The president is commuting sentences for eight victims of unfair crack sentencing laws:
Obama said he was granting clemency to the eight inmates and commuting their sentences, and that he would also give pardons to 13 convicts who have already been released. He said he would retroactively apply new sentencing guidelines and drug laws to the eight convicted felons who are still serving time, and six will be released by April 17. Under current law, Obama said, “many of them would have already served their time and paid their debt to society.”
Sullum applauds Obama for using his clemency power and hopes that he will exercise it more often in the future:
Families Against Mandatory Minimums estimates that 8,800 federal crack offenders are serving prison terms that could be shorter if they had been sentenced under current law. As of today, Obama has used his clemency power to help 0.1 percent of them.
Obama nevertheless deserves credit for acting, albeit belatedly and timidly, on his avowed belief that thousands of people in federal prison do not belong there. In addition to issuing these commutations, he has endorsed the Smarter Sentencing Act, a bill co-sponsored by Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) that would allow some crack offenders convicted before 2009 to seek shorter sentences. But as Obama demonstrated today, he does not have to wait for congressional action. It is completely within his power to free any federal prisoner whose sentence he deems unjust. If he exercises that power a little more, he will not be in danger of going down in history as the least merciful president ever.
The Dish 