{"id":1422,"date":"2012-03-09T11:45:21","date_gmt":"2012-03-09T09:45:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ofcourseimright.com\/?p=1422"},"modified":"2012-03-09T11:45:21","modified_gmt":"2012-03-09T09:45:21","slug":"pardons-in-the-kingdom-of-mississippi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/?p=1422","title":{"rendered":"Pardons in the Kingdom of Mississippi"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I’m a pretty liberal guy.\u00a0 I wear the label proudly.\u00a0 To me “liberal” means, amongst many other things, belief in the system of checks and balances<\/a>.\u00a0 Today, the Mississippi Supreme Court abrogated their responsibility as part of that system in that state.<\/p>\n

The Press is widely reporting<\/a> that the Mississippi Supreme Court<\/a> has refused to overturn nearly 200\u00a0 pardons issued by former Governor Haley Barbour<\/a> on his way out of town. At issue is a provision in\u00a0 Article 5 \u00a7124 of the Mississippi State Constitution<\/a> that says the following:<\/p>\n

\n

but no pardon shall be granted before conviction; and in cases of felony, after conviction no pardon shall be granted until the applicant therefor shall have published for thirty days, in some newspaper in the county where the crime was committed, and in case there be no newspaper published in said county, then in an adjoining county, his petition for pardon, setting forth therein the reasons why such pardon should be granted.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Let’s put aside the consequences to the convicts and to the families of those who were harmed by them.\u00a0 While I don’t like<\/strong> the provision, it’s there.\u00a0 We can even argue about what it means.\u00a0 Who should ultimately<\/strong> decide?\u00a0 I would think the Mississippi Supreme Court.\u00a0 Apparently not.\u00a0 Here is what Chief Justice William L. Waller, Jr. had to say in a 6-3 decision:<\/p>\n

Certainly, no one would argue that a court could investigate and determine the wisdom or propriety of a governor\u2019s acts, including pardons.\u00a0 However, the constitutionality of a governor\u2019s acts, including pardons, is a question which the court must determine.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As it happens, my last blog entry<\/a> talked about how former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich challenged the notion of Marbury v. Madison, where they reaffirmed their responsibility and authority to be the final judges on the meaning of the Constitution.\u00a0 That logic, that separates presidents from kings and queens apparently does not apply in Mississippi.<\/p>\n

There are some missing bits of information.\u00a0 How could the court have veered so far from this cornerstone of American jurisprudence?\u00a0 What other provisions of the Constitution would they choose not to enforce?\u00a0 Why, for instance, are they receiving a paycheck?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m a pretty liberal guy.\u00a0 I wear the label proudly.\u00a0 To me “liberal” means, amongst many other things, belief in the system of checks and balances.\u00a0 Today, the Mississippi Supreme Court abrogated their responsibility as part of that system in that state. The Press is widely reporting that the Mississippi Supreme Court has refused to … Continue reading “Pardons in the Kingdom of Mississippi”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":172,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[259,433,432,22],"class_list":["post-1422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-crime","tag-justice","tag-mississippi","tag-supreme-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/172"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1422"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1424,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1422\/revisions\/1424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}