How to Apply for a Federal Pardon

By Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., and Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA

How do you actually apply for a federal pardon?

You file a formal petition, addressed to the President, with the Office of the Pardon Attorney at the Department of Justice, on the form the Attorney General prescribes (28 C.F.R. § 1.1). Generally you must wait five years from release from confinement, or from conviction if no prison sentence was imposed (§ 1.2). The office investigates, the Attorney General recommends, and the President decides. There is no fee, no deadline, and no appeal.

Key takeaways on applying for a federal pardon

• File with the Office of the Pardon Attorney; the petition is addressed to the President. § 1.1
• Five-year wait from release from confinement — and “[t]he Department may grant a waiver of the five-year requirement” (JM 9-140.112)
• Generally do not file while on probation, parole, or supervised release. § 1.2
• The FBI conducts a background investigation. § 1.6
• Your prosecutor and your sentencing judge are asked for their views, and those views carry “considerable weight” (JM 9-140.111)
• If the Attorney General recommends denial and the President does not act within 30 days, concurrence is presumed and the case closes. § 1.8
• No fee. No deadline. No reason given on denial. No appeal.
• A pending petition survives a change of administration (JM 9-140.111)

The process, step by step

Step	What happens	Authority	What it requires from you
1. Confirm the conviction is federal	Only “Offences against the United States” are pardonable. Petitions “shall relate only to violations of laws of the United States”	Art. II, § 2, cl. 1; § 1.4	Read the judgment. “United States of America v. ___” is federal
2. Confirm the waiting period has run	Generally at least five years after release from confinement, or five years after conviction if no prison sentence was imposed. Generally no petition while on probation, parole, or supervised release	§ 1.2	Documentation of the release or completion date. A waiver may be requested
3. Prepare the formal petition	A formal petition addressed to the President, submitted to the Pardon Attorney, containing “the information required in the form prescribed by the Attorney General.” Military offenses go instead to the Secretary of the military department that had original jurisdiction	§ 1.1	Complete, accurate disclosure. The FBI verifies your answers
4. File with the Office of the Pardon Attorney	Petitions and forms “may be obtained from the Pardon Attorney”	§ 1.1	No filing fee
5. Investigation	The Attorney General “shall cause such investigation to be made of the matter as he or she may deem necessary and appropriate,” using appropriate agencies “including the Federal Bureau of Investigation”	§ 1.6(a)	An FBI background investigation focused on employment and financial stability, family responsibility, community reputation, and service
6. Prosecutor and judge are consulted	The Pardon Attorney “routinely requests” the views of the U.S. Attorney in the district of conviction, and asks that office to solicit “the views and recommendation of the sentencing judge”	JM 9-140.111	Nothing — but write the petition knowing they will read it
7. Victim notification, where applicable	Where the offense had a victim and the Attorney General concludes contact is warranted, reasonable effort is made to notify them that a petition was filed, that they may comment, and of the outcome	§ 1.6(b)	Awareness that the victim may be heard
8. Recommendation to the President	The Attorney General reviews the petition and the investigation and “shall report in writing his or her recommendation to the President”	§ 1.6(c)	Nothing
9. Decision	The President grants or denies. On a grant, “the warrant of pardon shall be mailed to the petitioner.” On an adverse recommendation the President does not act on within 30 days, concurrence is presumed and the case is closed	§§ 1.7, 1.8	Patience. No timeline binds anyone

Two features of that sequence surprise nearly every applicant.

Nothing in it has a deadline. Not the investigation, not the recommendation, not the decision. The only interval in the regulations is the 30-day presumption in § 1.8 — and that runs in the direction of closing the case, not deciding it.

The people who prosecuted and sentenced you are asked. The Justice Manual states that the U.S. Attorney’s views “are given considerable weight in determining what recommendations the Department should make to the President,” and that the sentencing judge’s views are routinely solicited too. A petition that mischaracterizes the offense will be read against the file by the people who built it.

The five-year waiting period, and how it is measured

28 C.F.R. § 1.2 is short and every word of it does work:

“No petition for pardon should be filed until the expiration of a waiting period of at least five years after the date of the release of the petitioner from confinement or, in case no prison sentence was imposed, until the expiration of a period of at least five years after the date of the conviction of the petitioner. Generally, no petition should be submitted by a person who is on probation, parole, or supervised release.”

