July 29, 2010 • 41 mins
A presidential pardon is a unique, unchallengable power granted to the president of the United States by the Constitution. In this episode, Josh and Chuck discuss the origins, history and controversial use of the presidential pardon.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always as
Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Pardon me, Josh, before we get down. Seriously,
(00:26):
I just had a flashback. I used to do the
show with Chris Pilette. Anybody who listens to tech Stuff.
If you don't, you should will know that he is
among the punniest people on the planet. Are you invoking
Pillette and my name in the same sentence? Wow? You
you shoot puns like that at me? You get the
you get the big guns. Alright, all right, pardon me
(00:48):
then before we get to this business, right, I just
want to say big welcome to a certain individual. All right, Um,
A little girl named um Sophia Milan Harris was born
today July h M. She's the daughter of my future
(01:09):
brother and sister in law, Josh Harris and Mika Harris.
People are probably like, Josh had a baby and didn't
even tell us, right, yeah, the other Josh you me
and her sister, both with Josh's so is that adorable?
And I met both of them right at your birthday party? Sure, yeah, yeah,
the one I was on a horse. That's awesome. So
welcome to the world, Sophia Milan, who's going to be
(01:29):
called Mila from now on. So thank you very much,
Chuck for indulging. Sure, and since you brought it up,
I should point out that at Josh's birthday party there
were a pony, horse, bunnies, and goats. Yeah, it was
like the farm was brought in for the party and
there weren't enough kids there to justify it, so we
(01:49):
all know what really was going on. Yeah, you mean
was like, you're so spoiled, I'm going to get you
a pony, and she got me a pony. Of course,
Emily spent like half the party in the goat create
so well, they were pretty cute goats. One looked like
pure Satanic evil, but the other one was just beyond adorable,
little pigmy goat because it was three months old, so
it was really little and cute. Yes, so baby goats,
(02:10):
human babies. So far, it's been like a minute and
a half and we're already like the cute factors through
the roof man well, we can take care of that.
Let's talk about pretty much the exact opposite of that,
shall we, Okay, buddy, I was um disheartened to hear
that July ten came and went and not a lot
of people marked it. But this day was the day
(02:34):
that Um Barack Obama, Mr Change, the president went past
John Adams presidency or administration neglect of clemency requests. So
he waited longer than the other president. It is very interesting. Um,
(02:55):
John Adams went five hundred and thirty six days, and um,
I should say, ly tenth is the day that Obama
tied him. You mean John Adams, the second uh, the
I'm sorry, the first vice president in the United States. Yes,
that that same John Adams. Yeah. Um, So anyway, it's
it's been several days since then. There's been no action
taken on any um requests for pardons from Obama, and
(03:18):
a lot of people are like, that's kind of weird. Um,
he's in third place right now to Clinton, M George W. Bush.
He's busy, Yeah, but as you'll find out, he really
doesn't have to do too terribly much. And the other
thing is what's what's odd is he's not doing anything.
He's not saying. They're just denying. I'm denying of denying him, right,
(03:39):
he's not doing anything with he He inherited a couple
of thousand requests for clemency um, and he I had
I think have had a few thousand more come up, um,
and he hasn't taken any action on any of them.
It's really puzzling, and it's not very talked about news story.
But I I I don't have a good answer why
(04:01):
I haven't been able to find one. I've looked, I
mean I looked. Well, usually don't hear about clemency much
till the last part of the president's final term. Not
necessarily true. And I should say, well, that's when you
lest I should say, that's when you really hear about it,
because that's when they come flying in. Yeah, and they
come hard and fast, and the real dirty ones come
(04:21):
up around that, you know. Um, I should say that
Obama has pardoned two individuals. There are two turkeys. Oh yeah, yeah,
that he pardoned last Thanksgiving. Um. And seriously, those are
the only pardons that he's given so far. Who started that?
Do you have that info? We don't really know. No
(04:42):
one knows. They think it was a lot of people
say it was Lincoln, but people have turned up that
it was actually Harry Truman. But Truman came up with
the idea. Possibly. I think Lincoln made a joke about it.
Truman came up with the idea, and I think John F.
Kennedy was the first to actually ever follow through with interesting,
that's what I've heard. And I think we talked about
our Thanksgiving podcast, but I can't remember. So Lincoln made
(05:05):
a joke about it as he hatcheted off the head
of a turkey. Yeah, he said he was gonna pardon
Tad's turkey because mom's so crazy these days. I'm gonna
gotta do something for the kid. So then he cut
off the head and said, l O L just kidding, right,
all right, so let's get down to this show. We
presidential pardons. And you wrote this and this was an
awesome article, dude, Thank you. Well. It was one of
(05:27):
those interesting ones, like the topics just interesting, you know,
because I mean, you think about it, Chuck. We have
a government of that consists of checks and balances, right,
so I mean, well, the way it's set up, you know,
the the Senate has has final approval on the people
the president tries to appoint to the Supreme Court. That's
(05:48):
a check. Um. The Senate can come up with Bill's laws,
but the President has veto power over him and UM
with the Supreme Court, you can impeach a Supreme Court. This.
Did you know that? I did not, um, although it
was in the article, So I guess I knew it
at one point in time when I was reminded of it.
So there's always checks and balances, Um, except the presidential pardon.
(06:11):
It exists in this weird vacuum side of everything else,
totally unchecked. You can't do anything about it. Yeah, And I,
like you pointed out in the article that Congress spends
a lot of time when all the pardons come flying
in hard and fast towards the end, just kind of
like I can't do anything. But I noted that the
same congressman they want that pardon too, for when they're
(06:32):
in trouble. You know, there's a lot of disingenuous electioneering
or politic politicizing, I guess with pardoning. But originally that's
not what it was intentionally created for. Uh. It has
become a political tool, right, and as as a result,
it's really kind of generated this uh, this ire in
(06:53):
public perception. Um. Pretty famously, Gerald Ford took a hit
in the public sector, right, Yeah, he pardoned Nixon. Yeah,
that was not a very popular move. No, um, and
that was kind of sweeping because he pardoned Nixon before
any charges were ever formally filed, which is no, no
technically with pardons, but weird and hinky. Yeah, and he
(07:17):
he kind of you know, a lot of people thought
Ford was a dummy president, not not a smart guy.
Maybe football injury and they said on dating confused. Um,
But I remember when he died learning that a lot
of people considered him something of a hero because he
fell on his sword. He through he gave up the
presidency to heal the country and just get the Nixon
(07:39):
era over with by pardnering the guy right and just
doing it himself, taking the full ire of the American
public just said forget it, I'm out of here. Right.
Another big one was Scooter Libby. Right. Yeah. Every president has,
you know, a slew of pardons, and every president has
some shady ones where they kind of get their buddies
out of trouble because when big money's involved in politics,
(08:01):
there's usually some malfeasants going on. So Scooter Libby was
pardoned by Bush. Yeah, he was j right right, and
he was a um well, he was convicted of obstructing
justice perjury lying to federal investigators. Yeah, exactly, except he
got really thrown under the bus. But it was for
(08:23):
the whole Valerie Plane thing, the CIA outing right right,
supposedly allegedly in retaliation for Plane's husband coming up with
analysis that saying like Iraq does not have weapons of
mass instruction, good times. Clinton was also under fire, of course,
for Mark Rich. Yeah not Mark Rick. Mark, No not,
(08:49):
you can't. You can't pin anything on Mark Rick. That
guy's so squeaky clean. Yeah. Mark Rich was the tax
famous tax evader whose wife x wife left a large
sum of money to the Clinton Library. And so Bill said, yeah, pardon.
I was hoping you're going to do that. But one
(09:10):
thing I thought was interesting was that it was a
conditional pardon, which we'll talk about. You noticed that as well, Yeah,
because he agreed basically he went to Switzerland to I
guess of aid charges initially. Yeah, he pled the country, yeah,
like Polansky style. And Clinton said, I'll pardon you if
you agree not to defend yourself against the civil suits
(09:33):
brought by the United States government. And so he said, yeah,
that's that's fine, Sure I'll do that. But they were
pretty substantial. It wasn't just text evasion. I uncovered this
when I was researching for this podcast. The guy was
also um indicted for selling or making oil deals with
Iran during the Iran hostage crisis, and there was a
(09:53):
full on embargo. Yeah that's light treason, right, Well, that's
that's the funny thing though, on that fun But he said, sure,
go ahead and pardon me, and I'll agree not to
defend myself when I come back to the US. And
you know, he never came back. Yeah, he's stayed in Switzerland.
He's like, thanks for the pardon. It's kind of nice here.
So I think when there's a couple of reasons, the
Mark Rich case stands out. The Mark Rich pardon stands
(10:16):
out so much as it seems so it's it's just
the worst kind of politics when some kind of elitist politician,
um pardons one of his or her own Yeah, well
so far one of his own, right, um. And then
also there were questions about whether Mark Rich bought that pardon,
(10:36):
whether that that endowment to the Clinton Library was in
exchange for a pardon. Right, I bought a lot of books.
