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Comment by jc4p | Hacker News Reader

I think the purest source is this: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/president-obama-grants-commut... but that lists a lot more clemencies

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From one of the clemencies

> use of a communication facility to facilitate the commission of a felony

How exactly is this an additional crime to said felony? How does using a telephone make the crime more heinous? This seems like one of those laws that's designed to be guaranteed to add more charges, similar to such gems as "non-violently resisting arrest".

Non-violently resisting arrest is a real thing and should most certainly be a crime. E.g. you put your hands firmly across your chest and force the police to overpower you and force you into handcuffs. You're not attacking anyone, but you're resisting arrest in a way that threatens the safety of the arresting officers and obstructs the lawful execution of an arrest warrant.

Also, when the charges are all for the same crime, the sentences are almost always concurrent, which means they run at the same time. It doesn't actually increase the length of the prison sentence.

> Non-violently resisting arrest is a real thing and should most certainly be a crime.

Sure. How bad of a crime? Thirty days in jail? A week? A year? Is that in line with practice?

Not exactly relevant but it's somewhat interesting that so many people apparently deserved life sentences but not even a mention of any of them on google.

Huh? I picked one at random...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mancer-l-barrington-iii/mandat...?

another

http://legaliq.com/Case/United_States_V_Quentin_C_Adams

and another

http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F3/182/...

Those were literally the first 3 I tried.

I wonder how they decide on the commuted sentence. Timothy Tyler's sentence has been commuted, but he still has to spend another two years in prison.

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