This Democratic Governor Just Demonstrated the Right Way to Use the Pardon Power

The power to grant pardons and reprieves has long been a controversial one. Chief Justice John Marshall described that power in lyrical terms as “an act of grace, proceeding from the power entrusted with the execution of the laws.” In 1866 the court returned to the subject and acknowledged that clemency power is “unlimited.” It extends, the court noted, “to every offence known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken or during their pendency or after conviction and judgment.” Clemency power “is not subject to legislative control. At the federal level, recent examples include President Ronald Reagan’s 1989 pardon of George Steinbrenner, the owner of the New York Yankees, who had pleaded guilty to making illegal political donations to help Richard Nixon and obstructing justice; President Bill Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich, who had for decades been a fugitive for fraud related to making illegal oil deals and not paying more than $48 million in taxes; and President Donald Trump, who pardoned and commuted the sentences of his cronies, including Steve Bannon, Roger Stone, and Charles Kushner, Jared Kushner’s father. In 2022, as the Washington Post reported, President Joe Biden “issued a mass pardon of federal marijuana convictions—a reprieve for roughly 6,500 people—and urged governors to follow suit in states, where the vast majority of marijuana prosecutions take place.” Related From Slate Jack Smith’s Moment of Truth at the Supreme Court In April of this year, Massachusetts Gov. According to the Washington Post, Moore’s clemency serves “to forgive low-level marijuana possession charges for an estimated 100,000 people in what the Democratic governor said is a step to heal decades of social and economic injustice that disproportionately harms Black and Brown people.” Moore, the Post continued, acted because criminal records for marijuana possession “have been used to deny housing, employment and education, holding people and their families back long after their sentences have been served.” Moore’s pardons will have a substantial impact on communities of color in a state where more than 70 percent of its male incarcerated population is Black.