I agree that a governor in most states is generally unilaterally permitted that power (admittedly, a failure in my analogy), it was not the point I was attempting to make that it is not within is power; my point was that possessing that power is not an excuse in and of itself to use it.
While to my knowledge there are generally no provisions for what reasons a governor may pardon a convicted felon, there is generally an element of custom and, shall I say, “good taste”. That is, to my knowledge, there is generally an establish precedence for when a governor should and should not exercise that power. It is my opinion that, especially in a state as strongly pro-death penalty as Virginia or Texas, if a governor overturned most or all death sentences, not on the merit of evidence or law, but on a purely moral or religious ground, the populace may become jaded with the judicial process. That is, why bother having a death penalty for the most serious of crimes if it is not able to be used when it is legally called for?
To me, a governor with such behavior would essentially be circumventing the law; he’d effectively be removing the death penalty from the books during is term without the voice of the people or the legislative branch. Now, if he wants to use it here and there for various reasons, that’s a different story all together, but if he attempts to patently refuse to execute all or even most of the inmates on death row on moral or religious grounds, while he may have the power, I would tend to view it as an abuse.
I believe you are mis-reading this clause, and that it does grant the governor the power to grant a pardon whether or not a parole board okays it. You are attaching a sentence clause to the wrong subject…
You interpret it as: the governor has the power to grant pardons and reprieves if a majority of the parole board reccommends it.
I interpret it as: the governor has the power to grant pardons and reprieves, only after reviewing a written recommendation from the parole board.
I believe the constitution requires the governor to consider input from the board, not that he take it.
The “grant repreives and commutations” clause belongs with “the governor has the power to”. It should not attach to. “the recommendation of the board”.
It’s not the difference in our beliefs - the law is that not every crime is subject to the death penalty, not even all deaths. and once the conviction and sentence has been issued, the ** law** allows for other actions - appeals of sentence and sentencing through the judicial circuit, as well as the possability of pardon or commutation of sentence from the executive branchs (typeically the governor).
the point I was making was that generally speaking actual innocence should result in the person being released from incarceration (unless, of course there were other concurrent sentences), whereas in most cases, commutation of death penalty is not the preferred redress for actual innocence, but held out as a possability for various other reasons. These could be for sentencing errors but usually that sort of thing would be actionable through the court system.
So, for argument’s sake wrt Bush and his DP record in TX, the cases submitted for shouldn’t include those cases where actual innocence was alledged (as I pointed out, god, we’d hope that those folks would have something better than LWOP), but where there is some other reason to spare the persons life. REdeamtion being one potential. you obviously disagree that redemtion should be a used to commute the DP, but it does appear to be one of the legitimate claims.
I think the implication is certainly that the governor is supposed to be acting on the wishes of said Board; however, I also think it is possible to disagree on the literal parsing of the text (translation: it seems plain to me that it says that clearly, but you can validly interpret it slightly differently). Saying “the Governor shall have power…on the … recommendation … of the Board… to grant reprieves” sounds to me like “If the board says to pardon the prisoner, the Governor can do it.”
Some more research on my part has determined that my interpretation – which I hold as logically valid, is apparently NOT the accepted interpretation of the language. I accept that the governor, inder the current understanding, has very limited power of pardon.
So, apologies Walloon. I wonder if this particular language has ever been tested in court. Does anyone know whether some governor ever tried hard to pardon someone that the parole board didn’t want pardoned?
I’m well aware of this as I also live in Virginia myself, and that is part of what made me think about how I, personally, would handle such issues. To be honest, I think if the choice is, “passionately try and speak out against the death penalty” or “shut up and accept the things I can’t change” with the first choice meaning no chance at election and the other giving me a fighting chance, I’d take the second chance. Like I said, I hope that to some level the people we have running for governorships feel like they can improve their state and make it a better place, and if you genuinely feel that way you shouldn’t give up on trying to do those things by taking an absolutist and intractable position on an issue that you simply lack the power to effect change.
Executives (both governors and the President) have a lot of executive powers that I think tradition and common sense tell us are not intended to be used without restraint. I think that the executive pardon arose out of the ability that monarchs used to have to pardon persons in extraordinary circumstances, usually in cases where justice clearly was not served or other special circumstances. Obviously, just like monarchs did, many Presidents abuse that pardon power (Clinton did so notoriously at the end of his Presidency–and many Presidents seem to have last-hour pardons the day they leave office.) I think that while there is clear precedent for unlimited use of pardons by the execute without cause, that the tradition of the executive pardon suggests it was intended to be used to correct extraordinary errors or faults or to deal with very extraordinary situations, not to be used exhaustively as a policy tool.
As I suspected, this was a largely a misunderstanding of your point from my perspective; my apologies. While I still do not agree that reformation or redemption is necessarily sufficient grounds for commuting the death penalty, I do find that far more palatable than releasing him. I am willing to accept that on the condition it is done only in a small number of cases under special cirumstances and not as the norm (which tends to be the case, as I understand).
It had me thinking similarly; however, it is difficult for me to consider the decision, as most of my objections to state law, were I to run for governor, would be from a political perspective as opposed to a moral one. As stated in a previous post, I think were I inclined to attempt to change the law to stand for my morals, running for governor is not the best platform for legislative change.
It looks like you did a more elloquent job of voicing essentially the same object I had.
The minute that I begin to equate the photo-op and traditional pardon of a Thanksgving turkey with the death penalty for convictec criminals is the minute that you can strap me down to that gurney because my intelligence will be pretty much shot by that point.
Well, you interpret it wrongly. The originating power to reprieve, commute, or pardon a criminal sentence belongs to the pardon and parole board, not to the governor. If the board votes to grant one of those to a criminal, the governor has the power to veto the recommendation. But the governor cannot unilaterally commute or pardon a sentence without the board’s prior approval. The governor can only grant one 30-day reprieve of a sentence on his own.