“More than 11,430 federal prisoners, many of them nonviolent offenders serving life sentences, have commutation petitions pending at the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of the Pardon Attorney, or OPA. Another 2,393 applications for presidential pardons, which are generally issued after someone completes a sentence, are also pending. Both numbers mark record highs for a clemency system that America’s founding fathers designed to be, in the words of Alexander Hamilton, “as little as possible fettered or embarrassed.”
“Today, access to clemency is anything but. Sam Morison, a former OPA attorney who now helps clients file petitions, says the Justice Department uses its oversight to stymie petitions before they ever reach the president’s desk.”
“The DOJ is to blame for the backlog,” Morison said. “They view their role as protecting the prosecutorial prerogative because, let’s face it, that’s what they do.”
“Some legal scholars believe the First Step Act, a landmark criminal justice reform bill President Donald Trump signed into law in December, created a way for inmates to bypass DOJ oversight by asking judges for sentence reductions based on the circumstances of their cases. But the concept hasn’t been tested in large numbers yet, and in the meantime, the odds of getting presidential relief are approaching zero. The office that granted 41% of all pending and newly filed clemency petitions in 1920 is on track to grant less than 0.1% under Trump.”