Welcome to the News Hour. President Biden announced today that he's commuting the prison

sentences of some 1,500 people and issuing pardons to 39 others convicted of nonviolent crimes.

That marks the largest number of commutations by a president in a single day.

As a president has said before, America was founded on the premise of second chances.

For far too long, our criminal justice system has closed doors of opportunity for too many people who should have the chance to once again participate in daily life and contribute to their communities.

Lisa Desjardin has more on the clemencies.

Omna and Jeff, most of the people affected by this clemency grant have been serving sentences

under home confinement thanks to provision put in place during the COVID epidemic.

Now their sentences have been commuted.

In addition, 39 people have had

their convictions fully pardoned, all for nonviolent offenses, including drug offenses. The list

includes Americans who served time for crimes committed in their teens or early 20s, and several

are military veterans. Until now, Biden has approved fewer clemencies than most

recent presidents. Mark Osler is a professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in

Minneapolis, an expert on presidential clemency, and he joins us now for a deeper dive.

Mark, thank you so much. Clemency is a unique power of presidents. And to start, I just want to go over terms, remind our audience what we're talking about. A pardon is something that forgives a crime and allows that person to regain some status, including the ability to vote, commutations, reduce penalties, including jail time or sometimes fines, but they don't change their

status. You said this is a big day, including for one of your clients, who is one of those who

was pardoned. To help us understand this group, can you talk about her and what this pardon means?

So out of that smaller group of people who got a pardon as opposed to a commutation, we saw Sarah Carlson.

Sarah Carlson is somebody who submitted her petition with the help of one of my students back in

2020 and has waited for years for this pardon. She's someone who was involved in drugs, was

addicted, had crimes that were associated with

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