DPI’s ​“What to Know” series exam­ines cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment from mul­ti­ple angles, one top­ic at a time. Each install­ment pro­vides essen­tial facts and data on spe­cif­ic aspects of the death penal­ty. This install­ment looks at clemen­cy: what it is, who holds the pow­er, and how often it changes the out­come of a capital case.

Why it mat­ters: The U.S. Supreme Court has described clemen­cy as the ​“fail safe” of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, the last rem­e­dy for a wrong­ful con­vic­tion once the courts are fin­ished. However, since 1976, it has been grant­ed for human­i­tar­i­an rea­sons to 369 peo­ple sen­tenced to death, while 1669 peo­ple have been executed.

Clemency is an act of the exec­u­tive branch — a gov­er­nor, the pres­i­dent, or, in some states, an appoint­ed board — that reduces a crim­i­nal sen­tence. A com­mu­ta­tion low­ers a sen­tence; in a cap­i­tal case, it almost always replaces a death sen­tence with life impris­on­ment, usu­al­ly with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole, and does not free the pris­on­er. Because the pow­er belongs to the exec­u­tive rather than the courts, judges have large­ly declined to review how clemen­cy is used, which means a deci­sion can turn on issues that could not have been con­sid­ered in court.. Clemency can also refer to an exec­u­tive par­don, which elim­i­nates the con­vic­tion and exon­er­ates the pris­on­er. Pardons are very rare; just 8 of the 369 grants of clemen­cy in the last 50 years have been full pardons.

Core Statistics:

  • Since 1976, 1669 peo­ple have been exe­cut­ed in the United States; over the same peri­od, gov­er­nors, boards, and pres­i­dents have grant­ed clemen­cy for human­i­tar­i­an rea­sons to 369 peo­ple sen­tenced to death.
  • Illinois accounts for rough­ly half of those grants, with 187, almost entire­ly from two mass com­mu­ta­tions: 167 pris­on­ers under Governor George Ryan in 2003 and 15 under Governor Pat Quinn in 2011.
  • Ten broad or blan­ket grants of clemen­cy have been issued since 1976, sev­er­al by gov­er­nors act­ing along­side or short­ly before their state abol­ished the death penalty.
  • Federal and mil­i­tary clemen­cies total 40, includ­ing President Joe Biden’s December 2024 com­mu­ta­tion of 37 of the 40 peo­ple then on fed­er­al death row.
  • More than a dozen states that retain the death penal­ty have nev­er grant­ed clemen­cy in a cap­i­tal case in the modern era.

Key Facts:

  • The U.S. Supreme Court relies on clemen­cy but does not police it. In Herrera v. Collins (1993), the Court called exec­u­tive clemen­cy the ​“fail safe” of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem and the tra­di­tion­al rem­e­dy for mis­car­riages of jus­tice after every judi­cial avenue has been exhaust­ed. At the same time, because the pow­er is vest­ed in the exec­u­tive branch, courts have been reluc­tant to impose pro­ce­dur­al stan­dards. Clemency deci­sions in cap­i­tal cas­es are there­fore dif­fi­cult to pre­dict and effec­tive­ly immune from judi­cial review, and because gov­er­nors are elect­ed offi­cials, the process can turn on polit­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions as much as on the facts of a case.

  • Procedures vary sharply from state to state. Among states that retain the death penal­ty, nine give the gov­er­nor sole author­i­ty to grant clemen­cy; sev­en allow the gov­er­nor to act only on a favor­able rec­om­men­da­tion from a board or advi­so­ry group; eight let the gov­er­nor receive a rec­om­men­da­tion that is not bind­ing; and in four, a board decides with­out the gov­er­nor play­ing a for­mal role. In the fed­er­al and mil­i­tary sys­tems, the pow­er rests with the president alone.

  • Most grants come from mass com­mu­ta­tions, not indi­vid­ual mer­cy. Roughly three-quar­ters of the 369 human­i­tar­i­an grants since 1976 came from just 10 broad acts of clemen­cy, sev­er­al by gov­er­nors who com­mut­ed entire death rows in con­nec­tion with abo­li­tion. The oth­er grants — few­er than 100 over five decades, an aver­age of few­er than two a year nation­wide — were made in indi­vid­ual cas­es. The con­trast is sharpest in Texas, which has car­ried out 600 exe­cu­tions since 1976 and grant­ed clemen­cy for human­i­tar­i­an rea­sons three times.
  • When clemen­cy is grant­ed in an indi­vid­ual case, the rea­sons clus­ter. A 2024 DPI study of indi­vid­ual grants found that con­cerns about com­par­a­tive cul­pa­bil­i­ty or an exces­sive sen­tence were the most com­mon­ly cit­ed rea­son for clemen­cy, appear­ing in almost 40% of cas­es. This is fol­lowed close­ly by pos­si­ble wrong­ful con­vic­tion, mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors like intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty or men­tal ill­ness, and offi­cial mis­con­duct or unfair legal prac­tices. Disparities between co-defen­dants recur often, as in the November 2025 com­mu­ta­tion of Tremane Wood in Oklahoma, whose death sen­tence was reduced to match the life sen­tence his broth­er received for the same crime.
  • Not every reduc­tion of a death sen­tence is an act of clemen­cy. DPI dis­tin­guish­es human­i­tar­i­an clemen­cy from sen­tence reduc­tions grant­ed for judi­cial expe­di­en­cy — for exam­ple, when a court over­turns a death sen­tence and the state agrees to a life sen­tence rather than con­duct a full retri­al, or when a gov­er­nor resen­tences pris­on­ers to com­ply with U.S. Supreme Court rul­ings bar­ring the exe­cu­tion of juve­niles or peo­ple with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. Those reduc­tions are not count­ed as human­i­tar­i­an grants of clemency.

