Clemency for Lori Kavitz serving 24 years
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Lori Kavitz is a first time nonviolent drug offender who has already served 15 years. After her husband committed suicide, she eventually dated a man who brought drugs into her life.
Lori Kavitz is a first time nonviolent drug offender who has already served 15 years. After her husband committed suicide, she eventually dated a man who brought drugs into her life. When he was indicted, she was labeled as his assistant and held responsible for all his illicit actions, convicted of conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine, and sentenced to 24 years and 4 months — more time than her boyfriend and even his supplier.
Here’s what her Sentencing Judge, Mark Bennet, wrote about Lori in a letter to the Pardon Attorney’s office:
“Lori Clare Kavitz has earned, and in my opinion, absolutely deserves the privilege of clemency and in my respectful opinion should be immediately released to serve her term of supervised release. I personally assure you I will follow her closely on TSR to ensure she has earned this privileged and responds in the positive way I fully expect her to.
Finally, her sentence was a gross miscarriage of justice – and I was on that day, in that courtroom, in that hour embarrassed and ashamed to be a U.S. District Judge imposing such an unfair sentence. At that time I said on the record that her sentence was “idiotic, arbitrary, unduly harsh and grossly unfair.” I called it one of the most “unjust sentences I have been forced to impose.”
I beg you to urge the President to right this grave injustice that I was unable to. I would at least be able to know as my career winds down that President Obama, albeit it years after the fact, brought a measure of justice and mercy that the Constitution allows him to do – that I was unable to give.”
