I Beg Your Pardon part 5

Speaker: Do you know what 453 kilograms of cocaine looks like? It's roughly 1000 pounds. It weighs about the same as a grand piano. Or a large Male Grizzly Bear. Or 5 grown ass men forming a human pyramid. That's a lot of cociane. Now, imagine all that cocaine, $63 millions dollars worth, packed into 13 bricks, tucked away in a motorhome heading from California to illnois. That's exactly what happened in 1995. A state trooper pulled the RV for going 5 mph over the speed limit. At first, he gives the driver a warning. But the trooper started looking around. Something just didn't seem right. The trooper said, wait here and called for a K-9 unit to search the camper. That's when they found the cocaine. All the passengers were arrested... including my cousin Iris. When my family heard the news, we were shocked. I mean, it's still hard to believe. My cousin Iris never had a criminal record prior to this. After she was arrest, Iris sat in jair for 10 months awaiting trial.

Iridia Sanchez: It was crazy. I would look to the ceiling and I saw a little crack and I can just see if it was day or night. Wow. And there was always a little star in between that little crack at night, I can see the star and I'm like, oh my God, that you're gonna make me cry. Happy. You know? I know. No. 'cause it was been rough, you know?

Javier: No, I can't even imagine. Ultimately, the jury didn't buy her story and convicted Iris of drug trafficking.

Speaker: Case Reopened MiracleFamily Rejection After

Javier: Tell me about that day when like the judge said the sentencing.

Speaker: Javier (2):

Iridia Sanchez: B

Speaker: Judge Says 60 Years

Iridia Sanchez: ut that day was horrible. Mommy was there, mommy. I remember mommy touching my shoulder, and when the judge say 60 years, like, like I know, she, she, she freaked out. I freaked out. I had to go to the bathroom to roll up because what the hell, I haven't never, never done anything, you know?

Javier: when I heard how many years you got, I couldn't believe it. Yeah. Because like, not even, not even, uh, murderers get that much time. Nothing.

Iridia Sanchez: Not even that.

Speaker: LIFE SENTENCE

Javier: that was basically a life sentence,

Iridia Sanchez: Oh yeah. No, I would still be in prison right now. Iris was 33 when she was convicted. She would be 93 years old if she served her entire sentence.

Speaker: (music)

Iridia Sanchez: Over the course of this series, we’ve spent a lot of time poking holes in some pretty questionable acts of clemency. We’ve looked at the favors, the backroom deals, and the cases that just don’t sit right. But here’s the thing: Clemency does serve a purpose. When it’s done right, it’s a powerful tool for justice. It’s the last-ditch effort to exonerate the innocent who were discarded by a broken system. It’s a way to stitch a fractured nation back together—the way President Andrew Johnson did when he pardoned 13,000 Confederate soldiers, or how Jimmy Carter granted a second chance to hundreds of thousands of Vietnam draft dodgers. It’s supposed to be about mercy. It’s supposed to be about restoring the civil rights of those who have truly atoned for their crimes. In today's episode, we're going to talk about my cousin's journey applying for clemency in the state of Illinois, what she's up against, and who deserves a second chance.

Speaker: INTRO

Iridia Sanchez: I’m Javier Leiva... and this is PRETEND. Stories about real people... pretending to be someone else.

Speaker: AD BREAKACT ONE

Iridia Sanchez: Can you imagine going into prison in the late ninties then coming out in 2018? She was incarcerated during the digital revolution. She must have felt like she walked out of prison and into a different planet.

Javier: And then you got outta prison and it was like a whole new world, right?

Iridia Sanchez: No, I was like a, a fish out of the water. You know, you, you just like, I have never seen one of, um, the phone with camera and you can talk to people in the phone, like, what, what is this? You know? I don't, I don't, I don't even a computer. Not even a laptop. It was impressive. I was really crazy because I've never seen it.

Javier: Yeah.

