Opinion ID: 2310847
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Federal authorities.

Text: So far as we are aware, all of the federal appellate decisions in this century which have considered the effect of a presidential pardon have adopted the approach suggested by Professor Williston and have rejected the position urged on us by Abrams. The closest case to the present one is Grossgold v. Supreme Court of Illinois, 557 F.2d 122 (7th Cir.1977). Grossgold, an attorney, had been convicted of mail fraud and suspended from practice. He was subsequently pardoned by the President. He sought reinstatement to the Illinois Bar, claiming that his suspension had been based on the pardoned offense, and that it had therefore been nullified by the pardon. The Court of Appeals unanimously held that the trial court had lacked federal jurisdiction over the case. The court then added the following: Assuming federal jurisdiction arguendo, the presidential pardon did not wipe out the moral turpitude inherent in the factual predicate supporting plaintiff's mail fraud conviction. As Judge Sprecher carefully explained in Bjerkan v. United States, 529 F.2d 125, 128 n. 2 (7th Cir.1975), a pardon does not blot out guilt nor restore the offender to a state of innocence. The court quoted with approval the passage from Professor Williston's article reproduced at page 11, supra, and concluded that because good character is a necessary qualification for the practice of law, and because Grossgold's conduct was incompatible with good moral character, the fact that he had been pardoned did not relieve him from professional discipline. Id. at 125-26 (additional citations omitted). [13] In United States v. Noonan, 906 F.2d 952 (3d Cir.1990), a defendant who had received a presidential pardon for a violation of the Selective Service Act asked the court to expunge the records of his prosecution and conviction. Invoking Garland, he claimed that the pardon had wiped out his guilt and that, in the eyes of the law, his offense no longer existed. Relying on the decisions in Grossgold and Bjerkan and on Professor Williston's article, the court, in an opinion by Judge Aldisert, held that Noonan was not entitled to expungement. Characterizing as dictum the statement in Garland that a pardon blots out of existence the guilt, id. at 958 (quoting 71 U.S. at 380), Judge Aldisert stated that the Supreme Court had abandoned the Garland dictum in Burdick v. United States, 236 U.S. 79, 91, 35 S.Ct. 267, 269, 59 L.Ed. 476 (1915). [14] Quoting from Bjerkan, supra, 529 F.2d 125, 128 n. 2 (7th Cir.1975), Judge Aldisert explained that the fact of conviction after a pardon cannot be taken into account in subsequent proceedings. However the fact of the commission of the crime may be considered. Therefore, although the effects of the commission of the offense linger after a pardon, the effects of the conviction are all but wiped out. Id. at 958-59 (emphasis added). The presidential pardon, according to the court, does not create any factual fiction that Noonan's conviction had not occurred [or] justify expunction of his criminal court record. Id. at 960. In In re North, 314 U.S.App. D.C. 102, 62 F.3d 1434 (1994) (per curiam), Clair E. George, a C.I.A. official who had been pardoned (along with Abrams) for his role in the Iran-Contra matter, applied for an award of counsel fees. Fees were available, under the applicable statute, to those individuals who had not been indicted. George had been indicted, but he argued that the pardon had blotted out the indictment against him. Like Abrams, George relied heavily on Garland. The court ruled, with one judge dissenting, that the pardon did not blot out the existence of the indictment, and that George was not eligible for an award of counsel fees. Just as the court in Noonan had done, the court in North characterized Garland's blot[ting] out language as dictum. Id. at 105, 62 F.3d at 1437. The court noted Chief Justice Marshall's definition of a pardon in Wilson, 32 U.S. (7 Pet.) at 160, which we have quoted in note 8, supra, and stated that Garland's rationale is consistent with Wilson; its dictum blotting out guilt is inconsistent with Wilson. Garland's dictum was implicitly rejected in Burdick [ supra ], 236 U.S. 79 [35 S.Ct. 267, at 91, 35 S.Ct. at 269], which recognized that the acceptance of a pardon implies a confession of guilt. Id. (citations omitted). In In re Spenser, 22 F. Cas. 921 (Cir.Ct. D.Or.1878), Judge Deady wrote an excellent opinion in which, in effect, he anticipated Professor Williston's article, as well as Grossgold and the other decisions written a century or so after Spenser. William Spenser sought to become a citizen of the United States. In order to be eligible for citizenship, he was required to demonstrate, inter alia, that he ha[d] behaved as a man of good moral character. While residing in this country, however, Spenser had been convicted of perjury. He subsequently received an unqualified pardon from the governor. The question before the court was whether, in light of Garland, Spenser's perjury had been blotted out, so that he was once again a man of good moral character. Notwithstanding Garland, the court answered that question in the negative: By the commission of the crime, the applicant was guilty of misbehavior, within the meaning of the statute, during his residence in the United States. The pardon has absolved him from the guilt of the act, and relieved him from the legal disabilities consequent thereupon. But it has not done away with the fact of his conviction. It does not operate retrospectively. The answer to the question: Has he behaved as a man of good moral character? must still be in the negative; for the fact remains, notwithstanding the pardon, that the applicant was guilty of the crime of perjury did behave otherwise than as a man of good moral character. Id. at 923. Thus, in a case decided only a few years after Garland, a federal judge made the very distinction which Professor Williston articulated in his article and which the courts in the later decisions adopted as their ratio decidendi. See also United States v. Swift, 186 F. 1002, 1017 (N.D.Ill. 1911) (the post-Civil War cases dispel the idea that the acts themselves, as distinguished from their penal consequences, were obliterated by pardon or amnesty.... A pardon or amnesty ... involves forgiveness, not forgetfulness.)