I'm sure you know. The other interesting thing. You know
who was lead counsel for Rich William William Kunsler for
fifteen years. Scooter Libby. Oh wow, he was his lawyer.
And he defended him and said, oh, he didn't evade
any taxes. And Clinton used Scooter Libby and said, we
(11:00):
have a hardcore Republican lawyer that's defending this guy saying
that he didn't do it. So then it's just funny
how inbred it all this. I think it's funny that
people still differentiate between Democrats and Republicans. Yeah, that's a laugh. Um. Also,
what lastly, this Mark Rich case red hot. It came
back when Obama was trying to get um Eric Holder
(11:24):
appointed as his attorney general. Yeah, trying to get him
past the Senate. That was the big contentious issue. How
did you sign off on the Mark Rich pardon? It
was like arguably the worst pardon ever in the history
of presidents um and he almost didn't get nominated. I
remember they stretched it out for weeks. Yeah. So anyway,
let's talk about this and then when we we'll go
(11:45):
back and talk about some more some more famous and
not so famous but interesting pardons. That sounds good, Josh,
Thanks chuckers Man. We are doing this on the fly
with the record button on what we usually go and
then talk about it and then edit that part out right. So, Chuck,
what does a pardon do? Why would Mark Rich even
be interested in having a pardon like this? Why would
(12:07):
somebody who's been convicted of a crime, sentenced to prison,
serve their time, and been out for several years be
interested in in getting a pardon? What's the point? Well,
first I would say, what are you kidding? But we'll
spell it out for you. A pardon, Uh. The main
thing it does is it gets you out of prison,
(12:28):
which is awesome. But the really awesome thing that it
does beyond that is it restores your civil rights as
a as a you know, free non uh federally incarcerated
individual or somebody who hasn't being convicted of a felony,
you know, as a felon, Chuck, you're not allowed to
own a firearm or right, which is why you couldn't
(12:49):
vote on Tuesday, um or Jerry Ditty, which is that's
kind of nice, but right, yeah, that one. I don't
know if that's it's a disability, but that's what they're
called collectively. When you lose those rights after being convicted
of a felony and that goes on your record, you
you lose these rights, and that's called civil disability, right,
and it restores every bit. It's it's almost like an annulmen.
(13:10):
It's as if nothing ever happened save for the fact
that it does stay on your record, right, and the
records remain that. It took several hundred years for them
to finally establish that. There's a Supreme Court case and
I think the nineties that said the records stay. There's
nice right off the top of your head too, um,
(13:31):
but there's no they don't have any effect on you
as a citizen and the longer. But that's just with
the federal government, and that's not even with all branches
of the federal government. Basically, the president. When the president
issues a pardon, the president is daddy of the country
right then and is saying, on behalf of the rest
(13:54):
of the American family, We're gonna forgive you for this
transfer transgression. I'm your dad, I'm everybody else's daddy. I'm
gonna make the decision and let's just move on passes. Now,
your brother, the I R S, your uncle, the I
R S, I should say, is probably still going to
sue your off your drunk uncle, right, but you are, Um,
(14:14):
I can't do anything about that. But you broke the laws,
and we're going to forgive you for breaking the laws. Right.
Should we talk about other forms of clemency, just so
everyone's squared away, Yeah, because of pardon. Clemency is the
umbrella term. Ye, pardon is one type of clemency. That's
the best point. Yeah, that's what you're gunning for. We
can we can draw the distinction, though, my friend with
(14:36):
um pardons, commutes, um remissions and what's the last one? Respite?
Respite commutation when you commute a sentence, that means you
just make it shorter, right, that's not used a whole lot.
You can also commute a sentence before it even starts. Yeah,
that's weird. That's what happened with Scooter Libby. Yeah, sure
he got a commutation, but not a pardon. So he's
(15:00):
a blemished individual as a citizen, but he didn't have
to go to prisons. He can't vote no, or serve
on a jury, or own a handgun or own a handgun.
That's probably a good thing. Um. We already talked about
the full part in the Granddaddy of them all. There
is the conditional pardon, which we mentioned, which means, um,
I will do this for you if and the Clinton
(15:20):
example was one. Another good one you listed was Jimmy Haffa.
Nixon pardon Haffa and said, I'll you know, I'll pardon
you as long as you don't take part in any
more labor organization, right And he was like, and go
sleep with the fishes. But that's all I do, right, Yeah,
And he had to go full on with the mob
after that. His inevitable course was set. With that agreement
(15:45):
remission we mentioned that is like when you say you
don't have to pay a fine, it releases you from
a legal obligation. Again, but that's just with like the
the federal government, and it's not necessarily with the I
r S. The I r S sees you in civil court.
It's it can't. It can't a civil obligation you owe
to a family for restitution, they can't. They can't remiss
(16:07):
that is that right, remiss remit, but you would be remissed.
Jerry's laughing in there. Respite is basically a temporary thing
where the president is like, you know what, let me
hold this off for a month or two while we
look at it, right, like an execution. Well, isn't that
a stay or is it the same thing? I don't know.
(16:27):
I don't know if a stay of execution is just
issued by the governor, or if a stay of execution
is a type of respite because this is only federal cases,
because the president can't touch state or local cases. Yeah,
so maybe that's a deaf does Yeah, the Feds. The
Feds execute people. The president could could keep somebody who
(16:50):
was sentenced to death through a court martial, they could,
they could give them respite. It's kind of like, hey,
here's a nice hot towel. Sit in the corner while
we figure out whether they we're going to kill you
or not, and you can you can polose on top
of each other. If you need more time, you can
issue them in succession and it's it doesn't interfere with
the trial or anything like that. Right, So you like
a lot of these kind of working conjunction like the
(17:13):
the the booyah combo that you want is the commutation
of sentence before it even starts, followed by or in
conjunction with, the full parton or a rest bit maybe
then the full part. Right. But I mean, if you
if you love a sense of drama, yeah go you
can tack the rest fit onto the beginning. I just
want to keep my butt out of jail. I don't
(17:34):
care if it's dramatic, right, just give me whatever puts me,
you know, back on the sidelines or back in the game. Sorry,
mixing sports metaphors that reminds me of a dream, Chuck
that I had. Um. I dreamt that I was at
a breakdancing championship, which I've actually been to you before. Um,
but I was sitting there like watching like all these
(17:55):
people break dance, you know, watching it. No, Actually, what
I figured out was I dreamt that I was watching
other people breakdance. I don't even have enough of an
opinion of myself to dream that I, myself is an
awesome break That's what I about to say, Dude, that
would be the master champion breakdancer in my dream. Right,
But you just said that you want to be out
of jail, so you can get back to the sideline.
(18:15):
That's what triggered that. Maybe we'll edit that out in post.
Huh no, so Chuck, what doesn't a pardon do? It
sounds like it's um basically the hand of God coming down,
touching you on the head and saying, go buy a
gun because you can uh one thing it does not
do and you cannot touch. And they were pretty smart
(18:36):
back when they wrote the constitution. Um, they made sure
that a you can impeach a president and be that
you cannot pardon an impeachment, right. Um. They they actually
didn't include presidential pardons in a couple of the plans
for the constitution. The New Jersey Plan and the Virginia
Plan both lacked presidential pardons, and Alexander Hamilton's was like,
(19:00):
I think Federal's paper number seventy four. Yes, yeah, Um.
He argued that there are times when this could really
come in handy guys, So let's put it in, but
let's make sure it doesn't apply to impeachment, right, because
if the president can be impeached and if he can't
pardon himself while he's being impeached, then he won't become
(19:23):
this absolute authoritarian. He can't possibly right, So, um, that
was how it ended up in there. But actually that
went further back, and we'll talk about that in a minute.
But they almost left the whole thing out and then
they said, no, we'll just follow custom. What were you
going to say it came over from England? Yeah, say
it man, Well it's actually the whole the whole idea
(19:43):
is rooted in the prerogative of the king, the English king. Yeah,
we got a lot of our early ideas clearly since
we had just uh, you know, come from England. We're
based on good old England, right, English common law or
royal law, I guess is what this would be, um,
And I think that's probably why presidential pardons weren't included
(20:03):
in a couple of the really popular plans for the Constitution,
because it was kind of smacked of royal tyranny, right yeah.
But they Charles, the second, I think, is the one
who originally thought of the impeachment idea, right, Well, either
he thought of it and was a fan, or he
was one of the weaker kings or one of the
(20:24):
more benevolent kings. Because a parliament that was in session
while he was reigning managed to slip that onto the
custom of the prerogative of the English king. So you
can overturn any court case except cases of impeachment, right, yes,
which is you know, there's some other ways that the
courts over the years of sort of shaped. Um. I
(20:46):
guess you could say limited or defined how you can
pardon and how you can't. Um like we said, it's
only federal cases. You can't affect civil civil cases at all,
and um like we all I mentioned restitution to a family.
