Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm editor Candice Gibson, joined by staff write Josh Clark. Hi. There,
Speaker 1: I just thought you yawn and I was about to
Speaker 1: say pardon. You know, Actually I was trying not to
Speaker 1: laugh at Jerry. I was trying. She she went three two.
Speaker 1: It was kind of cute. Our producer Jerry just did that.
Speaker 1: We love her. Yeah. So, um, all right, Candice, you ready? Yeah,
Speaker 1: make the heart symbol. Um. I was reading pardon Watch
Speaker 1: have you heard of this? I hadn't either. Actually, I
Speaker 1: was actually preparing for this podcast because I had noticed
Speaker 1: that I was needing to hydrate my skin a little more,
Speaker 1: which means one thing. It's getting to be pardoned season. Yeah,
Speaker 1: apparently pardons come hard and fast most in the late fall,
Speaker 1: early winner the president's finals term. Really, yeah, well, that's
Speaker 1: when they come the most. Traditionally, I mean, a president
Speaker 1: can offer a pardon any time of the year, but
Speaker 1: usually they're done in the fall. Uh and uh, the
Speaker 1: most come at the end of a president's term. Like
Speaker 1: you said, right, that makes sense to me. You know,
Speaker 1: it's October, you're walking through Bloomingdale's. The Christmas trees are up,
Speaker 1: and you're thinking about, you know, the Season of forgiveness.
Speaker 1: Actually kind of I suspect that that does have a
Speaker 1: little something to do with it, to tell you the truth. Yeah, yeah, so,
Speaker 1: Um I was. I was trying to figure out who
Speaker 1: George Bush might forgive or offer the Season of forgiveness
Speaker 1: to this year, right, I don't know she She wasn't
Speaker 1: on this list. This is from the Empty wheelblog, which
Speaker 1: again hadn't heard of until I started googling pardon predictions,
Speaker 1: which is one of my favorite things to do. But
Speaker 1: they had some pretty good ones on there. Um. There
Speaker 1: were some that were fairly obvious. One for Karl Rove,
Speaker 1: which just kind of be a blanket pardon for anything
Speaker 1: he might be convicted of in in the future. Um.
Speaker 1: Scooter Libby was one, although no, no, no, we'll get
Speaker 1: into that. We'll use him as a great example because
Speaker 1: he is a good example of what canon can't be done.
Speaker 1: Um Alberto Gonzalez obviously, Um Rumsfeld was. In addition, somebody
Speaker 1: posted a comment and said Rumsfeld um not abram Off though,
Speaker 1: and the reason that the person who predicted um of
Speaker 1: whether or not he these people would be pardon, said
Speaker 1: because abram Off was a snitch. So it doesn't think that, uh,
Speaker 1: that George Bush will play ball with abram Off, but
Speaker 1: they do think he'll play ball with Roger Clemens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And then they they were serious, They said that they
Speaker 1: think Clemens may get a pardon from Bush because Bush
Speaker 1: is a baseball guy. He used to be the Uh,
Speaker 1: I think that the managing owner of the Texas Rangers
Speaker 1: for a while. Did you know that? I did not? So, Um,
Speaker 1: this is these are just a few of the people
Speaker 1: who we may see get pardons in the future. And
Speaker 1: a pardon is a funny thing. I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's that funny, well funny and that it's kind of strange.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of moving pieces to a pardon, and
Speaker 1: on a very simple level, it's when a president excuses
Speaker 1: someone for an affront to the United States. It's never
Speaker 1: for a local crime, of state crime, anything like that.
Speaker 1: It has to be to United States as a whole,
Speaker 1: and you can apply it for a pardon. Apparently, like
Speaker 1: they get applications for pardons, and in the nineteen eighties
Speaker 1: there was even a position formed for someone who would
Speaker 1: review the pardons and research the person and see if
Speaker 1: he or she had been an upstanding citizen until this point,
Speaker 1: and help inform the president about whether or not this
Speaker 1: person deserved a pardon. And a pardon is is granged
Speaker 1: exclusively by the presidents. It's something that Congress can't override.
