By Associated Press - Saturday, February 8, 2020

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt has commuted the sentences of 147 people imprisoned for simple drug possession charges that would not be felonies if brought today.

The Republican governor signed papers Friday to commute the sentences of 119 people to time served and another 28 sentences to one year, The Oklahoman reports.

Steven Bickley, executive director of the state Pardon and Parole Board, told the paper that most people in the first group will be released Thursday Those in the second are set to be let out as they finish their sentences over the next several months, he said.

The commutations are the latest under a 2019 law that retroactively applied misdemeanor sentences for simple drug possession and low-level property crimes that state voters approved in 2016.

Last year, more than 450 people walked out the doors of prisons across Oklahoma in the largest single-day mass commutation in U.S. history.

Stitt has made reducing Oklahoma’s highest-in-the-nation incarceration rate one of his top priorities, but he has faced resistance from the state prosecutors.

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