Pardons rarely reach beyond grave
Boxer’s would be third granted posthumously
WASHINGTON – For decades, the Justice Department has refused to even look at pardon applications for people no longer living, saying its scarce resources are better spent investigating cases from people “who can truly benefit from a grant of clemency.”
That would seem to be bad news for champions of Jack Johnson, the for- mer heavyweight boxing champion convicted of kidnapping in 1913 in a racially charged prosecution. He died in 1946.
President Trump could pardon him anyway. Trump said Saturday that actor Sylvester Stallone called him to urge a pardon for Johnson — something previous presidents declined to do. “Others have looked at this over the years, most thought it would be done, but yes, I am considering a Full Pardon!” Trump tweeted.
It would be just the third presidential pardon in history intentionally given to someone who has died.
A pardon for Johnson would continue a Trump pattern of granting pardons outside the regular process at the Justice Department for vetting pardon applications. Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio and former Navy submariner Kristian Saucier both received pardons from Trump despite a Justice Department rule requiring someone to wait five years after their conviction. Former George W. Bush administration aide Scooter Libby got a pardon for his conviction in 2007 for lying to the FBI about the leak of a CIA agent’s name. Libby did not have a pardon application pending with the Justice Department when Trump granted it.
The president’s power to grant pardons derives from the Constitution.
For 212 years, it was unclear whether the president could pardon someone no longer living.
That ended in 1999.
Clinton and the Buffalo Soldier
Lt. Henry Ossian Flipper was the first African-American graduate from West Point and went on to lead the 10th Calvary’s famed “Buffalo Soldiers.” He was accused of financial irregularities and acquitted by a military court — only to be convicted of conduct unbecoming an officer.
Despite that, he went on to have a remarkable career in the Justice and Interior Departments.
A military commission corrected his records, but it wasn’t until a group of lawyers from Washington law firm Arnold and Porter took on the case in the 1990s that it got the attention of the White House.
The Justice Department resisted the pardon, saying there was no precedent for it.
Flipper’s lawyers traced the pardon power back to the English crown — the queen had granted two posthumous pardons. They argued that the president had a “special responsibility” as commander in chief “to ensure the integrity of the military justice system.”
President Clinton was convinced. He granted the pardon in a Rose Garden ceremony in 1999. “Although the wheels of justice turn slowly at times, still they turn,” Clinton said.
Bush and the ally of Israel
In 2008, President George W. Bush pardoned Charlie Winters, a former government procurement officer convicted of violating the Neutrality Act by helping Israel obtain B-17 bombers during the Arab-Israeli war in 1948. He spent 18 months in prison.
Israel later became a close U.S. ally, and two other men implicated in the operation received presidential pardons — one by Clinton in 2000. Winters died in 1984 without a pardon.
Reginald Brown, the lawyer representing the Winters family, ran into a brick wall at the Justice Department. He enlisted the help of prominent Jewish leaders, who got the attention of the Bush White House.
“Probably our most powerful weapon was a letter we got from Steven Spielberg,” Brown said. “That broke through. And once the president saw it and saw the story, he was moved by it.”
Nicole Navas Oxman, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said the policy on posthumous pardons remains in place, but it’s only advisory, and Trump — like Clinton and Bush — could disregard it.