About This Collection
The Department of Justice represented the government in litigation involving the Commonwealth and was responsible for providing legal advice to the Governor and all departments, boards and commissions. The head of the Department and chief law enforcement officer of the state was the Attorney General, whose appointment was first mentioned in the Constitution of 1776. Prior to 1923, the Department of Justice was known as the Attorney-General's Department. Included in the Department of Justice were the Board of Pardons, first established in 1874, and the Bureau of Correction, which was created in 1953 to administer the state correctional institutions formerly maintained by the Department of Welfare. The Commonwealth was one of the first political entities to abolish the use of corporal punishment for crime and to replace it with a system of rehabilitation through incarceration. As a result of a constitutional amendment, the Attorney General became an elected official in 1980, and that office became an independent department. The designation "Department of Justice" was discontinued at that time. Within the executive branch, an Office of General Counsel was formed to continue the old function of an attorney appointed and subordinate to the Governor, and the Bureau of Corrections was also transferred to the Governor's Office. A further result of the amendment was the eventual creation, in 1984, of a separate Department of Corrections. This collection contains Board of Pardons reviews criminal cases, except impeachment, to determine whether clemency should be recommended to the Governor for his or her approval or disapproval. While the United States' Constitution grants the President of the United States the power to grant pardons, in Pennsylvania the pardoning power is shared between the Board of Pardons and the Governor. The Board of Pardons consists of five members including the Lieutenant Governor who serves as chairman, the Attorney General, and three members appointed by the Governor and confirmed by the Senate. This collection contains applications made to, and proclamations issued by, the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons. Grouped into applications and proclamations and then arranged chronologically by date of action. The applications volumes provide brief narrative case histories and recommendations for pardons or commutations and whether the pardons or commutations were granted. Volume 1 covering the period 1874-1877 provides reasons why the Pardon Board made its recommendations while for the period 1882-1930 records of commutation actions are included. The last volume covering the period 1931-1934 contains mostly commutation records with only a few pardon actions. The proclamation volumes provide the Board's recommendations and reasons for its judgments.