[CTRL] LAT: Drug Kingpin's Release Adds to Clemency Uproar
-Caveat Lector- Sunday, February 11, 2001 SUNDAY REPORT Drug Kingpin's Release Adds to Clemency Uproar An outcry ensued when Clinton honored the longshot request of a cocaine dealer. His father's political donations increased sharply after the 1994 conviction. By RICHARD A. SERRANO and STEPHEN BRAUN Los Angeles Times Staff Writers WASHINGTON--In the waning days of his presidency, Bill Clinton promised to use his clemency powers to help low-level drug offenders languishing in prison. When Carlos Vignali walked out of prison on Jan. 20 and returned home to his family in Los Angeles, he appeared to fit the broad outlines of that profile. But the 30-year-old Vignali, who had served six years of a 15-year sentence for federal narcotics violations, fit another profile entirely. No small-time offender, he was the central player in a cocaine ring that stretched from California to Minnesota. Far from disadvantaged, he owned a $240,000 condominium in Encino and made his way as the son of affluent Los Angeles entrepreneur Horacio Vignali. The doting father became a large-scale political donor in the years after his son's arrest, donating more than $160,000 to state and federal officeholders--including Govs. Pete Wilson and Gray Davis--as he pressed for his son's freedom. The grateful father called the sudden commutation of his son's sentence by Clinton "a Hail Mary and a miracle." The improbability that such a criminal would be granted presidential clemency, as well as the younger Vignali's claim that he alone steered a pardon application that caught the president's attention and won his approval, has sparked disbelief and outrage from nearly everyone involved in his case. "It's not plausible; it makes no sense at all," said Margaret Love, the pardon attorney who oversaw all Justice Department reviews of presidential clemency applications from 1990 to 1997. "Somebody had to help him. There is no way that case could have possibly succeeded in the Department of Justice." Because it is a hard-edged criminal case, Vignali's commutation adds another dimension to the wave of eleventh-hour Clinton clemencies and raises new questions about the influence of political donors and officials on different stages of the process. As criminal justice authorities in Minnesota learned of Vignali's sudden freedom, they reacted with the same indignation that has greeted several other beneficiaries of the 140 pardons and 36 commutations Clinton granted in his last hours as president. The Vignali case also illustrates the secrecy that enshrouds the clemency process. A federal prosecutor who had urged Justice Department superiors to reject clemency for Vignali demanded an official explanation--only to be denied information from his own department. The judge who sentenced Vignali is openly aghast at the decision, which was made without his knowledge. And they all--from defense attorneys to street detectives to former pardon attorney Love--scoffed that Vignali could have walked free without the intervention of politically connected helpers. Key details of the case remain a mystery. Did political officials and other authoritative figures appeal for Vignali's freedom to the president or high-ranking Justice Department officials? What action, if any, did the Justice Department recommend to the White House? Vignali could not be reached for comment. But his father strongly denied that he or anyone else in the family asked politicians to press their case with Clinton. "I didn't write him a letter, I didn't do anything," Horacio Vignali said. "But I thank God, and I thank the president every day." For now, the Vignali case is a curious tale of how an inmate buried deep in the federal penal system won presidential help while others in more desperate straits remained behind. "Go figure," said an exasperated Craig Cascarano, the lawyer for one of Vignali's 30 co-defendants, many of them poor and black. "How is it that Carlos Vignali is out eating a nice dinner while my client is still in prison eating bologna sandwiches?" Clinton Concerned About Drug Sentences Clinton and his White House staff have not fully explained why he granted certain clemencies, including the highly controversial pardon of fugitive commodities broker Marc Rich. But in recent months, the president had expressed concern about mandatory federal sentences imposed on some small-time drug offenders. "The sentences in many cases are too long for nonviolent offenders," Clinton said in a November interview with Rolling Stone magazine. ". . . I think this whole thing needs to be reexamined." His comments prompted a flurry of last-minute clemency requests to the White House, said the former president's spokesman, Jake Siewert, particularly since Clinton believed that Justice was not moving fast enough in making clemency recommendations to the White House. "Most of the drug cases involved people with a sentence that the prosecutor or the sentencing
