Bitt wins the prize for quickest correction + memory jog. Me not thinking it through.

It is a case of wishful thinking, of course, but what raised the question in my mind was the thought/notion: might it be reasonable for a prosecutor to put a case in the icebox so as to not have a person convicted -- and definitely up for a pardon -- while the eager pardoner is still able to do so for his buds? I will admit that the chance that Fitzgerald or anybody else will bring something back to life after January 2009 is pretty tiny. But it is nice to think about. I have no doubt that Bush will pardon any of his buds that get some girl in trouble. If Clinton had little shame about some things, I would expect that Bush has none whatsoever. He's the Decider, after all.

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Typically, from what I've been hearing, pardons traditionally are only given:

a) When the justice system has been allowed to run its course. Otherwise, the executive branch would be telling the judicial branch that it is not trusted to reach the right verdict. Nixon was a special case that was done for the greater good of the country. ie, he was already ruined. The "Party" was ruined. Public trust was ruined and everyone knew what happened. A trial would only have served to shame the country even further. Agree or disagree, but the fact is that was the reasoning. Consider it the exception and a special circumstance.

Now that Bitt has whupped me upside the head and I have once again become an expert in constitutional law, I am going to guess that there was no provision in the law that said that it was OK to pardon Nixon because he was already ruined and/or because public trust was ruined -- or that because a trial would have only served to shame the country.

This is a sympathetic interpretation of that history and one that seems to have become more popular as Ford became not-a-president, then older, then elder, then an object of some nostalgia, and then dead. My memory is that Ford was not thought of very kindly at the time nor was his pardon viewed very broadly as a service to the country. Many people, including 2 or 3 who were not communists, saw the pardon as a complete miscarriage of justice. But it's tough to be very hard on Ford when he says bad things about GWB from the grave Anyhow, I'm not thinking that there was anything in the law about special circumstances. Nixon, like many criminals, got away with it...in this case thanks to Gerry.

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b) The pardoned must admit guilt and regret for his or her actions. Otherwise, you are pardoning someone for an act they deny taking part in. Clinton is generally thought to have ignored this one, but again, it's considered an exception rather than a rule.

Now the facts of the Marc Rich pardon by Clinton should have better informed my initial crackpot post. Rich, if I can trust Wikipedia, was only indicted, not convicted.

WRT the "The Nixon Pardon", several reviews that happened around the time of Ford's death mentioned that a big regret of Ford's was that he could do nothing to cajole or wheedle Nixon into admitting *anything*. I think Ford said he lost sleep over that. If that is correct then it would seem like the pardoned can keep his mouth shut and just move on to being a senior partner or elder statesman..