WASHINGTON – President Biden granted pre-Christmas prison breaks to 11 people jailed for drug crimes on Friday, expanding slightly on his massive marijuana amnesty announced last year – which critics criticized as failing to fulfill a campaign pledge to put everyone behind bars iron.
Biden, 81, wrote some of the nation’s toughest drug laws during his 36 years in the Senate, including one that sent several people to life in prison without parole for dealing marijuana.
During the 2020 campaign, however, Biden turned to promising a more lax approach, including releasing “everyone” in prison for pot.
The 11 selected Friday include nine people incarcerated for cocaine-related crimes and two for methamphetamine offenses.
Biden issued a proclamation expanding eligibility for amnesty under a policy he announced last year, which allows anyone convicted federally or in DC of marijuana possession to have their records expunged.
The expansion also allows for amnesty for people convicted of using pot on federal land.
President Biden expanded eligibility for the pardons he did last year. AP
It’s unclear how many additional people are eligible — after Biden’s initial mass pardon was criticized as a pre-midterm ploy because it didn’t actually free anyone while leaving more than 2,000 inmates in prison for dealing pot rather than possessing it.
“America was founded on the principle of equal justice under the law,” Biden said in a statement Friday.
“Elected officials on both sides of the aisle, religious leaders, civil rights advocates and law enforcement leaders agree that our criminal justice system can and should reflect these core values that make our communities safer and stronger. That is why today I am announcing the additional steps I am taking to make the promise of equal justice a reality.”
The viral anti-Biden video has called into question whether the legal system actually treats drug users equally.
A widely circulated video shows first-born Hunter Biden weighing 21 grams of crack cocaine and smoking it while his father boasts in a Senate speech that he and the late Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-SC) has passed legislation mandating five years in prison for smaller amounts of crack.
“If you have a piece of cocaine no more than this quarter … you will be imprisoned for 5 years. You don’t get probation, you don’t get anything but 5 years in prison — the judge has no choice!” Joe Biden said.
Although Biden used his pardon power for an unprecedented amount of time early, according to the White House, activists said it fell short of what he promised as a candidate.
Last year, protesters outside the White House blown up on a loop audio of Biden’s 2019 campaign pledge to free “everyone” in prison for pot and accused him of half-measures designed to confuse voters.
“I 100% know this is for the midterms,” rapper M-1 of left-wing hip-hop duo Dead Prez told The Post of Biden’s massive pardon. “I think we need to be smarter and not used anymore.”
Biden’s legislation in the 1980s and ’90s “made warehousing and the prison industrial complex a viable thing,” M-1 said. “If you don’t connect the three-strikes-you’re-out law and other laws he’s done in the past with what’s happening today, then you don’t see the complete hypocrisy.”
Vice President Kamala Harris, who oversaw the conviction of 1,956 people for pot crimes while San Francisco’s district attorney, “locked up so many of us in California for weed,” the rapper added. “If you read the headlines or you read the narrative that the White House is pushing, you’re going to be confused.”
Inmates in federal prisons for marijuana-related crimes told The Post they were surprised that Biden’s massive amnesty didn’t actually free any of them — even though recreational pot use is now legal under state law in about half the country.
“Biden gave us rancid hamburgers and the media celebrated as if he was serving filet mignon,” said federal inmate Joseph Akers, whose 16.5-year sentence for participating in a marijuana-dealing conspiracy is scheduled to end in 2031.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
