Obama adds to historic levels of clemency

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama on Monday pardoned 78 people and commuted the sentences of 153 non-violent drug offenders who would have received lighter sentences than they did if convicted of similar crimes today.

The White House said Monday's action marks the largest number of individual acts of clemency granted by a president in a single day in the nation's history. It brings Obama's total acts of clemency to more than than that of the last 11 presidents combined.

In total, Obama has pardoned 148 people and granted 1,176 commutations for federal inmates under the clemency initiative that he and former Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. launched two years ago.

Obama plans to issue more commutations before he leaves office, White House Counsel Neil Eggleston said.

One of those who received clemency is Corey Jacobs, 47, a Bronx native serving a life term for his first felony conviction on a drug charge.

'I am elated at the news about my client, Corey Jacobs, receiving clemency from President Obama today,” Jacobs's attorney, Brittany Byrd, said Monday. 'Corey has more than paid his debt to society by serving over 17 years of a life-without-parole sentence as a non-violent drug offender. Life in prison without the possibility of parole screams that a person is beyond hope, beyond redemption. And in Corey's case, it is a punishment that absolutely did not fit the crime. The president's mercy and belief in redemption literally saved Corey's life.”

Judge Henry Coke Morgan Jr. wrote a letter supporting Jacobs' petition for clemency and said that he would not have imposed a life sentence had he not been required to do so by laws on the books during the nation's 'war on drugs.”

Monday commutations include two Iowans - Anthony Timothy Dodd of Davenport and Aaron Duane Rees of Pleasantville.

Dodd was sentenced in 2006 to life in prison for a conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine conviction.

He later sought to have his prison term reduced after sentencing guidelines were changed to lessen the distinction between punishments for crack and powder cocaine. Previously, terms involving crack cocaine were much more harsh.

Records show his motion was denied in 2011.

Rees was sentenced to a life term in 2005 for convictions of conspiracy to manufacture methamphetamine and use of a minor to manufacture methamphetamine.

Obama commuted both Iowans' prison sentences to 20 years each. He conditioned Rees's eventual release on enrollment in a residential drug treatment program.

An inmates still waiting for clemency is 65-year-old Bruce Harrison, a decorated Vietnam War veteran suffering from health problems who has served 23 years of a 50-year sentence in a Floria prison for his role in transporting drugs in a government sting operation.

After Harrison and others were sentenced, several jurors said they were dismayed to learn how long those convicted would be in prison.

'If I would have been given the right to not only judge the facts in this case, but also the law and the actions taken by the government, the prosecutor, local and federal law enforcement officers connected in this case would be in jail and not the defendants,” juror Patrick McNeil wrote afterward.

Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates said that the Justice Department will review all clemency petitions submitted by August and send recommendations to Obama.

'Our work is ongoing and we look forward to additional announcements from the president before the end of his term,” Yates said.

Julie Stewart, president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, praised Obama's additional clemencies, but said that 'commuting sentences isn't going to dig us out of the 30-year problem of over-sentencing people in the first place.”

'That requires congressional action. and who knows what will happen in the new Congress,” Stewart said.

The Washington Post contributed to this report.