Commutations Campaign Update,
by Sherry Reames
On April 3 (Good Friday) Governor Evers announced the beginning of a new commutation process that will allow some prisoners in Wisconsin to shorten the remainder of their time behind bars. To implement this process, the governor is creating a Commutation Advisory Board, and his office immediately published new application forms and requirements for two kinds of candidates: juvenile lifers (people who received life sentences as teenagers) and people convicted at age 20 or more.
Although the governor’s announcement provided the WISDOM Old Law workgroup with a very happy Easter weekend, it did not mean that our three-year campaign for commutations has reached its goals. We are grateful to have come this far, but no prisoners have actually benefited yet. The governor and his advisors haven’t made the really hard choices yet. Furthermore, their new application process gives prisoners and their advocates an enormous amount of work to do and not much time to do it, since Evers’ term will end in December and the next governor may not choose to keep this little window of opportunity open.
The leader of WISDOM’s campaign, Beverly Walker of MICAH, was working with the governor’s staff long before this announcement to provide them a model application and selection process for commutations, based on the systems used in other states. But they ultimately scrapped her suggestions in favor of a “uniform application process” that closely follows Wisconsin’s existing application process for pardons. They seem not to have realized how much harder it would be for incarcerated applicants to obtain the certified legal documents required for this application (given the DOC’s insistence on shredding original documents and substituting photocopies), answer the questions that require internet searches, and pay for all the necessary photocopying and postage. So Beverly Walker was back on the phone with the governor’s office many times in April, negotiating work-arounds for the most cumbersome requirements. The latest revision of the Commutation requirements can be found on the Resources page of her website, theintegritycenterwi.org, and under FAQs on the governor’s site.
Since the governor’s office is requiring all commutation applicants to start over, using the new process, Wisconsin advocates for prisoners are now hard at work, trying to help candidates complete their applications, together with the required legal documents and as many supporting materials as possible, and submit all this paperwork to the governor’s office (with copies to the DA and the Clerk of Courts in the county of their conviction) as soon as possible. Leaders of EXPO, the Community, Justice Forward, and other nonprofits are calling for more volunteers to help, and WISDOM Old Law could use more volunteers too. Since the new process opens the door to a much larger population than the Old Law prisoners we originally had in mind, there is likely to be an enormous crush of applicants, all racing to take advantage of this opportunity before it vanishes.
The other big need right now is a public education campaign, trying to preserve the possibility of a second chance for as many deserving candidates as possible. Already politicians have started announcing their opposition to even considering the cases of those convicted of certain kinds of crime. Gov. Evers’ office has ruled out clemency for anyone convicted of a sex crime. Wisconsin Watch has reported that two of the candidates to succeed Evers (Tom Tiffany and Mandela Barnes) would also oppose commutations for anyone convicted of murder. Such blanket exclusions would rule out the possibility of a second chance for many of the people who are serving the longest sentences in our prisons, no matter how completely they have reformed and how much they have accomplished since the time of their crime.
Because stoking fears and prejudices about “violent criminals” often succeeds in political campaigns, those of us who know more should counter such tactics with real-life facts and examples. When members of the Old Law workgroup evaluated the records of potential applicants for commutation, we found that many of the strongest candidates were serving very long sentences for “first-degree intentional homicide,” either alone or as parties to the crime. Very few of their crimes resembled the media image of first-degree murder, however. Instead, at the time of conviction the typical candidate in this group was a teen or very young adult who did not plan to kill anybody but impulsively over-reacted out of anger or fear. Sometimes they were trying to protect themselves or someone else. Some were abuse victims who fought back against their abusers. A few seem to have played only a small part in a crime committed by others. But it was the “tough on crime” 1990s when most of these young folks came to trial, and they were prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Their original judges failed to make allowances for their youth and recognize their potential for redemption, but now we have a rare opportunity to rectify that injustice. Let’s not waste it!