Crime & Courts

Changes to drug sentencing guidelines may mean early release for nearly 200 Alaskans

A total of 181 federal Alaska inmates may be granted early releases within the next six years, according to numbers compiled by the U.S. Sentencing Commission.

The state's federal defenders and prosecutors have started reviewing cases of drug offenders who are potentially eligible for early release thanks to changes made earlier this year to sentencing guidelines.

The reductions are a result of revisions by the sentencing commission. The independent federal agency lowered the penalties for all future federal drug defendants in April. Several months later, the commission granted those reductions to drug offenders currently in prison.

However, the commission's decision to retroactively apply the changes stipulated that no drug offender could be released until a year after the changes go into effect on Nov. 1, 2014.

Federal judicial districts nationwide have a year to identify eligible inmates and to file motions on their behalf. It also grants prosecutors time to consider which cases they will oppose. Judges will make the final decisions.

Federal public defender for Alaska Rich Curtner said he and other attorneys in his office are compiling a master list of inmates who may walk out of federal prisons and back into the community next year and thereafter. The list is currently incomplete, he said.

"I have other cases I'm looking at, and other clients have been contacting me who were not on" one of the two lists provided by the sentencing commission and the federal probation office, Curtner said.

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According to the sentencing commission, 36 Alaska inmates are eligible for immediate release late next year.

The commission's changes are one of two initiatives aimed at freeing up prison beds and lowering what activists consider excessively harsh penalties.

President Barack Obama, through the Justice Department, has launched Clemency Project 2014. Federal criminals without ties to organized crime and lacking violent records can apply for release if they've spent a decade in prison.

Curtner said the clemency project petitions are being looked at by local federal public defenders and forwarded to a national group for further action.

So far, seven people have had their sentences reduced, Curtner said. The process has been streamlined for those cases, as the U.S. attorney's office for the district of Alaska has opposed about two out of more than a dozen proposed reductions; judges have typically ruled without the need for hearings.

"There's still a whole bunch in the pipeline we're going to work on," he said.

U.S. Attorney Karen Loeffler said her office is likely to agree with the vast majority of eligible nonviolent defendants seeking less time behind bars. Prosecutors follow the same rules as the public defenders when considering reductions -- "if they qualify, they're going to get it," she said.

Loeffler lumped the hopeful inmates into three categories: people who apply but do not qualify under the rules, inmates who clearly do qualify and those whom the government will oppose.

"Some may qualify in some way but we think they're dangerous, and those will be litigated in court," Loeffler said. "That's a rare circumstance, but it has happened (in past cases). I can't say whether that will happen again. We'll just have to take it case by case."

An estimated 46,376 drug offenders convicted in federal courts nationwide are expected to benefit from retroactive reductions.

The sentencing commission says sentences will be cut by an average of 25 months, which would free up 79,740 beds "over a period of years, of course." The commission also reported the most common drug types in the tens of thousands of early release cases. 28.8 percent of the cases involve methamphetamine, 27.8 percent cocaine, 19.3 percent crack, 11.6 percent marijuana and 7.6 percent heroin.

Curtner said any initiative that helps nonviolent drug offenders reintegrate into the community is a step in the right direction.

"For the 20 years I've been in this office, I've seen clients go away for many years, and this is my chance to welcome them back home," he said, adding that federal sentencing laws are too harsh.

Reviewing drug offenders' cases has created more work for his attorneys, but it is welcome, he said.

Loeffler said the president's administration made a policy decision that she is required to follow and believes the resources to successfully reintegrate drug offenders into the community are available.

"Our goal is to protect the community, not to see how long people can go to jail," she said. "I think it's important to have procedures and people to work with them to get back into society. That's a good thing."

Jerzy Shedlock

Jerzy Shedlock is a former reporter for Alaska Dispatch News. He left the ADN in 2017.

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