The rule	What it means
“at least five years”	A floor, not a target. The Justice Manual warns that for a serious offense “a suitable length of time should have elapsed in order to avoid denigrating the seriousness of the offense” — which may be considerably more than five years
“after the date of the release . . . from confinement”	Where a prison sentence was served, the clock runs from release, not from conviction or sentencing
“in case no prison sentence was imposed . . . after the date of the conviction”	Probation-only sentences run from the conviction date
“Generally, no petition should be submitted by a person who is on probation, parole, or supervised release”	Supervision is a separate obstacle. Someone released from custody six years ago but still on a term of supervised release faces this bar even though the five years have run
The waiver	The Justice Manual states: “The Department may grant a waiver of the five-year requirement.” The regulation does not mention it. A waiver request has to justify itself
The constitutional footnote	§ 1.2 binds the Department, not the President. § 1.11 provides that the regulations “are advisory only,” “create no enforceable rights,” and do not “restrict the authority granted to the President”

The practical advice that follows is unglamorous: work out your date precisely, from documents, before doing anything else. Applicants routinely miscount from sentencing rather than release, or forget that a term of supervised release is still running.

What the Department is looking for

JM 9-140.112 publishes the factors. The baseline sentence tells you what kind of case this is: “In general, a pardon is granted on the basis of the petitioner’s demonstrated good conduct for a substantial period of time after conviction and service of sentence.”

Factor 1 — Post-conviction conduct, character, and reputation

“An individual’s demonstrated ability to lead a responsible and productive life for a significant period after conviction or release from confinement is strong evidence of rehabilitation and worthiness for pardon.”

The FBI investigation, according to the same section, “focuses on the petitioner’s financial and employment stability, responsibility toward family, reputation in the community, participation in community service, charitable or other meritorious activities and, if applicable, military record. The investigation also serves to verify the petitioner’s responses in the pardon application.”

That last clause deserves its own line. The investigation verifies what you wrote. An inaccurate answer is not a neutral omission; it is a finding.

And the guidance contains a fairness provision that is easy to miss and worth knowing: “each petitioner’s life circumstances are considered in their totality: it may not be appropriate or realistic to expect ‘extraordinary’ post-conviction achievements from individuals who are less fortunately situated in terms of cultural, educational, or economic background.”

Factor 2 — Seriousness and relative recentness of the offense

“When an offense is very serious, (e.g., a violent crime, major drug trafficking, breach of public trust, or white collar fraud involving substantial sums of money), a suitable length of time should have elapsed in order to avoid denigrating the seriousness of the offense or undermining the deterrent effect of the conviction.”

Two riders. “In the case of a prominent individual or notorious crime, the likely effect of a pardon on law enforcement interests or upon the general public should be taken into account,” and “[v]ictim impact may also be a relevant consideration.” Conversely: “When an offense is very old and relatively minor, the equities may weigh more heavily in favor of forgiveness.”

Factor 3 — Acceptance of responsibility, remorse, and atonement

“The extent to which a petitioner has accepted responsibility for his or her criminal conduct and made restitution to its victims are important considerations. A petitioner should be genuinely desirous of forgiveness rather than vindication.”

The guidance is careful in both directions: “While the absence of expressions of remorse should not preclude favorable consideration, a petitioner’s attempt to minimize or rationalize culpability does not advance the case for pardon. In this regard, statements made in mitigation (e.g., ‘everybody was doing it,’ or ‘I didn’t realize it was illegal’) should be judged in context.”

And the warning that most affects strategy: “Persons seeking a pardon on grounds of innocence or miscarriage of justice bear a formidable burden of persuasion.” Read alongside JM 9-140.111 — “in clemency cases the correctness of the underlying conviction is assumed” — the message is that a pardon petition is a poor vehicle for relitigating guilt. That belongs in an appeal or a motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255.

