With nine months left in Obama Administration, apparently it is time for a clemency last call

Regular readers know I am a long-time critic of how modern presidents have (failed to) use their historic clemency powers and that I am not an especially big fan of how the Obama Administration and others have approached trying to do things better of late.  Another frustrating piece of this story is captured by this new Politico piece headlined "Obama team making last-ditch push on commutations: Top Justice official says non-violent drug offenders are running out of time to apply for reduced sentences."  Here are excerpts:

The Obama Administration is pressing hard to keep the clock from running out on thousands of federal drug convicts hoping to get their prison sentences shortened by President Barack Obama before he leaves office in January.  Earlier this week, the No. 2 official at the Justice Department pleaded with volunteer lawyers working on those cases to get the commutation applications filed right away.

"Time is of the essence and the inmates who raised their hands for your assistance still need your help," Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates wrote in the unusual letter, dated Monday and obtained by POLITICO. In the message to attorneys working through a consortium known as Clemency Project 2014, Yates noted that the group has set internal deadlines for most cases as soon as Monday of next week and for other cases in mid-May.  "I cannot stress how important it is [to] meet those deadlines," Yates wrote. "If those deadlines cannot be met, we need to ensure that inmates have sufficient time to file pro se petitions, and that the Department of Justice has enough time to process and review them."

Obama launched his so-called "Clemency Initiative" in early 2014, seeking to identify thousands who have served long drug-crime sentences that would likely have been shorter under current law. The effort was aimed at granting commutations to those who met certain criteria, such as being non-violent, low-level offenders. The announcement triggered a flood of clemency requests from close to 30,000 inmates — more than 10 percent of the federal prison population. The level of interest swamped the handful of lawyers in the office of the Justice Department's Pardon Attorney and overwhelmed the newly-created Clemency Project.

While the group has said nearly 4,000 attorneys were recruited to prepare applications, the process has been a tough slog, slowed by bureaucratic hurdles in obtaining paperwork and the reliance on lawyers who usually have no prior experience seeking clemency. Yates' letter to the Clemency Project lawyers says they have submitted "more than 850 petitions" thus far. That's a dramatic increase from the roughly 30 the group's lawyers had handed in about a year ago, but still far short of the number likely to yield the thousands of commutations some Obama administration officials expected at the outset.

The applications are also backlogged at the Justice Department, which had more than 11,000 commutation requests of all types pending at the end of March, according to Justice's website. In January, the Justice Department official who'd overseen the effort since the spring of 2014 resigned, complaining of a lack of resources and that her recommendations were not always being relayed to the White House. "The Department has not fulfilled its commitment to provide the resources necessary for my office to make timely and thoughtful recommendations on clemency to the president," Pardon Attorney Deborah Leff wrote in her resignation letter, obtained by USA Today through a Freedom of Information Act request.

White House Counsel Neil Eggleston said at a POLITICO Playbook Breakfast earlier this month that the Pardon Attorney's office has gotten a boost in resources and that some of the concerns Leff raised have been addressed. "The pardon attorney's office has a little more resources, which is good, and I have regular dealings with the pardon attorney directly, so to the extent that Ms. Leff was complaining about that, that was solved. Actually, it was solved before she left,” Eggleston said. “And so I think that we're moving forward in a pretty good way here."...

Last year, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) questioned whether the Justice Department had essentially outsourced its role in the process to the Clemency Project 2014 lawyers. A Justice Department official rejected that idea at the time, saying that the volunteer project — backed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and others — was "completely separate" from Justice.

However, Yates' letter this week highlights the Clemency Project's internal deadlines and thanks the group for having "screened out ... 20,000 ineligible applicants."  Critics, noting that Obama has granted commutations to some applications who did not appear to meet all the criteria, have expressed concern that some of those prisoners may have compelling cases for commutations but will be dissuaded from applying by having been screened out.  In addition, in a less-noticed portion of Leff's letter, she said she had "been instructed to set aside thousands of petitions for pardon and traditional commutation."

I have got tired of being tired of hearing these stories of too many clemency applicants and too little ability to procees them all. But I will continue to note (and lament) all this, and continue to hope that Prez Obama will vindicate all the energies and excitement advocates devoted to these matters by granting at least a few hundred more commutations and some significant number of pardons before he passes on the keys to the Oval Office next January.