“Justice Stephen Field wrote in Ex parte Garland (1867), “If granted before conviction, it prevents any of the penalties and disabilities consequent upon conviction from attaching [thereto]; if granted after conviction, it removes the penalties and disabilities, and restores him to all his civil rights; it makes him, as it were, a new man, and gives him a new credit and capacity…. A pardon reaches both the punishment prescribed for the offence and the guilt of the offender…so that in the eye of the law the offender is as innocent as if he had never committed the offence.”
I’m sorry, but this makes absolutely no sense to me. How does Bush issue a pardon when he doesn’t know what his people will be charged with? Your excerpt says, “in the eye of the law the offender is as innocent as if he had never committed the offence.” My question is, what offence? I don’t think you can issue a pardon for “every crime conceivable.”
As dim as some prosecutors can be, one thing they’re good at is coming up with charges. They tried as hard as they could to get Scooter Libby, going so far as to try him for lying to investigators without an underlying crime to lie about. How hard will it be to come up with something to charge Cheney, Rummy, and Condy with?
Now, therefore, I, Gerald R. Ford, President of the United States, pursuant to the pardon power conferred upon me by Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, have granted and by these presents do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from July (January) 20, 1969 through August 9, 1974.
In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this eighth day of September, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and seventy-four, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and ninety-ninth.