Governor, please commute the sentence of Life without Parole for Dutch citizen Harry Bout

12:00 AM
Petition to: Governor Jennifer Granholm

Dear Governor Granholm,

The undersigned request that you make a serious consideration to commute the sentence of Life without Parole for Dutch citizen Mr Harry Bout (MI DOC # 180741), a prisoner in the State of Michigan since 25 years.

In 2008, the Kingdom of The Netherlands supported the last commutation request of Mr Bout on humanitarian grounds (see their letter of 2nd of April 2008), but the Parole Board of Michigan gave a negative advice, without mentioning any reason why it was denied. On their advice, you denied a commutation, even though a fellow country asked you to consider this.

We the undersigned hope that with the support of the Kingdom of The Netherlands, you will look into the case for commutation of Mr Harry Bout more closely, because then you will see that Mr Bout´s case for commutation does have merit: he has a network of people in Michigan, in the rest of the United States and in The Netherlands who support him and he has always been active in keeping contact with his homeland, he has a place to live with his family in Holland, and when he regains his freedom, he will be deported anyway to The Netherlands, where he will be able to work and contribute to Dutch society.

Mr Harry Bout has been in a Michigan prison since 1985, costing heavily on the Michigan tax payers´ costs, even though he has always denied having done what he was charged for. We are not discussing the question of wrongful conviction in this petition, but we want to state that 25 years is a very long time to be in prison for, and it costs a lot of money. If there is no possibility for commutation, Mr Bout will die in prison and he will never be able to work towards redemption and be rewarded for his efforts to do so, as there is no incentive anymore to do so. Prison is and remains a bad place for people to be redeemed, and commuting a sentence of Life Without Parole of Mr Bout will help him even more to becoming a redeemed, valued person again. He already has the network in place for eventual parole when that would be needed. We need your careful consideration, having done 25 years of a sentence to die in prison is according to us long enough, we agree that Harry Bout needs to receive a commutation of his sentence to Parolable Life.

Thank you for your consideration into this matter,

Please go here to sign the petition on Change.org, thank you.

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