No one has explained to me how someone can be pardoned...who has not been indited or convicted of a crime.
Maybe you can?
From Wikipedia.
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United States
Thomas Nast asks pardon for his sketches.
Federal law
See also: List of people pardoned or granted clemency by the President of the United States
In the United States, the pardon power for federal crimes is granted to the President of the United States under Article II, Section 2 of the United States Constitution which states that the President "shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment." The U.S. Supreme Court has interpreted this language to include the power to grant pardons, conditional pardons, commutations of sentence, conditional commutations of sentence, remissions of fines and forfeitures, respites, and amnesties.[22]
All federal pardon petitions are addressed to the President, who grants or denies the request. Typically, applications for pardons are referred for review and non-binding recommendation by the Office of the Pardon Attorney, an official of the United States Department of Justice. The percentage of pardons and reprieves granted varies from administration to administration; however, fewer pardons have been granted since World War II.[23]
The pardon power was controversial from the outset; many Anti-Federalists remembered examples of royal abuses of the pardon power in Europe, and warned that the same would happen in the new republic. Alexander Hamilton defended the pardon power in The Federalist Papers, particularly in Federalist No. 74. In his final day in office, George Washington granted the first high-profile federal pardon to leaders of the Whiskey Rebellion.
Many pardons have been controversial. Critics argue that pardons have been used more often for the sake of political expediency than to correct judicial error. One of the more famous recent pardons was granted by President Gerald Ford to former President Richard Nixon on September 8, 1974, for official misconduct which gave rise to the Watergate scandal. Polls showed a majority of Americans disapproved of the pardon, and Ford's public-approval ratings tumbled afterward. Other controversial uses of the pardon power include Andrew Johnson's sweeping pardons of thousands of former Confederate officials and military personnel after the American Civil War, Jimmy Carter's grant of amnesty to Vietnam-era draft dodgers, George H. W. Bush's pardons of 75 people, including six Reagan administration officials accused or convicted in connection with the Iran–Contra affair, and Bill Clinton's commutation of sentences for 16 members of FALN in 1999 and of 140 people on his last day in office, including billionaire fugitive Marc Rich and his own brother, Roger Clinton. Most recently, George W. Bush's commutation of the prison term (but not the significant fine) of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was controversial. In commuting Libby's prison term, Bush stated: "I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby's sentence that required him to spend thirty months in prison ...leaving intact his remaining sentence and fine and leaving on his record his felony". In 2007 Bush issued 29 pardons but did not include Libby among them.
The Justice Department requires that anyone requesting a pardon wait five years after conviction or release prior to receiving a pardon. A presidential pardon may be granted at any time, however, and as when Ford pardoned Nixon, the pardoned person need not yet have been convicted or even formally charged with a crime.[24] Clemency may also be granted without the filing of a formal request and even if the intended recipient has no desire to be pardoned. In the overwhelming majority of cases, however, the Office of the Pardon Attorney will consider only petitions from persons who have completed their sentences and, in addition, have demonstrated their ability to lead a responsible and productive life for a significant period after conviction or release from confinement.[25]
It appears that a pardon can be rejected, and must be affirmatively accepted to be officially recognized by the courts. Acceptance also carries with it an admission of guilt.[26] However, the federal courts have yet to make it clear how this logic applies to persons who are deceased (such as Henry Ossian Flipper, who was pardoned by Bill Clinton), those who are relieved from penalties as a result of general amnesties and those whose punishments are relieved via a commutation of sentence (which cannot be rejected in any sense of the language).[27]
While a presidential pardon will restore various rights lost as a result of the pardoned offense and should lessen to some extent the stigma arising from a conviction, it will not erase or expunge the record of that conviction. Therefore, even if a person is granted a pardon, they must still disclose their conviction on any form where such information is required, although they may also disclose the fact that they received a pardon.[28] In addition, most civil disabilities attendant upon a federal felony conviction, such as loss of the right to vote and hold state public office, are imposed by state rather than federal law, and also may be removed by state action.
A symbolic use of the presidential pardon is the National Thanksgiving Turkey Presentation each Thanksgiving, in which a domestic turkey is pardoned from being slaughtered for Thanksgiving dinner and allowed to live out its life on a farm.[29]
State law[edit]
The pardon power of the President extends only to offenses recognizable under federal law.[28] However, the governors of most of the 50 states have the power to grant pardons or reprieves for offenses under state criminal law. In other states, that power is committed to an appointed agency or board, or to a board and the governor in some hybrid arrangement (in some states the agency is merged with that of the parole board, as in the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board).
Nine states in the United States have Boards of Pardons and Paroles that exclusively grant all state pardons. Alabama (Board of Pardons and Paroles), Connecticut (Board of Pardons and Paroles), Georgia (Board of Pardons and Paroles), Idaho (Commission of Pardons and Paroles), Minnesota (Board of Pardons), Nebraska (Board of Pardons), Nevada (Board of Pardon Commissioners), South Carolina (Board of Probation, Parole and Pardon), and Utah (Board of Pardons and Parole) are the nine states in the United States with all state pardons granted through state boards.
On at least two occasions, state governors—George Ryan[30] of Illinois in 2003 and Toney Anaya[31] of New Mexico in 1986—have commuted all death sentences in their respective states prior to leaving office.
Link to Pardon.
