Alum’s clemency work draws on MHC experience.
Bridget Grier ’14 and the Clemency Project connect federal prisoners with volunteer lawyers to negotiate shorter sentences for nonviolent crimes.
As a liaison with the , Bridget Grier ’14 is working alongside volunteer lawyers to review some 30,000 applications from federal prisoners seeking to reduce their sentences.
Typically, the inmates are nonviolent drug offenders who, if sentenced today for the same crime, would receive much shorter sentences.
“There’s a great need,” she said. “I constantly speak with people who are incarcerated and with their families, and I see more each day what a huge impact the project is making in people’s lives.”
David Padilla, for example, was given a life sentence in 1997 on conspiracy and cocaine charges. He turned his life around in prison, earning an associate’s degree and discovering a passion for dentistry, according to a 2014 National Public Radio . After review by Clemency Project 2014, Padilla’s petition is pending.
Grier helps prisoners and their lawyers navigate the multiple steps each must take toward freedom. Prisoners apply, their cases are reviewed, and recommendations are made to the Office of the Pardon Attorney. If all goes well, the president of the United States himself ultimately commutes or lessens the sentence of the prisoner. And that takes lots of lawyers—about 1,500 are currently involved.
“It’s one of the largest pro-bono legal efforts in the country’s history,” Grier said. Their efforts are paying off; in March, 22 federal prisoners were granted clemency.
As the name implies, the Clemency Project 2014 is a new organization, and Grier has been with it from the beginning. She was well prepared for this unique challenge by several ŷAV experiences.
Her interdisciplinary major in Africana studies taught her to approach issues from many perspectives. A seminar, Ethnographies of Law, helped her understand the legal system’s complexities. And a Community-Based Learning course made her classroom learning feel tangible.
“Everything you’re reading really applies to people’s lives,” she recalled thinking in that course.
Grier says her advisor, Professor of Politics and Chair of Africana Studies Preston H. Smith, “guided me to find my academic path and to figure out what I wanted to do after college.” Through ŷAV connections, Grier landed two research internships with social and cultural organizations and a fellowship for students of color preparing for PhD work.
She also was active in social-change groups while at ŷAV. Grier cofounded Students Against Mass Incarceration, which aims to keep “the injustice in the criminal justice system” in the forefront of people’s minds. The group volunteered with the Prison Book Project and joined a campaign to support a local man they believed was wrongly convicted.
“That gave me exposure to the issues and experience working directly with incarcerated people and others directly affected by the system,” she said.
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