- Sen. Webb Lays it Out! S 714: The National Criminal Justice Commission Act of 2009; Introduced in the Senate by Sen. James Webb (D-VA), March 26, 2009
- Why We Must Fix Our Prisons, By Sen. Jim Webb; from Parade Magazine (US), 3/29/09
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Locked Up for Life: The Case of Clarence Aaron; from Fox News (US), Dec 2008
Clarence Aaron is featured in the documentary SNITCH, from PBS Frontline. By arrangement with PBS, November Coalition is able to offer copies of SNITCH on DVD. Contact our office for details.
June 02, 2009 -- Fox News (US)
Man Serving Three Life Terms for Drug Deal Pins Hopes on Clemency from Obama
By Jennifer Lawinski
Original: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,524820,00.html
For Clarence Aaron, all that has changed is the president's name. George W. Bush can no longer grant him clemency. Now he's pinning his hopes on Barack Obama -- and there just might be a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.
Aaron was a 23-year-old junior at Southern University in Baton Rouge, La., in 1993 when he was convicted of conspiracy to distribute 24 kilos of crack cocaine. He refused to testify against his co-conspirators in a plea deal -- but his partners, career drug dealers, flipped on him and testified against him at his trial.
Mandatory federal minimum sentencing guidelines on crack charges were harsh, and Aaron was sentenced to three concurrent sentences of life in prison. He lost an appeal in 1996, and his efforts to get his sentence reduced have failed.
Now Aaron's only hope of ever walking out of prison lies in the power of the president of the United States to grant clemency.
President Bush denied Aaron's petition just before he left office in January. But Aaron's supporters hope President Obama will give him a chance. And statements by Obama and the Justice Department are giving them reason to be optimistic.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama called on Congress to revisit sentencing guidelines that were established during the crack epidemic of the 1980s and that mete out longer prison sentences for crack cocaine than powdered cocaine. The result has been a prison system teeming with low-level drug offenders.
"Under current law, mere possession of five grams of crack -- the weight of five packets of sweetener -- carries the same sentence as distribution of half a kilogram of powder -- or 500 packets of sweetener," said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who chaired a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs in April.
Furthermore, Durbin said, more than 81 percent of those convicted for crack offenses in 2007 were African-American, although only about 25 percent of crack cocaine users are African Americans.
At the hearing, Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer announced that the Justice Department, for the first time, was endorsing the elimination of the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine.
"A growing number of citizens view it as fundamentally unfair," Breuer said.
Eric Sterling, former counsel for the House Committee on Judicial Affairs and president of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, attended the April hearing and recently told FOXNews.com: "They are thinking very differently about this offense and how it should be punished.
"The quantities [that dictate sentencing] are a road map to prosecutors that is the wrong road map, and therefore we get so many of these low-level cases."
"The federal focus," he said, "should be on the highest level traffickers exclusively and ... they shouldn't be doing any local, neighborhood-type cases.'
Busting local small-time dealers won't make a dent in the actual problem, Sterling said. "You've got to explain to them that if they want to get the crack house out of their neighborhood, they've got to stop the cocaine coming in from Colombia."
While Congress works on reform, Sterling said he thinks Obama will use his power to pardon small-time drug offenders serving harsh sentences, and he thinks Aaron stands a chance -- although it's unlikely to happen soon.
"It's clear that President Obama can juggle a lot of balls at once, and I think that this is one that he and his legal and political advisers can handle and actually want to handle," Sterling said.
"I think they will want the time to review the petitions and do their own due diligence about Clarence's crime, check it out with the judge, review his prison record, and I suspect that his will not be the only commutation of sentence that will be announced."
Others have been lobbying for Aaron's release, as well. His crime and prosecution were profiled in a PBS documentary, "Snitch," and the nonprofit November Coalition, which advocates for ending unjust drug convictions, has been monitoring his case.
Debra Saunders, a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle who has lobbied for Aaron's release and written about in him several columns, said she thinks Aaron stands a chance with Obama in the White House.
