president Obama has at long last begun to commute some sentences
now he is broken records for the least amount of Pardons
and commutes during his sentence though he is not community very many at all in
fact
the as far as drug crimes even though his administration talks about
how the laws were to a stringent
and has killed them back I in terms over
how they're going to be applied in the future and terms ok
well what he's done the passes only community eleven people for drug crimes
in his entire five years in office which is
we take the loosely low but today
good news is commuted the sentence love 8 federal inmates
they have all spent at least 15 years in prison and six were serving life
sentences
and he said that their sentences 0
would have already been up if the new rules were in place that this was quote
and unfair system so it's great to see President Obama finally say that
and he said quote literally if they had been sentenced
under the current law many of them would have already served their time
and paid their debt to society which is indisputably true
so it's a small step forward but a very important one
especially because what are the people who said this was commuted
was a person that we had been arguing in favor of for a long time here on the
Young Turks
Stephanie George has been released she is
free at last now there's a case we brought you a long time ago
I she got three-strikes and hence was serving a life sentence
none other strikes were for any beilin offenses
in fact the first two strikes were for selling
two different instances up selling drugs were combined
160 dollars gay a
in reality the third strike the person would stash two
crack cocaine in her attic is the one who turned a Ren
when he was caught so it was very dubious to begin with whether she was at
all responsible
for the third straight year three kids she earned her GED ins
in the in prison and she'd been in prison for a long time she's forty-three
years old
but now she is free to go now look behind the scenes we've been working on
this
here the Young Turks we've been a
were considering doing a documentary we reached out to her lawyer's
I'll weaving got one of the top lawyers defense lawyers in the country
owed to work behind the scenes on this issue now it was not us
and here's the interesting part of it right her lawyers in our family said hey
you know what
let's give President Obama chance to do the right thing and see if we commute
her sentence
and I have to be honest with you I thought that was foolishly naive
President Obama because his track record show that he had no interest in
commuting sentences
or giving pardons you game far less
all those two things then George W Bush did but I was wrong on this one
and i'm relieved to report that I was wrong an ecstatic to see the Stephanie
George
who would serve for far too long in prison
is now going to be released and President Obama did the right thing
now the ACLU ways in here and they say
look there's a long way to go here and there's a lot of people in prison that
should be there is over
three thousand people in prison who are serving life sentences
for nonviolent offenses right and again present as a long way to go on catching
up
to even George W Bush in terms of how many people's said this is he is
commuted
or people that he has pardoned but they do say
this is called an incredibly important development
and it's true the first step on the road
is the most important step so let's hope the president falls through
and does more this we were not interested in releasing dangerous people
nobody's asking for that we're saying people who
been sent to prison for far too long on minor offenses
have been victims of the war on drugs
and it's time to let him out and would says you can tell from here I couldn't
be more relieved
that they finally left seventy George on their kids was here sir