President Clinton, in the spirit of the season, is said to be
considering using his power to grant clemency to various federal
prisoners and to people convicted of federal crimes. The most visible
people on the potential clemency list include Leonard Peltier, the
American Indian Movement activist serving time after being convicted for
the murder of two FBI agents on the Oglala Sioux reservation in North
Dakota in 1975 and financier Michael Milken, who has completed his
prison time but would like clemency to clear up his legacy.
A coalition of more than 600 prominent religious leaders has appealed
to the president to add a much larger group of mostly anonymous
prisoners to the list. The Coalition for Jubilee Clemency hopes that
President Clinton will commute the sentences of low-level drug offenders
with no violent crimes on their records who have already served at least
five years in federal prison.
This is a great idea. It would be a marvelous Christmas gift for
these prisoners, for their children and for the nation as a whole. And
it just might be the most constructive thing President Clinton could do
to add a bit of luster to his own legacy.
In the Christian and Jewish faiths the tradition of a Jubilee every
50 years, in which debts are forgiven and prisoners liberated is a
powerful and constructive affirmation of compassion. The words of
Leviticus 25:10 “you shall hallow the fiftieth year and you shall
proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants
thereof” are inscribed on America’s Liberty Bell.
The year 2000 is a Jubilee Year for Christians. Pope John Paul II has
emphasized the importance of this year as an opportunity for people of
faith and good will to participate in the healing process (for all
concerned) of forgiveness and clemency. As the pope has written, “The
Holy Year must be used as a chance to right injustices committed, to
mitigate excesses, and to recover what might otherwise be lost. I turn
with confidence to state authorities to ask for a gesture of clemency
towards all those in prison.”
We are not talking about guilt or innocence here, or whether certain
laws are right or wrong, but whether some of the punishments imposed,
mostly in good faith, have been appropriate. Congress passed mandatory
minimum sentencing laws in the 1980s that imposed long sentences for
certain drug offenses. In practice they have mostly been used against
low-level drug users and couriers rather than the “kingpins” they were
intended to punish.
Chief Justice William Rehnquist, hardly a flaming liberal, has said
mandatory minimums are “a good example of the law of unintended
consequences,” that have “led to an inordinate increase in the federal
prison population.” In 1997, 86 percent of federal judges in a survey
done for the Federal Judicial Center said they opposed mandatory
minimums.
In his recent interview with Rolling Stone magazine, President
Clinton himself acknowledged the problem, saying that “We really need a
re-examination of our entire policy on imprisonment. There are tons of
people in prison who are nonviolent drug offenders . I think the
sentences in many cases are far too long for nonviolent offenders, and
the facilities are not structured to maximize success when the people
get out.”
President Clinton has the power to convert these sensible words into
deeds, which would be something of a switch since the federal prison
population has doubled under his administration, from about 73,000 in
January 1993 to 146,000 this November. As the religious leaders put it
in a Nov. 20 letter to the president:
“The constitutional power to grant reprieves and pardons is a unique
and powerful tool to express the public’s merciful spirit. As you know,
the public has a strong desire for justice and forgiveness. Many of
these offenders are parents. Their children are being hurt by these
separations. Their children and their communities need them home.
Clemency is the last hope for justice for many of these offenders, as
many have exhausted all appeal options available to them.”
In 1994 the Department of Justice did a study that counted 16,316
“low-level drug law offenders” who also were “without prior violence in
their records.” Eric Sterling, a former counsel to the House Judiciary
Committee who is president of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation,
estimates that currently about 24,000 of the 146,000 federal prisoners
fit these criteria — low-level drug offenders with no prior record of
violence.
Hardly anybody expects or even hopes that President Clinton will
release many thousands of prisoners this Christmas, although that might
be the best affirmation of the ideal of justice with mercy. Chad
Thevenot, coordinator of the Coalition for Jubilee Clemency, has
suggested that the president ask each of the more than 600 federal
judges to “name at least one defendant whom he or she was required by
mandatory sentencing laws to sentence to a term he or she thought was
unjust — the kinds of cases that the judges lost sleep over.”
Whether such a gesture would lead to rethinking mandatory sentencing
laws or drug possession laws is probably unknowable. But it would be a
magnanimous display of compassion and mercy at a time of the year when
people of most major religions have mercy and miracles on their minds.
Perhaps that is why the campaign has been endorsed by so many clergy,
ranging from Episcopal Bishop Frederick Borsch of Los Angeles to Charles
A. Kroloff, president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis to
Richard Dowling, executive director of the Maryland Catholic Conference
to the retired president of the United Church of Christ to the
coordinator of the Muslim Peace Fellowship. As one might expect,
Unitarians have signed on. So have Methodists, Baptists, Friends and AME
ministers. Rev. J. Philip Wogaman, of the Foundry United Methodist
Church in Washington, D.C., said to be President Clinton’s home church
these days, is one of the signers.
If President Clinton fails to act it will not be the first time he
has disappointed drug-law reformers and prison reformers. Many were
expecting big changes in drug policy when he came into office eight
years ago. What they got was harsher enforcement and an actual general
in charge of the “drug war.”
But at this point President Clinton is a lame duck with no particular
political capital at stake. His comments suggest that he knows the drug
war has gone too far, has harmed too many innocent people. If he grants
even a few token clemencies to prisoners of the drug war he might sleep
better at night, assuming he has something close to a normal conscience.
And America will be a better country for it.
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