October 13, 2008 • 19 mins
The U.S. Constitution grants several powers to the President, including the ability to pardon anyone for several types of crime. Learn about the origins of pardons in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Candice Gibson, joined by staff write Josh Clark. Hi. There,
I just thought you yawn and I was about to
say pardon. You know, Actually I was trying not to
(00:22):
laugh at Jerry. I was trying. She she went three two.
It was kind of cute. Our producer Jerry just did that.
We love her. Yeah. So, um, all right, Candice, you ready? Yeah,
make the heart symbol. Um. I was reading pardon Watch
have you heard of this? I hadn't either. Actually, I
(00:42):
was actually preparing for this podcast because I had noticed
that I was needing to hydrate my skin a little more,
which means one thing. It's getting to be pardoned season. Yeah,
apparently pardons come hard and fast most in the late fall,
early winner the president's finals term. Really, yeah, well, that's
(01:04):
when they come the most. Traditionally, I mean, a president
can offer a pardon any time of the year, but
usually they're done in the fall. Uh and uh, the
most come at the end of a president's term. Like
you said, right, that makes sense to me. You know,
it's October, you're walking through Bloomingdale's. The Christmas trees are up,
and you're thinking about, you know, the Season of forgiveness.
(01:25):
Actually kind of I suspect that that does have a
little something to do with it, to tell you the truth. Yeah, yeah, so,
Um I was. I was trying to figure out who
George Bush might forgive or offer the Season of forgiveness
to this year, right, I don't know she She wasn't
on this list. This is from the Empty wheelblog, which
(01:45):
again hadn't heard of until I started googling pardon predictions,
which is one of my favorite things to do. But
they had some pretty good ones on there. Um. There
were some that were fairly obvious. One for Karl Rove,
which just kind of be a blanket pardon for anything
he might be convicted of in in the future. Um.
(02:06):
Scooter Libby was one, although no, no, no, we'll get
into that. We'll use him as a great example because
he is a good example of what canon can't be done.
Um Alberto Gonzalez obviously, Um Rumsfeld was. In addition, somebody
posted a comment and said Rumsfeld um not abram Off though,
(02:27):
and the reason that the person who predicted um of
whether or not he these people would be pardon, said
because abram Off was a snitch. So it doesn't think that, uh,
that George Bush will play ball with abram Off, but
they do think he'll play ball with Roger Clemens. Yeah,
And then they they were serious, They said that they
think Clemens may get a pardon from Bush because Bush
(02:48):
is a baseball guy. He used to be the Uh,
I think that the managing owner of the Texas Rangers
for a while. Did you know that? I did not? So, Um,
this is these are just a few of the people
who we may see get pardons in the future. And
a pardon is a funny thing. I don't know if
it's that funny, well funny and that it's kind of strange.
(03:09):
There's a lot of moving pieces to a pardon, and
on a very simple level, it's when a president excuses
someone for an affront to the United States. It's never
for a local crime, of state crime, anything like that.
It has to be to United States as a whole,
and you can apply it for a pardon. Apparently, like
(03:30):
they get applications for pardons, and in the nineteen eighties
there was even a position formed for someone who would
review the pardons and research the person and see if
he or she had been an upstanding citizen until this point,
and help inform the president about whether or not this
person deserved a pardon. And a pardon is is granged
exclusively by the presidents. It's something that Congress can't override.
(03:54):
It's it's actually an Article two section to the Constitution,
and I have this wasn't an amendment, No, and written
to the Constitution. Here's what it says. The President shall
have the power to grant reprieved and pardons for offences
against the United States except and here's the big except
in cases of impeachment. And it's about checks and balances
here too. Because the president himself or herself can be impeached,
(04:18):
he or she cannot pardon someone who's impeached. Does that
make sense, Yeah, totally it does. And that's actually the
Congress didn't come up with that impeachment part. The whole
thing goes back to English common law, the progative English kings. Yes,
the the English Kings originally had the power to pardon
anybody for anything at any time, no questions. I asked, Uh,
(04:40):
they could release somebody from jail, they could keep their
head off the chopping block UM. And then finally, I
think in the seventeenth or eighteenth century Um Parliament was
able to finagle their way into making that one imposition
that you a pardon doesn't have any effect on an
active impeachment. Right. That happened during King Charles the Seconds Rain,
(05:01):
and this was a model for the framers of the Constitution,
and it really split the framers in half, you know, ideologically,
because some of them thought that America was based on
the principle of being different from a monarchy and that
the president shouldn't have this sort of power like the king.
