United States Department of Justice, No. Given the frequency of such requests, the Office of the Pardon Attorney has started to proactively disclose the names of persons who have been denied executive clemency by the President on our website, in accordance with our Freedom of Information Act obligations.
Please be aware that receiving a pardon for a military offense will not change the character of a military discharge. An upgrade or other change to a military discharge may only be accomplished by action of the appropriate military authorities. To apply for a review of a military discharge, you should write to the relevant military branch, at the address listed below:.
Notwithstanding this policy, the President always retains the plenary power granted to him by the Constitution to pardon or commute sentences, and does so at his sole discretion, guided when he sees fit by the advice of the Pardon Attorney. The Privacy Act of , 5 U. A system of records is a group of records under the control of an agency from which information is retrieved by the name of the individual or by some identifier assigned to the individual. The Privacy Act requires that agencies give the public notice of their systems of records by publication in the Federal Register.
The Privacy Act prohibits the disclosure of a record about an individual from a system of records absent the written consent of the individual, unless the disclosure is pursuant to one of twelve statutory exceptions. The Act also provides individuals with a means by which to seek access to and amendment of their records, and sets forth various agency record-keeping requirements.
Senior managers in the Office of the Pardon Attorney would only speak with or be interviewed by the media with the explicit approval of the Deputy Attorney General. The Office of Public Affairs is responsible for ensuring that the public and the media are informed about the Department's activities and about the priorities and policies of the Attorney General and the President with regard to law enforcement and legal affairs, including the Departments role in the executive clemency process.
You are here Home » Office of the Pardon Attorney. Frequently Asked Questions. President Biden is exploring the use of his clemency power for individuals on home confinement under the CARES Act for non-violent drug offenses. Currently, the expedited screening program is only for those drug offenders on home confinement who have between 18 and 48 months remaining on their sentences.
The Bureau of Prisons BOP has been asked to notify eligible offenders of the program so that they may file a petition to initiate consideration of clemency by The President. Once the clemency petition and other necessary materials are assembled and evaluated by the Pardon Attorney, the Department of Justice will make its recommendation on the clemency request to The President.
Please note that the Department of Justice will continue to consider clemency cases where an offender has a pending motion for compassionate release in any district court if the commutation petition is being considered under the parameters of the expedited screening program. The Office of the Pardon Attorney is unable to provide additional information or clarification about the expedited home confinement screening program, so additional questions should be routed to The White House Office of Public Affairs.
Responsibility for exercising the pardon power vested in the President by Article II, section 2, of the Constitution was shared by the Secretary of State and the Attorney General from The Attorney General had administrative responsibility for pardon application review, , although the Department of State continued to issue pardon warrants until a Presidential order of June 6, , transferred this function to the Department of Justice.
Pardon responsibilities were delegated to the Office of the Clerk of Pardons, established in the Office of the Attorney General by an act of March 3, 13 Stat. The Office of the Clerk of Pardons became a component of the newly created Department of Justice, pursuant to its enabling act, June 22, 16 Stat. SEE They create no enforceable rights in persons applying for executive clemency, nor do they restrict the authority granted to the President under Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution.
We have added links directly to the clemency petitions on the homepage of our website and they allow you to easily fill out the information directly on the form. We respect the gender, identity, and preferences of our employees, clemency petitioners, and anyone else that we correspond with, so please make us aware of any information that would help us communicate with you more effectively, including preferred pronouns and legal name changes.
We prefer email, but if you don't have access to email, you can send records to us at U. We do not accept visitors or hand delivered packages to ensure the safety of our staff.
Emailing us at USPardon. Attorney usdoj. We are a fully digital office, so mail sent by postal service or Fed Ex is going to take longer for us to process and add to your casefile. We update the Clemency Lookup Feature once per month, but it could take up to 8 weeks before your case will show up on the lookup feature. Therefore, we will not respond to requests for confirmation of receipt or status updates if your petition was submitted to us within the past 8 weeks because we deem your request premature and the only publicly available information about a pending case is already proactively disclosed through this feature of our website.
