Do you think that the majority of people are aware how and when is the pardon applied or is there a somewhat wrong idea in Bulgaria? A part of society believes that the condemned should never be pardoned.
I do not have the self-confidence to answer what people's ideas are, but I am convinced that it is the duty of the state to inform them about the way in which its bodies exercise the power entrusted to them and about the results they achieve. Pardoning is a specialized professional activity and it is not possible for citizens to have an opinion on it without access to such information.
In the area of pardons, this was a targeted policy before 2016, and it led to awareness and peace of mind for citizens and confidence in the actions of the head of state in exercising this right of his. People showed sympathy and satisfaction in pardoning convicts, the reproaches were rather in the direction that their number was small. I remember cases of strong public pressure to pardon persons who were denied it, nevertheless. When this policy is not transparent and the public is not regularly and honestly informed about it, it is normal to expect an increase in public suspicion and a sense of threat, which in turn can give rise to a claim that the right, which is not exercised understandably, not is exercised at all.
Is there a law - who should be pardoned and when?
I cannot say what the situation is at the moment, since after 2016-2018 the official data becomes increasingly scarce and uninformative. Analyzes are missing. The reports of the Commission on Pardons are short and in their main part reproduce the old analytical reports. Personally, I am not guided by the standards for decision-making, since pardoning requires an individual approach, and in the reports everything is the same. The descriptions of pardons are sketchy and vague, and in some of them the exceptionality is neither obvious nor substantiated. The composition of the Commission is not clear. The head of state owes no reasons for a pardon and is criminally irresponsible.
The only guarantee that the law will not be applied arbitrarily and outside of public control is the existence of an expert-consultative body that bears full responsibility for the recommendations it makes. Its members should be known. Through the efforts of a series of commissions before the terms of the current presidential couple, sustainable standards of the practice of law were developed that ensured its predictability.
These standards, detailed for example in the public monthly and annual reports and analyzes of the old commissions, have been recognized as best European practice. Among them are, for example, rules for establishing the exclusivity of the case, assessment of recidivism and other public risks, progress in the correction of convicts, the severity of repression, applicability of alternative institutions for its relief, refraining from revision of judicial acts, etc. .I would say that with their observance, the pardon is exercised comprehensibly for society, and the condemned and their relatives are aware of when to seek it. In all cases, there are no established criteria upon which the president is obliged to pardon, but when he pardons, he is obliged not to violate the rules and principles of the legal system and not to encroach on the exclusive powers of other authorities.
What is the profile of the people who want to be pardoned and does anyone know what happens to them if their request is granted – are they re-educated, is someone controlling them?
This question does not have a single answer. First, it depends on the type of pardon. There are types in which the convicted person continues to serve a sentence and in this sense remains under the supervision and control of the state. In other types, there is no such need, and that is why the person is pardoned with the entire remainder of the punishment. In some cases, the pardon is applied more than once. One such example is the pardon of death row inmates, in some of whom it transformed the death penalty into life imprisonment without parole, then life imprisonment. These cases have been observed for decades and are indisputable. There is one general rule – a pardon does not apply if the convicted person continues to pose a risk to society. Even if this risk has disappeared, it may not be applied again, if the case is not exceptional, or if there are other options for mitigating the penalty. Pardon is an extraordinary remedy. It is applied very rarely.
The petitioner's profile has been analyzed in detail in the past in the commissions' periodic reports. Convicts predominated in it, and this is also after the merits of the Bulgarian model. In our country, the convicted person himself is empowered to directly address the bearer of the highest state mercy and personally present his point of view without depending on intermediaries, and the convicted people massively take advantage of this opportunity.
As for the people themselves, it is my firm professional conviction that the vast variety of human destinies makes it unprofessional and unethical to reason about them in general terms. They are all people who, despite their mistakes, weaknesses, torments, regrets, losses, naive notions of justice, confrontation with the irreversible consequences of the crime and other unimaginable difficulties for a legally living citizen, remain connected to society and the values of a non-criminal lifestyle .
Are these people, already pardoned, a public risk?
According to the practice that I know and that I have followed, pardon is not allowed if the convicted person is a public risk. This is the universal opinion of all the specialists in the matter and the members of the commissions that I know. This question is evaluated according to special professional methods and is among the main ones that should receive an unequivocal answer during the analysis of the case. The presence of such a risk is a sufficient and absolute bar to a pardon, even if there are arguments in its favor. There is practically no risk of relapse among those pardoned. In any case, it is not higher than the risk for any unconvicted citizen, i.e. for all of us. The cases of convicts who committed a crime after being pardoned are an exception.
Can the sentence of a convicted person be commuted without being pardoned?
Yes, this is the usual mass case. Legal systems have provided for a variety of regular institutions to mitigate punishment when, in the course of serving it, it begins to become disproportionate. Such is, for example, conditional early release from imprisonment due to the advanced rehabilitation of convicts; the postponement or interruption of the execution of the sentence due to illness or for various other family or personal reasons requiring the convict to return to society in order to take care of his own or other people's rights and interests; the judicial commutation of life imprisonment to 30 years imprisonment again due to progress in corrections; amnesty; multiple institutions regulating the severity of enforcement regimes, rewarding correctional achievements; the forgiveness of uncollectible government debts in the case of excessive fines, etc. The Bulgarian system is particularly rich in such institutes, which, in a comparatively European way, makes it one of the fairest and most flexible to the twists and turns in the convict's life and his reaction to the punishment.
When the case is within their scope, these institutes are preferred because they are specifically designed for specific categories of circumstances and offer much more options to achieve the most adequate individual solution. They are applied by the competent judicial and criminal enforcement authorities according to transparent, often competitive procedures. Applying pardons instead of them or despite the refusal of the relevant authority to apply them violates the separation of powers and the rule of law and impairs the constitutional powers of that authority. When the conditions for the application of such an institution are present, a pardon is refused, since it is a means of reducing repression, only if the legal system cannot respond in any other way to a case that is legally intolerable, i.e. a state reaction is due.
What is the picture in our country and where are we compared to other European countries?
We don't know what the picture is in our country. As I mentioned, the pardon policy over the last two terms has become increasingly opaque. In the past, the Bulgarian model was considered one of the most perfect in the world. According to the clemency index, which is a criterion for comparative assessment of the maturity of penal systems and whose ideal values are 1%-1.5%, Bulgaria had stabilized at 1.3%.
There is currently no data to measure it against. In 2013, the European Court of Human Rights announced the Bulgarian model as a recommended European practice. It is also described in the scientific literature. Its achievements are currently being abandoned in favor of some superficially similar practices, but it could easily be restored with the resumption of positive, transparent and enlightened enforcement practices. Once developed, they are not difficult to follow by anyone who approaches the exercise of state power responsibly and humbly and with respect for the right of a democratic society to know at least the principle basis of the decisions taken and to participate with a critical opinion in the evolution of state policies.