BOARD MEMBERS WANT TO IMPROVE PARDON PROCESS

The Nebraska Board of Pardons is looking for ways to streamline the pardon
process as more people seek an official pardon for past convictions in the
post 9/11 background-checking era.

"We have been swamped with paperwork and agenda items," said Secretary of
State John Gale. The meetings are getting very long, he said.

In June, the board spent almost four hours on 56 cases and finished just 15
minutes before the governor's first evening appointment. The board members
are the secretary of state, governor and attorney general.

Today the board will hold a special meeting to discuss changes that could
mean fewer opportunities to speak in person to the board and perhaps a
little longer wait for a pardon decision. But board members say they are
not looking for ways to reduce the number of people getting a pardon.

Several years ago the average person seeking a pardon was older, retired
perhaps, seeking to cleanse a record from their youth.

"They had raised a family. They just wanted to have someone say they had
cleaned up their life," said Attorney Gen. Jon Bruning.

The board still gets those cases.

In June the board granted a formal hearing to a 62-year-old man, father of
grown children, who wants a pardon from a 40-year-old felony assault
conviction as "a gift to my wife of 40 years for her confidence and faith
in me."

The man said his children would like him to be able to travel abroad with
less hassle. But he said the main reason is much more personal.

"It would be nice one day to look at myself and to know I had done all I
can to ask forgiveness for what I did as an irresponsible young man," he
wrote on his pardon application.

But today an increasing number of younger people seek a pardon for
employment reasons.

We had a union welder (seeking a pardon) working on the West Coast, who
couldn't work on government jobs because of 9/11 rules, said Bruning.

There have been a half dozen soldiers, going to Iraq or back to Iraq, who
couldn't get promoted because of a conviction, said Bruning.

"We've had active duty guys in uniform, on their break," come in for
hearings, said Bruning.

These people are looking more to the future rather than the past, Gale said
about the growing number of people seeking a pardon for employment reasons.

The long June meeting included many pardon requests for job reasons.

The board recently granted a pardon to a 49-year-old Lincoln woman for two
felony convictions (burglary and possession of marijuana with intent to
delivery) she committed when in her early 20s, convictions have haunted her
at jobs in recent years.

After six years working for a keno business, handling hundreds of thousands
of dollars, she was scheduled for a promotion to manager.

Instead she was fired, when the required fingerprinting turned up the
felonies. Her bosses wanted to keep her but the bonding company required
her dismissal.

The woman said she started turning her life around in her mid-20s. "Help me
get rid of that person on paper from 20 years ago," she wrote in her
application.

Sixteen years ago another woman took a job at an Omaha school while she was
getting welfare to help support her two children. Several years later she
was convicted of welfare fraud and given three years probation.

Since then she has raised two girls successfully - one is an attorney, the
other in law enforcement. But her job efforts are stymied by the felony
conviction.

"I made a mistake and paid for it. I have been unable to get a decent job
because once I tell them about a felony, they show me the door," she wrote
in her application.

Friends and ministers describe her as "a wonderful mother" in letters to
the board.

And her attorney daughter reminded the board that "the U.S. is a country
founded on the belief of second chances."

The board granted her a pardon.

Over the past four years the number of Nebraska pardons has grown - 38 in
2001, 56 in 2002, 69 in 2003 and 83 in 2004. And this year the board is
headed for a record, granting 51 pardons in just the first six months.

The board receives at least two to three times that many applications,
which they also review.

Nebraska's experience is typical in an era where the stigma of criminal
conviction is becoming more of a barrier to jobs, according to Margaret
Colgate Love, a national expert who researched the pardon processes across
the country for a just completed book.

"The natural reluctance to hire people with a criminal record has been
exacerbated since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, so that it is now more likely
than ever that a criminal record will be discovered and it will result in
loss of a job or other professional opportunity."

In fact, federal law now compels background checks and mandates
disqualification based on conviction for a wide variety of employment,
including education, health care services, child and elder care, financial
institutions and transportation, Love said.

It is important to keep dangerous, unsafe people away from children or
other vulnerable people. But this mania for background checks has gone too
far, she said.

It is fueled, she said, by bureaucrats "who are super cautious and risk
averse."

The mushrooming of people seeking pardons for job-related reasons is the
canary of the coal mines, she suggests.

The underlying problem this canary is detecting is a "risk averse" legal
system.

One solution, she suggests, would be a state law that says you cannot be
denied employment solely because of a conviction. The conviction would have
to have some relationship to the job.

In addition, there should be avenues for relief other than a state pardon.
"Licensing boards should be required to consider circumstances: how old is
the crime, what has the person done since then, what are references,", she
suggests.

Nebraska gets high marks for creating an understandable process, with clear
guidelines, she said.

Nebraska is among the nine states where pardon is an integral part of the
system and available to ordinary people with garden variety convictions,
according to Love.

The board is looking for ways to reduce their workload but not reduce the
significance of that pardon, said Bruning.

"A pardon is a significant act where the state grants clemency to an
individual who has turned their life around," he said.

The board is also dealing with a growing number of people wanting to drive
during the last years of a 15-year drunk-driving license suspension.

This is a new job for the board, assigned by the Legislature in the late 1990s.

The number of applications for the reprieve are growing as more people
convicted of a 15-year-suspension reach that seven-year water mark,
according to Ken Lackey, with the Department of Motor Vehicles.

This is a duty that could be assigned another group, Love suggested.

The Legislature gave the job to the Pardons Board rather than create a new
entity, Bruning said. "But if the Legislature were to rethink this issue,
that would be OK with me," he said.

[Sidebar]

Pardons Board

The Pardons Board deals with three different issues:

* Pardons for past crimes.

* Reprieves for people convicted of multiple drunk driving violations so
that they can drive (with alcohol detection equipment) during the last
years of a 15-year license suspension.

* Commutations of sentences, which involves primarily changing life
sentences on murder convictions to a specific number of years to allow an
individual to leave prison on parole.

Current Guidelines For Pardons, Reprieves

The pardons board will discuss its policy for pardons and reprieves at a
3:30 p.m. meeting Monday in the governor's hearing room.

The current guidelines for pardons:

* The board seldom considers pardons until three years after completion of
the sentence for a misdemeanor and 10 years after completion of a sentence
for a felony.

* People seeking a pardon must have a clean record (minor traffic
violations are overlooked) and letters of recommendations.

* The board has been hesitant to grant pardons for sex-related crimes and
convictions for the sale of large amounts of drugs.

* People seeking a pardon fill out an application, including a description
of the crime.

* Pardoning is a two-stage process. Board members first decide whether to
hold a public hearing. If it is clear no pardon will be granted, they do
not schedule a hearing.

* Individuals can appear before the board when members decide to set a
formal hearing. They are expected to appear at the formal hearing.

Current guidelines for reprieves from the 15-year license suspension:

* The board requires at least seven years free of criminal violations and
at least three years of sobriety (no alcohol or illegal drugs).

* People who get a reprieve must pay for and use equipment in their vehicle
that allows them to drive only if they have not been drinking.

* The current screening guidelines appear to be fairly successful. Just
four individuals have lost their special driving privilege since 1998 when
the reprieve system began.