a scholarly paper published by the American Bar Association in 2009<\/a>. New Mexico state law allows for its Parole Board to advise the state\u2019s chief executive on pardons. And the governor does frequently seek Parole Board input; the SFR and NMID analysis shows the Parole Board weighed in on 134 requests under Johnson, 259 requests under Richardson and at least 68 requests under Martinez.<\/p>\nIn 13 cases, Martinez went against the Parole Board\u2019s recommendation. Such was the case with Bruce Gillis, who in 1974 was convicted of a fourth-degree felony for distributing marijuana. Gillis told Martinez in a letter that he was 20 years old, \u201cimmature and irresponsible,\u201d and pleaded guilty to the charge at the advice of a lawyer, but later turned his life around.<\/p>\n
The Parole Board recommended a pardon. Martinez denied it.<\/p>\n
Generally, in states where pardon power isn\u2019t invested in a single person, rates of successful pardon applications are higher, says Osler, the Minnesota law professor. For example, Georgia and South Carolina, where parole boards have ultimate authority over pardons, issue pardons at higher rates than Vermont, Minnesota and New Mexico, three states where the governor has complete control.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou tend to see fewer granted when the executive has absolute power, because it becomes a political concern,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Governor comparisons<\/b><\/h3>\n
Gary Johnson tells SFR and NMID he didn\u2019t consider politics in pardon applications, and he acknowledges that his perspective on the issue chafed other Republicans. Johnson says that partly explains his switch to the Libertarian Party.<\/p>\n
As a political candidate, Johnson has often highlighted his stance in favor of marijuana legalization. He says he took special care to pardon drug offenders.<\/p>\n
\u201cReally, from the civil liberties standpoint, hey, these people have issues \u2014 but are they criminal?\u201d Johnson says of drug users. \u201cNo way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Richardson declined comment for this story, but his lead pardon attorney, Justin Miller, says Richardson \u201cwas very interested in the personal stories of the people who applied for a pardon because he understood that he had the power to help people who had gotten into legal trouble become fully reintegrated into society.\u201d<\/p>\n
In granting far higher percentages of pardons than Martinez, Richardson and Johnson also were more willing to buck the Parole Board\u2019s recommendations \u2014 including a few cases in which they granted pardons over the board\u2019s objections.<\/p>\n
Martinez, by contrast, has never granted a pardon in a case where the Parole Board recommended denial, according to state records. Those cases include marijuana-related convictions.<\/p>\n
Under Johnson and Richardson, the number of clemency applications remained relatively steady from year to year. Martinez, on the other hand, received the overwhelming majority of applications in her first term \u2014 but they\u2019ve slowed to trickle since 2015.<\/p>\n
The data provides no insight into the roughly 75 percent decline in applications under Martinez compared to her two predecessors. New Mexico lawyers say they\u2019ve turned away clients who want to pursue pardons because of Martinez\u2019s track record, and the tightened requirements she\u2019s put in place likely have deterred some from applying.<\/p>\n
Donatelli, the Santa Fe-based criminal defense and civil rights lawyer, criticizes all three governors for a dearth of pardons, citing the raft of nonviolent crimes that show up in the 24 years\u2019 worth of data as unworthy of excluding people from participating in democracy.<\/p>\n
He singles out convictions for drug possession and minor drug sales from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, when the War on Drugs was at its height and focused primarily on impoverished, minority communities, as cases ripe for pardons.<\/p>\n
\u201cA governor should be taking into consideration when looking at a conviction, \u2018Was this a case of unlawful or arbitrary application of police power that results in harsh treatment of the poor and minorities?\u2019\u201d Donatelli says.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s also certain many of those who applied were above the poverty level \u2014 skewing the data provided to SFR and NMID. The majority of people who get caught up in the criminal justice system are poor.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you had a public defender in the first place, you probably can\u2019t get an attorney to submit an application to be considered \u2014 another imbalance and inequity in the distribution of justice in our state,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Some people whose cases SFR and NMID reviewed have applied multiple times for pardons from all three governors. Jesse Childers is a former police officer who, in 1981, \u201coffhandedly advised my brother-in-law and his two friends how to commit an inside robbery and not get caught.\u201d He was not present when the crime went down, but spent five years in prison anyway. He first asked Johnson to pardon his armed robbery and conspiracy convictions in 1998. Johnson denied him.<\/p>\n
He appealed to Johnson again in 2001, but was ruled ineligible because he hadn\u2019t waited long enough after his first denial. Richardson did not take action on Childers\u2019 third application before leaving office at the end of 2010.<\/p>\n
