A Few Pardons Today -- Meanwhile the Pardon Attorney's Web Site Hasn't Been Updated Since the Clinton Administration
In addition to the good news about the crack sentencing reductions being retroactive, another piece of modest good news is that Pres. Bush granted some clemencies, including a few drug offenders. Via the Associated Press and CNN:
- Jackie Ray Clayborn, of Deer, Arkansas, sentenced in 1993 to five months in prison, two years of supervised release and $3,000 in fines on marijuana charges.
- John Fornaby, of Boynton Beach, Florida, convicted in 1991 of conspiring to distribute cocaine. He served three years in prison.
- Bush cut short the 1992 prison sentence of crack cocaine dealer Michael Dwayne Short of Hyattsville, Maryland, who will be released on February 8 after serving 15 years of his 19-year sentence.
Let's include this one too, just to keep things in the holiday spirit (even though we don't oppose having reasonable regulations on legalized substances):
- William James Norman of Tallahassee, Florida, convicted in 1970 for possessing and running an unregistered distillery that did not carry the proper signage and illegally produced alcoholic drinks made from mash. He was sentenced to three years probation.
Clemencies are a good thing, so I feel bad about using a negative-sounding headline. But it's important, because these few additional actions still leave George W. Bush far behind other presidential administrations in use of the pardon powers, even behind the pardon-parsimonious George Herbert Walker Bush. Interestingly -- and perhaps not coincidentally -- the US Pardon Attorney's office has not updated the sections of their web site listing clemency recipients and statistics since the end of the Clinton administration. They don't even include George W. Bush in the list of presidents. (I've saved copies of those two pages to prove it, in case they finally get around to updating those pages.)
More importantly, we've heard from list members whose family members have clemency petitions in that not only have their loved ones not been released, they haven't even heard back from the office with any decision, not even a "no." If I remember correctly, FAMM has charged that the backlog in the office is literally in the thousands.
Come on George, I've said it before, and I'm saying it again -- WE WANT PARDONS!!!!
What's going on??? To get a pardon
Comment posted by Anonymous on Fri, 12/14/2007 - 10:44amWho do you have to know? And how much does it cost? Why do Prez's pardon anyway? Must be the $$$$. Turning tide?... a sea change ,a reversal of the pendulum,a blowin' in the wind?...yeah, but ... I do notice that "news" now shows both sides more often. The playing field is leveling some, as compared to say...2003. Maybe 2009 will see layoffs within the ONDCP. LEAP has been a huge help,I think. Whistleblowers are good. The firsthand knowledge speakers are like gravity...hard to beat.
Yay! No more pardons!
Comment posted by Anonymous on Sun, 12/16/2007 - 8:18pmI want a pardon. I have a certificate of rehabilitation, but I want a pardon. I now see the importance of having the right to own guns, and my certificate doesn't restore that right to me. I want a full pardon. But wait! I don't need one now! The advances in criminology have removed the need of denying an ex-felon gun ownership, the ballistic/forensic science has made the use of guns in successful crimes almost non-existent. They even want to put ID imprints on shell cartridges now, there is just no way to use a gun in a successful crime.
Now then, due to this there is no need to deny an ex-con the right to keep and bear arms. He wouldn't be stupid enough to use one in a crime, he knows that he'd be immediately caught. So, thanks to science, the requirement to have a full pardon to purchase guns is gone, an ex-felon need only gain a certificate of rehabilitation to prove his re-entrance to citizen land, to prove his worth to society. The same science that led to trigger locks and the like has also led to the end of an antiquated form of punishment, the "pardon." Which, by the way, is something very few felons see.
Who needs a pardon? No one I know. A certificate of rehabilitation is good, but rare, also (I got one but I'm not really guilty. That helped, I guess, but to get a certificate or pardon you have to be guilty. I'm not guilty, so maybe I'm not supposed to have it, but I'm not giving it back). So maybe the new requirement for gun ownership is just getting off of parole. Yay!
There are more
Comment posted by Anonymous on Wed, 12/12/2007 - 2:29pmActually, that's not a complete list of the drug offenders pardoned/commuted by Bush.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i9XadTvxLoZX6crig6QD5e4-U3TwD8TFKBP00
Has anybody noticed that there seems to be a slight turning of the tide in the WoD? I wonder what's going on.