And George Mason was one of the staunch opponents. By
(05:21):
the other hand, Alexander Hamilton was one of the staunch advocates.
And the reason why it wasn't that that Hamilton's was just,
you know, some lackey to all future presidents. He had
a really good reason and and he argued it in
the Federalist Papers number seventy four, and he says that
it's a great idea to have a pardon because that
power could actually be used to quell rebellion or insurrection
(05:45):
um on a massive scale, right in the event of
a national crisis, and ironically enough, just after Washington came
into power, I think, in he had to issue a
presidential pardon to farmers who had been a part of
the insurruction the costs of Whiskey rebellion. Yeah, there was
a huge tax levied on corn crops um and these
(06:06):
farmers revolted against this tax. Uh, And basically it was
a rebellion there. They were armed and they were not
happy at all. Um and Washington basically negotiated an end
of this rebellion by saying, look, if you guys go
back to your farms, we'll talk about the tax. And
I'm not entirely certain what happened with the tax, but
if you guys lay down your arms and go back
(06:28):
to life as farmers, will forget this whole thing, ever happened.
And he did it by issuing a pardon, and it
worked as well. And that sounds to me almost like
something that's called a conditional pardon, And that's when you
agree to pardon someone but you get something in return,
and pardoning someone actually falls under the more general blanket
of clemency. And there's a couple of different pieces to
(06:48):
this as well. So we've got commutation a part on
a conditional pardon remission and roust fit. Yeah. Now, um,
commutation is what George Bush did for Scooter Livy, which
is why he would still be eligible for pardon. Commutation
is basically shortening a sentence, doing away with a fine.
There there. You know, any any sentence that's been levied
(07:10):
against you, so long as it was levied by a
federal court, Um, it can be commuted. So let's say
you're in jail for you were sentenced for ten years,
and the President commuter sentence to five. You just serve
five years and then after that year out. And this
also happened in the case of Patty Hurst as well.
Back in the nineteen seventies. This was a granddaughter of
(07:31):
the publishing magnate William Hurst, and she got caught up
with cult and supposedly was brainwashed and convinced to go
and uh conduct this huge bank robbery. And her sentence
was commuted by Jimmy Carter. I think, what does she
sort of like two of ten years or seven of
ten years? I believe so. So, yeah, Carter commuted her sentence,
and then later on he talked to President Clinton into
(07:54):
issuing a full pardon, which he did so. Yeah, Petty
Hurst is a pretty famous example. There's um So that
was also a commutation and a pardon. The big distinction
between a commutation and a pardon is if a sentence
is commuted, you may be released from prison or something
like that, or let out of fun. Right, if somebody
looks up your records they find that you are a
(08:16):
convicted felon. Right, with a pardon, it basically restores you
to the state of grace that you enjoyed right before
you committed that crime, which means you can vote, you
can serve on jury duty, you can own a firearm,
you're a full fledged citizen. Your your civil abilities are restored.
Someone just took a magic racer and there goes yeah.
And there was actually a guy that Bush pardoned in
(08:39):
two thousand seven who had been running a some sort
of big gambling outfit and the Feds broke it up
on Super Bowl Sunday or something like that, and he
was issued a pardon. And he said in the in
an interview the reason he sought a pardons because he
didn't want his grandkids to know that he had been
a felon. So now if they ever look up their
(09:00):
granddad it won't come up unless they happened to pull
up this Washington Post story and they'll say, oh, wow,
granddad was a felon. How about that. So let's break
down the other types and the conditional pardon we've touched
on that. That's when the president issues a pardon but
ask for something and return. Good example would be Teddy
Roosevelt when he pardoned people in the Philippines for an uprising.
(09:21):
He said, we'll forgive you for your offenses to United States,
but you have to swear allegiance and loyalty and yeah.
