No hearing has taken place since July, which means no pardons granted or denied in six months. 

Compare that to 2013 and 2014, when seven hearings were held each year and more than 200 pardons granted. 

At its last meeting, the second of 2019, 102 applications made it to the agenda. No testimony was permitted on 79 of them. Twenty-three were applications for reprieve or commutation of license revocations or suspensions, and testimony was allowed on those.

That's why Omaha Sen. John McCollister brought a bill (LB968) this session to better regulate the meetings of the board. It had a hearing Friday in front of the Judiciary Committee. 

The board can grant respites, reprieves, pardons and commutations of everything from murder convictions to driver's license suspensions. 

The bill would require the board to hold hearings at least every 90 days and require a hearing on each application at the next regularly scheduled meeting.

It would also prohibit combining unrelated applications at the same hearing and require a record of all hearings and for the board to make annual reports to the Legislature outlining pardons granted and considered.

The board is made up of Gov. Pete Ricketts, Attorney General Doug Peterson and Secretary of State Bob Evnen. Ricketts and Peterson took office in 2015; Evnen joined last year.

Teela Mickles, the founder and CEO of Compassionate Action that works with confined people, said she has witnessed firsthand the lack of action by the Board of Pardons. 

The first of two board meetings she attended in the past four years, she said, was a shock to her. At that meeting, the board tabled for two years all applications for sentence commutations.

One of the women in the audience was devastated, she said. Her brother, her last living sibling, had been in prison for 48 years and was elderly, and she wanted to see his sentence commuted so he could come home and they could live and die together.

The second hearing she attended allowed no testimony and applications were quickly denied. 

"The room was packed," she said. "The people have expectations of this board. It's just like you're just a little puppy in the bag, and let's just drown them all. It's disgusting and it's humiliating. ... There was a motion and it was a wrap." 

Ryan Sullivan, who teaches in the Nebraska College of Law clinic and supervises the Clean Slate Project, but who was not representing the University of Nebraska, said consistent hearings are important. 

From 2006 to 2016, the board considered 1,600 applications, and met six to eight times a year, with testimony taken three to four times a year. Beginning in 2017, the frequency of scheduled hearings diminished greatly, he said.

The decrease in Board of Pardons' activity has a detrimental impact on the criminal justice system, he said, which relies on criminal record rehabilitation mechanisms such as pardons to help reduce recidivism, he said.

People are told at their sentencing that if they stay crime-free for a required period of time, they'll have an opportunity for a fresh start by requesting a pardon. It gives them something to strive for and incentive to stay crime-free, and a chance for a formal removal of that label of criminal.  

After Sonya Fauver, Pardons Board administrative assistant for 15 years, left the board at the end of 2018, the tasks were taken over by others at the Nebraska Parole Board. Then in October, the Nebraska Crime Commission took over. 

Laurie Holman, the Crime Commission's legislative liaison and policy coordinator, said the Pardons Board has a meeting scheduled for Feb. 18 and it will begin to work through the backlog of applications.  

The Pardons Board opposed McCollister's bill, but at the same time understood concerns, it said in a letter to the Judiciary Committee.

At the February meeting, the board will consider 60 applications. 

"The board is committed to addressing the remainder of existing applications in additional meetings over the course of 2020," the letter said. 

The board said that over the past two years it has streamlined and made significant improvements for the benefit of applicants. 

The board's plan renders the need for LB968 unnecessary, the three board members said.