SAINT PAUL, Minn. (CN) — The Minnesota Supreme Court upheld the state’s system for granting pardons Thursday afternoon, issuing a rapid-fire ruling after hearing arguments on an effort to reshape the system on Wednesday morning.
The court issued a brief order finding that requiring a unanimous vote of Minnesota’s governor, attorney general and Supreme Court chief justice to grant a pardon is permissible under the state’s Constitution.
The order, issued Thursday afternoon by Justice Barry Anderson without the participation of the chief justice, was issued without opinion in an effort to put the Minnesota Board of Pardons back on its biennial meeting schedule. The board postponed a planned June 21 meeting this year because of a standoff between its members over a district court’s finding that the requirement of a unanimous vote to grant a pardon was unconstitutional.
The decision is a victory for the court’s own Chief Justice Lorie Gildea and a loss for Democratic Governor Tim Walz and for Amreya Shefa, a pardon-seeker and Ethiopian national who now faces deportation because of a manslaughter conviction for the self-defense killing of her abusive husband. Gildea was the sole vote against a pardon for Shefa, leading Shefa to launch a challenge to the unanimous-vote requirement enshrined in state statutes in 1897.
The parties’ dispute hinged on the language of an amendment to the Minnesota Constitution ratified the previous year which created the pardon board. The governor, the amendment reads, “shall have power in conjunction with the board of pardons... to grant reprieves and pardons.”
Attorneys for Walz and Shefa argued Wednesday that that language privileged the Governor’s pardon power, and that allowing other board members to effectively veto his vote was a usurpation of that power.
“When unanimity is applied, you can have one member, a wing member of the board, that renders the governor’s vote a nullity,” Shefa’s attorney Andy Crowder told the Supreme Court.
Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office also argued for the statute’s constitutionality, despite Ellison’s vote for a pardon for Shefa. Assistant Attorney General Pete Farrell told the court that the unanimous-vote requirement in a statute passed by a legislature almost identical to the one which passed the amendment spoke to the purpose of the amendment.
“The 1897 law imposing the unanimous vote requirement is powerful contemporaneous evidence of the constitution’s meaning,” he said, adding that while such a system wasn’t mandated by the constitution, it wasn’t forbidden either.
In a statement Thursday, Ellison thanked the court for issuing “a swift order that will allow the Board of Pardons to get back to work,” but expressed sympathy for Shefa herself.
“Hundreds of Minnesotans apply for pardons each year and they are counting on us to do the work that we are mandated to do,” Ellison said. “As someone who previously voted for a pardon for Ms. Shefa, I hope we will be able to rehear her case, given the threat to her life that awaits her in deportation.”
Shefa, a Muslim whose husband Habibi Tesema brought her to the United States and imprisoned and abused her for nearly two years, has said she fears she will be killed if she is returned to Christian-majority Ethiopia. Shefa is also HIV-positive, which carries additional stigma and risk for her.
Walz’ office issued its own statement, with similar sentiments to Ellison’s.
“The Governor is disappointed that Ms. Shefa will not receive the pardon that she deserves,” a spokesperson said. “Given the Supreme Court’s ruling, the Legislature needs to act to make clemency more accessible. The Governor looks forward to continuing the important work of clemency on the Board of Pardons. His administration will continue the fight for restorative justice and criminal justice reform.”
Walz and First Lady Gwen Walz have pushed for pardon reform throughout the governor’s term, arguing that the unanimous-vote requirement makes obtaining clemency unjustly difficult. Minnesota issues between 10 and 20 pardons annually, putting it ahead of most states but behind states like Alabama, Georgia, Nevada, Oklahoma, Utah and Pennsylvania for frequency of pardons granted. Pardon processes vary widely across states, but most allow wide executive latitude in granting pardons.
Minnesota’s model is unique to the North Star State; Nevada follows a similar model but includes multiple Supreme Court justices and does not require a unanimous vote. Nebraska’s is also similar, but substitutes the secretary of state for the chief justice at quarterly meetings of its pardon board and also does not have a unanimity requirement.
The sparseness of pardons in Minnesota drew other reformers to Shefa’s case. The Great North Innocence Project, which seeks relief for people wrongly convicted of crimes, filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court arguing that “Minnesota’s clemency system is not working.”
Julie Jonas, who penned the brief, is the Project’s legal director. She said Thursday that while Shefa’s guilt in her husband’s death meant she could not have been an Innocence Project client, she sympathized with her and agreed that the system needed reform.
“Minnesota has incredibly difficult post-conviction laws. There are incredible hurdles to people who are innocent,” she said. Making it easier to get a pardon, she noted, could open up one more avenue for the innocence to gain clemency.
While the Innocence Project’s clients have other options for post-conviction relief, she said, those too are often prohibitively difficult. Minnesota requires “clear and convincing” evidence to reconsider convictions, she said, and courts there have interpreted that to mean “incontrovertible.”
“We have clients who, I believe, fully are innocent, but can’t get any relief because of the procedural hurdles for seeking relief through the court,” Jonas said. “If there was a chance that they could get a pardon, that would be a really good option for them, but historically the pardon board has not looked at these kinds of cases.”
One positive step, she said, has recently come from Ellison’s office in the form of a conviction review unit. Such units, which can access resources from prosecutors to unearth wrongful convictions, have been able to increase exonerations in other states.
“There’s been something like 470 exonerations through conviction review offices across the country, and the attorney general just started one this year.”
On a grimmer note, she said, “the pardon route might have been a tool used by that unit…. And now they won’t really be able to do that.”
Attorneys for Shefa and Gildea did not immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday afternoon.
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