More Libby lessons as pardons and clemency are considered

There are so many insights and lessons one can draw from the sentencing of Lewis Libby.  Prior posts here and here focused on some guideline lessons, and this fine new Los Angeles Times piece focuses on lessons about the sentencing judge.  And, of course, the focal point for future insights and lessons will center on the Presideny's pardon and clemency power.

This New York Times piece provides a good overview of some pardon issues in the Libby case, and Margaret Love says so much in this short LA Times op-ed entitled "Begging Bush's pardon."  Here is the start of Love's very strong commentary:

As speculation grows about whether President Bush will pardon I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, or at least commute his prison sentence, it's important to remember the hundreds of ordinary people who have been patiently standing in line, some for many years, waiting for presidential forgiveness.  In a sense, it is these largely anonymous applicants for executive clemency (of which pardon and commutation are subsets) who hold the key to the president's ability to help the well-connected Mr. Libby.

This is not so much a matter of fairness as it is of political common sense.  Many of those with pending applications for clemency were convicted long ago of garden-variety crimes and have fully served their time; many others are still serving lengthy mandatory prison terms from which there is no hope of parole (parole having been eliminated from federal sentencing).

One such applicant is my client, Willie Mays Aikens, whose addiction to crack cocaine ruined a brilliant major league baseball career and who is now in the 13th year of a 20-year prison term for selling drugs to an undercover policewoman — an extraordinarily harsh sentence for a relatively minor, nonviolent drug offense.  There are countless others in similar positions.  If the president is unwilling to look favorably on deserving applicants for clemency like Aikens, how can he justify helping Libby? ...

Bush has been more sparing in his exercise of the constitutional pardon power than any president in the last 100 years, including his father. He has pardoned only 113 people in more than six years in office and denied more than 1,000 pardon applications.  He has granted only three of more than 5,000 requests for sentence reduction from federal prisoners.  Many hundreds of applications remain to be acted on....

For a president who has been willing to stretch his other constitutional powers to the limit and beyond, Bush has proved strangely hesitant to exercise the one power that is unquestionably his alone.... The federal pardon power has a proud history, yet in recent years it has been trivialized and allowed to atrophy.  The Libby case presents Bush with an opportunity to change that.

If he begins now to exercise his pardon power with more intention and greater liberality, with more sympathy for human error and less aversion to controversy, there is at least a chance that the public will regard with equanimity any relief he ultimately chooses to grant to Scooter Libby.

Some related posts:

• A thoughtful take on the Libby pardon politics
• Everyone's talking about pardons
• Will Libby get bail pending appeal from the courts? Can he get it from the President?
• Sentencing and pardon politics in the Libby case
• Libby sentencing archive