Osler's Razor

Every week I get lots of mail, but I don't always have time to read it. Yesterday was a day to get caught up, and I had a big boxful that had built up from the start of the month.

Much of it was from prison. I read those first; after all, someone had to work for four hours at a prison job just for the stamps they put on the envelope. There were 16 letters from prison this time around.

Previously, most of that mail was from people who wanted me to take their clemency case for my clinic: assign a student, learn their story, and tell it in the confines of the petition form. That's not true anymore. Now, the mail falls into three groups. The smallest group, actually, is from people who want us to prepare a petition for them.

The largest group is from people who are asking "what is going on?" Usually, they filed a petition three or four years ago, and have heard nothing. Or they filed a motion under the First Step Act and have heard nothing. Or they did both and have heard nothing. It's a sad commentary on how things are going-- basically, it is stuck. There is a huge backlog of clemency petitions, and the administration is neither granting or denying them.  They are just being ignored.

The second largest group are from people who want me to connect them to someone else-- usually Kim Kardashian ("or any Kardashian" as one writer put it today) or Shon Hopwood. There is a belief out there that KK can have any petition for clemency granted, but that is based on a sample size of one (Alice Johnson, pictured above with KK and Nkechi Taifa).  No one else has been released under clemency based on a Kardashian-- the real route to success with this administration is to be featured on Fox News.

It needs to change. We need a better process. President Trump would be wise to make that change. Democrats challenging him are wise to promise that they will. And in the meantime, people--many of them as good and whole as Alice Johnson-- will wait.