In general, but specifically in respponse to the recent activities by Trump, do these people get the money they were fined returned to them?
I can’t see why they would. They’re verdicts are not overturned, just pardoned for their crimes.
Is it different if old cases are re-opened and felons, having been heavily fined, are exonerated?
Can I ask an add-on question? Will the pardonees get to vote and own firearms?
IANAL but my understanding is that accepting a pardon is considered to be an acknowledgement of guilt.
I believe restitution for wrongful imprisonment or other punishments, including fines, rests on the assumption that the person was wrongfully convicted. So I don’t think these procedures would apply in the case of a person who is pardoned. In the eyes of the law, that person was lawfully convicted right up to the moment he was pardoned.
I’ve never understood the notion that accepting a pardon is admission of guilt. Suppose I’m a President (or governor), and someone under my jurisdiction is convicted of a crime, but I genuinely believe that they didn’t do it. It seems to me that that’s a prime example of a situation where I should use my pardon power.
Note that PotUS can impose conditions on pardons. (E.g., enter rehab, pay restitution, etc.) So an admission of guilt might be attached in some way. (A person has to accept a pardon to get it. Which made the recent instances of posthumous pardons “interesting”.)
Ford insisted that Nixon’s acceptance of his pardon was an admission of guilt. Nixon disagreed.
And there are blanket pardons like Carter’s for draft evaders. People weren’t named, no one had to do anything unless they had already entered the legal system, etc. Some people may have been covered by the pardon and didn’t know for sure if they we covered by it*. Etc. Who is “admitting guilt” here is quite fuzzy.
E.g., they went to Canada without getting a draft notice, but later one was sent to a previous address and they never received it.
People may still be able to reject pardons, but they can’t reject commutations. If the President says your prison sentence is over, it’s over, period. So even if you reject the pardon (assuming that’s still possible*), the President can commute your punishment down to zero whether you like it or not.
*When the Supreme Court ruled that convicts cannot reject commutations, it said the government presented a “very persuasive argument that in no case is such consent necessary to an unconditional pardon.”
In Colorado v. Nelson (2017), the Supreme Court held that the state must return “fees, court costs, and restitution” to a person whose conviction is invalidated by a reviewing court. It seems fairly clear from skimming that opinion that this would also apply to punitive fines (Alito’s concurrence tracks this principle back through the history of American law, although he seems to want to treat restitution differently from fines).
To the extent that the decision rests on the view that the vacating of the conviction restores the presumption of innocence, I don’t think it would matter whether the convicting is validating on direct review or re-opened somewhere down the line.
In 1866, the Supreme Court said in a summary of the pardon power that “it does not restore offices forfeited or property or interests vested in others in consequence of the conviction and judgment.”
I assume fines count as interests (money) vested in others (the United States) as a consequence of the conviction.
I read “fine money” as in, “You’re letting me out of jail, howsabout giving me some of that fine, fine money”.
Right.
I’m not looking up cites but whether accepting a pardon is an effective admission of guilt is a matter of some controversy. Some cases have held that accepting a pardon is an admission of guilt. This seems particularly salient pre-conviction. In this thinking, you can only be pardoned for crimes you have committed, so if you committed no crime, you can accept no pardon. Essentially, the courts are saying that if you accept the pardon rather than going to trial to show that you are not guilty, then you must be guilty.
Commentators have suggested that the analysis should be different post-conviction. Some pardons have carried conditions, such as Ford’s pardon of Nixon. If a pardon carries a condition, for example, that the person cannot deny their guilt, then accepting the pardon would be an explicit admission (not that I’m aware of any such conditions to a pardon - this is merely hypothetical). Other pardons are granted post-conviction explicitly because the president believes the person is innocent. No one really believes that accepting such a pardon is an admission of guilt. Even where the president isn’t granting the pardon due to a belief in the person’s innocence, a person may rationally accept a pardon for a crime they did not commit because it will relieve them of their sentence. This is understandable.
I’m not sure about that. Garland cites to Blackstone and Hawkins for the proposition that the pardon does not extend to property vested in others. Both the cited provisions refer, rather specifically, to actions “against a statute” where “informer hath acquired a private property in his part of the penalty”. (It also cites Bacon’s Abridgement, but I can’t easily find a free copy of that volume).
As far as I can tell, this is a reference to qui tam actions brought by private individuals (known a “informers”) to enforce laws where the informer received some portion of the penalty as payment. If so, this is a pretty specific provision that would not necessarily extend to property vested in the sovereign.
Then again, Hawkins also says that “no pardon by the king, without express words of restitution, shall divest either from the king or subject, an interest in lands or goods vested in them by an attainder or conviction preceding.” That would tend to support a broader reading.
Again, I am not a legal scholar, but my understanding is this is a principle of Anglo-Saxon law; a pardon reverses the conviction but the law still acknowledges that the conviction occurred and there was a period when the pardoned person was guilty. Napoleonic law, on the other hand, has the principle that a pardon makes a person as innocent as if they had never been arrested. But the idea of a pardon on the ground of innocence has leaked into American law and you can find references to it.
My speculation is that this principle is supposed to uphold respect for the legal system. If you pardon somebody and say they are completely innocent, you are essentially saying the legal system was wrong; it convicted a person who it shouldn’t have. The American principle says that pardons are just another part of the legal system. A person can be rightfully convicted by the courts because they are guilty but executive authorities can then issue them a pardon even though they are guilty. A pardon under this principle does not imply the court was wrong when it carried out its part of the legal process; it’s just saying there are steps in the legal process beyond the courts.
This difference in principle may reflect differing opinions in where the legitimacy of government comes from. The classical theory is that legitimacy comes from above; God’s usually at the top, he passes legitimacy down to earthly rulers, and those earthy rulers then delegate power down to administrators. So the lower levels of governments (like judges) can screw up but that doesn’t reflect upwards. God and the King are not presumed to be wrong just because some of those who serve them are. The system as a whole is still legitimate even though some people in it are wrong.
But in the system that came from Locke and Hobbes, legitimacy comes from below and moves up. A government derives its legitimacy from the consent of the people, who grant power to the higher levels. This means that mistakes at the lowest levels undermines the whole system. If the people are wrong in the decisions they make at the low levels - like pronouncing an innocent person guilty - then how can we assume they are right at the highest levels - like giving the right person the power of the Presidency. In a system like this, if the people are wrong then the entire system is wrong.
Voting and firearm ownership are controlled by the states. I believe that pardon alone doesn’t erase the record, ithe record needs to be expunged in a state court.
A pardon means one admits to being guilty is not clear cut and is debatable. Legal scholar Brian C. Kalt has written multiple articles claiming it’s not the case. A snippet from one below.
I LOLed.
Nitpick: English law. Anglo-Saxon law was totally different from English common law, and varied from region to region. Very little of it survived the Norman Conquest.
A pardon is a forgiveness for what you were convicted of, it is not that the conviction was overturned, just that you are forgiven and free from further penalty as a result of your conviction.
The conviction still stands.
It doesn’t refer to the executive - the President or governor can absolutely grant a pardon if he or she believes the person was innocent or unjustly convicted. But the pardon doesn’t erase the fact of the conviction , and at least in that sense, the person is acknowledging guilt. I recall reading that Joe Arpaio gave up the right to appeal when he accepted the pardon. Last I heard, Arpaio was still trying to get the conviction vacated ( apparently because the pardon was issued before he was sentenced or had the opportunity to appeal ) but hasn’t had any luck.
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