Speaker 1: It's it's actually an Article two section to the Constitution,
Speaker 1: and I have this wasn't an amendment, No, and written
Speaker 1: to the Constitution. Here's what it says. The President shall
Speaker 1: have the power to grant reprieved and pardons for offences
Speaker 1: against the United States except and here's the big except
Speaker 1: in cases of impeachment. And it's about checks and balances
Speaker 1: here too. Because the president himself or herself can be impeached,
Speaker 1: he or she cannot pardon someone who's impeached. Does that
Speaker 1: make sense, Yeah, totally it does. And that's actually the
Speaker 1: Congress didn't come up with that impeachment part. The whole
Speaker 1: thing goes back to English common law, the progative English kings. Yes,
Speaker 1: the the English Kings originally had the power to pardon
Speaker 1: anybody for anything at any time, no questions. I asked, Uh,
Speaker 1: they could release somebody from jail, they could keep their
Speaker 1: head off the chopping block UM. And then finally, I
Speaker 1: think in the seventeenth or eighteenth century Um Parliament was
Speaker 1: able to finagle their way into making that one imposition
Speaker 1: that you a pardon doesn't have any effect on an
Speaker 1: active impeachment. Right. That happened during King Charles the Seconds Rain,
Speaker 1: and this was a model for the framers of the Constitution,
Speaker 1: and it really split the framers in half, you know, ideologically,
Speaker 1: because some of them thought that America was based on
Speaker 1: the principle of being different from a monarchy and that
Speaker 1: the president shouldn't have this sort of power like the king.
Speaker 1: And George Mason was one of the staunch opponents. By
Speaker 1: the other hand, Alexander Hamilton was one of the staunch advocates.
Speaker 1: And the reason why it wasn't that that Hamilton's was just,
Speaker 1: you know, some lackey to all future presidents. He had
Speaker 1: a really good reason and and he argued it in
Speaker 1: the Federalist Papers number seventy four, and he says that
Speaker 1: it's a great idea to have a pardon because that
Speaker 1: power could actually be used to quell rebellion or insurrection
Speaker 1: um on a massive scale, right in the event of
Speaker 1: a national crisis, and ironically enough, just after Washington came
Speaker 1: into power, I think, in he had to issue a
Speaker 1: presidential pardon to farmers who had been a part of
Speaker 1: the insurruction the costs of Whiskey rebellion. Yeah, there was
Speaker 1: a huge tax levied on corn crops um and these
Speaker 1: farmers revolted against this tax. Uh, And basically it was
Speaker 1: a rebellion there. They were armed and they were not
Speaker 1: happy at all. Um and Washington basically negotiated an end
Speaker 1: of this rebellion by saying, look, if you guys go
Speaker 1: back to your farms, we'll talk about the tax. And
Speaker 1: I'm not entirely certain what happened with the tax, but
Speaker 1: if you guys lay down your arms and go back
Speaker 1: to life as farmers, will forget this whole thing, ever happened.
Speaker 1: And he did it by issuing a pardon, and it
Speaker 1: worked as well. And that sounds to me almost like
Speaker 1: something that's called a conditional pardon, And that's when you
Speaker 1: agree to pardon someone but you get something in return,
Speaker 1: and pardoning someone actually falls under the more general blanket
Speaker 1: of clemency. And there's a couple of different pieces to
Speaker 1: this as well. So we've got commutation a part on
Speaker 1: a conditional pardon remission and roust fit. Yeah. Now, um,
Speaker 1: commutation is what George Bush did for Scooter Livy, which
Speaker 1: is why he would still be eligible for pardon. Commutation
Speaker 1: is basically shortening a sentence, doing away with a fine.
Speaker 1: There there. You know, any any sentence that's been levied
Speaker 1: against you, so long as it was levied by a
Speaker 1: federal court, Um, it can be commuted. So let's say
Speaker 1: you're in jail for you were sentenced for ten years,
Speaker 1: and the President commuter sentence to five. You just serve
Speaker 1: five years and then after that year out. And this
Speaker 1: also happened in the case of Patty Hurst as well.
