Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska both offer mayoral pardons for some misdemeanor convictions tied to city laws, but the scope of approvals differs sharply, according to a comparison of records. From Jan. 1, 2020 to November 2025, Omaha pardoned more than 60 residents for misdemeanor convictions, while Lincoln approved two, records reviewed for the story show.
Jasmine Harris said the pardon route offered relief after years of employment rejections that she linked to a standard question on job applications. Harris said her conviction foreclosed opportunities that were previously open to her and became a lingering source of dread. She said the anxiety resurfaced whenever she had to fill out forms again and again, quoting: “It’s the anxiety that it brings back up, ‘Oh my gosh, I have to fill this out again. Is it going to be denied?’”
Harris was convicted of misdemeanor assault and battery under an Omaha city ordinance when she was in her early 20s. She applied for a mayoral pardon after later going back to school, finding employment, and rebuilding a career, but still feeling the pressure of the repeated question about prior convictions. When then-Mayor Jean Stothert pardoned Harris for her misdemeanor in 2017, she became one of hundreds of applicants over the years who have benefited from Omaha’s mayoral pardon program.
The program, which provides formal forgiveness and an opportunity to seal a conviction from public view, is limited to violations of city laws. A mayoral pardon does not erase the conviction, but supporters and applicants describe it as a practical step for people whose criminal histories have limited their options in areas such as housing and jobs.
Ryan Sullivan, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln law professor who oversees the college’s Civil Clinic, described what a pardon can mean for people applying for it. He said: “By getting that pardon … it tells them, ‘Hey, you made a mistake, but you are not that person anymore, and so we’re no longer going to limit you as a citizen.’” Sullivan’s clinic has helped some clients navigate the mayoral pardon process in Lincoln as well, according to records discussed for the story.
In Lincoln, officials have described the bar for approvals as unusually high. Garret Swanson, Lincoln’s chief communications officer, said in an email that the threshold to receive a pardon in Lincoln is very high, “meaning very few pardons have been approved.” Mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird declined an interview request for the story.
Omaha’s leaders, including Mayor John Ewing, said they weigh pardon requests with an eye toward both public safety review and the potential for reintegration. Ewing said, “If someone … made a mistake when they were a young person, and then they’re looking to be able to progress in their careers, the last thing we really need is something where they’ve done all the right things but they can’t get a job and be able to take care of their families,” as the story reported.
Not all applicants described pardons as immediate cures. Tom Mumgaard, a longtime attorney and Papillion City Council member, sought a pardon for a misdemeanor gambling conviction he earned by participating in a football pool at City Hall. Although he said his conviction had not affected his employment or other aspects of his life at the time, he later pursued formal forgiveness, telling reporters that it was “based upon my regret for having done something so stupid, and I wanted to, somehow, express my regret.”
Maurice Cannon described regret after misdemeanor assault and battery convictions in the 1990s, including what he said was a cycle of heavy drinking and altercations with romantic partners. Cannon said: “Some people just have vices, and alcohol was mine,” adding, “That’s what led me to get into trouble. And I’ll be honest, the two victims, they didn’t deserve it.” After health issues led to double amputation of his legs below the knee, he said he began exploring a pardon because he worried about protecting himself. “Because I’m a double amputee, I can’t just get up and just run,” Cannon said.
Cannon applied for and received a mayoral pardon in 2024, but he soon learned it did not restore his gun rights. He was told that any restoration would need to come from the state board rather than the mayor, and he said he has been working out next steps. Even so, Cannon said he felt relieved: “I felt good when they did it, because I could put some of those things behind me,” while adding that regret remained because he had done it.
The story also described how municipal pardon authority works procedurally and how it has evolved in Omaha. Omaha records cited for the story say pardon requests are reviewed by the city prosecutor, who then makes a recommendation to the mayor’s pardon board. Omaha City Attorney Matt Kuhse, who previously served as city prosecutor, described his own approach to considering cases involving municipal code violations. He said: “My philosophy was, I had a pretty generous view of things. I mean, these are municipal code violations. These aren’t like the crimes of the century,” according to the report.
Omaha’s eligibility rules have changed over time, records show. Before 2018, only a select number of city violations were eligible for mayoral pardons in Omaha, but in 2018 Stothert pushed to expand the list to cover just about all city ordinances, and the City Council approved the change. The story reported that Stothert said she applied especially strict scrutiny to pardon requests concerning domestic assault, animal neglect and child neglect, and Ewing said he would not pardon offenses involving sexual misconduct toward children and some types of violent crime.
In Lincoln, the city attorney’s office reviews pardon requests and recommends to the mayor, Swanson said the story reported. Over the last five years, the Lincoln mayor’s office received 10 pardon request forms and approved two, according to records discussed for the story. Ryan Sullivan said the Civil Clinic began helping clients apply for mayoral pardons after a dramatic drop in state Board of Pardons hearings during then-Gov. Pete Ricketts’ time in office. Sullivan said over that five-year stretch, half of the 10 Lincoln pardon requests were submitted by law students in the Civil Clinic.
Those efforts also encountered delays. According to the records cited, response times for four pardon requests filed from 2020 to November 2025 dragged into years and those four applications have not received a response, even as Swanson said the mayor intends to respond. Sullivan said the clinic ultimately stopped filing additional applications because the process became too cumbersome and involved no response after submissions, saying: “We ultimately decided to decline to file any more, just because the process was too cumbersome,” and referring to “no response.”
The story also focused on outreach and awareness. Kuhse said Omaha city staff provided application forms to the public defender’s office, posted the forms on the mayor’s website, and spread the word at clinics hosted by Legal Aid. He said, “I just wish more people knew about it.” In Lincoln, Swanson pointed to the mayor’s webpage where the application is available, while Sullivan speculated that Lincoln’s lower number of requests may reflect less communication about the pardon program compared with Omaha. He said residents might be unaware that the option exists in their city and that the population of eligible residents could be larger than the number of applications suggests.
This story was originally published by Flatwater Free Press and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.