Man Freed from Prison by Barack Obama Strikes Again, Now Charged with Attempted Murder

A man who had his life sentence commuted by former President Barack Obama in 2015 has now been charged with attempted murder.

Alton Mills, who is 54, is being held in a Cook County, IL jail with no bond awaiting his trial set for June 1st. Mills was arrested and charged with attempted murder, for a shooting that left a victim critically injured.

Illinois State Police shared about the arrest on Twitter:

“𝐈𝐋𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐎𝐈𝐒 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐄 𝐏𝐎𝐋𝐈𝐂𝐄 𝐌𝐀𝐊𝐄 𝐀𝐍 𝐀𝐑𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐓 𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐀𝐓𝐓𝐄𝐌𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐌𝐔𝐑𝐃𝐄𝐑 The public is reminded that all persons are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.”

𝐈𝐋𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐎𝐈𝐒 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐄 𝐏𝐎𝐋𝐈𝐂𝐄 𝐌𝐀𝐊𝐄 𝐀𝐍 𝐀𝐑𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐓 𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐀𝐓𝐓𝐄𝐌𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐌𝐔𝐑𝐃𝐄𝐑
The public is reminded that all persons are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
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— IllinoisStatePolice (@ILStatePolice) May 17, 2023

According to the information in the tweet, ISP Troopers responded to a report of a shooting on the expressway on May 14th. Multiple shots had been fired from Mills’s vehicle that struck the victim’s vehicle. A back-seat passenger was struck by the gunfire and had to be taken to a nearby hospital for life-threatening injuries.

Mills was arrested on May 16 after an “extensive investigation” and has been charted with three counts of attempted murder.

Mills had previously served 22 years of a life sentence before Obama granted him clemency, he was released in 2016. The clemency was granted as part of an initiative for non-violent, low-level offenders that were arrested during the war on drugs. Mills had been arrested in 1993 on federal drug charges, this was his third strike and resulted in a life sentence for him.

Obama chose 95 inmates “who were sentenced at the height of the war on drugs and would likely receive substantially lower sentences today” to have their sentences commuted and Mills was among those.

U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) had repeatedly shared Mills’s story as he advocated for a prison reform bill. Upon Mills’s release, Durbin said, “An overlooked casualty in our ‘war on drugs’ are the men and women who have been convicted under disproportionately harsh mandatory minimum sentencing laws. One such man is Alton Mills, who served more than two decades of a mandatory life sentence for a nonviolent drug offense, a punishment even the sentencing judge disagreed with.”

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) also said of Mills’s life sentence, “It’s not justice when someone who needs help can go away for life for selling crack on the street, but a bank executive who launders hundreds of millions of dollars for drug cartels can pay a fine and sleep in his own bed at night. There is one set of laws on the books, but two legal systems.”

Less than 10 years later, Mills, the former poster boy against the three strikes program is now facing three attempted murder charges.