Claude Price sat before the Washington State Clemency and Pardons Board in his beige prison uniform and apologized. Over and over again. He apologized to his former roommate whose gun he stole in 1997. He apologized to the man whose truck he stole 10 days later. He apologized to the two witnesses he chased and shot at. He apologized to the police officer he ran from.
That crime nearly three decades ago sent him to prison for, essentially, the rest of his life.
For two hours board members, on video, asked questions that probed Price’s crime and his life. He talked about what he was thinking the night he nearly killed two people. He talked about the abuse he suffered as a child and getting sober for the first time while in prison. He talked about why, after he initially got sober, he still broke prison rules.
Just because I got sober and knew to be better, I didn’t know how to be better," Price said. "I had no conflict resolution skills, I couldn’t identify problems and I reacted negatively. It took years to correct my behaviors."
The board, five volunteers appointed by the governor, also heard from one of Price's victims, Alita Carey, who said, "he put a fear in me that will never, ever go away."
Then the board voted unanimously to recommend that Price be let out of prison early.
Gov. Bob Ferguson was unpersuaded. He denied Price's request for clemency. Nearly a year later, Price remains in prison, not quite one-third of the way through his 95-year sentence. Absent help from a future governor he will likely die there.
In Ferguson's nearly two years in office, his Clemency and Pardons Board has recommended 15 people for commutations — to be released from prison early. Ferguson has not granted any of them a commutation.
In Washington, one of just 16 states that does not offer parole, Ferguson's de facto policy has shut off one of the few avenues for early release available for people serving long prison sentences.
It has also confounded some people usually supportive of the Democratic governor who've been surprised and dismayed by his repeated unwillingness to grant mercy even when his own board recommends it.
"I struggle to understand this governor," said Aline Flower, a lawyer for the Gates Foundation who has served on the board in her personal capacity since early 2025. "Do we have a governor who even believes in redemption or not? It leads us to ask why does he even have our board, what does he see as the purpose of this board?"
Flower was appointed by former Gov. Jay Inslee, as were her four board colleagues. She said board members have heard nothing from Ferguson as to why their recommendations are so often rejected.
While Ferguson has agreed to no commutations, he has agreed to some of the board’s recommendations on pardons. He has granted pardons in 13 of the 33 cases the board recommended, all involving people who have completed their sentences and were already out of prison. In total, he has followed his board's recommendations 27% of the time.
Ferguson declined an interview request for this article.
In a prepared statement, he said, “Determining when to grant clemency for individuals who committed crimes are some of the most challenging decisions I face as governor. These are things I pray about."
Ferguson's denials are a marked reversal from his predecessor, Inslee.
Inslee, in reviewing hundreds of cases over the course of his 12 years in office, almost always agreed with the recommendations of the Clemency and Pardons Board. When the board recommended he grant someone a pardon or commute their sentence, Inslee did so 94% of the time, according to a Seattle Times analysis of records. Inslee even granted commutations four times against the advice of his board.
Inslee, in a phone interview, said he carefully considered both the likelihood of someone reoffending and their prospects of success outside of prison when considering clemency applications.
"There's obviously a big risk if you do have a reoffense. It's a big risk, a political risk," Inslee said. "But the clemency board did a really good job, if you see what these individuals have done on release, it's really extraordinary."
Late in his last term, Inslee met and celebrated with dozens of people whose sentences he had commuted. He had never met any of them before. He called it one of the most compelling events he attended as governor.
"It was emotionally riveting to see people in the thralls of a whole new life and the joy on their faces, and their wives and girlfriends and their kids," he said. "I just think there’s an opportunity for the state to save taxpayer money, get people back to work, have people coaching soccer and going to church instead of sitting in a cage, particularly as they age."
"This is not to diminish the horror that a lot of these people did when they were young," Inslee added. "That's not forgotten."
Inslee said that of the nearly 200 people to whom he granted clemency after they applied and appeared before the board, only one person went on to commit a serious crime. That man pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy to distribute drugs.
Ferguson, in a statement, cited an example of a man recommended for commutation who in 1996 shot someone in a grocery store, then shot and killed another person on a bus. A judge said he'd been motivated by anti-Asian racism. "This is an example of the type of case where I have a disagreement with the unanimous recommendations of the board to release someone from prison early."
Ferguson's office said he's granted pardons at a higher rate than any governor in the past 60 years other than Inslee. Former Govs. Christine Gregoire and Gary Locke, for example, each granted five pardons and no commutations at the same point in their first terms, according to Ferguson's office.
Asked about Price, Ferguson's office noted that the prosecutor and victims opposed the commutation and that the board recommended he be released in 2031, after he completes one of his four consecutive sentences for attempted murder.
'The interests of justice'
Claude Price said he was 7 when his father first gave him alcohol and started sending him into buildings and storage yards to steal things. He was 12 the first time he was arrested. He spent most of his teenage years in juvenile detention.
In 1997, when he was 27, he stole an idling truck in Thurston County, driving past and knocking over the protesting owner. With a friend, he tried to steal another truck that same day. When two witnesses followed him, he shot at them, then chased them onto Interstate 5 and shot twice more. No one was hit by the gunshots.
He was convicted of theft, assault and four counts of attempted murder, and was sentenced to 101 years, a term later reduced to 95 years.
