PardonPower has been following some pretty interesting stories in recent weeks regarding fugitives from justice who have been caught or have turned themselves in to state officials and are now seeking clemency from their respective Governors. There is
Jack Hazen, a Vietnam War veteran who robbed a 7-Eleven clerk at knife point and waited about 10 months before escaping from a prison work program. Three decades later, Hicks was caught in
Las Vegas, living under the name "Charlie Free." And there is
Russell Trawick, who skipped out on a 10-year sentence for stealing money orders and was also captured three decades later.
Trawick now wants to be at home with his wife who is dying of cancer. Most recently, we have
Susan LeFevre, arrested for cocaine trafficking as a 19-year old.
LeFevre escaped after only eight months, married, raised some kids and has now been captured at the age of 53. Of course, these are all cases at the
state level.
Currently, one can visit a web page at
Salon (
here) where an Emily
Yoffe cites unnamed "legal scholars" who, at the time, could only name two fugitives "in recent history" who received presidential pardons. Of course, in the world of journalism, "recent history" is often code for "I do now know history" (see commentary
here). As a result,
Yoffe writes, "Individual pardons of fugitives are almost unheard of." While it is always hard to
dispute an anonymous person's sense of "recent history," the fact of the matter is that the history of federal executive clemency (from 1789 to 2008) is littered well enough individual pardons that were granted to fugitives from justice. Put another way: where we have useful data, we find pardons of fugitives.
Need bookends? In 1799, John Adams pardoned a ringleader of the Whiskey Rebellion,
David Bradford, who was indicted for treason and fled to Spanish Louisiana. In 2000, Bill Clinton granted a pardon to the fugitive
Preston King, who went to England being convicted for draft evasion. And, yes, then there
Marc Rich. But, in a 2001 professional paper, I observed:
In preparation for my forthcoming book, I scanned the Annual Report of the Attorney General over a twenty-five year period (1907 to 1932) with the specific goal of finding pardons that were given to “fugitives from justice.” Even though my approach was somewhat casual (essentially a lot of fast eyeballing of very, very small print), I found a dozen such instances. A one-every-other-year estimate for the period must certainly be low, or conservative, as I may very well have overlooked some relevant cases and, in some instances, the Report may simply not have mentioned the “fugitive” status of clemency recipients. Of the twelve fugitives I quickly identified, eight had escaped from prison and four fled either before their crimes were detected or during the appellate process (and they were presumably out on bond).
As I would later conclude, pardons for fugitives are not the "norm," but they are
far from the most radical or freakish events in the world of clemency decision making.
Was 1932 a long time ago? You betcha. But the
Annual Report of the Attorney General stopped reporting
individual acts of clemency in 1933. Thus, our inability to generalize about pardons of fugitives is more due to a lack of data than it is any
particular reason to think such activity just stopped instantly, in 1933, and became "almost unheard of" since.
Labels: Context, fugitives
