ACS
Login:

BookTalk

ACS BookTalk features posts by authors of books on pressing law or policy concerns. Click here to catch up on the latest.

This week's selection »

Blog

Topics

Join ACS

Featured Videos

More Videos »

Video Podcasts

More Podcasts »

Find a Lawyer Chapter or Student Chapter

Blogroll

Legal Blogs

Policy Blogs

Join The Conversation

LinkedIn

Archive
Home > Blog > All > Clemency

Clemency

  • May 8, 2012

    Clemency Board - a Promising Option for Consideration of Old Crack Cocaine Cases

    Guest Post

    By Nkechi Taifa, Senior Policy Analyst, Open Society Foundations. [American Constitution Society for Law and Policy (ACS) and the Open Society Foundations will host a forum with experts on the President’s Constitutional Pardon Power on May 10 in 2237 Rayburn House Office Building.]

    In 1974, Gerald Ford used his presidential pardon power to create an executive clemency board to oversee the petitions of 21,000 people convicted of draft-related offenses during the Vietnam War. Within a year, President Ford granted 90 percent of the petitions. The review process was a median strategy -- many desired outright amnesty for the lawbreakers while others favored imprisonment. 

    On balance, the approach by Ford establishing a pardon board allowed for individualized review of each clemency application, with options including approval, community service, or denial. A systematic process of review for this discrete class of cases helped mend a nation divided by conflicting opinions as to the legitimacy of the war and the reasonableness of sanctions for those who morally resisted it.

    Fast forward to today: Currently, there is an identifiable class of people serving egregiously lengthy sentences for crack cocaine offenses. All three branches of the U.S. government agree that these sentences are unjust, inconsistent, unfair and biased. Ironically, these people are the very same group whose harsh and discriminatory sentences inspired passage of the 2010 Fair Sentencing Act (FSA), which reduced the 100:1 powder to crack ratio to 18:1. The FSA, however, applies only to new cases occurring after its passage, leaving in place the flawed sentences of those who were already serving time under the old discredited sentencing scheme. 

    More
    Tags:
    Prison policy/incarceration, Criminal Justice, Clemency, clemency board, Crack/Powder Sentencing Disparity, drug sentences, Fair Sentencing Act, Ford administration, Guest Post, Nkechi Taifa
  • October 28, 2010

    The Quality of Mercy in New York: A Different Kind of State Challenge to Federal Immigration Policy

    Guest Post
    By Margaret Colgate Love, an attorney specializing in clemency and restoration of rights. Ms. Love, a former U.S. Pardon Attorney, has advised lawyers representing applicants before Gov. Paterson's pardon panel .
    On October 21, The New York Times reported that Governor David Paterson had received more than 1000 pardon requests from legal immigrants facing deportation because of old or minor state crimes. In May, Paterson (pictured) had announced the creation of a panel to consider such requests, ostensibly to inject fairness into what he described as an "embarrassingly and wrongly inflexible" system that expels immigrants without considering the possibility that deportation in a particular case might be unwise or unjust. Now, his term nearly up, the deadline for decision is fast approaching. Having stirred this pot, whatever he does is bound to be controversial.

    Governor Paterson's decision to tackle his pardoning responsibilities on a systematic basis followed on the heels of his pardon in March of Qing Hong Wu, a 29-year-old information technology executive. Wu, who had not lived in his native China since he was five years old, faced deportation because of his participation in a series of muggings as a 15-year-old. The sympathetic facts of Wu's situation had been detailed in a series of articles in The Times, and his request for mercy had garnered the support of his sentencing judge and the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. Announcing his pardon initiative at an annual gathering of state judges, Paterson declared: "In New York, we believe in rehabilitation."

    With the prospect of dozens or even hundreds of Paterson pardon grants becoming more real, The Times found advocates for immigrants euphoric: "People are being deported for indiscretions of their youth, and it's ripping families apart," one said. Another called for a replication of the pardon panel "far and wide."

    The Federation for American Immigration Reform was reportedly less thrilled: "As a general rule, we would be opposed to governors or other local officials stacking the deck so that people who could legitimately be deported get to remain in the country." FAIR spokesman Ira Mehlman complained that the governor was superseding the authority of Congress. "This is not his determination to make," he said.

    More
    Tags:
    Immigration, Criminal Justice, Clemency, Deportation, Gov. David Paterson, Guest Post, immigration, New York, pardon
  • April 14, 2010

    Looking for the President's Pardon Power? Try the Supreme Court.

