A good day gone bad as Meade rejected
DeSantis restored rights of ex-felons but didn’t pardon voting rights advocate.
On a day that should have been a celebration of second chances, Desmond Meade’s plea for a pardon was rejected by Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The governor, a Navy veteran, can’t stomach the fact that Meade — who won acclaim for his voting rights work — has a dishonorable discharge on his military record.
Abraham Lincoln was willing to pardon the Confederate soldiers who participated in an armed rebellion, as well as Union soldiers who deserted their posts. But DeSantis can’t find the compassion to forgive a man who got caught stealing three decades ago to support a drug habit while serving in the Army.
DeSantis might share Lincoln’s party affiliation, but Wednesday’s fit of pettiness shows he lacks the 16th president’s wisdom, compassion and capacity for forgiveness.
The state Cabinet meeting had been one of its most significant since early 2019 when it pardoned the Groveland Four, the young Black men wrongly accused of rape in 1949.
It got off to a promising start, with DeSantis and the Cabinet voting to finally do away with former Gov. Rick Scott’s mean-spirited and unjust mandate that ex-felons had to wait five to seven years before they could even apply to have their rights restored.
The Cabinet went a step further and decided to almost automatically restore the rights of ex-felons who have paid off all of their court-ordered fines, fees and restitution, clearing the way for thousands to serve on juries and hold public office.
It’s important for people who have paid their debt to society to be allowed to rejoin society as full citizens.
It was a good day until it came time for DeSantis to act on the request for a pardon from Meade, who embodies what it means to find redemption.
Meade was dishonorably discharged from the U.S. Army, not for rebelling against the government or deserting his post but for getting caught stealing to support a cocaine addiction he acquired while stationed in Hawaii, according to a 2018 New York Times profile.
He served three years in a brig, was released in 1993 and returned home to Florida. He got into more trouble, served more time and ended up homeless.
Meade’s life was a mess. Then, in 2005, as he stood on a set of railroad tracks contemplating suicide, something changed.
“I thought about how many people would come to my funeral and the answer was only four,” Meade recalled in March 2019, after the Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board named him the Central Floridian of the Year. “I questioned my significance on this earth, with the relationships and the places that I have been, to only have four people care if I died.”
Meade got into a drug-treatment program, got clean, got into college and eventually earned a law degree.
He became involved in the effort to do what elected officials refused to do — overturn Florida’s lifetime ban on voting for felons. Meade led the way to eliminating it through a state constitutional amendment that voters approved in 2018, an outcome DeSantis later called a mistake.
Meade had his right to vote restored thanks to Amendment 4, but he still can’t join the Florida Bar and practice law because of his criminal record. Nor can he serve on a jury or hold public office.
Which is why he ended up in front of DeSantis on Wednesday for the second time in less than a year, hoping the governor would dispense mercy and grant a pardon.
Fat chance.
DeSantis sent Meade packing, saying the dishonorable discharge was a deal killer.
It’s possible DeSantis feels that strongly about the military’s most punitive discharge. It’s also possible he’s punishing Meade for his advocacy of Amendment 4. Maybe the governor’s intransigence is linked to his feud with Democratic Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, a Cabinet member and Meade supporter who is positioning herself to run for governor.
What all of those reasons have in common is they’re not just.
Desmond Meade is a model of what society hopes for — a person who pays their debt, owns up to their mistakes and becomes a productive and valued member of the community.
If DeSantis plans to run for president in 2024, as many expect he does, he should try to be more like Lincoln, who understood what it means to forgive.