Court Opinion

ID: 9496709
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:33:40.841572+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:43.781574
License: Public Domain

RIPPLE, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
After twenty-eight years of service, Mr. Yasak resigned his appointment as a Chicago police officer. He was later convicted, in federal court, of having committed perjury before a grand jury. This crime constitutes a felony.1 After this federal *682conviction, Mr. Yasak was informed that he would be denied pension benefits because his felony conviction, arising out of his service as a police officer, rendered him ineligible for benefits.2 He therefore withdrew his personal funds.
The President of the United States later pardoned Mr. Yasak. Mr. Yasak, acknowledging his obligation to make all necessary payments, then asked that the Retirement Board reinstate his pension benefits. Despite the action of the President, the Board nevertheless informed Mr. Yasak that it would not reinstate his benefits. We therefore must decide whether the action of the President now obligates the Board to allow Mr. Yasak to re-invest his funds into the pension and to resume his pension eligibility.
The majority concludes that, despite the presidential pardon, the Retirement Board, although admittedly refusing Mr. Yasak a pension because of his now-pardoned felony conviction, acted lawfully when it refused to permit him to resume his participation in the fund. In its view, Mr. Yasak irrevocably lost any right to participate when, after being denied a pension because of the felony conviction, he withdrew his funds from the plan. In my view, this conclusion, and the reasoning expressed in support of it, fails to take into account the nature of the President’s constitutionally based Pardon Power3 as well as the practical realities of the situation before us. Mr. Yasak only withdrew his contributions because the Board had informed him that his felony conviction precluded his receipt of a pension. The withdrawal was therefore a direct consequence of his felony conviction ineligibility. To deny Mr. Yasak the ability to re-enter the fund on the basis of his earlier withdrawal effectively permits the City to exact a penalty for the offense despite the decision of the President in the exercise of his constitutional prerogative.
In Ex Parte Garland, 4 Wall. 333, 71 U.S. 333, 18 L.Ed. 366 (1866), the Supreme Court set forth the basic nature of a presidential pardon:
The power thus conferred is unlimited, with the exception stated. It extends to every offence known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken, or during their pen-dency, or after conviction and judgment. This power of the President is not subject to legislative control. Congress can neither limit the effect of his pardon, nor exclude from its exercise any class of offenders. The benign prerogative of mercy reposed in him cannot be fettered by any legislative restrictions.
Such being the case, the inquiry arises as to the effect and operation of a pardon, and on this point all the authorities concur. A pardon reaches both the punishment prescribed for the offence 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 offence. If granted before conviction, it prevents any of the penalties and disabilities consequent upon conviction from attaching; if granted after conviction, it removes the penalties and disabilities, and restores him to all his civil rights; it makes him, as it were, a new man, and gives him a new credit and capacity.
*683There is only this limitation to its operation: it does not restore offices forfeited, or property or interests vested in others in consequence of the conviction and judgment.
Id. at 380-81 (footnote omitted).4
Despite this broad description of the purpose and effect of the Pardon Power, the ease law of the Supreme Court recognizes that there are limitations to the scope and effect of a pardon.5 As Garland noted, it does not operate to restore offices forfeited or property interests vested in others as a result of the underlying conviction. See id. at 381. Nor must the fact of the underlying conviction, and the conduct that precipitated it, be ignored by a court charged with the responsibility of assessing the pardoned individual’s potential for rehabilitation in a later proceeding. See Carlesi v. New York, 233 U.S. 51, 57, 34 S.Ct. 576, 58 L.Ed. 843 (1914); cf. Grossgold v. Supreme Court of Illinois, 557 F.2d 122, 125-26 (7th Cir.1977) (holding that pardon did not relieve offender of moral turpitude inherent in the factual predicates of his conviction and therefore did not relieve him of professional disciplinary action based on those facts).
The Supreme Court has noted that a practical approach must be taken in setting the contours of the Pardon Power. The purpose of the pardon is to release the offender “from the consequences of his offence, so far as such release is practicable.” Knote v. United States, 95 U.S. 149, 153, 13 Ct.Cl. 517, 24 L.Ed. 442 (1877). It does not, therefore, give him a right to compensation for an imprisonment or other deprivation that he has suffered. Id. at 154. Nor, as noted above, does it give him a right to recoup any property rights that have “vested in others directly by the execution of the judgment for the offence, or which have been acquired by others whilst that judgment was in force.” Id. Similarly, if, as a result of the conviction, funds have been paid to the Government, title to those funds is vested in the Government and can only be returned to the offender through a *684legislative act. Id. In short, settled expectations, recognized by law, are not disturbed by the pardon.
We must take the same approach as the Supreme Court in establishing the contours of the Pardon Power. As I have noted earlier, the Supreme Court has stressed, explicitly and implicitly, the need to focus on the practical effect of the Chief Executive’s action. Taking the same approach, we must acknowledge at the outset that central to our inquiry must be the reality that the denial of a pension to the plaintiff was exacted as punishment for the federal conviction for which he now has received a pardon from the President. Notably, an amnesty issued by the President is intended to place the recipient “beyond the reach of punishment of any kind” for the offense of conviction. Ex Parte Garland, 71 U.S. at 381. The recipient is not to be excluded “by reason of that offence, from continuing in the enjoyment of a previously acquired right.” Id. To do so would be to “enforce a punishment for that offence notwithstanding the pardon.” Id. If the Board were allowed to deprive Mr. Yasak of the pension because he had committed an offense for which he is now pardoned, “the pardon may be avoided, and that accomplished indirectly which cannot be reached by direct legislation.” Id.
My colleagues nevertheless take the view that we are not confronted with a penalty exacted on account of the conviction, but rather with the consequence of the free act of Mr. Yasak in withdrawing his money from the pension plan. I respectfully submit that this approach is the exultation of form over substance. Keeping in mind the Supreme Court’s admonition that we analyze the contours of the Pardon Power with an eye to the practicalities of the situation, we must acknowledge the stark reality that Mr. Yasak withdrew his money from the pension fund only after he was informed that he would receive no pension because of the conviction. In short, the City had exacted a penalty because he was a convicted felon. Now that this status has been removed from him by order of the President of the United States, I can see no basis for permitting the City to render ineffective the presidential order by continuing to exact a penalty for the commission of that crime.
The cases, attuned to the practicalities of the situation, make clear that there are situations in which significant countervailing considerations must have, necessarily, the secondary effect of limiting the force of the presidential pardon. Prominent among these situations is the one in which the expectations of third parties would be unsettled because legal title to property has vested in them. See Knote, 95 U.S. at 154. By contrast, we are not faced here with any such expectation. Indeed, because Mr. Yasak has acknowledged his obligation to make payments necessary to make his account current, the rights of no third party would be significantly affected by allowing him to redeposit his funds in the pension plan.
The Retirement Board has raised no legitimate reason why it ought not acknowledge and give effect to the order of the President. Under these circumstances, we ought to refrain from curtailing gratuitously the constitutional Pardon Power of the Chief Executive.

