Clemency Rulings Take a Backseat in Illinois. What Did You Expect? It’s a Big Election Year

Has IL Gov. Pritzker granted any clemency petitions this year?

  • Gov. Pritzker has yet to grant any clemency petitions in 2024

  • Gov. Pritzker has denied 243 petitions so far this year

  • Approximately 3/4 of the denials were for sentence commutation requests

As we approach the mid-year, it’s doubtful that 2024 will be a banner year for clemency rulings in Illinois.

Five months in, Governor J.B. Pritzker has yet to grant a single clemency (pardon or sentence commutation) petition but has denied 243.

Because Pritzker’s administration releases clemency denials without identifiers (e.g., county of offense, type of offense, pardon versus sentence commutation), the only way to figure out what relief was sought is to run each petitioner’s name through the IDOC inmate finder – a tedious process that allows one to guesstimate how many pardons and sentence commutation requests were denied.  

With that disclaimer, thus far this year Gov. Pritzker has denied an estimated 60 pardon and 183 sentence commutation requests.

No Relief in Sight for Petitioners Still Waiting

For petitioners who’ve already been waiting several years for Gov. Pritzker to issue a ruling, it’s a fool’s errand to estimate the current wait time from filing to decision.

During his four-plus years in office, Gov. Pritzker has never issued clemency decisions on a regular schedule.

By comparison, former Gov. Bruce Rauner routinely issued clemency decisions around major holidays (i.e., Fourth of July, Memorial Day, Easter). Although Gov. Rauner granted few petitions during his tenure, petitioners (and their advocates) found comfort in knowing when the next round of clemency decisions was going to occur.

For those petitioners who have no remedy but clemency to clear their criminal background, the waiting game is agonizing. But not only do petitioners suffer from the delay, their loved ones do as well.

I hope Gov. Pritzker doesn’t lose sight of the fact that petitioners and their families stand to gain when a clemency petition is granted.            

Ina Silvergleid