One defensible exercise was the clemency granted to Leonard Peltier. His conviction was always dubious, based on the testimony of the same FBI that was engaged in the COINTELPRO operations against the recently-mentioned MLK. The FBI hasn't just been bad in the last few years; this wannabe secret police has been bad since its foundation. Gun battles with them ought to be considered gently by juries, under the assumption that they probably deserved whatever resistance they provoked. Instead he was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences and, eligible for parole since 1993, has been kept in harsh conditions amid regular beatings likely encouraged by the prison guards.
Biden was typically cowardly here, not pardoning the one character on his list who might have merited a pardon. He just gave him clemency to "lifetime house arrest." What a disgrace.
UPDATE: More on Leonard Peltier’s case.
13 comments:
Grim
Correct me if I’m wrong
Don’t you have to be convicted of a crime before you are pardoned?
Logically you have to be found guilty of the crime first…. and how could Biden pardon somebody after the conviction occurs after he’s left office?
None of this parting crap is even based on reason
The power doesn't seem to be limited. It's based on a royal prerogative that the Kings of England had, which doesn't (didn't) require a conviction or even a prosecution occur beforehand. The Department of Justice has duly noted all of these on its website as legitimate pardons, although that will have been the outgoing DOJ leadership.
We will see if there is a legal challenge. It's a bit strange to preemptively pardon people not even accused of any particular crime.
According to several legal-things websites, accepting a pardon means that the recipient is admitting guilt. While the person cannot be charged for a criminal act, they can be charged for civil offenses. So the prisoners who rejected clemency did so because they claim innocence.
I am not an attorney, so I could be missing some details and limitations.
LittleRed1
Admitting guilt to what? They’re not even indicted for anything.
I've been doing a little reading on this, and have seen a few interesting comments as well. The concept of a President pardon without conviction or accusation goes all the way back to George Washington who issued a blanket pardon for participants in the Whiskey Rebellion. More recently Jimmy Carter pardoned all Vietnam Era draft evaders including those never charged or convicted. For the most part such pardons are usually for groups of unnamed individuals who committed a specific offense, and in such cases of course would not have yet been charged. Ford's pardon for Nixon didn't specify any crimes nor did Reagan's for Cap Wienberger. The USSC case Burdick v US which established that pardons can be rejected because they are legally an admission of guilt was about pardons Woodrow Wilson issued to two reporters in an attempt to defeat their claims to Fifth Amendment protection and compel them to reveal information about a crime they had reported on. They were charged with bribing officials to reveal information about a smuggling operation but they weren't a part of the smuggling group.
What I've seen indicates that a person who receives a pardon can hold it in confidence. I suspect the DOJ practice of publicizing them is more due to modern laws regarding Federal actions and records than anything required to make the pardon effective. If charged with an offense covered by it the pardon is presented to the court to terminate the action.
Yeah, we usually call the broader usage amnesty, but it’s the same part of the Constitution that empowers all of this. It is a plenary power according to SCOTUS.
https://www.whitehousehistory.org/the-history-of-the-pardon-power
I sort of remember looking into the Pelltier claims years ago and deciding they had little or no merit. Reading the article, I'm still unmoved.
"“They set their agents up in a war zone, and two of them got killed in this turbulent situation."
"They" being the FBI. A war zone? I don't understand what he even means by that, but it's nonsense, legally.
"Peltier has never denied his involvement in the shootout that led to the deaths of Williams and Coler, but has denied firing the shots that killed them."
Doesn't that make him guilty just as a getaway driver in a bank robbery where one of the gang shoots the guard because it's a foreseeable end to their actions which they are a willing participant in? Not much of a defense.
Then there's the fact that the Biden people couldn't even bring themselves to pardon him- You'd think they'd be pretty receptive to the idea.
I'm thoroughly unconvinced.
Well, you can watch the movie that’s soon to come out and see how it moves you. He’s eighty years old, so I certainly can’t imagine that he’s going to cause any harm by moving from prison to his house. Even if he weren’t under permanent house arrest, ag his age there’s little chance of him harming anyone.
Well that's a different argument, but one I'm open to. I'm not sure what home a man who's been in prison for decades would go home to though, but perhaps he should have that opportunity.
I'm hugely skeptical of almost all documentaries. A story if you'll allow me, of how that came to be-
When I was in Architecture school in Switzerland, the "campus" was a villa house in a little town outside Lugano. Lovely area. There were about 25 students there at the time, living and schooling in the house/studio. One class that was offered was a documentary class taught by a French documentary filmmaker. I kind of stalled until late in the semester and had to come up with something quickly to do a two minute or whatever it was documentary. I noticed that on the corner of our villa was a sign with the name of the street we were on (as is common in Europe), and that the mailing address did not use the street name. So I went around and asked the students if they knew the name of the street the villa was on. Got several answers including a number of "I don't know", none of them correct. My documentary consisted of a little intro footage of the place, the clips of students being asked about the street name, and then a shot of the sign. I guess it was for me just about how we often don't even notice things like this around us, or even when you live somewhere you aren't *from* there. Really it was probably unfair to even ask them this question as there really was not reason to know it unless you saw the sign and wondered. I think it was more received as dumb Americans when they travel being oblivious to the details around them. The French documentary director loved it, I think more than any of the others, mainly because it had a "gotcha" moment. He said I got it. Since then I've understood well what the real purpose of documentary is for most filmmakers, and it's not truth.
That's my experience anyway.
Documentary films can indeed be tendentious. My experience with one I worked on as a history student, many years ago now, was however highly positive.
Ours was a public history project about the CCC and the restoration of Fort Pulaski outside Savannah, Georgia. I met some truly great guys from that era and learned a lot about their struggle through the Great Depression and the Second World War that followed. The CCC provided them with skills and discipline that prepared them to work together in the fight across Africa and then Europe. I found the experience of conducting the interviews to prepare for filming— which was all I did during the one semester I was involved— to be a great experience.
Thus I’m more inclined to be receptive of the works of the genre, for what are admittedly anecdotal reasons. It’s good to remember that all such projects may not be equally good.
I wonder if that film I helped with was ever finished? I should try to find out.
It looks like at least the raw interviews are available to watch.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/ccc-pulaski-oral-histories/2/
Very interesting! Found a little time to kind of listen while I'm working, about half an hour in. I can see how this would be a lot of fun. I too am one of those folks who can sit around and listen to the older folks talk about the old days quite happily. I chuckled a bit listening to the questioners and they'd keep asking him about "was the work (at the CCC camp) hard?" "Can you speak to the difficulty of the work?" and he just keeps shrugging it off as not being hard in his recollection, because he was used to working on the farm. They really wanted that answer that they could overlay the sad music over and play up how hard it was, but the reality just wasn't there for them, and he wouldn't even give an answer they could edit into that. Okay, I may be a little biased here, but that's how I heard it.
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