(13 Dec 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
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ASSOCIATED PRESS
Santaquin, Utah – 12 December 2024
1. SOUNDBITE (English) Stevoni Doyle, presidential pardon recipient:
“So I was at work, and I got a phone call and it said, ‘the U.S. government,’ and I just picked it up, and it was the pardon attorney. And she gave me the news, and I was overwhelmed, honored and just incredibly thankful."
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2. SOUNDBITE (English) Stevoni Doyle, presidential pardon recipient:
“I was convicted of possession of stolen mail and bank fraud. I was addicted to meth, and I forged some checks on a federally insured credit union and stole some people’s mail to support my drug habit."
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3. SOUNDBITE (English) Stevoni Doyle, presidential pardon recipient:
“So I got out of prison in 2006. I got married and had our youngest son. I went back to school and got my substance use disorder counseling license. And then I decided to go back and get my bachelor’s of social work and then get my master’s of social work. And now I work at Wasatch Behavioral Health as a therapist for the jail transition program.”
++SEPARATED BY BLACK FRAMES++
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Stevoni Doyle, presidential pardon recipient:
“Some of the best people I’ve ever met in my life have been people that have been addicted to drugs, and they turn their lives around and done incredible things. Having that barrier of having a conviction on your record, a lot of people think that there is no chance and they just continually get re-caught up in the system. So having an opportunity to get that conviction removed and be able to move forward and do anything they want in their life. If they wanted to go into the medical field or get any type of professional license, any of those things can be stopped from a conviction. So having this removed is extremely important, not just for me but for anybody that is in my position.”
++ENDS ON SOUNDBITE++
STORYLINE:
President Joe Biden is commuting the sentences of roughly 1,500 people who were released from prison and placed on home confinement during the coronavirus pandemic and is pardoning 39 Americans convicted of nonviolent crimes. It’s the largest single-day act of clemency in modern history.
The commutations announced Thursday are for people who have served out home confinement sentences for at least one year after they were released. Prisons were uniquely bad for spreading the virus and some inmates were released in part to stop the spread. At one point, 1 in 5 prisoners had COVID-19, according to a tally kept by The Associated Press.
Biden said he would be taking more steps in the weeks ahead and would continue to review clemency petitions. The second largest single-day act of clemency was by Barack Obama, with 330, shortly before leaving office in 2017.
Clemency is the term for the power the president has to pardon, in which a person is relieved of guilt and punishment, or to commute a sentence, which reduces or eliminates the punishment but doesn’t exonerate the wrongdoing. It’s customary for a president to grant mercy at the end of his term, using the power of the office to wipe away records or end prison terms.
Those pardoned Thursday range in age from 36 to 75. About half are men and half are women, and they had been convicted of nonviolent crimes such as drug offenses, fraud or theft and turned their lives around, White House lawyers said.
One of those pardoned was Stevoni Doyle, who applied for one six years ago, underwent extensive FBI vetting, then waited so long she all but forgot about it.
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