The Merchant of Venice.
The NY Times Op Ed Piece here on the Presidential power of clemency:
The constitutional provision that gives the president virtually unlimited authority to grant clemency was not an afterthought. The founders understood very well that there could be miscarriages of justice even under the rule of law. By allowing the president to commute unjust sentences or pardon deserving petitioners who had served their time, they sought to ensure that the workings of the courts could be tempered with mercy.
...
The perpetual punishment model of
justice has had far-reaching consequences. Politicians stayed as far away from
clemency as they could, fearing that voters would view them as soft on crime.
Meanwhile, at the Justice Department, the clemency process — which had been a
cabinet-level responsibility — fell under the authority of prosecutors who
seemed to view even reasonable lenience as a threat to the prosecutorial order.
The time required to handle clemency applications went from months to years;
the backlog grew; the stream of mercy that had once flowed began to dry up.
The clemency system, in other
words, is in a state of collapse. But the concept of mercy went out of fashion
by the 1980s, when the country embarked on a mandatory sentencing craze that
barred judges from exercising leniency when it was clearly warranted and placed
the justice system almost entirely in the hands of prosecutors. As a
consequence, even first-time offenders were largely viewed as beyond
redemption.
These laws drove up the prison
population 10-fold and filled the jails with young, low-level drug offenders
who were confined far longer than their offenses warranted. They also created a
large and growing class of felons, who are trapped permanently at the margins
of society by postprison sanctions — laws that bar them from jobs and housing,
strip them of the right to vote and make it difficult for them to obtain
essential documents like driver’s licenses.
The perpetual punishment model of
justice has had far-reaching consequences. Politicians stayed as far away from
clemency as they could, fearing that voters would view them as soft on crime.
Meanwhile, at the Justice Department, the clemency process — which had been a
cabinet-level responsibility — fell under the authority of prosecutors who
seemed to view even reasonable lenience as a threat to the prosecutorial order.
The time required to handle clemency applications went from months to years;
the backlog grew; the stream of mercy that had once flowed began to dry up.
The clemency system, in other
words, is in a state of collapse.
Rumpole says: For too long Congress and state legislatures and Representatives and Governors and Senators have engaged in the unseemly and struthious like spectacle of hiding their heads in the sand while tens of thousands of Americans were sentenced to life altering minimum mandatory sentences for minimal and non-violent drug activities.
Stop the madness.
See You In Court.