Posted on 05/27/2012 5:53:43 AM PDT by Kaslin
As a candidate for president in 2008, Barack Obama pledged to "immediately" review federal mandatory minimum sentences "to see where we can be smarter on crime and reduce the ineffective warehousing of nonviolent drug offenders." Obama also had written memoirs, in which he admitted to using marijuana and cocaine -- "maybe a little blow when you could afford it" -- as a teen. And he's the first black president.
Linda Aaron, a black Alabama grandmother, voted for Obama. For years, Aaron had been hoping that President George W. Bush would commute the obscenely long prison sentence of her son, Clarence. Because of Draconian federal mandatory minimum sentencing, a federal judge sentenced Aaron when he was 24 to three sentences of life without parole for a first-time nonviolent drug offense.
Linda Aaron fully expected that if Bush didn't use his presidential pardon power to commute her son's sentence -- and Bush did not -- Obama would do so. It still hasn't happened. Clarence Aaron is now 43.
The candidate who pledged to look at sentence reductions for nonviolent drug offenders became the president who, after rejecting nearly 3,800 requests, has commuted only one sentence while in office.
This column is not simply about Clarence Aaron. It is about a justice system that cannot correct itself when it knows that it has gone overboard.
Aaron broke the law in 1992, when he connected cocaine dealers for two very large drug deals. He deserved to go to prison. But what country puts first-time nonviolent 20-somethings behind bars for the rest of their natural lives?
There is nothing just about a system that metes out shorter prison time to co-defendants who are drug dealers (all but one of whom are now free in this case), than to a college student with no criminal record.
There is something perverse about a system that rewards drug dealers for pleading guilty and testifying against others, while it shows no mercy toward amateurs who don't know how to game the system.
I've heard the arguments as to why Aaron doesn't deserve a pardon. Drug deals are inherently violent. In refusing to plead guilty, Aaron refused to accept responsibility for his criminal actions. (That's true, and because Aaron lied on the stand, the judge lengthened Aaron's sentence.)
If you believe those arguments, as some people of good faith do, you still have to acknowledge that the system punished Aaron more for not pleading guilty and lying on the stand than it did for his brief role in the drug business.
There is no sense of proportion here. Aaron is serving the same sentence as Robert Hanssen, the FBI agent turned traitor.
In 2004, the U.S. Department of Justice pardon attorney recommended that the president not commute Aaron's sentence. ProPublica recently reported that in a push for more favorable recommendations, the Bush White House had asked the Office of the Pardon Attorney to reconsider Aaron's application.
Unfortunately for Aaron, current pardon attorney Ronald Rodgers passed along his predecessor's recommendation that Aaron's petition be denied. Rodgers failed to disclose that the U.S. attorney's office had reversed its position so that it supported a presidential commutation from life without parole to 25 years -- so that Aaron would be released in 2014. Samuel Morison, who used to work in the pardon attorney's office, believes that Rodgers ill-served Bush, who would have commuted the sentence if his pardon attorney had passed on case facts.
On Thursday, Families Against Mandatory Minimums held an event to urge the Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate the pardon attorney's office in light of Rodgers' failure to pass on that key bit of news. Linda Aaron spoke at the event. Over the phone, she told me she is "puzzled" over Obama's failure to commute her son's sentence.
By any objective measure, Aaron's life without parole is a cruel anomaly. I've been writing about his case for more than a decade because the criminal justice system won't accept responsibility and correct its pernicious excesses. Normally when something's broken, people who care for it fix it. But not the justice system.
Obama was supposed to bring sanity to a federal sentencing structure that over-punishes nonviolent drug offenders. But I guess he's just too busy to get to Clarence Aaron.
I have zero sympathy for liars, particularly those who do large drug deals, get caught, and then think they’re smarter than the system.
Aaron can rot his ass in jail.
Obama won’t even need his pardon priviledges...none of his criminal homies have been put in jail. Thank you, Eric Holder.
Of course, there’s always the Gitmo detainees...
When Obama loses this election, hold down your skirts people, because we are going to be blow away by the last-minute abuses and fraud. Every left wing whacko unibomber radical violent anti-american thug and their converted islamic cousin is going to get a pardon.
Open the flood gates - Jail Birds are the next voting block demographic to be enlisted by Democrats.
Caution, folks.
This is not really about our drug laws.
This is about an effort to eliminate minimum sentences for nearly every crime out there.
With the liberal infiltration of judiciaries nationwide, the elimination of minimum sentences would mean more violent offenders on the street, more convicted criminals voting and less justice for victims.
If I had my druthers I would have Obama in the same cell with Aaron for his drug use, and for his unConstitutional regulations, his abuse of his oath of office, his illegal Drafts card and Social Security card, and his fraudulent existence as President.
How much money did Clarence Aaron donate to zero’s campaign?
None? There’s your answer.
If I am not mistaken in some states convicted criminals can already vote. While the troops are denied the vote due to that the ballots are purposely delayed getting to them or being delivered
Agree ....
In all states, convicted felons can already vote, some states apply certain conditions to be met, such as having served the sentence, plus any parole or probation.
Maine and Vermont allow incarcerated felons to vote from their jail cells.
That explains the lumping of firearms with tobacco and booze.
Where in the Constitution does it give the govt the RIGHT to regulate your body, or what you put in it?
Obama is more likely to deform whatever comes in contact with him
It will be interesting to see who Obama pardons when he leaves office. “All narcotics criminals.”
I wonder if such a vague pardon would be valid. It probably needs to be name specific.
Would it be much different than Carter’s pardoning of Vietnam draft dodgers in 1977?
That’s a good point. If Carter could make a blanket pardon, then so could Obama.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.