"Clemency Reform: We're Still Waiting"

The title of this post is the headline of this recent commentary by Julie Stewart, the President of Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM), appearing at The Huffington Post.  Here are excerpts:

A year ago, The Washington Post and ProPublica reported that the Obama administration was set to reverse its poor record on clemency. At the time, President Obama was coming under growing pressure from sentencing law experts, sentencing reform groups, and civil rights organizations for granting fewer commutations and pardons than any president in modern history. Frustration was high because, in 2008, then-candidate Obama had railed against lengthy mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent offenders, a growing population within the federal prison system.

In an apparent attempt to address this frustration as Election Day 2012 approached, an unnamed administration official told the Post-ProPublica, "There will be 76 days between the election and inauguration for the president to exercise his [clemency] power." Advisers said he planned to act whether he won or lost the election.

It didn't happen. Since winning reelection, President Obama has not commuted a single sentence. Instead, during the first nine months of fiscal year 2013, the president has denied 2,232 requests for commutation, more than any other president in history denied in a single year.

Last week, the Justice Department sent a letter to the U.S. Sentencing Commission warning that the growing federal prison population was causing severe budgetary problems. The Department said policymakers were confronted with a stark choice: either "reduce the prison population and prison spending" or be prepared for "fewer prosecutors to bring charges, fewer agents to investigate federal crimes, less support to state and local criminal justice partners, less support for treatment, prevention and intervention programs, and cuts along a range of other criminal justice priorities."

Rather than jeopardize public safety by cutting investigators and prosecutors, the Department recommended that the Sentencing Commission (and Congress) reduce drug penalties for low-level offenders and "focus severe penalties on serious and repeat drug traffickers." The question our country faces, the Department wrote, is "how will those involved in crime policy ensure that every dollar invested in public safety is spent in the most productive way possible?"

If the administration wants to make certain every dollar of our nation's public safety budget is spent productively, as it should, President Obama should begin to exercise his executive clemency authority. For starters, he might look at the 2,000 individuals serving sentences of life without parole for drug crimes. He also should look at the 8,800 individuals serving lengthy crack cocaine sentences that were based on a formula that was repudiated by Congress when it passed the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010....

The pardon power can't fix 30 years of flawed policy, but it can provide meaningful -- and best of all, immediate -- relief to thousands who have already served long sentences and who pose no threat to public safety. It has been a year since the White House said it would get moving on clemency. We're still waiting.

I believe Julie wrote this commentary before the President made his remarks about the Martin/Zimmerman case on Friday.  But Prez Obama said just days ago that the "African American community is also knowledgeable that there is a history of racial disparities in the application of our criminal laws -- everything from the death penalty to enforcement of our drug laws." Rather than simply talk about what he views as "history of racial disparities in the application of our criminal laws," perhaps Prez Obama might think about actually doing something about them by, for example, granting at least a few commutations to at least a few federal prisoners still serving extreme crack sentences under the pre-FSA 100-1 drug quantity sentencing ratio.

Sadly, it seems yet again that our nation's first African-American President (as well as its first African-American Attorney General) are far more eager to talk the talk than to walk the walk when it comes to criminal justice reform.

UPDATE:  I have just seen that Mark Osler has forcefully argued that the Obama Administration should be getting to work on crack clemencies rather than fly-speck the Zimmerman case in this commentary at MSNBC headlined "The speck in Florida’s eye, and the log in DOJ’s."  Here is one key paragraph from Mark's commentary:

For this administration to re-open the Zimmerman case, with all the resources that will take, would be the equivalent of pointing at the speck in Florida’s eye while ignoring the log in its own. While the Trayvon Martin case involved one tragedy, more than 5,000 African-Americans remain in prison under lengthy federal sentences under a sentencing regime which has now been rejected by all three branches of government. That scheme — which sentenced defendants to the same mandatory minimum term for either 500 grams of powder cocaine or just 5 grams of crack — was rejected by the administration, by the courts, and finally in 2010 by Congress, which reduced the ratio from 100-1 to 18-1.