John Fetterman Says Morgan Freeman’s Shawshank Redemption Character Is His Model for Granting Clemency – And It’s Not as Crazy as It Sounds

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Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D) raised eyebrows with a comment he made during an interview with Semafor’s Dave Weigel that he would use Morgan Freeman’s character from The Shawshank Redemption as a test for when a violent criminal might deserve clemency.

Crime has been a hot topic in the contentious battle for Pennsylvania’s open Senate seat, with Republican candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz attempting to attack Fetterman as soft on crime and the Democrat responding with his opposition to defunding the police and record when he was mayor of Braddock, Pa.

Fetterman referenced Freeman’s movie character when he spoke to Weigel about the topic of criminal justice reform. A tweet by Weigel with an excerpt from the interview received a lot of mocking and critical attention, with many commentators unfairly accusing Fetterman of oversimplifying matters and supporting leniency for violent felons.

“One of my questions for @JohnFetterman: When does someone convicted of first degree murder deserve clemency?” wrote Weigel. “Introducing: The Morgan Freeman Test.”

Freeman’s portrayal of Ellis “Red” Redding in the widely-acclaimed 1994 film was, like so many of his roles, an intelligent and compelling personality who deeply affected the people around him. For those of you who managed to miss the countless showings of Shawshank on basic cable over the past decades, Red is a lifer in the fictional Shawshank Prison who befriends Tim Robbin’s character, Andy Dufresne, a banker wrongfully convicted for the murder of his wife and her lover.

It’s never expressly spelled out in the movie, but according to reports on the original Stephen King novella on which the script was based, Red had murdered his wife to get her life insurance by cutting the brake cables on her car, leading to an accident that not only killed her, but also a neighbor and infant who were in the car at the time. A horrific crime, without question.

Near the end of the film, Red is paroled after having served 40 years in prison, after a hearing with the parole board in which he describes how remorseful he is about his crime:

There’s not a day goes by I don’t feel regret. Not because I’m in here [in prison], or because you think I should. I look back on the way I was then: a young, stupid kid who committed that terrible crime.

I wanna talk to him. I wanna try to talk some sense into him — tell him the way things are. But I can’t. That kid’s long gone and this old man is all that’s left. I gotta live with that.

Fetterman focuses on these kind of issues in his comments to Weigel. Far from endorsing a blanket grant of freedom to unrepentant violent criminals, he describes the kind of prisoner who should be considered for release as someone who was “deeply remorseful” about their crime, who was “usually elderly,” had served “40 years or more” in prison, and was well known to the prison warden and guards, all of whom are saying that they would be willing to have the prisoner as their neighbor.

He also acknowledges that the crime victims must “absolutely” be “an important part of the conversation,” and emphasizes he is talking about prisoners who have “a perfect record,” had spent “more than half a century in jail,” and “nobody believes that they were still dangerous.”

Here’s the relevant section from the interview, which should be read in its entirety:

WEIGEL: When does someone who’s committed a first degree murder deserve clemency?

FETTERMAN: It’s really a very simple choice. I believe the perfect metaphor is “The Shawshank Redemption.” That’s a touchstone that virtually everybody has seen, everybody understands. I’ve asked people, would you want Morgan Freeman to die in prison or not? And I’ve never met anybody that says, “Yeah, he should die in prison. I would have voted to have him die in prison.”

I understood, at the beginning of becoming the board of pardons chair, that this was going to be weaponized. You’re talking less than one percent of individuals that are condemned to die in prison. And they come in front of five people, the same as in “Shawshank.” They’re usually elderly. They’re most likely be Black. And they are deeply remorseful for what they were involved in, or what they did directly; and they’ve done 40 years or more, maybe sometimes more than 50 years.

Everyone from the warden, to the Secretary of Corrections, down to the guards – everyone that has known them for decades, I ask everybody the question, “Would you want this person as your neighbor?” And they’re like, of course, absolutely, we’d be delighted to have that.

WEIGEL: How do you factor in family members of the person who was murdered? Maybe the murder was 50 years ago, but maybe they haven’t forgiven them, even if the warden or the guards have.

