Obama Issues Pardons

WASHINGTON -- President Obama, who had gone nearly 700 days without using his clemency power, finally issued nine pardons on Friday afternoon to a very minor rogue's gallery of small-time felons who long ago did their time, if they did any at all.

Far from sending a message about the excesses and errors of the judicial system, Obama picked minor and sometimes ancient offenses -- such as a 1963 conviction for "mutilation of coins" -- to forgive. He also chose not to commute any sentences at all.

P.S. Ruckman Jr., the editor of the Pardon Power blog and a political science professor in Illinois, told HuffPost he was struck by the minor nature of the crimes that Obama selected.
682 days into his presidency, Barack Obama, the slowest Democratic president in history to exercise the pardon power, has finally discovered the dark corners of Article II of the Constitution by granting 9 pardons. We expected as much since 1 out of every 2 pardons granted over the last 39 years has been granted in the month of December. The offenses addressed in the 9 pardons are from the following decades

1960s (2)
1970s (1)
1980s (3)
1990s (3)

As a result, the average distance between each sentence and the subsequent pardon is a whopping 28.3 years! The smallest distance is over 11 years. Poor Russel Dixon ... his liquor law violation was more than 50 years ago! As Samuel T. Morison has pointed out, increasingly pardons are granted to people who need (or benefit from) them the very least.

In addition, six out of the nine pardons were granted to individuals whose violations were so minor they were not even given a prison - or even a jail - sentence. Instead, they were merely placed on probation.

James Bernard Banks (1972) UT, illegal possession of government property (2 years probation)
Russell James Dixon (1960) GA, liquor violations (2 years probation)
Laurens Dorsey (1998) NY, false statements (5 years probation, restitution)
Ronald Lee Foster (1963) NC, coin mutilation (1 year probation. fine)
Timothy James Gallagher (1982) AZ, cocaine (3 years probation)
Roxanne Kay Hettinger (1986) IA, cocaine (30 days, 3 years probation)
Edgar Leopold Kranz, Jr. (1994) military (24 months)
Floretta Leavy (1984) IL, cocaine/marijuana (1 year and 1 day)
Scoey Lathaniel Morris (1999) TX, counterfeiting (3 years probation, fine)

Kind of weak wouldn't you say? But on the bright side it is something.


"Six out of the nine pardons are for people who didn't even go to prison," he said.

Some observers had hoped that, as a constitutional lawyer by training and the first African-American president, Obama might issue pardons and commutations that made a powerful statement about the justice system past and present.