Beth Curtis, sister of a federal inmate, runs a website Life for Pot that describes the cases of “marijuana lifers” serving long prison terms for nonviolent marijuana “conspiracies,” reports Cannabis Wire. Sixteen of the inmates were either denied clemency under President Obama or are pending. Seven others were granted clemency or otherwise released early. Curtis is in touch with about fifty inmates who have faced lifelong sentences for such cases. “There aren’t hundreds like some people think, but to think that there are any is kind of remarkable,” she said. The key to their long sentences boils down to one word: conspiracy.
Under federal law, defendants can be held responsible for all crimes that were “reasonably foreseeable” in a conspiracy. Even if they get out of the business, defendants are on the hook for drug quantities that other people sold—regardless of their knowledge or specific role in it. “If you are a part of a drug conspiracy under federal law,” said Vice Dean Rachel Barkow of the New York University School of Law, “you’re responsible for things that other people in that group undertaking have done. And it doesn’t matter whether or not you knew that was going to happen.” Curtis’ brother, John Knock, is one of more than 1,500 drug offenders set to die in federal prison under 1980s-era drug sentencing laws, despite a critical shift in drug punishments since then. Although Obama did grant more than 1,700 commutations—more than any other president—clemency experts say bureaucracy and poor planning stifled the program’s ability to free many more. Of the 13,000 people denied between 2014 and 2017, thousands appeared to be worthy candidates, found an analysis by the U.S. Sentencing Commission.