While Laurence Tribe may find a secret pardon to have a “Constitutional cloud” over it (whatever that means), there’s nothing in the Constitution or caselaw to suggest that a pardon must be publicly disclosed. There are practical issues such as being able to authenticate that the pardon was in fact issued while the President was in office, but I have a hard time believing the SC would find a secret pardon to be ipso facto unconstitutional.
In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if secret pardons have been issued in the course of intelligence work.
I don’t think I would disagree with an amendment whereby a president may not pardon close friends and family, but as a part of it someone must be able to.
Executive pardons are not because someone is a “king” but a realization that the law, while okay generally, sometimes has an improperly harsh circumstance in an individual case and there needs to be a safety valve.
The objection to Trump on this issue seems to be that Trump is an asshole and we shouldn’t elect a guy like Trump in the first place. Well, we have a remedy for that…rule by the people and all.
This seems to be the left wing equivalent of Q Anon stuff. Is there any evidence that Trump did this? In any event, he cannot pardon himself from state prosecution.
Non that I’m aware of. I understand that a pardon is only from federal prosecution. Two attorneys quit the NY stuff because their boss would not move forward with the prosecution. Yeah, if you don’t have an open and closed case, it may be hard to pursue an ex-president.
From the Chicago Tribune Three strikes - SAN FRANCISCO — Two years after California’s tough “three strikes and you’re out” law went into effect, twice as many defendants have been imprisoned under the law for marijuana possession as for murder, rape and kidnapping combined, according to a new study.
Reading it looks like two of them have to be violent crimes. But if then caught with MJ that’s it. Since MJ is mostly being legalized, it seems a bit over the top.
Will Smith would already have one violent crime against him. Don’t know much about that, but Chris Rock isn’t making it a big deal which is fine IMHO.
Attempting to overthrow the government is apparently just fine though. Make no mistakes, there are people taking notes.
The article seems incredibly biased as possession of weed is a misdemeanor in CA:
It could never be used as a third strike enhancement. It seems like a guy caught with 100 pounds of weed in his trunk, with 10 prior felony convictions, complains that he is serving life for merely “possessing marijuana” when in fact he was a major drug dealer and an habitual offender.
Is there a reason pardons have to be absolute? I think if it was just limited to vacating convictions, that would answer injustices but also allow retrial in cases where pardon powers were used as patronage or for self preservation by a president.
Let’s not get into an argument about the Capitol Insurrection. There’s plenty of other threads about that and I don’t want this thread derailed.
Anyway, how about this for a better way of handling pardons:
The President’s pardon power is totally removed. Instead, create a commission, call it the Clemency Commission, composed of retired judges and perhaps others familiar with the judicial system. Their job is to receive all applications for clemency and grant those they deem worthwhile. Anyone convicted of a federal crime can apply, even if they haven’t exhausted all appeals. However, there will be a limit of how often anyone can apply, perhaps only once every two or three years. Don’t want to overload the system, which would happen without that restriction.
There may be some restrictions on what sort of pardons the Clemency Commission can issue. I don’t have any thoughts on what those might be, but there may be some things we don’t want the commission to do.
So any thoughts on this? I think it would solve pretty much all the issues there are with the current system.
I’m not a fan. Appointing members of the commission would turn into yet another political battefield.
But limiting the president’s pardon powers to applications for clemency from anyone convicted of a federal crime makes sense to me. It wouldn’t have prevented Trump’s noxious granting of clemency for Blagojevich, but it would avoid all these potential shenanigans around self-pardons, pre-emptive pardons and secret, pocket pardons.
Sorry, think I started throwing things off the rails.
We don’t know if self pardons are even possible do we? Would such a pardon be presented to SCOTUS to rule on.
A president could issue themselves a pardon from Federal tax crimes. Or any other federal crime. For ever.
I don’t think the framers of the constitution every thought that anyone would be so deplorable to do such a thing, but we are bumping up against that edge.
It seems like it would be a court that’s higher than the Supreme Court, which isn’t supposed to exist.
There must be some natural consequences following. Remember this?
Mazars—the accounting firm that spent years preparing Donald Trump’s taxes and helping put together his personal statements of net worth—told the former president last week that it is severing ties with him, and that ten years of Trump’s balance sheets “should no longer be relied upon.”
I read that and think yeah, people talk about Enron—how about Arthur Andersen? Big companies can be sucked down by their complicity.
With unreliable statements for a decade, what happens when he wants future loans etc.? And who’s doing his taxes now? IANA financial guru but I assume some dominos will fall as the truth comes out and his credibility sinks.
Possibly, but since it won’t be ruling on Constitutional or regulatory issues, I wouldn’t expect nearly as much of that. And if we’re creative enough in how the members are selected, that maybe could be avoided altogether.
Pardons can only be issued for actions that have already taken place. So even if a self-pardon is allowed, the President can’t pardon himself for something he does in the future.
I’m not sure how you see it that way. The Clemency Commission will not rule on Constitutional issues or anything like that. Just on whether to commute sentences and similar. How is that higher than the SCOTUS?
At any rate, it would take a Constitutional amendment to remove the President’s pardon power, so the Commission could be allowed for in the same amendment.
I’m thinking of cases where the lawyers take it all the way to the SCOTUS and either they refuse to hear it or head it but re-iterate nope, in jail you stay. The Presidential pardon can overturn that. If you have a “Clemency Commission” they’d be overruling the Supreme Court in some cases.
What substitute mechanism would you propose to correct miscarriages of justice? And please don’t rely on district attorneys – the average district attorney will not admit that he might have made a mistake.
A more robust appeals process with increased funding for public defenders, plea bargain reform, and a better funded legal system overall to eliminate judicial backlogs.
I agree. Whether this is a 3, 7, 9, 11 or 29 member commission it will be filled with Senate confirmation hearings regarding how “soft on crime” the members are. A disaster.
We could be on to something here especially regarding plea bargaining. In my experience with the system this process is the most antithetical to justice. If I was innocent, I would take a deal for 5 years instead of taking the chance of spending the rest of my life in prison. But none of that tests the strength of the State’s case. It has just hung a sword over my head and made my decision a very rational one, but not one that leads to any truth finding function.
Plus a guilty person would gladly take five years, but an innocent person would be tempted to take it to the box. (jail slang for demanding a jury trial).