And this is back when the Philippines were U S territory, right,
that'd be good to know as well, what are we
doing down there? There's some Swedes out there going what
are you talking? Okay, So now we have remission and
(09:42):
this is when a person is released from some sort
of legal obligation like a fine. Yes is specifically a
fine yes, and then the last one respect Yeah. This
is temporary. It can last for like a month or
two uh, and could be used to UM to conduct
more in intensive investigation. Maybe there's a there's a good
(10:03):
person who UM or a good example I should say,
if somebody who deserves respite is Troy Davis very recent
new story. Yeah, here's to be executed in Atlanta. Yea,
he was accused of shooting a cop many many years ago,
and apparently over the years of the witnesses or some
made some huge percentage of the eyewitnesses were candid their testimony.
(10:28):
I gave different versions each time. Apparently a guy who
was there, head Um, allegedly confessed to being the one
who shot at the cops. So he was on death
row and they just recently he was granted restpite I believe,
I think just within hours of his execution time. Yeah,
and so rest but essentially buys time, like you said,
(10:48):
so that you can research and decide why you're not.
A pardon is merited. So those are those are the
different kinds of pardon. Yeah, and if y'all are still
with us after all of that, wake up, wake up um,
he's where gets kind of juicy. We talked a couple
of weeks ago on another podcast about, uh, whether or
not the Electoral College decides the vote or if we
(11:11):
decide the vote. And this is a hot button issue
because some people say that we should have amend the
Constitution to disband the electoral College and let the people's
vote decide well. Congress has also a couple of times
thought about introducing bills to overturn the presidential parton and
because it's written to the Constitution, this can be along
and sticky process. But so far none of these bills
(11:32):
have made it through to a certain stage and then
really held water. But because the government has three different branches,
we have legislative, judicial, and executive, And because only the president,
head of the executive branch, can issue pardons, if there's
some funny business going on with the executive branch and
(11:52):
someone's called to testify before Congress, the person, you know,
can choose to waffle back and forth or not really
testify or not show up supposedly until Taft came in
and fix that. Yeah, and this is weird, um, And
let's let's get to a factor of fiction. Part. Is
it factor of fiction that there's nothing anybody can do
about a presidential pardon? That's easy fiction? Okay, So so
(12:16):
what can be done? Okay, you say like you're surprised,
you know as well as I do what's going on.
At least I didn't say thanks for clearing that up.
For clearing that up. Um Taft came in and essentially
he was the one who said, you can't pardon someone
who's in contempt. So that's the check and balance there.
If something's happening with the executive branch and witnesses called
(12:39):
in to testify, they are bound constitutionally to testify before Congress,
and if they don't, then they're held in contempt. And
the president also the executive branch cannot pardon that person. No. Um.
And also because this this came out of the clarification
that pardons could only be used for affronts to the
(13:01):
federal government, right, Um, So Congress, I guess it was argued, uh,
is kind of exempt from that son in affront to Congress.
Contempt being held in contempt by Congress exists outside of
that that pardon power actually, uh. And did you know
that Congress actually has a little jail house behind the
(13:24):
each of the each of the chambers, so where you
can if you're held in contempt, they can take you
right off the floor and hold you indefinitely against your will,
be imprisoned by the members of Congress until you're ready
to talk, even if you're wearing your nicest Brooks exactly,
especially if your nicest Brooks brothers see what you're doing.
So if Congress holds you in contempt, all of a sudden,
(13:46):
you may be compelled to testify against a crooked president
or something like that. Um. So the president can't just say,
how about this, I'm just gonna grant your pardon right now,
and there's nothing they can do about it. Actually they can't.
They can hold you in contempt for not testifying, and
then you're in big trouble. So this was a big
check and balance that actually, like you said, William Howard
(14:08):
Taft elucidated as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
What's ironic is that Taft had been president eleven years
before and he basically ruled against this power of the president. Yeah,
and I think that that was a pretty smart move.
And who better than Taft who had been president to
suggest this because he knew how powerful the president can be.
