Former Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich offered suggestions in a Little Rock lecture Thursday for taking politics out of the granting of pardons and commutations.
Executive clemency, he added, needs to make a comeback, especially since society is now more open to rehabilitation and second chances.
“We live in a nation that imprisons a greater number of people compared to other nations,” the sixth Republican governor in Maryland’s history said during a noon lecture at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law.
During his term from 2003-07, Ehrlich reviewed 444 applications and granted 228 pardons. He also commuted the sentences of several “lifers” - those who had served lengthy terms for long-ago,violent offenses committed during their youth. He did this by treating executive clemency as an objective, factual process, Ehrlich said.
Each month, he met with his five-member legal staff to talk about the specifics of each case, Ehrlich said. The group considered only recommendations by state parole board officials. And it asked for input from the victims and their advocates.
“Everyone in the review group was empowered, but this was not a democracy,” he said, explaining that it was he who had to make the final decision because it was his job as governor, and he was the one who would live with it.
Sometimes, Ehrlich added, the decision to grant clemency was “easy,” especially in cases where those convicted had served long sentences for nonviolent crimes or drug offenses.
The tough ones, he said, were cases involving those who had been involved in violent crimes. “These are the cases that governors and politicians have traditionally shied away from,” he explained.
But some lifers deserve to be freed, Ehrlich added. For example, if the gunman in a robbery or murder has been released while the driver or accomplice remains incarcerated, clemency should be strongly considered, he said.
In other cases, Ehrlich and his legal staff members felt that they had corrected an injustice - such as an inmate who received a one-day trial or was forced into a plea.
Ehrlich stressed the need for an open and routine process. “Where you see executive leaders get into trouble is when they grant a lot of commutations at the end of their terms,” he said.
Arkansas, Pages 12 on 03/14/2014