Commutation

Attorney general nominee Eric H. Holder Jr. repeatedly pushed some of his subordinates at the Clinton Justice Department to drop their opposition to a controversial 1999 grant of clemency to 16 members of two violent Puerto Rican nationalist organizations, according to interviews and documents. Details of the role played by Holder, who was deputy attorney general at the time, had not been publicly known until now.

With his decision to keep I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby from going to prison, President Bush has provoked a firestorm of controversy but avoided what might have been even more damaging to his presidency: defections of Republican loyalists who are among the last to support the beleaguered White House. Libby's fate had become a cause celebre among conservative GOP activists, even as the public overwhelmingly opposed a presidential pardon.

President Bush wiped away the prison sentence of former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby on Monday, calling it an "excessive" punishment for a "first-time offender with years of exceptional public service." On the day that Libby's last bid to stay out of prison was rejected by an appeals court, Bush said he had decided to act -- not by pardoning Libby of his crime, but by commuting his 30-month sentence.

In commuting the sentence of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, President Bush said that the former vice presidential aide had suffered enough and that the 30-month prison term ordered up by a federal judge was "excessive." But records show that the Justice Department under the Bush administration frequently has sought sentences that are as long, or longer, in cases similar to Libby's.

Libya's top judicial authority on Tuesday commuted the death sentences of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor convicted of intentionally infecting more than 400 children with the virus that causes AIDS. The sentences were reduced to life imprisonment after the children's families were paid millions of dollars in compensation, raising hopes that the six eventually will be returned to their home countries.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry on Thursday spared the life of death row inmate Kenneth Foster Jr. just hours before he was to be executed for a murder he did not personally commit. Perry's decision to commute the death sentence of Foster, the getaway driver in a 1996 botched robbery that ended in a shooting, came after the governor received a rare recommendation to do so from the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles.

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney whose sentence for lying and obstructing justice in the CIA leak case was commuted by President Bush last summer, has dropped his legal appeal.

One of California's longest-serving death row inmates has had his sentence overturned for the third time. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said Lavell Frierson's attorney erred by failing to tell jurors of the defendant's history of mental retardation and child abuse. Frierson, 49, is on death row for the 1978 murder of Edgardo Kramer, a Peruvian airline employee, near Los Angeles International Airport.

A federal judge Friday cut by 75% one of the longest sentences in recent U.S. business fraud prosecutions, giving a former Dynegy Inc. accountant six years instead of the 24 initially handed down. Jamie Olis, 40, was resentenced by U.S. District Judge Sim Lake after the Supreme Court changed the effect of federal sentencing guidelines and the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Lake's original sentence.

Standing before a crowded auditorium Friday at DePaul University, former Illinois Gov. George Ryan shook hands with Madison Hobley -- a death row prisoner exonerated by the Republican leader in 2003. But while Hobley is now a free man, Ryan is heading to prison. In January, he is scheduled to begin a 6 1/2 year federal term for his part in a corruption scandal. "People say that the death penalty deters crime," said Ryan, 72. "I don't believe that. And I don't believe most people believe that."