Mark Osler, a law professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law and a nationally recognized expert on clemency, spoke with Straight Arrow News about President Donald Trump’s use of pardons and commutations and how those decisions reflect broader patterns in the exercise of presidential clemency.
From the article:
President Donald Trump has created what legal scholars describe as a new, “personal model” of granting clemency. The modern-day process is shaped less by traditional ideas of mercy and more by loyalty to Trump’s allies.
The approach is a sharp departure from the historical purpose of granting clemency, which prioritized providing mercy to those who’ve expressed remorse and rehabilitated themselves, said Mark Osler, a law professor at the University of St. Thomas–Minnesota and a leading expert on clemency.
“There’s thousands and thousands of petitions that have piled up from people who are in prison, who have rehabilitated themselves, and those are being ignored,” Osler told Straight Arrow News. “This is being done to the exclusion of everybody who doesn’t have $100,000 to pay to a lobbyist, who doesn’t have that access, who can’t stop by Trump’s table at Mar-a-Lago.”
The Constitution gives presidents broad authority to grant clemency, with the exception of someone who is under impeachment, or for future crimes.
The reasoning behind a president’s decisions, according to Osler, often reflects his personal values.
“It reveals what their deepest values are,” he said. “When we look back at Obama, he visited a prison, visited some people who had been drug offenders, walked out and literally said, ‘there but for the grace of God go I.’ And then (he) started a program that was targeted at drug offenders. With Trump, loyalty is at the center of his being and his values.”
Osler said it’s not unusual for a president to pardon an ally, but excluding people who don’t have access to the president, or those around the president, poses a problem.
“Always, there’s at least been some people who come out of that pool of those who aren’t rich, who aren’t famous, who don’t have a connection.” Osler said. “And we’re not getting that right now.”
