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Life without parole (LWOP) sentences are politically popular in the United States because, on their face, they claim to hold prisoners incarcerated until they die, with zero prospect of release via the regularized channel of parole. However, this view is procedurally shortsighted. After parole there is generally another remedial option for lessening or abrogating punishment: executive clemency via pardons and commutations. Increasingly, U.S. legal jurisdictions also provide for the possibility of compassionate release for lifers, usually granted by a parole board. On paper, pardon, commutation, and compassionate release are thus direct challenges to the claim that an LWOP sentence will inevitably and invariably lead to the prisoner's death while incarcerated. Few previous studies, however, have examined the finality of LWOP empirically. In this Article, I present original empirical data on clemency covering the period 1990-2021 in order to investigate the relationship between LWOP sentences and the release mechanisms of executive clemency and compassionate release in both state and federal cases. Ultimately, the results of this research reaffirm the finality of LWOP in the United States, despite the availability, on paper, of at least three potential release procedures. Only a handful of LWOP prisoners have received commutation or pardon from U.S. presidents, state governors, or pardons boards. Compassionate release has been granted almost as rarely. That said, some demographics tend to have benefited more than others. The findings presented within this Article are relevant not only to domestic clemency and end-of-life release policy but also to litigation dealing with a "right to hope" as a component of human dignity, and to the academic debate over LWOP as a global replacement for the death penalty and a form of "extreme" punishment of its own accord. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The President of the United States, pursuant to Article II of the Constitution, has the sole power to issue pardons that free individuals of the confines and limitations of federal prosecution and conviction. In his only term as President so far, Donald Trump issued approximately 143 pardons. Several of those pardons were directed to those who attempted to interfere with the 2016 presidential election by way of lying to investigators and members of Congress and by tampering with evidence and witnesses. Many other pardons issued by President Trump were given only to those who had close ties to the Republican Party or the President himself. The purpose of this Article is to showcase several of the individuals pardoned by President Trump in order to argue that he used the pardon power for personal gain and not as originally intended by the Founding Fathers. This Article also argues that constitutional amendments to the presidential pardon power are required in order to protect the American judicial system and our democratic principles from further executive abuse—be it from a potential second term of President Trump or any other future President of the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article examines the conditional pardon power of the U.S. president, which is the ability to attach conditions to clemency grants, and its boundaries. Topics discussed include the possibility of an abuse of the power, the notion that the power is underappreciated, the conditional pardon power jurisprudence, and the limitations on the conditional pardon power at common law.

This Article considers the reach of the president's pardon power and its potential employment as one means of creating legal impunity for a president and his personal and political associates. It addresses, in particular, the possibility that a president might issue self-interested pardons to himself, family members, or political or business associates. The Article reviews the constitutional origins of the federal pardon power and the law and practice of its use since the Founding era, and concludes: A president cannot constitutionally pardon himself, though the point is untested. In theory, a president could resign, or under the Twenty-fifth Amendment withdraw temporarily from the office, transform the vice president into the president or acting president, and secure a pardon from his former subordinate. But that seems improbable. A president can pardon anyone but himself (both humans and corporations), and those pardons, once issued, are almost certainly unchallengeable and irrevocable. A presidential pardon can cover any (and perhaps all) federal crimes the beneficiary has ever committed, so long as such crimes occurred and were completed prior to the issuance of the pardon. A president cannot pardon crimes that have not yet been committed. Consequently, a pardon issued corruptly might itself constitute a crime that could not be pardoned. The pardon power does not extend to state crimes or to any civil or administrative action brought by federal or state authorities. A presidential pardon cannot block congressional investigations. Finally, because a pardon effectively erases the Fifth Amendment privilege as to offenses covered by the pardon, it might make it easier for criminal and civil investigative authorities and Congress to compel testimony from the person pardoned. Therefore, presidential pardons could inconvenience, but could not prevent, thorough investigations of the private and public actions of a former president or his associates. The Article concludes by recommending a thorough, but judicious, use of available investigative avenues to inquire into well-founded allegations of wrongful behavior by former presidents and their personal and political associates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars continue to debate whether Lockean prerogative is better understood as operating within the constitutional framework, as constitutionalists would argue, or outside of it, as the extraconstitutionalists would argue. However, this debate has largely taken place in the abstract, with few concrete examples of prerogative brought to bear in the analysis. In this article, I utilize the presidential pardon power as a means to scrutinize the ongoing debate; in particular, I review the development and utilization of the pardon power since the founding of the United States and the more recent allegations of abuse and limitations on restraint. I argue that the pardon power is an explicit example of the constitutionalist understanding of prerogative and that, as such, the extraconstitutionalist view of prerogative is preferable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses U.S. Southern women's efforts to gain amnesty and presidential pardons following the close of the U.S. Civil War. The author examines the loss of property rights according to U.S. President Andrew Johnson's Amnesty Proclamation among these women. The author believes that women sought amnesty not to gain increased rights, but to instead preserve the Southern antebellum social order by regaining ownership of their land and personal property. Women's use of gender stereotypes in applying for pardons is also analyzed by the author. The eventual restoration of political rights to former Confederates during Reconstruction is explained.

