certain groups of people convicted of crimes in the state could soon become eligible for clemency the ACLU of New Jersey is launching a new program aimed at freeing individuals who've been incarcerated under what they consider to be extreme and unjust sentences the project is part of a larger decarceration movement throughout New Jersey and as Ted Goldberg reports this one has real traction because it finally has the support of the governor there are a lot of people in need um and when they hear about the clemency project it really does give them a glimpse of Hope and you know it's our mission to nurture that hope the clemency project is a new program from the ACLU of New Jersey hoping to lead to Shorter sentences for people currently in prison ACLU senior staff attorney Rebecca Uwakwe says the initial focus is two groups of incarcerated people survivors of domestic violence and people given much longer prison sentences after a trial compared to what they were were offered in a plea offer I was interviewing a client who was charged with a robbery and his initial offer was six years and the sentence ended up being 19 years post trial another um case where it was an assault um where the offer was 8 years and post trial it ended up being 22 years I'm not sure whether it's unconstitutional but it certainly impinges on constitutional rights it certainly implicates constitutional rights um when you get these sorts of extreme trial penalties Alexander Shalom is the director of Supreme Court advocacy at the ACLU of New Jersey he's happy about the States's bail reform and other initiatives but would like to see clemency used More Often by Governor Phil Murphy New Jersey's ahead of the curve but we're certainly not so far ahead that we don't have room for clemency and that's why we're so excited about this initiative that the ACLU is taking on and also about the receptiveness uh in the governor's office the ACLU of New Jersey won't receive state or federal funding for this they say they'll do the legal leg work and interviews on their own we're going to vet their cases to help prepare applications to send over to the governor's office to make sure that when the governor gets these applications they're strong they make the best case for why this category is appropriate for inclusion and why this person is appropriate flea bargaining and the trial penalty are in some ways a uniquely American innovation something that we've become a accustomed to that we think of as necessary for handling case loads uh but fundamentally at the end of the day they're deeply coercive Liz Komar works with the sentencing project she's not surprised to hear that in New Jersey only 105 people have received pardons or shortened prison sentences over the last 30 years and Governor Murphy hasn't granted clemency at all since becoming governor in 2018 throughout the 80s and 90s with the rise of Truth and sentencing movements and more and more political focus on being tough on crime unfortunately the the clemency mechanisms in many states have atrophied comar says clemency like everything else has become politicized in recent years making policy decisions making legal decisions like clemency based on the fear of attack ads if a single person reoffends in any way means that we're we're res defaulting to extreme incarceration the clemency project will also look at longer sentences that that are disproportionately given to people of color who commit crimes New Jersey has one of the highest disparities um racial disparities in the prison system and so what we're looking at is this is not only just addressing the criminal justice the criminal legal system as we know it but this is reforming and this is really addressing and centering racial Justice Governor Murphy has said in the past that he supports the clemency project even though the next pardon or commutation he gives out would be his first for NJ Spotlight news I'm Ted Goldberg