Obama shortens prison sentences of 3 South Carolina drug offenders

Three South Carolinians are among 61 drug offenders who had their prison sentences shortened by President Barack Obama on Wednesday.

Obama has issued 248 drug-related commutations, more than the past six presidents combined, according to the White House.

Eight of those were for South Carolina inmates, including the three granted on Wednesday. More than one third of the inmates who received commutations were serving life sentences.

“They’re Americans who’d been serving time on the kind of outdated sentences that are clogging up our jails and burning through our tax dollars,” Obama said in a statement on Facebook. “Simply put, their punishments didn’t fit the crime.”

Shermaine Donnell Whitley, of Charleston, was sentenced in 2003 to 240 months in prison with 10 years supervised release for conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute and distributing cocaine and cocaine base.

Vander Keith Gore, of Little River, received the same sentence in October 2002 for conspiring to possess with intent to distribute, and distributing, 50 grams or more of cocaine base, 50 kilograms or more of marijuana, five kilograms or more of cocaine, and less than 100 grams of heroin.

Amos Embress Cyrus, of Hemingway, was charged in 1996 with conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute, and with distribution of cocaine base. He was sentenced to 300 months imprisonment with five years supervised release. When he was arrested, he was on supervised release for similar charges.

All three will now be released on July 28 of this year.

In a letter to Cyrus, Gore, Whitley and the 58 other inmates receiving the commutations, Obama wrote that this act “embodies the basic belief in our democracy that people deserve a second chance after having made a mistake in their lives that led to a conviction under our laws.”

Obama also had lunch on Wednesday with some of the former inmates whose sentences were commuted by him and former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, at a Washington restaurant that employs former convicts.

“You’ve got folks around this table who are now attorneys,” Obama told them. “They’re raising children, getting married.”

The Obama administration has long called for an overhaul of the criminal justice system, focusing on getting rid of overly harsh sentences for drug offenses and strict mandatory minimums that led to high incarceration rates. Since his administration announced its clemency initiative in 2014, thousands of inmates have applied.

Another 9,115 clemency petitions from prisoners are still pending, according to the Marshall Project, a news website devoted to criminal justice issues. Although there is bipartisan support in Congress for reforming the criminal justice system, the chaotic election year has pushed it to the background.

All of the inmates who had their sentences commuted by the president were serving time for drug possession, intent to sell drugs, and related crimes. Except for a few charged with firearms violations, most were nonviolent offenders.

In order to qualify for a commutation, inmates have to have served at least 10 years of their sentence, have demonstrated good conduct in prison, and have no significant criminal history or connections to gangs, cartels or other organized crime.

This story was originally published March 30, 2016 at 5:09 PM with the headline "Obama shortens prison sentences of 3 South Carolina drug offenders."