Price's petition to the board says he "received a century-long sentence for his crimes that did not physically hurt his victims." It says his lawyer at sentencing presented no mitigating evidence about his history of abuse as a child and was later disbarred.
Price, now 56, said in prison he experienced a moment of clarity — that he was responsible for his actions and needed to make major changes to his life. He began to mentor others to better themselves. He makes beaded artwork, crochets hats for children and has taught other men to crochet. He has had no serious infractions for a decade.
"He has been rehabilitated and the prison has done its job," Price's wife Ronelle said. "I’m not sure what motivates Gov. Ferguson to keep him in prison."
Kathryn Karcher, Price's clemency attorney, practiced civil law for most of her career, never really dealing with criminal law.
"In my walk of life, I think I had preconceptions about how people who were not educated are and maybe people who’d been in prison for 30 years are, and then I met Claude and he totally knocked me back on my heels," she said. "He’s just a guy who’s totally turned his life around and has had a profound effect on other people's lives."
Ferguson gave no rationale to Price for denying his application beyond writing that "the interests of justice do not require a commutation of the sentence at this time."
Karcher found the specific language Ferguson used in his letter — language that is almost identical in each one of his letters denying commutations — curious.
"The interests of justice do not require …"
"... require ..."
"That is not the standard," Karcher said. "This is clemency, this is discretion, this is executive grace, it's never required. If that's the standard, no one should ever get clemency."
Ferguson used the same language in denying the commutation of Tomas Keen — who also stole a car and shot at a witness and has served 16 years in prison. Keen, 37, earned a college degree and a paralegal certificate in prison, became a teacher and a mentor and won a PEN America award for best prison essay. He also received a unanimous recommendation from the clemency board.
Unlike Price, Keen's release was not opposed by either a local prosecutor or any of his victims.
Keen first filed for a commutation in 2020. He got a hearing last year. He had tried not to get his hopes up.
"The old 'Shawshank Redemption' line, in prison 'hope is a dangerous thing,' " he said in a phone interview from Airway Heights Corrections Center, outside Spokane. But after the board's recommendation, his guard slipped. Still, he had to wait 11 more months for Ferguson's decision.
"I was fully invested, I thought it was going to happen," he said. "It got to the point where I was ripping my hair out."
His wife cried when his commutation was denied.
"We really haven't gotten anything from the governor's office aside from 'it does not meet the interests of justice,' " said Joelene Keen. "We would have loved an actual explanation of how, why, but there's just nothing."
'Wholesale denying cases'
The Legislature created Washington's Clemency and Pardons Board in 1981, just a couple of years before eliminating parole, in an effort to make sentences more uniform.
The board is supposed to help the governor with the process of granting pardons and freeing people from prison. There is no specific guideline for who gets clemency. The person must have been in prison for at least 10 years and have exhausted appeals. State law says the board should recommend pardons "in extraordinary circumstances" and recommend commutations when the sentence "no longer serves the interest of justice."
The board slows down the process, inserting a chunky layer of bureaucracy between the clemency request and the governor's decision. But it also, advocates say, gives the governor some political cover to exercise his clemency powers.
"It's not just his decision, it's a decision that was made through this considered, deliberate process," said Jennie Pasquarella, director of the Seattle Clemency Project. "It feels like he's kind of wholesale denying cases based on political calculation."
It took Price four years from beginning his clemency petition until Ferguson made his decision. The board currently gets about 100 petitions for pardons and commutations a year and usually holds hearings on about half. They generally meet four times a year, two days at a time.
The Legislature last year passed a law with Ferguson's support to speed up the process. The law expands the Clemency and Pardons Board from five to 10 members, with the expectation that a board twice as large could hear twice as many cases. It also says board members should be paid a small amount and increases staff time, costing an estimated $600,000 a year, but not accounting for any potential savings from freeing up prison beds.
But Ferguson, in the year and a half since the law passed, has not appointed anyone to fill those five new spots.
His office said he has not filled the positions because the Legislature did not provide funding.
"He looks forward to filling these positions when our budget situation stabilizes," spokesperson Brionna Aho wrote.
Price is now not due to be released until 2092, when he would be 122 years old. He could apply for clemency again in three years, but the process itself takes several additional years. He said going through the process was both emotional and validating.
He saw Carey, a victim of his crime, and the psychological scars that she obviously still bears.
"I could see the trauma she experienced and the pain that she suffered firsthand," he said in a phone interview from Stafford Creek Corrections Center, near Aberdeen. "Twenty-eight years later and seeing she was still deeply touched by my actions, it was pretty emotional."
It meant something to sit in front of that governor-appointed board and to have them see him and listen to him.
"My life was one — from childhood — of poor choices, bad decisions and basically being told my entire life that I was worthless," he said. "To have that esteemed board listen to my testimony was a sort of validation of all the hard work that I have done to change myself."
Price's daughter — who he'd been estranged from since he went to prison — saw the hearing and got in touch with him. He said they now speak nearly every day. He's met his son-in-law and his grandchildren for the first time.
Price has never heard from Ferguson — beyond the formal letter saying the interests of justice did not require his release.
"It's got to be a difficult position to be in," he said. "If he grants clemency to someone and they get out of prison and commit another crime, that's going to be terrible and then he gets to feel accountable for that.
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