Court Opinion

ID: 9844501
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:03:43.760763+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:15:36.427360
License: Public Domain

BRIGHTMIRE, Presiding Judge,
concurring in result.
I concur in the result of the court and I agree that § 527(4) as applied to an innocent spouse constitutes a constitutionally forbidden bill of attainder.
My departure from the majority is with regard to their perception of the effect of an unconditional gubernatorial pardon as applied to plaintiff’s situation, and I also am of the opinion that the strict letter application of 37 O.S.1981 § 527(4) in denying plaintiff’s application for a retail liquor license operated to make the statutory provision arbitrary, thus depriving her of equal protection of the laws.
With reference to her husband’s pardon, the majority recognizes that the supreme court has for years taken the position that a full and complete pardon granted by the governor after a state conviction removes “all penalties and legal disabilities” and “obliterates, in legal contemplation, the offense itself.” Stephens v. State ex rel. Goldsberry, 111 Okl. 262, 239 P. 450 (1925). In fact, the court not only reaffirmed the Stephens philosophy later on in State ex rel. Cloud v. Election Board of State, 169 Okl. 363, 36 P.2d 20 (1934), but amplified it through language used by the Supreme Court of the United States in Ex parte Garland, 71 U.S. (4 Wall.) 333, 18 L.Ed. 366 (1867), namely, that “A pardon reaches both the punishment prescribed for the offense and the guilt of the offender; and when the pardon is full, it releases the punishment and blots out of existence the guilt, so that in the eye of the law the offender is as innocent as if he had never committed the offense.”
Implying, however, that the high court has since retreated from the fundamental doctrine of Stephens and State ex rel. Cloud, the majority quotes an obiter phrase used by the high court in the more recent case of Stone v. Oklahoma Real Estate Commission, 369 P.2d 642 (Okla. 1962), that “a pardon simply does not ‘wipe the slate clean!’ ” In context this language was used in connection with an issue having to do with the “reputation” of a pardoned applicant for a real estate license— not one involving the imposition of a legal disability on the pardoned one. The per curiam opinion did not purport to overrule, *1051or even dilute, the court’s earlier posture— indeed it did not even mention either Stephens or State ex rel. Cloud. The wiping the slate clean phraseology was used in a contextual setting featuring at least two significant facts: (1) the Stone pardon was not a full one and did not cover a 1923 felony conviction; (2) being a state pardon, it could not and did not pardon the applicant for a federal crime he was convicted of in 1937.
And while, as Stone says, .a pardon implies guilt and does not obliterate the fact that a crime was committed, such observations do not diminish the legal effect of a pardon with respect to the forgiven person’s civil rights, penalties and legal disabilities.
In this case, application of the letter of § 527(4) seems especially harsh, unjust and unreasonable under the admitted facts. The conviction of plaintiff’s husband was in 1955 for the possession of intoxicating liquor — some nine years before plaintiff met and married him. The man thereafter maintained a clean record and was granted a full pardon by the governor in 1980.
More importantly, both plaintiff and her husband had been issued licenses to work in retail liquor stores by defendant ABC. Both had worked in one for many years. Defendant knew this. It also knew that the husband held the position of store manager. No evidence was presented that there was ever the slightest irregularity or impropriety in connection with his management of the retail liquor establishment.
Finally, in my opinion, refusing the innocent plaintiff a license on the basis of § 527(4) in effect deprives her of equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the federal constitution. And as to her husband, § 527(4), as well as Art. 27, § 10(c) of our state constitution, seems to me to have an ex post facto complexion forbidden by Art. 1, § 10 of the U.S. Constitution.
For all these reasons, I think the judgment should be reversed.