Obama commutes sentences of 214 inmates, including 67 people serving life sentences
Photo of President Barack Obama by Evan El-Amin / Shutterstock.com.
President Obama on Wednesday commuted the sentences of 214 prisoners, the highest number in any single day since at least 1900.
Obama has so far granted 562 commutations in all, more than the previous nine presidents combined, White House counsel Neil Eggleston writes for the White House blog. The Washington Post has a story.
Sixty-seven of the prisoners whose sentences were commuted on Tuesday were serving life sentences, mostly for nonviolent drug crimes, Eggleston says. Some of those granted commutations will be released immediately after processing, while others will have to serve more time.
Clemency Project 2014, a working group that includes the American Bar Association, had supported 118 of the clemency applicants, according to a press release. Clemency Project 2014 project manager Cynthia Roseberry expressed “tremendous gratitude” to Obama.
“With less than six months remaining in President Obama’s term, I know that today’s action will bring hope to so many worthy individuals and their incredible and heroic pro bono attorneys from across the country awaiting a decision by the president on their clemency petitions,” Roseberry said in the press release.
President Barack Obama meets for lunch with formerly incarcerated individuals who have received commutations, at Busboys and Poets in Washington, D.C., March 30, 2016. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
See also:
ABA Journal: “Clemency Project 2014 is out to help prisoners doing excessive time due to inflexible sentencing”
