“At the beginning of 2014, when the Justice Department asked private attorneys for help in locating worthy candidates for commutation, it was already sitting on thousands of applications from federal prisoners seeking shorter sentences. Two years later, Reuters reports, about 9,000 petitions are pending at the DOJ, and another 9,000 still need to be reviewed by the network of lawyers who volunteered to help vet applicants. So far the organization, known as Clemency Project 2014, has been contacted by 34,000 prisoners and has forwarded petitions from only 300 or so, 31 of whom have received commutations.”