So let's say if O. J. Simpson, in a weird
alternate world, were convicted of cutting his wife's head off,
(21:08):
if he had done that, if he had really done that,
he could not have been he could have been pardoned
for that. But um it, let's say if the president
was a big fan of the juice, but he could
not have been relieved of paying a goldman all that
money that he lost, Which is weird because he was
found guilty or not guilty, But what do you call
it's libel for her death and his son's death in
(21:30):
a civil suit. Guilty in a court of law, criminally, Yeah, weird,
so strange how that can happen in this country. Yeah,
that was a really weird moment in this country's history.
Huh um, chuck. There's some other ways that the presidential
pardon has been shaped. Um, you can't force the well,
you the the idea used to be was that you
(21:52):
can't force a person to take a parton. That's my
favorite little nugget in this whole article. Right, So you
would think like, oh, yeah, here's your partner, especially if
it's like a commutation of sentence and you get out
of jail early. Um, not everybody's done with that. Some
people are what we called institutionalized, can't make it out
on the outside any longer. Yes, he was institutionalized. He
(22:14):
couldn't make it, and he hung himself in the little
halfway house sort of that they set him up with. Right.
It was one of the sadder moments of the Shaw
Shank redemption. There was another guy who, um that may
or may not happen have happened to His story kind
of ends slightly before that as far as we can tell,
as far as we know, Um, Calvin Coolidge, the cool
(22:38):
he uh he he gave a pardon to a guy
who was in jail, and the guy didn't want to leave,
so he directly ordered the warden to get the guy
out of prison and shut the cell behind him. Well,
that was the one caveat you did mention was, Um,
you can refuse a pardon, but not when it applies
to cases of life or death. So if you're on
death row, you don't get a choice if you're pardoned. Yeah. Yeah,
(23:02):
the Supreme Court worked that out as well. They're saying like, no,
if you if you want to die, we're not going
to kill you just because you want to die if
we've decided that you shouldn't die, And what's the deal
with content of court? I didn't quite get that. Okay,
So Chuck, this is this is a very very important
part because this is the one too. I agree. I
went back and read it, and I think it was
(23:23):
one of those things where, um, I was just so
hot and bothered about it, like, oh, yeah, here's the
crux of my whole article. Yeah right, I um just
kind of ram past actually explaining it. Well, so let
me try to do it a little better here. Okay, Um,
you were saying that if um, the president, if if
(23:45):
for some reason O. J. Simpson had been convicted of
his alleged murder of Nicole Simpson and Ronald Coldman, Right, Um,
and the president had pardoned him, that pardon would have
had any effect on the civil case against him by
the Goldman family, by the Brown family. Right. Because murder
(24:07):
is legally an affront to the United States. It's an
affront to the laws of the United States. And by
the way, also this would only only if he had
been convicted in federal court. Could the president's pardon have
helped him? Right? Remember that, Um, because the murdered also
has an effect on this family. We have civil courts,
(24:29):
there's civil law and criminal law. President can forgive criminal law,
can't do anything for civil law because pardons only cover
in affront to the United States. So, at one point
in time, a guy named William Howard Taft, who is
Supreme who is the chief Justice of the Supreme Court,
and after his presidence here it was after he was president,
(24:50):
eleven years after he left the White House. He said
he always said like he felt like he fulfilled his
destiny is Supreme Court justice. He didn't like being president. Yeah,
but as Supreme Court justice, he helped give a tool
to Congress. Um by saying that the presidential pardon is
only to cover affronts to the United States, it doesn't
(25:11):
cover affronts to a court. Write a contempt of court
charge sounds like a loophole. That is a loophole, and
Congress has exploited it because Congress actually has the ability
to hold people in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify.
So remember that whole impeachment clause right where it literally
(25:32):
says in the Constitution you can the president has the
power to pardon people except in cases of impeachment. Right
Without that court contempt of court loophole, you'd have another
loophole where the president could be like, I'm gonna do
anything I want and Congress can investigate me all at once,
but none of my people are talking because they can be.
They can be um arrested and charged and sentenced and
(25:56):
pardoned and keep their mouth that the whole time. You
know there's a pardon coming. That doesn't work for contempt
of court cases because contempt of court or contempt of
Congress is not technically in affront to the laws of
the United States. It's in affront to Congress in front
of the court. So the presidential pardon can't do anything
about it. So there's the one tool Congress has as
(26:18):
far as battling the presidential pardon, they can compel witnesses
to testify, and if they don't, they can they have
actually a little jail in the Senate and I think
House chambers where they keep them the person in contempt.
That's a nice jail. Was that any better? I got it?
But however, if a president does if it's legitimate, and
(26:40):
if and if it's legal, and if he does it
right or she the woman president one day, it is
completely irrefutable. Yeah, if if they do it right and
it's on the well we say, on the level, like
some of those last ones aren't really on the level
ethically speaking, but they but they're legal, but you can't
you can't challenge whether they're on the level or not right.
(27:00):
And uh, you know, ground Congress has tried to put
a stop to this over the years here and there
they've introduced bills uh to limit um pardon power, but
they've all failed because of a couple of reasons. Because um,
it's in the Constitution very clearly, Article two, Section two,
and Supreme Court like stuffhold the Constitution when they can,
(27:21):
like to stand behind it when they can. And the
other reason is it's you know, it's kind of a
long standing power, and uh, they're not really used to
you know, they're not hip to getting rid of these
things that have been around for a couple of hundred years. Right,
And for everybody who's just opened their email client to
send us some all these examples of the Supreme Court
(27:41):
not standing behind the Constitution when they can't, Chuck meant
specifically standing behind them the pardon power article. That's what
you meant, right, that's what we're talking about. Okay, Yeah, sorry,
thanks for pointing that out and stopping the flood of emails.
And not only that, Chuck, they actually in Supreme Court
decreed this is a it is spelled out in the Constitution,
(28:05):
the president's power to pardon. And if you're gonna find
any flaws in it, you're gonna have to go to
that like one two sentence section and find your flaws there,
because it's in the Constitution and you really can't touch
it outside of the Constitution. Right. So, Chuck, we were
talking about the origins of this. You know that it
was found in um the prerogative of the English kings,
(28:28):
and then you know, they talked about it and finally
the founders put it in the Constitution, and originally it
was to give the president the ability to say queil rebellion,
insurrection and just basically make it deal with people who
were rising up against the government and saying, look, if
(28:49):
you guys go back home, we're going to forget all
this happened. I'll issue a blanket pardon, a k amnesty.
Very shortly after the constitution was written. Uh. And then
and I think seventeen sev George Washington said this is awesome.
There's a whiskey rebellion going on. The farmers are uprising
(29:10):
because they don't like being tax I'm gonna just forgive
all you guys if you pipe down because you've been arrested.
And they said, okay, all right, we'll go back home.
And that was like right afterward. Yeah, and Jimmy Carter,
like you said, to heal national wounds, Ford kind of
pardon Nixon just to wrap that up. Uh. Carter did
(29:30):
a similar thing to sort of put an end to
the Vietnam era by pardoning all the draft dodgers, which
a lot of people probably didn't like that move very much. Yeah. Either,
good point. One of my favorites, Josh is when you
point out that UM pardons a lot of times can
(29:50):
sort of undermine laws, and that was the case with
Kennedy in nineteen fifty six, and National Narcotics Act was
basically a big hard, one of the first big hard
drug laws where they had mandatory minimums for kind of
small time offenders. So Kennedy said, you know, it's really
not fair that these small time offenders, are first time
offenders are in prison for like five or more years,
(30:13):
and it's no good. So I'm going to issue a
blanket pardon for all these guys and gals. And it
kind of overturned the law in essence. Yeah, and he's
not the only person to do that. Um, there's calls
right now for Obama to issue issue blanket pardons to
people who are convicted under mandatory crack minimums because there's
(30:34):
such a disparity between UM, mandatory minimums for cocaine, which
is predominantly or considered a white drug, and crack, which
is considered a black drug. UM. So if you get
caught with the same amount of crack and coke same value, UM,
you go to jail, you know, five times longer for
crack under these mandatory miniums. He hasn't so far, but
(30:56):
there's a call for that same use of the presidential
pardon to use a tool. Um. Warren Harding basically overturned
the Espionage Act, Right, Yeah, that was was that the
Tokyo Rose No No Espionage Acts was World War One. Basically,
if you were talking out against World War one war
(31:16):
in general, or were a conscientious objector, the federal government
through you in prison for up to ten years. Right, yes,
And so you're talking about Eugene dev This guy is
kind of a hero of mine. He was a Socialist
Party candidate. Um, what I thought was funny. He was
a candidate five times in nineteen hundred, oh, four, oh eight, twelve,
(31:36):
and twenty. So he took off nineteen sixteen. I guess
to regroup. I wondered if there were like two, if
there was a candidate or two in there that he
was like the guys better than me, let him run,
or if he Yeah, I would have thought after he
lost four times, he's like, I can't do this again. Well,
I think he's kind of like the Ralph Nader of
the turn of the twentieth century, the turn of the
nineteenth century. Well, he spoke out like you said, UM
(31:59):
against our involvement in World War One, and he was
convicted as for treason a speech under the Espionage Act
and then UM sinence to ten years in Harding said
here in Atlanta, Yeah, in the in the federal Pokey.
