Timeline: A History of Pardons

by Robin Respaut, Al Shaw and Krista Kjellman Schmidt

Dec. 4, 2011, 4 a.m. EST

The chart below shows pardons granted per year from 1900-2011. Click on a bar to see the number of pardons granted and by which president. The timeline below the chart shows notable pardons. | Story:Shades of Mercy: Presidential Forgiveness Heavily Favors Whites »

10 pardons

Timeline: Notable Pardons

Sources: The White House, United States Office of the Pardon Attorney, Department of Justice, The Minority Staff Committee on Government Reform - U.S. House of Representatives, The New York Times, The Washington Post, PardonPower.com/P.S. Ruckman, Jr., Yale Law School, University of Pittsburgh Law School, TIME magazine, The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, CNN.com, KITV/ABC News, LA Times, Texas Monthly, Frank Sinatra By Chris Rojek

Latest Stories from ProPublica

The Company Testing Air in East Palestine Homes Was Hired by Norfolk Southern. Experts Say That Testing Isn’t Enough.

Are Colorado’s Efforts to Curb HOA Foreclosures Working?

HOA Foreclosures Are a “Lose-Lose” Game for Coloradans, but These Lawyers Win Regardless of the Outcome

ProPublica and Partners Win Five SABEW Awards for Business Journalism

Republish This Story for Free

Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Thank you for your interest in republishing this story. You are are free to republish it so long as you do the following:

You have to credit ProPublica and any co-reporting partners. In the byline, we prefer “Author Name, Publication(s).” At the top of the text of your story, include a line that reads: “This story was originally published by ProPublica.” You must link the word “ProPublica” to the original URL of the story.
If you’re republishing online, you must link to the URL of this story on propublica.org, include all of the links from our story, including our newsletter sign up language and link, and use our PixelPing tag.
If you use canonical metadata, please use the ProPublica URL. For more information about canonical metadata, refer to this Google SEO link.
You can’t edit our material, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week,” and “Portland, Ore.” to “Portland” or “here.”)
You cannot republish our photographs or illustrations without specific permission. Please contact [email protected].
It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories. You can’t state or imply that donations to your organization support ProPublica’s work.
You can’t sell our material separately or syndicate it. This includes publishing or syndicating our work on platforms or apps such as Apple News, Google News, etc.
You can’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually. (To inquire about syndication or licensing opportunities, contact [email protected].)
You can’t use our work to populate a website designed to improve rankings on search engines or solely to gain revenue from network-based advertisements.
We do not generally permit translation of our stories into another language.
Any website our stories appear on must include a prominent and effective way to contact you.
If you share republished stories on social media, we’d appreciate being tagged in your posts. We have official accounts for ProPublica on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Copy and paste the following into your page to republish:

Current site Current page