Former President Barack Obama’s legacy is still reverberating positively for the lives of Americans. While incumbent President Donald Trump holds thousands upon thousands of migrants in inhumane, dangerous conditions and consistently mulls turning the justice system into even more of a personal bludgeoning tool via attacking his political opponents, a Louisiana woman named Danielle Metz graduated college recently after being among those prisoners whose sentences Obama cut down. This week, Obama personally sent Metz an encouraging, handwritten letter on the occasion of her graduation from Southern University.
‘Congratulations on your graduation from Southern! I am so proud of you, and am confident that your example will have a positive impact for others who are looking for a second chance. Tell your children I say hello, and know that I’m rooting for all of you.’
Metz had been facing the prospect of staying in jail indefinitely because of three life sentences plus another 20 years that she had been slapped with in the 1990s at a height of the so-called war on drugs over her husband’s drug trafficking ring. While imprisoned, she attempted to turn her life around “from the inside,” earning her GED. She spoke to USA Today in recent days about that turnaround coming more full circle via her college graduation — and apparently following that story, Obama got in touch.
At the time of the original story, Metz told the publication that she wished she could tell Obama:
‘You don’t know what you did for me. I’m finally coming into my own. I made the honor roll.’
Obama got numerous people out of prison besides Metz who were in similar situations. He used the power of commutation — shortening people’s sentences — more than any one of the past dozen or so presidents, issuing a full 1,715 along with 212 pardons. Most of those who Obama targeted — including the 330 people whose sentences he commuted on his last full day in office in 2017 — were serving time for drug-related offenses. Some of the sentences he dealt with his pardons and commutations stretched back into the 1960s, 70s, 80s, and 90s.
At this point in his presidency, Donald Trump has granted just four commutations. He reduced Sholom Rubashkin’s fraud punishment, helped out the Hammond brothers who had been held liable for arson they committed in protest against the U.S. government in 2012 — and got a woman named Alice Marie Johnson out of prison. Johnson is a grandmother who had been sentenced to life imprisonment as a first-time offender facing nonviolent drug charges.
Although in that case, Trump helped someone turn their life around, he has used similar powers for political aims on other occasions. Besides freely discussing whether or not he would pardon individuals — including himself, possibly — held liable for behavior undertaken as part of the Russia scandal, he has used his pardon power for figures like Arizona’s Joe Arpaio, who was facing a criminal conviction for singling out immigrants for targeting while on the job as Maricopa County Sheriff, even after a court ordered him to stop.
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