Pardon is an act of state mercy. But is every pardon really mercy – or does it sometimes turn into charity for a person who has already received from the state the punishment that the law provides for the crime he committed? This is a question that does not have a clear legal answer. The Constitution gives the president the right to pardon, and this power can be delegated to the vice president. When delegated, it is the vice president who makes the final decision. Medical expert opinions, opinions, proposals and many other documents can be placed before him. But none of these documents puts the signature for him.
That is precisely the essential point. The proposal is not a decision. The expert opinion is not a decision. The commission is not a decision. The decision is up to the person who has the constitutional authority to pardon.
Thus, legal procedure inevitably encounters morality.
Because not all crimes are the same. It is not the same for the same person to be convicted of tax evasion and to be convicted of drug distribution. It is not the same to cause death by negligence in a traffic accident and to commit intentional murder. And the issue is even more serious when we are talking about the intentional murder of two or three people.
The law determines the punishment.
The court determines the guilt and the amount of the punishment.
But in pardoning, the state does something different – it decides whether this punishment should be terminated or mitigated before the term set by the court has expired.
And therefore the first question in a request for clemency should be: what is the reason for requesting it?
Every prisoner has the right to request clemency. This is part of the very logic of the institution of clemency. But the fact that someone has the right to request clemency does not mean that the state has a moral obligation to grant it to him.
On the contrary.
In each specific case, the question must be not only what happens to the convicted person if he remains in prison, but also what could happen to society if he is released.
This is especially important in serious intentional crimes.
When a person is convicted of murder, behind the sentence is not just a number in a criminal case. It is a human life that has been taken. There are relatives who have lost a person. There is also the public interest in the state showing that such behavior has serious consequences.
When we talk about drug trafficking, the picture is not limited to the specific perpetrator. Drugs affect other people, families, children and entire communities. Here, the potential public harm does not end with the sentencing.
Therefore, in such crimes, the issue of the risk of recidivism and the public danger should have particular weight.
And here comes the role of the pardoner. He is not a judge and should not review the sentence. But he has the right to assess whether there are grounds for state clemency in this particular case.
And this means that he also has the right to say “no“. This “no“ is just as important as the “yes“.
For example, a medical examination can establish a serious illness. This is an objective circumstance and must be taken into account. But the medical document alone cannot answer the question of whether a person convicted of a serious intentional crime should be released early from his sentence. It answers the medical question. Someone else must answer the state question.
This is where the moral and ethical boundary lies.
Because pardon should not be a reward for good behavior in prison. Good behavior is the duty of every prisoner. It should not be a way for a person to automatically avoid the rest of their sentence just because they have presented enough documents.
Pardon should be an exception.
An exception that is made when there are strong enough reasons for the state's mercy to outweigh the need for the sentence to be served to the end.
And the more serious the crime, the higher the bar for this mercy should be.
This is not cruelty.
This is responsibility.
Because the state has two sides to humanity. One is to show compassion for the convicted person. The other is not to forget the victims and the community.
If in a pardon you only see the person in prison, but not the people who may be in danger after his release, then the state's mercy is already starting to look like a one-sided charity.
And so the question is not simply “does the vice president have the right to pardon?“
Yes, he does.
The question is “why should he do it?“
What has changed? What is the public need? What is the risk? What is the gravity of the crime? How much of the sentence has been served? And most of all - what will this decision mean for society?
This is a huge responsibility. And that is why pardoning should be a mercy.
But it should never become alms.