Opinion ID: 2627850
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: United States Courts of Appeals decisions

Text: The United States Courts of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Seventh Circuit, and the District of Columbia Circuit have not followed Garland's broad articulation of the presidential pardoning power. U.S. v. Noonan, 906 F.2d 952, 958, 960 (3d Cir.1990) (concluding that a pardon can only remove the punishment for a crime, not the fact of the crime itself, and holding that the United States Supreme Court's decision in Burdick implicitly rejected its prior sweeping conception of the pardoning power in Garland ); Bjerkan v. United States, 529 F.2d 125, 128 n. 2 (7th Cir.1975); In re North, 62 F.3d 1434, 1437 (D.C.Cir.1994) (concluding that the United States Supreme Court's articulation of the pardoning power in Garland was uncontrolling dictum and further holding that the Burdick decision implicitly rejected the overly broad position). Rather, they have concluded that the explanation was mere dictum because the Court had already decided the dispositive issue of whether a particular oath was constitutional and was also implicitly overruled by Burdick. Focusing on the scope of the Texas executive's pardoning power, in Groseclose v. Plummer , the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reached a similar conclusion. 106 F.2d 311 (9th Cir.1939). In Groseclose, the Ninth Circuit rejected the defendant's contention that the Texas pardons wiped out his prior convictions as though they had never occurred, analogizing that [t]his is the same as saying that executive clemency clears the boards as thoroughly as the granting of a new trial and subsequent acquittal would do. Id. at 313. While recognizing that some authorities supported the proposition that a pardon obliterated the underlying conviction and guilt, the Ninth Circuit disagreed, concluding that the great weight of authority support[s] the more realistic view that a pardon, to the extent of its terms, does nothing more than to abolish all restrictions upon the liberty of the pardoned one, and upon his civil rights that follow a felony conviction and sentence. Id. The court acknowledged that while a Texas pardon may have the effect of prohibiting the Texas courts from considering the act giving rise to the pardoned offense, the pardon could not turn back the hand of time[;] ... the stubborn fact remains that the habit of crime was upon him. Id.