After commuting the sentences of 8 convicts, including
Stephanie George, of Pensacola, Fla., who
received a life sentence in 1997, when she was 27, for hiding a boyfriend’s stash of crack in a box in her house. In both cases, the judges criticized the mandatory sentences they were required to impose, calling them unjust.
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Today, 46 other received good news.
President Obama announced on Monday that he was commuting the sentences of 46 federal drug offenders, more than doubling the number of nonviolent criminals to whom he has granted clemency since taking office.
“These men and women were not violent criminals, but the overwhelming majority had been sentenced to at least 20 years;
14 of them had been sentenced to life for nonviolent drug offenses, so their punishments didn’t fit the crime,” Mr. Obama said in a video released on the White House Facebook page, in which he is shown signing the commutation letters.
Mr. Obama had already commuted the sentences of 43 prisoners, as part of an initiative begun last year by James M. Cole, the deputy attorney general at the time, who set criteria for who might qualify: generally nonviolent inmates who have served more than 10 years in prison; have behaved well while incarcerated; and who would not have received as lengthy a sentence under today’s revised sentencing rules.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/14/us...offenders.html