USA Today and Pardon "Research" Disasters

As the next several presidents drop their rounds of "controversial" acts of clemency, one can expect that Scooter Libby's name will be added to the list of "controversial pardons," even though he was granted a commutation of sentence. Despite the fact that such lists are always heavily skewed toward the last 30 years of history, they are rarely distinct for their accuracy.

Take this one, for example, that was put together by "USA Today Research." It is quite a hoot. Per usual, this brief "history" suggests 7 of the 8 most controversial pardons were granted since 1970. See my comments on another list with similar weakness here.

It also says that William H. Harrison "did not live long enough to issue any pardons." I guess Elijah Reah, James P. Smith and James Birch are rolling over in their graves. Reah and Smith were pardoned on March 10 and 19, 1841. Birch received a remission of a fine from the president on March 23 in that year. William H. Harrison's name is at the bottom of all three clemency warrants. You can see it for yourself in Microfilm Set T969, National Archives. So, either USA Today has uncovered the ultimate (and somehow ignored) pardon scandal or ... something's afoot.

James Garfield is said to have pardoned no one in the six months that he was president. That is certainly news to the ghost of an American Indian named "Spopee" who, after being convicted of murder, was spared an execution by Garfield's commutation of sentence on April 15, 1881. Garfield also pardoned John G. Wustum and Theodore Neilson on the same day (for perjury and smuggling respectively). On April the 16th, he granted another pardon to Charles P. Scott (who broke into a post office). On June 29, Garfield pardoned Donald D. Cameron of New York. So, who is doing the "research" for USA Today, and just exactly where is it being done anyway?

I don' think these are the all-time whammies of pardon blundering, but they are certainly legitimate candidates in my book.

The Washington Post once reported that William Taft was on his way to breaking the record for pardons granted by Theodore Roosevelt. Only problem was that Ulysses S. Grant and Grover Cleveland both granted more pardons than Roosevelt. And Taft wound up finishing well behind Grant, Cleveland, Roosevelt, William McKinley and Rutherford B. Hayes.

Kathleen Dean Moore’s generally outstanding work, Pardons: Justice, Mercy and the Public Interest (1989) notes, at page eighty-two:

The average number of pardons per year during [the Reagan] administration was 41. This is the lowest average for any president in U.S. history – not just the lowest percentage of applicants or prison inmates, but also the lowest average number of pardons for any president.

Moore does not identify what specific source(s) she used to reach this dramatic conclusion, but Reagan could not possibly have had the “lowest average” number of pardons per year “for any president in U.S. history.” At least four presidents failed to grant 41 pardons at all, the entire time they were in office (Washington, Adams, W.H. Harrison and Garfield). Thomas Jefferson never pardoned more than 25 individuals in any of the eight years that he was president. Franklin Pierce never topped 40. Washington (first term and second term), Adams, Jefferson (first and second term), Madison (first and second term) Pierce and Buchanan all averaged fewer than 41 pardons per year. Reagan would be more accurately described as being somewhere around 9th place for this statistic.

Even then, I would not put Moore in the same league with a post over at the Washington Monthly, which recently roared:

Sentencing experts cannot find a single other instance in American history in which someone sentenced to prison had received a presidential commutation without having served any part of that sentence. (Bush is quite a trailblazer.)

Now that is a dinger, upper deck, over the scoreboard in center field. One could not be more positively clueless! So, just what is the scoop on all of horribly misinformed commentary on the pardon power? And just who am I to judge anyway? More on that later ...