(14:29):
So so so, so you've got this, uh, this contempt
clause basically taken out or added to the uh, the
understanding of impeachment. And that's why we're seeing today, um,
with the whole Attorney general firings scandal going on. Uh,
you're not seeing pardons being issued hard and fast. You're
(14:49):
seeing um executive privilege cited. Actually, which that's that's pretty
much the reason why. Well, when it comes to pardons,
it's interesting to look at who's granted the most, who's
granted the least. You know, who granted the most the
article I did FDR. Yeah, and it was a whopping
(15:10):
three thousand, six hundred eight seven. Keep in mind he
did serve three terms. He did, but that it was
still a thousand pardons more than the next highest. Yeah,
and pretty recently Clinton granted four hundred fifty nine and
he served two terms. He had some scandalous pardons. He
pardoned Mark rich who was the ex husband of one
(15:31):
of his big donors, Denise rich Um, for tax evasion
to the tune of fifty million bucks. He was very
much criticized for that. He was also criticized for partnering
his own brother, Rogers. You know that Roger had been
convicted of cocaine distribution in the eighties. Um, the thing
isn't in in Clinton. In President Clinton's defense, Roger served
(15:53):
his full term, paid all his fines, and had been
out of prison in like living in normal life for
many many years by the time he was actually pardoned,
and that's generally customary when you're pardoned. Commutations are very
very rare. When Scooter Livy's sentence was commuted before he
even served a single second in jail, uh, there was
a lot of analysis of it, and and people did
(16:14):
some research and found that that is not a common
thing at all. Pardons usually come at some point years
after the after the sentence has been carried out and
the finds have been paid, the restitution has been made,
and the person's tried to serve in or lead an
exemplary life since then. That kind of thing. And one
of the reasons for that is that even though there's
not a thing that we can do about a presidential pardon,
(16:37):
we can certainly voice our ira definitely, and because we
have freedom of the press, you know, we can quickly
disseminate that anger toward the president. So, especially now where
there are offices created to research who deserves pardons, there's
plenty of information available on who should get it, who
shouldn't get it. We all know the president knows and
again can't be overturned, but he can be reamed publicly
(17:01):
for it. He can be but you know, if you
think about it, America, these days, we don't burn enough
things in effigy. You know, our ire isn't stoked easily enough.
This isn't like poll in or anything like that. You know,
where you you if the government does something to irk everybody,
they're gonna let you know in the streets pretty quick.
And I don't know. When I drive to work this
morning and yesterday I saw a little little lady walking
(17:23):
around with the sandwich board on that UM said something
to the tune of I don't know taxes, blah blah blah. Well,
clearly it made a real impact. I mean I was
driving so fast I couldn't really tell that she was.
She was putting her ire onto slight um. Another thing
about pardons we should mention, aside from public ire is that,
and I don't think this happens very frequently, but a
(17:43):
pardon isn't official if the person being pardoned doesn't accept it.
That that used to be the rule, Like you, the grantee,
the person being pardoned had to say, oh great, thanks,
I want this um. And then I think it was Coolidge,
Calvin Coolidge, Okay, I kind of confused about this. Basically,
there was a guy. Yes, this is the rule before Coolidge,
(18:04):
and then Coolidge um pardoned a guy who didn't want
to leave jail, and Coolidge had him thrown out. He
told the warden to lock the door behind him and
the guy had to leave jail, whether he liked it
or not. Clearly been institutionalized or the food was really
good in the jail he'd been in. But that kind
of altered the rule a little bit. And that's kind
(18:25):
of how pardons have existed. And just as sidebar on Coolidge,
just because I don't think people know how cool Coolidge
really was. I love this man. He was sort of
a very powerful man. A few words. I remember when
he was up for re election. I don't remember like
I was there in the first person, but um, apparently
he was pretty popular and people wanted him to run again.
And he took the stage for this big speech. People
(18:45):
thought maybe he would announce he was running again. People
thought maybe he'd offer some sort of grand goodbye. He
apprecised the mic and he says, I choose not to
run for re election. Exit stage left, it's over. That's
a cool customer right there, that's a Coolidge utomer. Anyway, um,
can I say one last thing? Yeah, of course, little
pardon scandal, tidbit, you know Lincoln, Oh, you're going to
(19:10):
bring this up. He actually he pardoned a guy who
was convicted of attempted bestiality, and his defense was what,
he's such a stand up guy and all other aspects
of his character, and that he'd been drunk during the
time and question. So he was pardoned by Abraham Lincoln
near frat voice today. Don't get away with that, gosh anyway.
