Applications for executive clemency (which include pardons and sentence commutations) are very different from expungement petitions filed in courts and heard by judges.  With executive clemency applications, a petitioner is requesting a executive (ultimately, a governor at the state level, or the the President acting through U.S. Department of Justice at the federal level) to take some sort of executive action on a previously adjudicated criminal case.   The scenarios can be very complicated.