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Full-Text Articles in Law
Due Process In Death Penalty Commutations: Life, Liberty, And The Pursuit Of Clemency, Daniel T. Kobil
Due Process In Death Penalty Commutations: Life, Liberty, And The Pursuit Of Clemency, Daniel T. Kobil
University of Richmond Law Review
The idea of the last-minute reprieve granted by a distant, unknowable dispenser of mercy to a man condemned to death has a powerful hold on our imaginations. Fyodor Dostoevsky's eleventh hour pardon by the czar in many ways shaped his literary career. The scene of the haunted Death Row prisoner who awaits word from the governor as a ticking clock punctuates his final hours is a stock vignette of Hollywood crime films. Anyone who has ever seized on the slimmest hope, whose fate has been committed to the hands of another - virtually all of us - can identify with …
Federal Executive Clemency Power: The President's Prerogative To Escape Accountability, James N. Jorgensen
Federal Executive Clemency Power: The President's Prerogative To Escape Accountability, James N. Jorgensen
University of Richmond Law Review
The United States Constitution vests the President with "power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment." Although Virginia delegate Edmund Randolph raised concerns about the executive branch possibly abusing the pardon power to conceal criminal conduct at the Constitutional Convention, Randolph's colleagues relied upon the presumption that a president would not break the law and defeated his motion to limit presidential pardon power to cases of treason. Recently, the scandalous Iran-Contra affair has demonstrated that, contrary to the Framers' expectations, presidents may circumvent or directly violate federal laws.