{"id":31019,"date":"2018-12-07T14:40:42","date_gmt":"2018-12-07T20:40:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=31019"},"modified":"2018-12-12T13:08:26","modified_gmt":"2018-12-12T19:08:26","slug":"twenty-one-people-leave-prison-after-gov-fallin-commutes-drug-related-sentences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2018\/12\/07\/twenty-one-people-leave-prison-after-gov-fallin-commutes-drug-related-sentences\/","title":{"rendered":"Twenty-one people leave prison after Gov. Fallin commutes drug-related sentences\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Twenty-one people were released from state prisons Wednesday after Gov. Mary Fallin commuted their sentences for drug-related crimes.<\/p><p>Fallin reduced the sentences for 20 women and one man to time-served. A spokesperson for the governor\u2019s office said the people were released the same day Fallin signed their commutations.<\/p><p>A criminal justice reform advocacy group helped the people receive rare recommendations for reduced sentences from the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board last month. In one recent year, the board made similar recommendations for only 19 of 477 applicants.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p>The governor\u2019s office said the people receiving commutations would have received a much shorter sentence or no prison time at all if they were convicted of the same crimes today.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p>The difference is due to criminal justice reform laws passed in recent years, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sos.ok.gov\/documents\/questions\/780.pdf\">including a voter initiative<\/a> that reclassified simple drug possession and other drug-related felonies as misdemeanors.<\/p><p>Fallin reconsidered the inmates\u2019 sentences after Oklahomans for Criminal Justice Reform guided them through the state\u2019s months-long commutation process overseen by the Pardon and Parole Board.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p>The advocacy group chose to help 46 people out of a group of about 700 people who they believed might have been given excessive sentences. Nine more of the advocacy group\u2019s applicants will learn whether they\u2019ll get a favorable recommendation after a board hearing next week.<\/p><p>A spokesperson for the advocacy group said one other woman received a commutation recommendation but was automatically disqualified after she was caught with drugs in prison.<\/p><p><i>Editor&#8217;s Note: A previous version of this story\u00a0misstated the number of people still seeking recommendations for commuted sentences from the state Pardon and Parole Board. The story has been revised to reflect that the correct number is nine.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The 21 people released were helped through a months-long commutation process by advocacy group Oklahomans for Criminal Justice Reform.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":201,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18],"tags":[995,12,878,818,996],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31019"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/201"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31019"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31025,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31019\/revisions\/31025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}