If you accept a "pardon", is it an admission of guilt ??

[kentuck]

Thinking of all those people that Trump pardoned last night or early this morning, that is a lot of guilty people.

The attempt to steal the election of 2020 was a huge criminal enterprise, judging from the number of people willing to accept a pardon.

But that should come as no surprise to anyone.

[elleng]

1. question posed by character in The West Wing!

[QueerDuck]

2. I think that technically, the answer is yes... but for this crew, they just see it as a technicality and as...

a way to avoid consequences. They (and MAGA) incorrectly interpret a pardon as some sort of "proof" that the legal system is corrupt, or that it was a conspiracy that could only be rectified and set-right with a bogus pardon.

[dweller]

3. Pardoned on the federal level

And they were all charged at state level …





✌🏻

[sarisataka]

4. Only in the court of public opinion

Legally, no more so than taking the Fifth is an admission of guilt

[DFW]

5. By itself? I should think not.

Being from the South, and having heard stories of unjustly "convicted" of people, mostly minority men, languishing in jails for years or even decades for crimes they didn't commit, if a more enlightened judge/governor/president should be presented with such a case, and it seems obvious that to wait for the wheels of "justice" to slowly grind to the same conclusion of innocence would be cruel and unusual, I'd say that in such a case, a pardon should be granted immediately, and accepted just as quickly. Let the paperwork and the evidence turned up by the local Innocence Project continue, but any legal procedure that frees a wrongly convicted innocent is correct, and it implies by no means an admission of guilt.

[malaise]

6. Attempted coup

Un(fucking)believable.
Amazing that he didn’t pardon himself.

[Wiz Imp]

7. From a technical legal standpoint? NO

From an implied social & moral standpoint? Absolutely Yes.

[Locutusofborg]

8. Arguably the most famous pardon in US history

President Ford's pardon of President Nixon was issued before Nixon had been indicted or charged with any crime so his pardon could not have been an admission of guilt., A Grand Jury did name Nixon as an "unindicted co-conspirator" though.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

9. Acceptance of a pardon is an admission of guilt

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