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Left: Dequan Willard (Lubbock County Sheriff’s Office). Right: Then-president Joe Biden speaks from the Roosevelt Room on July 14, 2024 (AP Photo/Susan Walsh).
A Texas man whose drug-related sentence was commuted by former then-President Joe Biden earlier this month has been arrested for allegedly violating the terms of his supervised release.
Dequan Willard, 30, allegedly tried to fake a urine test during a visit with federal officers under the terms of his supervised release, according to federal prosecutors in the Northern District of Texas.
Previously convicted of a cocaine distribution conspiracy along with several other individuals, the defendant was originally arrested in late 2016 after authorities found over two kilograms of the popular street drug and confiscated several firearms, court records show.
After pleading guilty, Willard was sentenced to a total of 14 years behind bars. In early 2024, he successfully moved to reduce his sentence to 12 years and three months, based on his lack of criminal history at the time of his conviction. And on Jan. 17, the remainder of the defendant’s sentence was commuted in a sweeping grant of commutation doled out to 2,490 federal inmates.
On Jan. 24, Willard was arrested again, court records show.
Prosecutors elaborated on the reason why during a hearing last week, according to a courtroom report by Lubbock Lights.
During his initial supervised release visit at the Lubbock Probation Office last week, Willard allegedly had a bag of diluted coffee concealed near his crotch, a prosecutor told the judge.
Whether his pants were actually down or not, he was caught in the functional state of such, and then admitted to using synthetic marijuana in prison just prior to being released, prosecutors allege.
Lubbock County Sheriff Kelly Rowe angrily criticized the decision-making process that led to Willard’s brief stint outside of federal prison in comments to Lubbock-based NBC affiliate KCBD.
“I look at this in the sense that we’ve had dedicated men and women in law enforcement who are putting it all on the line,” the sheriff said. “We’re talking about dangerous offenders where their activities in the course of investigation are very high risk. The point of arrest, very high risk. And to see all of that work basically washed away, all of that risk washed away because of a political decision made in Washington, D.C., only serves to make me angry about it.”
Rowe told the outlet that his office took note of individuals like Willard as soon as the U.S. Department of Justice announced Biden’s wide-ranging grants of clemency to nonviolent drug offenders.
The sheriff, for his part, disputed such characterizations.
“Say it for what it is,” Rowe added. “I mean, if you want to let some of the worst of the worst back out on the street, say it for what it is.”
The commutation gifted by Biden was not a full pardon. In real terms, Willard’s sentence was cut down to 100 months – which he had served by the time the grant of leniency was issued due accumulating good behavior credits. But, under the terms of the commutation, Willard was still subject to five years of supervised release.
He could now spend up to nine more months in prison.
“The bottom line, this guy is no saint,” the sheriff told Lubbock Lights. “We know, as a law enforcement organization, this is a bad cat. He should never have been cut loose – like most of them.”
On the first day of his second term in office, President Donald Trump issued sweeping pardons and commutations for nearly 1,500 people charged by federal authorities over the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Rowe, for his part, also criticized blanket clemency in general terms.
“I think it’s very dangerous to go down this road, without ensuring that you’ve got a thorough process to ensure that the individuals that you’re granting, that a president, period, is granting something like this to, that there is a justifiable reason for it,” the sheriff told KCBD.
