Hatch: President Obama’s Commutations of Drug and Firearm Sentences Pose Real Risks
SALT LAKE CITY—Senator Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, the senior member and former Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, issued the following statement upon news that President Obama has given over 1,000 clemency grants to federal inmates, including two announced yesterday from Utah:
“We need to be very careful about letting convicted criminals out of jail early, particularly ones convicted of serious drug and firearm offenses. Among the criminals who have received commutations under President Obama are individuals caught trafficking significant amounts of cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin and dozens of armed felons. We’ve made real legislative progress recently in the fight against illegal drug use, and it’s important that we not undermine our efforts through ill-advised commutations and early releases.”
Earlier in November, Senator Hatch wrote an op-ed for National Review urging caution in commuting felons’ sentences. He wrote:
Last week, President Obama commuted the sentences of 98 federal drug and firearm felons. These commutations were the latest in a long line of executive clemency actions. President Obama has now commuted the sentences of 872 federal offenders — more than the last eleven presidents combined.
No doubt there are instances where a guilty defendant receives an overly harsh sentence. Perfect justice is not possible in an imperfect world.
But we need to be very careful about letting convicted criminals out of jail early, particularly ones convicted of serious drug and firearm offenses. Illegal drugs such as heroin, methamphetamine, and cocaine inflict incalculable harm on our communities, destroying lives and ravaging families. Gun violence similarly shatters the lives of victims and their families and has a profoundly negative impact on community well-being.
The full op-ed is below:
Last week, President Obama commuted the sentences of 98 federal drug and firearm felons. These commutations were the latest in a long line of executive clemency actions. President Obama has now commuted the sentences of 872 federal offenders—more than the last eleven presidents combined.
No doubt there are instances where a guilty defendant receives an overly harsh sentence. Perfect justice is not possible in an imperfect world.
But we need to be very careful about letting convicted criminals out of jail early, particularly ones convicted of serious drug and firearm offenses. Illegal drugs like heroin, meth, and cocaine inflict incalculable harm on our communities, destroying lives and ravaging families. Gun violence similarly shatters the lives of victims and their families and has a profoundly negative impact on community well-being.
That’s one reason I’ve taken a cautious approach to many of the criminal justice reform efforts advanced recently in Congress. I agree with a number of my colleagues that our system of mandatory minimum sentences can produce unjust outcomes and that empowering judges to sentence below the statutory minimum in certain defined situations may make sense.
But we must be cautious, particularly when it comes to releasing offenders currently in prison.
As an initial matter, it’s important to keep in mind that many incarcerees pled down from more serious crimes. That is, the offense for which they’re serving time is not the offense initially charged, or the most serious offense for which the government could have won a conviction. In the plea bargaining process, both sides make concessions in order to avoid the uncertainty of trial. The defendant agrees to plead guilty, while the government agrees to forego more serious charges. Thus an individual caught dealing drugs may agree to plead guilty to simple possession, or a person arrested with ten kilos of cocaine may plead guilty to possessing a much smaller amount.
The point is not that such individuals should face harsher penalties than their plea deals provide for—that would be unjust—but rather that an offender’s crime of conviction does not necessarily reflect his or her actual danger to the community. Keep this in mind when you hear talking points about “low-level offenders.” Many such offenders in fact committed more serious crimes, but pled down to lesser offenses to avoid trial.
A review of President Obama’s recent batch of commutations reveals the perils of an overly liberal approach to sentence reductions. Among the 98 offenders receiving commutations are 19 individuals convicted of firearm offenses, including use of a firearm during a drug trafficking crime. Seventy-five of the commutations involved the distribution or intended distribution of cocaine, 19 involved the distribution or intended distribution of methamphetamine, and 4 involved the distribution or intended distribution of heroin. These are not eighteen-year-olds selling small amounts of marijuana to their friends in the locker room. These are hard-core drug traffickers. Many were caught with more than a kilogram of cocaine or heroin.
With our nation—and state—in the midst of an ongoing drug epidemic, we cannot afford to be letting hundreds of serious drug traffickers out early without assurance that they will not return to their criminal ways. One individual whose sentence President Obama recently commuted committed his first felony when he was only 16 years old and ran the largest cocaine ring in Topeka, Kansas. Hardly the type of offender who should be a candidate for early release.
We’ve made real legislative progress recently in the fight against drug abuse—particularly prescription drug abuse. This summer, Congress passed the first comprehensive bill to address the prescription drug crisis at the national level. I negotiated the legislation with my House and Senate counterparts and fought hard to ensure the bill included effective programs to educate children about the dangers of prescription drug abuse and to provide treatment for individuals addicted to prescription medications. I also authored legislation this Congress to facilitate closer collaboration between law enforcement and prescription drug distributors and to incentivize self-reporting of Controlled Substances Act violations. Both of these bills are now law.
There’s still more work to be done in the fight against illegal drugs, and it’s important that we not undermine our efforts through ill-advised commutations and early releases. I’ve supported proposals to enable prisoners serving first-time sentences to qualify for transitional custody—such as home confinement—by completing anti-recidivism training and undergoing a thorough evaluation by prison officials. That is a far cry from cutting years off the sentences of repeat drug traffickers caught with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of hard-core illicit drugs.
Remedying overly harsh prison sentences is a laudable goal, but we must be smart about how we do so. The last thing we should want is to let serious drug and firearm offenders out early only to have them fall back into their previous lives of crime. Our families and communities deserve better.
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Hatch Statement on Court Delay of Federal Overtime Rule
SALT LAKE CITY—Senator Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, a member and the former Chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, issued the following statement in reaction to a Texas judge granting an emergency injunction against the Labor Department's overtime rule:
“The court’s decision confirms what I have said for months: The Department of Labor has clearly exceeded its authority. If implemented, the Obama administration’s overreaching Overtime Rule would be devastating to workers and employers alike, making work schedules less flexible by requiring salaried employees to punch a time clock. While Congress may need to evaluate overtime salary thresholds, the Obama administration's accelerated, one-size-fits-all, top-down approach was a mistake. In fighting to rein in our burdensome regulatory bureaucracy, I will continue to champion policies that strengthen America’s workers and small businesses.”
Hatch Statement on the Nomination of Betsy Devos to Serve as Secretary of Education
SALT LAKE CITY—Senator Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, a member and the former Chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, issued the following statement following President-elect Trump’s announcement that he is nominating Betsy Devos to serve as Secretary of Education:
“I am excited about President-elect Trump’s pick for Secretary of Education. Betsy DeVos has been a tireless proponent for our nation’s children and is committed to expanding opportunities for all students. I look forward to working with her to restore greater local authority over our nation’s schools, enhance parental involvement in their children’s education, and boost achievement for students of all backgrounds
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