President Bush Will Pardon Turkey before Humans: A Pardon Primer

By · Monday, November 24th, 2008

I am about to pass my 22nd consecutive Thanksgiving holiday as a federal prisoner. President Bush, I am sure, will take yet another opportunity to pardon a turkey. If history repeats itself, President Bush will not show such compassion to the more than 200,000 people serving time within the federal prison system. This President has not shown much interest in exercising his pardon power on behalf of human beings

The United States Constitution, in Article II, Section 2, provides the President with the authority to pardon individuals for federal crimes. A pardon is a form of clemency. More than one type of pardon exists. With the general pardon, the President extends an act of grace that relieves the individual of the legal consequences that follow a specific crime. A conditional pardon, on the other hand, requires something specific from an individual in order for the pardon to be effective.

Amnesty is another form of executive clemency that falls under the President’s pardon power. Rather than granting amnesty to a single individual, Presidents grant amnesty to certain classes of people who may be subject to criminal charges but have not yet been convicted. President Carter, for example, granted amnesty to those who were subjected to criminal charges for evading the draft during the Vietnam War.

A reprieve is a pardon that suspends or postpones the execution of a sentence for a definite time. A reprieve does not excuse or change the sentence that the court imposed. Rather, a reprieve simply delays it temporarily.

A commutation of sentence, on the other hand, changes the punishment to a less severe sentence. President Bush was kind enough to commute the sentence of his friend, Scooter Libby, after a jury convicted Libby of federal crimes during the scandal that put an American intelligence officer’s life at risk for political manipulation. Rather than allowing Scooter Libby to serve the time in prison that a federal judge imposed, President Bush commuted the prison portion of Libby’s sentence by eliminating the prison time; President Bush avowed that his friend had suffered enough through the trial and did not need to serve time in prison.

In the federal system, prisoners may request an application for executive clemency from the case manager. If the individual chooses, he may write to the office of the Pardon Attorney for an application, or he can ask someone with Internet access to download an application for clemency from the Pardon Attorney’s Web site.

Under President Bush, the Pardon Attorney may have been the most laid-back position in the administration. There has been virtually no attention paid to the thousands of applications for clemency that have been on file. President Bush has been reluctant to extend acts of grace to people in prison, except for friends of the administration like Scooter Libby.

Prior to the tough-on-crime era that began with President Reagan, Presidents used their Constitutional power to pardon with more magnanimity. Fewer than 40,000 people were serving time in federal prison when I was locked inside a U.S. Penitentiary back in 1987. Yet past Presidents reviewed pardon requests regularly and commuted sentences on a regular basis. Now, with more than 200,000 people in federal custody, pardons are far rarer. During his eight years in office, President Bush has only commuted five prison terms.

I have had an application on file for executive clemency since 2003. I serve a lengthy sentence for a nonviolent drug offense. During more than 21 full years of imprisonment, I have worked hard to reconcile with society. I have educated myself, earning an undergraduate degree from Mercer University and a graduate degree from Hofstra University. I’ve published several books on the prison experience that university professors from across the United States use to educate students on the subjects of criminal justice and corrections. I have kept a clean disciplinary record and contributed to communities both inside and outside of prison boundaries. Most importantly, I have built and nurtured a family that will assist my transition upon release. My hopes were that those records of redemption would advance my candidacy for relief from my sentence. Yet under President Bush’s administration, my petition for clemency has gathered dust with thousands of others in the office of the Pardon Attorney.

With President-elect Obama, I have more hope. I remain grounded in reality, but I feel confident that President Obama will appoint a Pardon Attorney who will share the same vision as our country’s new President. Rather than extinguishing hope, as President Bush so expertly did, President Obama inspires all Americans to reach their highest potential. Perhaps next year, some human beings, as well as turkeys, will receive acts of grace and compassion from our new President.

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