“I am granting your application because you have demonstrated the potential to turn your life around,” President Obama wrote. “Now it is up to you to make the most of this opportunity.”

When Evans Ray Jr. stood in a federal courtroom in 2007 after arranging a drug sale, a judge explained, at length, that he didn’t want to hand down the mandatory life sentence required by law.

“It is my desire not to sentence you to life,” Judge Alexander Williams Jr. said in his Greenbelt, Md., courtroom, according to transcripts. “I believe that the circumstances justify a sentence shorter than life. I further believe that there is some disproportionality between what you’ve done and the sentence of life.” Read Full Article in The Washington Post | May 6, 2017

See, too, "Obama Commuted Evans Ray's Life Sentence; Now Ray wants to help Others Like Himself" by Breanna Edwards in The Root | February 2017