WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama has commuted the sentence of one Arkansas man and pardoned another, the White House announced Tuesday.
Michael Sain of Holly Grove was convicted in 2000 of possessing and intending to distribute more than 500 grams of cocaine hydrochloride. After a bench trial, U.S. District Judge Billy Roy Wilson of the Eastern District of Arkansas sentenced him to 210 months in prison, or 17.5 years.
Rather than surrendering when it was time to begin his sentence at a federal prison in Oakdale, La., Sain became a fugitive, finally being nabbed by Chicago police officers in January 2004.
Sentenced to an additional 24 months in prison for failing to appear, he has been incarcerated for 13 years.
Now housed at a low-level federal prison in Forrest City, Ark., he wasn’t scheduled to be released until Dec. 31, 2020.
Thanks to Obama, Sain’s sentence will now expire Jan. 17, 2019, but only if Sain enrolls in a residential drug treatment program.
Sain was one of 209 people who received presidential commutations Tuesday. Since taking office, Obama has commuted the sentences of 1,385 people, the most of any president in history, the White House said.
The president also pardoned 64 people Tuesday, bringing his total number of pardons to 212.
Charles D. Hinton of Blevins, Ark., who was convicted in Georgia of being an accessory after the fact to a crime, has had the felony conviction on his record for more than four decades.
Hinton received a suspended 30-month sentence and also three years’ probation, which was completed on April 11, 1972.
Obama didn’t explain the factors that led him to believe the two Arkansans should be shown mercy. But Neil Eggleston, counsel to the president, wrote that Obama had granted clemency to all 273 people because he “found them deserving of a second chance.”
Shortly before Christmas, Obama pardoned another Arkansas man, Allen Wayne Parker of Fort Smith. In 1991, Parker, a former Fort Smith police officer, admitted to stealing property that had been seized from evangelist Tony Alamo by federal law enforcement officials.
Tuesday’s announcement came less than 72 hours before the end of Obama’s second term.
In a blog post Tuesday on the White House’s website, Eggleston said the president had shown “remarkable” mercy to 1,597 commutation and pardon recipients, but that “only Congress can achieve the broader reforms needed to ensure over the long run that our criminal justice system operates more fairly and effectively in the service of public safety.”