By Gabriel Monte
Lubbock Avalanche-Journal
LUBBOCK, Texas — A 50-year-old federal inmate from Lubbock has rejected President Barrack Obama’s Aug. 3 offer for clemency.
Arnold Ray Jones, who was one of more than 200 men in federal prison whose sentences Obama offered in August to cut short, has rejected the commutation, according to Department of Justice records.
According to the grant of clemency filed Aug. 3, the president’s offer came under the condition the inmates enroll in a Residential Drug Abuse Program.
According to the document, the inmates had a 14-day deadline to enroll in the program after receiving a copy of the grant of clemency.
“Condition declined, commutation not effectuated,” reads a note next to Jones’ name in the list of inmates offered clemency on the Department of Justice’s website. He is the only inmate so far to have declined the offer.
Jones’ prison record shows he was on the waiting list for the program in May of 2014, but is unclear if he was accepted or completed the program. He also earned a certificate in June 2003 for completing a drug education program.
Jones, who is one of two Lubbock men offered sentence reductions, has been serving a 235-month, or 19 and 1/2 year, sentence handed to him in 2002. He is now at a minimum security prison in Beaumont, according to court records.
He pleaded guilty to a federal felony count of distribution of less than 50 grams of cocaine base (crack cocaine) and aiding and abetting.
His projected release date is set for April 12, 2019. The commutation would have him out of prison a year earlier. According to court documents, Jones had tried three times unsuccessfully to have his sentence reduced between 2008 and 2015.
Federal Judge Sam Cummings denied in May a final request by Jones to reduce his sentence based on a 2014 amendment that reduced base offense levels on federal drug offenses. Cummings said in the order Jones’ status as a career offender made him ineligible for the reduction.
The second Lubbock inmate offered clemency, Raul Camargo Flores, is 13 years into a 24-year sentence for dealing methamphetamine and is expected to be released Aug. 3, 2018.
Obama cut short the sentences of 214 federal inmates, including those serving 67 life sentences, in what the White House called the largest batch of commutations on a single day in more than a century.
Almost all the prisoners were serving time for nonviolent crimes related to cocaine, methamphetamine or other drugs, although a few were charged with firearms violations related to their drug activities. Almost all are men, though they represent a diverse cross-section of America geographically, according to The Associated Press.