More proof politicians are very compassionate toward criminals … who are fellow politicians

I am hoping readers might help me come up with a catchy word or phrase to describe the all-too-common phenomenon of “tough-on-crime” politicians becoming amazingly sympathetic to convicted felons who are fellow politicians.  I would have liked to had such a term for President Bush, who showed his soft side when he commuted the sentence of his pal Scooter Libby, despite the fact that he has not shown any similar compassion toward thousands of other first offenders sentenced to prison for crimes arguably less serious than Libby’s (such as Victor Rita and others noted in this post).  And such a term now is needed to describe a number of prominent Senators who are seeking compassion for other prominent federal offenders.

First, consider the compassion now being expressed by Senator Orrin Hatch and other Republicans in this new Politico piece asking “Will Bush pardon Stevens?.”  Here are some particulars:

Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) hasn’t yet joined the gallery of notorious felons, small-time crooks and aggrieved innocents seeking pardons from President Bush, but it appears he’ll have the support of some of his soon-to-be-former colleagues if he does.

“He has served this country for over 50 years,” said Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), a widely respected member of the Judiciary Committee. “I think most anybody would probably say, ‘Yeah, he should be [pardoned].’ I think most anybody would say it’s fair to say that.” On Oct. 27, a District of Columbia jury convicted Stevens on seven counts of failing to report more than $250,000 in gifts and home renovations he received from 1999 to 2006. Stevens, 85, faces up to 35 years in prison if the conviction stands….

For Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the case for a pardon for Stevens has already been laid out. It’s all right there in a letter that Stevens’ lawyers sent to Attorney General Michael Mukasey — one in which they laid out their allegations of prosecutorial misconduct before and during his trial. “I look at what has been outlined in this letter to the attorney general, and I think if President Bush were to consider it, I think there would clearly be grounds based on what I have seen to go ahead and do so,” Murkowski said of a pardon.

Murkowski emphasized that the decision to pardon is Bush’s alone but that there “were clear instances in that trial where the prosecutors clearly overreached, and as a consequence of that overreaching, you have a verdict that comes down, and now a good man — a man who has served his state and his country — is now looking to that forced retirement.”

The letter from Stevens’ attorneys to Mukasey doesn’t specifically request a pardon but rather seeks a Justice Department investigation into its prosecutors’ conduct.

Informed readers should see a special irony concerning Senator Murkowski’s suggestion that prosecutorial “overreaching” provides clear grounds for a pardon.  A concern about overzealous federal prosecutors was, of course, the rationale given by President Clinton for his notorious pardon of Marc Rich.  Ah well, I suppose I am just naive to expect politicians to be even a little bit principled in this arena.

Second, lest anyone think only Republicans deserve a clemency chutzpa award, consider the public statements of Democratic Senator Dick Durbin urging commutation of the prison sentence of former Illinois Governor George Ryan.  Here are details from this Chicago Tribune report:

Despite an acknowledged firestorm of criticism, Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin said Monday that he was asking President George W. Bush to commute the federal corruption sentence of former Republican Gov. George Ryan to time served as an act of compassion and mercy.

“For those who would argue that a commutation makes light of his crimes, it is clear that he has already paid a significant price and will continue to do so as long as he lives,” Durbin wrote of Ryan in a letter to Bush. “Justice is a sword that should be tempered with compassion. Further imprisonment will not, in my opinion, serve the ends of justice.”

The request by Durbin, the second-highest ranking Democrat in Senate leadership, met with support from Ryan’s attorney, former Gov. Jim Thompson, but was assailed by the head of Ryan’s prosecution team and some of the jurors who convicted him. “George Ryan’s crimes were serious breaches of the public trust,” said former Assistant U.S. Atty. Patrick Collins, who led the Ryan investigation. Collins questioned why Ryan was being “humanized” by supporters of a commutation over other inmates, including elderly prisoners or single parents.

Denise Peterson of Hawthorn Woods, who served on the federal jury that convicted Ryan in 2006 on federal fraud, racketeering and related charges, said a commutation would send the wrong message to politicians looking to abuse the public trust. “I think that once again politicians are getting special treatment because of who they are, and that’s not how it should be,” Peterson said. “I had a front-row seat, and I understand that he’s guilty and he’s not sorry. He should stay in jail.”

Durbin said public officials should be held to a higher standard of public trust. But he said that while Ryan’s case may be of a high profile, it was little different from the thousands of people whom his office has tried to help because they feel “they have not been treated fairly by our government.”

“I will speak out for justice in each and every case,” Durbin said. “Because George Ryan happened to be an elected official does not mean that I would ignore the plea of his wife and family.”

Funny, I must have missed all the media reports of Senator Durbin publicly “speak[ing] out for justice in each and every case” in which a not-so-prominent federal defendant (like Victor Rita, for example) has “already paid a significant price” for crimes less serious than those committed by George Ryan.

UPDATE:  For more packground on pardon issues and debate, ABC News has this new piece.  Among other interesting parts of the ABC piece is this bit of empirics:

The president, who has a nearly unfettered constitutional power to pardon, has used it sparingly.  He has granted fewer than 200 of 10,000 petitions filed in the past eight years.  

Candidly, I would have guessed that the President would get more than 10,000 clemency petitions over two terms.  Also, given that the Supreme Court gets nearly 10,000 petitions for certiorari each year and grants less than 100, this bit of data allows me to now say that a modern clemency petition has twice the change of success as a modern cert petition.