As Catholic University of America (CUA) law student Nicole Conte worked on a federal clemency petition for Kevin McDonald, it wasn’t long before she concluded that the convicted drug trafficker — who had been sentenced to life in prison — deserved a shot at freedom.
“He had no history of violence and a very minor criminal history,” Conte said. “He was also the only person in the drug conspiracy to exercise his right to trial and the only person sentenced to life in prison, a sentence that not even the leader of the conspiracy received.”
Conte’s work on McDonald’s petition paid off in a major way last month when McDonald became one of 95 drug offenders who got their sentences commuted by President Barack Obama.
Whereas McDonald, 38, had been sentenced to life in prison in 2005 for conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine, he is now set to be released in December 2016.
“I was overjoyed for Mr. McDonald and his family,” Conte told Diverse. “For Mr. McDonald to be one out of tens of thousands who applied for clemency was humbling, but his case was a deserving one, one that I believe embodies the need to reduce coercive plea bargaining and inflexible sentencing.”
Conte helped score the legal victory as part of the CUA Law/Ehrlich Partnership on Clemency, a partnership between Catholic University and former Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., an attorney who has long championed the cause of clemency.
But ultimately, McDonald’s freedom was secured through the partnership’s collaboration with Clemency Project 2014, an independent initiative launched after U.S. Deputy Attorney General James Cole asked the lawyer profession to provide free legal assistance to federal prisoners who would likely have received a shorter sentence if they had been sentenced under today’s federal sentencing guidelines, which, thanks to the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, have made penalties for crack cocaine less harsh than they had been previously.
