With one signature, elation, a life changed. I saw it firsthand in January, 2001.
 
I was at Geiger Correctional Center in Spokane, Washington to shoot the first interviews for my documentary Perversion of Justice, a film about women impacted by drug conspiracy laws and mandatory sentences. That cold January day I had interviews scheduled with two federal inmates, Jodie Israel and Hamedah Hasan.
 
When we arrived at the prison, we heard the remarkable news. Israel, who had at that point served seven years of a mandatory 11 year, three month sentence for a marijuana conspiracy conviction, had just learned that her clemency request had been granted by President Bill Clinton. She would be free within hours.
 
The film crew followed Israel to her home and listened to her talk excitedly about her new life thanks to Clinton's use of his unfettered constitutional power.  Baths, chewing gum and seafood dinners were suddenly options on the table after seven years of prison life. We watched Israel gleefully take her first post-release bike ride. But of course Israel was most thrilled about the prospect of getting reacquainted with her four children, three of whom were under five years old when she was sentenced.
 
With one stroke of a pen, a family reunited. A life changed. Hope restored.
 
Hamedah Hasan, my other interview subject, was not on Clinton's pardon list. (She had not applied at that point because an appeal was still pending.) So, we conducted our interview as planned inside her small prison bedroom. She had already been imprisoned for seven years.
 
Hasan described her tragic case. Fleeing an abusive relationship, she took refuge at the home of her cousin who was selling crack cocaine. During the time she lived in his home, Hasan did errands for her cousin including wiring money for him, enough for prosecutors to charge her as a co-conspirator in his crack cocaine operation.
 
Despite the fact that Hasan was a first-time offender and a pregnant mother of two daughters, her judge, the Hon. Richard Kopf, was forced by mandatory sentencing policies to sentence her to two life sentences, two forty-year sentences, two twenty-year sentences, a five- and a four-year sentence (later reduced to 27 years due to a sentencing guideline change).
 
When Hamedah, with the help of her attorney Korey Reiman, submitted her clemency request to President Bush a few years ago, many of us believed that it was only a matter of time before that request would be granted. We reasoned that the president would have to see that the only humane response would to grant Hasan clemency.  After all, the pardon attorney's website says: "Appropriate grounds for considering commutation have traditionally included disparity or undue severity of sentence."

How can 27 years for a non-violent first-time drug offense not be considered as unduly severe? Hasan's Republican appointed sentencing judge said that had he not been bound by mandatory sentencing guidelines he would have given Hasan approximately ten years. Moreover, Judge Kopf publicly advocated for the President to grant Hasan's clemency request in order to correct the extreme injustice in her case.  Click here to read more.