In what was likely to be his final major use of executive authority, President Barack Obama commuted the sentences of an additional 330 federal prisoners on Thursday — the most granted by a president in a single day in history.
The move brings his commutation total to 1,715, more than any other president. The vast majority are low-level drug offenders who were subject to now-outdated mandatory minimum sentences. And while Obama’s push for criminal justice reform came up short in his last two years in office, he directed his own justice department to drive a more assertive use of the president’s clemency authority.
(Read the rest of the story here…)