We will also refrain from providing status updates on cases that you can now use our Clemency Lookup Feature to confirm the status of. Due to longstanding policy, we will not provide any additional information about the status of a pending case, outside of what is available on our website, and we also cannot rush or expedite the President's decisionmaking process. Under well-established procedures, this office will not process a clemency application while litigation concerning the case is pending.
Clemency officials conduct a very thorough review in determining a petitioner's worthiness for relief. Accordingly, you should be prepared for a detailed inquiry into your personal and criminal background as well as current activities.
A request for a motion under 18 USC g or c 1 A otherwise known as compassionate release should be submitted to the Warden of the Bureau of Prisons institution that houses the inmate. Compassionate release requests cannot be accepted by the Pardon Attorney because a commutation by the President must be a last resort remedy.
Therefore, if an inmate is currently being considered for compassionate release, the Pardon Attorney may close a pending commutation of sentence petition until a decision is made by the court on the request for compassionate release.
If so, the inmate may reapply to the Pardon Attorney for clemency once the compassionate release motion and any appeal have concluded. The Pardon Attorney will not close a case due to a pending compassionate release motion if the Office is reviewing the case under President Biden's expedited home confinement clemency screening program.
Why is Trump considering pardoning himself? Could Mike Pence pardon Trump if he resigns or is removed from office by impeachment or under the 25th Amendment? Would a presidential self-pardon be constitutional? How would a self-pardon affect state prosecutions? How has Trump used the clemency power so far compared with the past?
August 4, The law generally prevents the president from using the military as a domestic police force. Joseph Nunn. October 14, When it came to the pardon power they even thought of Donald Trump.
Under Article II, sec. There would rarely, if ever, he reminded the delegates, be a commander in chief with the courage and rectitude displayed by George Washington during the War of Independence. There might even be a president who would try to change our form of government. The president, argued Mason,. It may happen, at some future day, that he will establish a monarchy, and destroy the republic.
If he has the power of granting pardons before indictment, or conviction, may he not stop inquiry and prevent detection? The case of treason ought, at least, to be excepted.
Some process is necessary to deal with injustices or changes in the relevant societal norms. The case of a Canadian father who was convicted of second-degree murder for killing his severely disabled daughter serves as a microcosm of many of the potential problems of the pardon See box: The Latimer case.
A brief reading of the case will show that refusing someone a pardon can be as divisive as granting one. This may be especially true when pardons are given for political reasons. It is not unusual for pardons to be granted in the interests of the future good of a nation, especially one recovering from internal strife, such as Lebanon or South Africa. Collective pardons or amnesties may be extended to those committing crimes in a national conflict.
These types of pardons are considered more acceptable when granted within a transparent, legal framework, such as a truth commission requiring an admission of guilt.
In such cases, the peace and stability of the country are judged to be of greater public benefit than the punishment of an individual. Pardons may also be used to pre-empt conflict by dissipating tensions within a society. In another instance, on assuming the throne in , the King of Thailand pardoned up to , prisoners by either shortening their sentences or sanctioning their immediate release, including those jailed for insulting the royal family.
While there may be some consensus about pardons designed to protect the nation from further conflict and division, politically motivated pardons of living individuals, on the other hand, are often accompanied by the odour of corruption and suspicions of personal bias. In , the Polish President pardoned the former head of the anti-corruption agency in the middle of a legal proceeding against him, but there was little that sceptics or opponents of the pardon could do.
Nevertheless, pardoning an individual before a conviction, though it may be legal, seems more like a subversion of justice. She could not talk, suffered multiple seizures daily, had been in persistent pain and endured many operations. He was sentenced to life in prison, the mandatory minimum for second-degree murder. In , he was released on full parole, having served the minimum of ten years. The Canadian Supreme Court gestured in the direction of the Royal prerogative of mercy in its decision in Latimer, while being careful to distance itself from any potential pardon decision:.
Latimer has undergone two trials and two appeals to the Court of Appeal for Saskatchewan and this Court, with attendant publicity and consequential agony for him and his family. It could be argued that a pardon for Latimer would be socially divisive, not unifying. Perhaps it only appears that way because some groups are more vocal than others and therefore able to generate political pressure.
The only option was a pardon, but the Canadian government so far remains silent.
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