Select the most appropriate option that can substitute the underlined words in…

Concept: In one-word-substitution and near-synonym questions, several options often share one broad sense (for example, "being excused from a punishment"), so the task is to match the sentence's exact register and scope — individual versus group, temporary versus full, legal versus moral — to the single word whose established meaning fits precisely.

1. The underlined phrase describes an authority (the President) formally excusing one convicted individual from punishment for a crime.

2. Each option is compared against that precise sense: an act of mercy or leniency exercised by an authority toward an individual's punishment for an offence.

3. Clemency matches this sense directly — it names an authority's act of mercy that pardons, reduces, or excuses an individual's punishment.

Cross-check against the other options, by value:

• Amnesty denotes an official pardon extended to a whole class or group of offenders, most often for political or wartime offences, rather than to one named individual for an ordinary criminal act.

• Reprieve denotes only the postponement or cancellation of a scheduled punishment (most commonly a stay of execution); it does not by itself excuse or remove the punishment.

• Absolution denotes a formal release from guilt or blame rooted in moral and religious usage (such as absolution from sin), rather than an authority's act on a criminal punishment.

None of these three matches the individual, authority-granted, punishment-excusing sense of "official pardon" as precisely as Clemency does, so Clemency is the word that best substitutes the underlined phrase.