Man whose life sentence was commuted by Obama now charged with attempted murder in road rage incident, woman left brain-dead

A man whose life sentence was commuted by then-President Obama in 2015 has now been charged with the shooting of a woman in a road rage incident. The woman is brain-dead and not expected to survive. The shooting occured early on Sunday morning near Chicago. Mills admitted to police that he was the shooter, and has now been charged.

Alton Mills was a cocaine dealer who was serving year 22 of a life sentence in prison when Obama took up his cause and commuted that sentence in 2015. Now he's facing three charges of attemped murder, and the woman who he allegedly shot is not likely to live. Mills admitted that he had caused "great bodily harm and imminent death" to the woman.

The road rage incident happened early on Sunday morning. Three people had been out clubbing together, and stopped at a red light behind Mills in Posen, Ill. When the light turned green and Mills remained stopped, the driver of the car attempted to pass Mills, which apparently made the former felon angry. 

Mills apparently caught up to the car and opened fire, shooting a woman in the back seat in the head, said Assistant State's Atorney Kathryn Morrissey during Mills' bail hearing. After Mills shot at the car, the driver was able to snap a blurry photo of the license plate, and went directly to a local fire station and called police.

A search of Mills' home by police uncovered loose bullets that match those fired at the car. Gunshot residue was also found on Mills' car. Mills had been working for the Chicago Transit Authority and advocating for others to be released early from prison.

Obama commuted his sentence because Mills' offenses were considered to be merely small time drug offences. He'd been arrested and convicted for possession of 5 grams of crack cocaine twice, and so when he was arrested again, those previous two convictions worked against him, as part of what was known as the "three strikes" laws, where a person convicted twice would, upon a third conviction, face harsher penalties for repeat offenses. He was charged in 1993 "on federal conspiracy charges as part of a crack cocaine conspiracy," The Daily Mail reports.

Mills' case was a big deal for Democrats at the time, who saw his case of small time drug dealing with a life sentence to be a cause celeb as to why the drug laws were not working in the US. Senator Dick Durban of Illinois paraded his faces through Congress, saying that a man who only had earned $300 per week for selling crack cocaine should not be in prison for life. It was Durban who told Obama of Mills' sentence, and advocated for his release. Photos show Mills and Elizabeth Warren after his sentence was commuted.

Obama had a clemency initiative for low-level drug offenses as a means of combatting and reversing the "war on drugs," which saw Americans facing harsh penalties for selling drugs. Crack was a scourge in American inner-cities, and was not only harmful to the social fabric, but deadly, as were the gang wars surrounding the highly lucrative illegal drug market.