The Daily Agenda: Ducey wasn’t forgiving last year
Maybe ask the new guv ... More drama at the Republic ... And he's the most enlightened human.
When a governor or president is about to leave office, they often grant a spate of pardons or reduced prison sentences on the way out the door.
Gov. Doug Ducey granted few pardons in 2022, continuing a record of denying clemency to Arizona prisoners and people who’ve served their time.
In Ducey’s final full year in office, he granted just three clemency requests. All three granted in 2022 were in imminent danger of death, meaning they were considered terminally ill with just a few months to live, under state guidelines. The three granted clemency were: Steven Moore on Jan. 19, 2022; Thomas Windle on Sept. 8, 2022 and Matthew Hall on Dec. 30, 2022.
We’re waiting to hear if he granted any on his technical last day in office, since he worked until Jan. 2 this year. We’ll update you once we find out.
A last-day pardon push wouldn’t be new. Gov. Jan Brewer granted most of her few pardons on her last day in office. President Donald Trump signed off on more than 140 pardons or commutations on his last day.
To request a pardon or commutation in Arizona, people apply to the Arizona Board of Executive Clemency, which conducts hearings to decide whether to recommend clemency to the governor. The governor has the ultimate say.
Rachel reported on Ducey’s record in this area back in 2018. Back then, the governor rarely signed off on clemency applications. Some of those applicants wanted to clear their records to do things like volunteer in a school. Some sought reduced sentences or pardons for crimes they committed at a young age. Even when the Arizona Board of Executive Clemency recommended a pardon or commutation, the governor often didn’t approve it, as of 2018.
Governors rarely announce their pardons. To find out if Ducey had granted a bunch of pardons in his last year, we filed a records request to the Arizona Board of Executive Clemency.1
The classic last-minute pardons stem from the political pushback that governors, especially Republicans trying to look tough on crime, often face on clemency. The outgoing executive does a batch of pardons and commutations once they’re nearly out of office and not running again so they don’t face political ramifications.
But in some states, governors have undertaken large-scale clemency efforts, typically designed to look back at low-level drug offenses or people convicted as teens.
Clemency didn’t really come up on the campaign trail this year. While criminal justice in general is a huge campaign talking point, it rarely includes the “political land mine” that is clemency. Josselyn Berry, Gov. Katie Hobbs’ spokeswoman, said the topic is “on our radar” but hasn’t been explored in-depth yet.
Coming off the very low pardons of her two predecessors, Hobbs could look at these broader ideas — or she could simply sign off on more pardons and commutations than the last two governors did, which wouldn’t take much.
Boas v. the Diversity Committee: The Republic’s diversity committee has “deep concerns” over a piece from conservative columnist Phil Boas, who defended Republican Sen. John Kavanagh’s bill to make teachers tell parents if their students prefer to use different pronouns than assigned at birth. The bill would also let teachers disregard those pronouns — even if parents approve their use — if they have a “religious or moral convictions” against it. In the piece, Boas questioned if teachers would be forced to use pronouns like “frog” or “rat.” That section later got cut out, though the paper of record didn’t add any note about why it cut that part. We got ahold of the letter the diversity committee sent to top editor Greg Burton, which says while there’s a debate to be had over parents’ rights, “such debate does not need to resort to the notion that there is a conspiracy afoot to regender students against their parents’ will,” and that kind of rhetoric adds to a climate of violence against LGBTQ people. The diversity committee demanded that future opinion pieces be fact-checked, that the paper clarify its editorial process for op-eds and that the Republic publish an op-ed to counter Boas’ “hateful and negative rhetoric.”
Poco a poco: Passing gun safety laws is a lot like recovering from brain trauma caused by a shooting, former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords told the New York Times: It’s difficult, slow, arduous work. But both Giffords and the organization she founded to fight for gun regulations are making progress, she said.
“Progress happens inch by inch,” Giffords said.
ElEcTiOn InTeGrItY: Secretary of State Adrian Fontes is asking Attorney General Kris Mayes to investigate Kari Lake after she tweeted out voter signatures last week claiming they were invalid, NBC News’ Vaughn Hillyard reports. Arizona law makes using voter data to publish voters’ signatures a Class 6 felony, with some exceptions.
The new wave: The record number of migrants crossing the border these days are increasingly coming from a vast array of countries and seeking asylum. Republican politicians blame the trend on President Joe Biden’s border policies, but experts note there are a lot of factors, including people fleeing autocratic governments in Latin America, economic inequities exacerbated by COVID-19 and environmental disasters related to climate change, the Republic’s Daniel Gonzalez writes.
Neighbors with guns: Arizona gun dealers are asking a court to dismiss a lawsuit from the Mexican government alleging that five gun dealers are responsible for gun violence in Mexico because of their alleged “straw sales” to cartels. Capitol Media Services’ Howie Fischer has been following the case, which attorneys describe as “a clash of national values” between the U.S. and its southern neighbor.
It’s too skinny: The federal government is pumping historic investments into infrastructure, but not the I-10 widening project between Phoenix and Tucson that Arizona lawmakers set aside money to help fund before the feds shot down Arizona’s proposal. The Associated Press has a wonky deep dive into why I-10 didn’t make the cut and what kinds of projects are getting all that money.
It’s too dry: The AP also obtained a trove of emails shedding light on the failed negotiations last year among Colorado River states to severely curtail water usage. States again met at the negotiating table yesterday, the AP noted separately, and six of the seven Lower Basin states reached a water-saving deal to head off federal intervention. California didn’t sign the agreement. Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers are pressuring Scottsdale to turn on the tap to the Rio Verde Foothills area with bills to cut off water to the Scottsdale mayor and city council’s homes, strip state-shared revenue from the city and give it to the waterless and make Scottsdale liable for fire damage and health issues arising from the lack of water, the Republic’s Sasha Hupka writes.
It takes too long: The lines at the DeConcini Port of Entry in Nogales used to only form on the south side of the border heading north into the U.S. But these days, Mexico-bound cars face increased scrutiny from Customs and Border Protection, which is searching for guns and money. The lines are an everyday occurrence now because of lane closures due to understaffing at CBP, the Nogales International’s Jonathan Clark writes.
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