About the Clemency Project
The University of Minnesota Law School’s Clemency Project advocates for individuals serving disproportionately long prison sentences. The Project’s clemency advocacy work is at the heart of an innovative and integrated program aimed at connecting law students in a hands-on way to the human realities of mass incarceration, and using experiences in individual cases to catapult judicial and policy changes that will impact a larger group of criminal justice-impacted individuals. In the fall of 2021, the Clemency Project Clinic was formalized as one of the law school’s clinics.
The genesis and core of the Clemency Project Clinic’s work are clemency petitions on behalf of federal and state incarcerated individuals. Federally, it has secured 40 clemencies under four administrations: 14 from President Obama (see Drug inmate wins release, thanks to University of Minnesota program and State law school clemency projects help shorten drug sentences and Clemency Project Gets Four Commutations on Obama’s Final Day in Office), 14 from President Trump in January 2021, another 11 from President Biden, and one from President Trump in 2026. In addition to its federal drug clemency applications, the Project began filing clemencies in homicide cases in 2018 in New York and Minnesota, securing a unanimous commutation in 2021 and two additional commutations in 2023 and 2025. In Minnesota, it also secured an unprecedented “reprieve” for a young man seeking rehabilitative programming and two pardons, including one for a female whose past convictions denied her licensing in any care-giving role. Importantly, it is always the students who argue the cases before the Clemency Commission and the Board of Pardons in Minnesota. In addition, several of the Project’s representations involve Inter-Disciplinary Work and the expertise of professors across the university.
Clemency advocacy is immensely rewarding for the students. It also hones some of a lawyer’s most important skills: effective interview techniques, building a trusting client relationship, meticulous legal and factual research, pre-empting adverse arguments, and drafting persuasive narratives and legal arguments.
Compassionate Release Applications are a natural outgrowth of the Project’s clemency work. Over-crowded prisons and the increasing “graying” of their populations make it all the more pressing that the federal Bureau of Prisons and state correctional systems move to release prisoners who are elderly, of limited capacity or facing unexpected family obligations. The Project has filed well over a dozen federal compassionate release motions, securing the release of a grandmother with Covid-19 vulnerabilities serving a life sentence, a 74-year-old woman subject to an 8-year term of home confinement, and a woman who had been the victim of sexual abuse by a prison guard. The Project partnered with the Medical School in several of these applications, including one case in which the Project presented to the Medical School’s “Grand Rounds” in April 2021.
Several of the Project’s clemency clients were granted early parole hearings because they were juveniles at the time of their offenses. The Project has represented five of these individuals at their Parole Hearings, including engaging in a unique inter-disciplinary partnership with the Department of Psychiatry on behalf of one of these individuals.
Complementing the Project’s clemency work is its “Second Look” Litigation, where it identifies and develops novel legal routes to a judicial “second look” at the integrity of the sentence a prisoner is serving, including a successful effort to secure the release of an individual serving state and federal sentences out of D.C.; an effort to expand access to a retroactive federal sentencing guideline in the Eighth Circuit; the first defendant to secure release under Minnesota’s second look opportunity for individuals convicted of felony murder; and a successful post-conviction motion on behalf of a New York State clemency client in Brooklyn.
The Project engages in Legislative Advocacy on behalf of long-term prisoners. For example, working with Violence Free Minnesota, the Project spearheaded the bill to enact the Survivor Justice Act in Minnesota, a piece of legislation aimed at securing lenient sentencing for those whose experiences of trauma are causally related to their criminal conduct. See more Working through the Clemency Project, 3L Kendra Saathoff Testifies on a Sentencing Bill That She Helped Draft and Prof. JaneAnne Murray Testifies Before the Minnesota Senate Judiciary and Public Safety Committee on the Survivor Justice Act. It also participates in Regulatory Advocacy. It has submitted several letters to the U.S. Sentencing Commission proposing/supporting reforms, including a letter addressing a proposal to make certain drug guideline amendments retroactive and two letters advocating for the Commission to study foreign criminal and penal systems.
Project has spear-headed and participated in Impact Litigation on behalf of incarcerated individuals addressing conditions of incarceration, including a successful challenge to the MN Department of Corrections’ efforts to reincarcerate individuals released due to Covid vulnerabilities, and an ACLU action against the Bureau of Prisons for its handling of the Covid-19 spread at Waseca FCI. It also engags in strategic submission of Amicus Briefs in cases that impact the long-term incarcerated. It has submitted amicus briefs to the Minnesota Supreme Court addressing the history of the Minnesota Pardon Board and the history of Felony Murder Law Reform. It also filed an amicus brief in the Eighth Circuit on the genesis and goals of the First Step Act.
The Project regularly conducts Prison Visits, both to visit clients in Minnesota prisons, as well as federal prisons nationally, and to join in formal prison tours. In 2023, the Project inaugurated a program to visit more humane prisons in Europe, commencing with Halden prison in Norway in 2023, followed by an innovative psychiatric prison in the Netherlands in 2024 and the UK’s groundbreaking Grendon prison in 2025. In the spring of 2026, it is heading to Ireland. During these visits, Murray and clinic students meet with prosecutors, defense lawyers, judges, university researchers, reform advocates and impacted individuals to get a better understanding of their criminal and penal systems.