Legal News

?All He Did Was Lie?: Medgar Evers?s Brother to Seek DeLaughter Pardon

By Ashby Jones

The rules on presidential pardons go like this: there really aren’t any. While most of the pardons come at the end of a president’s last term, a president can pardon anyone for any crime at any time. He doesn’t have to provide a rationale, or ask the Supreme Court, or run it by Congress. It just takes the stroke of a pen.

But in considering a pardon, to what degree should a president be swayed by the applicant’s life history or past good works? It’s a question that may soon be presented to President Obama in regard to Mississippi judge Bobby DeLaughter, who on Monday began an 18-month prison term for lying to the FBI in a case related to the Dickie Scruggs bribery scandal. (Click here, here and here for previous posts on DeLaughter.)

The news: civil rights leader Charles Evers said he plans to ask Obama to pardon DeLaughter. Why the love? In the mid-1990s, DeLaughter prosecuted the murder of Evers’s brother, Medgar, and successfully won a conviction against Byron De La Beckwith. (The saga was later turned into a movie, The Ghosts of Mississippi, with Alec Baldwin playing DeLaughter.)

“All he (DeLaughter) did was lie,” said Evers, to the Jackson Clarion-Ledger’s Jerry Mitchell. “What man can tell me he hasn’t lied? You’re telling me he should spend 18 months in prison for that?”

Evers’ widow, Myrlie Evers-Williams, who successfully pushed for Beckwith’s prosecution, said Monday, “I’m very pleased Charles is doing this, and I support him.”

On July 30, DeLaughter stepped down as a Hinds County circuit judge and admitted he lied to FBI agents when he said he had two conversations with former Hinds County District Attorney Ed Peters about a pending lawsuit against Scruggs. Prosecutors said DeLaughter actually had dozens of conversations about the lawsuit with Peters, who was working for Scruggs.

Not everyone, however, is in favor of the pardon idea. Handing out a pardon to DeLaughter would be the wrong thing to do, said Charles Merkel, the lawyer for one of the men who had sued Scruggs over a legal-fee dispute. “If the judiciary can do what he did and escape punishment for it, it would send a disastrous message.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on January 05, 2010 (boomark / email).