By Lauren Victoria Burke, NNPA Newswire Contributor
With less than 30 hours left in his presidency, President Biden has pardoned five people. One of the pardon’s includes Virginia’s first Black Speaker of the House of the Delegates, Don Scott.
In 1994, Scott was arrested during his third year in law school and sentenced for a nonviolent drug offense – he was a money mule for two people he hardly knew. But he was prosecuted as part of a “conspiracy” and sentenced to ten years in prison. But upon his release eight years later, he ran a business, took the bar exam and passed on the first try, was hired by one of the leading law firms in Virginia. In January 2024, in an incredible career turnaround, Scott was elected Speaker of the Virginia House in 2024.
The turn of events was outlined in the statement from The White House.
“Since his release, he has practiced as an attorney and was elected to the Virginia legislature in 2019. In 2024, he became the first Black Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates. Mr. Scott is a U.S. Navy veteran who donated his kidney to his next-door neighbor in 2021. His supporters have highlighted his dedication to public service, his remorse and redemption, and his tireless commitment to improving the lives of those around him,” the statement from President Biden read.
“The most important thing, I think, for me is as I talk to young men and women who’ve been involved and been in the justice system or something like that, and I just try to let them know, like, your life is not over. You get to still be the captain of your own story. You get to be the captain of your own ship, the master of your story. And no matter what you’ve gone through, you can overcome anything,” Speaker Scott told Black Virginia News during an interview podcast hours after the Biden White House made the news official on the morning of January 19.
Speaker Scott’s pardon was one of three requested by Congressman Bobby Scott (D-Va.). (The two Virginia lawmakers are not related). President Biden also announced the pardon of Kemba Smith of Richmond, Va., also prosecuted as a “conspirator” in a drug ring as the result of the actions of her boyfriend, and Michelle West.
In another significant announcement and a nod to history, Biden posthumously granted a pardon to Marcus Garvey.
Garvey created the Black Star Line, the first Black-owned shipping line and method of international travel. Garvey also founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association, which celebrated African history. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. described Mr. Garvey as “the first man of color in the history of the United States to lead and develop a mass movement.” Garvey died in 1940.
The lengthy penalty for a nonviolent drug offense visited on Don Scott and Smith were common during the punitive “war on drugs” era that began in the 1980s and accelerated in the 1990s after the passage of the 1994 Clinton Crime Bill. The U.S. continues to lead the world in the rate of incarceration at an estimated annual cost of $80 billion.
Biden has set a record for commutations with over 2,000.
Lauren Victoria Burke is an independent investigative journalist and the owner of Black Virginia News. She is a political analyst who appears regularly on #RolandMartinUnfiltered and speaks on Crisis Comms on YouTube @LaurenVictoriaBurke. She can be contacted at LBurke007@gmail.com and on twitter at @LVBurke.
