For first time, Gov. Jared Polis skips year-end pardons and commutations for convicted Coloradans

Sam Tabachnik, The Denver Post on Jan 2, 2026

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For the first time in his tenure, Gov. Jared Polis did not end the year by granting clemency to any individuals convicted of crimes in Colorado.

It had become an annual holiday tradition for the governor in late December to fully pardon or commute the sentences for Coloradans convicted of a wide variety of offenses.

But the Christmas and New Year’s holidays came and went without any action in late 2025.

“Governor Polis takes the weighty responsibility of clemency very seriously,” Shelby Wieman, a Polis spokesperson, said in a statement Friday. “Each application is carefully reviewed and deliberated on, based on their own merits, and that process remains ongoing. While in years past the announcement has come before the end of the year, there is no set timeline and the governor does not want to rush the process. Careful review of these applications continues.”

The Colorado Constitution gives the governor the power of clemency, which allows the granting of mercy or leniency to a person convicted of a crime. Commutation is the reduction of a criminal sentence, while a pardon is the full forgiveness of a crime.

The governor is the only person who can grant commutations and pardons after convictions for state crimes, while the state legislature has the authority to regulate the process.

Between 2019, Polis’ first year in office, and 2024, the governor granted clemency to at least eight people at the end of each year. Most years involved more than 20 combined pardons and commutations. In 2021, the Democrat issued 1,351 pardons for people convicted of marijuana possession charges.

In 2024, Polis shortened the sentences for four people — including two men sentenced to life in prison for murders in the 1990s — and pardoned another 22 individuals. In 2021, he also reduced the sentence from 110 years to 10 years for a truck driver convicted of causing a fatal crash in Lakewood that killed four people.

Polis did grant clemency earlier in 2025, issuing a blanket pardon in June to any Coloradans with state-level criminal convictions for possession of “magic mushrooms.”

The lack of year-end clemency orders comes as Polis faces pressure from President Donald Trump and his base to free the convicted former Mesa County clerk Tina Peters. The president claimed to issue Peters a pardon last month, though he lacks the authority to free people convicted of state crimes.

Peters is serving a nine-year sentence in state prison in Pueblo for felonies related to providing unauthorized access to voting equipment when she was the elected clerk and recorder of Mesa County.

Trump has repeatedly gone after Colorado’s governor, recently calling him a “scumbag,” while telling Polis and the Republican district attorney who prosecuted Peters to “rot in hell.” His Department of Justice last month announced it had launched an investigation into Colorado’s adult prisons and juvenile detention centers, with high-ranking justice officials linking the probe to Peters’ detainment.

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