The Implication of Obama’s Latest Clemency Fest
19th December 2015
Whenever Senator Mike Lee, or some other Leniency for Drug Dealers stalwart, defends his sentencing reform legislation, he points to the case of one or two drug felons who received a sentence that seems unduly harsh. Such cases aren’t impossible to find.
But invoking them raises an obvious question and then a more subtle one. The obvious question is: if this sentence is egregious, why hasn’t President Obama commuted it? The more subtle question is: does this poor fellow languish in prison because supporters of sentencing reform want to use him as a talking point?
These questions come to the fore in light of Obama’s latest round of commutations.