In , Reagan pardoned Eugenio R. Martinez, one of the seven men originally convicted for the Watergate break-in. A Cuban refugee who was on the CIA payroll at the time of the burglary, Martinez had completed his prison term and been turned down for pardons by presidents Ford and Carter. Reagan has been urged recently by William P. Clark, his longtime friend and former national security adviser and Cabinet member, to pardon North and Poindexter.
Reagan, questioned by reporters Monday, refused to discuss the matter. Bruce Fein, a former associate deputy attorney general in the Reagan administration, said he believes Reagan is considering granting pardons.
Fein, a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, argues Reagan should grant pardons both to North and Poindexter and to McFarlane because their motives were to serve the country and the president.
Pardoning the principle figures would open the question of whether to pardon others, such as the private operators and moneymen of the Iran-Contra affair. The Nixon pardon caused an uproar among his political opponents who accused Ford of making a deal with Nixon to pardon him in exchange for the presidency. In addition to its role in healing divisions, presidential pardons can also address miscarriages of justice, Rudalevige said.
In his first full day as president in , Democrat Jimmy Carter issued a blanket amnesty to more than , draft dodgers who fled the country or failed to register for the draft during the Vietnam War. Before leaving office, he issued pardons, including the commutation of the sentence for heiress Patty Hearst, who robbed a bank after she was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army terrorist group.
She was later pardoned by President Clinton. While Republican George H. Bush issued only 77 pardons during his four years in office, to , he closed the chapter on the Iran-Contra scandal, in which the US sold weapons to Iran and financed the Contra rebels in Central America, by pardoning many of its key players, including his own aide Elliott Abrams and former secretary of defense Caspar Weinberger.
For his part, Trump largely used his pardon power to help his political supporters. He pardoned Charles Kushner, the father of son-in-law Jared Kushner, for tax evasion and retaliating against a witness in He also used his pardon power to help former political advisors such as Paul Manafort, Roger Stone and Stephen Bannon.
He gave Johnson a full pardon on Aug. Ruckman, Jr. The first category of explanations are 'legal' or 'technical' in nature. Generally such explanations relate to 1 the potential, probable or certain innocence of the petitioner 2 mitigating factors or 3 concern for proportionate punishment. A second category of formal, public clemency explanations concerns humanitarian compassion or mercy.
Clemency rationales in this category are criticized more frequently, but the appeals to sympathy and emotion in this category of explanations may serve as a powerful shield to the executive. Many pardons, for example, have been issued to federal prisoners near death Adler ; Humbert A well-argued statement emphasizing the extreme age, ignorance, or questionable degree of sanity in the recipient of clemency may sway sympathy as well as any 'death bed' scenario.
A third and final category of formal, public clemency explanations concerns judgments on reform, or rehabilitation. Explanations in this category may well provide the greatest potential for controversy. Policy analyst James Pfiffner, writing for the Heritage Foundation , similarly described the purposes of pardon power as including "temper[ing] justice with mercy in appropriate cases," "do[ing] justice if new or mitigating evidence comes to bear on a person who may have been wrongfully convicted," and added:.
Pardons have also been used for the broader public policy purpose of ensuring peace and tranquility in the case of uprisings and to bring peace after internal conflicts. Its use might be needed in such cases. Presidents have sought to use the pardon power to overcome or mitigate the effects of major crises that afflicted the polity.
Ford and James Earl Carter granted amnesties to Vietnam-era draft evaders. Presidents have issued preemptive pardons for individuals who may be suspected of wrongdoing but have yet to be charged or convicted.
The Supreme Court confirmed the president's authority to grant preemptive pardons in a ruling in Ex Parte Garland. A January Congressional Research Service report on presidential pardons said the power of presidential pardons originated in English law and was a subject of debate among the framers:. Following the American Revolution, the English legal tradition of a pardon power held by the executive directly influenced the pardon provision included in the U.
At the Constitutional Convention, the two major plans offered—the Virginia and New Jersey plans—did not address pardons. However, in a 'sketch' of suggested amendments to the Virginia plan, Alexander Hamilton included a pardon power vested in an 'Executive authority of the United States' that extended to 'all offences except Treason,' with a pardon for treason requiring Senate approval. It appears that the rationale for the treason limitation was, at least in part, that the head of the executive branch should not be able to absolve himself and possible conspirators of a crime threatening 'the immediate being of the society.
Still, all modern presidents have used their power to pardon, to varying degrees. The president who issued the most pardons is Franklin Delano Roosevelt, according to data kept by the U. Department of Justice, which helps to evaluate and execute applications for forgiveness. Part of the reason Roosevelt leads in the number of pardons by any president is that he served in the White House for such a long time. He was elected to four terms, in , , and Roosevelt died less than a year into his fourth term, but he is the only president to have served more than two terms.
President Barack Obama's use of his pardon power was relatively rare compared to other presidents. But he granted clemency—which includes pardons, commutations, and remissions—more times than any president since Harry S. Obama pardoned or commuted the sentences of 1, convicts during his two terms in the White House. According to the Pew Research Center:. In some cases, a president may choose to commute a person's sentence rather than pardon them.
A commutation is a reduction in sentence, rather than a full pardon. While a full pardon essentially "erases" the crime legally speaking - reversing the criminal conviction itself, as well as the consequences - a commutation addresses only the sentence, leaving the conviction as it was on the offender's record.
Like pardons, the power to issue a commutation for a federal crime rests with the president. It is considered an offshoot of the president's pardoning power; the president may grant any sort of pardon, commutation, or other "reprieve" for any federal crime except impeachment.
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