WASHINGTON –– President Clinton was making decisions on Friday about granting clemency to some of the scores of convicted Americans seeking presidential pardons or lighter punishment.
Among those seeking intervention are a Wall Street financier, an American Indian activist convicted of killing two FBI agents and a longtime Clinton friend and supporter convicted of trying to influence a former member of Clinton's cabinet.
"There are a number of different cases where there are mandatory minimums (sentences) that have been unduly harsh and there may be one or two cases like that today, particularly in cases where the person was involved in nonviolent drug conviction," White House press secretary Jake Siewert said Friday.
He said the president was expected to make more clemency announcements before Jan. 20.
Asked on Thursday whether convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard was on the list, Siewert replied: "I wouldn't expect anything new on that." The administration has been reviewing Israel's request that Pollard be released. The former civilian analyst for the U.S. Navy was convicted of espionage in 1985 for giving Israel tens of thousands of top-secret documents. He was sentenced to life in prison.
Earlier this week, a coalition of 675 clergy asked Clinton to commute sentences of nonviolent drug offenders. In a letter, the group asked the president to grant clemency and release on supervised parole those federal prisoners who have served at least five years for low-level, nonviolent involvement in drug cases.
"To find some of those drug offenders who deserve to be released, Clinton should appeal to the more than 600 federal trial judges, asking each to name at least one defendant whom he or she was required by mandatory sentencing laws to sentence to a term he or she thought was unjust – the kind of cases that the judges lost sleep over," said Chap Thevenot, coalition coordinator.
Among others who have asked Clinton for clemency:
–Leonard Peltier, convicted of killing FBI agents Ron Williams and Jack Koler who were searching for robbery suspects on the Pine Ridge Indian reservation in South Dakota in June 1975. He was convicted and sentenced in 1977. The defense contended that evidence against him was falsified.
–Susan McDougal, a former real estate business partner of the Clintons who was sentenced in 1996 and released from prison in 1998. She was convicted of four felonies related to a fraudulent $300,000 federally backed loan that she and her husband, failed savings and loan owner James McDougal, never repaid. About $30,000 of the loan was used as a down payment on property briefly placed in the name of Whitewater Development, the Arkansas real estate venture of the Clintons and McDougals.
–Michael Milken, who made billions for himself and others in the 1980s junk bond business, was convicted of securities fraud, served 22 months of a 10-year sentence and paid over $1 billion in fines, restitution and legal settlements. Milken's pardon request is backed by one of Clinton's original benefactors, California supermarket mogul Ron Burkle.
–Archie Schaffer III, a Tyson Foods executive convicted under a 1907 law of trying to influence agricultural policy by arranging for then-Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy to attend a Tyson birthday party in Arkansas in 1993.