minor legal/political question

[kaigou]

For the US president to pardon someone, doesn't that someone have to be accused of a crime in the first place? How do you pardon someone who hasn't been charged with anything?

Comments

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

That's what baffles me: "potential crimes" -- my understanding was that for Nixon, the impeachment process had revealed well enough evidence to be used in criminal proceedings. Without a grand jury, the best way to sum would be "definitely committed crimes but we're not sure on the specifics quite yet" (like being charged with homicide but is it first degree, second, etc, I suppose).

It just seems... wrong to me, on a very basic level, that you could pardon someone -- independent of any actual charges or evidence of grounds for charges -- for "anything wrong the person may have done". I mean, that's just a blank slate, beyond a get-out-of-jail-free card. Well, I guess it is a get-out-of-jail-free card, literally.

Maybe I'm wrong but I could've sworn that the usual proceedings is that in the president's last sixty days or so, he (or someday, she) considers pardons of extreme/unusual cases. A kind of parting benevolence. (Sure, it could be done at any point during a presidency but I suspect it's a last-step thing because then you don't have to worry about people caterwauling for the rest of your presidency about who you did/didn't pardon.)

I guess I just find it baffling, and somehow ethically wrong on so many levels that I can't believe it'd actually be possible to pardon anyone who hasn't been, y'know, convicted. Hmph.