On the advice of Kim Kardashian, President Trump on Wednesday commuted the prison term of Alice Marie Johnson, a 63-year-old great-grandmother, who in 1996 was sentenced to life without parole in federal prison on nonviolent drug and money laundering charges.
It's a somewhat surprising move coming from Trump, a president who has publicly called for executing drug dealers. But Jordan's case underscores how many nonviolent drug offenders are serving life terms in federal prison. According to federal corrections data analyzed by the Sentencing Project, a criminal-justice-reform group, as of 2016 1,907 federal inmates were serving life sentences for drug offenses, which are by definition nonviolent (more on that below).
An additional 103 offenders found guilty of those crimes were serving "virtual life sentences," which the Sentencing Project defines as sentences of 50 years or more. Under federal law, there is no possibility of parole for crimes committed after Nov. 1, 1987.
All told, drug offenders make up about 30 percent of the current population of 6,720 federal prisoners serving life or virtual life sentences. According to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, drug trafficking offenders can receive life sentences for dealing "large quantities" of drugs. But in real terms, those quantities can be small: 1 kilogram of heroin, half a kilogram of methamphetamine mixture or a little over a quarter-kilogram of crack cocaine.
Drug offenders can also receive life sentences if they have a significant criminal history or if prosecutors can demonstrate that bodily injury or death resulted from the use of the drug.
