Governor Pat Quinn granted clemency to 126 people Wednesday. Some of the crimes of those pardoned date back to the 1970s.
A number of them have been waiting for a decision for nearly a decade. A backlog of clemency requests built up under ex-governor Rod Blagojevich, who acted on very few appeals.
Ken Tupy serves with the Illinois Prisoner Review Board. He says the board makes recommendations on each case, but the governor doesn't have to follow it.
"The board tends to look at the amount of violence in the crime, the amount of harm on the victims, what the petitioner has done with their life, how many years it's been, whether or not they've shown that they're rehabilitated."
Quinn granted clemency to over twelve-hundred people in his term as governor, and denied a pardon to more than 21-hundred.
