Obama cuts 7 years from WI man's sentence

A 35-year-old Madison man was among 98 federal prisoners whose sentences were commuted Thursday by President Barack Obama.

Danny D. Turner was sentenced in August 2008 to 17 1/2 years in prison after conviction at trial on three counts of distributing crack cocaine. Now Turner will be released in October 2018 if he can sign up for residential drug treatment program, a condition Obama attached to a few dozen of Thursday's commutations.

The commutations bring Obama's 2016 total to 688, by far the most ever granted in a single year by a president. His total while in office is 872, more than the number granted by the country's prior seven presidents combined.  He has also denied almost 3,000 petitions for shortened sentences.

Forty-two of the sentences commuted Thursday were life terms.

Presidential commutations are not pardons; the prisoner granted one is still a felon and carries the other consequences of conviction.  Obama has been using his executive power to grant earlier release to those prisoners who got harsh sentences for non-violent drug offenses under prior administrations' "war on drugs." 

Similar crimes would earn much lighter sentences under current guidelines.