[CTRL] LAT: Drug Kingpin's Release Adds to Clemency Uproar (fwd)
-Caveat Lector- SUNDAY REPORT Drug Kingpin's Release Adds to Clemency Uproar An outcry ensued when Clinton honored the longshot request of a cocaine dealer. His father's political donations increased sharply after the 1994 conviction. By RICHARD A. SERRANO and STEPHEN BRAUN Los Angeles Times Staff Writers WASHINGTON--In the waning days of his presidency, Bill Clinton promised to use his clemency powers to help low-level drug offenders languishing in prison. When Carlos Vignali walked out of prison on Jan. 20 and returned home to his family in Los Angeles, he appeared to fit the broad outlines of that profile. But the 30-year-old Vignali, who had served six years of a 15-year sentence for federal narcotics violations, fit another profile entirely. No small-time offender, he was the central player in a cocaine ring that stretched from California to Minnesota. Far from disadvantaged, he owned a $240,000 condominium in Encino and made his way as the son of affluent Los Angeles entrepreneur Horacio Vignali. The doting father became a large-scale political donor in the years after his son's arrest, donating more than $160,000 to state and federal officeholders--including Govs. Pete Wilson and Gray Davis--as he pressed for his son's freedom. The grateful father called the sudden commutation of his son's sentence by Clinton "a Hail Mary and a miracle." The improbability that such a criminal would be granted presidential clemency, as well as the younger Vignali's claim that he alone steered a pardon application that caught the president's attention and won his approval, has sparked disbelief and outrage from nearly everyone involved in his case. "It's not plausible; it makes no sense at all," said Margaret Love, the pardon attorney who oversaw all Justice Department reviews of presidential clemency applications from 1990 to 1997. "Somebody had to help him. There is no way that case could have possibly succeeded in the Department of Justice." Because it is a hard-edged criminal case, Vignali's commutation adds another dimension to the wave of eleventh-hour Clinton clemencies and raises new questions about the influence of political donors and officials on different stages of the process. As criminal justice authorities in Minnesota learned of Vignali's sudden freedom, they reacted with the same indignation that has greeted several other beneficiaries of the 140 pardons and 36 commutations Clinton granted in his last hours as president. The Vignali case also illustrates the secrecy that enshrouds the clemency process. A federal prosecutor who had urged Justice Department superiors to reject clemency for Vignali demanded an official explanation--only to be denied information from his own department. The judge who sentenced Vignali is openly aghast at the decision, which was made without his knowledge. And they all--from defense attorneys to street detectives to former pardon attorney Love--scoffed that Vignali could have walked free without the intervention of politically connected helpers. Key details of the case remain a mystery. Did political officials and other authoritative figures appeal for Vignali's freedom to the president or high-ranking Justice Department officials? What action, if any, did the Justice Department recommend to the White House? Vignali could not be reached for comment. But his father strongly denied that he or anyone else in the family asked politicians to press their case with Clinton. "I didn't write him a letter, I didn't do anything," Horacio Vignali said. "But I thank God, and I thank the president every day." For now, the Vignali case is a curious tale of how an inmate buried deep in the federal penal system won presidential help while others in more desperate straits remained behind. "Go figure," said an exasperated Craig Cascarano, the lawyer for one of Vignali's 30 co-defendants, many of them poor and black. "How is it that Carlos Vignali is out eating a nice dinner while my client is still in prison eating bologna sandwiches?" Clinton Concerned About Drug Sentences Clinton and his White House staff have not fully explained why he granted certain clemencies, including the highly controversial pardon of fugitive commodities broker Marc Rich. But in recent months, the president had expressed concern about mandatory federal sentences imposed on some small-time drug offenders. "The sentences in many cases are too long for nonviolent offenders," Clinton said in a November interview with Rolling Stone magazine. ". . . I think this whole thing needs to be reexamined." His comments prompted a flurry of last-minute clemency requests to the White House, said the former president's spokesman, Jake Siewert, particularly since Clinton believed that Justice was not moving fast enough in making clemency recommendations to the White House. "Most of the drug cases involved people with a sentence that the prosecutor or the sentencing judge felt was excessive,"
