White House access gave some a faster route to federal pardons

WASHINGTON - In December 2007, the names of about 700 federal prisoners seeking commutations reached President Bush's desk. He rejected all but one. Among the disappointed petitioners was Reed R. Prior, an Iowa man serving a life sentence for a drug conviction whose application had been pending for nearly five years.

Last month, Prior filed a new application with the Justice Department. Not much had changed. But this time, with help from the Iowa governor, Prior's lawyer secured a face-to-face meeting with the White House counsel, Fred F. Fielding. A week later, Bush commuted Prior's sentence.

Of the 20 felony offenders to whom Bush granted clemency on Dec. 23, most of the attention has focused on Isaac R. Toussie, the New York real estate swindler who had hired a lawyer with political connections and bypassed the normal review process. A day later, the White House took the dramatic step of saying it was stopping his pardon.

But Toussie, who was represented by a former associate counsel to Bush, was just one of at least four people who gained special access.

Two others were also represented by former associate counsels to Bush, and Prior got a White House meeting because his lawyer knew the wife of Governor Chet Culver of Iowa.

People with the wherewithal to do so have always tried to use special access to power to win clemency. And none of Bush's decisions have been as controversial as President Bill Clinton's last-minute pardon of the fugitive-financier Marc Rich.

But over the last few presidencies, the incentive to try to go around the normal process has increased, said P.S. Ruckman Jr., a political scientist who specializes in clemency.

A huge backlog at the Justice Department's pardon review office combined with the relatively small number of clemencies granted by recent presidents, Ruckman said, "encourages people to try to end-run the process - to try to cheat, for lack of a better word, to gain access to the White House directly."

Although the Bush administration has repeatedly said clemency-seekers should go through the Justice Department review, a White House spokesman, Tony Fratto, said anyone was free to send a petition directly to the White House, which "at a minimum requires the cost of a stamp."

But Ruckman said that people without connections cannot walk into the White House, and under ordinary circumstances, any letter would be forwarded to the Justice Department, where about a half-dozen lawyers had 2,172 pending cases as of Dec. 4.

Going through the Justice Department did not work for Prior, despite widespread support. The judge, who sentenced him to life for methamphetamine possession with intent to distribute, said in an interview that he "fully supported" a commutation. He said the sentence, required by mandatory sentencing guidelines, was unjust given the circumstances. The prosecutor and several prominent Iowa politicians supported him, too.

But that was not enough the first time. So last month, when his volunteer lawyer, Robert M. Holliday of Des Moines, filed a new application, he decided to try to take Prior's case directly to the White House.

There were signs that the three offenders represented by former White House lawyers may have received special treatment.

The applications for all three were filed less than a year before the pardons were granted. Margaret Colgate Love, who was the US pardon attorney from 1990 to 1997, said it usually takes significantly longer than that to undergo a complete review, which includes an FBI background check.

Alan S. Maiss, once president of Bally Gaming Inc., was convicted in 1995 in a case related to a video-poker scandal in Louisiana. In seeking a pardon, Maiss was represented by H. Christopher Bartolomucci, an associate White House counsel from 2001 to 2003.

The applications for the other two represented by former White House lawyers were filed in June and July of 2008, respectively. For different reasons, each was ineligible for a positive Justice Department recommendation.

One case was that of the late Charles T. Winters, to whom Bush granted a posthumous pardon for a conviction stemming from illegally sending arms to Israel in 1948. The Justice Department normally does not process applications for deceased people.

The other case that was ineligible for a pardon under normal circumstances was that of Toussie. The department requires five years to have passed since the end of a sentence before it will consider a pardon application, and that time period was not yet up.