He got a million votes from prison. Yeah, and for
his nineteen campaign, a million votes. Ninety's a lot of votes.
It was a lot of votes. And he was enough
(32:21):
of a contender that when UM Mr President Warren G.
Harding issued a blanket pardon for people under the Espionage Act,
he invited Eugene Debs to drop by the White House
to hang out after he got out of the pen. Yeah,
and what Debs say, No, way, no we went. Oh
he did. Yeah, he had a visit. I'm just kidding,
uh Ford, Um, I mentioned Tokyo Rose. He pardoned the
(32:44):
only American woman that was part of the propaganda reading
of Japanese propaganda reading on radio Tokyo zero hour and
she was convicted of um was it treason again? And
years later, years later report or dug up some info
that was kind of like this is a trumped up
charge and this isn't really right. So Ford said, pardoned. Yeah,
(33:06):
her story is pretty interesting in and of itself. Oh yeah,
the whole tokeyo roast thing is. I think Patty Hurst
she got a pardon. I love Patty Hirst. She got
We talked about her, I think in the Brainwashing podcast.
Remember when I took you into a preppy Yeah. Um.
She was kidnapped and allegedly forced to commit bank robberies
(33:28):
with the Symbionese Liberation Army, who also made an appearance
by the way, for you stuff you should know fact
finders in the swap podcast. What sl did? Yeah, remember
they got in the shootout with the first SWAT teamer.
They were one of the reasons the SWAT team came up. Yeah. Anyway,
well we should point out who she was, just for
those of you don't know. She was the granddaughter of
(33:48):
a newspaper magnet, William Randolph Hurst, which is what Citizen
Kane was. He was based on him. Citizen Kane and
um Elvin and the Chipmunks, the squeak Will that was
based on Hurst too. It was. It was basically remake
as this in Kane. I had no idea, So yeah,
Hurst was. She's like, oh, they brainwashed me and made me. Uh,
they kidnapped me and brainwashing made me Rob Banks and
(34:11):
so they said, and no, I don't think so, you're
you're convicted. Um, just in in prison for seven years
and Jimmy Carter stepped in and commuted it. And then
later on he asked Billy Billy Boy to give her
the full part in what she did, and then she went.
She was in every John Waters movie ever made. I
think since then, I've not seen a one she I
(34:33):
think she was in cry Baby to begin with, and
she's been in everyone since then, including his upcoming film,
What is It? Fruitcake? Is this next one he has
the best? He said, it's a Christmas a Christmas movie
fruit Cake? I've never seen. We've never seen a movie.
I like John Waters. He's cool. You know what you
should see? I guess if you have never seen one.
I wouldn't start you off with the early like really
(34:56):
nasty ones. I actually made her It's perfect for you, Flamingos.
I would think, right, get pink flamingos and watch Divine
eat poop. For for the love of God, I would say,
sereal mom. Another one with Kathleen Turner before she was
a man. I thought that was probably during the man transition.
(35:18):
The mansition, Perhaps, Josh, I want to talk about Arthur
O'Brien just for a second. He's my favorite one because
President Abraham Lincoln pardoned him from a charge of beast reality,
attempted beast reality. Do you know what he was actually
trying to do with what animal? I think I did
(35:39):
when I wrote this, but I don't anymore. Not important.
Let's just call it beast reality. But Lincoln said, you
know what, he's a really good guy otherwise, and he's
led a really good life, and he was really hammered
when it happened. So I'm just gonna go ahead and
pardon that. Yeah, and he did. Arthur O'Brien is now
a unbesmirched beast list zoo phillist, zoo phillist. I think, so, Chuck,
(36:04):
Actually that Arthur O'Brien cases a really exemplary of the
kind of thinking that goes into a presidential partner is
supposed to write. Um. Lincoln said, Hey, the guy was drunk.
He's live an exemplary life, Um, And he is. He's
just he's he made a mistake when he was doing
that with that animal, right, and he knows that clearly.
(36:28):
He hasn't tried to get with an animal since so
I'm going to pardon him. Uh. In eighteen nine, the
d o J said, you know what, the president needs
help with this kind of stuff. So, um, we're we're
going to take on this power. Our Congress said, d
o J. Take on this power in the Office of
the Pardon Attorney was created. Yeah, and he's basically I say,
I keep saying he. I feel like I should say
she because I don't know if we've had a female
(36:48):
partner attorney. But they are generally they're completely in charge
of handling the thousands of request that office is. So
what they do is they do the same thing as
they did way back with Lincoln. They dig around the case,
they find out the circumstances of the case, whether or
not they've made restitution and led a really good life
and maybe they've left prison, or maybe they'd work with
(37:10):
kids and have done really great things. And then they
are the ones who make the recommendation to the president.
But the president, I mean, if they're smart, they'll listen
to what they say because they've done all the legwork.
But the president doesn't have to know follow the advice.
And actually the the apparently the d o j or
the Partner Attorney's office said, Um, you probably shouldn't pardon
Mark Rich he doesn't really fit the criteria, and Clinton went,
(37:34):
that's going around, right, Should we close with some stats? Yeah,
let's do it. We can't talk about pardons without just
throwing out who has done what. So we're gonna go
ahead and say that the all time granddaddy of pardons
was was Roosevelt, not americally, well, numerically Franklin three terms. Yeah,
(37:55):
but there were what like over three thousand pardons there were,
and it's a lot of pardons. But that's I think,
um of the partners that come across his desk he
signed off on. Truman led the way with percentage wise
right forty something, and um, James Garfield and William Henry
(38:16):
Harrison of course had no pardons because they weren't in
office very long. No, U W H. H. Died of
pneumonia after a month. I'm William Wait, here's William Henry Harrison.
I died in thirty days. Uh, Jimmy. Recently, let's just
go over the recent ones. Carter issued five six six,
Reagan issued four oh six. Oh, Billy Clinton did for
(38:37):
fifty six and then the Bush Boys came along and
Um Bush Senior, Herbert Walker only seventy seven, and George W.
Can I'm sorry, pardoned right? And m Herbert Walker pardon seven?
You said one of them was Caspar Weinberger, who is
(38:58):
the Defense secretary in the ir On Contra affair. That
was his big controversial When everyone has at least one, sure,
why not? It's on your way out anyway, Yeah, wacky commanders,
you're going to work for Goldman Sacks afterward. Anyway, you
might as well as who cares? So I guess that's it, right. Yeah.
If you want to see some funny pictures of old
timey presidents or George W. Bush partnering a turkey, you
(39:21):
should probably look up presidential pardons in the search bar
at how stuff Works dot com. All right, so Chuck,
then what are we going to do then? Right now?
A couple of little orders of business, A little pitch
and thank you. So we need a new sound. It's
time for pitch, all right. I have no idea what
(39:41):
that sound was, uh, Josh, we are having We are
recreating our awesome all star trivia night that we did
in New York, right here in our hometown of Atlanta, Georgia,
and uh, we have not got a location yet and
we are not positive on a date, but it's looking
like it might be the first weekend Timber the weekend
of dragon Con, which is a Labor day, Labor Day weekend,
(40:04):
we're looking at that Friday, September three. Don't hold us
to that, but we are having an all star trivia
in Atlanta. It will probably be the weekend of dragon Con.
So we're gonna say most likely. I don't know about
the Friday or whatever. I think it's probably going to
be that weekend. I don't see why we wouldn't. Why
wouldn't we exactly let's do it. So once again we're
putting a call out to people that have venues that
(40:25):
might be interested in hosting UM Suggestions trivia guys. Sure, yeah,
whatever you got. And we also want to say thank
you quickly to Mark Rhodes. Mark Rhodes is a big
fan and he's been helping us troubleshoot this OS for
iPhone update issue that we've been having where people cannot
download directly to their phone and Mark has been a
(40:46):
big help. So thank you Mark for that. And I
want to say thank you to Tom Rhodes, the stand
up comedian who was huge in the nineties whose act
I caught at the Gotham Nightclub. The Gotham Comedy Club
is what it was. He was hilarious. So thank you
to Mark Rhodes and Tom Rhodes, and thanks to Dusty Rhodes.
Yeah for just such a great wrestler exactly. Uh, we
(41:07):
have another Rhodes chuck. Uh, Lieutenant Rhodes who's in a
rock right now? Yeah? Sure, yeah, we haven't heard from
me in a while. No, so hey, send in an email,
will you, Lieutenant Rhodes, and let us know you're doing
all right? Uh? If you know Rhods that we should
be thanking, let us know. Maybe we'll thank them. There's
roads all over the place. Apparently you can wrap it
(41:27):
up spanking on the bottom and send it to stuff
podcast at how stuff works dot com for more on
this and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff
works dot com. Want more House stuff Works, check out
our blogs on the house stuff works dot com home page.