For this page’s audience there is a further point. A pardon petition is generally filed five or more years after release, and by then § 2255 has usually closed — it requires custody, which ends when supervised release ends. The remaining judicial route for someone attacking the conviction itself is a writ of error coram nobis under 28 U.S.C. § 1651(a), filed in the court of conviction. If the real claim is that something fundamental went wrong in the case, that is where it belongs, and it can be assessed alongside a pardon petition rather than instead of one. See coram nobis.

Factor 4 — Need for relief

“The purpose for which pardon is sought may influence disposition of the petition. A felony conviction may result in a wide variety of legal disabilities under state or federal law, some of which can provide persuasive grounds for recommending a pardon. For example, a specific employment-related need for pardon, such as removal of a bar to licensure or bonding, may make an otherwise marginal case sufficiently compelling to warrant a grant in aid of the individual’s continuing rehabilitation.”

And the counterweight: “the absence of a specific need should not be held against an otherwise deserving applicant, who may understandably be motivated solely by a strong personal desire for a sign of forgiveness.”

Factor 5 — Official recommendations and reports

“The comments and recommendations of concerned and knowledgeable officials, particularly the United States Attorney or Assistant Attorney General whose office prosecuted the case and the sentencing judge, are carefully considered.”

Applied Insight — Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., Principal Attorney: Factor three is where petitions are usually lost, and the failure is almost always the same one. A petitioner has spent years explaining the case to family, employers, and themselves, and the explanation has hardened into an account in which the conviction was a misunderstanding. Then that account goes into a document that is read by the office that prosecuted them, alongside the file. The Justice Manual’s phrase — “genuinely desirous of forgiveness rather than vindication” — is not a stylistic preference; it describes what the reader is checking for. If the honest position really is innocence, the petition is the wrong instrument, and the guidance says so: a “formidable burden of persuasion.”

What to assemble

The regulations require the prescribed form; the factors tell you what has to be behind it.

• The conviction record — judgment, charging document, and where relevant the presentence report. You are describing an offense the reader can look up.
• Proof of the release or completion date, to establish the five-year period from the right date.
• Restitution and fine status. Factor three names restitution expressly. An unsatisfied obligation should be addressed rather than left for the investigation to find.
• Employment and financial history across the post-release period — the investigation’s stated focus.
• Character references from people with actual knowledge, who can describe specific conduct rather than offer general praise. Their statements should be able to survive an FBI interview.
• Evidence of community involvement or service, where it exists — and an honest account where it does not, given the guidance’s recognition that circumstances differ.
• A clear statement of the need for relief, if there is one: the license, the bond, the specific legal bar.
• A personal statement that describes the offense accurately, accepts responsibility, and accounts for the years since without minimizing.

Every factual assertion should be one you would be comfortable having verified, because it will be.

The personal statement

There is no legal test, no hearing, and no advocate speaking for you. The personal statement is the only place your own account appears, and the published factors describe what a reader is checking for.

Describe the offense accurately, in your own words. The reader has the file. The Justice Manual notes that in clemency cases “the correctness of the underlying conviction is assumed,” and that the prosecuting office is expected to address the matter if a petitioner “refuses to accept guilt, minimizes culpability, or raises a claim of innocence.” An account that conflicts with the record does not create doubt about the record; it creates doubt about you.

Take responsibility without performing it. Factor three asks for a petitioner “genuinely desirous of forgiveness rather than vindication,” and warns that an “attempt to minimize or rationalize culpability does not advance the case.” It also says something more forgiving that is easy to miss: “[w]hile the absence of expressions of remorse should not preclude favorable consideration,” mitigation statements “should be judged in context.” You are not required to produce a particular emotional register. You are required not to argue that it was not really your fault.

Account for the years, with specifics. Factor one is about “demonstrated ability to lead a responsible and productive life for a significant period.” Employers, dates, roles, responsibilities, and obligations met. Not adjectives.

Say what you need and why, if there is a specific need. Factor four treats “removal of a bar to licensure or bonding” as capable of making “an otherwise marginal case sufficiently compelling.” Name the statute or the rule if you can. And if there is no specific need, say that too — “the absence of a specific need should not be held against an otherwise deserving applicant, who may understandably be motivated solely by a strong personal desire for a sign of forgiveness.”

