Obama Releases 6,000 Drug Convicts, But Jails Man For Catching Too Many Fish
Because that makes a lot of sense.
Judicial Watch added a new entry to its Corruption Chronicles this week as thousands of drug convicts [some with illegal weapons] have been poured back into American streets in the name of President Obama’s grand vision of criminal justice reform.
It’s an attempt to reduce sentencing for non-violent drug offenders and ensure that the poor and minorities aren’t disproportionately incarcerated. But at the same time, the Obama administration has stiffened penalties for breaking other, less serious federal laws as well. Such as catching too many fish. Judicial Watch explains:
The feds actually went after a commercial fisherman named Anthony Jospeh for “Fisheries Fraud” because he caught too many fluke. Then, he lied about it to the government—“systematically underreporting fluke”—and that got him in a boatload of trouble.
Last week the New York fisherman got sentenced to seven months in prison, a $603,000 fine and three years of supervised release following incarceration, according to a Department of Justice announcement. This overfishing business is serious stuff, according to the language in the federal document. “In order to cover up the illegal fluke harvesting, Joseph falsified” the reports he sent to the government agency that regulates fishing and “he also utilized the exempted fisheries permit quota that was acquired through” a federal program as a “mask for his fluke overages.” For some reason this doesn’t sound nearly as serious as a drug-related offense. Is it possible that the country is safer because a fish fraudster is in jail…while drug convicts roam freely?
As is noted in JW‘s report, federal prosecutors are warning the government against using misleading descriptions like “non-violent” when talking about drug traffickers, as trafficking drugs is “inherently violent.” And lessening sentences related to that crime will make it more difficult to bring justice to dangerous drug traffickers, prosecutors say.
