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Criminal Obama Commuted Ends Up Back In Prison

REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

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Steve Birr Vice Reporter
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Police arrested a narcotics trafficker who received a commuted sentence from former President Barack Obama after wrecking his car during a high-speed chase.

Robert M. Gill, 68, was serving a life sentence on cocaine and heroin distribution charges from 1990 before Obama let him out of a Texas prison in 2015. After meeting with his probation officer Feb. 9, Gill drove to the parking lot of a supermarket where he purchased roughly two pounds of cocaine. An affidavit said “he was going to sell the cocaine to make money and would be paying a female $26,000 for the cocaine,” reports the New York Post.

Gill is charged with possession of more than 500 grams of cocaine with intent to distribute. If convicted, Gill faces another 40 years back behind bars.

“I’m so disappointed to hear that he got arrested again,” Ronald Schmidt, a lawyer who represented Gill, told Star-Telegram “We all have free will, and apparently, he made a bad decision again and he’s going to have to suffer the consequences again.”

Obama commuted a record 1,715 sentences over his eight years in office. Most of the people who received commutations from Obama are non-violent drug offenders, however, many criticize applying that label to people dealing in deadly narcotics. Obama commuted Adan Nieves Martinez’s sentence on Jan. 17, a man convicted in a massive bust of a drug operation transporting cocaine, methamphetamine and more than 1,000 grams of heroin.

Authorities convicted Martinez for the transportation of bulk amounts of various narcotics from Texas for distribution in Grand Forks, N.D. in 2007. Martinez was arrested with eight other men and given 20 years in prison for his part in the operation. He will officially walk free in May.

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