Pardon Seekers in Vermont Plead for an Answer

Every now and then, Jez Smith calls Gov. Phil Scott’s office to ask about an application she submitted back in 2017. The Bellows Falls woman isn’t seeking a job. It’s forgiveness she’s after, the official variety, for a crime she committed half a lifetime ago.

Smith, 65, is one of nearly 120 people who have applied for gubernatorial pardons during Scott’s eight years in office, according to a spreadsheet Seven Days received from the state as a result of a public records request. Roughly half of those applications were deemed “incomplete” for lacking necessary paperwork. Several others were withdrawn for reasons unknown. The rest, close to 70, are pending.

The applications themselves are deemed confidential, making it difficult to know the exact motivations behind them. But those seeking gubernatorial forgiveness likely see in pardons the rarest of opportunities: to leave their past behind. All records related to the crimes of those pardoned would become eligible to be destroyed through a process known as expungement. The pardoned would no longer have to disclose the conviction on paperwork, nor would it appear on background checks. Their slate would effectively be wiped clean.

While a recent series of controversial presidential pardons has the public once again talking about this absolute power, less attention has been paid to executive clemency at the state level — mostly because, in Vermont anyway, there’s not been much to discuss.

Scott, one of Vermont’s longest-serving governors, has never granted a pardon, making him an outlier among those who have previously held the office. He’s also never denied one. The pending applications instead sit in a pile somewhere, frustrating some of those seeking mercy.

“At first, you go into it with a lot of faith,” said Smith, who is seeking a pardon for a pair of 1993 convictions related to the robbery of a fast-food joint. Now, she wonders whether he’s even read her application.

The governor was not made available for an interview, but his spokesperson provided a statement about his stance on pardons. Scott meets with his attorney a few times a year to review applications, which come in on a rolling basis and have no expiration date, according to the spokesperson, Amanda Wheeler.

“The Governor takes the authority he has to issue a pardon very seriously because a pardon is an act of extraordinary relief,” Wheeler said in the statement.

She added that Scott has not denied any applications outright because he does not want to signal that someone is beyond rehabilitation; he might just want to see a longer track record of good behavior.

“As convicted felons in most cases, we believe they should be continuing to find ways to demonstrate why they should be eligible for such extraordinary relief,” Wheeler said.

Executive clemency is one of the unrestrained powers granted to U.S. presidents, who have the ability to pardon federal crimes, and governors, whose authority is limited to state offenses. Anyone is eligible for a pardon. But how a recipient is chosen can be wildly subjective — and ethically dubious.

On the final day of his presidency, Bill Clinton granted clemency to an oil trader who fled the U.S. after he was indicted for tax evasion and whose ex-wife just happened to be a major Democratic donor. President Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter on his way out the door after vowing for months that he wouldn’t.

Since his first day back in the Oval Office this year, President Donald Trump has taken the power of the pardon to unprecedented lengths on behalf of those who curry his favor. He has pardoned January 6 rioters, corrupt sheriffs, Bitcoin barons and tax-evading government officials.

In a 2019 essay for Vermont Bar Journal, Montpelier attorney Paul Gillies reflected on the reasons for pardons in Vermont in recent decades.

Sometimes it has been to right an injustice. In 1976, then-governor Thomas Salmon pardoned 71 people who had been convicted on the testimony of a celebrated undercover drug agent who was later discredited.

Other times, the pardon has been used to wipe away convictions that look different after the passage of time. In the final days of his tenure in 2016, for example, governor Peter Shumlin issued a call for applications from people who had been convicted of cannabis possession, leading to nearly 200 pardons. His justification was that the convictions were no longer legitimate in the age of decriminalization.

All told, Vermont governors have issued nearly 780 full pardons since 1950, according to the state archives. Salmon and Shumlin account for more than half, but every governor — even single-termer Robert Stafford — issued at least one pardon before leaving office.

