President Donald Trump granted pardons and commuted the sentences of over 100 individuals on the eve of his last day as President of the United States. Among these executive acts of clemency were 2 individuals who were serving time for cannabis offenses: Craig Cesal and Corvain Cooper.
Just recently, on June 17, 2020, after 18 years in prison for a first-time nonviolent marijuana conspiracy offense, Craig Cesal was released to home confinement due to risks posed by COVID-19 on the federal prison population. Now, an executive order of clemency has been made to commute his sentence altogether.
FREE Craig Cesal gets call from Ivanka Trump
Long time pot prisoner activist Cheri Sicard posted on her Facebook page:
Craig has been serving a life sentence without parole on a marijuana charge. “My crime was that my truck repair business in Chicago fixed trucks operated by a Florida long-haul trucking company whose drivers trafficked marijuana in the south,” he told The Washington Post in 2016.
Corvain Cooper
President Trump also commuted the sentence of Corvain Cooper. a father of two girls who has served more than 7 years of a life sentence for his non-violent participation in a conspiracy to distribute marijuana.
During his one term in office, there has been a fair amount of criticism that President Trump has inappropriately offered pardons to people to whom he had personal connections. But the list of pardons his team prepared for him to sign on his final full day in office includes the names of people who have been serving life sentences for drug or fraud charges who have been seeking clemency, some of whose names have been brought up by advocates for years,
Unfortunately, there are still many people who are serving prison sentences for nonviolent drug crimes, and whose cases emphasize the broken nature of the country’s criminal justice system.
Others who received clemency in the executive orders include Lavonne Roach, a nonviolent drug offender, who has been serving a 30-year sentence after she was charged with conspiracy to distribute meth. Ms. Roach, a Lakota Sioux woman, has been in prison since 1994.