(19:32):
If you want to learn even more about presidential pardons,
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stuff works dot com.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Candice Gibson, joined by staff write Josh Clark. Hi. There,
I just thought you yawn and I was about to
say pardon. You know, Actually I was trying not to
(00:22):
laugh at Jerry. I was trying. She she went three two.
It was kind of cute. Our producer Jerry just did that.
We love her. Yeah. So, um, all right, Candice, you ready? Yeah,
make the heart symbol. Um. I was reading pardon Watch
have you heard of this? I hadn't either. Actually, I
(00:42):
was actually preparing for this podcast because I had noticed
that I was needing to hydrate my skin a little more,
which means one thing. It's getting to be pardoned season. Yeah,
apparently pardons come hard and fast most in the late fall,
early winner the president's finals term. Really, yeah, well, that's
(01:04):
when they come the most. Traditionally, I mean, a president
can offer a pardon any time of the year, but
usually they're done in the fall. Uh and uh, the
most come at the end of a president's term. Like
you said, right, that makes sense to me. You know,
it's October, you're walking through Bloomingdale's. The Christmas trees are up,
and you're thinking about, you know, the Season of forgiveness.
(01:25):
Actually kind of I suspect that that does have a
little something to do with it, to tell you the truth. Yeah, yeah, so,
Um I was. I was trying to figure out who
George Bush might forgive or offer the Season of forgiveness
to this year, right, I don't know she She wasn't
on this list. This is from the Empty wheelblog, which
(01:45):
again hadn't heard of until I started googling pardon predictions,
which is one of my favorite things to do. But
they had some pretty good ones on there. Um. There
were some that were fairly obvious. One for Karl Rove,
which just kind of be a blanket pardon for anything
he might be convicted of in in the future. Um.
(02:06):
Scooter Libby was one, although no, no, no, we'll get
into that. We'll use him as a great example because
he is a good example of what canon can't be done.
Um Alberto Gonzalez obviously, Um Rumsfeld was. In addition, somebody
posted a comment and said Rumsfeld um not abram Off though,
(02:27):
and the reason that the person who predicted um of
whether or not he these people would be pardon, said
because abram Off was a snitch. So it doesn't think that, uh,
that George Bush will play ball with abram Off, but
they do think he'll play ball with Roger Clemens. Yeah,
And then they they were serious, They said that they
think Clemens may get a pardon from Bush because Bush
(02:48):
is a baseball guy. He used to be the Uh,
I think that the managing owner of the Texas Rangers
for a while. Did you know that? I did not? So, Um,
this is these are just a few of the people
who we may see get pardons in the future. And
a pardon is a funny thing. I don't know if
it's that funny, well funny and that it's kind of strange.
(03:09):
There's a lot of moving pieces to a pardon, and
on a very simple level, it's when a president excuses
someone for an affront to the United States. It's never
for a local crime, of state crime, anything like that.
It has to be to United States as a whole,
and you can apply it for a pardon. Apparently, like
(03:30):
they get applications for pardons, and in the nineteen eighties
there was even a position formed for someone who would
review the pardons and research the person and see if
he or she had been an upstanding citizen until this point,
and help inform the president about whether or not this
person deserved a pardon. And a pardon is is granged
exclusively by the presidents. It's something that Congress can't override.
(03:54):
It's it's actually an Article two section to the Constitution,
and I have this wasn't an amendment, No, and written
to the Constitution. Here's what it says. The President shall
have the power to grant reprieved and pardons for offences
against the United States except and here's the big except
in cases of impeachment. And it's about checks and balances
here too. Because the president himself or herself can be impeached,
(04:18):
he or she cannot pardon someone who's impeached. Does that
make sense, Yeah, totally it does. And that's actually the
Congress didn't come up with that impeachment part. The whole
thing goes back to English common law, the progative English kings. Yes,
the the English Kings originally had the power to pardon
anybody for anything at any time, no questions. I asked, Uh,
(04:40):
they could release somebody from jail, they could keep their
head off the chopping block UM. And then finally, I
think in the seventeenth or eighteenth century Um Parliament was
able to finagle their way into making that one imposition
that you a pardon doesn't have any effect on an
active impeachment. Right. That happened during King Charles the Seconds Rain,
(05:01):
and this was a model for the framers of the Constitution,
and it really split the framers in half, you know, ideologically,
because some of them thought that America was based on
the principle of being different from a monarchy and that
the president shouldn't have this sort of power like the king.
