Give second chances a chance -- March 31, 2016 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Before the New Hampshire primary in 1992, Gov. Bill Clinton denied clemency to a mentally incapacitated death-row inmate and flew home to Arkansas to oversee the execution.

Back then, presidential candidates needed to show they were tough on crime.

Today, they’re tough on the criminal justice system.

Democratic presidential contenders Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders both favor criminal justice reform. Republican Ted Cruz originally supported reform but has backed off. Reform is one thing about which Donald Trump hasn’t said much.

Interestingly, though, none of the GOP presidential hopefuls in this snarling campaign called Clinton as soft on crime when she proposed ending mass incarceration, reducing sentences for non-violent drug offenders and reforming mandatory sentencing laws.

A rare consensus has developed among Democrats and Republicans that the criminal justice system is, as former Attorney General Eric Holder said, broken. In the 1990s’ War on Drugs, voters wanted to lock up criminals and throw away the key. 

President Bill Clinton signed the 1994 Violent Crime Control Act that created longer mandatory sentences and made felonies of lesser crimes.

Now, with nearly half the inmates in federal prisons incarcerated for drug offenses at a per-inmate cost of nearly $30,000 a year, attitudes have changed. Most people think the law is unduly harsh, locks up too many people -- especially minorities -- costs too much and does not make us safer.

President Barack Obama, who has made criminal justice reform a priority, Wednesday commuted the sentences of 61 nonviolent drug offenders. This brought his total commutations to 248 -- more than the last six presidents combined, the White House said.

 Two Alabama prisoners had their sentences commuted: Ian Kavanaugh Gavin of Eight Mile and Jerome Harris Jr. of Mobile. Both were convicted of intending to distribute crack cocaine and having a firearm in their possession.

Since he has been president, Obama has commuted 92 life sentences. Among them: Dwayne Twane Walker of Charlottesville, Va., who received life for a conviction of conspiracy to distribute cocaine base.

 “The power to grant pardons and commutations…embodies the basic belief in our democracy that people deserve a second chance after having made a mistake in their lives that led to a conviction under our laws,” Obama said in a letter to the prisoners who will be freed.

While he has issued only a fraction of the 10,000 clemency grants for nonviolent offenders Holder predicted last year, Obama vows to do more. The Justice Department’s pardon attorney quit earlier this year because she was frustrated with the slow pace and the backlog of clemency requests.

No one, though, expects clemency to solve our prison problems.

White House Counsel Neil Eggleston wrote on the White House blog: “Clemency is nearly always a tool of last resort that can help specific individuals, but does nothing to make our criminal justice system on the whole more fair and just.”

Reform requires legislation, and some states have taken the lead. In Congress, there’s bipartisan interest, and House Speaker Paul Ryan promises the House will take up reform sometime this year.

Democrats Tim Kaine and Mark Warner of Virginia are among cosponsors of the bipartisan sentencing reform bill in the Senate. Sen. Mike Lee, a conservative Republican from Utah, favors easing mandatory sentencing laws.

Not all are convinced, however. Sen. Jeff Sessions, a conservative Republican from Alabama, is among those who worry that violent criminals might be freed and commit more crimes.

In the 1990s, fear of recidivism motivated the sledgehammer approach to judicial discretion, replacing it with mandatory minimum sentences.

Eight years ago, although he opposed easing sentencing laws, President George W. Bush signed the Second Chance Act, which provides grants to faith-based and other groups to help prisoners train for jobs, fight substance abuse and learn other skills to reenter society.

Since 2009, more than $400 million in Second Chance grants has been distributed, and other federal programs also help offenders get on their feet. Even so, our recidivism record is appalling.

Almost half of federal offenders released in 2005 were rearrested for a new crime or for a violation of supervision conditions within eight years – most within two years, the U.S. Sentencing Commission said in a study released March 9. Of these, almost one-third were reconvicted.

