Weldon Angelos was sentenced in Utah to 55 years in prison for "small-time marijuana and gun charges". "Mr. Angelos is a first-time offender who sold $350 in marijuana to a government informant three times -- and carried, but did not display, a gun on two of those occasions. Police found other guns and pot at his house." This week, the US Supreme Court declined to review Angelos' case.
The sentencing judge, Paul G. Cassell, was appointed by Bush and is known to be convservative. He "declared the mandatory sentence in this case 'unjust, cruel, and even irrational.' He noted that it is 'far in excess of the sentence imposed for such serious crimes as aircraft hijacking, second degree murder, espionage, kidnapping, aggravated assault, and rape.'...And in an extraordinary act, he explicitly called on Mr. Bush to use his clemency powers to offer what he as a judge could not: justice." Bush has only commutted two sentences so far in his presidency.
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