As you know, last September the BOP changed its email system to make mass emailing of this newsletter impossible.
This is a copy of the newsletter for February 24, 2025. I have reformatted it to eliminate graphics so everything printed in black will fit into a Corrlinks email (if you are providing it to an inmate).
LISA Newsletter for February 24, 2025 – ‘Go Ask Alice – I Think She’ll Know’
LISA publishes a free newsletter sent to inmate subscribers in the Federal system. Due to BOP Corrlinks limitations, the newsletter must be sent in small batches throughout the week.
Edited by Thomas L Root, MA JD
Vol 11, No 8
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Trump Names Former Prisoner Alice Johnson ‘Pardon Czar’
Keep Your Eye on the Prize
Dept of Justice Reads Pardons Expansively
BOP Acting Director Lasts Five Weeks; Other Top Brass Opt for Retirement
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TRUMP NAMES FORMER PRISONER ALICE JOHNSON ‘PARDON CZAR’
President Trump announced last Thursday that Alice Johnson, whose 1996 life sentence for a cocaine conspiracy was commuted in 2018, would serve as White House “pardon czar,” a position in which she will “advise him on criminal justice issues,” according to the NY Times.
No one knows exactly what this position entails or its significance but having a White House liaison responsible for clemency issues and who has the President’s ear is unprecedented in modern times. Still, many federal prisoners are starting to think that Jefferson Airplane had it right in “White Rabbit” when it advised, “Go ask Alice – I think she’ll know.”
After Kim Kardashian talked Trump into commuting Johnson’s sentence, Johnson initially convinced Trump to grant clemency to a couple of her FCI Aliceville cellies. Later, at Trump’s request, she suggested the names of people to receive clemency at the end of his first term.
The Times reported that in announcing her appointment, Trump said Johnson “would be advising him on cases of people convicted of nonviolent crimes who had gotten sentences not likely be handed down today. Ms. Johnson’s case was seen as an example of draconian sentencing laws that disproportionately affected nonviolent offenders, particularly women and members of minority groups.”
Trump told reporters that “Alice was in prison for doing something that today probably wouldn’t even be prosecuted.” That’s probably not quite correct: Her indictment, which named 16 defendants, described Alice as a leader in a multi-million-dollar cocaine ring, and detailed dozens of drug transactions and deliveries. At sentencing, her judge said she was “the quintessential entrepreneur” in an operation that dealt in 2,000 to 3,000 kilos of cocaine.
Still, Johnson’s post-sentencing record was exceptional, and her work since her release seven years ago has been tireless. “Alice Johnson has been a relentless advocate for second chances, and her own story is a testament to the power of redemption,” Weldon Angelos, another Trump clemency recipient and founder of the criminal justice organization The Weldon Project, told Marijuana Moment last week.
The Times said that Johnson’s appointment illustrates how Trump’s “approach to criminal justice reform is rife with contradictions. He signed the bipartisan First Step Act, which aimed to reduce prison sentences for certain nonviolent drug crimes, during his first term, then told advisers privately soon afterward that he regretted it, according to multiple officials working with him at the time… During his 2024 campaign, he called for shooting thieves who steal from drugstores and for the death penalty for drug traffickers and dealers. Then, in one of his first acts as president in his second term, he issued a grant of clemency to all of the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — violent and nonviolent alike.”
Angelos, however, is focused on the appointment rather than the President’s record on criminal justice. “The creation of a pardon czar position is a significant step in prioritizing clemency and criminal justice reform,” he said, “signaling a commitment to addressing injustices in the system and ensuring that mercy is applied more fairly and efficiently.”
MSNBC complained, “It’s not clear that this position will have real power. Ultimately, the president determines who receives pardons, so it’s possible this role will have as much actual authority as Trump’s Diet Coke retriever. But it seems pretty obvious what he’s after with this stunt. Trump has perverted the pardon process, most glaringly with his pardons of violent insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on Jan 6. And now he has made a sympathetic figure the face of that process.”
Prisoners and their loved ones are wondering how Johnson’s appointment might upend the current clemency system, which has been characterized over the past decade by Byzantine review procedures while thousands of petitions gathered dust in the DOJ Office of Pardon Attorney. Must a commutation petition still begin with a filing with OPA? Will clemency petitions now be routed directly to Johnson’s White House office?
No one knows. However, a Substack blogger on healthcare already has solicited people to contact Johnson to urge that a father and his sons convicted of selling toxic industrial bleach as a fake COVID-19 cure through their online church be pardoned.
NY Times, Trump Names ‘Pardon Czar’ to Advise on Clemency (Feb 21)
NY Times, Trump May Name a Woman He Once Pardoned to Be His ‘Pardon Czar’ (Feb 18)
Marijuana Moment, Trump Confirms He’s Appointing Former Drug Prisoner He Freed As New ‘Pardon Czar’ (Feb 20)
MSNBC, In ongoing stunt, Trump names Alice Johnson his ‘pardon czar’ (Feb 21)
Robert Yoho, Surviving Healthcare (Feb 22)
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KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE PRIZE
In order to be allowed to file a second-or-successive 28 USC 2255 habeas corpus motion, a prisoner has to meet some tough “gatekeeping” standards, that newly discovered evidence would have led a jury to find him or her innocent or that the Supreme Court had adopted a new rule of constitutional law, made retroactive to cases on collateral review, that was previously unavailable.”