Iridia Sanchez: it was 23 years, you know? Yeah. You're coming out of a world to a world that, that you knew back in the day, but you don't know nothing now. Every family has a black sheep. You know the one we whisper about at Thanksgiving. But that wasn't my cousin, Iris. Iris was the "fun one." She’s closer to my mother’s age. They’re part of that generation that came over from Cuba in the sixties—kids, maybe seven or eight years old, landing in a brand-new country with their whole lives stretched out in front of them. I have these vivid, yet blurry memories of the eighties. My mom was a nail stylist, and Iris would be at our house every single week to get her nails done. I don't remember the specific conversations—I was just a kid—but I remember the vibe. I remember the smell of the polish, the constant laughter, and just… having fun. Iris had everything going for her. Before prison, she was managing multiple medical department at a healthcare clinic. Which is why it hit us when, one day, she was just… gone. It felt like we’d never see her again. Sixty years.

Javier: I mean, you're 20 something years into this sentence, and you're thinking there's no hope. But when did things start turning around for you? Because I never expected you to be out and you know, I

Iridia Sanchez: dont think you or anybody, I don't think you or anybody. When I turned my 20, my 15 year mark, I thought that's it. You know, nobody's, you know, I'm not coming out ever again. But then one day in 2019, I get a message from Iris' attorney asking me to write a letter to Governor J.B. Pritzker tasking him to grant her a pardon of her 1996 conviction for drug trafficking. She had already served 23 year sof her 60 year sentence. It seemed like a long shot honestly.

Javier: When you told me about that, that you wanted me to write a letter to the governor, I was just like, I'll write it. But like, I didn't think that was actually gonna work. Yeah.

Iridia Sanchez: Like I wasn't even, I didn't know anything.

Javier: how many people wrote a letter for you?

Iridia Sanchez: Oh, a lot of people. Even the, the warden that head of the prison wrote me a letter.

Javier: Oh, really? You know?

Iridia Sanchez: Yeah. That's awesome.

Javier: Until now, we've only been talking about Federal acts of clemency granted by the President of the United States. With a stroke of a pen, the president can wipe away any federal crimes, for whatever reason they see fit. But that power only goes so far. The President has zero authority to pardon someone for a state-level conviction. Because my cousin Iris was convicted in a state court, only Governor JB Pritzker has the legal power to pardon her. First, let's clear up the language here. Because a pardon and a commutation are not the same thing. A pardon is usually for people who are already out of prison. It’s when the government formally forgives your crime and restores your civil rights, like the right to vote or own a gun. But a commutation... a commutation is for people who are still locked up. It’s when the Governor or president stepping in, cutting your sentence short, so you can go home. If you want to understand the reality of what Iris is up against, you just have to look at the numbers. In 2024, Governor JB Pritzker granted only six clemency petitions out of 2,100 clemency applications. In 2025, he granted 74 petitions but 73 of those were just pardons... for people who already served their time. Out of all the people still sitting in Illinois prisons, praying for a second chance... Governor Pritzker picked exactly one. Just one commutation. For Iris, those odds seem impossible. So I wrote the letter to Governor Pritzker, licked the envelope, and stuck it in the mail. I might as well would have dropped it in a black hole. I needed to understand how this system actually works. So, I reached out to Iris's attorney, Margaret Byrne. Margaret isn't just a defense lawyer; she's been in the trenches fighting the Illinois prison system and filing clemency petitions for the last forty-five years. If anyone knows how to open a door, it’s her.

Margaret Byrne: Well, I started this organization in the 1990s called the Illinois Clemency Project for battered women, and I worked with volunteer law students and law professors and some lawyers, and we set up this whole project and none of us got paid to do it. A battered woman in prison, she doesn't have any money. You know what I mean? a lot of battered women get sentenced to too much time because, uh, the abuse wasn't considered adequately, when the judge, sentenced them.

Javier: And specifically battered women that I guess were involved in some sort of crime.

