JFK and RFK Commute a 50-year Marijuana Sentence. Partly printed DS: "John F. Kennedy" as President and "Robert F. Ken...

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JFK and RFK Commute a 50-year Marijuana Sentence. Partly printed DS: "John F. Kennedy" as President and "Robert F. Kennedy" as Attorney General, 2p, 9" x 13.5". Washington, D.C., July 16, 1963. In full: "Whereas Peter Young was convicted in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California on an indictment (No. 25738-CD), charging violations of Section 176(a), Title 21, United States Code, and on May twenty-seventh, 1957, a sentence of fifty years' imprisonment was imposed; and Whereas the aforesaid conviction was appealed and affirmed on January ninth, 1961, by the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit; and Whereas the said Peter Young was committed to the United States Penitentiary, McNeil Island, Washington, July twenty-first, 1957, and will be eligible to be released therefrom with credit for statutory good time December twenty-first, 1990; and Whereas it has been made to appear that the ends of justice do not require that the aforesaid sentence be served in its entirety: Now, therefore, be it known, that I, John F. Kennedy, President of the United States of America, in consideration of the premises, divers other good and sufficient reasons me thereunto moving, do hereby commute the sentence of the aforesaid Peter Young to a term of ten years' imprisonment."

Section 176(a), Title 21 of the U.S. Code was enacted in 1909. It covered illegal importation of marijuana and set the penalties for such illegal importation. It was repealed in 1971 and was replaced by Public Law 91-513. Three heavy horizontal folds with indentations at the edges, one going through the line commuting the sentence, another through the gold paper seal of the Department of Justice. Anything signed by both John and Robert Kennedy are scarce. Although this document does have minor defects, the content (commutation of a marijuana importation conviction) and the fine signatures of John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy make it a rare and extremely desirable presidential document. Accompanied by LOA from PSA/DNA.