(41:50):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always as
Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Pardon me, Josh, before we get down. Seriously,
(00:26):
I just had a flashback. I used to do the
show with Chris Pilette. Anybody who listens to tech Stuff.
If you don't, you should will know that he is
among the punniest people on the planet. Are you invoking
Pillette and my name in the same sentence? Wow? You
you shoot puns like that at me? You get the
you get the big guns. Alright, all right, pardon me
(00:48):
then before we get to this business, right, I just
want to say big welcome to a certain individual. All right, Um,
A little girl named um Sophia Milan Harris was born
today July h M. She's the daughter of my future
(01:09):
brother and sister in law, Josh Harris and Mika Harris.
People are probably like, Josh had a baby and didn't
even tell us, right, yeah, the other Josh you me
and her sister, both with Josh's so is that adorable?
And I met both of them right at your birthday party? Sure, yeah, yeah,
the one I was on a horse. That's awesome. So
welcome to the world, Sophia Milan, who's going to be
(01:29):
called Mila from now on. So thank you very much,
Chuck for indulging. Sure, and since you brought it up,
I should point out that at Josh's birthday party there
were a pony, horse, bunnies, and goats. Yeah, it was
like the farm was brought in for the party and
there weren't enough kids there to justify it, so we
(01:49):
all know what really was going on. Yeah, you mean
was like, you're so spoiled, I'm going to get you
a pony, and she got me a pony. Of course,
Emily spent like half the party in the goat create
so well, they were pretty cute goats. One looked like
pure Satanic evil, but the other one was just beyond adorable,
little pigmy goat because it was three months old, so
it was really little and cute. Yes, so baby goats,
(02:10):
human babies. So far, it's been like a minute and
a half and we're already like the cute factors through
the roof man well, we can take care of that.
Let's talk about pretty much the exact opposite of that,
shall we, Okay, buddy, I was um disheartened to hear
that July ten came and went and not a lot
of people marked it. But this day was the day
(02:34):
that Um Barack Obama, Mr Change, the president went past
John Adams presidency or administration neglect of clemency requests. So
he waited longer than the other president. It is very interesting. Um,
(02:55):
John Adams went five hundred and thirty six days, and um,
I should say, ly tenth is the day that Obama
tied him. You mean John Adams, the second uh, the
I'm sorry, the first vice president in the United States. Yes,
that that same John Adams. Yeah. Um, So anyway, it's
it's been several days since then. There's been no action
taken on any um requests for pardons from Obama, and
(03:18):
a lot of people are like, that's kind of weird. Um,
he's in third place right now to Clinton, M George W. Bush.
He's busy, Yeah, but as you'll find out, he really
doesn't have to do too terribly much. And the other
thing is what's what's odd is he's not doing anything.
He's not saying. They're just denying. I'm denying of denying him, right,
(03:39):
he's not doing anything with he He inherited a couple
of thousand requests for clemency um, and he I had
I think have had a few thousand more come up, um,
and he hasn't taken any action on any of them.
It's really puzzling, and it's not very talked about news story.
But I I I don't have a good answer why
(04:01):
I haven't been able to find one. I've looked, I
mean I looked. Well, usually don't hear about clemency much
till the last part of the president's final term. Not
necessarily true. And I should say, well, that's when you
lest I should say, that's when you really hear about it,
because that's when they come flying in. Yeah, and they
come hard and fast, and the real dirty ones come
(04:21):
up around that, you know. Um, I should say that
Obama has pardoned two individuals. There are two turkeys. Oh yeah, yeah,
that he pardoned last Thanksgiving. Um. And seriously, those are
the only pardons that he's given so far. Who started that?
Do you have that info? We don't really know. No
(04:42):
one knows. They think it was a lot of people
say it was Lincoln, but people have turned up that
it was actually Harry Truman. But Truman came up with
the idea. Possibly. I think Lincoln made a joke about it.
Truman came up with the idea, and I think John F.
Kennedy was the first to actually ever follow through with interesting,
that's what I've heard. And I think we talked about
our Thanksgiving podcast, but I can't remember. So Lincoln made
(05:05):
a joke about it as he hatcheted off the head
of a turkey. Yeah, he said he was gonna pardon
Tad's turkey because mom's so crazy these days. I'm gonna
gotta do something for the kid. So then he cut
off the head and said, l O L just kidding, right,
all right, so let's get down to this show. We
presidential pardons. And you wrote this and this was an
awesome article, dude, Thank you. Well. It was one of
(05:27):
those interesting ones, like the topics just interesting, you know,
because I mean, you think about it, Chuck. We have
a government of that consists of checks and balances, right,
so I mean, well, the way it's set up, you know,
the the Senate has has final approval on the people
the president tries to appoint to the Supreme Court. That's
(05:48):
a check. Um. The Senate can come up with Bill's laws,
but the President has veto power over him and UM
with the Supreme Court, you can impeach a Supreme Court. This.
Did you know that? I did not, um, although it
was in the article, So I guess I knew it
at one point in time when I was reminded of it.
So there's always checks and balances, Um, except the presidential pardon.
(06:11):
It exists in this weird vacuum side of everything else,
totally unchecked. You can't do anything about it. Yeah, And I,
like you pointed out in the article that Congress spends
a lot of time when all the pardons come flying
in hard and fast towards the end, just kind of
like I can't do anything. But I noted that the
same congressman they want that pardon too, for when they're
(06:32):
in trouble. You know, there's a lot of disingenuous electioneering
or politic politicizing, I guess with pardoning. But originally that's
not what it was intentionally created for. Uh. It has
become a political tool, right, and as as a result,
it's really kind of generated this uh, this ire in
(06:53):
public perception. Um. Pretty famously, Gerald Ford took a hit
in the public sector, right, Yeah, he pardoned Nixon. Yeah,
that was not a very popular move. No, um, and
that was kind of sweeping because he pardoned Nixon before
any charges were ever formally filed, which is no, no
technically with pardons, but weird and hinky. Yeah, and he
(07:17):
he kind of you know, a lot of people thought
Ford was a dummy president, not not a smart guy.
Maybe football injury and they said on dating confused. Um,
But I remember when he died learning that a lot
of people considered him something of a hero because he
fell on his sword. He through he gave up the
presidency to heal the country and just get the Nixon
(07:39):
era over with by pardnering the guy right and just
doing it himself, taking the full ire of the American
public just said forget it, I'm out of here. Right.
Another big one was Scooter Libby. Right. Yeah. Every president has,
you know, a slew of pardons, and every president has
some shady ones where they kind of get their buddies
out of trouble because when big money's involved in politics,
(08:01):
there's usually some malfeasants going on. So Scooter Libby was
pardoned by Bush. Yeah, he was j right right, and
he was a um well, he was convicted of obstructing
justice perjury lying to federal investigators. Yeah, exactly, except he
got really thrown under the bus. But it was for
(08:23):
the whole Valerie Plane thing, the CIA outing right right,
supposedly allegedly in retaliation for Plane's husband coming up with
analysis that saying like Iraq does not have weapons of
mass instruction, good times. Clinton was also under fire, of course,
for Mark Rich. Yeah not Mark Rick. Mark, No not,
(08:49):
you can't. You can't pin anything on Mark Rick. That
guy's so squeaky clean. Yeah. Mark Rich was the tax
famous tax evader whose wife x wife left a large
sum of money to the Clinton Library. And so Bill said, yeah, pardon.
I was hoping you're going to do that. But one
(09:10):
thing I thought was interesting was that it was a
conditional pardon, which we'll talk about. You noticed that as well, Yeah,
because he agreed basically he went to Switzerland to I
guess of aid charges initially. Yeah, he pled the country, yeah,
like Polansky style. And Clinton said, I'll pardon you if
you agree not to defend yourself against the civil suits
(09:33):
brought by the United States government. And so he said, yeah,
that's that's fine, Sure I'll do that. But they were
pretty substantial. It wasn't just text evasion. I uncovered this
when I was researching for this podcast. The guy was
also um indicted for selling or making oil deals with
Iran during the Iran hostage crisis, and there was a
(09:53):
full on embargo. Yeah that's light treason, right, Well, that's
that's the funny thing though, on that fun But he said, sure,
go ahead and pardon me, and I'll agree not to
defend myself when I come back to the US. And
you know, he never came back. Yeah, he's stayed in Switzerland.
He's like, thanks for the pardon. It's kind of nice here.
So I think when there's a couple of reasons, the
Mark Rich case stands out. The Mark Rich pardon stands
(10:16):
out so much as it seems so it's it's just
the worst kind of politics when some kind of elitist politician,
um pardons one of his or her own Yeah, well
so far one of his own, right, um. And then
also there were questions about whether Mark Rich bought that pardon,
(10:36):
whether that that endowment to the Clinton Library was in
exchange for a pardon. Right, I bought a lot of books.
