President Biden this week pardoned 39 people convicted of non-violent crimes, three of them from Minnesota. All three of them are women.
White House attorneys say 49-year-old Sarah Jean Carlson of Coon Rapids, 38-year-old Kelsie Lynn Becklin of Falcon Heights, and 51-year-old Lashawn Marrvinia Walker of Minneapolis, had all turned their lives around.
Carlson was convicted in connection with a 2007 bank robbery in Otsego, while Becklin and Walker were convicted of non-violent drug offenses.
Biden is under pressure from advocacy groups to pardon broad swaths of people before the Trump administration takes over in January. The president also weighing whether to issue preemptive pardons to those who investigated Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election and are facing possible retribution when he takes office.
On Thursday, the president commuted roughly 1,500 people who were released from prison and placed on home confinement during the coronavirus pandemic and pardoned 39. It’s the largest single-day act of clemency in modern history.
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.