In your paper's July 17 editorial "Crime and punishment," you examined President Barack Obama's recent decision to grant clemency to 46 drug offenders, including our client, Norman O'Neal Brown. The article concluded that Mr. Brown's original sentence of life in prison without parole made not "the least bit of sense." We couldn't agree more. Mr. Brown sincerely regrets his past actions, but the sentence that was imposed was strikingly out of proportion to Mr. Brown's non-violent drug offenses. Even Mr. Brown's sentencing judge lamented that the sentence he was obligated to impose was "tragically disproportional" to Mr. Brown's offenses. By serving nearly 24 years in prison, Mr. Brown has paid his debts to society..
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Originally published in The Baltimore Sun on July 24, 2015.
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