State clemency developments during a holiday season still full of (foolish?) hope for clemency boldness from Prez Trump

In this post last week, I noted Prez Trump's tweet talking about how criminal justice reform "brings much needed hope to many families during the Holiday Season."  I stressed that long-promised additional clemency action could provide another means for the President to make families happy and hopeful during this special time of year.  (On that front, it is worth recalling that, as posted here, Prez Trump issued his first commutation of Sholom Rubashkin exactly a year ago today.  His other commutations were to Alice Marie Johnson in June 2018, and then Dwight and Steven Hammond in July 2018.)

While we all continue to wait and hope for Prez Trump to use his historic constitutional clemency power to "bring much needed hope to many families," I thought it worth noting some recent actions on this front at the state level.  Specifically, here are relatively recent stories of Governors in Arkansas and Colorado and Pennsylvania making notable use of their clemency powers:

I suspect there may be some more state clemency grants already issued and still to come, though I keep pushing for Prez Trump to be active on this front because I believe it provides a useful push (and perhaps some political cover) for state executives considering clemency petitions. In particular, a GOP Governor is considering a high-profile clemency cases in Tennessee, Cyntoia Brown as reported here, and any kind of peer pressure is likely beneficial in this context.

A few of many recent related posts: 

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