Obama commutes sentences of North Las Vegas inmate, 57 others
WASHINGTON — A 55-year-old federal prison inmate from North Las Vegas is one of 58 people whose long sentences on drug-related offenses were commuted Thursday by President Barack Obama.
The White House announced that Michael Tyree Mays’ sentence of 30 years on a charge of cocaine possession with intent to distribute will instead expire in May 2018.
Court records show that Mays was sentenced in 1999 in California as a repeat offender after pleading guilty to one count of a multiple-count indictment.
He filed documents challenging his sentence as improperly based on a 1993 conviction in another case.
Obama on Thursday commuted the 58 prison terms as part of a broader push to revamp the criminal justice system and ease punishments for nonviolent drug convicts.
Eighteen of the 58 had been given life sentences and some have already spent more than decades in prison. Most are now due for release on Sept. 2. Others will be released over the next two years.
The latest wave — among them defendants convicted of either possessing or dealing cocaine, crack and methamphetamine — brings to 306 the number of people granted clemency by Obama, the vast majority for drug crimes. The administration has said the pace of commutations is expected to increase as the end of Obama’s presidency nears.
The prisoners given commutations have been “granted a second chance to lead productive and law-abiding lives,” said Deputy Attorney General Sally Quillian Yates.
“Our clemency work is continuing as part of our broader efforts to effectuate criminal justice reform and ensure fairness and proportionality in sentencing,” Yates said.
The Obama administration has sought to reduce the prison population by encouraging shorter sentences and alternatives to prison for nonviolent criminals. It has supported legislation in Congress that would encourage judges to hand out lesser sentences more lenient than the federal mandatory minimums.
In a statement Thursday accompanying the announcement, Obama said, “It just doesn’t make sense to require a nonviolent drug offender to serve 20 years, or in some cases, life, in prison.”