"Clarence's hope for a commutation should be more likely to be rewarded by Barack Obama, who has been critical of the war on drugs," she said.
But Saunders was critical of the president's actions so far.
"His actions on this issue have been lax. He has yet to issue a single pardon or commutation," she said. "So maybe Obama will be more like Bush than expected."
Aaron's attorney said he intends to file another clemency petition, though he must wait a year under the rules of the Justice Department's Office of the Pardon Attorney.
Sterling, meanwhile, is optimistic that Aaron ultimately will regain his freedom.
"As you continue to be aware of these cases, the sentence that Clarence Aaron got for his conduct is so outrageous," he said. "It is a travesty of justice and it urgently should be addressed by the president."
November 9, 2008 -- San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Column: Bush Should Commute Sentence Of Clarence Aaron
By Debra J. Saunders
The San Diego Union Tribune reported last Sunday on the effort to petition President Bush to commute the sentence of former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, who pleaded guilty in 2005 to accepting some $2.4 million in bribes. The president has the constitutional power to pardon federal offenders by wiping clean their prison records for sentences served or by commuting the sentences of inmates in federal prison.
Before Bush even considers such a request, he ought to take a long look at the thousands of petitions for a presidential pardon filed by inmates who have never served in elective office. He could start with the case file of Clarence Aaron, who at age 23 in 1992, while a student at Southern University in Baton Rouge, La., made the criminal decision to introduce two drug dealers, which resulted in a transaction involving 9 kilograms of cocaine.
Aaron broke the law, and the fitting consequence for that is a serious prison stay. But because Aaron was a newbie to the drug trade and did not have the experience with the criminal-justice system that would have led him to testify against the trade kingpins in exchange for a lighter sentence, and because his five co-conspirators knew enough to fess up and turn on him while he wrongly and stupidly denied any guilt, Aaron was handed the longest sentence in the group. He was a first-time nonviolent drug offender - but a judge sentenced him to life without parole.
Having entered prison as a young man, he will die there unless a president pardons him.
There is something rotten to the core in a justice system that puts a twentysomething first-time nonviolent offender away for life, while meting out lighter sentences for career criminals who know how to game the system. Life without parole also is the same sentence imposed on FBI-agent-turned-Russian-spy Robert Hanssen, except that it is worse for Aaron, who was sentenced in 1992. Hanssen was arrested at age 56.
It turns out Aaron's most heinous offense was not the drug deal, but not having spent years getting arrested and learning how to roll through the criminal justice machine.
I know that I will hear from law-and-order types who will argue that all drug dealers should go away for life. I do not think many would feel so sanguine about such a term for a white college student. (Aaron is black.) As it is, the world is not a safer place with Aaron behind bars. It is a poorer territory that throws away people because of a warped sentencing formula that ensnares the unwitting and spits out the truly dangerous.
Aaron, now 39, has admitted his wrongdoing and taken responsibility for the actions that put him behind bars. He has a clean prison record. In 2005, two wardens recommended that he be moved to a lower-security facility.
Bush has a pretty stingy record when it comes to granting presidential pardons and commutations. He has granted a mere 163 pardons -- a figure far lower than President Ronald Reagan's 406 back when the federal prison population was much smaller.
No doubt, President Bill Clinton's sleazy fire-sale pardons on his way out of the office - which were roundly and deservedly criticized - have made Bush reluctant to use his absolute power of pardon.
Also, as Texas governor, Bush was burned when he pardoned a one-time misdemeanor drug offender so that he could work in law enforcement, only to watch Steve Raney be arrested for stealing cocaine during a roadside arrest four months later.
For all of the above reasons, critics in the pardon community pretty much have given up on Bush commuting Aaron's sentence. They have put their hope into clemency from President-elect Barack Obama, who has been critical of the draconian federal mandatory minimum sentencing system. They believe that Bush will reserve his pardon power for political operatives, and ignore excessive sentences imposed on the unconnected.
