Bush Is Scrooge When It Comes to Pardons -- Tough Stance Part of Broader View; Only Two Presidents Have Exonerated Fewer

By Gary Fields
24 December 2003
The Wall Street Journal
(Copyright (c) 2003, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)

WASHINGTON -- After the pardon feast that accompanied President Clinton's departure from the White House three years ago, his successor is presiding over a famine.

When President Bush took office in January 2001, it was to the sound of the Clinton pardon scandal ringing in his ears. President Clinton, on his last day, issued a slew of pardons and commutations, including one to fugitive financier Marc Rich at the request of his ex-wife, a major Democratic campaign contributor. Mr. Bush came into office amid congressional hearings and a federal investigation of Mr. Clinton's last-minute pardons.

During his first presidential news conference, on Feb. 22, 2001, Mr. Bush said he would be different. Of pardons, he said: "I'll have the highest of high standards."

So far, that's meant very few pardons in very safe cases, among them a man who got probation in 1962 for making moonshine, a minister sentenced to two years in 1957 for not reporting for his military induction, and a 1971 case where a postal worker served one year for stealing $10.90 from the mail.

Oh yes, and then there are Stars and Stripes, the Thanksgiving turkeys pardoned by Mr. Bush last month and sent off to enjoy retirement at Frying Pan Park in Fairfax County, Va. If you include the two turkeys that Mr. Bush has pardoned every year, that raises his pardon total to 17.

Don't expect another one anytime soon. In the traditional season of presidential forgiveness, when pardons and commutations are usually meted out, the White House doesn't "anticipate any more this year," said a White House official familiar with the deliberations. That leaves Mr. Bush's three-year total of pardons at 11. He hasn't commuted any of the nation's 174,000 federal inmates. The statistics make him the
least pardon-friendly president in the history of the presidential pardon.

While pardons and commutations seem insignificant compared with other presidential problems, commutations are especially significant in the federal justice system because there is no parole, and a commutation is the only way someone can get out of prison earlier than the sentence allows.

"The president has been judicious in granting pardons," says White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan. "He approaches pardons very carefully and deliberately and has been consistent both as governor of Texas and as president."

Traditionally, presidents are more sparing early in their tenures. However, statistics from the Office of the U.S. Pardon Attorney show that for most of the 20th century, presidents granted hundreds of pardons and commutations by their 35th month. (Mr. Bush is now in his 35th month.) The president's father, George H.W. Bush, had pardoned 38 and commuted one at this point, and Mr. Clinton had granted 53 pardons and three commutations.

Jack Levin, director of the Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict at Boston's Northeastern University, says the stance on pardons and commutations is part of a larger law-and-order mentality. "Americans want defendants to serve every minute of their sentences," he says. Still, the convicted keep trying. The pardon attorneys office, which is part of the Justice Department, gets about 1,000 new clemency applications a
year. Those applications include requests for pardons of past convictions, which restore civil rights, and commutations, which shorten the sentences of inmates currently in prison.

Mr. Bush's few pardons can't be attributed to the attorneys in the pardon office, whose job is to vet pardon applications. The attorneys stick to strict guidelines, and the process can include extensive background checks by the Federal Bureau of Investigation into employment and criminal records and community involvement. Ultimately, the deputy attorney general at the Justice Department makes a recommendation to the Office of the White House Counsel.

Attorneys in the pardon office won't say how many applications they've advised the president to approve, but they say it's definitely more than 11. While it is easy to attribute Mr. Bush's few pardons to the backlash from Mr. Clinton's final performance, Mr. Bush wasn't pardon-happy when he was governor of Texas either. He moved into the Texas governor's mansion in 1995 after a campaign in which he said he would "end early release of criminals." The 18 clemency grants he issued as governor made him the most parsimonious governor of Texas since 1947; Ann Richards granted 70. Even the last
Republican to hold the office before Mr. Bush, Bill Clements, used the power 822 times.

Margaret Colgate Love, former pardon attorney under the president's father and Mr. Clinton, said Mr. Bush had one pardon backfire as governor, when he pardoned someone on a marijuana charge only to have the unpaid constable accused of stealing cocaine during a drug raid. Mr. Bush was already cautious at the time, and he became even more so. Ms. Love says her fear now is that the pardon process is being underutilized, and without it, there's no "fail-safe" for rectifying injustices in the federal system.

"The specter of someone being released and then committing another crime has been extremely frightening" for governors and presidents, says Daniel T. Kobil, law Professor at Capital University Law School in Columbus, Ohio.

Only two of the nation's leaders had statistically fewer pardons than Mr. Bush: William Henry Harrison died of pneumonia within a month of taking office; James Garfield was shot four months into his term and was bedridden until he died two months later.

The rest of America's presidents have issued pardons left and right. Richard Nixon commuted Jimmy Hoffa's sentence in 1971, and Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon after he had resigned his presidency in the fallout from the Watergate scandal. Outgoing President Reagan pardoned George Steinbrenner, owner of the New York Yankees, in 1989 for illegal campaign contributions. And George H.W. Bush pardoned former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and other figures implicated in the Iran-Contra affair.

And yesterday, New York Gov. George Pataki granted a posthumous pardon to comedian Lenny Bruce, for a nearly 40-year-old obscenity conviction.

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Tom Hamburger contributed to this article.

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Inclement Climate

George W. Bush has been stingier with pardons and commutations than his recent predecessors. Below, presidents and the number of clemency actions granted through Sept. 30 of their third year in office.

Harry S. Truman...............735

Dwight D. Eisenhower..........132

John F. Kennedy...............391

Lyndon B. Johnson.............925

Richard M. Nixon..............522

Gerald E. Ford................404

Jimmy Carter..................319

Ronald Reagan.................181

George H.W. Bush...............39

William J. Clinton.............56

George W. Bush*................11

Controversial clemencies