"Judge urges Obama to cut coke dealer's sentence"

The title of this post is the headline of this effective new piece by Josh Gerstein now up at Politico.  Here is how it starts:

A federal judge is calling attention to President Obama's uncertain stance on executive clemency by making a rare judicial plea for a presidential commutation of a drug convict. In an opinion issued Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Paul Friedman urged President Barack Obama to reduce the 27-year sentence Friedman imposed on Byron McDade back in 2002 after a jury found him guilty of conspiring to distribute more than five kilos of cocaine.

"Twenty-seven years is a very long time," Friedman wrote. "None of Mr. McDade's former co-defendants or co-conspirators received more than a seven-and-one-half year sentence. While each of them pled guilty and provided substantial assistance to the government by testifying against Mr. McDade (and some provided assistance in other ways), this sentence is disproportionate."

Friedman said that when McDade was sentenced, federal sentencing guidelines required the 324-month term. Those guidelines became advisory as the result of a Supreme Court decision in 2005, but Friedman said he had no authority to re-open McDade's sentence even though someone sentenced after him for the same offense may have gotten a much shorter term.

However, in an unusual move, the judge made a public appeal to Obama to use his constitutional power to shorten the convict's sentence. "The Court urges the President to consider executive clemency for Mr. McDade and to reduce Mr. McDade's sentence to fifteen years in prison followed by...supervised release," the judge wrote.

Judge Friedman's full opinion in US v. McDade is available at this link.  Here is more of what Judge Friedman had to say at the close of the opinion to explain his concerns with the sentence the defendant is serving:

Indeed, had Mr. McDade not exercised his constitutional right to a jury trial and instead pled guilty, the likely sentence under even a mandatory Guideline regime would have been approximately 168 months, approximately half the sentence the Court was required to impose after Mr. McDade was found guilty at trial.  Had the Sentencing Guidelines been advisory in 2002, or if Booker were retroactive now, the Court would vary substantially from the Guideline sentence of 324 months.  This Court, however, is without authority to reduce Mr. McDade’s sentence at this juncture.

As regular readers know, President Obama's failure to grant even a single clemency through now his second 100 days in office should keep McDade from expecting too much in response to Judge Friedman's call for presidential action.  Nevertheless, I think it is useful (and could eventually be consequential) for judges to vocally express concerns with particular sentencing outcomes they may be obliged by law to impose or uphold.

Some related posts on clemency:

• A simple plea for Prez Obama: grant at least a single clemency in your first 100 days
• Historical evidence that it is NOT too early to start demanding clemencies from President Obama
• Still waiting ... and waiting ... and waiting ... on the clemency front
• Another public and potent call to reinvigorate the pardon power
• When will President Obama start acting like President Lincoln when it comes to the clemency power?
• The sad (unpardonable) state of compassion in the Bush Administration
• ACS issue brief on the pardon power
• Latest FSR issue on "Learning from Libby"
• "The Fall of the Presidential Pardon"
• What might 2009 have in store for . . . executive clemency?