“Decentralizing Clemency: Decentralizing the Commutation Power to Invigorate Sentence Reduction”

The title of this post is the title of this new paper recently posted to SSRN and authored by Riley Kane, a recent graduate The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law.  This paper is part of a student paper series supported by the Drug Enforcement and Policy Center.  Most of the papers in this series have come from the marijuana seminar I teach, and I blog about these papers in posts like this over at my Marijuana Law, Policy & Reform blog.  But this paper emerged from my sentencing class last fall, and the topic has only become more timely and important in recent months.  Here is this paper’s abstract:

Reforming sentencing and reducing prison overcrowding requires a focus on the future to ensure just punishments and the past to re-evaluate harsh punishments from the ‘tough on crime’ era.  This paper focuses on ending those past wrongs.  Executive clemency is sometimes discussed as a method for addressing harsh punishments, but there are only so many governors and Presidents.  This paper proposes amending the Ohio Constitution to grant the elected county prosecutors a commutation power subject to veto by the governor.  This would decentralize clemency and create a new, potentially system-reshaping tool to address harsh sentences and empower reform-minded prosecutors.  The paper additionally discusses other methods to expand clemency and favors adopting the novel constitutional amendment in addition to other reforms for maximum impact.