Clutch Connects — Issue 05
After the Gavel Drops
16 terms. Four hidden groups. One disputed district.
How to play: Click the terms you think belong together — selected tiles turn pink. When you think you have a group of four, reveal it using the buttons below the grid. Watch out for the disputed district: one term looks like it belongs somewhere else. Reveal the disputed district note when you’re ready.
The terms
What a parole board weighs
PAROLE • RESTITUTION • RECIDIVISM • SUPERVISION
The factors and mechanisms that govern whether — and under what conditions — a convicted person is released before their sentence ends.
What the appeals court is looking for
REVERSAL • AFFIRMANCE • REMAND • ERROR
The four outcomes and primary inquiry on appellate review: did the lower court get it right, get it wrong, and if wrong — what happens next?
What executive power can do to a sentence
CLEMENCY • COMMUTATION • PARDON • PROBATION
The governor’s toolkit for intervening in a criminal sentence — plus the court-imposed alternative to incarceration that keeps people under supervision in the community.
Post-conviction mechanisms that challenge the original outcome
HABEAS CORPUS • NEW TRIAL • RECORD • EXPUNGEMENT
Tools and concepts used to revisit a conviction after sentencing: the constitutional writ, the motion for new trial, the underlying record that makes either possible, and the legal erasure that can follow.
The disputed district this week: PROBATION looks like it belongs with the parole board group — probation and parole are constantly confused, both involve supervision, and parole boards sometimes set probation conditions. But probation is a court-imposed sentence (not a parole board decision), and it belongs with executive power’s tools because it represents the court acting in lieu of incarceration — a sentencing alternative that intersects with clemency and commutation when sentences get modified.
EXPUNGEMENT may tempt you into the executive power group since it sounds like a pardon. But expungement is a legal process, not an executive action — it requires a court order and it belongs with the mechanisms that challenge or clean up the original record.
EXPUNGEMENT may tempt you into the executive power group since it sounds like a pardon. But expungement is a legal process, not an executive action — it requires a court order and it belongs with the mechanisms that challenge or clean up the original record.
From the editor
The patterns in these puzzles are fictional. The ones in Michigan’s courts aren’t. Rita maps those for a living.
