How hard can it be to specify that pardons can be given by a committee of 25 randomly selected individuals with an Ivy league education when at least 2/3 is in favor with no existing financial ties and no information regarding the identity of whoever's fate is at stake?
Right, not hard at all, but apparently whoever wrote the Constitution was a fucking moron.
I think you're onto something, for a kind of second-chance review function, but instead of "with an Ivy League education", perhaps you most want people knowledgeable about both judicial process and society.
"Ivy League education" isn't a totally bad predictor, but it's going to be very biased towards people with privileged socioeconomic backgrounds, who therefore may have blind spots of aspects of society that apply to the situation. (No matter how many books they've read, classes they've taken, years of volunteering with the less-advantaged they've done, and hours of NPR they've listened to.)
The US Constitution wasn't written with the wellbeing of random ordinary citizens in mind. You could argue it was the exact opposite in fact.
More importantly it was written under the assumption that political elites would understand and act against the risk of electing a broken demagogue.
But alas, the modern GOP’s cravenness beggars belief.