Biden commutes sentence for ex-McKees Rocks drug rehab founder who ran heroin ring
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A Navy veteran who founded a McKees Rocks drug rehabilitation center but was later convicted of running a large-scale heroin ring was among those whose sentences were commuted by President Joe Biden last week.
David Francis, who was 69 at the time of his sentencing, was ordered to serve 10 years in prison in November 2020 after pleading guilty to conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute more than 100 grams of heroin and five counts of aiding or assisting in the preparation of filing false income tax returns.
The prison term was part of a plea agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s office.
Now 72, Francis was most recently being supervised by the Residential Reentry Management field office in New York, according to the federal Bureau of Prisons.
His release date on the bureau’s website was listed as April 13, 2025. It is unclear whether that reflects the commutation.
Francis, who served in the Navy during the Vietnam War, had struggled with drug addiction for much of his life, using heroin for the first time at age 9.
As part of his sentencing hearing, his then-defense attorney, Casey White, said Francis had been sober for several years, when, in January 2004, he opened Next Step Foundation Inc., a three-quarter house drug rehab facility in McKees Rocks.
For eight years, Francis helped people, participating in 5,000 drug interventions and housing as many as 187 residents, White said at the time.
But during a room sweep at 3:30 a.m. on June 3, 2012, Francis found heroin. Instead of flushing it, he snorted it. And then he began selling it.
Francis funded that trade through the preparation of fraudulent tax returns though the business All Personal Matters, investigators said.
Prosecutors said that Francis’ drug sales caused three clients at Next Step to overdose and nearly die.
His tax fraud, they said, cost the IRS $1.7 million.
At the time of sentencing, White told the judge that his client had become a trusty of the veterans’ pod at the Allegheny County Jail, and several staffers there submitted letters on his behalf.
On Monday, White said he was happy to hear of the commutation.
“Mr. Francis is a military veteran and of advanced age,” White said. “I believe he was the right candidate to be commuted under the circumstances.”
Francis could not be reached for comment.
Others from Pennsylvania who were included on the commutation list were Gregory Podlucky and Michael T. Conahan, a former Luzerne County Common Pleas judge .
Podlucky, the former chairman and CEO of a defunct Latrobe bottling company, had been ordered to serve 20 years in federal prison in 2011 for a fraud scheme that took more than $629 million from investors.
Conahan was convicted in 2009 in the so-called kids-for-cash scandal in which he was ordered to serve 17 years in prison after pleading guilty to racketeering.
Conahan and another former judge, Mark Ciavarella, accepted $2.8 million in illegal payments to send children to for-profit juvenile jail facilitiess.
In issuing the 1,499 commutations — the largest number ever in a single day — Biden did not provide individual explanations.
He said in a statement Thursday that America was built on “the promise of possibility and second chances.”
“As president, I have the great privilege of extending mercy to people who have demonstrated remorse and rehabilitation, restoring opportunity for Americans to participate in daily life and contribute to their communities, and taking steps to remove sentencing disparities for nonviolent offenders, especially those convicted of drug offenses,” Biden wrote.