I'm sure you know. The other interesting thing. You know
who was lead counsel for Rich William William Kunsler for
fifteen years. Scooter Libby. Oh wow, he was his lawyer.
And he defended him and said, oh, he didn't evade
any taxes. And Clinton used Scooter Libby and said, we
(11:00):
have a hardcore Republican lawyer that's defending this guy saying
that he didn't do it. So then it's just funny
how inbred it all this. I think it's funny that
people still differentiate between Democrats and Republicans. Yeah, that's a laugh. Um. Also,
what lastly, this Mark Rich case red hot. It came
back when Obama was trying to get um Eric Holder
(11:24):
appointed as his attorney general. Yeah, trying to get him
past the Senate. That was the big contentious issue. How
did you sign off on the Mark Rich pardon? It
was like arguably the worst pardon ever in the history
of presidents um and he almost didn't get nominated. I
remember they stretched it out for weeks. Yeah. So anyway,
let's talk about this and then when we we'll go
(11:45):
back and talk about some more some more famous and
not so famous but interesting pardons. That sounds good, Josh,
Thanks chuckers Man. We are doing this on the fly
with the record button on what we usually go and
then talk about it and then edit that part out right. So, Chuck,
what does a pardon do? Why would Mark Rich even
be interested in having a pardon like this? Why would
(12:07):
somebody who's been convicted of a crime, sentenced to prison,
serve their time, and been out for several years be
interested in in getting a pardon? What's the point? Well,
first I would say, what are you kidding? But we'll
spell it out for you. A pardon, Uh. The main
thing it does is it gets you out of prison,
(12:28):
which is awesome. But the really awesome thing that it
does beyond that is it restores your civil rights as
a as a you know, free non uh federally incarcerated
individual or somebody who hasn't being convicted of a felony,
you know, as a felon, Chuck, you're not allowed to
own a firearm or right, which is why you couldn't
(12:49):
vote on Tuesday, um or Jerry Ditty, which is that's
kind of nice, but right, yeah, that one. I don't
know if that's it's a disability, but that's what they're
called collectively. When you lose those rights after being convicted
of a felony and that goes on your record, you
you lose these rights, and that's called civil disability, right,
and it restores every bit. It's it's almost like an annulmen.
(13:10):
It's as if nothing ever happened save for the fact
that it does stay on your record, right, and the
records remain that. It took several hundred years for them
to finally establish that. There's a Supreme Court case and
I think the nineties that said the records stay. There's
nice right off the top of your head too, um,
(13:31):
but there's no they don't have any effect on you
as a citizen and the longer. But that's just with
the federal government, and that's not even with all branches
of the federal government. Basically, the president. When the president
issues a pardon, the president is daddy of the country
right then and is saying, on behalf of the rest
(13:54):
of the American family, We're gonna forgive you for this
transfer transgression. I'm your dad, I'm everybody else's daddy. I'm
gonna make the decision and let's just move on passes. Now,
your brother, the I R S, your uncle, the I
R S, I should say, is probably still going to
sue your off your drunk uncle, right, but you are, Um,
(14:14):
I can't do anything about that. But you broke the laws,
and we're going to forgive you for breaking the laws. Right.
Should we talk about other forms of clemency, just so
everyone's squared away, Yeah, because of pardon. Clemency is the
umbrella term. Ye, pardon is one type of clemency. That's
the best point. Yeah, that's what you're gunning for. We
can we can draw the distinction, though, my friend with
(14:36):
um pardons, commutes, um remissions and what's the last one? Respite?
Respite commutation when you commute a sentence, that means you
just make it shorter, right, that's not used a whole lot.
You can also commute a sentence before it even starts. Yeah,
that's weird. That's what happened with Scooter Libby. Yeah, sure
he got a commutation, but not a pardon. So he's
(15:00):
a blemished individual as a citizen, but he didn't have
to go to prisons. He can't vote no, or serve
on a jury, or own a handgun or own a handgun.
That's probably a good thing. Um. We already talked about
the full part in the Granddaddy of them all. There
is the conditional pardon, which we mentioned, which means, um,
I will do this for you if and the Clinton
(15:20):
example was one. Another good one you listed was Jimmy Haffa.
Nixon pardon Haffa and said, I'll you know, I'll pardon
you as long as you don't take part in any
more labor organization, right And he was like, and go
sleep with the fishes. But that's all I do, right, Yeah,
And he had to go full on with the mob
after that. His inevitable course was set. With that agreement
(15:45):
remission we mentioned that is like when you say you
don't have to pay a fine, it releases you from
a legal obligation. Again, but that's just with like the
the federal government, and it's not necessarily with the I
r S. The I r S sees you in civil court.
It's it can't. It can't a civil obligation you owe
to a family for restitution, they can't. They can't remiss
(16:07):
that is that right, remiss remit, but you would be remissed.
Jerry's laughing in there. Respite is basically a temporary thing
where the president is like, you know what, let me
hold this off for a month or two while we
look at it, right, like an execution. Well, isn't that
a stay or is it the same thing? I don't know.
(16:27):
I don't know if a stay of execution is just
issued by the governor, or if a stay of execution
is a type of respite because this is only federal cases,
because the president can't touch state or local cases. Yeah,
so maybe that's a deaf does Yeah, the Feds. The
Feds execute people. The president could could keep somebody who
(16:50):
was sentenced to death through a court martial, they could,
they could give them respite. It's kind of like, hey,
here's a nice hot towel. Sit in the corner while
we figure out whether they we're going to kill you
or not, and you can you can polose on top
of each other. If you need more time, you can
issue them in succession and it's it doesn't interfere with
the trial or anything like that. Right, So you like
a lot of these kind of working conjunction like the
(17:13):
the the booyah combo that you want is the commutation
of sentence before it even starts, followed by or in
conjunction with, the full parton or a rest bit maybe
then the full part. Right. But I mean, if you
if you love a sense of drama, yeah go you
can tack the rest fit onto the beginning. I just
want to keep my butt out of jail. I don't
(17:34):
care if it's dramatic, right, just give me whatever puts me,
you know, back on the sidelines or back in the game. Sorry,
mixing sports metaphors that reminds me of a dream, Chuck
that I had. Um. I dreamt that I was at
a breakdancing championship, which I've actually been to you before. Um,
but I was sitting there like watching like all these
(17:55):
people break dance, you know, watching it. No, Actually, what
I figured out was I dreamt that I was watching
other people breakdance. I don't even have enough of an
opinion of myself to dream that I, myself is an
awesome break That's what I about to say, Dude, that
would be the master champion breakdancer in my dream. Right,
But you just said that you want to be out
of jail, so you can get back to the sideline.
(18:15):
That's what triggered that. Maybe we'll edit that out in post.
Huh no, so Chuck, what doesn't a pardon do? It
sounds like it's um basically the hand of God coming down,
touching you on the head and saying, go buy a
gun because you can uh one thing it does not
do and you cannot touch. And they were pretty smart
(18:36):
back when they wrote the constitution. Um, they made sure
that a you can impeach a president and be that
you cannot pardon an impeachment, right. Um. They they actually
didn't include presidential pardons in a couple of the plans
for the constitution. The New Jersey Plan and the Virginia
Plan both lacked presidential pardons, and Alexander Hamilton's was like,
(19:00):
I think Federal's paper number seventy four. Yes, yeah, Um.
He argued that there are times when this could really
come in handy guys, So let's put it in, but
let's make sure it doesn't apply to impeachment, right, because
if the president can be impeached and if he can't
pardon himself while he's being impeached, then he won't become
(19:23):
this absolute authoritarian. He can't possibly right, So, um, that
was how it ended up in there. But actually that
went further back, and we'll talk about that in a minute.
But they almost left the whole thing out and then
they said, no, we'll just follow custom. What were you
going to say it came over from England? Yeah, say
it man, Well it's actually the whole the whole idea
(19:43):
is rooted in the prerogative of the king, the English king. Yeah,
we got a lot of our early ideas clearly since
we had just uh, you know, come from England. We're
based on good old England, right, English common law or
royal law, I guess is what this would be, um,
And I think that's probably why presidential pardons weren't included
(20:03):
in a couple of the really popular plans for the Constitution,
because it was kind of smacked of royal tyranny, right yeah.
But they Charles, the second, I think, is the one
who originally thought of the impeachment idea, right, Well, either
he thought of it and was a fan, or he
was one of the weaker kings or one of the
(20:24):
more benevolent kings. Because a parliament that was in session
while he was reigning managed to slip that onto the
custom of the prerogative of the English king. So you
can overturn any court case except cases of impeachment, right, yes,
which is you know, there's some other ways that the
courts over the years of sort of shaped. Um. I
(20:46):
guess you could say limited or defined how you can
pardon and how you can't. Um like we said, it's
only federal cases. You can't affect civil civil cases at all,
and um like we all I mentioned restitution to a family.
