#first step act

Frank Vyan Walton at Daily Kos:

Also, Trump said some crazy shit about “doing more for Black people than Lincoln.”

After "Morning Joe" co-host Mike Brezinski reported the former president told the crowd at the NRA convention in Dallas, “And honestly, there’s been no president since Abraham Lincoln and perhaps in a certain way, including Abraham Lincoln, but there’s been no president since Abraham Lincoln that has done more for the Black individual in this country than President Donald J. Trump,” before adding, "There’s been nobody. Not even close.”

So that’s a thing.

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Woodruff asked Biden about Kushner, saying, “Another subject, the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, he told a reporter this week who asked him about your criticism of him that he has spent a lot of time in the White House, and I’m quoting him, cleaning up the messes that you left behind and, in particular, I’m quoting, the reforms enacted by this administration, the Trump Administration, he said roll back a lot of the very harsh laws they were created and partially written by vice president Biden over 20 years ago which put a lot of African-Americans in prison and really destroyed a generation and did a lot of harm to our country.”

Biden laughed as Woodruff finished the question.

“Look, I thought he was a foreign policy guy, I didn’t know he was also a criminal justice person,” Biden said of Kushner, who sat for an interview at The TIME 100 Summit on criminal justice reform after being tapped by the president last year to negotiate the First Step Act with Congress.

Biden went on to defend the 1994 legislation by pointing out the fact that the African-American community had supported it at the time and still supported him personally. “Look, I guess the best way to answer the question in a short amount of time, why is it that I get overwhelming support from the African-American community when the law was written, why was it that the members of black caucus supported it? Why was it that the black mayors of the country supported me? Why is it that I have more support from the African-American community today than everybody else combined.”

One of the first prisoners to be released under a new criminal justice reform law is Matthew Charles, a Tennessee man who made national headlines last year after he was resentenced and ordered back to prison two years after his release. A number of public figures, including celebrities and politicians from both political parties, have advocated for his freedom.

Charles was serving an additional decade behind bars, but Thursday morning his sentence was unexpectedly reduced to time served. He could be released within 24 hours.

Charles' legal team had exhausted all legal avenues for release, and a petition for presidential clemency has been pending with the White House since last summer.

But the First Step Act, signed into law by President Trump last month, opened another avenue, in part by reducing sentencing guidelines for crack offenses and making those changes retroactive. After the bill passed, Charles' federal public defender filed a motion, claiming if he were to be sentenced now, he would fall under a lesser guideline.

On Wednesday, the U.S. attorney's office filed a response saying it would neither fight the request nor appeal if his sentence was reduced. On Thursday morning, federal Judge Aleta Trauger agreed with Charles' attorneys and asked for his immediate release from a Kentucky prison.

Released From Prison Again, After Criminal Justice Reform Became Law

"The Republican-led House approved the First Step Act on a 358-36, reflecting a major pivot by the GOP from a punitive, law-and-order stance of the 1980s to policies that emphasize rehabilitation and aim to save money."

Report finds that incarcerated Black men are biggest beneficiaries of ‘First Step’ act

Federal report confirms more than 90% of inmates already freed by ‘First Step Act’ are African American men, many of whom have been affected by sentencing disparities.

(more…)

"I've just been praying and hoping that this day would come. And it has come. And it's a remarkable feeling."

Matthew Charles, who was released from prison and sent back again, is beginning his life again as a free man.

In an exclusive interview, he tells Lester Holt about what it was like to learn that he’d be released from prison thanks to President Trump’s First Step Act. 

(Photo: Dave Martin/AP) 

Reform  'out of whack' prison sentences