In 2022, a sixteen-year-old boy found himself in his second year of what Paul Schnell, Commissioner of Corrections, called “purgatory.” Convicted of second-degree unintentional murder when he was fourteen, Carlos Dickerson Jr. was prosecuted as an adult and sent to the Lino Lakes prison to participate in the Youthful Offender Program (Program). The Program was not designed for long-term participants, and most juveniles participate for only a few months before they move into adult programming. However, Dickerson was the youngest person to ever enter the Program.
While other juvenile participants came and went, Dickerson stayed. And federal law kept Dickerson isolated from others incarcerated at Lino Lakes because the law requires juveniles to be held separately from adults. At the time, Minnesota law also prevented the Department of Corrections from housing him—even temporarily—at the Red Wing Correctional Facility, where it sends most juvenile offenders. With two years left before he could move to adult programming, Dickerson was stuck. Neither the Minnesota Judicial Branch nor the Department of Corrections could provide Dickerson any relief for the situation, so he approached the Board of Pardons for an archaic form of relief: a reprieve.
This Article examines the uniqueness of the Minnesota Board of Pardons (Board) by reviewing previous statutory limits to the Board’s power and the 2023 changes from the Minnesota Legislature through the lens of the reprieve—a largely unknown and little-used form of clemency. This Article will highlight the potential for reprieves as a form of clemency. First, Part II of the Article reviews the origins of clemency law in Minnesota. Next, Part III examines the nature of the reprieve today in Minnesota and nationally by reviewing statutes, caselaw, and trends. Part IV then explains the changes enacted in 2023 by the Minnesota Legislature that overhauled the Board and conspicuously left reprieves on the table as a form of clemency. Finally, Part V concludes by encouraging advocates and applicants across the state to consider creative uses of the reprieve and echoing the Supreme Court’s assertion that clemency can take whatever form justice requires.