Outgoing President Joe Biden has been on a pardons binge these last few weeks, granting a get-out-of-jail card to a bloated list of people. However, such power must be used wisely and therein lies the rub. His recent pardon of former Judge Michael Conahan, who sent children to jail to get rich in an unseemly “cash for kids” kickback, is a case in point.
The scandal involved two Pennsylvania judges, Conahan and Judge Mark Ciavarella. They were convicted of taking more than $2 million in kickbacks to fill the beds at two for-profit detention centers. Ultimately, the scheme was uncovered, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court threw out the convictions of some 2,300 children. But the dastardly deeds were not without human cost.
In the case of Sandy Fonzo, whose son was unfairly sentenced and subsequently committed suicide, such a pardon caused outrage. “I am shocked and hurt,” Fonzo said in a statement following the judge’s pardon. “Conahan’s actions destroyed families, including mine, and my son’s death is a tragic reminder of the consequences of his abuse of power. This pardon feels like an injustice for all of us who still suffer.”
Biden’s loose criteria for pardons appears to be the culprit, and now there is no going back and no way to restore justice.
Pardon Me, Mr. President
There is a lesson in this travesty of justice for future pardons. It’s as simple as the adage “Two wrongs don’t make a right,” and a weaponized criminal justice system stands in direct opposition to the meaning of justice. This may be why the American people stood up on Election Day and yelled, “Stop!”
They were witnesses to two kinds of justice: one that favored those in the party in power with preferential treatment and another that threw the book at people with the so-called “wrong politics.” There is a plethora of examples of this type of lawfare. They include, but are not limited to, BLM rioters who got a slap on the wrist for heinous actions during the famous “Summer of Love” following the George Floyd incident.
Friendly progressive prosecutors make a mockery of our system of justice by handing out ridiculously light sentences to those arrested for such things as fatal arson and violence against police officers. On the other side of the political fence lies the heavy-handed treatment of approximately 1,500 Jan. 6 protesters – some of whom are serving time for doing nothing more than walking through an open door of the Capitol.
With all this as a backdrop, there is good reason for incoming President Donald Trump to pardon a significant portion of J6 prisoners. Not as a tit-for-tat but because so many of these people have suffered a great injustice at the hands of those who wanted to teach their political opponents a lesson. How do we know this? Legal scholar and commentator Jonathan Turley explains one such instance:
“Justice Department official Michael Sherwin proudly declared in a television interview that ‘our office wanted to ensure that there was shock and awe … it worked because we saw through media posts that people were afraid to come back to D.C. because they’re, like, ‘If we go there, we’re gonna get charged.’ … We wanted to take out those individuals that essentially were thumbing their noses at the public for what they did.”
Most fair-minded people believe that defendants should not be used as pawns to send messages but rather have their day in court based on legitimate offenses. This is where the J6 process went awry, and the US Supreme Court stepped in and threw out the charges against former police officer Joseph Fischer, who entered the Capitol building on that fateful day. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote:
“The government’s expansive construction of subsection (c)(2) would have other effects as well, he suggested. It ‘would criminalize a broad swath of prosaic conduct, exposing activists and lobbyists alike to decades in prison.’”
The High Court’s decision “could affect charges against more than 300 other Jan. 6 defendants,” according to Scotusblog. In the almost four years since J6, 1,500 people have been prosecuted for various offenses, 1,100 of whom have been convicted. Six hundred people have been sentenced to prison*. Both during the campaign and since his election, Trump has indicated that he plans to pardon many of these people. “We’re going to look at each individual case, and we’re going to do it very quickly, and it’s going to start in the first hour that I get into office. And a vast majority of them should not be in jail.”
Trump’s approach – to look at each distinct case rather than what appears the Biden administration did in issuing general criteria for pardons -- is the best way to handle such power and right the wrongs of what many believe to be political injustice. As Liberty Nation’s Legal Affairs Editor Scott Cosenza asserted, “Correcting prosecutorial abuse by government authorities is exactly the kind of thing pardon power is good for, and given his own victim-survivor status of the Biden/Garland DOJ, Trump is ideally suited to understand.”
Issuing pardons on a case-by-case basis will also mean the chances of making mistakes are less likely. And when it comes to something as important as restoring America’s faith in our criminal justice system, such an intentional and thoughtful approach to pardons is warranted.
*The cited J6 numbers fluctuate and vary somewhat, depending on the source.
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