US announces early release plan for nonviolent, low-level drug offenders
RT USA
Jan 30, 2014
Andrew Burton / Getty Images / AFP
The Obama administration announced Thursday a new clemency effort that encourages defense lawyers to refer to the Department of Justice low-level, nonviolent drug offenders for early release from federal prisons.
Speaking before the New York State Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Section, Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole unveiled the plan that seeks to determine possible clemency for inmates whose long-term incarceration “harms our criminal justice system.”
“You each can play a critical role in this process by providing a qualified petitioner – one who has a clean record in prison, does not present a threat to public safety, and who is facing a life or near-life sentence that is excessive under current law – with the opportunity to get a fresh start,” Cole said.
In addition, the US Bureau of Prisons will begin informing such low-level, nonviolent drug offenders of the opportunity to apply for early release, Cole said.
The announcement follows other initiatives and statements regarding prison reform made recently by top officials. Attorney General Eric Holder said in August that the same type of low-level drug offenders, with no ties to gangs or major drug trafficking organizations, would no longer be charged with certain offenses that instituted harsh mandatory sentences.
President Obama followed Holder in December with the commutation of sentences of eight inmates serving extensive terms in prison for crack cocaine convictions. All of the eight – recommended by the Justice Department – had served at least 15 years in jail and had been convicted before the 2010 Fair Sentencing Act, which was passed in effort to close large sentencing disparities between those convicted for crack and those for powder cocaine crimes.
Obama said at the time those eight inmates would have received shorter sentences had the law existed when they were convicted, adding some would have already served their time by then.
Cole said the Justice Department would like to send more of those kind of cases to the White House.
“The president’s grant of commutations for these eight individuals is only a first step,” he said. “There are more low-level, nonviolent drug offenders who remain in prison, and who would likely have received a substantially lower sentence if convicted of precisely the same offenses today.”
Cole did not specify how many candidates the White House will consider in the clemency program, though there are currently thousands of inmates serving time in federal prison for just crack cocaine crimes.
The Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney is in charge of advising the White House on the merits of specific cases.
Cost savings is a residual benefit of the commutations for such low-level offenders. Holder, testifying before a Senate committee Wednesday, said federal prison costs make up one-third of the Justice Department budget, amounting to “a growing and potentially very dangerous problem.”
The total cost for incarcerating federal prisoners in 2010 came to US$80 billion. The federal prison population has shot up by 800 percent since 1980, and prisons are operating at 40 percent over capacity, according to the Justice Department.
On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee also advanced the Smarter Sentencing Act, which would reform mandatory minimum statutes. The new bill would shorten sentences and give judges more leeway to use their own discretion during sentencing. In addition, the legislation would allow inmates to return to court to seek sentences pursuant to the Fair Sentencing Act.
Kansas Woman Left to Die In Jail Over Small Amount of Marijuana
by Amanda Warren
Activist Post
Jan 28, 2014
Brenda Sewell and her sister Joy Biggs had recently purchased a motor home from a Colorado couple. The couple delivered it to them in Kansas City and the sisters drove the couple back to Colorado.
It was on their way home, just after crossing the Colorado-Kansas border, when a Kansas Highway Patrol officer pulled the women over for suspected speeding in Sherman County.
Biggs never could have guessed that in less than 72 hours she’d be helping a jail mate try to revive her dying sister who was foaming at the mouth.
While suspected speeding last Monday was the reason the officer pulled their car over, the discovery of a small amount of marijuana is why they were taken to a Goodland jail where they were both denied a phone call.
Sewell, age 58, was on legal prescriptions to treat long-term problems with her thyroid, hepatitis C and fibromyalgia. She had purchased the marijuana from Colorado, where it was recently made legal, to manage nausea and lack of appetite.
Thailand: Thaksin Regime Turns on its Own Supporters
by Tony Cartalucci
Alt Thai News Network ATNN
Jan 29, 2014
Regime sends “red shirt” enforcers to threaten farmers and their families for protesting 6 months of unpaid subsidies – smashing the myth of “rural support.”
January 30, 2014 (ATN) – While the US, UK, and others across the West attempt to sell upcoming sham elections in Thailand as upholding “democratic values,” the regime overseeing the one-party self-mandate in a climate of regime-sanctioned terrorism, political intimidation, and a “state of emergency,” has begun turning on its own supporters – mainly farmers.
Farmers began blocking roads across the country in response to unpaid rice subsidies that are now half a year late. Thaksin Shinawatra promised 40% + over-market prices for rice as part of vote-buying populist policies that propelled his nepotist appointed sister into power in 2011. Since then, the rice-buying scheme has collapsed in scandal, corruption, and bankruptcy with government warehouses literally collapsing from the weight of rotting rice left unsold for months.