So far, the critics have been right. Last year, Bush commuted the 30-month prison sentence of former vice presidential aide Scooter Libby, because it was "excessive." But he has yet to commute the sentence of Clarence Aaron. Aaron should be spending this Thanksgiving and Christmas with his mother and his family. And only President Bush can make that happen.
November 29, 2007 - San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Column: Free Clarence Aaron
By Debra J. Saunders, San Francisco Chronicle
Is there any mercy in America for Clarence Aaron? Aaron has been on the wrong end of a gross miscarriage of justice, yet somehow, few voices will speak for him.
In 1992 at age 23, Aaron broke the law. While he was a senior at Southern University in Baton Rouge, La., he became a go-between for two drug dealers for two deals; one deal didn't happen, the other involved 9 kilograms of cocaine. He was paid $1,500.
Federal prosecutors in Alabama honed in on the dealers. Eventually they charged six individuals for the deals, including Aaron.
Oddly, having no criminal record, Aaron found himself at a distinct disadvantage. He didn't have the drug-trade savvy that could have instructed him in how to trade information on others in order to win short time in prison.
And Aaron didn't know that fighting prosecutors can deliver a longer sentence than dealing drugs.
So he screwed up again -- he pleaded not guilty and lied during his trial.
All of the other five co-conspirators received shorter sentence than Aaron.
The kingpin, who admitted having made more than a million dollars selling crack, served less than eight years. The friend who lured Aaron into the deal had a criminal record; he and two other co-conspirators served less than five years in prison. They garnered shorter sentences by pleading guilty and testifying against Aaron.
Aaron's sentence for a first-time nonviolent drug offense: Life without parole, actually three life sentences. The feds had managed to inflate Aaron's sentence by charging him with dealing more than 23 grams of crack cocaine -- even though, as the 1999 PBS Frontline documentary "Snitch" reported, no physical evidence of the drugs was presented in court.
Also, the second 15- kilogram deal never happened, and one dealer bought powder not crack, which carries a longer sentence than powder cocaine from the other, but the crack charge stuck because the buyer converted the power into crack.
Only one other co-conspirator is still in prison, and he too failed to cut a deal.
J. Don Foster, the U.S. Attorney whose office prosecuted Aaron, told Frontline, "You know, the tendency to feel sorry for him is in relation to these other people that did cooperate and that did help themselves and got less time.
And even though they were perhaps guiltier or more culpable, they got less because they helped solve the case. They helped to bring everybody to justice.
And the one person or two -- I think there were two that went to trial in that case -- that didn't, you know, suffer the results or the consequences of the arrogance of thinking that you're -- you're going to beat this, that 'I'm too good. I'm too good to take a deal.' "
That's a stark, if unintended, admission that some prosecutors think crossing them is a worse crime than being a drug kingpin.
Aaron, now 38, has a spotless disciplinary record, yet he will live in prison until he dies -- unless President Bush commutes his sentence.
In July, the president commuted the 30-month prison sentence of former vice presidential aide Scooter Libby because it was "excessive." Hello -- Clarence Aaron's sentence is excessive, squared.
After 14 years in prison, Aaron wrote in an update to his presidential commutation petition that he regrets "the weakness that led me to get involved in a drug deal."
And: "From the day I entered the prison door, I made a promise to myself that I would meet the trials of life head on, and I have become a stronger person behind these walls."
His prison work record is exemplary. He has a "clear conduct" record. He has continued his education. In 2005, two wardens recommended that Aaron be transferred to a lower security facility.
Newspapers frequently report stories about repeat violent offenders who game the system, get out of prison and hurt more innocent people. Let me be clear:
Violent repeat offenders should serve hard time, and enjoy no breaks. But life without parole for a nonviolent first-time offense is an outrage.
And it doesn't make America safer -- not when the kingpins get out of prison sooner, because, to paraphrase Foster, they don't act arrogant.
Updated 11/10/08
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