Speaker: Javier (2):

Margaret Byrne: Mostly the women I've represented have killed their batterers,

Javier: I gotcha.

Margaret Byrne: in some, version of self-defense. But the self-defense didn't work, here in Illinois. The minimum sentence for murder is 20 years. And, uh, if you use a gun in the commission of a murder, the minimum sentence and you have to serve 100% of it is 45 years. So you end up with some very unjust, sentences.

Speaker: THE IMPORTANCE OF THE CLEMENCY SYSTEM

Javier: the law is a blunt force instrument, right. The clemency system is designed to, to look at situations like the one that you just described, and, and, and, and, and that's what it's for. Right?

Margaret Byrne: It's been. The greatest pleasure of my career is to represent women who are in prison who shouldn't be there. It's great. money can't compare to what it's like to watch a woman walk out of prison who shouldn't have been in there in the first place.

Javier: You know, take her over the Walmart and let her buy some new clothes. I mean, it's like heaven. It's so great. So I, I was talking to my, my cousin 'cause I started thinking about it and I remember that years ago she asked me to write her a letter asking for clemency. And I just thought, man, this, that just seems like a long shot, you know? I don't know why, but I was like, Hey, you know what? I love my cousin. I'm gonna write her, a letter and see what happens.

Margaret Byrne: they're rarely granted, clemency is based on mercy. the last thing a a, a prisoner can do. You know, after she has lost all of her appeals, lost post-conviction petitions, It's, it's like the last ditch effort for somebody who's in prison when everything else has failed. But as you've heard in the previous episodes, some powerful people seem skip to the front of the line. the current president, you know, he, he uses it, uh, to. It appears to be to make money. I don't know where these pay payments are going. The people are paying a million dollars or $2 million to Rudy Giuliani or other lawyers. You basically are able to buy the grant of a clemency. Now, and that's a complete perversion of the purpose of clemency.

Javier: Yeah, it, it is. it's just crazy. The inherent value you, you have if you are in the orbit of. The president. Yeah. It's just, it's crazy. Since we're talking about Illinois, it would be a miss to not talk about "Blago." Former Democratic Governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich. While he was never accused of using his power to sell pardons or commutations, Rod's governor's office was very much open for business.

Speaker: (beat)

Javier: When federal investigators finally closed in on him in 2008, the charges read less like a political scandal and more like a mob shakedown. He wasn't just taking bribes; he was actively using the leverage of the Governor's office to squeeze people for cash. Blagojevich held up eight million dollars in state funding for a children's hospital. Do you want that money for those sick kids? It's gonna cost ya. A $50,000 campaign contribution from the hospital’s CEO. Then there was the state's racing industry. When racetrack owners needed his signature on a piece of legislation, Blagojevich... not so fast. Pay $100,000 as you pass go. But most famous corruption was his attempt to auction off a United States Senate seat to the highest bidder.

Speaker: ( (Slight pause for emphasis))

Javier: When Barack Obama was elected President in 2008, it fell to the Governor Blagojevich to appoint his successor in the Senate. Blago saw this as an opprotunity.

Speaker: I've got this thing and it's golden and I, I'm just not giving it up for nothing.

Javier: Little did Blago know that he was secretly being recorded by the FBI. He wanted millions in campaign cash. He was ultimately convicted on 18 counts, including wire fraud, extortion, and bribery, and sentenced to 14 years in federal prison. In 2020, Trump commuted Blago's sentence and sent him home. So, how does a disgraced, impeached Democratic governor, caught selling the highest offices in US Government, end up walking free with his record wiped clean by a Republican President? We will never know for sure. Maybe Trump saw a kindred spirit in the imprisoned governor. Then 5 years later, in his second term in office, Trump signing a full and unconditional pardon for Blagojevich.