And George Mason was one of the staunch opponents. By
(05:21):
the other hand, Alexander Hamilton was one of the staunch advocates.
And the reason why it wasn't that that Hamilton's was just,
you know, some lackey to all future presidents. He had
a really good reason and and he argued it in
the Federalist Papers number seventy four, and he says that
it's a great idea to have a pardon because that
power could actually be used to quell rebellion or insurrection
(05:45):
um on a massive scale, right in the event of
a national crisis, and ironically enough, just after Washington came
into power, I think, in he had to issue a
presidential pardon to farmers who had been a part of
the insurruction the costs of Whiskey rebellion. Yeah, there was
a huge tax levied on corn crops um and these
(06:06):
farmers revolted against this tax. Uh, And basically it was
a rebellion there. They were armed and they were not
happy at all. Um and Washington basically negotiated an end
of this rebellion by saying, look, if you guys go
back to your farms, we'll talk about the tax. And
I'm not entirely certain what happened with the tax, but
if you guys lay down your arms and go back
(06:28):
to life as farmers, will forget this whole thing, ever happened.
And he did it by issuing a pardon, and it
worked as well. And that sounds to me almost like
something that's called a conditional pardon, And that's when you
agree to pardon someone but you get something in return,
and pardoning someone actually falls under the more general blanket
of clemency. And there's a couple of different pieces to
(06:48):
this as well. So we've got commutation a part on
a conditional pardon remission and roust fit. Yeah. Now, um,
commutation is what George Bush did for Scooter Livy, which
is why he would still be eligible for pardon. Commutation
is basically shortening a sentence, doing away with a fine.
There there. You know, any any sentence that's been levied
(07:10):
against you, so long as it was levied by a
federal court, Um, it can be commuted. So let's say
you're in jail for you were sentenced for ten years,
and the President commuter sentence to five. You just serve
five years and then after that year out. And this
also happened in the case of Patty Hurst as well.
Back in the nineteen seventies. This was a granddaughter of
(07:31):
the publishing magnate William Hurst, and she got caught up
with cult and supposedly was brainwashed and convinced to go
and uh conduct this huge bank robbery. And her sentence
was commuted by Jimmy Carter. I think, what does she
sort of like two of ten years or seven of
ten years? I believe so. So, yeah, Carter commuted her sentence,
and then later on he talked to President Clinton into
(07:54):
issuing a full pardon, which he did so. Yeah, Petty
Hurst is a pretty famous example. There's um So that
was also a commutation and a pardon. The big distinction
between a commutation and a pardon is if a sentence
is commuted, you may be released from prison or something
like that, or let out of fun. Right, if somebody
looks up your records they find that you are a
(08:16):
convicted felon. Right, with a pardon, it basically restores you
to the state of grace that you enjoyed right before
you committed that crime, which means you can vote, you
can serve on jury duty, you can own a firearm,
you're a full fledged citizen. Your your civil abilities are restored.
Someone just took a magic racer and there goes yeah.
And there was actually a guy that Bush pardoned in
(08:39):
two thousand seven who had been running a some sort
of big gambling outfit and the Feds broke it up
on Super Bowl Sunday or something like that, and he
was issued a pardon. And he said in the in
an interview the reason he sought a pardons because he
didn't want his grandkids to know that he had been
a felon. So now if they ever look up their
(09:00):
granddad it won't come up unless they happened to pull
up this Washington Post story and they'll say, oh, wow,
granddad was a felon. How about that. So let's break
down the other types and the conditional pardon we've touched
on that. That's when the president issues a pardon but
ask for something and return. Good example would be Teddy
Roosevelt when he pardoned people in the Philippines for an uprising.
(09:21):
He said, we'll forgive you for your offenses to United States,
but you have to swear allegiance and loyalty and yeah.
