Information and Instructions on Carter Proclamation Certificate
Please read carefully before completing the application
President Carter,
by Proclamation of January 21, 1977, pardoned certain persons who, during
the Vietnam War era, violated the Military Selective Service Act by draft-evasion
acts or omissions committed between August 4, 1964 and March 28, 1973.
If you believe your conviction is covered by President Carter’s
Proclamation and you can provide the required documentation from your
criminal case that will enable us to verify that you are covered by the
Proclamation, you may obtain an individual certificate of pardon evidencing
the fact that this Pardon Proclamation applies to you. The certificate
will be issued only if you were convicted of such an
offense. If you were arrested for and/or charged with a Military Selective
Service Act violation for an offense committed during the relevant time
period, but your prosecution ended in some fashion other than conviction
(such as dismissal of charges or an acquittal), you are not eligible to
seek a certificate of pardon.
Furthermore, President
Carter’s Pardon Proclamation applies only to violations
of the Military Selective Service Act by civilians. If you were a member
of the armed forces during the relevant period, and you were convicted
for a violation of military law, your offense does not qualify for
treatment under the Proclamation. A person wishing to seek a presidential
pardon for a military conviction may apply for a pardon from the current
President under the regular pardon procedure. In addition, the Carter
Proclamation does not apply to Military Selective Service Act
violations involving force or violence, or to offenses committed by agents,
officers, or employees of the Military Selective Service system in connection
with duties or responsibilities arising out of their employment. Consequently,
if you were employed by the Military Selective Service system and your
offense involved your official duties, or if your offense involved force
or violence, your conviction was not pardoned by the Proclamation.
If you believe that
you were convicted of an offense that was pardoned by the Carter Pardon
Proclamation and wish to obtain a certificate reflecting that the Proclamation
applies to you, complete the following application form fully and carefully
and submit it with the documentation from your court case. The information
we request on the application form is needed to allow us to determine
whether you belong to the class of persons pardoned by the Proclamation
and are eligible to receive the certificate of pardon. The documents you
must provide to enable us to determine whether you fall within
the class of pardoned persons are (1) the charging document (the
indictment or criminal information that sets forth the factual basis of
the offense) and (2) the judgment of conviction or the court docket
sheet reflecting the date of sentencing and the sentence imposed
for the criminal charge of which you were convicted. Any other court documentation
you provide may be helpful, but may not in itself be sufficient to allow
us to determine whether you were pardoned. To research whether documents
from your prosecution are still available, you should contact the National
Archives, whose website is www.archives.gov.
We will ask the United
States Attorney for the district in which you were convicted to verify
the information you provide. Because of the amount of time that has passed
since the promulgation of President Carter’s Pardon Proclamation,
it has become extremely difficult and time-consuming -- and sometimes
impossible -- for Department of Justice and court personnel to locate
records of Selective Service Act prosecutions brought during the Vietnam
War era. Accordingly, the Office of the Pardon Attorney is no longer able
to accept applications for Carter Proclamation pardon certificates unless
they are accompanied by official documentation sufficient to permit us
to determine whether the applicants meet the criteria of the Proclamation.
If the United States
Attorney verifies the information you provide and it is concluded that
the Carter Pardon Proclamation applies to your conviction, we will send
you a certificate evidencing your pardon. We will also notify the Federal
Bureau of Investigation that your conviction was pardoned by the Proclamation
so that the FBI may make the appropriate notation of that fact in its
official records.