This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

— Illinois Police Video Shows Black Ph.D. Student Being Violently Arrested for "Stealing" Own Car — Ben Mathis-Lilley | Slate

Sheriff is right. The mentally ill should not be in jail — Salt Lake Tribune Editorial

"Jim Winder runs a jail, not a hospital. And he is rightly more than a little upset that there are some people — including, apparently, a fair number of state lawmakers — who can't tell the difference.

"As sheriff of Salt Lake County, Winder is responsible for holding people who have been arrested for various crimes, from petty to violent, until they have gone to trial or made bail. Unfortunately, for him and for them, at any given time a great many of those being held really don't belong in a jail, no matter what they are accused of doing. They belong in a mental hospital. ..."

Sheriff Jim Winder: Jail is a poor backstop for the mentally ill — Christopher Smart | The Salt Lake Tribune

"Chelsea Manning, the US army soldier who became one of the most prominent whistleblowers in modern times when she exposed the nature of modern warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan, and who then went on to pay the price with a 35-year military prison sentence, is to be freed in May as a gift of outgoing president Barack Obama. ...

" ... Manning, who is a columnist for the Guardian, was the face of one of the harsher aspects of the Obama administration, as an official leaker who suffered under his approach a longer custodial than any other whistleblower of modern times. She was one of several leakers who were prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act – with more individuals falling foul to that anti-spying law than under all previous US presidents combined. ..."

"At the end of his term, President George W. Bush commuted the sentence of Scooter Libby, who had been convicted of misleading Congress as to the outing (purely out of political vengeance) of a covert CIA operative named Valerie Plame. At the end of his term, President George H.W. Bush pardoned everyone convicted of engaging in the criminal act of selling missiles to a state-sponsor of terrorism and diverting the profits to a private war in Central America. Libby never served a day in jail. Neither did any of the Iran-Contra characters who skated. ...

" ... there is no serious argument about whether or not Chelsea Manning's punishment was sufficient. Solitary at Leavenworth is as sufficient as it gets."

A Long List of What We Know Thanks to Private Manning: A partial account of what was in the WikiLeaks leaks — Greg Mitchell | The Nation

" ... The biggest disconnect between those who approve of her commutation and those who don't is undoubtedly a simple difference of opinion about how serious her crimes were. But there's another disconnect that's less obvious because so many of us barely even notice it anymore: the United States is a wild outlier when it comes to the length of prison sentences. Manning was sentenced to 45 years in prison. A lot of people will shrug when they read that, but it's insane by any kind of global standard. We hand out 15 and 20-year sentences like candy in America, while the rest of the world considers 5-10 years a severe sentence for anyone short of a serial killer. ..."

"In addition to commuting the bulk of Chelsea Manning's sentence, President Obama on Tuesday granted a full pardon to retired Marine Gen. James Cartwright for lying to the FBI about his conversations with reporters. The general pleaded guilty in September 2016 to falsely denying he was the source of leaks on details about the so-called Stuxnet computer virus, which the U.S. government reportedly used to sabotage centrifuges at an Iranian nuclear facility in 2008 and 2009. Cartwright was set to be sentenced on Tuesday but instead received his pardon."

— Obama Pardons His "Favorite General" — Joshua Keating | Slate

"Retired Gen. James "Hoss" Cartwright, the former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was once described by Bob Woodward as President Obama's "favorite general" for his advice on Iran and Afghanistan. In his last week in office, Obama may be paying Cartwright back for his counsel, pardoning him for lying to investigators about conversations he had with reporters about efforts to sabotage Iran's nuclear program. Cartwright's leaks were on a much smaller scale than those of Chelsea Manning, who had her sentence commuted today today, but were more typical of the record number of leakers prosecuted under the Obama administration. ..."

Hellhole: The United States holds tens of thousands of inmates in long-term solitary confinement. Is this torture? — Atul Gawande | The New Yorker, March 30, 2009 [Link tweeted out today]

"Human beings are social creatures. We are social not just in the trivial sense that we like company, and not just in the obvious sense that we each depend on others. We are social in a more elemental way: simply to exist as a normal human being requires interaction with other people. ..."

Prison is horrifying. For transgender people, it's hell. — Germa Lopez, Vox, April 11, 2016 [Link tweeted out today]

"Samantha Hill prayed to God that it would finally end — even if it ended with her death. ...

" ... The core problem is how the prison system classifies and treats Hill and others like her. Hill is a transgender woman — someone who identifies and presents as a woman but was designated as male at birth. But the prison system treats her as a man, so she has been locked up in men's prisons, typically high-security facilities with very violent inmates. The results have been tragically predictable. ..."

— Obama's last chance to give some deserving people a second one — Washington Post Editorial

"In the final days of his presidency, Barack Obama has an opportunity to give some deserving people a second chance. He has the power to grant executive clemency — pardons and sentence commutations — to those who have been subject to inequities in the justice system, such as unduly long sentences that they would not have received under current guidelines. The president, who has been accelerating his use of this authority in recent months, should give it his best effort before crossing the finish line. ..."

Mr. Obama, Pick Up Your Pardon Pen — New York Times Editorial

" ... For almost everyone with a criminal conviction, a pardon is the only path back to full citizenship. Throughout most of American history, presidents granted them liberally. Mr. Obama is a different story. ..."