Eight federal inmates imprisoned for crack cocaine offenses are expected to have their sentences commuted by the president on Thursday. The unprecedented move by Obama is seen as a further rebuke to the severe mandatory penalties for drug crimes loosened by 2011’s Fair Sentencing Act, as the inmates likely would have received lighter sentences under current law. “The bottom line…is that there are several thousand more where they came from,” said Julie Stewart, founder of the group Families Against Mandatory Minimums. The inmates, who are serving sentences ranging from 15 years to life, would be released within 120 days.
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