Inmates ask Trump to pardon people alongside turkeys

Trump will “pardon” a pair of birds Tuesday at the White House as part of an annual meat-industry event that people behind bars say is upsetting to watch.

“It is one of the greatest insults to watch the president pardon two turkeys every Thanksgiving while I and so many other people suffer for non-violent drug conspiracy cases,” said Michael Pelletier, a paralyzed Maine native with a pending clemency request.

Pelletier is serving life without parole for importing Canadian marijuana. His statement was provided by Amy Povah, a clemency recipient who founded Can-Do Clemency to advocate for other federal drug offenders.

“For everyone we communicate with, it’s like pouring salt in a wound,” Povah said about the turkey pardons. She was released in 2000 by President Clinton about nine years into a 24-year sentence for conspiracy to traffic the drug MDMA.

Michelle West, who is serving life in prison for drug-related crimes, said in a message shared by Povah that “each year, I watch the president of the United States pardon a turkey wondering who started this tradition and why?”

“The turkey’s life is saved while I continue to languish in federal prison praying the president will consider pardoning me,” she said. “I have done everything humanly possible to prove I am worthy and deserving. What did the turkey do?”

Chad Marks, nearly halfway through a 40-year cocaine sentence, said that “President Trump should show mercy this year to both the turkey and those who deserve it.”

“Last year, I was filled with hope that while then President Obama pardoned the turkey he would do the same on that very day for me,” said Marks, who teaches GED classes to other inmates. “I was left feeling hopeless while the turkey was saved.”

Inside of prison, televised turkey pardons are “a sensitive topic,” said Jamal Hanson, who spent about 17 years in prison before his crack cocaine sentence was commuted by President Obama last year.

“It’s an insult to an individual stuck in that situation,” he said of the lighthearted events. “It may be touched on briefly in a television room, but [with] an individual that’s holding on to threads of hope, you don’t want to sit around and discuss that.”

“We’re talking about real lives and real families,” said Hanson, who now works as a driver. “You’ve got individuals that are hoping and praying that they will receive that blessing and get that opportunity.”

Hanson plans to apply for a pardon after the standard five-year waiting period that’s part of the ordinary Justice Department process. Pardons can be given by the president outside of that process at any stage of the criminal process, including when someone is in prison.

Margaret Love, U.S. pardon attorney from 1990 to 1997, said turkey pardons are “a silly distraction from genuinely important social and political issues,” and that she hopes Trump will be generous with deserving applicants.

Love said gun ownership is one of the biggest motivators for formerly incarcerated people seeking a pardon. “Hunting is a big deal in a lot of people’s lives,” she said. “If there’s one primary collateral consequence that motivates people to apply for a pardon, it’s to restore their gun rights.”

Other out-of-prison pardon aspirants desire a sense of official forgiveness, or relief from a long list of collateral consequences of conviction. “When people have a criminal record, they are fair game to be discriminated against. There are few legal protections,” Love said.

One pending pardon applicant, Chibueze Okorie, is awaiting word on his third request with the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney after two previous denials.

“I know it’s a tradition they have to go through, but pardoning a human would be more valuable than pardoning an animal,” Okorie said. “A lot of people are out there suffering.”

Okorie, now a Presbyterian lay minister in Brooklyn, pleaded guilty in 1989 to heroin possession with intent to distribute. He said he drove friends who were drug dealers after arriving in the U.S. from Nigeria. After cooperating with authorities, he received an 18-month sentence, credited as time served.

Okorie now leads his church’s prison reentry ministry and hopes to become a U.S. citizen if he gets a pardon. He said an immigration judge has allowed him to remain in the country, but he may be barred from re-entering if he ever leaves.

“I have turned a lot of life around,” he said of his community work. “Living like this means I’m still being punished.”

A Justice Department inspector general report found U.S. Pardon attorney Roger Adams, in office 1998-2008, wrongly considered Okorie’s nationality when he first applied for a pardon, telling a colleague he was “about as honest as you could expect for a Nigerian. Unfortunately, that’s not very honest.”

Another current pardon aspirant was openly considered by Trump this year, before a request to waive the standard five-year wait was denied by administrators of the standard pardon process.

Kristian Saucier, a former Navy sailor jailed for taking cellphone photos inside a submarine, became a Trump campaign talking point after he unsuccessfully asked for the “Clinton deal,” meaning little if any punishment for mishandling classified information. Trump said in January he was considering a pardon, but did not act before Saucier’s release from prison in September.

“Nothing can give me back the year I lost with my daughter and wife in prison, but a pardon would definitely restore my good name,” Saucier told the Washington Examiner after his release from prison.

As of Friday afternoon, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told the Washington Examiner that she was unaware of plans to pardon human beings for Thanksgiving.

Although he discontinued Obama’s late-term use of clemency to commute drug sentences, Trump’s August break from recent precedent by giving a pardon to political ally Joe Arpaio in his first year – ahead of sentencing for criminal contempt and outside the standard process – offered clemency advocates glimmer of hope.

Okorie said he remains optimistic about his third try.

“A turkey is not going to ask for this pardon, but people are talking from their hearts,” he said. “When you are pardoning someone, you are doing what Jesus Christ would be doing if he were in the White House right now.”