NY Times Editorial calls out President Obama's stingy use of pardons/clemency -- and some stats
An editorial in today's New York Times applauds the eight people for whom it was announced last week that President Obama has decided to either pardon or to commute their sentences, even as it calls him out for being stingier than any other President in recent times in granting such pardons and/or commutations. The stats are really quite disturbing, particularly when so many are locked up for staggeringly long periods for non-violent offenses. Here is a list of Presidents from Eisenhower forward, showing the time in office and the number of pardons/commutations granted by each:
Eisenhower - 8 years - 1,157
Kennedy - just under 3 years - 575
Johnson - 4 years - 1,187
Nixon - 5.5 years - 926
Ford - 2.5 years - 405
Carter - 4 years - 566
Reagan - 8 years - 406
G.H.W. Bush - 4 years - 77
Clinton - 8 years - 459
G.W. Bush - 8 years - 200
Obama - 5 years - 61
This is really quite appalling, in my view, and all the more so this year because the President isn't standing for re-election. Where is your compassion, Mr. President?
Here is an excerpt of and link to the Times's editorial:
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By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Published: December 22, 2013[/font]
President Obama’s decision on Thursday to commute the outrageously long drug sentences of eight men and women showed a measure of compassion and common sense. But it also served to highlight the injustice being done to thousands of prisoners under federal sentencing laws.
In issuing the commutations, Mr. Obama blamed the “unfair system” that is keeping thousands behind bars solely because they were sentenced before August 2010, when Congress reduced the vast disparity between the way federal courts punish crack cocaine and powder cocaine offenses. The three-year-old federal law, the Fair Sentencing Act, allows prisoners to petition a judge to shorten their sentence, but it does not apply to nearly 9,000 prisoners who were already serving time when it was passed. While Congress is considering legislation to make the law retroactive, any such fix is far from assured.
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It is important to recognize that while Mr. Obama showed mercy to these eight people, his administration has been the least merciful in modern times. The power to mitigate an overly harsh sentence is squarely in his hands, and yet in nearly five years he has commuted just nine sentences and issued 52 pardons. (A commutation lessens the severity of a punishment, while a pardon forgives the offense itself and restores the rights people lose when they go to prison.)
There is no excuse for this lack of compassion. The risk to public safety is often used to justify denials of clemency, but a preliminary report issued in July by the United States Sentencing Commission found that the recidivism rates for the more than 7,300 prisoners who received sentence reductions under the Fair Sentencing Act were similar to those for inmates who served full sentences.
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