Relevant and Current Cases:

The cas­es below, all from the past two years, show clemen­cy oper­at­ing in three dif­fer­ent ways. They are notable in part because out­comes like these remain uncommon.

Alabama — a com­mu­ta­tion two days before exe­cu­tion. On March 10, 2026, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey com­mut­ed the death sen­tence of Charles ​“Sonny” Burton to life with­out parole, two days before his sched­uled exe­cu­tion. Mr. Burton was sen­tenced to death for a 1991 rob­bery and mur­der that both the state and his attor­neys acknowl­edged he did not per­son­al­ly car­ry out; the par­tic­i­pant who fired the fatal shot ulti­mate­ly did not receive a death sen­tence. In the weeks before the com­mu­ta­tion, Priscilla Townsend, a juror who had vot­ed to sen­tence Mr. Burton to death, and Tori Battle, the daugh­ter of the vic­tim, each pub­licly urged Gov. Ivey to grant clemen­cy. The case shows how com­par­a­tive cul­pa­bil­i­ty and the views of jurors and vic­tims’ fam­i­ly mem­bers can con­verge in sup­port of a single grant.

“I believe it would be unjust for one par­tic­i­pant in this crime to be exe­cut­ed while the par­tic­i­pant who pulled the trig­ger was not.”

— Alabama Governor Kay Ivey, state­ment com­mut­ing the death sen­tence of Charles ​“Sonny” Burton, March 10, 2026

Federal — the largest pres­i­den­tial grant of clemen­cy in the mod­ern era. On December 23, 2024, President Joe Biden com­mut­ed the death sen­tences of 37 of the 40 peo­ple then on fed­er­al death row to sen­tences of life with­out parole. He left three sen­tences in place, in cas­es involv­ing ter­ror­ism and hate-moti­vat­ed mass mur­der. President Biden said the com­mu­ta­tions were con­sis­tent with the mora­to­ri­um his admin­is­tra­tion had placed on fed­er­al exe­cu­tions, and that he could not allow a new admin­is­tra­tion to resume exe­cu­tions he had halt­ed. Measured by the num­ber of peo­ple affect­ed, it was the largest act of death-penal­ty clemen­cy by a U.S. pres­i­dent and one of the largest sin­gle grants in the modern era.

Georgia — a court steps into the clemen­cy process. In Georgia, an appoint­ed board rather than the gov­er­nor decides clemen­cy, and the process itself has recent­ly come under scruti­ny. On December 15, 2025, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles placed Stacey Humphreys’ clemen­cy hear­ing, sched­uled for the fol­low­ing day, on hold indef­i­nite­ly, leav­ing the sta­tus of his exe­cu­tion unre­solved. On December 29, 2025, a Fulton County Superior Court judge blocked the board from resched­ul­ing the hear­ing or set­ting a new exe­cu­tion date while a ques­tion about a board mem­ber’s poten­tial con­flict of inter­est was resolved. The order was an unusu­al instance of a court inter­ven­ing in a clemen­cy process that is nor­mal­ly shield­ed from judi­cial review. Mr. Humphreys’ case shows that in states where a board decides clemen­cy, ques­tions about the board­’s com­po­si­tion, not only its deci­sion, can them­selves become grounds for judicial intervention.

Global Perspective:

Internationally, the oppor­tu­ni­ty to seek clemen­cy is treat­ed as a pro­ce­dur­al safe­guard rather than an act of mer­cy. Article 6(4) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the United States has rat­i­fied, pro­vides that any­one sen­tenced to death has the right to seek par­don or com­mu­ta­tion of the sentence. 

In its 2018 General Comment No. 36 on the right to life, the United Nations Human Rights Committee stat­ed that clemen­cy pro­ce­dures should be set out in law and should not be inef­fec­tive, unnec­es­sar­i­ly bur­den­some, dis­crim­i­na­to­ry, or arbi­trary, and that an exe­cu­tion should not be car­ried out before a clemen­cy request has been mean­ing­ful­ly con­sid­ered and conclusively decided.

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