Speaker 1: Back in the nineteen seventies. This was a granddaughter of
Speaker 1: the publishing magnate William Hurst, and she got caught up
Speaker 1: with cult and supposedly was brainwashed and convinced to go
Speaker 1: and uh conduct this huge bank robbery. And her sentence
Speaker 1: was commuted by Jimmy Carter. I think, what does she
Speaker 1: sort of like two of ten years or seven of
Speaker 1: ten years? I believe so. So, yeah, Carter commuted her sentence,
Speaker 1: and then later on he talked to President Clinton into
Speaker 1: issuing a full pardon, which he did so. Yeah, Petty
Speaker 1: Hurst is a pretty famous example. There's um So that
Speaker 1: was also a commutation and a pardon. The big distinction
Speaker 1: between a commutation and a pardon is if a sentence
Speaker 1: is commuted, you may be released from prison or something
Speaker 1: like that, or let out of fun. Right, if somebody
Speaker 1: looks up your records they find that you are a
Speaker 1: convicted felon. Right, with a pardon, it basically restores you
Speaker 1: to the state of grace that you enjoyed right before
Speaker 1: you committed that crime, which means you can vote, you
Speaker 1: can serve on jury duty, you can own a firearm,
Speaker 1: you're a full fledged citizen. Your your civil abilities are restored.
Speaker 1: Someone just took a magic racer and there goes yeah.
Speaker 1: And there was actually a guy that Bush pardoned in
Speaker 1: two thousand seven who had been running a some sort
Speaker 1: of big gambling outfit and the Feds broke it up
Speaker 1: on Super Bowl Sunday or something like that, and he
Speaker 1: was issued a pardon. And he said in the in
Speaker 1: an interview the reason he sought a pardons because he
Speaker 1: didn't want his grandkids to know that he had been
Speaker 1: a felon. So now if they ever look up their
Speaker 1: granddad it won't come up unless they happened to pull
Speaker 1: up this Washington Post story and they'll say, oh, wow,
Speaker 1: granddad was a felon. How about that. So let's break
Speaker 1: down the other types and the conditional pardon we've touched
Speaker 1: on that. That's when the president issues a pardon but
Speaker 1: ask for something and return. Good example would be Teddy
Speaker 1: Roosevelt when he pardoned people in the Philippines for an uprising.
Speaker 1: He said, we'll forgive you for your offenses to United States,
Speaker 1: but you have to swear allegiance and loyalty and yeah.
Speaker 1: And this is back when the Philippines were U S territory, right,
Speaker 1: that'd be good to know as well, what are we
Speaker 1: doing down there? There's some Swedes out there going what
Speaker 1: are you talking? Okay, So now we have remission and
Speaker 1: this is when a person is released from some sort
Speaker 1: of legal obligation like a fine. Yes is specifically a
Speaker 1: fine yes, and then the last one respect Yeah. This
Speaker 1: is temporary. It can last for like a month or
Speaker 1: two uh, and could be used to UM to conduct
Speaker 1: more in intensive investigation. Maybe there's a there's a good
Speaker 1: person who UM or a good example I should say,
Speaker 1: if somebody who deserves respite is Troy Davis very recent
Speaker 1: new story. Yeah, here's to be executed in Atlanta. Yea,
Speaker 1: he was accused of shooting a cop many many years ago,
Speaker 1: and apparently over the years of the witnesses or some
Speaker 1: made some huge percentage of the eyewitnesses were candid their testimony.
Speaker 1: I gave different versions each time. Apparently a guy who
Speaker 1: was there, head Um, allegedly confessed to being the one
Speaker 1: who shot at the cops. So he was on death
Speaker 1: row and they just recently he was granted restpite I believe,
Speaker 1: I think just within hours of his execution time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so rest but essentially buys time, like you said,
Speaker 1: so that you can research and decide why you're not.
Speaker 1: A pardon is merited. So those are those are the
Speaker 1: different kinds of pardon. Yeah, and if y'all are still
Speaker 1: with us after all of that, wake up, wake up um,
Speaker 1: he's where gets kind of juicy. We talked a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks ago on another podcast about, uh, whether or
Speaker 1: not the Electoral College decides the vote or if we
Speaker 1: decide the vote. And this is a hot button issue
Speaker 1: because some people say that we should have amend the
Speaker 1: Constitution to disband the electoral College and let the people's
Speaker 1: vote decide well. Congress has also a couple of times
Speaker 1: thought about introducing bills to overturn the presidential parton and
Speaker 1: because it's written to the Constitution, this can be along
Speaker 1: and sticky process. But so far none of these bills
Speaker 1: have made it through to a certain stage and then
Speaker 1: really held water. But because the government has three different branches,
Speaker 1: we have legislative, judicial, and executive, And because only the president,
Speaker 1: head of the executive branch, can issue pardons, if there's
Speaker 1: some funny business going on with the executive branch and
Speaker 1: someone's called to testify before Congress, the person, you know,
Speaker 1: can choose to waffle back and forth or not really
Speaker 1: testify or not show up supposedly until Taft came in
Speaker 1: and fix that. Yeah, and this is weird, um, And
Speaker 1: let's let's get to a factor of fiction. Part. Is
Speaker 1: it factor of fiction that there's nothing anybody can do
Speaker 1: about a presidential pardon? That's easy fiction? Okay, So so
Speaker 1: what can be done? Okay, you say like you're surprised,
Speaker 1: you know as well as I do what's going on.
