Bush Pardons up to 39
 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7097303/

President Bush pardoned eight people, including a man convicted of bootlegging 45 years ago, the Justice Department announced Friday.

Those granted pardons were:

* Alan Dale Austin, Mabank, Texas, misapplication of mortgage funds, sentenced October 1987 to two years in prison and $22,000 in restitution.
* Charles Russell Cooper, Corpus Christi, Texas, bootlegging, sentenced May 1959 in South Carolina to three years probation.
* Joseph Daniel Gavin, East Elmhurst, N.Y., court-martialed by the Army in 1984 for failure to obey an order and other charges and given a bad conduct discharge.
* Raul Marin, El Paso, Texas, failure to appear, sentenced January 1982 to six months in prison, five years probation.
* Ernest Rudnet, Tamarac, Fla., conspiracy to file false tax returns, sentenced March 1992 to one year probation.
* Gary L. Saltzburg, Clovis, N.M., theft of government property, sentenced January 1995 to 18 months probation, community service.
* David Lloyd St. Croix, Kenmare, N.D., disposing of stolen explosives, sentenced June 1989 to two years probation and a $500 fine.
* Joseph William Warner, McLaughlin, S.D., arson on an Indian reservation, sentenced November 1995 to eight months in prison, a $5,000 fine, and restitution of $5,560.

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Question, what does pardoning someone 45 years later really mean? This bootlegger's sentence is not even an issue today, so why waste the energy pardoning him?


RUgreek

maybe it takes it off their record? :confused: :p

yea, but after 10 years a record can be expunged anyway. And if you ask me, getting pardoned by the president would attract attention to someone, as this obviously did.

Did he sell the pardons, like Clinton?

come on, no hijacking until someone can help me with this one :D

maybe he thought it would be good PR after executing hundreds in Texas and illegally holding thousands in Guantanamo.

Once a Presidential pardon has been granted, does the petitioner still have a record, or is the record of the offense destroyed?

Generally speaking, a pardon does not mandate expungement of the record. In United States v. Noonan (Third Circuit, 1990), the recipient of a presidential pardon requested a court order expunging all court records relating to his conviction. The Court ruled that while expungment might be in order when an arrest or conviction was constitutionally infirm, there was no precedent for expungement being granted on the basis of a pardon following an unchallenged or otherwise valid conviction: a pardon did not 'blot out guilt' or restore the offender to a state of innocence in the eye of the law.


This is from the first website that came up in a google search for "presidential pardons" - http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/pardons.htm - the above answer was under the FAQ section, lots of other interesting info about the history of pardons on there.

ETA: US Dept of Justice - Office of the Pardon Attorney (includes application process) - http://www.usdoj.gov/pardon/index.html

Were they guilty? What do you think should happen to murderers and rapists?

We don't know in Guantanamo because Bush & Co. wont hold trials. We have jails, just need to stop filling them up for victimless crimes like marijuana possession.

Yeah all our jails are filled to capacity with long-term prisoners who are in there only for smoking one joint. That's the problem. You nailed it!

-Rudey

Heh... victimless? I think the family of four RCMP officers might disagree... because that "victimless" pot comes from somewhere.

Highly doubtful because those who like President Bush don't disagree with those actions so we don't need positive PR and those who don't like Bush wouldn't be swayed no matter what he does.