We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.
TRUMP GRANTS CLEMENCY TO A FEW MORE… TOO FEW MORE
President Trump last week commuted two sentences and granted pardons to five others who previously pleaded guilty to nonviolent crimes but have completed their sentences.
Trump commuted the sentence of Ronen Nahmani, who was serving a 20-year sentence for conspiracy to distribute the synthetic drug “spice.” The White House said Ronen had no prior criminal history and has five young children at home, the oldest is 13 years old, and a wife battling terminal cancer. Trump noted his case for an early release received bipartisan support from legislators.
Trump also commuted the sentence of Ted Suhl, an Arkansas man convicted in 2016 on four counts of bribery after prosecutors said he took part in a scheme to increase Medicaid payments to his faith-based behavioral health-care center for juveniles company. Suhl lost at the 8th Circuit, and was preparing to file in the Supreme Court. The White House noted his “spotless disciplinary record” over three years in prison and highlighted support for the commutation from former Gov. Mike Huckabee and former U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins.
Trump pardoned five other people who had already served their sentences, for offenses ranging from transferred government property illegally to transporting marijuana, to running an illegal gambling parlor in 1987 and stealing guns from luggage.
With Monday’s announcements, Trump has now pardoned or reduced the sentences of 19 individuals since taking office. Ohio State University law professor Douglas Berman noted in his Sentencing Law and Policy blog last Wednesday that with over 177,000 people in federal prison, “six commutations is, by all sensible measures, a very small number. The granting of only six commutations seems especially disappointing given that last year Prez Trump was talking about considering clemency requests that including “3,000 names, many of those names have been treated unfairly, … [and] in some cases, their sentences are far too long.”
Trump’s six clemency grants in his first term beats the first term records of every president since Reagan. The record is still held by Nixon, who granted 48 clemencies in his first term. Berman noted “that so very few federal prisoners have recently received clemency while the federal prison population has swelled makes these numbers even more depressing. The also look terrible if we look back further historically, as almost every other 20th Century US President (except for Dwight Eisenhower) granted a hundred or more commutations while in office (with Woodrow Wilson granting 341 in 1920 alone).”
The Hill, Trump announces seven pardons or commutations (July 29)
Wall Street Journal, Trump Commutes Prison Sentences in Medicaid Bribery, Drug Cases (July 29)
Sentencing Law and Policy, A (depressing) first-term scorecard for recent presidents (July 30)
– Thomas L. Root