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Bush Pardon thread

Bush will save his controversial pardons for the last day in office. Don't worry.
 
gumboot said:
I doubt the US "Head of Government" (that would be Dick Cheney or Steny Hoyer) can issue pardons any more than the Australia Head of Government can issue pardons. Pardons are traditionally only something the Head of State can issue.
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The US president is both Head of Government and Head of State. But your point is still right - when the president pardons people, he's able to do so in a sense because he's Head of State, not because he's Head of Government. So it wouldn't make sense to compare our Head of Government pardoning people with Australia's Head of Government pardoning people, because our Head of Government is Head of State, while Australia's is not.
 
davefoc said:
Can a president grant a pardon for a state crime?

On the Marc Rich pardon:
It just recently came up that the prime minister of Israel made a special request to the Clinton administration for Marc Rich's pardon. Apparently Marc Rich is an orthodox Jew although I'm not sure how he got the prime minister of Israel to make the request. I was surprised that H. Clinton wasn't hit with more questions about Bill Clinton's pardons. I recently read through a list. A lot of them looked very shady. An interesting question for H. Clinton would have been how she felt about the pardons and whether she would consider it an appropriate use of presidential pardon power to make similar pardons if she were president.


http://www.slate.com/id/2204984/
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Clinton's pardons were a real stain on his presidency IMHO. Living in Arizona at the time I was outraged at the Fife Symington pardon. It took me many years to forgive him for that one. Of course living through the Bush presidency accelerated the process.

Daredelvis
 
PhantomWolf said:
Why do they never pardon the ones that deserve pardons like Troy Anthony Davis?
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I just read through the Wikipedia article on this. I had never heard of the guy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_Anthony_Davis

It sounds like the case for innocence is marginally more legitimate than some of these deals. Although it sounds like Mr. Davis wasn't all that outstanding of a citizen before this murder. Apparently he had shot somebody else earlier in the day, but the case against him sounds a little sketchy on the actual murder.

I didn't look at all at PhantomWolf's link. I don't see much probative value in that kind of thing. I suspect every murderer that manages to get a little publicity for his case has a web site full of the protestations about his innocence from the true believers.

Further confounding these kind of cases is my sense that a lot of the well known people that get involved are anti death penalty proponents and they seem to be willing to flat out lie if they think it's going to keep somebody from being executed.

As a practical matter, I don't think Bush could pardon him. It sounds like he was convicted of a state crime and according to linusrichard above Bush can not pardon people for state crimes.

But what do you think PhantomWolf? Is there some special reason that you singled this guy out? What do you think the chances are that he is innocent of the crime that he was convicted of?
 
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I think the chances are pretty high. Of the 9 non-police witnesses, 7 have changed their statements to say that they either didn't see the shooter of that that the shooter was another person, that other person is one of the remaining 2 witnesses that claim Troy did it. About six other people who didn't see the shooting have come forward to say that that "wittness" told them that he did it. There was no physical evidence that Troy did it, no weapon, only the wittnesses who now are saying that they were pressured into claiming Troy did it. One of the witnesses whose statment was used in trial is illiterate and claims that he wasn't even shown the statement the police used, nor was it true to what he told them.

On top of that his rights to appeal have been pretty much been violated. He never had a lawyer on his appeal for most of the time it was supposed to be being prepared, and the community center that was finally assigned the case had just 2 laywers working on 80 cases and they never met with him, nor argued his innocence. Ther case has been one very long stuff up from go to woe, but due to legal technicalities and misrepresentation, he's repeatedly been denied the one thing every person should be allowed to have, a fair trial.
 
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In related news, Sen. Dick Durbin is lobbying Bush to pardon former Illinois Governor George Ryan.

I hope Bush doesn't do this. Ryan is only 1 year into a 6 year sentence, he should serve the entire sentence as an example to other Illinois politicians who are thoroughly corrupt, including our current governor who I'm guessing will be facing his own criminal charges in due time.

One of the crimes Ryan was convicted of was allowing commercial drivers licences to be bought for campaign contributions during his tenure as Illinois Secretary of State. One of these was bought by an illegal immigrant who couldn't even speak English, and a part fell off the poorly maintained truck he was driving which caused a mini-van to burst into flames on the highway, incinerating 6 children.

No way, no how should Bush pardon Ryan. Not until he can bring back to life those 6 children who died because of his greed and corruption.
 
Puppycow said:
Has he pardoned anyone? Is there still time?
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I don't know if there is a legal chance to pardon anyone else from now on, but Bush did pardon these guys some hours ago:

http://search.cnn.com/arProcessing....commute/index.html?iref=newssearch&qry=pardon
Bush commutes sentences of former Border Patrol agents updated 9 hours, 42 minutes ago
On his final full day in office, President Bush issued commutations for two former U.S. Border Patrol agents convicted in 2006 of shooting and wounding an unarmed illegal immigrant -- suspected of drug smuggling at the time -- and then covering it up.
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Texas said:
That was not a pardon. He just commuted the rest of the jail sentences. Clinton pardoned 140 people on his last day Bush pardoned no one.
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My bad, I thought it's the same thing from a legal point of view about the Presidents power to intervene in legal cases.
 
Oliver said:
My bad, I thought it's the same thing from a legal point of view about the Presidents power to intervene in legal cases.
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No a pardon completely voids the conviction and erases the crime from the books. A commutation only shortens the original sentence but the person still carries a felony conviction on their record.
 
Texas said:
No a pardon completely voids the conviction and erases the crime from the books. A commutation only shortens the original sentence but the person still carries a felony conviction on their record.
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And presumably loses the right to vote and other rights that convicted felons lose? Not nearly as generous as a pardon.
 
Texas said:
No a pardon completely voids the conviction and erases the crime from the books. A commutation only shortens the original sentence but the person still carries a felony conviction on their record.
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Which sounds like a fair choice for the commutation based on the case in question. But is there any way for Bush to pardon someone in the final hours till the inauguration? It seems to be quite late for any further pardon...
 
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