Posted on 04/24/2014 1:42:57 PM PDT by jazusamo
As President Obama prepares to use his executive power to release thousands of felons (serving time under “racist” drug sentences) the Justice Department’s top official in charge of pardons quits rather than let criminals out of jail.
At least someone at the agency charged with enforcing the law and providing federal leadership in controlling crime, has some scruples. Of course, the official statement on the abrupt resignation of the Department of Justice (DOJ) Pardon Attorney, Ron Rodgers, is that he suddenly requested reassignment after heading the division for six years. One newswire story quotes a DOJ Deputy Attorney General saying that Rodgers’ departure is “in the tradition” of senior executive service attorneys who ask for reassignment.
The facts tell a different story. As head of the DOJ’s Pardons Office Rodgers clashed with the Obama administration over a controversial plan to release—or reduce the sentences of—convicted drug offenders. It’s part of the president’s effort to end racial discrimination in drug-related sentences. It started with the 2010 signing of a law ( Fair Sentencing Act) that for the first time in decades relaxed drug-crime sentences he claims discriminate against minority offenders. The measure severely weakens a decades-old law enacted during the infamous crack cocaine epidemic that ravaged urban communities nationwide in the 1980s.
But the Fair Sentencing Act is not retroactive so the president launched a broad plan this month to help those sentenced under the older, stricter law which required mandatory prison for first-time offenders and a five-year sentence for trafficking offenses involving more than five grams of crack cocaine. This punished a disproportionate number of blacks, the administration says, compared to more affluent whites and Hispanics that enjoy lighter sentences for possessing the more expensive powder cocaine that most blacks can’t afford.
So this week Attorney General Eric Holder announced a new DOJ clemency initiative that’s expected to free thousands of prisoners serving time for crimes related to crack cocaine. The agency expects to get bombarded with petitions, Holder said in a video posted on the DOJ website, and will assign dozens of new attorneys to its pardon office, which is now headed by an Obama team player named Deborah Leff. The clemencies will “restore a degree of justice, fairness and proportionality,” Holder said, adding that the DOJ is “committed to recommending as many qualified applicants as possible for reduced sentences.”
More than 20,000 inmates “sentenced under the old regime” will likely qualify for clemency, according to Deputy Attorney General James Cole, who held a press conference this week to announce the initiative. “For our criminal justice system to be effective, it needs to not only be fair; but it also must be perceived as being fair,” Cole said. “Older, stringent punishments that are out of line with sentences imposed under today’s laws erode people’s confidence in our criminal justice system, and I am confident that this initiative will go far to promote the most fundamental of American ideals – equal justice under law.”
With that said, here’s an interesting tidbit related to this story. One of the federal lawmakers (California Congresswoman Maxine Waters) that for years pushed to reduce drug sentences over racial disparities accused the CIA of selling crack cocaine to blacks in her south central Los Angeles district to raise money to support clandestine operations in Latin America, including a guerrilla army. Waters and her buddy, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, were driving forces behind the Fair Sentencing Act and are undoubtedly celebrating the new clemency criteria.
“The clemencies will “restore a degree of justice, fairness and proportionality,” Holder said, adding that the DOJ is “committed to recommending as many qualified applicants as possible for reduced sentences.””
Does that mean that white collar criminals, a disproportional number being white, will also apply to balance the table?
Has to be...
What are you quoting? That’s great, because it’s absolutely true.
One of the reasons these sentences were more severe is that this was not usually the only thing these people were doing (many of them had other felony convictions, often dating from a time when lax sentencing was the rule) and that crack was destroying the black “community” and blacks themselves were asking that these people be taken out of their neighborhoods and sent away.
I hope some of them got their lives together in prison - I know a couple of people who did - but the others should just be given more time to think about it and finish their sentences. Otherwise, Obama is just inflicting them on their poor, nearly empty neighborhoods again.
” - - - the abrupt resignation of the Department of Justice (DOJ) Pardon Attorney, Ron Rodgers - - - - “
At last, Diogenes’ Lantern has found an honest man in the DOJ!
BTW, could Ron Rodgers be the last honest man in the DOJ?
What is the racial breakdown of these cons being freed?
....do Obama, Jarrett, Van Jones, and Holder all see America as South Side Chicago? Is it a mixed race culture of ms-fits?
Obama is giving a Presidential Pardon to his friends or hopes they’ll become his friends
Prior to joining the Justice Department in 2010, Ms. Leff held a variety of leadership positions in the public, private and non-profit sectors. She was President and member of the Board of Directors of the Public Welfare Foundation, a national foundation based in Washington, D.C., focusing on criminal and juvenile justice, health reform, and workers’ rights. She has also served as Director of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum; President and CEO of Feeding America, the nation's largest domestic hunger relief organization; and President of the Joyce Foundation. During much of the 1980s and early 1990s, Ms. Leff was Senior Producer at ABC News Nightline, World News Tonight and 20/20, overseeing coverage that won numerous national awards, including the Emmy and the DuPont awards. She is the former Chair of the Board of Directors of StoryCorps and previously served on the Board of Directors of the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation, CARE and the Children's Defense Fund. She also chaired the Midwest Rhodes Scholars Selection Committee.
Ms. Leff received her undergraduate degree from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, where she was named a University Scholar. She earned her law degree from the University of Chicago Law School and received an honorary doctorate in humane letters from Lake Forest College.
Yeah -- we won't have "equal justice under law" until the proportion of murders of white citizens at the hands of black releasees rises to equal the proportion of murders among the black community at the hands of those selfsame murderers Obama-Holder aim to release. (And of course they'll get their Motor Voter cards right away.)
Translation: Open season on y'all crackas!
New political slogan for billboards in black slums:
WE MURDER OUT AND WE VOTE
Libertarians, even here, want to point out the “victimless” crime of possessing illegal drugs for personal use. But what they fail to mention is that what crime is apparent is the tip of an iceberg of criminality. Now, I’m not saying that you can assume unproven crimes, but drug abusers are NOT little angels.
They need the cell space for Conservative non-profit donors, officers and employees.
/johnny
That way both the dead murder victims, AND the murderers can vote Rat.
Well said...It’s not just their own lives they screw up it’s many others.
This is just the beginning. What’s next? Pardons for black rapists, followed by black child molesters, followed by black murderers, followed by any black criminals remaining in the prison system?
Soon to be followed by an increase in the welfare rolls, section 8 housing, and gang bangers in a neighbourhood near you.
If you don’t have a plan, better get one, and fast.
I agree. The mandatory minimum was a stupid program. There are some people sitting in prison today who should not have received those mandatory long sentences. I’ve got my flame retardent suit on. Do you?
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