Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee issued formal pardons for 43 Tennesseans on Friday. All cases came with recommendations from the Tennessee Board of Parole and all recipients had finished prison sentences.
Lee stressed that his wave of pardons, which arrived days after President Joe Biden commuted sentences for about 1,500 people, differed in substance from that of the outgoing president, who also issued a broad pardon for his son Hunter Biden.
“These are very different individuals than many of the individuals whose sentences were commuted in the previous federal clemency grant,” Lee told press.
Guided by his faith in God and markets, Tennessee’s deeply conservative top executive heads into his second term as governor
Lee emphasized that criminal histories were a stumbling block for these recipients to seek or gain employment, and his clemency decisions had been reached after an “exhaustive process.”
Both Lee and Biden demonstrated a rarely used power assigned to the executive branch — the authority to directly intervene in a judicial system. Lee previously issued smaller clemency waves, including a 2022 decision to pardon 16 people and expedite 30 sentences, typically just before Christmas. A practicing Christian, Lee publicly attributes his moral framework to Christian teachings, though he has faced criticism from faith leaders for his commitment to Tennessee’s death penalty.
Throughout his six years in office, Lee has pushed reforms to the criminal legal system with varying degrees of success, sometimes putting him at odds with a hardline legislature controlled by his fellow Republicans.
See the full list of those receiving pardons below.
- Sabrina Myrick Adams
- Otto Adkerson
- Pamela Amos
- Ashley Cooper Barnhill
- Erik Bennett
- Justin Beshearse
- Lanesha Brown
- Quanroyas Clendening
- Jeffrey Crick
- Johnny Drinkard
- Lauren Driver
- Angelia Laderman Dycus
- Jason Hall
- Sarah Harrell
- Kimberly Holliday
- Matthew Hoover
- Joshua Hunt
- Jonathan Jackson
- James Jones
- Kathy Keel
- Tameka Kirk
- Steven Langston
- Shantie Martin
- Miguel Monzon
- Tyree Morgan
- Brittany Nepa
- Zennia Nesmith
- Shirley Parsons
- Christopher Prince
- Cynthia Ramirez
- Stephanie Robertson
- Jennifer Rush
- Melissa Smith
- Thomas Smith
- Taylor Stevenson
- Robert Turner
- Patrick Varni
- Jeffrey Victory
- Pamela Waller
- Janet Watson
- Joseph Whitfield
- Paul Williams
- Tanika Woodard
