What used to take only days is now stretching into months and close to years for the issuance of the first pardon by a new president.

 

Like his immediate predecessors, President Barack Obama has continued a recent trend of putting pardons and commutations of sentence on the backburner during his first term in office. In fact, President Obama is on the verge of setting a modern record for waiting so long to pardon a convicted criminal.

 

If he does not issue a pardon before November 23, President Obama will pass the mark set by Bill Clinton for Democratic holders of the Oval Office. George W. Bush set the record for Republican presidents when he waited until December 20, 2002, near the end of his second year in office, to pardon his first seven Americans, one of whom, Douglas Harley Rogers, was a Jehovah’s Witness who had refused to be drafted into the armed forces back in 1957.

 

Historically, the vast majority of presidents made their initial pardon within their first 100 days in office.

 

The all-time record for longest wait to pardon someone is held by George Washington, who took nearly five years to act.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Obama: Countdown to Infamy (by P.S. Ruckman Jr., Pardon Power)

Number of Days till the Granting of the First Pardon (PardonResearch.com)

Presidential Clemency Actions by Administration: 1945 to Present (Department of Justice)

Pardons Granted by President Bill Clinton (Department of Justice)

Pardons Granted by President George W. Bush (Department of Justice)