The Justice Department has denied a pardon request from a former Navy sailor currently in prison for illegally taking pictures on a nuclear attack submarine.

Kristian Saucier, 30, is about nine months into his 12-month sentence at the Federal Medical Center at Fort Devens in western Massachusetts for being convicted of one count of unauthorized retention of national defense information, a felony.

Jeffrey Addicott, director of the Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary's Law School in Texas, who said he is offering his services pro bono, submitted petitions for a presidential pardon and commutation on behalf of Saucier in January. Addicott also had to submit an application to waive the required five-year waiting period before anyone convicted of a federal offense is eligible to apply for a presidential pardon. That period starts from the time someone is released from confinement.

The waiver was denied, but the commutation request still is pending. The response from the Office of the Pardon Attorney says that the office has concluded it would "not be appropriate" to grant a waiver in Saucier's case.

"We do not believe that Mr. Saucier's circumstances in this regard are so unusual as to justify a waiver of the waiting period. Waivers are infrequently granted and then only for particularly compelling reasons," the response says, in part. "It may ultimately be to Mr. Saucier's benefit to wait the full five years to demonstrate that he has become fully rehabilitated and is a contributing member to society."

Addicott said the response from the office, which is dated May 30, 2017, and unsigned, wasn't sent to him and was sent instead to a lawyer who previously worked on Saucier's case. He initially thought the letter must be fraudulent but later was able to authenticate it once he received a copy.

"This is extremely unprofessional and indicates not only a shocking level of incompetence at the Office of the Pardon Attorney but signals clearly that our hard work received a only pro forma look and never got out of that office to the Department of Justice or to President Trump," he said.

Addicott also pointed to remarks made by Trump during a televised interview in late January with Sean Hannity of Fox News, indicating that he was "looking at the case." Addicott said he asked Hannity to bring up Saucier's case during the interview.

Saucier was a machinist's mate aboard the USS Alexandria when on at least three different occasions in 2009 he used his cellphone camera to take pictures of various technical components of the submarine's nuclear propulsion system while it was docked at the Naval Submarine Base in Groton.

During Saucier's sentencing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Vanessa Richards, a prosecutor for the case, said the photographs documented the submarine's entire propulsion system. "The technology that's documented in these photographs is, quite literally, an engineering and a scientific wonder," she said.

The government sought a sentence of 63 months in prison.

j.bergman@theday.com