#OBAMA PARDONED PEOPLE THAT HAVE DONE TIME CRACK#  The project, which also took credit for recommending four of the 46 prisoners whose sentences Obama shortened last July, was formed last year after the Justice Department's signaled a new openness to commutation petitions. Trigg, also a first-time offender, got 15 years for selling meth with her boyfriend in Missouri.Д¬lemency Project 2014, a joint effort by FAMM, theВ American Bar Association, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Federal Public and Community Defenders, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL), says Friday's batch of commutations included 27 applicants recommended by the project's lawyers. Angelos, a first-time offender,В got a 55-year mandatory minimum for three small-time marijuana transactions, totaling a pound and a half, because he allegedly possessed a gun at the time of the sales. Timothy Tyler, Weldon Angelos, Melissa Trigg, and far too many others are still serving excessively long sentences that should be commuted as well.' Tyler got a life sentence for mailing LSD to a government informant. For that reason, we commend him for showing more mercy than his predecessors. 'President Obama is the first president in decades to use it as the founders intended. 'American presidents have had the power to show mercy since the founding of our Republic,' says FAMM President Julie Stewart. #OBAMA PARDONED PEOPLE THAT HAVE DONE TIME CRACK# The commutation recipients include seven prisoners whose cases have been highlighted by Families Against Mandatory Minimums.В Among them are Sharanda Jones, a first-time offender who received a life sentence in 1999 for transporting crack from Houston to a Dallas suburb, and Sandra Avery, a Floridian who received a life sentence in 2007 for possessing 50 grams of crack (less than two ounces) after prosecutors sought an enhanced penalty based on three prior convictions for possessing small amounts of crack that were together worth $100. Twelve of the prisoners were released on Friday. The shortened penalties included 40 life sentences, which Obama changed to terms ranging from nine to 25 years. The rest of the prisoners in this latest batch of commutations were convicted of offenses involving methamphetamine (10), cocaine powder (eight), marijuana (five), cocaine and heroin (one), unspecified controlled substances (five), gun possession by a felon (one), and bank robbery (one).  Thousands of people therefore continue to serve sentences that almost everyone now agrees are too long. But it did not make the changes retroactive.  After years of complaints about penalties that arbitrarily treated people caught with the smoked form of cocaine much more severely than people caught with the snorted form, Congress substantially shortened crack sentences in 2010. And unless Obama picks up his pace a lot, it looks like he will fall far short of issuing the 'thousands' of commutations that an unnamed 'senior administration official' last year said might be seen by the end of his administration.ДЄ large majority of the prisoners who received commutations on Friday-64 out of 95-are crack cocaine offenders. But since Obama has received a lot more applications for shorter sentences that his predecessors did, his record looks much less impressive if you consider commutations as a percentage of petitions. That's a pretty striking improvement for a president who granted only one commutation in his first term. In fact, he has shortened almost as many sentences as Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Obama has now shortened more sentences than any president since Lyndon Johnson. Last Friday, President Obama issued 95 commutations, more than doubling his total so far.

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