The False Hope of “Bipartisan” Criminal Justice Reform

Alice Marie Johnson is free and starring in her first Super Bowl ad. Already, the campaign for her release had made international headlines: a black woman in her sixties, a casualty of America’s drug war who was imprisoned in 1996 for participating in a cocaine distribution operation, a grandmother essentially sentenced to die in jail. Now Johnson will also be known for having her voice and image placed next to President Trump’s own appeal, in the eleventh hour of his impeachment trial, for reelection.

The ad introduces Johnson as someone...