Extenuates [verb]

They attempted to extenuate their crimes by the hardships they had suffered, but in vain.

This reflection may extenuate my faults in their effects, but it must aggravate them in their source.

The Lords' committee extenuate the presumption that either knights or burgesses sat in any of these parliaments.

If some dozen of the conniving deputies had been sent there, Warden Tapp might have had less to extenuate.

But whether he is to be believed or not, the fact that four of the prisoners went down in irons is impossible to extenuate.

It was to mention nothing and imply nothing, neither to acknowledge, to explain nor to extenuate.

I do not say this to extenuate my crime, but to let you know the exact truth.

Da Souza entered presently, apologetic and abject, prepared at the same time to extenuate and deny.

He was habitually more ready to glory over his conquests, than to deny or extenuate them.

I have in no wise exaggerated, but have simply followed the golden maxim of "nothing extenuate nor set down aught in malice."