Brooks: Jubilant clemency hearing brings Jason Sole one step closer to a clean slate

There are no applause breaks when the Minnesota Clemency Review Commission decides your fate.

Petitioners are expected to sit quietly and listen. No clapping, no arguing; no matter if the board recommends mercy or not.

This time, the board made an exception.

“We’ll let you break the rules today,” commission member Zach Lindstrom told the crowd that filled the hearing room, the overflow room and the online feed on Friday. “Go ahead.”

The crowd erupted in cheers for Jason Sole, who served time as a young man for a drug offense.

Sole had waited calmly as all eight members voted to recommend a pardon. Now he smiled wide, drumming happily on the table, before rising to hug his way out of the room. He was one step closer to a clean slate.

If the pardon board agrees with the recommendation, the person he is today is all that employers, loan officers and agents at the airport will see: a 47-year-old husband, father, author and college professor. Not the 26-year-old who served time on a felony drug charge.

“I want to know how that feels,” said Sole, who appeared at the hearing with his community at his back, quite literally. It was the largest crowd board members could remember seeing at a clemency hearing. “I hope to get these shackles loosened up off me.”

Sole has tried for years to convince the state of Minnesota to wipe the 20-year-old felonies from his record. Under the state’s old pardon system, the only way to clear your slate was to convince all three of the most powerful officials in the state. Sole convinced the governor and the state attorney general, but the chief justice of the state Supreme Court at the time said no.

Since then, new reforms have made the process a little easier to navigate and accessible to more than a few dozen petitioners at a time. The Clemency Review Commission now screens applications and makes recommendations to the board.

The board has the option of simply signing off on a pardon and sending it in the mail. Others will still go before the board and plead their case to the governor, the attorney general and the chief justice — although a pardon now only requires a yes from the governor and one other member of the board.