Student Volunteers Help the Rehabilitated to Earn a Second Chance

Last November, as part of his historic clemency initiative, then-New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy visited Princeton to announce his latest round of clemency grants. In the process, he thanked a team of Princeton student volunteers who had spent the spring of 2025 assisting in the preparation of 32 petitions for executive clemency.

Under the direction of Joe Krakora, a Princeton School of Public and International Affairs lecturer affiliated with SPIA in New Jersey, the students interviewed the petitioners, reviewed their court records, and assisted in the preparation of their application materials. By the time Murphy left office in January, he had granted clemency to 12 of the clients whom the team assisted.

The Clemency Project, said Krakora, a former New Jersey public defender, “gives students the opportunity to see that you're not defined by the worst thing that you did.”

The student volunteers numbered around 50. Most were undergraduates, though there were a handful of graduate students as well.

“I was impressed by the number of students who are really social justice-minded and were anxious to participate,” Krakora said.

Among the dozen people who were granted clemency, most were incarcerated and had their sentences commuted; the rest had their lifetime parole status lifted.

“Even among the clients who did not get clemency, they were all, without exception, very appreciative of the work the students had done,” Krakora said. “There’s got to be some level of fulfillment for the students in that respect as well, that their work was appreciated.”

MPA student Julia Heinzel represented a client who had declined a plea deal that would have resulted in a 25-to-30-year prison sentence, only to be convicted at trial and sentenced to more than 50 years. Thanks in part to Heinzel, the man’s sentence was commuted by Murphy.

“I feel incredibly honored to have worked on this project and gotten to tell my client’s life story to the clemency board,” she said. “I’m very excited to continue working in the public interest law space, as I am attending law school in the fall. The Clemency Project and my involvement in it was a huge influence on both my application and my decision to pursue law as a career. I am incredibly inspired by all the work that these lawyers do and hope to gain the necessary skills in law school to continue that work myself.”

Among other things, the Clemency Project was an effective complement to the School’s experiential-based courses. For Vaishnavi Murthy ’28, who came to Princeton already interested in criminal legal work, participating gave her a chance to move beyond theory into practice.

“From this experience, I was able to learn about interviewing incarcerated individuals and centering their story, as our main task was to help put together a narrative that reflects why an individual should be granted early release by the governor,” she said. 

“It's one thing when we talk about policy at SPIA, but these were real people in prison,” Krakora said. “These were real cases with real clients. For Princeton students to interact with people who've been convicted and interview them and see that they're just people like the rest of us who may have made some pretty bad mistakes in their life, there's a humanity involved.”

With the start of a new academic year last September, Krakora got to work on a separate but related initiative. More than 60 student volunteers signed on for Krakora’s Second Chance Project, which assisted two groups of clients. One group comprised convicted sex offenders who have gone at least 15 years without a violation and have petitioned the court to be removed from the Megan’s Law sex offense registry. The other group was parolees seeking release from further parole obligations after going at least seven years without an offense.

In sum, the students filed 16 motions in court on behalf of convicted sex offenders to be removed from the registry and discharged from lifetime parole. Eight were granted; the other eight remain pending. The teams also filed 18 applications to the parole board for early discharge. Six were approved, with a number still in the internal parole board appeal process and four set to be appealed to the New Jersey Superior Court's Appellate Division.

For Emily Ganter ’29, participating in Second Chance was an opportunity to glimpse the criminal justice system in action outside of a courtroom.

“At the conclusion of the project, I had a much better understanding of the real human impact of sentencing and sentencing disparities, especially when ‘tough on crime’ policies are in place,” Ganter said. “Meeting clients face-to-face and hearing their stories had a deep emotional impact on me. It's difficult for college students to get experience working directly with clients, but the Second Chance Project allowed us to do that in a profoundly fulfilling way.”

Jillian Ascher ’28 worked on both projects and said she appreciated the opportunity “to make the real-life impact that I hope to accomplish in criminal justice work.”

“Meeting the clients challenged the preconceptions I had about incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals, complicating my understanding of what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong, and how nuance is crucial,” said Ascher, whose assistance helped two clients to obtain clemency. “Some of the cases I worked on illuminated issues around parole and incarceration I had never thought of before: last-minute, out-of-state travel arrangements, anxiety around parole officers, and the now-overturned requirement for an admission of guilt to receive parole in the first place.” 
 

Joe Krakora, a lecturer with the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, former New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, Princeton SPIA Dean Amaney Jamal, and Anastasia Mann, a lecturer and the founding director of SPIA in NJ, pose with students in November 2025 during then-Governor Murphy's clemency grant announcements.

Photo by: Edwin Torres, Office of the Governor