Speaker 1: At least I didn't say thanks for clearing that up.
Speaker 1: For clearing that up. Um Taft came in and essentially
Speaker 1: he was the one who said, you can't pardon someone
Speaker 1: who's in contempt. So that's the check and balance there.
Speaker 1: If something's happening with the executive branch and witnesses called
Speaker 1: in to testify, they are bound constitutionally to testify before Congress,
Speaker 1: and if they don't, then they're held in contempt. And
Speaker 1: the president also the executive branch cannot pardon that person. No. Um.
Speaker 1: And also because this this came out of the clarification
Speaker 1: that pardons could only be used for affronts to the
Speaker 1: federal government, right, Um, So Congress, I guess it was argued, uh,
Speaker 1: is kind of exempt from that son in affront to Congress.
Speaker 1: Contempt being held in contempt by Congress exists outside of
Speaker 1: that that pardon power actually, uh. And did you know
Speaker 1: that Congress actually has a little jail house behind the
Speaker 1: each of the each of the chambers, so where you
Speaker 1: can if you're held in contempt, they can take you
Speaker 1: right off the floor and hold you indefinitely against your will,
Speaker 1: be imprisoned by the members of Congress until you're ready
Speaker 1: to talk, even if you're wearing your nicest Brooks exactly,
Speaker 1: especially if your nicest Brooks brothers see what you're doing.
Speaker 1: So if Congress holds you in contempt, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you may be compelled to testify against a crooked president
Speaker 1: or something like that. Um. So the president can't just say,
Speaker 1: how about this, I'm just gonna grant your pardon right now,
Speaker 1: and there's nothing they can do about it. Actually they can't.
Speaker 1: They can hold you in contempt for not testifying, and
Speaker 1: then you're in big trouble. So this was a big
Speaker 1: check and balance that actually, like you said, William Howard
Speaker 1: Taft elucidated as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: What's ironic is that Taft had been president eleven years
Speaker 1: before and he basically ruled against this power of the president. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think that that was a pretty smart move.
Speaker 1: And who better than Taft who had been president to
Speaker 1: suggest this because he knew how powerful the president can be.
Speaker 1: So so so, so you've got this, uh, this contempt
Speaker 1: clause basically taken out or added to the uh, the
Speaker 1: understanding of impeachment. And that's why we're seeing today, um,
Speaker 1: with the whole Attorney general firings scandal going on. Uh,
Speaker 1: you're not seeing pardons being issued hard and fast. You're
Speaker 1: seeing um executive privilege cited. Actually, which that's that's pretty
Speaker 1: much the reason why. Well, when it comes to pardons,
Speaker 1: it's interesting to look at who's granted the most, who's
Speaker 1: granted the least. You know, who granted the most the
Speaker 1: article I did FDR. Yeah, and it was a whopping
Speaker 1: three thousand, six hundred eight seven. Keep in mind he
Speaker 1: did serve three terms. He did, but that it was
Speaker 1: still a thousand pardons more than the next highest. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and pretty recently Clinton granted four hundred fifty nine and
Speaker 1: he served two terms. He had some scandalous pardons. He
Speaker 1: pardoned Mark rich who was the ex husband of one
Speaker 1: of his big donors, Denise rich Um, for tax evasion
Speaker 1: to the tune of fifty million bucks. He was very
Speaker 1: much criticized for that. He was also criticized for partnering
Speaker 1: his own brother, Rogers. You know that Roger had been
Speaker 1: convicted of cocaine distribution in the eighties. Um, the thing
Speaker 1: isn't in in Clinton. In President Clinton's defense, Roger served
Speaker 1: his full term, paid all his fines, and had been
Speaker 1: out of prison in like living in normal life for
Speaker 1: many many years by the time he was actually pardoned,
Speaker 1: and that's generally customary when you're pardoned. Commutations are very
Speaker 1: very rare. When Scooter Livy's sentence was commuted before he
Speaker 1: even served a single second in jail, uh, there was
Speaker 1: a lot of analysis of it, and and people did
Speaker 1: some research and found that that is not a common
Speaker 1: thing at all. Pardons usually come at some point years
Speaker 1: after the after the sentence has been carried out and
Speaker 1: the finds have been paid, the restitution has been made,
Speaker 1: and the person's tried to serve in or lead an
Speaker 1: exemplary life since then. That kind of thing. And one
Speaker 1: of the reasons for that is that even though there's
Speaker 1: not a thing that we can do about a presidential pardon,
Speaker 1: we can certainly voice our ira definitely, and because we
Speaker 1: have freedom of the press, you know, we can quickly
Speaker 1: disseminate that anger toward the president. So, especially now where
Speaker 1: there are offices created to research who deserves pardons, there's
Speaker 1: plenty of information available on who should get it, who
Speaker 1: shouldn't get it. We all know the president knows and
Speaker 1: again can't be overturned, but he can be reamed publicly
Speaker 1: for it. He can be but you know, if you
Speaker 1: think about it, America, these days, we don't burn enough
Speaker 1: things in effigy. You know, our ire isn't stoked easily enough.
