Pubdate: Sat, 24 Feb 2001
Source: Charlotte Observer (NC)
Copyright: 2001 The Charlotte Observer
Contact:  http://www.charlotte.com/observer/
Author: Neal Peirce
Note: Neal Peirce is a nationally syndicated columnist who writes about 
state and local government and federal relations.

CLINTON DIDN'T TAKE PARDONS FAR ENOUGH

He should have done something about the thousands of nonviolent drug 
offenders serving long, mandatory sentences.

Almost as troublesome as the last-minute pardons President Clinton decided 
to grant rich, powerful and connected figures like financier Marc Rich are 
questions about the pardons he failed to issue to hundreds of very ordinary 
people caught in the legal traps of our misguided "war on drugs."

The number of Americans incarcerated for drug offenses has spiraled upward 
tenfold since 1980. Some 500,000 are now held - 80,000 in federal prisons. 
Many are serving extremely long sentences - 20, 25 years, life - with no 
chance of parole.

Under the mandatory sentences enacted by Congress in 1988, federal drug 
offenders typically serve longer than persons convicted of rape, assault or 
robbery - often longer than murderers.

Bill Clinton knew all this. In the same "Rolling Stone" interview (in the 
magazine's January edition) in which he supported decriminalizing 
possession of small amounts of marijuana, he also acknowledged that many 
drug sentences "are too long for nonviolent offenders." The great majority 
of federal judges, he noted, now want to do away with mandatory sentences.

Additionally, an intensive campaign was launched to persuade Clinton to 
grant clemency to nonviolent drug offenders - small-time users or carriers 
- - who have ended up serving decades-long sentences under the mandatory 
federal sentencing guidelines.

In the final weeks of his term, Clinton received an eloquent plea from 675 
leading clergy of all denominations. Their proposal: that he commute the 
sentences of virtually all low-level, nonviolent drug offenders who had 
already served five years of their terms.

Not only are the sentences excessive, the clergy noted, but thousands of 
the offenders are parents whose children are deeply hurt by the separations.

A prisoners' rights group, Families Against Mandatory Minimums, even 
supplied Clinton with a list of the nearly 500 prisoners who would been 
released had they been convicted following (and not before) a 1994 "safety 
valve" law that allows judges to be more lenient on first-time offenders.

So what did Clinton decide?

In his final day in office, following up on a handful of earlier drug case 
pardons, he included 22 drug offenders in his final pardon list.

What a dismal showing, when one considers that Clinton could legitimately 
have pardoned hundreds, ideally thousands!

Even worse, it turns out that one of the lucky 22 who received a 
presidential commutation looks more like a drug kingpin than an innocent 
victim. His name: Carlos Vignali Jr., a major player in a Twin Cities 
cocaine ring before his 1994 conviction and 15-year sentence for a major 
interstate cocaine shipment. Vignali's father, Minnesota newspapers are 
reporting, donated $160,000 to Democratic officeholders after his son went 
on trial.

Says a disappointed Eric Sterling, president of the Criminal Justice Policy 
Foundation, which worked with the clergy on their appeal:

"We were hoping to elevate the thinking of the president about these 
issues. To reflect on the appropriate and merciful and just use of the 
pardoning power. To leave a just legacy. It's evident he didn't care about 
that."

Had Clinton worked to pardon several hundred deserving minor drug 
offenders, Sterling suggests, he would have received press accolades.

Even more important, adds Sterling, "It would have been an extremely 
powerful policy message to the new president - and Congress - that drug 
sentences are an issue that needs serious attention."

Without that, one can at least detect other signs of a reform tide sweeping 
in. George W. Bush hardly championed reduced sentences for anything as 
governor of Texas. Yet if the new administration has its ears open at all, 
it will hear some of its friends urging radically new drug policy.

An online news service, stateline.org, reports that seven Republican 
governors are now vocally supporting less jail time and more treatment, 
supervision and community service for drug offenders. They are Govs. George 
Pataki (New York), Gary Johnson (New Mexico), Jim Geringer (Wyoming), Mike 
Leavitt (Utah), Dirk Kempthorne (Idaho), Frank Keating (Oklahoma) and Mike 
Huckabee (Arkansas).

The guiding concerns: prisons crowded with inmates who have chronic alcohol 
or drug problems; the high costs of prisons - to build them, to maintain 
them; and the blatant failure of nearly three decades of a furious, 
punitive war on drugs.

"It makes more sense to treat people with a drug problem rather than simply 
incarcerating them and putting them in a place where their problems are not 
met," Arkansas' Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister, said in his State 
of the State address last month.

Also dying an overdue death: the idea that cutting off foreign drug supply 
will happen, or make a difference. President Bush's compadre, Mexican 
President Vicente Fox, tells the truth here: "(The United States) has shown 
a grand inability to reduce drug consumption. It has shown a grand 
inability to prevent drugs from entering."

Bottom line: America's entire anti-drug strategy needs revamping. Clinton 
had a chance to start with the humblest victims. He failed. But the 
rationale for the status quo is crumbling.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens