Reply #18: Another historical perspective re: clemency [View All]

First, I ain't claiming to be any sort of expert.

But on the whole, across this same 2000 years SG speaks of, hasn't clemency/mercy also been practiced by courts and kings?

What I don't fully get is why we even have any sort of clemency provision at all if it is so rarely--never?--used. Not pardons, not stays of execution, not exoneration based upon new evidence but clemency (as I understand it): coummuting the captial sentence against a convicted murderer. (I don't recall clemency ever being granted in any of the high profile DP cases since the DP's reinstatement. Does it happen in lower-profile DP cases--i.e. well before executtion an national media exposure--and I'm just not aware?)

Again the issue does not have to do w/ evidence of innoncence. That's a whole different route, including stays of execution, etc. Right?

Is remorse the only avenue to clemency? Is it ever even granted at all in capital cases in the U.S.?

I guess the upshot is is that if the DP will always be about the original monsterous act, that clemency really has no place in a modern democracy's legal systems and is an outdated concept that DP suporters should be against not only as a practice but as an executive branch provision.

Are there indeed those that argue this? Reasons?