Address the hard facts before the investigation finds them. An arrest after the conviction, an unpaid balance, a gap in employment. Explained by you is better than discovered by the FBI.

Do not overwrite it. The Office of the Pardon Attorney places no limit on what an applicant may submit — “[a] clemency applicant – or any third party – is free to send any documentation or other written information” — but volume is not persuasion. Two practical notes from the same guidance: submit copies rather than originals, because the material “will be added to the applicant’s executive clemency file”; and do not send anything on digital media or through a file-sharing service, which the office “cannot access.”

What happens after you file

Nothing quickly. No provision sets a decision deadline. Petitions routinely pend for years, and the Department’s own statistics show them carrying across fiscal years and administrations.

A pending petition survives a change of President. The Justice Manual: “Should a president leave office without acting on a particular clemency petition, that petition will remain open and active until the incoming president reaches a decision.”

You may be contacted. The office “acts as a liaison with the public during the pendency of a clemency petition, responding to correspondence and answering inquiries.”

Denial gives no reasons. Under § 1.8, when the President denies, the Attorney General “shall so advise the petitioner and close the case.” And where the Attorney General recommends denial and the President does not act within 30 days, “it shall be presumed that the President concurs in that adverse recommendation,” and the case closes.

There is no appeal. Ohio Adult Parole Authority v. Woodard, 523 U.S. 272 (1998), holds clemency decisions “are rarely, if ever, appropriate subjects for judicial review,” and § 1.11 provides the regulations “create no enforceable rights.”

What can be done after a denial — and what the current Part 1 does and does not say about re-applying — is covered at clemency denied what next.

If the conviction was a court-martial

One route diverges completely, and it is easy to miss because it appears in a single clause of § 1.1.

28 C.F.R. § 1.1 provides that the petition goes to the Pardon Attorney “except for petitions relating to military offenses,” and that “[a] petitioner applying for executive clemency with respect to military offenses should submit his or her petition directly to the Secretary of the military department that had original jurisdiction over the court-martial trial and conviction of the petitioner.” A form furnished by the Pardon Attorney may be used, “but should be modified to meet the needs of the particular case.”

So a person convicted by court-martial files with the Secretary of the Army, Navy, or Air Force rather than with the Department of Justice. Filing in the wrong place does not preserve anything; it simply delays.

Two adjacent points for anyone in this position. A dishonorable discharge is a separate federal firearms disability under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(6), independent of any conviction — and a pardon of a court-martial conviction does not by itself change a discharge characterization. And since 2026, both court-martial convictions and dishonorable discharges are expressly within the categories eligible to apply for firearm-rights relief under 18 U.S.C. § 925(c). See federal firearm rights restoration.

Why petitions fail

Reading the published factors backwards produces a short list of avoidable problems, and most denials that are not simply discretionary involve one of them.

Filing too early. Miscounting the five years from sentencing rather than release, or filing while a term of supervised release is still running, contrary to § 1.2’s instruction that “[g]enerally, no petition should be submitted by a person who is on probation, parole, or supervised release.”

Arguing innocence in a forgiveness proceeding. The guidance says the correctness of the conviction “is assumed,” and that innocence claims carry “a formidable burden of persuasion.” A petition built on relitigating the case asks the wrong office for the wrong thing.

Minimizing. Factor three names the failure mode expressly — an “attempt to minimize or rationalize culpability does not advance the case,” and the examples given are “everybody was doing it” and “I didn’t realize it was illegal.”

Unresolved restitution. Factor three treats restitution to victims as an important consideration. An outstanding balance that goes unaddressed is a gap the investigation will find.

Inaccuracy anywhere in the form. The investigation “serves to verify the petitioner’s responses in the pardon application.” An error in a date or an omitted arrest becomes a credibility problem rather than a clerical one.

Generic references. Letters that praise without describing anything specific do little, and their authors may be interviewed.

A thin post-conviction record with nothing to point to. Factor one is about demonstrated conduct over a significant period. A petition filed at the earliest possible moment with little to show for the interval is asking the reader to take the years on faith.

What are the realistic odds?

