One of the perks of being a chief executive of government is the ability to issue clemency. Governors are just like presidents – they
can give pardons and commute sentences for those people convicted of crimes within their states.
Now I know there are those people who have an ideological problem with the concept of clemency. Too many of them place so much faith in the ability of prosecutors that they seem to think they never make mistakes.
THEY WANT TO believe that there never are criminal cases whose circumstances are so unique that they can’t be crammed into some set of guidelines for sentencing.
For that is the reason for allowing a governor to be able to commute a sentence. It is the easiest way for mistakes or legal flukes to be resolved – all-powerful ability to impose a change.
Of course, the problem with such power being put into one man’s hands is that clemency winds up getting defined by that particular government official’s ideology. The presidency of George W. Bush is going to be remembered in part because of Bush the younger’s reluctance to take any action that went counter to the courts.
Illinois, it turns out, is an excellent example of how the
differing mentalities of the chief executives affect who gets a show of compassion for their legal troubles.
AS REPORTED RECENTLY in the Chicago newspapers, one of Rod Blagojevich’s acts during his six years as Illinois governor was to grant a pardon to a suburban Chicago man who had been convicted on a tax law violation.
By comparison, one of Pat Quinn’s most recent actions was to commute the prison sentence of a woman who killed her son and daughter some two decades ago.
Debra Gindorf was given a life prison term for the March 1985 incident where she smothered her children, then tried unsuccessfully to kill herself.
Quinn is siding with the medical professionals who claim that Gindorf was suffering from post-partum depression at the time. In short, she could have been medicated and treated, rather than incarcerated.
WITH PROPER TREATMENT, she poses no threat to society, and likely should not be taking up space at the Dwight Correctional Center, the state’s prison for women.
Gindorf has had her bid for clemency pending for years. This was a case that Blagojevich was asked to act upon. Yet he never did. In fact, it was a part of the backlog of hundreds of clemency and commutation applications that were never dealt with by the would-be reality TV star who was impeached and removed from office in Illinois.
Blagojevich never made any public comment about Gindorf’s case, but it would appear he was less-than-willing to show sympathy for a woman who was in prison because of the death of her children.
Don’t underestimate the strength of that image. There are some conservative activists who now are criticizing Quinn for being willing to overlook the concept of dead kids. They don’t want to care about mental illness, and instead want to focus on the act as though that somehow makes Illinois a more secure place for people to live.
BY COMPARISON, WE get the Chicago Sun-Times report this week about Blagojevich’s willingness to give a pardon to Anan Abu-Taleb, who owns a restaurant in Oak Park and had a tax fraud conviction on his record.
Blagojevich gave him the pardon in 2006, which goes as far as anyone can in terms of erasing the incident from Abu-Taleb’s record.
But as the Sun-Times reported, Blagojevich received campaign contributions from a law firm whose partners include an Abu-Taleb cousin by marriage.
Now I’m not saying Abu-Taleb didn’t deserve the pardon. Perhaps there are circumstances about his incident that make it reasonable to quit bringing the conviction up against him for the rest of his life.
BUT I CAN’T help but think that somebody on his staff must have realized that the appearance of an impropriety was being created because of the campaign contributions to the fund that Blagojevich would now want to use to pay his legal bills as he faces government corruption charges in U.S. District Court. The fact that no one on the gubernatorial staff was willing to question this particular pardon from being granted is a scary concept.
What makes it particularly bad is that Blagojevich as governor developed a reputation almost as stringent as that of Bush. Neither one liked the idea of signing their names to a clemency petition or pardon request.
But because of the circumstances, we get the impression that the way to get Blagojevich’s attention for a possible pardon was to crack open the checkbook. That is a sad impression to give.
When compared with Quinn’s willingness to show sympathy for a woman even though there will be some people who will demand his scalp for it (personally, I think commutation is justified – she still spent about two decades in prison), it makes him seem all the more noble.
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can give pardons and commute sentences for those people convicted of crimes within their states.Now I know there are those people who have an ideological problem with the concept of clemency. Too many of them place so much faith in the ability of prosecutors that they seem to think they never make mistakes.
