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Apr 30, 2024 · Apply for Clemency. Pardon After Completion of Sentence. The President can grant a pardon to a person who was convicted in a United States District Court, the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, or a military court-martial. A pardon is an expression of forgiveness and can help eliminate some of the consequences of a conviction.
- Petition for Pardon After Completion of Sentence
Please read the accompanying instructions carefully before...
- Pardon Information and Instructions Package
1. Submit the petition to the Office of the Pardon Attorney....
- PARDON INFORMATION AND INSTRUCTIONS
4. Length of process. The pardon process can be lengthy as...
- Petition for Pardon After Completion of Sentence
Oct 1, 2019 · To apply, you will need to gather information about your convictions and then fill out a detailed application. Part 1. Preparing to Apply. 1. Check if you qualify. In order to get a Presidential pardon, you first must have been convicted of a federal offense or of an offense in the District of Columbia. The President cannot pardon state conviction.
- I. Loss & Restoration of Civil/Firearms Rights
- II. Pardon Policy & Practice
- III. Expungement, Sealing & Other Record Relief
- IV. Criminal Record in Employment & Licensing
A. Vote
Voting rights depend upon state law, for people with both state and federal convictions. See Richardson v. Ramirez, 418 U.S. 24, 54 (1974). Most states restore the right to vote automatically upon release from prison or completion of sentence, and the few states that require some official action for re-enfranchisement give people with federal and out-of-state convictions access to their restoration procedures. (See profiles in this series for Alabama, Iowa, Kentucky, Virginia, and Wyoming. Mi...
B. Jury
Eligibility for federal jury service is lost upon conviction in state or federal court of a crime punishable by more than one year if a person’s “civil rights have not been restored.” 28 U.S.C. § 1865(b)(5). The Administrative Office of United States Courts interprets this provision to require only that a person’s “civil rights have been legally restored” under state law. Seehttp://www.uscourts.gov/services-forms/jury-service/juror-qualifications.1 While some courts have continued to require...
C. Public office
The U.S. Constitution does not prohibit convicted persons from holding office, but some statutes provide that conviction will result in the loss of office. See, e.g., 18 U.S.C. § 201(b) (sentencing court may order disqualification from federal office of official convicted for bribery). A felony conviction does not disqualify a person from federal employment, but may be considered by particular agencies in connection with determining suitability. See Kelly Salzmann & Margaret Love, Internal Ex...
A. Authority
Executive pardoning power lies exclusively in President and cannot be limited or regulated by Congress. U.S. Const. art. II, sec. 2. By Executive Order, the Attorney General is charged with providing advice on pardon policy and investigating and making recommendations on all applications for pardon and commutation. See28 C.F.R. Part 1. The Pardon Attorney is responsible in the Justice Department for receiving and investigating pardon applications, and making recommendations for action.
B. Eligibility
Under Justice Department regulations, to be eligible to apply an applicant must wait five years after release from prison, or date of sentencing if not incarcerated. Waiver of the eligibility waiting period is infrequent. Ordinarily an applicant must have no court proceedings pending, and must have completed supervision. 28 C.F.R. Part 1. People whose convictions were prosecuted under the Uniform Code of Military Justice are eligible to apply for a presidential pardon, as are people with D.C....
C. Effect
A pardon “in no way reverses the legal conclusion of the courts; it ‘does not blot out guilt or expunge a judgment of.’” Hirschberg v. Commodity Futures Trading Com’n, 414 F.3d 679, 682 (7th Cir. 2005), citing In re North, 62 F.3d 1434, 1437 (D.C. Cir. 1994); see also Nixon v. United States, 506 U.S. 224, 232 (1993) (“a pardon is in no sense an overturning of a judgment of conviction by some other tribunal”); Burdick v. United States, 236 U.S. 79, 94 (1915) (a pardon “carries an imputation of...
A. Inherent expungement authority
There is no general federal expungement statute, and federal courts have no inherent authority to expunge records of a valid federal conviction. See, e.g., United States v. Jane Doe, 833 F.3d 192 (2d Cir. 2016),vacating 110 F. Supp. 3d 448 (E.D.N.Y. 2015); United States v. Crowell, 374 F.3d 790, 792-93 (9th 2004), cert. denied, 543 U.S. 1070 (2005). However, some courts have held that federal courts have inherent ancillary authority to expunge criminal records where an arrest or conviction is...
B. Federal First Offender Act
Where a person with no prior drug conviction is found guilty of misdemeanor possession of a controlled substance under 21 U.S.C. § 844, courts may impose probation before entry of judgment, and subsequently dismiss the case without entry of judgment and no conviction resulting if the person has not violated a condition of probation. See 18 U.S.C. § 3607(a).7Expungement of all records is available only if the defendant was less than 21 years of age at the time of offense. § 3607(c). The effect...
C. Deferred prosecution
The Justice Department has authority to enter into deferred prosecution agreements, which, when approved by the court, may have the effect of excluding time under the Speedy Trial Act. DPAs, along with their out-of-court analogues non-prosecution agreements (NPAs), afford a middle-ground option to the prosecution when, for example, it believes that a criminal conviction may be difficult to obtain or may result in unwanted collateral consequences for a defendant or third parties, but also beli...
A. Ban-the-box in federal employment
In December 2019, Congress passed the Fair Chance Act as part of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2020 (S.1790), amending Titles 2, 5 and 28 of the U.S. Code to prohibit employers in all three branches of the federal government, and private-sector federal contractors, from asking about job applicants’ arrest and conviction record until a conditional offer of employment has been extended, an approach that has become known as “ban the box”. Signed into law by President Trump, the Act’s...
B. Federal laws regulating state and private employment
CCRC has collected an extensive archive of materials relating to federal assistance to employers and small businesses during the pandemic, through the Paycheck Protection Program and EIDL, and to individuals through tax rebates. The National Employment Law Project has also published a fact sheet on how individuals with a criminal record are treated by federal pandemic recovery efforts. See Han Lu, Radical Inequality, Records, and Recovery (July 28, 2020), https://www.nelp.org/publication/radi...
C. Additional Note on Federal Criminal Background Checks
In June 2006 the Attorney General issued a report pursuant to § 6403(d) of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 (Pub. L.108-458, 118 Stat. 3638, 3759) making recommendations to Congress for standardizing non-criminal justice access to FBI-maintained criminal history records. See The Attorney General’s Report on Criminal Background Checks, http://www.usdoj.gov/olp/ag_bgchecks_report.pdf. The report recommends that the FBI’s national database of criminal records generall...
You can obtain additional information about applying for a presidential pardon, and an online application form by visiting the U.S. Department of Justice website at www.usdoj.gov/pardon/.
Legal Sidebar. Presidential Pardons: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) 08/28/2017. Article I, § 2 of the United States Constitution provides the President the authority “to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.”
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