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Comment by dboreham | Hacker News Reader

Agree. It seems to have (never had?) any positive benefit.

IDK, I think Carter's pardon of draft dodgers was a pretty good use of the pardon power.

The problem seems to be that we have unjust laws and punishments. We should have some way to apply mercy in that case. For example, I (hope to) see a future where people jailed for MJ related crimes get a mass pardon.

> The problem seems to be that we have unjust laws and punishments. We should have some way to apply mercy in that case.

The solution is to fix that and make it retroactive. Remove the unjust law and release anyone who was convicted for violating it.

A pardon is just a bad, unfair bandaid fix.

Chelsea Manning. Prosecuting her and other whistleblowers instead of the officials they blew the whistle on was a mockery of justice. Though that wasn't the stated reason for the commutation, it was long overdue.

Obama commuted the sentences of 1,715 individuals and issued 212 pardons for non-violent fedral drug convictions.

I mean there are lots of people arrested on effectively political charges, and it's good to be able to reflect on it years later and get them out of jail. I'm not convinced Changpeng Zhao's charges would have ever been brought against him if the Biden admin didn't go so hard against crypto, I'm happy to see him pardoned. Hopefully next Trump can get whistle blowers like John Kiriachou

Doesn't necessarily have to be left up to the whims of one person though.

Why not? A large portion of the punishment is just going through the court system. For a significant amount of time all you can do is stress about your next court date, you can't get work and burn through your savings. In his case he has already paid tens of millions in his money and the company paid billions. He spent four months in jail, and has spent years out of work.

By the time a pardon comes the persons life is usually already in deep distress, and whatever they were working on is likely already over. I don't see why it's such a tragedy to let some people get pardoned who maybe don't deserve it.

Trump essentially defines all convictions that he doesn't agree with as political charges though.

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