Obama promises more pardons, but can he do it?

WASHINGTON — President Obama's decision to shorten the sentences 214 drug offenders Wednesday has put him on pace to become one of the most prolific grantors of presidential commutations in history.

And yet on the other side of the clemency ledger — full pardons — Obama has been the stingiest two-term president since George Washington.

Obama promised Thursday to catch up to his predecessors by the end of his presidency. But it won't be easy.

Obama's mixed record of clemency underscores the legal, political and bureaucratic complications of what is, on paper, among of the president's most absolute constitutional powers: "to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States."

That power can take several forms. The most common are commutations, which shorten the sentences of convicted criminals still serving time, and pardons, which represent a full legal forgiveness and restore all civil rights.

"So we have focused more on commutations than we have on pardons," Obama said in a Thursday press conference in response to a question from USA TODAY. "By the time I leave office, the number of pardons that we grant will be roughly in line with what other Presidents have done."

Of the most recent two-term presidents, President Ronald Reagan granted 393 pardons. President Bill Clinton granted 396. President George W. Bush, 189.

With less than six months to go in his presidency, Obama has granted just 70.

Not counting four Iranians pardoned as part of a prisoner exchange in January (national security-related pardons have traditionally been handled in a separate process), Obama has pardoned just two people since Christmas, 2014.

"If he's undertaking to do pardons, and he's looking to do as many as his predecessors, he's going to have to scramble in the last six months," said Margaret Love, who served as the U.S. pardon attorney in the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations.

It's certainly mathematically possible for Obama to reach that goal. There were 1,378 pardon petitions pending as of June 6, according to the Office of the Pardon Attorney.

In perhaps his most detailed explanation of his pardon policy to date, Obama also acknowledged Thursday that most of the Office of the Pardon Attorney's resources are devoted to his clemency initiative, a two-year-old effort to encourage inmates to apply for commutations. The program targets convicts — mostly drug offenders subject to mandatory minimum sentences — who would have gotten shorter sentences if they had committed the same crime today.

Obama says he's proud to have 'reinvigorated' long-neglected clemency power

"Standing up this commutations process has required a lot of effort and a lot of energy, and it’s not like we got a new slug of money to do it. So you’ve got limited resources," Obama said. "The primary job of the Justice Department is to prevent crime and to convict those who have committed crimes and to keep the American people safe. And that means that you’ve had this extraordinary and Herculean effort by a lot of people inside the Justice Department to go above and beyond what they’re doing to also review these petitions that have been taking place."

That's left fewer resources for pardons,which can require more work than commutations. Commutations involve a review of an applicant's prison record, but pardons require a full FBI investigation into the applicant's employment history, alcohol and drug use, mental health treatment, delinquent debts, lawsuits and charitable activities.

Obama has also denied 1,629 pardon petitions, often reserving the remedy for decades-old cases. A 2015 analysis by USA TODAY found that half of Obama's pardons were for offenses committed before 1989, suggesting a more cautious approach.

The 50-year-old pardon: Obama picks safe clemency cases

Obama said Thursday that the politics of pardons and commutations can be "risky."

"You commute somebody and they commit a crime, and the politics of it are tough. And everybody remembers the Willie Horton ad," he said. Horton was a Massachusetts felon who was granted a weekend furlough from prison but did not return, and later committed a brutal rape in Maryland. His case became a devastating attack ad against 1988 Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis, the former Massachusetts governor.  "And so the bias I think of my predecessors and, frankly, a number of my advisers early in my presidency is, be careful about that," Obama said.

Sure enough, Obama came under fire Friday from two prominent congressional Republicans for his commutations. "These 214 individuals are not so-called ‘low-level, non-violent’ offenders – which simply do not exist in the federal system," said Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., a close ally of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. "They are serious criminals."

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., told a local paper, the News Virginian, that the commutations were part of an "unconstitutional practice of picking and choosing which laws to enforce and which laws to change."

On the other side, advocates say Obama hasn't gone far enough. Even on commutations, Obama's 562 grants only scratch the surface of the problem created by the mandatory minimum sentences adopted a generation ago as part of the war on crime, they say.

"The pace needs to quicken considerably to get them all. Otherwise this will have been a lottery instead of an effective program," said Rachel Barkow, of the New York University School of Law.

But she said she's happy to see Obama begin to demonstrate a hands-on approach to the problem. "I'm really impressed with his knowledge of these cases and the criteria.  And that he's proud of it and clearly seems personally invested in it."

Obama said Thursday he hopes to leave a legacy of "reinvigorating" a clemency power that had atrophied under recent administrations.

"I’d say clemency has been 'reinvigorated' to an extent, but it sure took a while, and it still has a long way to go," said Jeffrey Crouch, an American University professor and author of The Presidential Pardon Power. "If President Obama continues to regularly and vigorously use his power to pardon and commute sentences, he would set an example for a President Hillary Clinton or a President Donald Trump as to how she or he could use clemency to address a policy question."