Hip-hop producer Weldon Angelos is the latest American to receive a Presidential pardon from Donald Trump prior to his upcoming exit from the White House in 2021.
"Feels great to have been fully pardoned by the President of the United States," Angelos wrote in the caption of an Instagram post reacting to the news. "Now it’s time for more pardons and commutations."
Angelos was sentenced to 55 years in prison in 2004 after selling $350 worth of marijuana to an undercover police officer while possessing a firearm. He turned down a 15-year plea deal and was later convicted of 13 charges.
“He had to provide means for his family and himself,” Snoop Dogg said of the case in 2017. “It wasn’t like it was a violent crime he was committing – he was just hustling.”
Judge Paul Cassell wrote an open letter to President Barack Obama, in 2016, saying that the sentence was far too harsh: “The sentence was unjust, uncruel, and even irrational...because his appeals have been exhausted, the only solution for Angelos is a Presidential commutation. I urge you to swiftly commute his sentence.”
Prior to his harsh conviction, Angelos worked on Snoop Dogg's We From the LBC Soundtrack in 2004.
[Via]