THEY WANT TO believe that there never are criminal cases whose circumstances are so unique that they can’t be crammed into some set of guidelines for sentencing.
For that is the reason for allowing a governor to be able to commute a sentence. It is the easiest way for mistakes or legal flukes to be resolved – all-powerful ability to impose a change.
Of course, the problem with such power being put into one man’s hands is that clemency winds up getting defined by that particular government official’s ideology. The presidency of George W. Bush is going to be remembered in part because of Bush the younger’s reluctance to take any action that went counter to the courts.
Illinois, it turns out, is an excellent example of how the
differing mentalities of the chief executives affect who gets a show of compassion for their legal troubles.AS REPORTED RECENTLY in the Chicago newspapers, one of Rod Blagojevich’s acts during his six years as Illinois governor was to grant a pardon to a suburban Chicago man who had been convicted on a tax law violation.
By comparison, one of Pat Quinn’s most recent actions was to commute the prison sentence of a woman who killed her son and daughter some two decades ago.
Debra Gindorf was given a life prison term for the March 1985 incident where she smothered her children, then tried unsuccessfully to kill herself.
Quinn is siding with the medical professionals who claim that Gindorf was suffering from post-partum depression at the time. In short, she could have been medicated and treated, rather than incarcerated.
WITH PROPER TREATMENT, she poses no threat to society, and likely should not be taking up space at the Dwight Correctional Center, the state’s prison for women.
Gindorf has had her bid for clemency pending for years. This was a case that Blagojevich was asked to act upon. Yet he never did. In fact, it was a part of the backlog of hundreds of clemency and commutation applications that were never dealt with by the would-be reality TV star who was impeached and removed from office in Illinois.
Blagojevich never made any public comment about Gindorf’s case, but it would appear he was less-than-willing to show sympathy for a woman who was in prison because of the death of her children.
Don’t underestimate the strength of that image. There are some conservative activists who now are criticizing Quinn for being willing to overlook the concept of dead kids. They don’t want to care about mental illness, and instead want to focus on the act as though that somehow makes Illinois a more secure place for people to live.
BY COMPARISON, WE get the Chicago Sun-Times report this week about Blagojevich’s willingness to give a pardon to Anan Abu-Taleb, who owns a restaurant in Oak Park and had a tax fraud conviction on his record.
Blagojevich gave him the pardon in 2006, which goes as far as anyone can in terms of erasing the incident from Abu-Taleb’s record.
But as the Sun-Times reported, Blagojevich received campaign contributions from a law firm whose partners include an Abu-Taleb cousin by marriage.
Now I’m not saying Abu-Taleb didn’t deserve the pardon. Perhaps there are circumstances about his incident that make it reasonable to quit bringing the conviction up against him for the rest of his life.
BUT I CAN’T help but think that somebody on his staff must have realized that the appearance of an impropriety was being created because of the campaign contributions to the fund that Blagojevich would now want to use to pay his legal bills as he faces government corruption charges in U.S. District Court. The fact that no one on the gubernatorial staff was willing to question this particular pardon from being granted is a scary concept.
What makes it particularly bad is that Blagojevich as governor developed a reputation almost as stringent as that of Bush. Neither one liked the idea of signing their names to a clemency petition or pardon request.
But because of the circumstances, we get the impression that the way to get Blagojevich’s attention for a possible pardon was to crack open the checkbook. That is a sad impression to give.
When compared with Quinn’s willingness to show sympathy for a woman even though there will be some people who will demand his scalp for it (personally, I think commutation is justified – she still spent about two decades in prison), it makes him seem all the more noble.
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1 comment:
"The fact that no one on the gubernatorial staff was willing to question this particular pardon from being granted is a scary concept."
It seems quite clear from everything we've seen and everything we've heard that Blagojevich never listened to anyone on his staff, that any one of them could have questioned a pardon and the governor would have gone right ahead.
Now, if your point was that someone should have come out and publicly questioned it, well, that would be way too much to expect, wouldn't it?
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