Human Rights for Prisoners March: Clemency

Sunday, July 27, 2014

Historic Clemency Drive a Dud

The Justice Department's promises about clemency reached a snag. This seems to be another case of, "Give us credit; we tried to do the right thing." And the crowds cheer in their mass hypnosis. Al Jareeza reports "Ambitious effort to extend presidential clemency to thousands of inmates is at risk of stalling because of a legal snag." "I tried" and a dollar won't buy a bag of chips. Never has any presidential administration "tried" to do so much for Americans, particularly blacks, and actually accomplished so little. It is incredible. See an excerpt below.

Federal defenders potentially excluded from historic clemency drive

Six months after the Justice Department called on defense lawyers to help it identify and vet candidates for its clemency drive, there is concern that the federal defenders — whom the DOJ invited in as key partners — might never have been authorized to participate in the first place. This could leave the initiative without the manpower it needs.

A high portion of the potential pool of inmates is represented by the federal defenders, and they have been critical in the formation and operation of Clemency Project 2014, a coalition of defense lawyers and advocates created in the wake of the DOJ’s call. (The vast majority of those prosecuted in federal courts receive court-appointed lawyers; in districts where there is a federal defenders’ office, they generally handle 60 percent of those cases.)

"Federal defenders include some of the best courtroom and appellate advocates in the United States. Having them work with the Clemency Project 2014 has been important to the work we are doing,” said Mark Osler, director of the Federal Commutations Clinic at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, who has been training lawyers for the Clemency Project. “Losing them as a part of the coalition would be a significant challenge.” Read the entire article:
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/7/25/federal-defenderspotentiallyexcludedfromhistoricclemencydrive.html

"I Tried"
http://youtu.be/q4EiBFUpFXg

Repeat of paragraph 1: The Justice Department's promises about clemency reached a snag. This seems to be another case of, "Give us credit; we tried to do the right thing." And the crowds cheer in their mass hypnosis. Al Jareeza reports "Ambitious effort to extend presidential clemency to thousands of inmates is at risk of stalling because of a legal snag." "I tried" and a dollar won't buy a bag of chips. Never has any presidential administration "tried" to do so much for Americans, particularly blacks, and actually accomplished so little. It is incredible.

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Human Rights for Prisoners March

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Mary Neal, director

MaryLovesJustice@gmail.com

Friday, July 4, 2014

The Truth About Clemency

The video embedded below was surreptitiously removed from my "Legal Victories" group at Facebook. It was also substituted in my "Legal Victories" blog with a video of Eric Holder discussing the Voting Rights Act. When Holder made the announcement at the April 21 speech (YouTube link http://youtu.be/GRy2bsUMuoE ) about clemency being considered for possibly thousands of inmates, threats to recall and prosecute the attorney general increased significantly.

"Attorney General on Expanding Clemency Criteria for Drug Offenders in Federal Prison"

See the redirected link in the last paragraph of "Legal Victories Expected re Clemency" at http://legalvictories.blogspot.com/2014/04/legal-victories-expected-re-clemency.html . Holder recently stated that 23 months would be cut from qualified inmates' sentences. That seems to be a Change from the expectations raised regarding clemency by Attorney General Holder in this video, and perhaps that explains why the video of his April 21 speech was removed from Facebook where I placed it and the link to this speech was redirected in my "Legal Victories" article to a speech about Voting Rights. Cyberstalking Mary Neal happens often. I am "America's Most Censored - Mary Neal" (Google it).

Thousands of America's inmates were sentenced under the 100:1 crack to powered cocaine law that the government later declared to be unjust and racist. The disparity was REDUCED but not eliminated under the 2010 Fair Sentencing Act. The present disparity is 18:1. Last year, President Obama granted clemency to eight victims who were unjustly given long sentences including life in prison for crack cocaine offenses under the old law, which was never applied retroactively to inmates who were sentenced before 2010. To cut only 23 months off the sentences of such individuals seems minuscule.

The United Nations made a recommendation in March 2014 that the Fair Sentencing Act should be applied retroactively to inmates who were sentenced under the unjust 100:1 law, which was admitted to have been racist. The federal mandatory sentencing law keeps thousands of individuals contained at great expense to taxpayers - people who would otherwise already be free if not for the racism in America's injustice system.

Referring to the United Nation's assessment of human rights in the United States that was issued in March, Al Jazeera reported, “[The] committee continues to be concerned about racial disparities at different stages in the criminal justice system, sentencing disparities and the over-representation of individuals belonging to racial and ethnic minorities in prisons and jails.”

"The U.N. body calls on the U.S. to retroactively implement the 2010 Fair Sentencing Act and close a loophole that allows thousands of nonviolent offenders to languish in federal prisons as a result of draconian drug laws."