U.S. Pardon for Marcus Garvey?

After his federal conviction in 1923 of a single count of mail fraud, Marcus Garvey submitted his first application for Executive Clemency in 1925. The following year, he submitted an affidavit subscribed by nine members of the petit jury which subsequently supported his application. In 1927, President Calvin Coolidge commuted his sentence. He was immediately deported to Jamaica.
On January 10, 2007, Congressman Charles Rangel submitted House Concurrent Resolution 24 asking, by inference, for President George Bush or any successor to posthumously pardon Garvey. This can happen in 2008.
The resolution was referred to the House Judiciary Committee. It also asks the president to affirm Garvey’s innocence. Garvey suffered an unjust prosecution and evidence falling short of proof beyond a reasonable doubt undergrided his conviction.
Article 1, section 2 of the U.S. Constitution empowers the president to pardon all “offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” The only objection to the proposed clause was its extension to treason. President George Washington immediately pardoned two persons convicted of treason arising out of the 1794 Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania.
The most controversial challenge to Article 1, sec. 2 arose in Ex parte Garland. Alexander Hamilton Garland, a Confederate sympathizer, was unable to swear that he had not been a Confederate sympathizer although President Andrew Johnson had pardoned him for all acts committed during the Civil War. He was seeking reinstatement to the bar.
The Supreme Court ruled that a pardon retroactively expunges a criminal defendant of all crimes. This means that a person receiving a pardon is innocent in the eyes of the law. Garland subsequently became U.S. Attorney General even though he had given aid and comfort to the Confederacy.
While the pardon clause in the U.S. Constitution is clear, racism seems to be the unwritten exception to the unambiguous rule. Bill Borders, an attorney, was convicted in federal court of conspiring with former U.S. D.C. Judge Alcee Hastings to solicit bribes from criminal defendants in exchange for lenient treatment. Borders was sentenced to five years in prison. Hastings was acquitted.


Afterwards, Borders was immediately disbarred from the practice of law in 1983 by the D.C. Court of Appeals. He was not only a felon but the appellate court ruled “that at least two of the crimes of which the respondent has been convicted involved moral turpitude, and that these convictions have been affirmed on appeal.”
On January 10, 2001, his last day in office, President Bill Clinton pardoned Borders. In a notice of motion to vacate the court’s original order of disbarment, he asserted that he was free of any punishment from the conviction.
Borders argued that the pardon nullified the order of disbarment and that he should not suffer any disabilities for the conviction. The courts vigorously disagreed with Borders in his case even though it agreed with Borders otherwise.
Despite its ruling in Borders, the D.C. Court of Appeals took a different position in In re Abrams. Eliot Abrams, a federal operative under President Ronald Reagan, pled guilty to two counts of wilful failure to answer pertinent questions in a Congressional inquiry.
President Reagan immediately pardoned Abrams and he was allowed to continue to practice law and to enjoy another position in the Bush Administration. A pardoned person is free of all disabilities. Despite the pardon, Borders is still subject to Dred Scott. Clinton obviously had questionable authority to pardon a Black man.
While the granting of a pardon is an exercise of discretion, no lawful barrier existed to bar a pardon in favor of Garland. Garvey is an international figure and many African states continue to honor Mr. Garvey. African and Caribbean nations should also put pressure on Bush 43 to pardon him.
In addition to posthumously extending justice to Garvey, a pardon would further expand diplomatic relationships between African states and states in the Caribbean with the United States which has both eyes on oil and natural resources in Africa and the Caribbean.
Pan-Africanism should connect Black peoples throughout the world. The colors of Pan-Africanism have arisen by merging the colors of Ethiopia with the red, black and green colors of Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association. Ghana was the first African nation to embrace Pan-Africanism. Many other nations have followed suit.