Obama commutes sentence of Chelsea Manning in last-minute clemency push
Obama commutes sentence of Chelsea Manning in last-minute clemency push:- President Obama has commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning, the Army private serving a 35-year sentence for leaking classified military secrets to Wikileaks, the White House said Tuesday.
Manning will be released May 17 after serving nearly seven years for stealing and releasing secret cables that divulged U.S. military and diplomatic operations
The soldier, who was convicted under the name of Bradley Manning and now identifies herself as a woman, attracted widespread support from privacy advocates and transgender activists who complained that she couldn’t get the medical help she needed in the military prison in Leavenworth, Kan.
The action brought immediate rebuke from Republicans on Capitol Hill. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., called it “outrageous” and said it set “a dangerous precedent that those who compromise our national security won’t be held accountable for their crimes.”
“I don’t understand why the president would feel special compassion for someone who endangered the lives of our troops, diplomats, intelligence officers, and allies,” Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark. “We ought not treat a traitor like a martyr.”
Obama also granted full pardons in a number of high-profile cases, including:
► Former general James Cartwright, convicted last October of lying to the FBI in a leak investigation. The former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was accused of lying about his role in disclosing classified information about the use of the Stuxnet computer virus to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program.
► Baseball Hall of Famer Willie McCovey, convicted of tax evasion in 1996.
► Ian Schrager, co-founder of New York’s famed Studio 54 nightclub, convicted of tax fraud in 1980.
► Stephen Lee Arrington, convicted in a drug conspiracy that involved carmaker John Z. DeLorean, known for making the car made famous in the Back to the Future trilogy starring Michael J. Fox. DeLorean was acquitted, but Arrington pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years in prison.
Obama also commuted the sentence of Oscar Lopez Rivera, a Puerto Rican nationalist who was the last remaining member of a Puerto Rican terrorist group still in prison. President Bill Clinton commuted the sentences of 16 members of the group for setting off bombs in 1970s and ’80s, but Rivera refused the clemency to protest another member who was not released.
Those names were among the list of 64 pardons and 209 commutations Obama granted Tuesday, with less than four days left in his presidency, bringing his total number of acts of clemency to 212 pardons and 1,385 commutations. That’s more pardons than President George W. Bush, but still near a historic low. But his commutations set an all-time record, surpassing Woodrow Wilson’s 1,366.
Unlike full pardons, which extinguish all the legal consequences of a conviction, a commutation has the more limited effect of shortening a sentence while leaving other consequences intact.
Source:- http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/01/17/obama-commutes-sentence-chelsea-manning/96678814/
