(Joe Biden speaks during a news conference, following the push of the 1994 crime bill through the Senate.AP/John Duricka)
January 25, 2021
President Donald Trump on Wednesday released seven prisoners with life sentences for marijuana — including some jailed without parole under President-elect Joe Biden’s 1994 crime bill.
Paraplegic Michael Pelletier, 65, and Corvain Cooper, 41, are among the men who received prison commutations from Trump.
Pelletier had a life sentence for smuggling pot from Canada into Maine in the early 2000s. Both jurisdictions later legalized the drug.
Cooper had a life sentence for his role transporting marijuana from California to North Carolina, also under the three-strikes provision of Biden’s law.
The crime bill’s mandatory life sentence for a third serious drug conviction was reduced to 25 years by Trump’s First Step Act, but the reduction wasn’t retroactive. Cooper’s initial two strikes were later thrown out, but that, too, didn’t apply retroactively.
Cooper’s attorney Patrick Michael Megaro told The Post in November that “Biden is responsible for the 1994 crime law that [resulted in] Corvain Cooper being sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for marijuana and the Obama-Biden administration was directly responsible for the prosecution.”
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