    By Margaret Love, who now represents applicants for pardon and commutation. Love previously served as U.S. Pardon Attorney under Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton. 
    At a recent oral argument in a case involving the crack cocaine sentencing guidelines, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy asked Assistant Solicitor General Leondra Kruger, "Does the Justice Department ever make recommendations that prisoners like this have their sentence commuted?"

    It was a question that stumped Ms. Kruger. The answer should have been "not very often."

    On second thought, make that "hardly ever."

    The prisoner was Percy Dillon, sentenced in 1993 to 27 years in prison for trafficking in crack cocaine. Dillon was asking the Court to decide whether the U.S. Sentencing Commission had acted properly in limiting courts' ability to modify previously-imposed sentences in the wake of Congress' 2007 reduction in the crack guidelines. If Dillon lost his case, he would spend another three years in prison.

    Dillon seemed to strike Justice Kennedy as a particularly appealing candidate for clemency: his sentencing judge had called his original sentence "unfair" and "entirely too high," and Dillon had spent 16 years compiling an impressive prison record of educational outreach to fellow inmates and at-risk youth in the community.

    Getting no answer from the government to his question about the frequency of the Justice Department's clemency recommendations, Justice Kennedy observed that there had been no sentence commutations in 2009 and only five the year before. "Does this show that something is not working in the system?"

    More
    Tags:
    Access to Justice, Executive power, Supreme Court, Other courts, Sentencing guidelines, Criminal Justice, Separation of Powers and Federalism, Clemency, Commutations, Dillon v. U.S., Justice Anthony Kennedy, Justice Department, Kenneth Harvey, Leondra Kruger, Mandatory Minimum Sentences, Margaret Colgate Love, Padilla v. Kentucky, Pardons, President Obama, sentencing
  • December 4, 2009

    Criminal Justice Roundup

    PTSD Defense via "Selective Empathy": ACS Board member Linda Greenhouse on the Supreme Court overturning a veteran's death sentence.

    Huckabee & Clemmons' Clemency: The former governor's persistent defense of clemency for an apparent cop-killer.

    Civil Disobedience or Epidemic?: Following the jailing of their colleague, 20 courthouse deputies call in sick.

    Crime-fighting with Criminology: Cincinnati's "unusual" approach to combatting gang violence.

    Re-Thinking the System: Sen. Jim Webb and other special guests join ACS for a major event on Wed. 12/9 to assess the shortcomings and opportunities in our country's approach to criminal justice.

    More
    Tags:
    Death penalty, Habeas corpus, Juvenile justice, Supreme Court, Criminal Justice, Arizona Sheriffs, Cincinnati, Civil Disobedience, Clemency, Empathy, Gang Violence, Gov. Mike Huckabee, Linda Greenhouse, Maurice Clemmons, Sen. Jim Webb
  • April 30, 2009

    Mercy in Missouri

    Guest Post
    By Christopher Hill, State Strategies Coordinator for the ACLU Capital Punishment Project

    During the last general election there was much discussion about the power of the executive branch. One great power that the executive branches of the federal government and most states have is the power to grant clemency.

    The ability to examine a person's life and decide to grant him or her mercy is awesome. This ability is even more incredible in the capital punishment context. It gives the executive the chance to save a life. In 2003, Gov. George Ryan (R-Ill.) commuted the death sentences of all 167 death-row inmates and pardoned four men. He did so because he believed that the state's capital punishment system could no longer be trusted given the numerous exonerations and the documented cases of law enforcement misconduct.

    Clemency can make things right when the complicated and convoluted procedures of the judicial system prevent justice from being done because, for example, a death-row inmate has missed a deadline. It can also make things right when a death-row inmate has shown that he has reformed and deserves the mercy of a life sentence without parole.

    Gov. Jay Nixon (D-Mo.) has that chance. Dennis Skillicorn is scheduled to be executed on May 20, 2009. Skillicorn (left) does not dispute that when he was younger he committed murders and was a thief. While he was addicted to drugs; he did horrific things. (Update, 5/1/09: Although he was convicted of an earlier murder and plead guilty to the Arizona murders, Skillicorn claims that he was not the triggerman in his first conviction and Nicklasson also confessed to being the triggerman in the Arizona murders.) 

    Dennis Skillicorn is never going to be released from prison. In addition to his death sentence in Missouri, he has life sentences to serve in Arizona. Interviews he has given indicate he is remorseful for his crimes and that he understands that he has to be punished for his actions. The issue is whether he should die for them.

    This is where clemency comes in and Dennis Skillicorn has many arguments for clemency.

    More
    Tags:
    Death penalty, Executive power, Criminal Justice, Separation of Powers and Federalism, Clemency, Dennis Skillicorn, George Ryan, Guest Post, Jay Nixon, Missouri, Sonny Perdue