Tag Archives: death row

Senators Push for Massive Biden Clemency Push – Update for November 18, 2024

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We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

SENATORS URGE BIDEN TO COMMUTE THOUSANDS OF SENTENCES

President-elect Trump may accomplish something this month that no one has yet been able to do yet: get President Biden to wield his clemency powers.

release161117Senate Democrats are pressuring Biden to shorten the sentences of thousands of federal drug prisoners incarcerated before he leaves office. In a letter sent to Biden October 21st but only surfacing last week, seven Senate Judiciary Committee members plus an eighth Senator urged Biden to commute drug mandatory minimums that were shortened by the First Step Act but not retroactively.

The FSA cut mandatory life under 21 USC § 841(b)(1)(A) for one prior drug conviction from 20 to 15 years and for two priors from life to 25 years. The change started out in the legislative process to be retroactive, but retroactivity was amended out of the bill before passage to secure Republican votes.

The group of Democrats, led by Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Richard Durbin (D-IL), is urging Biden to categorically lower the sentences of people sentenced under § 841(b)(1)(B) mandatory minimums so they match what they would have received under the First Step Act amendment. In some cases, sentences would be cut to time served.

“[O]ver 8,000 federal clemency petitions are awaiting decision,” the letter notes. “You have granted only 25 pardons and 131 commutations thus far, denying nearly 8.000 petitions.’ We respectfully request that your Administration act with urgency to grant relief to deserving individuals and further reduce the clemency backlog… One significant step in the right direction would be to grant categorical relief to incarcerated individuals who were sentenced under harsh mandatory minimums that the bipartisan First Step Act substantially reduced.”

Sen Peter Welch (D-VT), one signer, said, “President Biden should heed our call and use the power of executive clemency while he has it.”

crackpowder160606The letter also urges Biden to use clemency to cut the sentences of people convicted for crimes related to crack cocaine who would face less time in prison if crack and powder cocaine were punished at a one-to-one ratio and urged him to restart Obama’s clemency initiative, which granted clemency to nearly 1,700 people – mostly for drug offenses – who met certain qualifications.

“The letter came just weeks before Election Day,” Politico noted last week. “But it reflects concerns that have only intensified since Trump won the White House.”

At the same time, pressure is intensifying to convince Biden to commute the death sentences of the 40 people on federal death row. Their crimes range from drug-related murders to murder in a national park to terrorist killings and the fatal shooting of a bank guard during a robbery.

Of 50 federal executions in the past century, Trump carried out 13 of them in six months beginning in July 2020. Trump has promised to execute everyone on death row in his next Administration.

The ACLU last week called on Biden to “act now to finish the death penalty reform work his administration began in 2020. He must commute the sentences of all people on federal death row to stymie Trump’s plans and to redress the racial injustice inherent to capital punishment.”

The Atlantic last week called on Biden to offer pardons to Liz Cheney, a former Republican Congresswoman who served on the House January 6th Committee, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, prosecutor Jack Smith, and “to all of Trump’s most prominent opponents.” Trump and his allies have promised to prosecute them for imagined crimes arising from prosecuting, investigating or just criticizing him since the January 6, 2021, riot.

Politico, Biden faces pressure from Hill Democrats to grant clemency for drug crimes (November 13, 2024)

Letter to President Biden from Sen Durbin et al (October 21, 2024)

Slate, Joe Biden Can Preemptively Halt One Brutal Trump Policy (November 12, 2024)

ACLU, Biden Must Use Final Months in Office to Commute Federal Death Sentences (November 14, 2024)

The Atlantic, Pardon Trump’s Critics Now (November 13, 2024)

– Thomas L. Root

“Code Blue” At BOP, GAO Says – Update for April 28, 2023

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We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

GAO PUTS BOP ON CRITICAL LIST

The Government Accountability Office last week added the BOP to its “high risk” list of “government operations with vulnerabilities to fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement, or in need of transformation.”

criticalcondition230428Federal prisons were the only program added to the 2023 list, which is updated every two years. The GAO has seen “good progress in certain areas due to congressional and executive branch actions, but there are still serious, very consequential problems that need to be addressed,” GAO head Gene Dodaro recently told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. “We’re adding management of the Bureau of Prisons, there’s been problems with staffing, which has led to some concerns about inmate and staff safety and also their efforts to evaluate programs that are intended to help deal with the recidivism issue.”

GAO first identified BOP management as an “emerging high-risk issue” in March 2021. Since then, GAO reports, the BOP has addressed 22 GAO recommendations, leaving 28 recommendations still on the table. What’s more, Charles Johnson, managing director of GAO’s homeland security and justice team, told Congress the BOP’s staffing level remains down 15%.

Speaking of management failings, the Associated Press reported last week that an inmate whose death sentence was commuted in 2019 remains housed on death row at USP Terre Haute.

deathrow230428Four years later, AP reported, the BOP has not moved him to a less restrictive unit. Asked about the prisoner’s continued placement on death row, a Dept of Justice official told AP that “the Bureau of Prisons is considering [the inmate’s] designation determination.”  At least the BOP is taking the time to carefully consider whether someone without a death sentence should be housed somewhere other than death row.

AP said that the case “illustrates chronic bureaucracy in the prisons system and the difficulties in getting anyone off death row.”

“How can I not get this guy off death row?” federal defender Monica Foster said in a recent interview. “Well, I did get him off death row. But why can’t I physically get him off death row?”

Meanwhile, after a recent disturbance at FCI Miami, a BOP low-security facility, Miami TV station WTVJ reported, “multiple sources from inside the facility [said] that more than 100 weapons were found…” A prison security expert told the station, “Discovering a hundred weapons in a search following something like this would signal the administration. It would signal me, if I were the administrator, to look into my search processes.”

The station said that a 2019 Occupational Safety and Health Administration report likewise recommended that the BOP “increase number of searches for weapons, cellphones and contraband.”

cellphones230428Last week, the BOP fired a shot across the bow at illegal cellphones, as ubiquitous in prisons as spring flowers in the garden. The U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina said that six inmates housed at three different facilities at the FCC Butner complex have been criminally charged with possession of contraband cell phones.

If convicted, each inmate faces up to an extra year of prison for possessing a cellphone and disqualification for First Step Act credits and the 365 days sentence credit for eligible programming participation.

U.S. Attorney Michael Easley said, “By indicting these six inmates at FCC Butner, we hope to send a clear message to the inmate population that the possession of cellphones will never be tolerated at FCC Butner.”

Govt Executive, Management of the Federal Prisons System Is Added to GAO’s High-Risk List (April 20, 2023)

GAO, Efforts Made to Achieve Progress Need to Be Maintained and Expanded to Fully Address All Areas (April 20, 2023)

AP, Inmate stuck on US death row despite vacated death sentence (April 16, 2023)

WTVJ, Video Shows Disturbance That Led to Lockdown at Federal Correctional Institution in Miami (April 21, 2023)

DOJ, Six Federal Inmates Indicted for Contraband Cell Phones (April 20, 2023)

– Thomas L. Root