Part of the problem is that commutation often makes the criminal eligible for parole; if her sentence had been commuted, Ms Tucker could have been out on parole in 2003, an unpalatable thought to many Texans.
Berlusconi was also ordered to serve a four-year prison sentence, commuted to one, which will be enforced next year, either as community service or house arrest.
In his time, Enfield wasn't an obscurity but somewhere people commuted to from all over north London.
He had been badly injured in the first world war, and there was a public outcry over his conviction, leading to the sentence being commuted to life imprisonment.
Parliamentarians and government ministers from the Council of Europe, the EU's human rights watchdog, called for Davis's sentence to be commuted.
On Thursday Berlusconi was ordered to serve four years in prison, a sentence that has been commuted to one year under a 2006 amnesty and will consist, due to his age, of detention under house arrest or community service rather than jail.
One commuted so frequently between Scotland and Spain he was nicknamed McPedro.
Oxfordshire County Council's consultation criteria were biased towards urban areas, looking at how many people lived, worked, shopped, commuted in a half-mile radius of the library, which naturally favoured them over the rural libraries that will now suffer the most cuts.
This is his punishment for tax fraud, commuted from four years' imprisonment because of his age.
A death sentence was commuted, they said, because of his age (90) and ill health.
The politicised judiciary has handed down death sentences (many since commuted) to hundreds more.