So let's say if O. J. Simpson, in a weird
alternate world, were convicted of cutting his wife's head off,
(21:08):
if he had done that, if he had really done that,
he could not have been he could have been pardoned
for that. But um it, let's say if the president
was a big fan of the juice, but he could
not have been relieved of paying a goldman all that
money that he lost, Which is weird because he was
found guilty or not guilty, But what do you call
it's libel for her death and his son's death in
(21:30):
a civil suit. Guilty in a court of law, criminally, Yeah, weird,
so strange how that can happen in this country. Yeah,
that was a really weird moment in this country's history.
Huh um, chuck. There's some other ways that the presidential
pardon has been shaped. Um, you can't force the well,
you the the idea used to be was that you
(21:52):
can't force a person to take a parton. That's my
favorite little nugget in this whole article. Right, So you
would think like, oh, yeah, here's your partner, especially if
it's like a commutation of sentence and you get out
of jail early. Um, not everybody's done with that. Some
people are what we called institutionalized, can't make it out
on the outside any longer. Yes, he was institutionalized. He
(22:14):
couldn't make it, and he hung himself in the little
halfway house sort of that they set him up with. Right.
It was one of the sadder moments of the Shaw
Shank redemption. There was another guy who, um that may
or may not happen have happened to His story kind
of ends slightly before that as far as we can tell,
as far as we know, Um, Calvin Coolidge, the cool
(22:38):
he uh he he gave a pardon to a guy
who was in jail, and the guy didn't want to leave,
so he directly ordered the warden to get the guy
out of prison and shut the cell behind him. Well,
that was the one caveat you did mention was, Um,
you can refuse a pardon, but not when it applies
to cases of life or death. So if you're on
death row, you don't get a choice if you're pardoned. Yeah. Yeah,
(23:02):
the Supreme Court worked that out as well. They're saying like, no,
if you if you want to die, we're not going
to kill you just because you want to die if
we've decided that you shouldn't die, And what's the deal
with content of court? I didn't quite get that. Okay,
So Chuck, this is this is a very very important
part because this is the one too. I agree. I
went back and read it, and I think it was
(23:23):
one of those things where, um, I was just so
hot and bothered about it, like, oh, yeah, here's the
crux of my whole article. Yeah right, I um just
kind of ram past actually explaining it. Well, so let
me try to do it a little better here. Okay, Um,
you were saying that if um, the president, if if
(23:45):
for some reason O. J. Simpson had been convicted of
his alleged murder of Nicole Simpson and Ronald Coldman, Right, Um,
and the president had pardoned him, that pardon would have
had any effect on the civil case against him by
the Goldman family, by the Brown family. Right. Because murder
(24:07):
is legally an affront to the United States. It's an
affront to the laws of the United States. And by
the way, also this would only only if he had
been convicted in federal court. Could the president's pardon have
helped him? Right? Remember that, Um, because the murdered also
has an effect on this family. We have civil courts,
(24:29):
there's civil law and criminal law. President can forgive criminal law,
can't do anything for civil law because pardons only cover
in affront to the United States. So, at one point
in time, a guy named William Howard Taft, who is
Supreme who is the chief Justice of the Supreme Court,
and after his presidence here it was after he was president,
(24:50):
eleven years after he left the White House. He said
he always said like he felt like he fulfilled his
destiny is Supreme Court justice. He didn't like being president. Yeah,
but as Supreme Court justice, he helped give a tool
to Congress. Um by saying that the presidential pardon is
only to cover affronts to the United States, it doesn't
(25:11):
cover affronts to a court. Write a contempt of court
charge sounds like a loophole. That is a loophole, and
Congress has exploited it because Congress actually has the ability
to hold people in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify.
So remember that whole impeachment clause right where it literally
(25:32):
says in the Constitution you can the president has the
power to pardon people except in cases of impeachment. Right
Without that court contempt of court loophole, you'd have another
loophole where the president could be like, I'm gonna do
anything I want and Congress can investigate me all at once,
but none of my people are talking because they can be.
They can be um arrested and charged and sentenced and
(25:56):
pardoned and keep their mouth that the whole time. You
know there's a pardon coming. That doesn't work for contempt
of court cases because contempt of court or contempt of
Congress is not technically in affront to the laws of
the United States. It's in affront to Congress in front
of the court. So the presidential pardon can't do anything
about it. So there's the one tool Congress has as
(26:18):
far as battling the presidential pardon, they can compel witnesses
to testify, and if they don't, they can they have
actually a little jail in the Senate and I think
House chambers where they keep them the person in contempt.
That's a nice jail. Was that any better? I got it?
But however, if a president does if it's legitimate, and
(26:40):
if and if it's legal, and if he does it
right or she the woman president one day, it is
completely irrefutable. Yeah, if if they do it right and
it's on the well we say, on the level, like
some of those last ones aren't really on the level
ethically speaking, but they but they're legal, but you can't
you can't challenge whether they're on the level or not right.
(27:00):
And uh, you know, ground Congress has tried to put
a stop to this over the years here and there
they've introduced bills uh to limit um pardon power, but
they've all failed because of a couple of reasons. Because um,
it's in the Constitution very clearly, Article two, Section two,
and Supreme Court like stuffhold the Constitution when they can,
(27:21):
like to stand behind it when they can. And the
other reason is it's you know, it's kind of a
long standing power, and uh, they're not really used to
you know, they're not hip to getting rid of these
things that have been around for a couple of hundred years. Right,
And for everybody who's just opened their email client to
send us some all these examples of the Supreme Court
(27:41):
not standing behind the Constitution when they can't, Chuck meant
specifically standing behind them the pardon power article. That's what
you meant, right, that's what we're talking about. Okay, Yeah, sorry,
thanks for pointing that out and stopping the flood of emails.
And not only that, Chuck, they actually in Supreme Court
decreed this is a it is spelled out in the Constitution,
(28:05):
the president's power to pardon. And if you're gonna find
any flaws in it, you're gonna have to go to
that like one two sentence section and find your flaws there,
because it's in the Constitution and you really can't touch
it outside of the Constitution. Right. So, Chuck, we were
talking about the origins of this. You know that it
was found in um the prerogative of the English kings,
(28:28):
and then you know, they talked about it and finally
the founders put it in the Constitution, and originally it
was to give the president the ability to say queil rebellion,
insurrection and just basically make it deal with people who
were rising up against the government and saying, look, if
(28:49):
you guys go back home, we're going to forget all
this happened. I'll issue a blanket pardon, a k amnesty.
Very shortly after the constitution was written. Uh. And then
and I think seventeen sev George Washington said this is awesome.
There's a whiskey rebellion going on. The farmers are uprising
(29:10):
because they don't like being tax I'm gonna just forgive
all you guys if you pipe down because you've been arrested.
And they said, okay, all right, we'll go back home.
And that was like right afterward. Yeah, and Jimmy Carter,
like you said, to heal national wounds, Ford kind of
pardon Nixon just to wrap that up. Uh. Carter did
(29:30):
a similar thing to sort of put an end to
the Vietnam era by pardoning all the draft dodgers, which
a lot of people probably didn't like that move very much. Yeah. Either,
good point. One of my favorites, Josh is when you
point out that UM pardons a lot of times can
(29:50):
sort of undermine laws, and that was the case with
Kennedy in nineteen fifty six, and National Narcotics Act was
basically a big hard, one of the first big hard
drug laws where they had mandatory minimums for kind of
small time offenders. So Kennedy said, you know, it's really
not fair that these small time offenders, are first time
offenders are in prison for like five or more years,
(30:13):
and it's no good. So I'm going to issue a
blanket pardon for all these guys and gals. And it
kind of overturned the law in essence. Yeah, and he's
not the only person to do that. Um, there's calls
right now for Obama to issue issue blanket pardons to
people who are convicted under mandatory crack minimums because there's
(30:34):
such a disparity between UM, mandatory minimums for cocaine, which
is predominantly or considered a white drug, and crack, which
is considered a black drug. UM. So if you get
caught with the same amount of crack and coke same value, UM,
you go to jail, you know, five times longer for
crack under these mandatory miniums. He hasn't so far, but
(30:56):
there's a call for that same use of the presidential
pardon to use a tool. Um. Warren Harding basically overturned
the Espionage Act, Right, Yeah, that was was that the
Tokyo Rose No No Espionage Acts was World War One. Basically,
if you were talking out against World War one war
(31:16):
in general, or were a conscientious objector, the federal government
through you in prison for up to ten years. Right, yes,
And so you're talking about Eugene dev This guy is
kind of a hero of mine. He was a Socialist
Party candidate. Um, what I thought was funny. He was
a candidate five times in nineteen hundred, oh, four, oh eight, twelve,
(31:36):
and twenty. So he took off nineteen sixteen. I guess
to regroup. I wondered if there were like two, if
there was a candidate or two in there that he
was like the guys better than me, let him run,
or if he Yeah, I would have thought after he
lost four times, he's like, I can't do this again. Well,
I think he's kind of like the Ralph Nader of
the turn of the twentieth century, the turn of the
nineteenth century. Well, he spoke out like you said, UM
(31:59):
against our involvement in World War One, and he was
convicted as for treason a speech under the Espionage Act
and then UM sinence to ten years in Harding said
here in Atlanta, Yeah, in the in the federal Pokey.