In 2011, Childers filed a fourth application, this time to Martinez. It came with a letter of support from well-known Albuquerque attorney and Martinez donor Turner Branch, which Branch had originally sent to Richardson\u2019s legal team in 2009.<\/p>\n
Martinez was unmoved \u2014 despite a recommendation from her Parole Board that Childers be pardoned. \u201cI hold law enforcement officers to a higher standard than civilians,\u201d Martinez wrote in her denial letter.<\/p>\n
A month later, Childers\u2019 wife tried again, imploring Martinez in a three-page letter to \u201cremember mercy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNow that you have a new job, it is time to take off the hat of a prosecutor and put on the hat of a public servant,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n
Martinez appears not to have responded.<\/p>\n
Redemption<\/b><\/h3>\n
The pardon files released by Martinez show heartfelt pleas by people who argue they\u2019ve pursued the American Dream in spite of their felony convictions. In three cases, Martinez offered some redemption that granted them a full share of that dream.<\/p>\n
Then 64 years old, Charles Hayes wrote to Martinez in a 2011 pardon request that he got into trouble 43 years back, when his friends decided to steal beer from a lodge in Los Alamos. Hayes did not participate in the theft, yet he drank some of the beer. He was convicted for breaking and entering, but the judge told him \u201cif I would join the Marine Corps he would remove any record of my being in trouble.\u201d He enlisted the same day, and did not know if he would return home from Vietnam alive.<\/p>\n
A devout Catholic and family man, Hayes wrote that he led a \u201cvery good and productive life.\u201d He worked for the same company for 30 years and rose into a management position before retiring. He volunteered for a Los Alamos search-and-rescue team.<\/p>\n
But he discovered the judge did not fulfill his end of the bargain; the conviction remained on his criminal record for life, unbeknownst to him until he attempted, unsuccessfully, to purchase a deer rifle for his son as a Christmas gift. He wanted a pardon to enjoy annual hunting trips and \u201chold my head a little higher.\u201d<\/p>\n
Martinez gave it to him.<\/p>\n
In another of the three cases, Martinez granted a pardon at some political risk of appearing soft on welfare fraud. Despite two requests by SFR and NMID, Martinez\u2019s office turned over sparse documentation for the pardon application of Marian Donaldson, who pleaded no contest in 1986 to felony welfare fraud.<\/p>\n
Donaldson\u2019s pardon file shows no application letter, case documents or letters of recommendation that would help describe her crime. But Martinez granted Donaldson, born in 1939, a pardon, citing \u201cextraordinary circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a telephone interview from his home in northern Idaho, Edward Schneider, the third applicant to be granted a pardon by Martinez, says he applied for a pardon because he could not travel to Canada. He was surprised to learn he was only one of three applicants who received a pardon from Martinez, and he says no political or personal connections helped him get a felony larceny conviction pardoned.<\/p>\n
Schneider wrote to the governor that, since his release, he had not been charged with a crime. He wrote that he\u2019s paid his taxes, raised his family and volunteered. Schneider says the key to his not falling into the trap of recidivism was support from family and friends. Moving to another city after his prison sentence helped too, Schneider says.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe it\u2019s like AA,\u201d Schneider tells SFR and NMID. \u201cYou just have to make a clean break. You have to say, \u2018I don\u2019t want to do this anymore. I don\u2019t like being locked up in prison. And I will do anything required of me to keep from returning to that system.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Schneider says his felon status did not inhibit his employment chances because it was harder in his days to find someone\u2019s criminal history. But in the age of Google, Strickland, president of the New Mexico Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, says unemployment is why \u201cpardons are an important part of justice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Like many governors, Martinez may wait until the end of office to grant more pardons. Others, such as Brenna Ellis, say they\u2019ll wait for a new gubernatorial administration before applying again.<\/p>\n
Donatelli, the criminal defense attorney, says he expects \u201cthe numbers to go back to what we saw in previous administrations\u201d with a new governor in office Jan. 1, \u201cand even greater given the recognition of drug convictions people are laboring under with the responsible exercise of executive power.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Susana Martinez, a former district attorney, has granted just three pardons since taking office.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":60345,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[142,107,208],"class_list":["post-585252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-crime","tag-roundhouse","tag-susana-martinez"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=585252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585252\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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