Speaker 1: This isn't like poll in or anything like that. You know,
Speaker 1: where you you if the government does something to irk everybody,
Speaker 1: they're gonna let you know in the streets pretty quick.
Speaker 1: And I don't know. When I drive to work this
Speaker 1: morning and yesterday I saw a little little lady walking
Speaker 1: around with the sandwich board on that UM said something
Speaker 1: to the tune of I don't know taxes, blah blah blah. Well,
Speaker 1: clearly it made a real impact. I mean I was
Speaker 1: driving so fast I couldn't really tell that she was.
Speaker 1: She was putting her ire onto slight um. Another thing
Speaker 1: about pardons we should mention, aside from public ire is that,
Speaker 1: and I don't think this happens very frequently, but a
Speaker 1: pardon isn't official if the person being pardoned doesn't accept it.
Speaker 1: That that used to be the rule, Like you, the grantee,
Speaker 1: the person being pardoned had to say, oh great, thanks,
Speaker 1: I want this um. And then I think it was Coolidge,
Speaker 1: Calvin Coolidge, Okay, I kind of confused about this. Basically,
Speaker 1: there was a guy. Yes, this is the rule before Coolidge,
Speaker 1: and then Coolidge um pardoned a guy who didn't want
Speaker 1: to leave jail, and Coolidge had him thrown out. He
Speaker 1: told the warden to lock the door behind him and
Speaker 1: the guy had to leave jail, whether he liked it
Speaker 1: or not. Clearly been institutionalized or the food was really
Speaker 1: good in the jail he'd been in. But that kind
Speaker 1: of altered the rule a little bit. And that's kind
Speaker 1: of how pardons have existed. And just as sidebar on Coolidge,
Speaker 1: just because I don't think people know how cool Coolidge
Speaker 1: really was. I love this man. He was sort of
Speaker 1: a very powerful man. A few words. I remember when
Speaker 1: he was up for re election. I don't remember like
Speaker 1: I was there in the first person, but um, apparently
Speaker 1: he was pretty popular and people wanted him to run again.
Speaker 1: And he took the stage for this big speech. People
Speaker 1: thought maybe he would announce he was running again. People
Speaker 1: thought maybe he'd offer some sort of grand goodbye. He
Speaker 1: apprecised the mic and he says, I choose not to
Speaker 1: run for re election. Exit stage left, it's over. That's
Speaker 1: a cool customer right there, that's a Coolidge utomer. Anyway, um,
Speaker 1: can I say one last thing? Yeah, of course, little
Speaker 1: pardon scandal, tidbit, you know Lincoln, Oh, you're going to
Speaker 1: bring this up. He actually he pardoned a guy who
Speaker 1: was convicted of attempted bestiality, and his defense was what,
Speaker 1: he's such a stand up guy and all other aspects
Speaker 1: of his character, and that he'd been drunk during the
Speaker 1: time and question. So he was pardoned by Abraham Lincoln
Speaker 1: near frat voice today. Don't get away with that, gosh anyway.
Speaker 1: If you want to learn even more about presidential pardons,
Speaker 1: please read how presidential Pardons Work on how stuff works
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