Illinois Governor Rauner grants 6 Petitions for Executive Clemency with Authorization to Expunge and 1 Commutation of Sentence on July 1, 2016

Last Friday, July 1, 2016, Governor Rauner granted clemency requests of 7 petitioners: 6 in the form of executive clemency with authorization to expunge and 1 in the form of a commutation of sentence.  With regard to the pardons and expungements, the underlying crimes ranged from residential burglary to robbery, from keeping a gambling place and gambling to theft, and from delivery of a controlled substance to manufacture and delivery of cannabis. The counties at issue were Cook, Lee, McLean, Macon and Will and the years of the offenses ranged from 1977 to 2006.  None of the 6 pardons and expungements authorized restoration of firearm ownership/possession rights which may have been forfeited by the convictions; in Illinois, a petitioner must proactively ask for his or her firearm possession and/or ownership rights to be restored by the Governor prior to being able to obtain a Firearms Owner Identification (FOID) Card.

In this most recent batch of decisions, Governor Rauner denied 150 Petitions for Executive Clemency.  I have not yet seen any information concerning the types of cases that were denied relief. I do know that this total group of 157 petitions had some dating back to the 2012 docket and that there are still approximately 500 undecided petitions remaining from previous administrations.