He got a million votes from prison. Yeah, and for
his nineteen campaign, a million votes. Ninety's a lot of votes.
It was a lot of votes. And he was enough
(32:21):
of a contender that when UM Mr President Warren G.
Harding issued a blanket pardon for people under the Espionage Act,
he invited Eugene Debs to drop by the White House
to hang out after he got out of the pen. Yeah,
and what Debs say, No, way, no we went. Oh
he did. Yeah, he had a visit. I'm just kidding,
uh Ford, Um, I mentioned Tokyo Rose. He pardoned the
(32:44):
only American woman that was part of the propaganda reading
of Japanese propaganda reading on radio Tokyo zero hour and
she was convicted of um was it treason again? And
years later, years later report or dug up some info
that was kind of like this is a trumped up
charge and this isn't really right. So Ford said, pardoned. Yeah,
(33:06):
her story is pretty interesting in and of itself. Oh yeah,
the whole tokeyo roast thing is. I think Patty Hurst
she got a pardon. I love Patty Hirst. She got
We talked about her, I think in the Brainwashing podcast.
Remember when I took you into a preppy Yeah. Um.
She was kidnapped and allegedly forced to commit bank robberies
(33:28):
with the Symbionese Liberation Army, who also made an appearance
by the way, for you stuff you should know fact
finders in the swap podcast. What sl did? Yeah, remember
they got in the shootout with the first SWAT teamer.
They were one of the reasons the SWAT team came up. Yeah. Anyway,
well we should point out who she was, just for
those of you don't know. She was the granddaughter of
(33:48):
a newspaper magnet, William Randolph Hurst, which is what Citizen
Kane was. He was based on him. Citizen Kane and
um Elvin and the Chipmunks, the squeak Will that was
based on Hurst too. It was. It was basically remake
as this in Kane. I had no idea, So yeah,
Hurst was. She's like, oh, they brainwashed me and made me. Uh,
they kidnapped me and brainwashing made me Rob Banks and
(34:11):
so they said, and no, I don't think so, you're
you're convicted. Um, just in in prison for seven years
and Jimmy Carter stepped in and commuted it. And then
later on he asked Billy Billy Boy to give her
the full part in what she did, and then she went.
She was in every John Waters movie ever made. I
think since then, I've not seen a one she I
(34:33):
think she was in cry Baby to begin with, and
she's been in everyone since then, including his upcoming film,
What is It? Fruitcake? Is this next one he has
the best? He said, it's a Christmas a Christmas movie
fruit Cake? I've never seen. We've never seen a movie.
I like John Waters. He's cool. You know what you
should see? I guess if you have never seen one.
I wouldn't start you off with the early like really
(34:56):
nasty ones. I actually made her It's perfect for you, Flamingos.
I would think, right, get pink flamingos and watch Divine
eat poop. For for the love of God, I would say,
sereal mom. Another one with Kathleen Turner before she was
a man. I thought that was probably during the man transition.
(35:18):
The mansition, Perhaps, Josh, I want to talk about Arthur
O'Brien just for a second. He's my favorite one because
President Abraham Lincoln pardoned him from a charge of beast reality,
attempted beast reality. Do you know what he was actually
trying to do with what animal? I think I did
(35:39):
when I wrote this, but I don't anymore. Not important.
Let's just call it beast reality. But Lincoln said, you
know what, he's a really good guy otherwise, and he's
led a really good life, and he was really hammered
when it happened. So I'm just gonna go ahead and
pardon that. Yeah, and he did. Arthur O'Brien is now
a unbesmirched beast list zoo phillist, zoo phillist. I think, so, Chuck,
(36:04):
Actually that Arthur O'Brien cases a really exemplary of the
kind of thinking that goes into a presidential partner is
supposed to write. Um. Lincoln said, Hey, the guy was drunk.
He's live an exemplary life, Um, And he is. He's
just he's he made a mistake when he was doing
that with that animal, right, and he knows that clearly.
(36:28):
He hasn't tried to get with an animal since so
I'm going to pardon him. Uh. In eighteen nine, the
d o J said, you know what, the president needs
help with this kind of stuff. So, um, we're we're
going to take on this power. Our Congress said, d
o J. Take on this power in the Office of
the Pardon Attorney was created. Yeah, and he's basically I say,
I keep saying he. I feel like I should say
she because I don't know if we've had a female
(36:48):
partner attorney. But they are generally they're completely in charge
of handling the thousands of request that office is. So
what they do is they do the same thing as
they did way back with Lincoln. They dig around the case,
they find out the circumstances of the case, whether or
not they've made restitution and led a really good life
and maybe they've left prison, or maybe they'd work with
(37:10):
kids and have done really great things. And then they
are the ones who make the recommendation to the president.
But the president, I mean, if they're smart, they'll listen
to what they say because they've done all the legwork.
But the president doesn't have to know follow the advice.
And actually the the apparently the d o j or
the Partner Attorney's office said, Um, you probably shouldn't pardon
Mark Rich he doesn't really fit the criteria, and Clinton went,
(37:34):
that's going around, right, Should we close with some stats? Yeah,
let's do it. We can't talk about pardons without just
throwing out who has done what. So we're gonna go
ahead and say that the all time granddaddy of pardons
was was Roosevelt, not americally, well, numerically Franklin three terms. Yeah,
(37:55):
but there were what like over three thousand pardons there were,
and it's a lot of pardons. But that's I think,
um of the partners that come across his desk he
signed off on. Truman led the way with percentage wise
right forty something, and um, James Garfield and William Henry
(38:16):
Harrison of course had no pardons because they weren't in
office very long. No, U W H. H. Died of
pneumonia after a month. I'm William Wait, here's William Henry Harrison.
I died in thirty days. Uh, Jimmy. Recently, let's just
go over the recent ones. Carter issued five six six,
Reagan issued four oh six. Oh, Billy Clinton did for
(38:37):
fifty six and then the Bush Boys came along and
Um Bush Senior, Herbert Walker only seventy seven, and George W.
Can I'm sorry, pardoned right? And m Herbert Walker pardon seven?
You said one of them was Caspar Weinberger, who is
(38:58):
the Defense secretary in the ir On Contra affair. That
was his big controversial When everyone has at least one, sure,
why not? It's on your way out anyway, Yeah, wacky commanders,
you're going to work for Goldman Sacks afterward. Anyway, you
might as well as who cares? So I guess that's it, right. Yeah.
If you want to see some funny pictures of old
timey presidents or George W. Bush partnering a turkey, you
(39:21):
should probably look up presidential pardons in the search bar
at how stuff Works dot com. All right, so Chuck,
then what are we going to do then? Right now?
A couple of little orders of business, A little pitch
and thank you. So we need a new sound. It's
time for pitch, all right. I have no idea what
(39:41):
that sound was, uh, Josh, we are having We are
recreating our awesome all star trivia night that we did
in New York, right here in our hometown of Atlanta, Georgia,
and uh, we have not got a location yet and
we are not positive on a date, but it's looking
like it might be the first weekend Timber the weekend
of dragon Con, which is a Labor day, Labor Day weekend,
(40:04):
we're looking at that Friday, September three. Don't hold us
to that, but we are having an all star trivia
in Atlanta. It will probably be the weekend of dragon Con.
So we're gonna say most likely. I don't know about
the Friday or whatever. I think it's probably going to
be that weekend. I don't see why we wouldn't. Why
wouldn't we exactly let's do it. So once again we're
putting a call out to people that have venues that
(40:25):
might be interested in hosting UM Suggestions trivia guys. Sure, yeah,
whatever you got. And we also want to say thank
you quickly to Mark Rhodes. Mark Rhodes is a big
fan and he's been helping us troubleshoot this OS for
iPhone update issue that we've been having where people cannot
download directly to their phone and Mark has been a
(40:46):
big help. So thank you Mark for that. And I
want to say thank you to Tom Rhodes, the stand
up comedian who was huge in the nineties whose act
I caught at the Gotham Nightclub. The Gotham Comedy Club
is what it was. He was hilarious. So thank you
to Mark Rhodes and Tom Rhodes, and thanks to Dusty Rhodes.
Yeah for just such a great wrestler exactly. Uh, we
(41:07):
have another Rhodes chuck. Uh, Lieutenant Rhodes who's in a
rock right now? Yeah? Sure, yeah, we haven't heard from
me in a while. No, so hey, send in an email,
will you, Lieutenant Rhodes, and let us know you're doing
all right? Uh? If you know Rhods that we should
be thanking, let us know. Maybe we'll thank them. There's
roads all over the place. Apparently you can wrap it
(41:27):
up spanking on the bottom and send it to stuff
podcast at how stuff works dot com for more on
this and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff
works dot com. Want more House stuff Works, check out
our blogs on the house stuff works dot com home page.
(41:50):
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