"Which Presidential Candidate Would Give David Barren His Freedom?"

The title of this post is the title of this notable new Filter commentary authored by Rory Fleming.  I recommend the piece in full, and here are excerpts:

David Barren is a Black man from Pittsburgh who was sentenced in 2010 to life without parole in the federal criminal justice system.  That was during President Obama’s tenure — despite his heavily implying that no one should serve more than 20 years in prison for a nonviolent drug offense — and while Attorney General Eric Holder ran the Department of Justice.

Barren was accused of leading a conspiracy involving the distribution of over 150 kilograms of cocaine — though trial transcripts show that federal prosecutors, the defense attorney and the judge had huge difficulty determining how much cocaine there really was.  While the government claimed that there was $1.2 million of drug money to be seized, court documents show it was $76,000 plus Barren’s house, worth approximately $500,000.

Anrica Caldwell, Barren’s fiancée, believes that federal prosecutors on the case demanded life in retaliation for his actually taking them to trial — something of a unicorn in the federal justice system, in which 97 percent of cases end in plea deals.  At least one of his co-conspirators got only four years in prison for the conspiracy, after testifying against Barren.

Obama felt bad for him, but only to a point. He commuted Barren’s sentence to 30 years on his final day in office.  As Barren himself wrote in an email to Reason reporter CJ Ciaramella, he got a “reduction from LIFE in letters, to life in letters and numbers.”

Caldwell, an elementary school teacher in Pittsburgh, is the vice president of CAN-DO, an organization that tirelessly fights for clemency for nonviolent federal drug prisoners. “Baby, I’m gonna die in here,” Barren told her in a call from prison in January 2017.  He is currently 54, and not due to be released until 2034....

But at least one presidential candidate, Senator Cory Booker — recognizing that as things stand, nothing is going to change in time to save people like Barren — is going for broke. Indeed, Booker’s new clemency plan aims at reducing sentences for potentially tens of thousands of people serving federal time for drugs.  Unlike Obama, he said he would do it by executive order — constituting a White House clemency recommendation panel that is not hamstrung by the US Department of Justice, which currently houses the Office of the Pardon Attorney.

This would arguably represent the first time in US history that a president told federal line prosecutors to stuff their hyper-carceral, alarmist agenda.  Obama buckled significantly to their pressure by leaving many people like Barren out to dry on de facto life sentences. “People assume that Obama’s clemency initiative means 1,700 people are kicking their feet up now at home,” said Caldwell, “and that’s just not true.”

Barren’s case is pending before the Trump White House for additional clemency relief, and Caldwell hopes this could be seen as an opportunity for Trump to prove he is serious about the issue before an election year.

Two other presidential candidates could follow Booker’s ambitious clemency reasoning.  In the Queens District Attorney race, perhaps the biggest criminal justice referendum of the year, both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have joined liberal media in endorsing Tiffany Cabán, who promises more proportional sanctions for both nonviolent and violent crime.

Sanders and Warren should talk about their plans for criminal justice reform in more detail, as it is the biggest civil rights issue of our time.  Would they give a man like David Barren a chance? Or would they, too, let his clock run out before he can see his loved ones from outside of the bars?

A few of many older and recent related posts: 

Via RSSMix.com Mix ID 8247011 http://www.rssmix.com/

Comments

Post a Comment