Speaker: want to express our deepest and most pro profound and everlasting gratitude to President Trump for what he's done today. For the full presidential, pardon? I think about my relationship with President Trump and it's really. Well, he's always doing things for me and he never asked me to do anything for him. After 2,896 days in prison, nearly eight years, president Trump pulled me out of there. And now he did this. And, uh, all I can tell you is that, uh, president Trump is a man who, when he sees things that are wrong, he rights them and puts an end to them. ACT TWO

Javier: Something is broken with our clemency system. Some people might say, why do we even need this system? If you committed a crime, serve your time and suck it up. But for me, I don't want to live in that world. I personally believe in second chances. I think it's easy to want to be tough on criminals. Especially felons. But what happens when these people get out of jail.

Margaret Byrne: when you've been in prison for many years, the punishment continues when you get out because you can't get a job, people won't rent an apartment to you. it's so easy now to check someone's criminal background. When you get out of prison, people say, 'Just get a job." Easier said than done. If you're a felon, you can't even drive an uber. You can't be a nurse. You can't be a real estate agent. You can't even get a license to cut hair in some states. The easiest place to hide is usually the kitchen of a restaurant, working the line, because it's one of the few places left that doesn't care about what you did in 1995. In this country, felons don't have many options, and often go back to a life of crime. Shouldn't we have a system in place that rewards people who have served the time and have become productive citizens? Criminologists have studied human behavior for decades, and they all agree on one undeniable fact: people age out of crime. They even have a name for it. It’s called the "age-crime curve." According to a massive, eight-year study by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, if you release a twenty-one-year-old from prison, there is a sixty-seven percent chance they’ll be rearrested. But if you look at people who are released in their sixties? The rearrest rate plummets to roughly thirteen percent. And the reason is simple... the person who goes into prison at twenty-five is not the same person who sits in a cell at fifty-five. Attorney Jeff Grant and co-founder of the White Collar Support group tells me that the pardon system doesn't go far not enough.

Jeff Grant: A pardon is not a records expungement a pardon is a forgiveness. So technically, even if you granted a presidential pardon, you still have a criminal record. that criminal record can still prevent you from doing a lot of things, someone still might not wanna hire you because you have a criminal record. Despite your pardon, you may not be able to be a baseball coach on your son's baseball team. There's a lot of ways a criminal record would still impede your ability to move your life forward. even if you got a pardon?

Speaker: It is way easier to get a record expunged at the state level than at the federal level. If you are convicted of a federal crime, the door is essentially welded shut. For 99% of federal convictions, the only way to clear the record is to get a Presidential Pardon. That's why Jeff Grant co-founded the Federal Expungment Initiative.

Jeff Grant: right now very few people are getting pardons, even with the amount of pardons that the prior administration gave out and the current administration is giving out. there really haven't been that many pardons, but there is a lot of Pardon? Movement. There's a lot of pardon?

Javier: Or they're making a lot of noise. It's not the quantity, but Right.

Speaker: Who Gets Pardoned Matters

Javier: It's who is getting pardoned.

Jeff Grant: Exactly.

Javier: So, so let me, let me see if I, I'm gonna spit it back at you to see if I understand what you're saying. You're saying if you're, if you have federal charges against you or if you've been convicted of a federal crime, there are very few tools in the. Toolkit. One of those is a par. Pardon? The other one is like, uh, computation, right? So maybe the solution is adding one more tool to that toolkit, which is expungement, right?

Jeff Grant: Exactly.

Speaker: You may remember Jeff Grant from an previous PRETEND episode. In 2006, Jeff Grant pleaded guilty to charges of wire fraud and money laundering. As a result he lost he had to surrender his law license.

Jeff Grant: five years ago I got my law license reinstated in the state of New York, that gave me an opportunity for a second life, in my opinion, similar to a pardon, or much more powerful even than a pardon.

Speaker: Since leaving prison, Jeff Grant has made it his mission to help offenders like him find their footing when they reach the other side.

