Gov. Bruce Rauner today granted clemency requests for 10 Illinois criminals.
Clemency requests allow convicted criminals to pursue expungement through the court system, clearing them of their crime and essentially erasing it from their criminal record.
Rauner has released five rounds of clemency rulings since taking office and has established a process for reviewing them regularly. Each of the 10 people the governor granted clemency to today cleared a background check through the Illinois State Police’s Law Enforcement Agencies Data System.
In addition to the 10 requests Rauner approved, he denied another 200. The latest round of judgments wades further into a backlog of more than 1,200 appeals stretching back multiple administrations. The most recent batch catches the administration up to April 2007.