Maybe they know something that we don’t, i.e., that there’s a load of presidential pardons likely to happen, so now’s the time to jump on the gravy train. Or whatever train gets you out of jail.
More than 2,300 people applied for a pardon or commutation in fiscal 2008, which ended Sept. 30, the largest number for any single year since at least 1900, according to Justice Department Statistics. The unprecedented number of applications and the lengthy time needed to make final decisions have led to a backlog of more than 2,000 pending clemency applications.
[…] A number of high-profile felons have already sought clemency, among them Michael Milken, the junk-bond king and financier convicted of securities fraud in 1990; John Walker Lindh, the so-called American Taliban; Randy “Duke” Cunningham, the former California congressman who was convicted of tax evasion; and Edwin Edwards, the former governor of Louisiana convicted in 2000 of racketeering, according to the Justice Department.
Evidently, Dubya has been very lean on the pardons to date, issuing the fewest since WWII of any president except his father.
A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment other than to refer to 2001 congressional testimony from Roger Adams, the former pardon attorney.
In that testimony, Adams said the office’s “initial investigative step,” when reviewing commutation applications, was to read an applicant’s pre-sentencing report, judgment of convictions and prison progress report.
In a recent court affidavit, a pardon office official said the office reviewed those documents in “many cases,” which Love described as a “change in policy.”
“The Department of Justice has basically closed down the pardon program for all intents and purposes for meaningful release of ordinary people,” she said. “I don’t think any substantive thought is given to the issues raised by the people who are applying.”
The backlog in applications, according to Love, is a result of the tough-on-crime attitude of the 1980s, including the explosion in drug cases, mandatory-minimum sentencing laws and the abolition of parole. Bush has received 7,707 petitions for a reduced prison sentence, nearly six times the number received by President Ronald Reagan.
Several outside experts and government officials said presidents often see little political upside, and a lot of risk, in granting pardons.
The real pardon question is whether Bush will sign a “get out of jail free” card preemptively for folks in his Administration, past and/or present. Legal experts paint that as problematic, but that hardly means it’s undoable.
Among those who’ve raised the preemptive pardon issue is Harold Krent, the dean of the Chicago-Kent School of Law, who studies presidential power. But he said it would be difficult to issue a blanket amnesty to administration officials without defining in some way the extent of the possibly illegal activity. “You would almost have to say that a person was tortured in order to absolve somebody of the torture,” he said.
Unlike other controversial pardons, Krent said the extent of any potential illegal activity in the Bush Administration is not known. “We, as a society, lose the benefit from the closure and mere transparency that comes through a criminal trial,” he said.
A White House spokesman would not comment on whether preemptive pardons were under consideration.
Wow. That’s certainly a less-than-convincing non-denial.