Jeff Grant: So even though we have 30, support group members now. who have applied for a pardon? And we're gonna be advocating for, I'm not applying for a pardon. And the reason, there's two reasons I'm not applying for a pardon reason. One is I want to be a dispassionate advocate. I want to get pardons for everyone in our support group. And I don't want it to be somehow clouded by the fact that I'm looking for a pardon for myself. There's no, there's no money. There's no fee. This is just something we do out of, out of our ministry and because we think it's the right thing to do. The second thing is that I really want my record expunged and if we succeed in getting an expungement bill passed, I want to be one of the first to put my application in to get an expungement. I think it's much more powerful than a pardon.

Javier: I think what happens with the clemency and with the pardons is that in some of these cases is such a slap in the face of the victims, right? Like, uh, wiping out restitution

Jeff Grant: I think if the question is, you know, has the pardon power been misused? Is it being used for, you know, kind of as a, uh, um, a business opportunity for the people who are seeking pardons? Sure, of course.

Javier: there might be a better way to process clemency requests.

Jeff Grant: Tell me what you've done in the last three years, right? 'cause if you sat on your hands and did nothing, or you did nothing to benefit society or you, nothing, did nothing to benefit your family, or you didn't go to. Classes. You didn't do anything to become a better citizen

Javier: you gotta earn it.

Jeff Grant: Right. I'm not gonna give you leniency here. I think it's basically that same standard.

Javier: Tell me what you've done over the course of these years to no longer be that person. I think that's a very reasonable thing and like I would find anyone, I would find it hard for anyone to disagree with that. Right. Yeah. I mean, it, it, it's not that complicated.

Speaker: I, I don't think it's that complicated.He also says that you have to be mentally and emotionally fit. What Jeff Grant is describing is a system, a process. Not paying for political favors. Jeff Grant and a team of lawyers, academics, and policy advisors are helping draft a bill and are hoping to get it moved through Congress. If successful, they'll be able to make federal criminal expungent an alternative addition to the clemency system.

Javier: But let's get back to my cousin Ivy's case. I asked her Attorney Margarey Bryne about the case. , she received a 60 year sentence, which at the time, in 1996, when I heard that, I was thinking I would never see my cousin again. This was a life sentence. Do people really serve 60 years for, for this type of offense,

Margaret Byrne: it's a very long sentence. I mean,

Javier: I

Margaret Byrne: offense was, uh, drug trafficking. And in the nineties, everybody was all riled up about, uh, drug trafficking and Illinois across, 80 the highway. lots of drugs were carried in trucks and motor homes like the one she was in. and a lot of people got very big sentences because they were carrying very huge piles of cocaine, you know.

Javier: thousands of pounds, right?

Margaret Byrne: but in her case, I got her sentence reduced by going back to court, and that judge just, I could tell right from the beginning he felt that that was a ridiculous sentence. So that's how her sentence was reduced to, I think, 40 years. And she had to do 20 and she had already done them. when the clemency petition was granted. So she came to the hearing, the, and the hearing's conducted before the Illinois Prisoner Review board. And she was a able to talk to them and answer their questions, and I think they could see that this is not a drug trafficker, if anything. You know, she was just a, a mule who you know, but in fact I don't, I'm very confident and you know her, um, she would never have done something like that. Never. If somebody had said to her, we wanna put 1100 pounds of cocaine in the back of the motor home you're in, she would never have gotten in that motor home. No, that's not who she is.

Javier: like it's so out of character.

Margaret Byrne: No, she didn't know. I think the people who were driving the motor home wanted to make it look innocent and they needed women there. 'cause otherwise it was four guys, uh, in a motor home together I mean, it just didn't seem like a likely situation. They needed a couple women to make it look. So she was just totally used. After Margaret was able to reduce Ivy's sentence and get her out of prison, my cousin started working, anywhere she could, despite her criminal record looming over her. She had already been working. She and she had a perfect prison record. She had never been arrested for anything else. she appropriate candidate to be able to, get pardoned for the offense and be able to expunge it from her record Easier said than done. But then, to my surprise.... Margaret was able to pull it off. With a flick of his pen, Governor JB Pritzker granted her clemency and expunged her record. I couldn't believe it. Ivy couldn't believe it.

