Last week, in time for Thanksgiving, President Obama pardoned five people convicted of charges ranging from intent to distribute marijuana to running an illegal gambling business. He even issued a commutation, his first, which meant that he was ordering the release of someone currently in prison serving their sentence. In this case, it was a woman serving a 22 year sentence for cocaine distribution.
President Obama, like most Presidents in this “Tough on Crime” era of the last 40 years, has been a veritable teetotaler when it comes to using his Pardon Power. Presidents, from Johnson to Obama, have erred on the side of their own political interests in not appearing soft on crime instead of showing mercy or righting pasts wrongs. Until this year.
Over the last 12 months, the President has pardoned 22 people. What is behind this new found love of the really only unchecked power the President has? I don’t know. I would like to think that the President has found his inspiration once again from the fictional President Bartlett in the West Wing episode “The Benign Prerogative:”
The pardons issue takes center stage, as [First Lady] Abbey [Bartlet] pressures her husband to pardon a Native American tribal leader convicted of killing two FBI agents in North Dakota, the GOP wants leniency for an imprisoned ex-Governor in failing health. Josh fobs off the assignment of reviewing a very short list of pardon candidates on Donna, and the family ties of one possible candidate lead to a brutal decision with devastating real world consequences. President Bartlet makes a stand when a highway-improvements bill includes a GOP rider for reducing judicial discretion in sentencing. Bartlet opposes the mandatory minimums and guidelines for prison sentences, vetos the measure, makes a speech about how being tough on crime needs to go along with being smart on crime, and pardons over 30 inmates. He then tells one of them to make the most of this opportunity.
I was going to rip the scene off the DVD, as I couldn’t find it on YouTube, but that got too long and complicated. So you will have to make due with that descriptive blurb from Wikipedia. Basically, the episode dealt with mandatory minimum sentences Judges are forced to give convicted drug offenders, leaving them with little to no judicial discretion. And thus the decision to be merciful is left to President and his benign prerogative, or the pardon power. The President decides to veto yet another harsh mandatory minimum bill and then pardons various examples of how mandatory minimums are ridiculous. To quote the character Donna from the episode:
A lot of [these pardon applicants], their judges spoke at their sentencing about the harshness of what they had to impose. Scrutinize away. You tell me? Do we toss out Daisy Aimes, mother of three had a boyfriend who stored a kilo in her closet. She’s done eight years and is facing eleven more. That’s longer than rapists and child molestors get. I don’t see a list anymore. These are people.
Perhaps President Obama has reminded himself and us the benefits of mercy. Perhaps he is making a larger point, like President Bartlet did. That is still unclear. But as Jesus Christ once said, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.” Yes, my Christianist friends, Jesus Christ was “soft on crime” because he was big on the mercy stuff.