Osler's Razor

Several months ago, I mentioned that I was working on a big project. Today, that project is finally unveiled.

Last April, Baylor Law student Sid Earnheart did an amazing thing. He organized a meeting in Washington DC that involved some of America's top appellate lawyers, advocacy groups, experts in the pardon power (including a former U.S. Pardon Attorney), and lobbyists. The purpose of this meeting was to start a project in which we would push President Obama to use the power of pardon and commutation in a principled way. Specifically, we wanted him to use that power to correct the oversentencing of many people in crack cases. The administration already had asserted that they thought that crack should be sentenced in the same way as powder cocaine cases.

In starting this project, Sid and I were reacting to the unprincipled way that the two previous administrations have used that power.

Today, we will file the first petition for commutation on behalf of Hamedah Hasan. This petition was prepared (extremely well) by lawyers at the ACLU's Drug Law Reform Project, with whom I collaborated previously in the case that ended up being chronicled in the film American Violet.

To check out the Hamedah petition and get an idea of what the project is all about, check out the web site.