And this is back when the Philippines were U S territory, right,
that'd be good to know as well, what are we
doing down there? There's some Swedes out there going what
are you talking? Okay, So now we have remission and
(09:42):
this is when a person is released from some sort
of legal obligation like a fine. Yes is specifically a
fine yes, and then the last one respect Yeah. This
is temporary. It can last for like a month or
two uh, and could be used to UM to conduct
more in intensive investigation. Maybe there's a there's a good
(10:03):
person who UM or a good example I should say,
if somebody who deserves respite is Troy Davis very recent
new story. Yeah, here's to be executed in Atlanta. Yea,
he was accused of shooting a cop many many years ago,
and apparently over the years of the witnesses or some
made some huge percentage of the eyewitnesses were candid their testimony.
(10:28):
I gave different versions each time. Apparently a guy who
was there, head Um, allegedly confessed to being the one
who shot at the cops. So he was on death
row and they just recently he was granted restpite I believe,
I think just within hours of his execution time. Yeah,
and so rest but essentially buys time, like you said,
(10:48):
so that you can research and decide why you're not.
A pardon is merited. So those are those are the
different kinds of pardon. Yeah, and if y'all are still
with us after all of that, wake up, wake up um,
he's where gets kind of juicy. We talked a couple
of weeks ago on another podcast about, uh, whether or
not the Electoral College decides the vote or if we
(11:11):
decide the vote. And this is a hot button issue
because some people say that we should have amend the
Constitution to disband the electoral College and let the people's
vote decide well. Congress has also a couple of times
thought about introducing bills to overturn the presidential parton and
because it's written to the Constitution, this can be along
and sticky process. But so far none of these bills
(11:32):
have made it through to a certain stage and then
really held water. But because the government has three different branches,
we have legislative, judicial, and executive, And because only the president,
head of the executive branch, can issue pardons, if there's
some funny business going on with the executive branch and
(11:52):
someone's called to testify before Congress, the person, you know,
can choose to waffle back and forth or not really
testify or not show up supposedly until Taft came in
and fix that. Yeah, and this is weird, um, And
let's let's get to a factor of fiction. Part. Is
it factor of fiction that there's nothing anybody can do
about a presidential pardon? That's easy fiction? Okay, So so
(12:16):
what can be done? Okay, you say like you're surprised,
you know as well as I do what's going on.
At least I didn't say thanks for clearing that up.
For clearing that up. Um Taft came in and essentially
he was the one who said, you can't pardon someone
who's in contempt. So that's the check and balance there.
If something's happening with the executive branch and witnesses called
(12:39):
in to testify, they are bound constitutionally to testify before Congress,
and if they don't, then they're held in contempt. And
the president also the executive branch cannot pardon that person. No. Um.
And also because this this came out of the clarification
that pardons could only be used for affronts to the
(13:01):
federal government, right, Um, So Congress, I guess it was argued, uh,
is kind of exempt from that son in affront to Congress.
Contempt being held in contempt by Congress exists outside of
that that pardon power actually, uh. And did you know
that Congress actually has a little jail house behind the
(13:24):
each of the each of the chambers, so where you
can if you're held in contempt, they can take you
right off the floor and hold you indefinitely against your will,
be imprisoned by the members of Congress until you're ready
to talk, even if you're wearing your nicest Brooks exactly,
especially if your nicest Brooks brothers see what you're doing.
So if Congress holds you in contempt, all of a sudden,
(13:46):
you may be compelled to testify against a crooked president
or something like that. Um. So the president can't just say,
how about this, I'm just gonna grant your pardon right now,
and there's nothing they can do about it. Actually they can't.
They can hold you in contempt for not testifying, and
then you're in big trouble. So this was a big
check and balance that actually, like you said, William Howard
(14:08):
Taft elucidated as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
What's ironic is that Taft had been president eleven years
before and he basically ruled against this power of the president. Yeah,
and I think that that was a pretty smart move.
And who better than Taft who had been president to
suggest this because he knew how powerful the president can be.
