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The LISA Foundation is staffed by people with years of experience with the federal criminal justice and prison system. Since 2015, we provide a free newsletter to federal inmates and those on the outside with news, explanation and occasional commentary on federal criminal law and procedure, federal legislation, and administrative action affecting federal convictions, sentences and prison management.
On his final Friday in office, President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of nearly 2,500 inmates serving lengthy prison terms, saying he wanted to return people serving disproportionately long sentences for nonviolent drug offenses to their communities.
Last Sunday, the Wall Street Journal reported that only 258 of those receiving commutations, about 10% of the total, had been recommended by Dept of Justice Pardon Attorney Elizabeth Oyer.
Biden’s list included “individuals with violent backgrounds who otherwise wouldn’t meet the department’s standards for recommendation for receipt of clemency,” according to a January 18th internal DOJ email written by Oyer to dismayed and angry DOJ colleagues. “While I am a strong believer in the possibility of second chances through clemency, the process by which yesterday’s action was carried out was not what we had hoped and advocated for,” Oyer wrote in the email – labeled “confidential and law enforcement sensitive” – that was leaked to the Wall Street Journal. She added: “I understand that some of the clemency grants are very upsetting.”
The Journal reported that the 2,490 names were compiled by a team of about a half-dozen lawyers from the White House Counsel’s Office, offenders selected primarily because they had been sentenced for trafficking in crack cocaine rather than powder cocaine. Federal law considers one gram of crack to equal 18 grams of powder – despite the fact that the stoichiometry for conversion of powder to crack is about 1.12:1 – and that 18:1 ratio was a reduction from a 100:1 powder-to-crack ratio that existed prior to the Fair Sentencing Act being passed in 2010.
Read the full article at
Biden Drug Clemencies Were Sloppy, DOJ and Courts Say – Update for February 5, 2025
