Our [sarcasm]beloved[/sarcasm] former sheriff Joe Arpaio is now petitioning the court to vacate his conviction for criminal contempt now that Lord Dampnut has pardoned him. From my layman’s perspective this seems ludicrous - a pardon doesn’t mean you are declared innocent, just that you don’t have to serve a sentence. If I were the judge I would tell Arpaio to pound sand - he’s still guilty of the crime, he just has a pal in a position to get him off the hook.
Question: Is vacating a conviction any sort of common or standard practice after a pardon?
Sorry, automatic pilot. I got the letters right, just in the wrong order. Was “[sarcasm]beloved[/sarcasm]” also over the line? I ask for future reference.
For example, in Canada you can get a pardon after X years (after sentence is complete) on most crimes provided you keep your nose clean… Which means that once the pardon is issued, a criminal record check will not show that you hav a criminal record. AFAIK, Canada does not allow questions about arrest etc. in general - the only permissible question in most circumstances is “do you have a criminal record (i.e. conviction for which you have not been pardoned)?”
So what exactly is the ex-sheriff asking for? Doesn’t the pardon automatically clear his conviction record? I also recall some discussion whether his offence fell under contempt of court, and whether such a court-related issue was even within the power of the president to pardon?
A pardon means the recipient does not have to serve his sentence (or the remainder thereof, if applicable). It doesn’t vacate the conviction or mean it won’t show up in one’s Permanent Record, or anything. If anything, acceptance of a pardon is an admission of guilt.
Arpaio presumably wants the conviction tossed so he can accept a federal office, but there’s no legal reason for the court to do so.
As I recall, the SCotUS ruled in the early-to-mid 19[sup]th[/sup] century that a pardon is an admission of guilt. When a convict is handed a pardon, they may present it to the court, return it to the sender, or burn it in the sink in their cell. If they do the first thing, they are seen to be admitting their guilt. Even if the court were to vacate the conviction, the pardon still stands, and the public record, which now cannot be unseen by many millions of people, will show the Arpaio’s guilt-by-acceptance.
The only story I read about Arpaio was about him being punished by a court for ignoring a court order to stop arresting people solely for immigration violations (i.e. illegal aliens). Is this that same issue?
If the pardon by Trump is still in question he’ll probably have to wait until that matter is cleared up which might take awhile as they’ll have to research if the POTUS can pardon a state or lower-level conviction. Could take years really as I doubt they assemble a crack team of experts to work on this full-time.
Yes. There are many other controversies about Arpaio, including bragging about treating prisoners badly (some of whom died in custody), but racial profiling was the subject of the contempt of court conviction. His wikipedia page is quite stunning. Many famous people have pages that run 10 or 20 paragraphs, with one or two paragraphs devoted to some controversy or other. Arpaio’s page is almost entirely controversy.
Your answer is completely devoid of accuracy. Arpaio’s is not “a state conviction.” It’s a federal conviction for an offense against the United States, specifically 18 U.S.C. 401(3), for willfully violating the terms of a court order.
There is no provision in the law to assemble a crack team of experts to decide if a President can pardon a state conviction: he cannot. The Constitution provides the President essentially unlimited power to pardon federal offenses (offenses against the United States) and zero power to pardon state crimes.
The legal theory is that Arpaio is legally entitled to petition the court to have his conviction expunged. The court is apparently reviewing the request. They are the sole arbiter of whether the conviction remains on the record. That the court did not reject the petition out-of-hand might be considered a tiny bit disturbing.
Also, if the original conviction stands, it could be used as evidence against him in any Civil Court, if his victims sued him for damages.
And it would be very strong evidence, since the Criminal Court proof level is much higher than that of Civil Court. It’s almost a slam-dunk to win a Civil case if the defendant has already been convicted in a Criminal case. (The usual defense to this is to claim that the criminal act that he was convicted of is a different act than the tortious act that caused the civil damages.)
The general rule is correct, but your application is not. Arpaio was not convicted of a crime, per se. He was convicted of indirect criminal contempt for disobeying a court order in a civil case. The underlying finding was not based on whether he violated the rights of suspects, but whether he violated federal law.
In other words, it is the part in parentheses that controls the outcome of the hypothetical civil lawsuit. In any event, Arpaio would not be personally liable to civil plaintiffs, so his conviction is not admissible to sustain the defendant’s (Maricopa County’s) wrongdoing at all.
It means things go on as if Arpaio hadn’t been convicted. The idea is that Arpaio didn’t have a chance to appeal, so it’s not fair for him to have the conviction on his record. This seems like a thin argument to me, since (1) I’m not aware of any rule that would have prevented Arpaio from appealing regardless of the pardon, and (2) he had the option to decline the pardon. But it’s not my field, and I haven’t read the order.