[CTRL] LAT: Drug Kingpin's Release Adds to Clemency Uproar
-Caveat Lector- Sunday, February 11, 2001 SUNDAY REPORT Drug Kingpin's Release Adds to Clemency Uproar An outcry ensued when Clinton honored the longshot request of a cocaine dealer. His father's political donations increased sharply after the 1994 conviction. By RICHARD A. SERRANO and STEPHEN BRAUN Los Angeles Times Staff Writers WASHINGTON--In the waning days of his presidency, Bill Clinton promised to use his clemency powers to help low-level drug offenders languishing in prison. When Carlos Vignali walked out of prison on Jan. 20 and returned home to his family in Los Angeles, he appeared to fit the broad outlines of that profile. But the 30-year-old Vignali, who had served six years of a 15-year sentence for federal narcotics violations, fit another profile entirely. No small-time offender, he was the central player in a cocaine ring that stretched from California to Minnesota. Far from disadvantaged, he owned a $240,000 condominium in Encino and made his way as the son of affluent Los Angeles entrepreneur Horacio Vignali. The doting father became a large-scale political donor in the years after his son's arrest, donating more than $160,000 to state and federal officeholders--including Govs. Pete Wilson and Gray Davis--as he pressed for his son's freedom. The grateful father called the sudden commutation of his son's sentence by Clinton "a Hail Mary and a miracle." The improbability that such a criminal would be granted presidential clemency, as well as the younger Vignali's claim that he alone steered a pardon application that caught the president's attention and won his approval, has sparked disbelief and outrage from nearly everyone involved in his case. "It's not plausible; it makes no sense at all," said Margaret Love, the pardon attorney who oversaw all Justice Department reviews of presidential clemency applications from 1990 to 1997. "Somebody had to help him. There is no way that case could have possibly succeeded in the Department of Justice." Because it is a hard-edged criminal case, Vignali's commutation adds another dimension to the wave of eleventh-hour Clinton clemencies and raises new questions about the influence of political donors and officials on different stages of the process. As criminal justice authorities in Minnesota learned of Vignali's sudden freedom, they reacted with the same indignation that has greeted several other beneficiaries of the 140 pardons and 36 commutations Clinton granted in his last hours as president. The Vignali case also illustrates the secrecy that enshrouds the clemency process. A federal prosecutor who had urged Justice Department superiors to reject clemency for Vignali demanded an official explanation--only to be denied information from his own department. The judge who sentenced Vignali is openly aghast at the decision, which was made without his knowledge. And they all--from defense attorneys to street detectives to former pardon attorney Love--scoffed that Vignali could have walked free without the intervention of politically connected helpers. Key details of the case remain a mystery. Did political officials and other authoritative figures appeal for Vignali's freedom to the president or high-ranking Justice Department officials? What action, if any, did the Justice Department recommend to the White House? Vignali could not be reached for comment. But his father strongly denied that he or anyone else in the family asked politicians to press their case with Clinton. "I didn't write him a letter, I didn't do anything," Horacio Vignali said. "But I thank God, and I thank the president every day." For now, the Vignali case is a curious tale of how an inmate buried deep in the federal penal system won presidential help while others in more desperate straits remained behind. "Go figure," said an exasperated Craig Cascarano, the lawyer for one of Vignali's 30 co-defendants, many of them poor and black. "How is it that Carlos Vignali is out eating a nice dinner while my client is still in prison eating bologna sandwiches?" Clinton Concerned About Drug Sentences Clinton and his White House staff have not fully explained why he granted certain clemencies, including the highly controversial pardon of fugitive commodities broker Marc Rich. But in recent months, the president had expressed concern about mandatory federal sentences imposed on some small-time drug offenders. "The sentences in many cases are too long for nonviolent offenders," Clinton said in a November interview with Rolling Stone magazine. ". . . I think this whole thing needs to be reexamined." His comments prompted a flurry of last-minute clemency requests to the White House, said the former president's spokesman, Jake Siewert, particularly since Clinton believed that Justice was not moving fast enough in making clemency recommendations to the White House. "Most of the drug cases involved people with a sentence that the prosecutor or the sentencing
