Our notably unpardoning President

Sandy Levinson

Justin Smith, a philoosphy professor from Montreal, has an excellent posting on the New York Times web site denouncing the "parody" of mercy by which President Obama will shortly "pardon" a turkey, who will therefore be allowed to live. Smith notes the fact that the United States is almost unique among the self-proclaimed "enlightened" countries of the world in its use of the death penalty. Rick Perry, of course, garnered huge applause from telling a Republican audience that he has let literally dozens of prisoners go to their deaths without his exercising his gubernatorial prerogative even to delay the sentence for 30 days. (Pardons and commutations are in the hands of a separate pardoning board in Texas.) This included his sending to death a very-likely innocent man who had been railroaded by junk-science testimony about arson, and Perry thereafter torpedoed a a post-execution attempt to find out the full facts. Moreover, Mitt Romney has publicly praised himself for never once using his own authority as Massachusetts governor to pardon anyone.

The sad fact is, however, that Barack Obama is little better. He has been notably non-compassionate in his use of presidential pardoning power. President Obama did not issue his first pardon until December 2, 2010, a full 682 days into his presidency. This puts him in third place (behind only George Washington and George W. Bush) in his hesitancy to pardon. There were, of course, exceedingly few federal laws to violate at the time of the Washington Administration, and he in fact had the grace and good sense to pardoned those convicted of treason in the Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania. As the New York Times emphasized in its story on the Obama pardons, the recipients had committed only “small-scale” offenses many years ago that garnered most of them only sentences of probation. One might contrast our last two presidents with Harry Truman, who issued his first pardon eight days after succeeding to the presidency; Woodrow Wilson, who took nine days to issue his first pardon; and John F. Kennedy, who granted his first pardon nineteen days after his inauguration in 1961. Barack Obama should be ashamed. Perhaps he might emulate Washington's sensitivity vis-a-vis the participants in the Whiskey Rebellion by commuting (though not pardoning) John walker Lindh, who is serving a brutally long sentence that was agreed to to avoid the possibilty of a death penalty as part of the initial hysteria of 2001. I won't hold my breath. Perhaps he will demonstrate some compassion in January 2013 or 2017, depending on the results of the election, when it will be "safe" for him to do so. In any event, one might hope he would avoid the shameful parody of showing mercy toward a turkey, selected entirely arbitrarily, as most of us (including myself) look forward to devouring millions of other turkeys on Thanksgiving.
Posted 11:46 AM by Sandy Levinson [link]