The writ of coram nobis
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A viewer asked John Kiriakou whether there was any angle besides a pardon that would restore his pension. His answer named a specific and largely disused remedy.

The mechanism

"Yeah, there is a second angle," he said. "It's called a writ of coram nobis."

He set out what it would require, and the requirement is unusual: the relief does not come from the defendant proving anything but from the prosecution recanting. "The Justice Department would have to go to the Eastern District of Virginia court and say, 'We made a mistake in prosecuting John Kiriakou. We recognize the mistake. We admit the mistake, and we ask that his conviction be overturned.'"

That places the remedy outside a defendant's control entirely. Nothing Kiriakou does can produce it; the department that charged him has to reverse itself in open court.

The rarity

Kiriakou's estimate of the odds is contained in his account of how obscure the term has become. He said he had been at a dinner party seated beside a circuit court judge, mentioned a writ of coram nobis, and got the reaction: "Wow, a writ of coram nobis? I haven't even heard that term since law school."

He was direct about the frequency: "They're exceedingly rare. There was one in like 2001. There was one in 1986, but they're very, very rare."

Why he thinks he might have a chance

His one ground for hope is institutional rather than legal. "With that said," he added, "the Trump Justice Department hates the legal system as much as I do, so maybe I stand a chance there. I don't know. We'll see."

The reasoning is characteristically unsentimental: a department hostile to its own predecessors' work is more likely than a self-protective one to concede that a past prosecution was a mistake.

Where it sits

Kiriakou raised coram nobis alongside, not instead of, the pardon he has been seeking. In the same passage he set out what viewers could do to help, writing to the US pardon attorney, and said he remained hopeful, while conceding that if a pardon does not come under this president, "I give up. It's going to be the end of it for me."

His earlier account of why he could not simply appeal, that the plea deal required him to waive that right, is treated separately.

See also

- Kiriakou pardon request
- Ed Martin
- The Virginia pardon and voting rights
- Espionage Act