(14:29):
So so so, so you've got this, uh, this contempt
clause basically taken out or added to the uh, the
understanding of impeachment. And that's why we're seeing today, um,
with the whole Attorney general firings scandal going on. Uh,
you're not seeing pardons being issued hard and fast. You're
(14:49):
seeing um executive privilege cited. Actually, which that's that's pretty
much the reason why. Well, when it comes to pardons,
it's interesting to look at who's granted the most, who's
granted the least. You know, who granted the most the
article I did FDR. Yeah, and it was a whopping
(15:10):
three thousand, six hundred eight seven. Keep in mind he
did serve three terms. He did, but that it was
still a thousand pardons more than the next highest. Yeah,
and pretty recently Clinton granted four hundred fifty nine and
he served two terms. He had some scandalous pardons. He
pardoned Mark rich who was the ex husband of one
(15:31):
of his big donors, Denise rich Um, for tax evasion
to the tune of fifty million bucks. He was very
much criticized for that. He was also criticized for partnering
his own brother, Rogers. You know that Roger had been
convicted of cocaine distribution in the eighties. Um, the thing
isn't in in Clinton. In President Clinton's defense, Roger served
(15:53):
his full term, paid all his fines, and had been
out of prison in like living in normal life for
many many years by the time he was actually pardoned,
and that's generally customary when you're pardoned. Commutations are very
very rare. When Scooter Livy's sentence was commuted before he
even served a single second in jail, uh, there was
a lot of analysis of it, and and people did
(16:14):
some research and found that that is not a common
thing at all. Pardons usually come at some point years
after the after the sentence has been carried out and
the finds have been paid, the restitution has been made,
and the person's tried to serve in or lead an
exemplary life since then. That kind of thing. And one
of the reasons for that is that even though there's
not a thing that we can do about a presidential pardon,
(16:37):
we can certainly voice our ira definitely, and because we
have freedom of the press, you know, we can quickly
disseminate that anger toward the president. So, especially now where
there are offices created to research who deserves pardons, there's
plenty of information available on who should get it, who
shouldn't get it. We all know the president knows and
again can't be overturned, but he can be reamed publicly
(17:01):
for it. He can be but you know, if you
think about it, America, these days, we don't burn enough
things in effigy. You know, our ire isn't stoked easily enough.
This isn't like poll in or anything like that. You know,
where you you if the government does something to irk everybody,
they're gonna let you know in the streets pretty quick.
And I don't know. When I drive to work this
morning and yesterday I saw a little little lady walking
(17:23):
around with the sandwich board on that UM said something
to the tune of I don't know taxes, blah blah blah. Well,
clearly it made a real impact. I mean I was
driving so fast I couldn't really tell that she was.
She was putting her ire onto slight um. Another thing
about pardons we should mention, aside from public ire is that,
and I don't think this happens very frequently, but a
(17:43):
pardon isn't official if the person being pardoned doesn't accept it.
That that used to be the rule, Like you, the grantee,
the person being pardoned had to say, oh great, thanks,
I want this um. And then I think it was Coolidge,
Calvin Coolidge, Okay, I kind of confused about this. Basically,
there was a guy. Yes, this is the rule before Coolidge,
(18:04):
and then Coolidge um pardoned a guy who didn't want
to leave jail, and Coolidge had him thrown out. He
told the warden to lock the door behind him and
the guy had to leave jail, whether he liked it
or not. Clearly been institutionalized or the food was really
good in the jail he'd been in. But that kind
of altered the rule a little bit. And that's kind
(18:25):
of how pardons have existed. And just as sidebar on Coolidge,
just because I don't think people know how cool Coolidge
really was. I love this man. He was sort of
a very powerful man. A few words. I remember when
he was up for re election. I don't remember like
I was there in the first person, but um, apparently
he was pretty popular and people wanted him to run again.
And he took the stage for this big speech. People
(18:45):
thought maybe he would announce he was running again. People
thought maybe he'd offer some sort of grand goodbye. He
apprecised the mic and he says, I choose not to
run for re election. Exit stage left, it's over. That's
a cool customer right there, that's a Coolidge utomer. Anyway, um,
can I say one last thing? Yeah, of course, little
pardon scandal, tidbit, you know Lincoln, Oh, you're going to
(19:10):
bring this up. He actually he pardoned a guy who
was convicted of attempted bestiality, and his defense was what,
he's such a stand up guy and all other aspects
of his character, and that he'd been drunk during the
time and question. So he was pardoned by Abraham Lincoln
near frat voice today. Don't get away with that, gosh anyway.
(19:32):
If you want to learn even more about presidential pardons,
please read how presidential Pardons Work on how stuff works
dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
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