Vermonters have additional avenues these days to get convictions wiped off the books, thanks to recent expansions of the state’s expungement laws. But there are still many convictions that don’t qualify, such as crimes with some component of violence.

Scott still has more time in office, of course, and it is not uncommon for presidents and governors to grant pardons at the end of their tenures, perhaps to avoid potential political blowback.

In Vermont, a 14-page pardon application describes the guidelines. Generally, applications will be considered only if a certain amount of time has passed from the conviction in question: at least five years for a misdemeanor and 10 years for a felony.

Applicants must also show that their behavior has been “exemplary” since their conviction and that a pardon would not only help them find a job and provide for their family but also benefit society more broadly. Finally, they must submit at least four letters of recommendation explaining why they are worthy of gubernatorial mercy.

Among the nearly 70 completed applications filed with Scott’s office since he started on the job in 2017 are people convicted of DUI, domestic assault, robbery, possessing child pornography, drug dealing and child cruelty.

One woman, who spoke to Seven Days on the condition that her name wouldn’t be printed, said she requested a pardon in late 2023. She’d just been fired after her supervisors learned she had a misdemeanor domestic assault conviction from 1996.

The woman, who spent 14 years working at the state psychiatric hospital, said she disclosed the charge to the people who first hired her. But she was told that there was no written record of those conversations. She believes the file was ruined in July 2023, when floods filled the basements where some public documents were stockpiled.

She’s now working part time at a convenience store and said she assumes she’ll never hear from the governor’s office about her request.

For Smith, the Bellows Falls woman, the pursuit of a pardon traces back to a cold spring night in 1992, when she and a friend walked into a Brattleboro McDonald’s with an unloaded pellet gun and demanded a key to the safe. They ushered the employees into a cooler, tossed them their coats and cigarettes, and locked the door before leaving with several thousand dollars in cash. They didn’t make it far: The employees snuck out a delivery hatch and called the cops, who quickly nabbed the robbers.

Smith, then 32, was charged with four felonies, including kidnapping, though prosecutors would determine that she had been manipulated into participating.

Smith, who says she was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a teen, had been off her medication for years. She recalled from the witness stand how she became depressed after losing custody of her son and finally agreed to join her friend in the stickup because she felt that she had nothing to lose.

“That’s basically how things were going in my life,” she said at her friend’s 1993 trial, the Rutland Herald reported at the time.

Smith had two felonies dismissed in exchange for cooperating with prosecutors. She would spend a few years locked up — including stints at the state psychiatric hospital, from which she briefly escaped twice — before rebuilding her life.

She got back on her meds and found work at homeless shelters. She even went to school, earning her bachelor’s degree in psychology. But she came to recognize that her job prospects would be forever limited by her criminal record.

So, in 2017, Smith filled out the lengthy pardon application, hoping Scott might be willing to wipe away the worst decision of her life.

She duly disclosed a DUI charge she picked up in 2016, the only other time she’d run afoul of the law this millennium. She attached the mandated letters from people vouching for her: a former minister, therapist, psychiatrist, two friends and her father.

And she explained her motivation: to get a job working with at-risk teens.

“I got really screwed up when I was an adolescent,” Smith told Seven Days. “That’s where it all started for me. I would like to help them nip it in the bud and get their lives on track before they go way downhill.”

It’s unclear whether Scott has reviewed Smith’s application or discussed it with his attorney. Those conversations are protected by executive privilege, Wheeler said.

Smith grew impatient as the years passed and eventually started contacting the governor’s office directly to inquire about her application. She’s called enough times that those on the other end of the line recognize her by name, she said. She’s been told — more than once — that if Scott hasn’t responded yet, he probably won’t.

But she wants to hear that from the governor himself, and so she wrote to him once again this spring, pleading for an answer.

She has yet to hear back.

Editor’s note: As of July 1, 2025, people with multiple DUIs can seek to have their records sealed after 10 years. A previous version of this story reported that that offense could not be expunged.

This article appears in Jul 2-8, 2025.

Got something to say?

Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!