President Donald Trump commuted the sentence Wednesday of a woman serving a life sentence for drug offenses whose cause was championed by reality TV star Kim Kardashian West in a recent visit to the White House.
Trump commuted the sentence of Alice Marie Johnson, two White House officials said. The 63-year old spent more than two decades behind bars and is not eligible for parole.
The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to publicly discuss the commutation before it was announced.
The commutation puts a renewed focus on the Trump administration’s push for prison and sentencing reform.
Johnson was convicted in 1996 on eight criminal counts related to a Memphis-based cocaine trafficking operation involving more than a dozen people. The 1994 indictment describes dozens of deliveries and drug transactions, many involving Johnson.
She was sentenced to life in prison in 1997, and appellate judges and the U.S. Supreme Court have rejected her appeals. Court records show she has a motion pending for a reduction in her sentence, but federal prosecutors are opposed, saying in a court filing that the sentence is in accord with federal guidelines, based on the large quantity of drugs involved. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Memphis did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday afternoon.
A criminal justice advocacy site, CAN-DO, and one of Johnson’s attorneys say a request for clemency was rejected by former President Barack Obama.
A 1997 Associated Press story on Johnson’s sentencing said she headed up a multimillion-dollar drug ring. But Memphis attorney Michael Scholl, who filed the latest court documents in her request for a sentence reduction, said she was not a leader in the cocaine operation.
“What is the purpose of putting a lady with no prior criminal record, on a nonviolent drug offense, in jail for her entire life?” he said in a telephone interview. “She’s a model inmate.”
Scholl added that Johnson has admitted her wrongdoing, which is borne out in letters she has written to U.S. District Judge Samuel H. Mays, who now oversees her case.
“Judge Mays I’m writing to you to express my deep remorse for the crime that I committed over 20 years ago. I made some bad choices which have not only affected my life, but have impacted my entire family,” she said in a February 2017 letter in the court record.
In a hand-scrawled letter last June she wrote: “I’m a broken woman. More time in prison cannot accomplish more justice.”
Kardashian West visited the White House in May to meet with Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, who is overseeing the administration’s push to overhaul the nation’s prison system. She also met with Trump in the Oval Office, a photograph of which the president released on Twitter.
In an interview with Mic released earlier this year, Kardashian West said she’d been moved by Johnson’s story after seeing a video by the news outlet on Twitter.
“I think that she really deserves a second chance at life,” Kardashian told Mic. “I’ll do whatever it takes to get her out.”
The Associated Press contributed to this article.