. See 18 U.S.C. § 1623; see also United States v. Yasak, No. 88 CR 217, 1988 WL 79641 (N.D.Ill. July 25,1988) (denying in part motion to dismiss indictment).

. See 40 Ill. Comp. Stat. 5/5-227.

. See U.S. Const, art. II, § 2, cl. 1 ("[The President] shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.").

. The Pardon Power, when exercised by the President, is binding on the states as well as the federal government. See Bjerkan v. United States, 529 F.2d 125, 127 (7th Cir.1975).

. Our case law has recognized as well that the broad language of Ex Parte Garland, 4 Wall. 333, 71 U.S. 333, 18 L.Ed. 366 (1866), is subject to qualification. Indeed, in Bjerkan v. United States, 529 F.2d 125 (7th Cir.1975), we said:
A pardon does not “blot out guilt” nor does it restore the offender to a state of innocence in the eye of the law as was suggested in Ex Parte Garland, 71 U.S. (4 Wall.) 333, 380, 18 L.Ed. 366 (1866). See Burdick v. United States, 236 U.S. 79, 91, 35 S.Ct. 267, 59 L.Ed. 476 (1915) (suggesting that, far from blotting out guilt, the acceptance of a pardon may constitute a confession of guilt). We accept the view of the effect of a pardon propounded by Professor Williston in Does A Pardon Blot Out Guilt? 28 Harv.L.Rev. 647, 653 (1915):
The true line of distinction seems to be this: The pardon removes all legal punishment for the offense. Therefore if the mere conviction involves certain disqualifications which would not follow from the commission of the crime without conviction, the pardon removes such disqualifications. On the other hand, if character is a necessary qualification and the commission of a crime would disqualify even though there had been no criminal prosecution for the crime, the fact that the criminal has been convicted and pardoned does not make him any more eligible.
Thus, 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 128 n. 2; see also Grossgold v. Supreme Court of Illinois, 557 F.2d 122, 125 (7th Cir.1977). I examine further these limitations in the text.