"Kim Kardashian West pushes White House for more drug sentence commutations"

Because the Supreme Court decided this morning not to decided any of the five remaining criminal law cases on its docket for this Term, I am left to blogging some more about clemency developments.  On that front, the breaking news came through the Today show, which led to this NBC News article with the headline that I have used for the title of this post.  Here are excerpts from the article (with emphasis added):

Kim Kardashian West has given the White House reports on several other nonviolent criminal offenders for possible commutation after she persuaded President Donald Trump to commute the sentence of Alice Marie Johnson, she told "Today" in an exclusive joint interview with Johnson.

Kardashian West said she "saw compassion" when she met with Trump, who as recently as March promised to "seek the death penalty against drug traffickers, where appropriate under current law." "I saw a different side," Kardashian West said Wednesday. "And I think that this is just the beginning of something greater. ... The reality is people change their mind."...

Kardashian West, the star of several reality TV shows and the wife of music superstar Kanye West, visited Trump at the White House with her attorney in late May to plead for Johnson's release, pointing to corrections officers' assessment of her as a model prisoner who became an ordained minister...

In the interview — during which the two women met in person for the first time — Kardashian West said she had assembled a large legal team and was pursuing clemency for several other nonviolent offenders — whose cases she said she has forwarded to the White House for review. "This is like, 'OK, we did this,'" Kardashian West said. "Let's open up this conversation."

Johnson said that because of Kardashian West's advocacy, "the Red Sea has opened" for possible leniency for nonviolent drug offenders, a campaign she said she intends to be part of. "I plan on continuing to magnify this issue," Johnson said. "I'm just an example, but I'm not the only one.

"There are so many others like me whose faces are not here, who are not sitting next to a war angel, who deserve clemency as much as I did and who deserve another chance in life," she said. "And I can't stop. I can't stop."

Regular readers are likely tired of seeing me recall that, way back in 2010, I urged Prez Obama to structurally change the federal clemency system in this law review article.  At the end of that article, I urged the President "to seriously consider creating some form of a 'Clemency Commission' headed by a 'clemency czar' ... [in the form of] an expert body, headed by a special designated official, who is primarily tasked with helping federal officials (and perhaps also state officials) improve the functioning, transparency, and public respect for executive clemency. "  I will be the first one to say that I could never have expected, eight years later during a Donald Trump presidency, that we would have a  Kim Kardashian West emerging as a de facto "clemency czar" serving with a "large legal team" operating as a de facto "Clemency Commission."

Simply put, we live in interesting times.

A few of many recent related posts about recent Trumpian clemency activity:

• Might Kim Kardashian West actually convince Prez Trump to grant clemency to federal drug offender? 
• As Kim Kardashian heads to White House, I hope she advocates for many federal offenders excessively sentenced 
• Prez Trump meets with Kim Kardashian to discuss clemency ... and then tweets that he "Will be giving a Full Pardon to Dinesh D’Souza"
• Prez Trump suggests to reporters there will be more episodes of "Celebrity Clemency" 
• Is all the recent Trump clemency action creating (unhealthy?) excitement among federal prisoners?
• Prez Trump reportedly "obsessed" with pardons and "may sign a dozen or more in the next two months"
• Prez Trump now says he is looking at "3,000 names" for possible clemency and will seek more 
• Any suggestions for Prez Trump's "growing list of potential pardons or commutations"? 
• "Trump asks for clemency names and lists promptly arrive at White House" 
• Former US Pardon Attorney explains why "Trump’s pardons are really not out of the ordinary" 
• Another notable report on clemency suggesting Prez Trump will be "pardoning a lot of people — pardons that even Obama wouldn’t do"