FETTERMAN: I agree that, absolutely, the victims are very much an important part of the conversation. The point is that if somebody has a perfect record, and they have spent, you know, more than half a century in jail, and nobody believes that they were still dangerous or anything – it really just comes to a simple choice of believing in a chance at redemption.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK), who is aggressively wrong on nearly every criminal justice reform issue, was typical of Fetterman’s critics with a tweet claiming the candidate wanted “to release first-degree murderers because he saw a movie,” adding a sarcastic “You can’t make this up.”

Cotton was essentially making it up, clearly counting on his followers not taking the time to click the link and read the article. As noted above, Fetterman was not advocating for a blanket release of murderers and did not adopt his views because he saw a movie, but rather cited a movie character as “the perfect metaphor” of an elderly prisoner who had shown remorse, peacefully served decades in prison, and was believed to no longer be a danger to society.

Both criminal justice research and Supreme Court precedent have recognized the possibility of even violent criminals being successfully rehabilitated, especially when their crimes were long ago and they are advanced in years. The American Conservative Union — the same group that organizes CPAC, hardly a gang of squishy liberals — has a criminal justice reform project supported by the ACU Foundation, the Nolan Center for Justice, which has written an amicus curiae brief to the Supreme Court advocating for “compassionate release” of elderly prisoners.

In the brief, the Nolan Center’s attorneys praised The First Step Act, a law signed by former President Donald Trump in 2018 after passing Congress with bipartisan support, for allowing prisoners to file motions for their own compassionate release. Previously, only the U.S. Bureau of Prisons could move to reduce a sentence on these grounds.

The brief criticized the BOP for having “notoriously shirked its gatekeeper role” for years with a “dysfunctional” compassionate release program that was “notoriously reluctant to support pleas for early release, no matter how warranted.” The end result, they continued, was that “defendants who did not belong in prison languished there and added needless costs to BOP and the taxpayers.”

Citing a report by the Inspector General that found “an effectively managed compassionate release program would result in cost savings for the BOP,” the brief argued that “very few prisoners awarded compassionate release recidivate,” with a “recidivism rate of 3.5% under compassionate release, versus 41% general rate for federal offenders.”

The story of Taurus Buchanan is far more typical of the kind of murderer who is able to convince a parole board to grant parole than the unrepentant predator portrayed by naysayers like Cotton. In 1993 when he was 16 years old, Buchanan was arrested for “landing a single fatal punch during a fight with neighborhood boys,” reported the Marshall Project’s Nicole Lewis, and was tried as an adult, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison.

When Buchanan was 42, he was granted parole after hearing testimony from his family, the warden of Angola prison where he had served 25 years, and other inmates. As Lewis wrote, Buchanan was an “exemplary inmate”:

He credits his positive outlook to an unwavering faith in God, strengthened during his time in prison. Determined to live his best life despite the circumstances, Buchanan took advantage of every opportunity available to him in Angola. He earned his GED. He learned to cook, and he became a certified carpenter. And he ultimately received a Class A Trusty status, which is the highest classification at the prison, and comes with special privileges.

As a 2o15 analysis by The Marshall Project noted, parole boards across the country are heavily influenced by political motivations, both because the board members are almost always appointed by their state’s governor and because any new crimes committed by any prisoner they recommend for parole are highly likely to become sharply critical headlines.

Unsurprisingly, years of data show that these boards are not releasing murderers en masse. Most prisoners granted parole were behind bars for nonviolent crimes, and the few parolees who had committed violent acts were able to show a record of rehabilitation and exemplary behavior like Freeman’s Shawshank character Red — or like the real world’s Taurus Buchanan.

Murder of another human being is rightfully and justifiably treated as the most severe and heinous of crimes; it’s the only state-level offense that can be eligible for the death penalty. The decision to release someone who took another life is not one that should be granted capriciously or even broadly, but in light of the serious problems caused by America’s over-incarceration issues, it is neither fiscally responsible nor sound policy to say there are zero circumstances under which parole could be granted to a convicted murderer.

Those mocking Fetterman for using Freeman’s character as a metaphor are missing the point: rehabilitation is possible and parole may be warranted — even for those who have committed violent crimes — where a prisoner has expressed clear remorse for their crimes and established a long record of exemplary behavior while in prison.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.