Speaker: IVY GOT CLEMENCY

Javier: I'm just saying that like Right, like you won the lottery in a sense, right?

Iridia Sanchez: Oh, definitely. See, no, I, I wasn't even thinking about none of like, you don't even think. Especially me, you know?

Javier: Right.

Iridia Sanchez: I, I was like, I couldn't believe it. Like, what is this? Like I didn't understand nothing left and right in my attorney explained it to me. But it was a miracle, Holly, to tell you the truth. It was a miracle

Javier: Yeah.

Iridia Sanchez: For me to get a claim. I mean, what, I don't even know what to say, but in reality, I don't have a record.

Speaker: I asked my cousin how much she had to pay in attorney fees for the clemency application and hearing.

Iridia Sanchez: She helped me pro bono. Everything. Everything.

Margaret Byrne: I wasn't surprised because what's it to 'em, you know, it's not a big deal. No.

Javier: Well, I'm so, so glad that, and that my cousin was able to find you

Margaret Byrne: didn't have any money.

Javier: Yeah. No, no, absolutely. And she's still, you know, she's just getting by

Margaret Byrne: Well, she probably got out because you wrote that letter.

Javier: Oh gosh. I'm sure a lot of people wrote that letter, right?

Margaret Byrne: Mm-hmm.

Javier: Yeah. Yeah.

Margaret Byrne: They did.

Javier: I'm glad I played a small role in it,

Margaret Byrne: You did.

Speaker: ONLY GOD PARDONS

Iridia Sanchez: The one thing I can tell you, I never got in trouble, And if you see my clemency of my hearing paper, like you are an example of an inmate. and I never got in trouble. I always try to help people like I used to do out here. I I didn't change.

Javier: Yeah, She says, she knows who she is and what she stands for. Yeah. To this day, Iris insist she is innocent.

Iridia Sanchez: 'Cause I've met, I'm not a criminal.

Javier: You can get all the pardons and commutations.... but my cousin says that nothing erases the stigma attached with being a convicted felon.

Iridia Sanchez: And when you are out here, it's even totally, believe it or not, have it in that gonna make me, it's gonna make me cry, but sometimes I feel. Out here, it's worse than in there because I, you are in a bubble and here is who's out to get you, you know?

Javier: Yeah.

Iridia Sanchez: And it's very unpleasant to feel like that sometimes.

Javier: Yeah.

Iridia Sanchez: You know, it's all your freedom. Yeah. But you can have freedom, but you have freedom in your mind, in your heart, wherever you are, that's your freedom, you know?

Speaker: Money Stress and Survival

Iridia Sanchez: But I made it through, I made it out. That's how I feel. I made it out. I'm fine. never going back to how I was before I got incarcerated.

Javier: Yeah.

Iridia Sanchez: You know, they judge you a lot.

Javier: Yeah.

Iridia Sanchez: And that's what sucks the most, you know? Yeah. Because you're judging me for no reason and you don't know my story and ask me. Right. But one of the worst part is when you get out here and that people reject you.

Javier: Yeah.

Iridia Sanchez: You know, like you're gonna go give them a kiss, a hug. Like if you know, you know, the worst of the worst. And I'm like, whoa.

Javier: And there's no pardon for that. Right. Like,

Iridia Sanchez: no, only God has the pardon. It's crazy. I think you're the first one who ever asked me.

Javier: Yeah.

Iridia Sanchez: I still carry it with me. Javi. I cannot hide it. Okay. No. Let's pretend it never happened. Pretend that never happened. Are you kidding me? That was part of my life for 23 years. You are gonna tell me never happened. No. Tell to the Yes it happened. Yeah. Only way. No, I don't have, this is my life.

Javier: Yeah.

Iridia Sanchez: And this is the truth. And that's it.