- President Donald Trump is expected to announce a series of pardons and commutations as he prepares to leave the White House on Jan. 20.
- For federal inmates serving life sentences, presidential clemency can represent the last hope for release.
- Trump has made very few pardons and his process has been unorthodox. For average inmates like Anthony Viola, it is unclear if it's possible to catch the president's attention.
- Advocates are calling for President-elect Joe
Biden to overhaul thr system. - Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
Anthony Viola's petition asking President Donald Trump to free him from
The photo was taken in 2002 during one of Anna's visits to the penitentiary in Allenwood, Pennsylvania, where Viola has been incarcerated for nearly three decades. In his clemency application, Viola writes that Anna, now 80, is due to undergo brain surgery to resolve complications from a previous surgery.
"I would like to be there for my wife, as she has been for my entire incarceration," he wrote. "She may not survive the surgery, I would like to be with her as we live out our remaining days."
Four years ago, as then-President Obama was leaving office, Viola's application was denied. Now, with Trump preparing to leave office, Viola is trying again. The application for clemency is perhaps his last chance at freedom.
Trump is expected to announce 100 pardons and commutations on Tuesday, the day before he hands power over to President-elect Joe Biden. On Monday, The New York Times reported that several people close to Trump had received large sums of money for assisting individuals in the process.
Meanwhile, Viola's health is also deteriorating. At 78, he is blind in one eye, has a pacemaker for a cardiac condition, and has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), among other illnesses. The petition includes a letter recounting how Viola opened up his coffee manufacturing warehouse to homeless people and veterans so they could take showers. Viola's granddaughter, Skyla, writes that she would like Viola to help her with her homework and teach her Italian. "I would really love to be with him at home with our family," the letter said.
In 1991, a jury convicted Viola of racketeering, conspiracy to distribute cocaine and marijuana, and possessing a firearm. Prosecutors said Viola was the leader of a ring selling drugs and stolen goods on the Brooklyn waterfront, though Viola's former lawyer argued that he was actually a whistleblower. A judge sentenced him to natural life in prison, all but ensuring that Viola, who was 48 at the time, would die behind bars.
For the approximately 152,000 prisoners kept in federal detention, clemency represents one of the only opportunities for an early release. Congress abolished federal parole in 1984 and another mechanism, compassionate release, is difficult to win, leaving prisoners who have exhausted their appeals with little recourse except a
Viola is one of an estimated 14,000 people who have asked President Trump to grant them clemency before leaving office. Many of the applicants were sentenced under mandatory minimum guidelines, often for drug offenses.
Trump has rarely used the power, and his approach has been unorthodox. A large number of cases have involved the president's associates or those close to him, according to Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard University professor who has tracked Trump's use of clemency. Just before Christmas, he announced pardons for his former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, as well as Charles Kushner, the father-in-law of Trump's daughter, Ivanka Trump. In 2018, he announced he would free Alice Johnson, a first-time nonviolent drug offender whose cause had been taken up by Kim Kardashian West, who made an appeal during a visit to the White House.
It is not clear that Viola will win the president's attention.
Calls to overhaul the federal clemency process have been made since long before Trump took office. But advocates say that the president's use of the power to protect those close to him, while largely ignoring ordinary applicants, has energized the fight for long-sought reforms to how clemency cases are handled.
Though clemency is a vital mechanism for release, its recent use has been rare. A study by the Pew Research Center showed that pardons and commutations dropped sharply starting in the Reagan administration, falling from 22% of applications granted under Jimmy Carter from 1977-1981 to 12% under Reagan during eight year tenure in the 80s. Obama, who was applauded for creating a clemency initiative during his second term that operated out of the DOJ, commuted even fewer -- just 1,927 sentences out of roughly 36,500. Since then, the initiative has been criticized for the thousands of people it left behind bars despite their strong cases for freedom.
"The process in the Department of Justice is really cumbersome and set up essentially so that most people get denied," Rachel Barkow, a New York University law professor specializing in clemency, told Insider.
Clemency applications begin in the Department of Justice's Office of the Pardon Attorney (OPA), which advocates say is itself a conflict since the same agency that once prosecuted the prisoners holds the sole power to free them. If a prisoner's application does make it out of the OPA with a favorable recommendation, it's then reviewed by the Deputy Attorney General, whose role is to supervise all federal prosecutors -- another conflict of interest, advocates say. Finally, the application goes to the White House counsel.
"I understand why people get upset with [Trump] but they forget that going back to the Department of Justice is not necessarily an answer," said Sam Morrison, an attorney who worked in the OPA from 1997-2010. "[The OPA] has a very negative view toward clemency and they sort of view it as undermining the work of a prosecutor somewhere. When they review these petitions they just look for a reason to say no."
During his presidency, Trump has circumvented the DOJ system altogether, opting for an internal review inside the White House. Morrison, who has knowledge of the Trump process, said that the applications are distributed to junior attorneys tasked with making a recommendation to the president.
President-elect Joe Biden has vowed to reduce the prison population and has called the lengthy sentences for drug offenses that he advocated for as a senator "a big mistake."
Morrison and Barkow both hope that as president Biden will finally reform the system. They are calling on him to form an independent panel within the executive branch to review clemency applications, and include prosecutors, defense attorneys, law enforcement, formerly incarcerated people, and criminologists.
"The key is you just don't want it to have DOJ in charge of the entire thing," said Barkow. "If you had people who represent a range of perspectives you'd have far more cases that would get a recommendation for a grant."
Morrison added that the process should be made more transparent so prisoners have an opportunity to read why the government opposes their petition and respond accordingly. Currently, prisoners are not given a reason why their petitions are denied. Biden's transition team did not respond to a request for comment on his plans for clemency from Insider.
Viola, for his part, remains optimistic.
In a telephone interview with Insider, he spoke about his fear of contracting COVID-19, his desire to see his children, and wife's imminent death. "She's actually waiting for me to come home," he said.
He struggled to hear questions, even while wearing a hearing aid. After five minutes, the line went dead.