MORGANTOWN, WEST VIRGINIA—Two 2015 WVU Law graduates, Amanda Camplesi and Laura Hoffman, are mentioned in a June 1 USA Today article about President Obama’s federal clemency program.
Camplesi and Hoffman, who graduated in May, worked on a clemency case in the West Virginia Innocence Project law clinic. Their client, Byron McDade, is serving a 27-year sentence for cocaine trafficking while his partners — who testified against him — “got no more than seven” years according to the article.
After a judge recommended reducing McDade’s sentence to seven years served, Camplesi and Hoffman helped McDade’s lawyer put together a 168-page petition for a Clemency Project screening committee. The students spent 122 hours on the case, including gathering paperwork and visiting McDade in prison.
The case is considered an early test of the President’s program to encourage nonviolent prisoners to apply for early release.
Read the full article: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/05/31/obama-clemency-initiative/27963853/
-WVU-
jj06/04/2015
