We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.
WHITE HOUSE BEGINS TO UNTANGLE CLEMENCY MESS
President Biden has inherited 14,000 unresolved clemency requests – petitions seeking a pardon (forgiveness of the offense) or commutation of sentence (reduction of sentence, usually to time served). Many of the clemency petitions date from the Obama era but a good number piled up in the last four years, during which time who you knew was more important that what you wrote in your petition.
Politico reported last week that the White House is seeking suggestions on how to reform the clemency system and deal with the backlog. But the White House so far has revealed little about its plans, leaving advocates concerned that Biden’s team lacks a comprehensive plan for dealing with the backlog.
Over 100 criminal justice reform groups are urging Biden to overhaul the process and start resolving cases right away. The ACLU launched an ad campaign last month to push him to grant clemency to 25,000 people and make good on his pledge to tackle criminal justice issues amid a national reckoning on racial injustice. “The danger,” law professor Mark Osler said, “is that they’ll replicate the mistake the past several administrations of never focusing on it until it’s too late and it’s a mess.”
While Biden didn’t campaign aggressively on the issue of clemency, the joint task force Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vermont) assembled last summer proposed a 60-person agency independent of the DOJ, composed of people with diverse backgrounds to review cases.
Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tennessee), who chairs the House Judiciary subcommittee with jurisdiction over pardons, lobbied Obama and Trump to issue more pardons. He said he plans to do the same for Biden.
“There are… more and more people in jail, and a lot of those people have been there forever and they have been there for long draconian sentences,” Cohen said.
Ohio State University law prof Doug Berman counseled patience as the White House figures out a plan. But, he said, “taking a careful and deliberative process toward grander reform of the entire clemency process should not be an excuse for Prez Biden to hold back entirely on the use of his clemency pen…I am pretty confident that only a relatively little amount of time would be needed for members of the Biden team to identify at least a handful of compelling cases that could and should allow clemency grants” to be part of Biden’s first 100-day agenda.
Politico, Trump left behind a clemency mess. The clock’s ticking for Biden to solve it. (February 11, 2021)
Sentencing Law and Policy, How about some clemency grants from Prez Biden while his team works on grander clemency plans? (February 11, 2021)
– Thomas L. Root