Making the case for Governors to make greater use of clemency powers

This New York Times opinion piece, titled “Governors, Use Your Clemency Powers” and authored by Steve Zeidman, focuses on the need for states’ chief executives to step up their clemency work.  The piece is worth a full read (though it focuses mostly on commutations and not pardons), and here are excerpts:

Clemency, specifically the power to commute a person’s sentence, is a readily available mechanism to rectify the hyper-punitive sentences regularly meted out in state courts during the past several decades that contributed to the crisis of mass incarceration.  The power in many state constitutions to grant clemency is one way to address the vast racial disparities that exist in state prisons….

Close to 90 percent of the two million people behind bars in the nation are held in state facilities, making the collective inaction by governors around clemency inexcusable.  In New York, where there are almost 33,000 people in state prisons, there is a backlog of almost 1,100 pending clemency applications awaiting action. A state government website focused on clemency states that applicants must “demonstrate that they have made exceptional strides in self-development and improvement.” 

Surely there are many people among those almost 1,100 who meet and even surpass that threshold — people who have acknowledged responsibility for the harm they caused, have done all they can to atone and have amassed vast evidence of transformation. In the past year, Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, granted a sentence commutation to just one person.  Across the Hudson in New Jersey, Gov. Phil Murphy, also a Democrat, created a clemency advisory board last year — and later granted several commutations — after failing to grant even a single clemency application in his first seven years in office….

Many state prison officials also know that granting clemency makes for a safer and more productive prison environment for all, prisoners and correction officers alike. When clemency is a real option, people in prison have something clear to strive toward.  There are cost savings for taxpayers after each incarcerated person is released — and many then go on to become taxpayers themselves.  Once home, those granted clemency can become mentors to young people and help rebuild their families and communities.  Data shows over and over that the rate of recidivism is vanishingly low for those granted clemency after decades in prison.

Governors should use their power to release people who entered prison decades ago as teenagers, are elderly or ill, have earned college degrees and who regularly assist their peers in settings like hospice units and as mobility aides.  In my experience assisting in hundreds of clemency applications, these are the very sorts of people with pending clemency applications.  These are people deserving of mercy, forgiveness and grace.

The founding fathers and framers of the Constitution clearly viewed clemency as essential to the administration of justice, and yet many governors today set that aside in favor of political calculations.  The correct response to Mr. Trump’s misuse of clemency is not to complain or to attempt to block his actions, but rather to demand that governors who have similar powers use them on behalf of those who clearly warrant that measure of humanity.