Obama to grant final wave of drug clemencies

Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, seen in May 2015, led the clemency initiative alongside other criminal justice reform efforts.
Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, seen in May 2015, led the clemency initiative alongside other criminal justice reform efforts.

Justice Department officials have completed their review of more than 16,000 clemency petitions filed by federal prisoners over the past two years and sent their last recommendations to President Barack Obama, who is set to grant hundreds more commutations to nonviolent drug offenders during his final days in office.

"Everyone has killed themselves here to get the final recommendations to the president," Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates said. "We were in overdrive. We were determined to live up to our commitment. It was 24-7 over the Christmas break."

U.S. Pardon Attorney Robert Zauzmer has not taken a day off since Yates brought him on in February to sift through the backlog of thousands of petitions. From her home in Atlanta, Yates said she reviewed hundreds of petitions during the holidays.

As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office, Justice officials worry that his administration will dismantle Obama's clemency initiative, which has resulted in the early release of 1,176 drug offenders who were sentenced under the severe mandatory minimum laws passed in the 1980s and 1990s during the nation's "war on drugs." More than 400 were serving life sentences.

Yates said Obama will grant "a significant" number of commutations this week but would not specify a number. Several people close to the process said it will be several hundred.

Those officials also fear that the next attorney general may undo new criminal justice policies. Then-Attorney General Eric Holder put in place a policy three years ago to reserve the most severe drug-offense penalties for high-level or violent traffickers -- and to no longer charge low-level, nonviolent drug offenders with crimes that impose severe mandatory minimum sentences. Justice Department data indicate that prosecutors are now focusing on more-serious drug cases, and there have been fewer charges that carry mandatory sentences.

Neither Trump nor his attorney general nominee, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., has said what actions might be taken on drug-charging policy or clemency, but during his campaign, Trump criticized Obama's initiative to grant commutations.

"Some of these people are bad dudes," he said. "And these are people who are out, they're walking the streets. Sleep tight, folks."

When Yates arrived at Justice in the spring of 2015, the clemency program was overwhelmed and bogged down. Advocates criticized the inefficient process and urged the Obama administration to pick up the pace for the inmates waiting for relief from sentences they called unfair.

Early last year, more than 9,000 clemency petitions were pending, and the pardon attorney at the time was so frustrated at having what she called "so few attorneys and support staff" that she quit.

Yates brought on Zauzmer, a longtime federal prosecutor, who prioritized applications so that Justice lawyers could focus on inmates who met the criteria: Inmates had to have served at least 10 years; had no significant criminal history; had no connection to gangs, cartels or organized crime; and probably would have received a "substantially lower sentence" if convicted today.

Not all inmates who have been granted clemency will be released immediately or even in a number of months.

At the end of August, Yates announced that she would review and give Obama a recommendation on every petition that was still in the department's possession at that time -- about 6,195 petitions from drug offenders. She did that and included several hundred petitions received through Sept. 15, after her cutoff date. She also reviewed petitions that came in as late as Nov. 30 from drug offenders serving life sentences. By last Friday, the final number of petitions reviewed was 16,776.

A Section on 01/17/2017

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