Days before he left office, former President Joe Biden’s order of clemency for people convicted of federal drug crimes was billed as one of the largest such acts for non-violent offenders in U.S. history.
But the family members of Karen Clarke, who was murdered in 1999 along with her 8-year-old son, Leroy “BJ” Brown, have said Adrian Peeler doesn’t fit that description.
“He’s not a nonviolent criminal. He’s a violent criminal of the worst kind. There is no way that a person of his caliber should be on any street in any community anywhere in the United States,” Oswald Clarke, the victim’s brother, said at a 2021 court hearing.
Peeler was sentenced to 25 years in state prison for his involvement in the murders of Clarke and Brown and also pleaded guilty to federal drug crimes, for which he was sentenced to another 35 years.
Of nearly 2,500 people who were granted clemency for drug offenses last Friday, about a dozen of them are defendants from Connecticut. But it was unclear if any of them had been convicted of other offenses.
The appearance of Peeler’s name on the list shocked the victims’ family, the prosecutors involved in the 1999 case and lawmakers from the state who remember how the double murder helped establish a witness protection program in Connecticut.
None of them received advance notice.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Connecticut was not consulted or notified before the Jan. 17 announcement, spokesman Thomas Carson told The Connecticut Mirror. The brother of Clarke told the CT Examiner they were “blindsided” by the news.
Some of the recent pardons and commutations issued by both Biden and President Donald Trump have raised eyebrows and sparked condemnation this week. They have called into question the vetting process of clemency requests, though the authority for presidents to grant such relief is broad and enshrined in the Constitution.
Hours into his presidency, Trump issued 1,500 pardons of defendants who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to stop the certification of the 2020 election. The nearly dozen defendants from Connecticut were covered by that pardon, including Patrick McCaughey III of Ridgefield, who was sentenced for a violent clash with a police officer.
That has, in part, prompted U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., to push for reintroducing a bill to require more transparency around presidential acts of clemency and change how victims and law enforcement are notified about these requests.
His “Pardon Transparency to Protect Investigations Act” was first introduced in January 2024 and was inspired by a commutation from Trump’s first term. Blumenthal plans to update the bill, which could be filed in the new session of Congress as early as this week, with an expanded section about notifying victims and law enforcement.
“It’s been on my mind for a while, but needless to say now, for better or worse, it’s been raised to a new level of attention, partly because of Peeler and also because of the Trump pardons,” Blumenthal said in an interview on Wednesday.
“I think the validity of this legislation doesn’t depend on any single pardon,” he continued. “As appalling and abhorrent as the Peeler clemency feels, the Trump pardons are absolutely repugnant, and questions have been raised about previous pardons. The pardon power is about as absolute and unbridled as any power in the Constitution is. There are no checks and balances.”
The senator said he hopes his legislation can at the very least provide some “guardrails” to that presidential authority, though he acknowledges he is operating under a narrow legal scope. And now that Democrats are in the Senate minority, it is unclear what kind of traction it will get or if it will attract any Republican co-sponsors.
One part of his legislation requires the pardon attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice to provide a justice impact statement when made aware of a potential clemency grant and give that to Congress and the president within 30 days. It also includes notifying victims and giving them and others in law enforcement a chance to weigh in, though the president gets the final say.
In an upcoming amended version, victims and law enforcement related to other cases of the defendant that are not “tethered” to the pardon or commutation would also get notified, according to his office. In the case of Peeler, that would mean Clarke’s family and the prosecutors involved in the murder case would also get notice, even though his commutation was related to his federal drug offense.
Blumenthal has long been critical of how former presidents from both parties have used clemency in some cases.
“It lends itself to potential mistakes, regardless of the party of the president,” he said.
“Pardons are now a black box. They should not be a black box,” he said. “The president has unchecked power, but it should not be invisible in this exercise. The impact statement is an effort to open the black box.”
Democrats have also raised major concerns over Trump’s wide-ranging Jan. 6 pardons that erase the sentences and criminal history of some of the most violent offenders from that day.
U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, called it a “grievous insult” that flies in the face of law and order.
And as he caught backlash from Republicans over pushing for extra time to debate the nomination of John Ratcliffe as CIA director, U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., argued that the real threat to national security is Trump’s pardons.
“Political violence in this country just became mainstream. It is now a fact of life in America. If you commit an act of horrific violence in the name of the president of the United States, that president will make sure you get away with it,” Murphy said from the Senate floor Wednesday.
Republicans have had mixed reactions to Trump’s Day 1 pardons, and some, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, defended his decision. But they also drew scrutiny, even from some of his own supporters.
The International Association of Chiefs of Police and the Fraternal Order of Police, two groups representing law enforcement, condemned the pardons and commutations from both Biden’s and Trump’s administrations that were granted “to individuals convicted of killing or assaulting law enforcement officers.” FOP has endorsed all of Trump’s presidential runs.
“When perpetrators of crimes, especially serious crimes, are not held fully accountable, it sends a dangerous message that the consequences for attacking law enforcement are not severe, potentially emboldening others to commit similar acts of violence,” they said in a joint statement.
When it comes to Peeler’s commutation, Blumenthal said he is informally seeking answers from those he knows in the former administration. He said it is a “mystery” as to how it got to Biden’s desk for approval. Others lawmakers in Connecticut have agreed with Blumenthal’s assessment of the situation.
“U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal noted that someone ‘dropped the ball.’ He’s absolutely right. Bridgeport Mayor Ganim called it a ‘terrible miscarriage of justice.’ He’s right too,” state Senate Minority Leader Stephen Harding, R-Brookfield, said in a Wednesday statement.
“We need answers and accountability,” he added. “This is a slap in the face to all Connecticut victims of violent crimes and their families.”
Peeler finished serving his state prison sentence in 2022, and in recent years, he has repeatedly petitioned the federal court to reduce his remaining sentence and be released from federal custody.
In 2021, a federal judge held a hearing to listen to Peeler’s request for resentencing under the First Step Act, a law passed by Congress in 2018 that sought to reduce lengthy and disproportionate sentences that were handed down in the past.
Peeler gathered letters of support from his father, his aunt and several members of the Yale Prison Education Initiative, whom he interacted with while he was serving his state prison sentence for conspiracy to commit murder.
The judge, Janet Bond Arterton, reduced Peeler’s federal sentence from 35 years to 15 years but declined to immediately release him from prison after federal prosecutors and Clarke’s family members pointed out that Peeler had never expressed remorse for the 1999 murders in Bridgeport.
Nancy Gifford, an assistant U.S. Attorney at the time, noted for the judge that Clarke’s 8-year-old son, BJ Brown, was allegedly targeted by Peeler because he was scheduled to serve as a witness in Connecticut court.
“Killing witnesses is the ultimate attack on our judicial system. And when that witness is a child, an 8-year-old boy, that attack is amplified,” Gifford said.
Clarke’s family voiced apprehension about Peeler’s claims of being reformed while serving his twenty-plus year sentence in state prison. And they noted that while he apologize for trafficking drugs, he has never publicly apologized for his involvement in the two murders.
“He never even admitted to any of those things. He has no remorse. He had no remorse. He does not care. All he wants to do is to manipulate the system,” Clarke said.
CT Mirror staff writer Dave Altimari contributed to this report.
The Connecticut Mirror/Connecticut Public Radio federal policy reporter position is made possible, in part, by funding from the Robert and Margaret Patricelli Family Foundation.
This story was originally published by the Connecticut Mirror.
