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I think the fact that you use a very high profile and beloved person as your example is in fact why giving pardoning power to the executive branch is bad — the

by pibaker 3mo ago

I think the fact that you use a very high profile and beloved person as your example is in fact why giving pardoning power to the executive branch is bad — the pardon goes to whoever is able to draw the attention and appear the most likeable to the person with the pardoning power. If you think a law is bad, repeal it. Go through the same legislative process that made it happen in the first place. Trying to fix systematic issues with one off bandaids heavily impacted by personal judgement of whoever happens to be in power is just asking for corruption.

iamnothere 3mo ago
The problem isn’t always the law, sometimes it is the implementation. Pardoning someone who was later found to be convicted through a travesty of justice (corrupt prosecutor and/or judge) does not mean that the law is bad, only that the system is made up of fallible people. If pardons need to happen with frequency to correct those errors, then the system is in serious trouble. Perhaps all pardons should trigger a Congressional review process to work on improving the system as a whole. (Not that Congress does anything good, these days.)