WASHINGTON – U.S. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, today released the following statement after President Biden announced that he is granting clemency to nearly 1,500 Americans who were placed on CARES Act home confinement and will pardon 39 additional individuals:
“The President took an important step by commuting the sentences of these men and women. In far too many cases in our justice system, the punishment doesn’t fit the crime. I have long advocated for criminal justice reform to address these inequities and commend President Biden for this act of mercy and for his leadership.
“These individuals have successfully returned to their communities and reunited with their families. I urge the President to continue using his pardon power during his remaining time in office to address miscarriages of justice, just as the founders of this democracy intended.”
Durbin has long championed efforts to address inequities in mandatory minimum sentencing. In 2010, President Obama signed into law Durbin’s Fair Sentencing Act. The bipartisan bill to curtail the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine marked the first time Congress had repealed a mandatory minimum since the Nixon administration.
In 2018, President Trump signed into law Durbin’s First Step Act (FSA), landmark prison and sentencing reform legislation that included key sentencing reforms from Durbin’s Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act.
Durbin has sponsored both the Smarter Sentencing Act and the Eliminating A Quantifiably Unjust Application Of The Law (EQUAL) Act. As Chair of the Judiciary Committee, Durbin and Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-IA) introduced the bipartisan First Step Implementation Act, the COVID-19 Safer Detention Act, and the Prohibiting Punishment of Acquitted Conduct Act of 2021, legislation that aims to build on the FSA and continue Congress’s bipartisan efforts to make our criminal justice system fairer.
In 2021, Durbin along with U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ), Chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Criminal Justice and Counterterrorism, sent a letter to President Biden urging his Administration to rescind a Trump-era opinion that would force federal inmates on home confinement to return to prison following the COVID-19 pandemic. Durbin and Booker also sent a letter to Attorney General Garland on the same matter in April 2021. Following those letters, Attorney General Garland announced that the Department of Justice (DOJ) has reconsidered a Trump-era OLC opinion that would have required individuals onCARES Act home confinement to return to prison at the end of the pandemic.
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