole
February
18, 2014
Dear
President Obama,
This
suggestion is in response to the speech given by Deputy Attorney James Cole at
the New York State Bar Association Meeting on January 30, 2014.
Grant a systemic
or group Presidential Clemency to a unique category of nonviolent federal
inmates. This group would be nonviolent
drug offenders serving sentences of life without parole or de facto life
without parole (attached is an example of such a group clemency).
There
is a crisis in the Criminal Justice System caused by harsh and outdated
sentencing. The ACLU spotlighted the
incarceration of non-violent offenders serving sentences of life without parole
in their report of November 13 2013, A Living Death: Life without Parole for
Nonviolent Offenses. Since its
inception, FAMM has been cautioning about the consequences of harsh sentencing
and mandatory minimum sentences
There
is a common thread running through these nonviolent life without parole
sentences.
1. It seems that a high percentage of these
offenders exercised their sixth amendment right to trial and received a many
fold sentencing enhancement for this decision,
2. Another frequent element in these life
sentences for nonviolent drug offenders is that they were charged and
prosecuted for conspiracy with only cooperating witnesses and informants giving
testimony.
3. Most of these inmates were sentenced
under mandatory minimums and they are aging in place having already served
considerable time.
I
trust that this suggestion will be given thoughtful consideration. It is heartfelt and comes from one who has
become familiar with many of these nonviolent citizens.
This
is a solution for healing the wounds of the war on drugs and people and
will also begin to end the incarceration of non-violent drug offenders.
To: President Barack Obama
Attorney General Eric Holder
Deputy Attorney General James Cole
A
SUGGESTION FOR ADDRESSING OUR PROPENSITY FOR OVERINCARCERATION: CLEMENCY AND
THE WAR ON DRUGS
Grant
a systemic or group Presidential Clemency to a unique category of nonviolent
federal inmates. This group would be
nonviolent drug offenders serving sentences of life without parole or de facto
life without parole.
Model
this clemency on the clemency granted by President Gerald Ford and President
Jimmy Carter who gave clemency to those who had violated the Selective Service
Act during the War in Viet Nam. The War
on Drugs has been an equally divisive war imprisoning a generation of men and
women.
Our prolonged War on Drugs has left this country
with a legacy of thousands of nonviolent offenders serving sentences that may
very well mean death behind prison walls.
There are children, wives, husbands, parents and siblings who long to
have their loved ones home again.
Moreover this War continues to cost billions of tax dollars to support a
policy that is at best suspect and losing the support of citizens it is
designed to keep safe.
The public is no longer complacent about the
sentencing disparity between crack cocaine and cocaine. This disparity has exposed a highly
discriminatory distinction that has led to egregious sentencing for some of the
country’s most vulnerable citizens.
At the present time, the legal status of marijuana
is being challenged state by state. The
cruel irony is that every year there are 700,000 to 800,000 local, state and
federal arrests for marijuana that most of the population sees as no more
harmful than alcohol. This is evidenced
by the fact that marijuana is now being legalized across the country state by
state at a staggering rate.
If the covenant between those who govern and the
citizens who are governed is to be maintained, the costly experiment of the War
on Drugs needs to be seriously addressed.
This suggestion is modeled on a solution that
resolved the legal status of offenders in an equally divisive war, The War in
Viet Nam. Using the power of the
president for systemic pardoning is nothing new. It’s been done frequently since our country’s
first president - George Washington.
We urge the president to use the model of President
Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. After
President Ford pardoned Richard Nixon on September 16, 1970 he initiated a
Clemency Program for those who violated the Selective Act. Ford granted 1,731 pardons to civilians,
those who evaded the draft and 11,872 to military personnel, those who went AWOL. President Jimmy Carter expanded the clemency
healing many wounds and bringing thousands of young men back into the fold of
citizenship.
Our criminal justice system needs a cleansing to
restore faith in the integrity and justness of our law. Non Violent marijuana offenders who have received
life without parole or de facto life sentences for marijuana only offenses
could be granted a group commutation after a significant number of years served
– be it ten years or some other designation.
It could be commutation for those who had served 10 years and or reached
the age of 60.
We are warehousing non-violent old men and women
whose offense was selling a substance that is being reevaluated and legalized.
Nonviolent crack offenders could be addressed in the
same manner. Commute crack sentences
when time served equals the time of incarceration for same weight cocaine
offenses.
Systemic
clemency has been used frequently throughout the history of our country. This is a Presidential tool and responsibility
that is usually used to restore justice when retribution has caused a rift in
the social fabric. The war on drugs is
our contemporary example of this excess.
Alexander Hamilton (Federalist
#74) Presidential Power
“Humanity
and good policy conspire to dictate that the benign prerogative of pardoning
should be as little possible fettered or embarrassed. The criminal code of every country partakes
so much of necessary severity, that without an easy access to exceptions in
favor of unfortunate guilt, justice would wear a countenance too sanguinary and
cruel.”