The Department publishes the counts, and quoting them precisely is more honest than characterizing them. These are from the Office of the Pardon Attorney’s Clemency Statistics, updated January 23, 2025, recording what the office counted in each fiscal year. They are not a success rate for any group of petitioners, because petitions carry over between years and administrations. The page does not cover the current administration.

Administration	Months	Pardon petitions received	Pardons granted
Joseph R. Biden	48	1,666	80
Donald J. Trump (first term)	47.5	1,969	144
Barack H. Obama	96	3,395	212
George W. Bush	96	2,498	189
William J. Clinton	96	2,001	396
Ronald Reagan	96	2,099	393
Jimmy Carter	48	1,581	534

Source: DOJ, Office of the Pardon Attorney, Clemency Statistics (updated Jan. 23, 2025). The legend notes grants are counted from clemency warrants; that clemency granted to someone who did not file through the office is counted as granted but not received; and that class grants by proclamation are excluded.

The honest summary: pardons are granted in the dozens to low hundreds per administration against petitions in the thousands. That is a hard road, and it is a road — which is more than can be said for most post-conviction relief at this stage.

What does it cost?

The Department charges no fee for a clemency petition. Petition forms “may be obtained from the Pardon Attorney” at no cost, and neither 28 C.F.R. Part 1 nor the Office of the Pardon Attorney’s materials impose a filing fee.

Costs that do arise are the ordinary ones: obtaining certified court records, obtaining documentation of restitution status, and legal fees if you use counsel. Fees for representation depend on the scope of the record and are not quoted on a website.

If you are told that a fee must be paid to the government to file a pardon petition, or that payment can accelerate a decision, treat that as a warning sign.

Where to go next on the pardon petition

• What a presidential pardon is — what is a presidential pardon
• What a pardon does not do — what a pardon does not do
• The scope of the power — pardon power
• Clemency, pardon, and commutation compared — clemency vs pardon
• After a denial — clemency denied what next
• If firearm rights are the goal — gun rights restoration
• The clemency hub — clemency lawyers

Related reading on how OPA processes petitions

Two procedural points from the Office of the Pardon Attorney are worth carrying into the application. There is no hearing — OPA describes clemency as “a written process” with “no hearing held by the Pardon Attorney on any commutation or pardon application” — so the written submission carries the entire case. And a pending application survives a change of administration: “the clemency application will remain open until resolved by a later President.”

For how the petition is processed once filed, see federal pardons. For what you are actually asking for, what is a presidential pardon and presidential pardon power; for the limits of the grant, what a pardon does not do and pardon vs expungement.

If a prior petition was denied, clemency denied, what next covers reapplication — and note that OPA states applicants “do NOT need to wait to submit a new application.” If a sentence reduction rather than forgiveness is the goal, see commutation eligibility and compassionate release. And if the object is firearm rights, the administrative route at federal firearm rights restoration is now faster than a pardon for most applicants, though your state’s separate bar still has to be checked against firearm rights restoration by state.

Why work with Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C.

Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C. is a boutique federal criminal defense and appellate firm founded in 2019, with a national federal practice run on an intentionally small caseload. Elizabeth Franklin-Best is admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court and twelve of the thirteen U.S. Courts of Appeals — every regional circuit (1st–11th) plus the D.C. Circuit — and has handled more than 330 federal proceedings, over 100 of them appeals, with sixteen published decisions as counsel of record. She is recognized by Best Lawyers in America 2026 for Appellate Practice and by Chambers USA 2026 for white-collar litigation, and is the author of Reversing Your Criminal Conviction: Develop Your Winning Strategy (2023).

A pardon petition has no legal test to satisfy, which means the document carries the whole case and every factual assertion in it will be independently verified. That is a records-and-writing problem, and it is the same discipline as an appellate brief.

Offices in Columbia and Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, serving clients nationwide. No outcome can be promised, and this page is general information rather than legal advice.

Schedule a consultation

To find out whether your waiting period has run, and what your petition would need to carry, schedule a consultation or call (843) 620-1100.

Frequently Asked Questions About Applying for a Pardon

Reviewed for legal accuracy by Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., Principal Attorney·September 2026