WASHINGTON — Karen Orehowsky decided to join the Beltway lobbying crowd not long after getting a phone call from her mother, back home in Iowa. Her mother told her she had a new pen pal, a former drug dealer by the name of Phillip Emmert who was serving a 27-year sentence in federal prison.
Orehowsky was alarmed to hear that her 62-year-old mom was corresponding with an inmate. But her mother assured her that Emmert had reformed and did not deserve his long sentence. She said her rural church had begun writing letters to him to give him hope and support, and suggested her daughter do the same.
Orehowsky was skeptical. "Nobody in this great country gets 27 years with no possibility of parole as a nonviolent first offender," she said, recalling her initial doubts.
But after some research, she, too, came to believe Emmert had been the victim of an unjust sentence -- and heartbreaking personal misfortune. He had, she learned, become a model prisoner.
Orehowsky decided she would do more than write him letters: She would lobby the Justice Department to get President Bush to commute Emmert's sentence.
As an employee of the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, she knew people inside the federal bureaucracy. She talked up the case at parties attended by administration officials. She sought advice from government lawyers who had first-hand knowledge of the clemency process.
Early on, a former Justice Department official warned her that she was taking on a nearly hopeless task. Orehowsky scribbled her exact words -- "You have no reasonable chance of success" -- on a piece of paper and pinned it to a wall above her desk at work.
The Bush administration's record for granting clemency was not encouraging. In 2002, when Orehowsky embarked on her quixotic task, Bush had not commuted a single sentence.
He since has taken action in four cases, the most prominent being that of former vice presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice in the CIA leak case. Bush has also granted full pardons to more than 100 people -- but only after they had served their time.
Cases such as those of Libby and Marc Rich, the fugitive financier pardoned by President Clinton in 2001, have raised questions about the fairness of presidential clemency because they involved the affluent and politically connected.