Unable to sell the rice to nations that have turned to other rice-producers over concerns of downward spiraling quality, the regime attempted to sell bonds. The sale failed to raise even half the cash necessary to pay farmers who already had promised rates slashed and delayed.
As protests began to spread across the north and northeast of Thailand, considered Thaksin Shinawatra and his regime’s stronghold, and with other farmers headed to Bangkok to join the “Occupy Bangkok” campaign, the regime has begun turning its notoriously violent “red shirt” enforcers on the farmers – most of whom, according to the BBC, AFP, Reuters, and others constituted the regime’s support base.
Image: Rice farmers in Phitsanulok province were threatened by regime “red shirts” to end their protest. Often cited by the Western media in their “class divide” narrative, it is now clear the nation’s farmers were simply used to get Thaksin Shinawtra back into power, and that the violence and intimidation usually reserved for his political opponents is now being turned on them in the wake of being cheated by his vote-buying rice subsidy scam. Rice farmers have already turned in their rice, but have not been paid for it for half a year – in other words – they were robbed. (Photo by Chinnawat Singha)
VIDEO — Shooting Cops
Larken Rose
Nov 13, 2011
If blunt truth makes you uncomfortable, maybe you need to be uncomfortable.
VIDEO — Day of Rage: French cops clash with protesters at rally against Hollande
RT
Jan 27, 2014
COURTESY: RT’s RUPTLY video agency, NO RE-UPLOAD, NO REUSE – FOR LICENSING, PLEASE, CONTACT http://ruptly.tv
RT’s video agency Ruptly has obtained exclusive footage from Paris during a “Day of Rage” against President Francois Hollande Sunday, during which videographer Jonathan Moadab was detained by authorities for filming clashes between protesters and police.
RT LIVE http://rt.com/on-air
Yet Another ‘Suspect’ Detained and Subjected to Three Enemas By Overzealous Cops
by Matt Staggs
disinformation
Jan 26, 2014
The anal obsessions of our drug warriors continue to be expressed on hapless citizens. This time, a 54 year-old man once convicted of meth possession:
IF you think that protests about overzealous law enforcement are over the top, listen to what unfolded when the police suspected that David Eckert, 54, was hiding drugs in his rectum.
Eckert is a shy junk dealer struggling to get by in Hidalgo County, N.M. He lives a working-class life, drives a 16-year-old pickup and was convicted in 2008 of methamphetamine possession.
Police officers, suspecting he might still be involved in drugs, asked him to step out of his pickup early last year after stopping him for a supposed traffic violation. No drugs or weapons were found on Eckert or in his truck, but a police dog showed interest in the vehicle and an officer wrote that Eckert’s posture was “erect and he kept his legs together.”
That led the police to speculate that he might be hiding drugs internally, so they took him in handcuffs to a nearby hospital emergency room and asked the doctor, Adam Ash, to conduct a forcible search of his rectum. Dr. Ash refused, saying it would be unethical.
“I was pretty sure it was the wrong thing to do,” Dr. Ash told me. “It was not medically indicated.”
Eckert, protesting all the while, says he asked to make a phone call but was told that he had no right to do so because he hadn’t actually been arrested. The police then drove Eckert 50 miles to the emergency room of the Gila Regional Medical Center, where doctors took X-rays of Eckert’s abdomen and performed a rectal examination. No drugs were found, so doctors performed a second rectal exam, again unavailing.
Doctors then gave Eckert an enema and forced him to have a bowel movement in the presence of a nurse and policeman, according to a lawsuit that Eckert filed. When no narcotics were found, a second enema was administered. Then a third.
The police left the privacy curtain open, so that Eckert’s searches were public, the lawsuit says.
After hours of fruitless searches, police and doctors arranged another X-ray and finally anesthetized Eckert and performed a colonoscopy.
“Nothing was found inside of Mr. Eckert,” the police report notes. So after he woke up, he was released — after 13 hours, two rectal exams, three enemas, two X-rays and a colonoscopy.
The hospital ended up billing Eckert $6,000.
New Hampshire House Passes Recreational Pot, Legalization Unlikely
by Elizabeth Renter
Natural Society
Jan 25, 2014
Last week, the New Hampshire House gave preliminary approval to legalize recreational pot. And though the measure isn’t likely to become law, with a state Senate opposed to ending marijuana prohibition, the passage by the House marks a significant step and a sign that things are changing.
The bill is reportedly modeled by those in Washington and Colorado and would allow people to possess up to one ounce of marijuana. It would tax and regulate pot and also allow citizens to grow a total of six plants.
The first attempt to pass the measure failed, with two lawmakers tipping the scales to the opposing side. Only an hour later, they tried again and the bill passed 170-162, according to AlterNet. The House voted 170-162 after a 2 ½-hour heated debate to send the bill to its tax committee to review before taking a final vote.
PN 