This came up while I was watching an old “24” last night, but I think there’s a factual question here so I’m putting it in GQ. If the president, or any other official, grants immunity or a pardon to some creep just to get desperately needed information out of him, how valid and irrefutable is it?
The scenario comes up in TV and movies so much that it is hackneyed now: Criminal has info that can’t be obtained anywhere else (location of kidnapped child, nuclear bomb, etc.) and refuses to divulge it unless he is granted immunity or a pardon from the president. Much angst and hand wringing over this Faustian bargain, and then they meet the criminal’s demands because they have no choice.
The tension is premised on the assumption that the president (or whatever official) would never just lie to the creep, get the info, and then say “Ha! Tricked you. No immunity for you!” Now I know that on a much lower level, like when the local DA is granting immunity to a street level perp in return for info, that immunity offer would be managed by a defense attorney who makes sure it is enforced. And if they tried to renege, that would thwart any future efforts to make such a deal.
But in these Hollywood scenes, it’s usually just a terrorist alone in an interrogation room. They usually demand the immunity in writing, with the president’s signature, like that is some sort of ironclad guarantee.
So if this happened in the real world – assuming there truly was no other way to get the info out of this person – wouldn’t everyone involved just say “Sure, give her a nice looking document with a big gold seal and the president’s signature. Afterward, we say it was all done under duress and isnt’ valid.” I mean, what’s the downside? Terrorists then decide they can’t deal with us because we don’t play fair?
I don’t think it’s so much a matter of what terrorists think of us as what we think of us. If you show your word isn’t good in one area, it’s not likely your word will be taken in other areas.
Well, first we’d have to establish that such a scenario has ever actually occured. The government has granted immunity to certain scumbags in return for testimony in the criminal trials of other scumbags. But have we ever really given a scumbag immunity in return for giving us the location of a nuclear bomb, or some such? Thing is, like you say, if the immunity is secret then it is unenforceable. So secret immunity is worthless. So I can’t imagine it would be offered to a scumbag to bribe them to cooperate. Maybe a particular agency, or group, or agent, could tell a scumbag that if he cooperates they’ll let him go…but they’d have no way to tell the other agencies that the scumbag is now off limits unless the immunity is public.
Why wouldn’t a Presidential pardon be an iron clad guarentee? That is, unless you don’t beleive that the constitution specifally gives him that right. Which it does.
Yes, a presidential pardon IS an ironclad guarantee. But that pardon can’t be secret, or it won’t work! There’s no such thing as a secret pardon.
And again, if the president pardons you secretly, he can unpardon you secretly too.
In the case of normal grants of immunity, there is a third party to enforce the terms. The prosecutor and defendant agree on terms, and the judge enforces them. The the prosecutor doesn’t grant immunity, the judge does. And if the defendant tries to back out of the agreement, then the agreement is void.
However, in the case of the president secretly giving some terrorist immunity, who’s going to enforce the terms of the immunity? No one. A public pardon of some terrorist is possible, but there’s no such thing as a conditional pardon, the president would have to pardon the terrorist and then hope the terrorist would cooperate. And if the president offers a pardon and the terrorist cooperates then there’s no mechanism to force the president not to change his mind.
Sometimes the shows will reverse this cliche just as you suggest. I am reminded of the Battlestar Galactica episode where the President comes down hard on the military for torturing a prisoner, then offers him her word as to his safety and good treatment in order to get information about some bombs on their ships… then jettisons him into space.
There was a case in Alabama shown an episode of When America’s Funniest Police Animal Chases Turn Cars Wild or somesuch, wherein a man took schoolchildren hostage in Alabama. He released the kids after being shown a video of the governor signing a document purported to be his pardon, and upon leaving the premises he was promptly tackled, arrested and booked for his alleged crimes.
Secret or unenforced pardons can only work if the bad guy, as in the case cited by No Me Ayudes Compadre, is really stupid.
As soon as there is one publicized case of a pardon being revoked, the promise of one can never work again.
And yes, it means that terrorists, or any ordinary kidnapper, hostage taker etc., will no longer listen to those who don’t play fair back. This endangers the lives of every threatened person ever after. That’s why any official who does this needs to be condemned. The good guys absolutely have to play fair and be held to higher moral values than the bad guys or it’s the literal end of civilization.
And, yes, this applies in real life to our current real world situations.
Well, there has already been that one case, Exapno, as cited above. So according to you this this means the literal end of civilization. It’s already too late, we’re doomed! But of course only stupid people would believe such promises in the first place.
Letting a terrorist go because we promised them they could if only they let the hostages free is bad public policy. We generally have a duty to tell the truth, but not when telling the truth threatens human life. You don’t have a duty to tell the Nazis where the Jews are hiding, you have a duty to lie to the Nazis. If lying to a stupid kidnapper that he’ll get a pardon will get him to release his hostages, then lying is perfectly ethical.
Well, the President can grant a pardon for federal crimes. A State’s governor can grant a pardon for state crimes. And many crimes could be prosecuted under either (or both) federal or state laws.
So the President could grant a pardon for violation of federal anti-terrorist laws. Then the criminal tells where the bomb is concealed & how to disarm it. Then he is promptly arrested by the state police, and charged with violating that states laws against ‘attempted murder’. Quite a possible scenario.
But as people have said, that would certainly affect what pardon(s) the next terrorist demanded.
But once the president has signed that real pardon on national TV, what incentive does the terrorist have to tell where the bomb is hidden? He’s already got his pardon, he can walk out of that FBI interrogation room a free man without telling anyone anything.
But of course, that would ruin it for the next terrorist…
So can we take as stipulated that terrorists have good reason to be suspicious of such offers of immunity, and governments have good reason to be suspicious of offers of information conditional on immunity. Can we take it as given that these agreements have already been broken in the past, and that one more breach of trust is therefore not likely to have much effect?
Pardons can be conditional, can’t they? I’ve read that Richard Nixon pardoned Jimmy Hoffa on the condition that Hoffa couldn’t get involved with the Teamsters Union again before a certain future date. (I think it was several years later.)