Huckabee’s Pardon Issue
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. (Matt 5:7)
If there is anything which can sink Huckabee’s chances as fast as they have risen, it is the issue of his pardons as governor of Arkansas. On its face, it looks pretty bad - a series of pardons based on rather weak reasoning, and the one very infamous one where the pardoned rapist went on to murder. The full facts have yet to come out, and perhaps the full airing of the issue will clear it up - more likely, however, is that this will be sound-bited to death and the real facts will never reach the broader American audience.
Governor Huckabee is a Christian - and thus the impulse to pardon is strong in him. But mercy comes in varied forms, and it is not, perhaps, actually merciful to pardon a murderer, or a rapist. It is my view that once a person has deliberately taken the life of an innocent person, or has raped another person, that person has forfeited forever his right to be part of our society. We can be merciful to such men by not executing them; by giving them a light prison regime once they’ve shown long term good behaviour - but to let them loose actually puts them at risk of doing it again, and doing worse. Governor Huckabee saw it differently, though it may be that he didn’t think the matter through all the way.
A pardon, in my view, is for someone who had mitigating circumstances which warrant a reduction in sentence - there can be no mitigating circumstances in deliberately murdering an innocent person, or raping another person. Such acts are always and everywhere entirely un-necessary, and should then be outside of the realm of pardons. This, of course, is just my view - but it does instruct me about how to view Governor Huckabee’s actions.
42 comments December 12th, 2007
