Between Thanksgiving, when the president performs the annual “pardoning” of the turkey, which is just as funny and poignant this year as the one before, and before that, and Christmas is one of the most important times of the year for the Chief Executive to exercise his power to pardon.  Real people, not just turkeys. 

President Obama was likely too busy the past two Decembers to flex his pardon muscle, and no one was saved.  In advance of this December, the lack of any pardons by the President of Hope gave many  a reason to question what he was thinking.  Maybe that little push was what he needed. 

From Pardon Power, President Barack Obama has, for the first time ever, finally, acted:

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 and has granted 9 pardons. Why, even William Henry Harrison, who only served 32 days before having the poor taste to die, found a way to grant 3 pardons!

Tippicanoe, stricken with pneumonia from his coatless inaugural walk, pardoned three people before kicking the bucket after a month in office.  Seriously.  And it took 682 days for President Obama to have the audacity to grant his first 9 pardons.

The offenses addressed in the 9 most recent pardons are distributed across decades as follows:

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

As a result, the average distance between each sentence and the subsequent presidential pardon is a whopping 28.3 years! Even the smallest distance is over 11 years.

And here are the winners:

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)

Notably, not one remained imprisoned, dubiously or otherwise.  Indeed, the lengthiest sentence imposed on this group of nine was 24 months, back in 1994.  Most received sentences of probation. 

Certainly better than nothing, if mostly symbolic.  Actually, not much different than nothing.  This isn’t a reflection of mercy or perceived injustice, but rather as tepid pointless and wimpy as could be.  These are, as  Pardon Power presciently anticipated, a politically “innocuous handful of pardons.”  No one, no adversary in a future election, can point to anyone pardoned and yell, “Willie Horton.”

Maybe our President, former Constitutional Law prof, is of the view that our criminal justice system, the one that sent blacks to prison under sentencing guidelines that deemed crack cocaine 100 times more punishable than the powder favored in the wealthy white suburbs, works so very well that there’s no one worthy of pardon out there.

For those of us, however, who see things gone awry with the legal system from time to time regularly every day, and realize that from the hand of the Executive comes the last chance at righting a wrong, we believe that there are more than enough wrongs out there to justify the exercise of the power in a real and meaningful way.  Heck, if nothing else, cut the the  Scott Sisters a break.  No one will castigate you for it.

Do something with the power while you have it or it means nothing.  Do something.  Make it count.