Who grants pardons for felony convictions?
If you were convicted of a felony at the federal level you actually need a pardon from the President of the United States. If you were convicted at the state or county level you need a pardon from the Governor of your state. The real challenge, though, is getting your pardon request to one of those levels. Governors and Presidents are really busy (surprise, surprise), so they have boards of people that review requests all day. Most requests are denied – you need to have a really good reason for requesting the pardon (also known as clemency in most places). Where do you start? First of all, you need to understand that a lot of inmates sitting in jail are sending pardon requests to the Governor (or the President, depending on their jurisdiction). If you just try to sit down and write a sob story explaining why you need clemency, you probably aren’t going to get past the first gatekeeper. So how do you make sure your pardon request is taken seriously? You will probably need a good attorne