The current epidemic of opioid and heroin addiction is worse than the cocaine epidemic of the 1990s. We need to stop warehousing nonviolent drug offenders and invest instead in prevention, treatment, rehab, education and recovery. We can’t afford to do anything else.

©2016 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

30

Family values, fundraising, fairness -- and Obama's stance on same-sex marriage -- May 10, 2012 column

By MARSHA MERCER

To those who were shocked, shocked to hear that campaign politics might have figured into President Barack Obama’s endorsement of same-sex marriage, I have bad news. It was ever thus.

Obama fired off a fundraising email the day after he said he personally supports same-sex marriage. Unseemly, yes, but hardly surprising. Political strategizing has been at the heart of the war over marriage equality since the Defense of Marriage Act was a glimmer in Bob Dole’s eye 16 years ago.

As President Bill Clinton ran for re-election in 1996, Dole, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, co-sponsored the Senate bill that defined marriage as between a man and a woman.

Dole wanted to stir the “family values” pot, but Clinton grabbed the spoon.

As Dole shepherded the bill banning same-sex marriage through Congress, with the help of House Speaker Newt Gingrich, the White House announced that yes, indeed, Clinton would sign it. And in September he did so, ignoring the outrage of gay supporters. The re-election campaign soon ran ads on Christian radio stations, lauding the president for fighting for “our values.”

Clinton sanded the edges off what Dole had hoped would be a wedge issue in that campaign. But the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, lives as the law of the land. Obama disavowed DOMA and has refused to defend it in court – but the law still blocks thousands of lawfully wedded same-sex couples from receiving benefits available to heterosexual couples. We’ve yet to hear how Obama proposes to change that.

In 1996, no state had legalized same-sex marriage. Today, six states and the District of Columbia permit it, but under DOMA no state must recognize same-sex marriages that are performed in another state.

Section 3 of the law specifies that for federal purposes ``the word `marriage’ means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word ‘spouse’ refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or wife.”

The law effectively cuts out same-sex married couples from more than 1,100 federal benefits, according to the Human Rights Campaign, an advocacy group for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people.

Married same-sex couples cannot file joint tax returns, take unpaid family leave, receive surviving spouse benefits under Social Security or receive family health and pension benefits as federal civilian employees.

Obama told Robin Roberts of ABC News Wednesday that, “For me, personally, it is important…to go ahead and affirm that I think that same-sex couples should be able to get married.” But he dodged questions about what he will actually do, saying the issue should be left to the states.

A day earlier, North Carolina became the 30th state to ban same-sex marriage, reinforcing current law with a constitutional amendment.

It’s difficult to imagine how Obama can stick to the stance that his views are merely personal when he says fairness and justice are at stake. He stood for fairness when he backed repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the policy that prevented gay men and lesbians from serving openly in the military.

The main rationale for not defending DOMA in the courts was Obama’s determination that the law was unconstitutional, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. wrote House Speaker John A. Boehner in February 2011. Nevertheless, law is law, and the president ordered his attorney general to continue enforcing it.

House Republicans hired a lawyer to defend the law in the courts.

The Supreme Court likely will decide the issues at some point. For now, Obama has a campaign to run and pay for. One in six of his top bundlers, who have brought in $500,000 or more, have publicly identified themselves as gay, The Washington Post reported.

Obama is trying to walk a line between voters with strong feelings. He stressed in the ABC interview that he deeply respects pastors and others who believe in traditional marriage, and he indicated that same-sex marriage isn’t a current priority.

“I’m not gonna be spending most of my time talking about this, because, frankly, my job as president right now, my biggest priority, is to make sure that we’re growing the economy, that we’re putting people back to work, that we’re managing the draw-down in Afghanistan effectively,” he said.

But he’s not shy about using the issue to bring in campaign cash. For now, Obama’s strategy is to describe himself as a practicing Christian who believes in the Golden Rule.

“Treat others the way you’d want to be treated,” he said before boarding Air Force One for a trip to the West Coast for fundraisers, where his support of same-sex marriage could boost his haul.

©2012 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.