In 2008, Randall Mann was convicted for mailing threatening communications under 18 USC 876. The district court instructed the jury that the government need prove only that a “reasonable person” would find Randy’s communications threatening, and the jury did so. However, 15 years later, the Supreme Court held in Counterman v Colorado that the 1st Amendment requires the government to prove that the defendant actually had some understanding of his statements’ threatening character.
Randy, who said his many letters to government officials were just intended to show that prison does not rehabilitate people, asked the 4th Circuit for authorization to file a successive 28 USC 2255 motion based on Counterman. The government agreed that he had satisfied the gatekeeping requirements of 2255(h), but it argued that the court should also impose a “plausibility requirement,” requiring Randy to show that constitutional error “had substantial and injurious effect or influence in determining the jury’s verdict, as required for relief under 2255.”
The 4th Circuit refused the government’s demand. “The focus of our inquiry at this stage must always remain on the 2255(h) gatekeeping standards,” the Circuit wrote. “We’ve already found that Randy has satisfied the 2255(h) gatekeeping requirements. There isn’t an additional plausibility requirement he must meet… Counterman is on point. Randy was prosecuted for a true-threat offense. The jury wasn’t instructed that the government had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he subjectively intended to threaten another, and the government acknowledges that this omission was error… Whether that error warrants relief under 2255 is a merits question for the district court to decide in the first instance when it considers Randy’s 2255 motion.
In re Rendelman, Case No 23-257, 2025 USAppLEXIS 4087 (4th Cir. Feb 21, 2025)
Counterman v Colorado, 600 US 66 (2023)
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DEPT OF JUSTICE READS PARDONS EXPANSIVELY
In further evidence that this is not your parents’ Dept of Justice, DOJ last week argued in several pending cases that Trump’s clemency for Jan 6 rioters covers unrelated crimes that were discovered during FBI searches stemming from the attack on the Capitol.
Prosecutors moved to drop felon-in-possession charges against two former Jan 6 defendants, 18 USC 922(g)(1) that were based on guns found at the two men’s homes during the Jan 6-related searches, although the guns themselves were not connected to the riot. The government argues that the gun cases were covered by invoking Trump’s Day 1 executive order granting mass clemency to Jan. 6 defendants, because the searches that found the guns were “conduct related to” those events.
The expansive reading of the pardon marks the latest push by the Administration to absolve Jan. 6 defendants, whom Trump has described as political prisoners and victims of persecution.
One North Carolina defendant has pled not guilty to child pornography charges stemming from images found in the search of his residence as part of the Jan 6 investigation. NPR observed that in that case, “it’s unclear how broadly the Trump administration will interpret the pardons.”
Politico, Justice Department broadens Trump’s Jan 6 clemency as it moves to drop gun cases (Feb 22)
NPR, Justice Department broadens Jan. 6 pardons to cover gun, drug-related charges (Feb 20)
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BOP ACTING DIRECTOR LASTS FIVE WEEKS; OTHER TOP BRASS OPT FOR RETIREMENT
Six of the Bureau of Prisons top management – including Acting Director William W. Lothrop – have announced plans to retire in the past two weeks, the Washington Post reported, “amid questions within the agency about its direction under President Donald Trump, according to the union representing BOP employees and internal communications…”
Two out of the six regional directors, the general counsel, chief information officer and head of the oversight division, are also retiring between now and the end of July, according to a message Lothrop sent to BOP staff on Feb 14 announcing his departure at the end of February. This leaves 10 of the agency’s 21 senior management positions vacant.
Lothrop stepped into the director’s role on Jan 20 when Colette Peters left her post. At the time, the media reported she had resigned. However, last week, Walter Pavlo wrote in Forbes that Peters “was reportedly fired.” And yesterday (Feb 23), the Washington Post reported that Peters’ lawyer said in a statement that she “was removed by Trump’s acting attorney general on Inauguration Day without due process. Peters is appealing the decision.”
Pavlo wrote that the BOP is “currently experiencing significant upheaval, with a wave of leadership departures leaving the agency without clear direction during a critical time.” He quoted Lothrop as saying, “We are in unprecedented times as an Agency.”
Not that Lothrop did much in his five weeks at the helm. Pavlo complained that Lothrop’s “directives to the staff have lacked clear guidance and appear that he is simply passing on information as he received it from the Department of Justice. Whenever a new administration comes into office, agencies like the BOP are often in a reactionary position to enact changes demanded by new leadership but these changes and the pace of the changes are unprecedented.”
Trump’s offer of eight months’ severance to federal employees and the firing of probationary employees have reportedly worsened the under-staffed BOP’s already-bad employment situation. “It’s mass confusion, honestly,” Brandy Moore White, president of AFGE Council 33, which represents BOP employees. She said the top brass are in turmoil. “They are just very nervous that if they would fire a director on Day One, what protections do they have?” she said. “If they’re eligible for retirement, why wouldn’t they jump ship?”
The resignation severance offer was available to all federal employees except for military, postal service, immigration enforcement and national security positions. BOP was not exempted in the original memo, but it was listed in a separate Dept of Homeland Security memo that gave “any law enforcement official in the Federal Bureau of Prisons…” the authority to find and arrest illegal immigrants.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said in her confirmation hearing that fixing the BOP is one of her priorities. She told senators that the agency had “suffered from years of mismanagement, lack of funding and low morale.”
The morale fix appears not to be in just yet.
Washington Post, At Federal Bureau of Prisons, senior retirements add to uncertainty (Feb 23)
Forbes, Bureau of Prisons Executives Announce Retirement Ahead of New Director (Feb 17)
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