This article focuses on the feeling of nationalism among the confederate states of the U.S. and the amnesty letters from western North Carolina which were written by rebels to regain their civil and political rights after the civil war concluded in 1865. The Proclamation of Amnesty, issued by President Andrew Johnson, offered pardon to all Southerners who took part in the rebellion.

The Supreme Court has never authoritatively addressed the President's power to pardon civil contempt. But in Ex parte Grossman, Chief Justice Taft argued in dictum that the President categorically lacked such power. That conclusion, now taken for granted, purportedly rested on English precedent as crystallized by Blackstone. But pre-ratification English cases and treatises fail to support the criminal-civil distinction as the boundary of the President's power to pardon contempt. To the extent those English sources reveal at least an ambiguity in Article II, post-ratification American practice and normative considerations lend additional support to an alternative framework. Identifying a neglected indeterminacy as to the pardon power's reach over certain civil contemnors, this Note rejects Taft's criminal-civil divide and proposes a limiting principle centered on private legal interests. History, common law precedent, and functional considerations support a Constitution that permits pardoning contempt unless the pardon extinguishes private legal interests of third parties. Under this view, the President can pardon all criminal contemnors and can release from coercive fines or imprisonment those civil contemnors who owe tangible, but not equitable, relief. For criminal contemnors and this subset of civil contemnors, presidential pardons may face political or ethical obstacles, but should not face constitutional ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses Ortega-Melendres v. Arpaio court case addressing president's pardon power. It informs that the U.S. President Donald Trump pardoned Sheriff for a conviction for contempt of court, granted by the District Court for the District of Arizona for intentionally failing to adhere to the court's preliminary injunction. It also mentions that injunction was offered to stop detaining individuals based on their Hispanic appearance in order to investigate immigration law.

The article discusses legal issues in U.S. nation's separation of powers jurisprudence. Topics include flexibility and discretion necessary to discharge presidential duties; findings presented by the special counsel Robert Mueller concludes the evidence supports a finding that the President engaged in criminal wrongdoing outside his official duties, therefore the Justice Department will have to determine whether or not to stand with the Office of Legal Counsel conclusions.

The article offers information about the mercy pleas through the real story of Sharanda Jones who was leader of conspiracy of drug dealing. Topics include reduction in her sentence to 16 years by former American president Barack Obama and of thousand others; clemency power of the U.S. constitution used by the President; and views of author towards development of general analysis of mercy which applied on pardons and lenient sentences.

In the waning days of the Obama Administration, with Trump's promised immigration crackdown looming, over one hundred advocacy organizations joined forces to urge President Obama to permanently protect hundreds of thousands of immigrants from deportation by pardoning their breaches of civil immigration law. That pardon never materialized and, as expected, the Trump enforcement regime is sowing terror and devastation in immigrant communities nationwide. While it seems unfathomable that the current President would use his pardon power to mitigate even the most extreme applications of our nation's immigration laws, there is unfortunately no indication that the harshest aspects of the immigration laws are likely to be revised by the current political branches. Accordingly, future Presidents will likely once again face the questions of how they may use prosecutorial discretion generally, and the pardon power specifically, to address the human toll of such laws. Since the Founding, the pardon power has been used primarily to forgive individual criminal convictions. Thus the broad civil immigration pardon, which Obama declined to issue, would have raised novel questions regarding the appropriate boundaries of the presidential pardon power. Resolution of those previously unexplored questions is necessary to help future Presidents determine whether their pardon power can serve as a safety valve to alleviate the disproportionate penalties that our immigration laws have imposed on longtime members of our communities. This Article explores the novel concept of a civil immigration pardon. Specifically, it closely examines the language and drafting history of the Pardon Clause, exhaustively reviews early and modern pardon practice and jurisprudence, and considers whether a President could, consistent with the Constitution, use that power to protect some of the largest categories of noncitizens currently at risk of deportation. Ultimately, it argues that the President possesses the constitutional authority to categorically pardon broad classes of immigrants for civil violations of the immigration laws and to thereby provide durable and permanent protections against deportation. As millions of noncitizens and their families face a historically unprecedented wave of deportations and as traditional mechanisms for policymaking continue to fail, the immigration pardon offers an important tool for future Presidents to forgive the civil offenses that result in some of the harshest penalties in our nation's justice system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the need of reform in laws related to pardon in the U.S. Topics discussed include Federal law enforcement and prosecution in the U.S.; prosecutorial and police powers; the presidential powers to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the country; and differences between the pardon power and other forms of clemency.