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USA - 2025 Was Not a Good Year for Clemency in Capital Cases

January 6, 2026:

January 6, 2026 - USA. 2025 Was Not a Good Year for Clemency in Capital Cases

2024 was something of a watershed for the use of clemency in capital cases. In November 2024, President Joe Biden issued a mass commutation of 37 federal death sentences. A month later, outgoing North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper granted clemency to 15 people on his state’s death row, “the largest grant of death row clemency in North Carolina’s history.”

In one sense, they were a bit late for the party.

As the Center for Death Penalty Litigation pointed out, by the time they acted, “Every Democratic governor in a state with the death penalty ha[d]…taken at least some executive action to prevent executions, whether by imposing a moratorium, granting commutations, or supporting legislation.” And Republican governors in Tennessee and Ohio also had halted executions.

So, the start of 2025 brought hope that we would see more commutations of death sentences in other places. But it did not happen.

Indeed, on President Donald Trump’s 1st day back in the Oval Office, he condemned what Biden did and announced he would make the lives of those Biden spared as miserable as possible. Recall his infamous executive order, entitled “RESTORING THE DEATH PENALTY AND PROTECTING PUBLIC SAFETY.”

There, Trump said that his predecessor had “commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 most vile and sadistic rapists, child molesters, and murderers on Federal death row: remorseless criminals who brutalized young children, strangled and drowned their victims, and hunted strangers for sport.”

He directed the Attorney General to “evaluate the places of imprisonment and conditions of confinement for each of the 37 murderers whose Federal death sentences were commuted by President Biden,” and “to ensure that these offenders are imprisoned in conditions consistent with the monstrosity of their crimes and the threats they pose.”

As if that wasn’t enough, Trump asked the Attorney General to “evaluate whether these offenders can be charged with State capital crimes and shall recommend appropriate action to state and local authorities.”

It may very well be that Trump’s aggressive assault on Biden’s clemencies discouraged governors from commuting death sentences in 2025. And the fact that this year, Trump made scandalous use of his own clemency power did not help.

He fired the well-qualified person who served as the Justice Department’s Pardon Attorney and regularly does not wait for, or ignores, the well-established procedures and careful reviews traditionally provided by the department. Over the last year, he treated clemency as just another commodity to be sold, exchanged, or used to help in the most nefarious of his cronies.

An article from the Lisa Foundation puts it this way: “The lesson from over 11 months of Trump’s pardons and commutations is clear: if you don’t have rich parents, a MAGA flag and hat, or a means of enriching the Trump family, your odds of clemency rival those of winning the Powerball.”

And early January, 2025 brought the unsettling news that “2 federal prisoners whose death sentences were…commuted by President Biden have asked a judge to block the reduction in their sentences, arguing that it could jeopardize their appeals.”

With 47 executions in 2025, there were plenty of opportunities for governors to step in to stop them. But, as the number of executions suggests, most declined to do so.

Take Indiana Governor Mike Braun. In May, Braun followed the recommendation of the Indiana Parole Board and refused to commute Benjamin Ritchie.

Ritchie’s clemency petition had noted that he was “born with a severely damaged brain due to prenatal alcohol exposure.” It called attention to the fact that “His mother drank nearly every day during her pregnancy with Ben. She also smoked marijuana daily and took other drugs.” The resulting brain damage, his petition claimed, “limits Ben’s functioning to that similar to a person with intellectual disability.”

The Parole Board was unmoved.

In a letter to the governor, it said that “The Board considered a vast amount of testimony and evidence regarding Benjamin Ritchie’s more recent diagnosis of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Disorder…. along with a documented history of abuse and neglect as a child, as well as all evidence of corrective measures taken to address the behaviors associated with these conditions.”

The Board explained that “the information related to Benjamin Ritchie’s history of abuse and neglect, including but not limited to pre-natal alcohol exposure, has been appropriately considered by the fact finders and judicial officers tasked with considering the evidence.” Finally, it acknowledged that it had given great weight to the testimony of the victim’s family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers.

“The outcome that those individuals were promised by a jury of Mr. Ritchie’s peers was that Mr. Ritchie would ultimately be put to death for his egregious actions. The family and friends of Bill Toney have patiently waited for the day when that sentence would be fulfilled.”

Ritchie was executed on May 20, 2025.

On the other side of the ledger, 2 red-state governors did commute death sentences last year, 1 in Alabama, one in Oklahoma.

In March, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey stopped the execution of Robin “Rocky” Myers. Myers and his lawyers urged the governor to do so, claiming that he was innocent and also intellectually disabled.

Ivey explained her decision by saying, “I have enough questions about Mr. Myers’ guilt that I cannot move forward with executing him…. In short, I am not convinced that Mr. Myers is innocent, but I am not so convinced of his guilt as to approve of his execution.”

In November, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt accepted the recommendation of his state’s Pardon and Parole Board and commuted Tremane Wood’s sentence to life without parole just minutes before he was set to be executed. Wood’s clemency petition argued that his life should be spared because “he [was] the only person in Oklahoma…facing execution for felony murder” when he neither “killed” nor “intended to kill anyone.”

It also pointed out that of the 4 people involved in that crime, he “was the only one who received a death sentence.”

Stitt justified his action by saying that it “reflects the same punishment his brother received for their murder of an innocent young man and ensures a severe punishment that keeps a violent offender off the streets forever.”

Two grants of clemency in 2025 were not a lot. But, then again, 2024 was more the exception than the norm in the world of capital punishment.

As the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) reports, “Out of almost 10,000 individuals sentenced to death since 1972, only 86, or less than 1 %, have had their death sentences commuted.” Moreover, the DPIC explained, “Grants of clemency are also concentrated in a relatively small number of states…. Of the states that still retain the death penalty today, 11 have never issued an individual grant of clemency in the more than 50 years that comprise the modern death penalty.”

The DPIC quoted former Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who once called executive clemency the “‘fail safe’ of the capital punishment system. It is the final opportunity, after all legal avenues have been exhausted, for an executive to decide whether to spare a prisoner from execution.”

At the start of 2026, chief executives in death penalty states will have the chance to take advantage of that opportunity. They should use it to spare the lives of people sentenced to death, and to set an example by making mercy part of our calculations of justice.

Given the cruelty now in abundant supply both here and abroad, we need that example than ever.

(Source: Austin Sarat, Professor at Amherst College)

https://verdict.justia.com/2026/01/06/2025-was-not-a-good-year-for-clemency-in-capital-cases