Bill Clinton pardoned Marc Rich, a billionaire financier on the run in Switzerland from tax evasion charges.

Bill Clinton pardoned Marc Rich, a billionaire financier on the run in Switzerland from tax evasion charges. Critics said Rich had bought the pardon because of millions given by his ex-wife to the Clinton library.

Black asks Bush for pardon

Request puts spotlight on President's absolute power

By David Usborne in New York
Saturday, 22 November 2008

The Independent, London, UK
Conrad Black leaves court after being sentenced last year

AP

Conrad Black leaves court after being sentenced last year

* Photos enlarge

Conrad Black, the disgraced peer and former press baron who was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison last year for pocketing illicit millions, has asked George Bush to use his presidential powers to release him.

Black's long-shot application for clemency will refocus attention on the absolute power of US presidents to extend mercy to anyone they believe deserving of shorter prison sentences or of having their criminal records expunged with a presidential pardon. More than 5,000 cases are before Mr Bush, who must decide on all of them before leaving office on 20 January.

The Office of the Pardon Attorney, a unit within the US Justice Department that vets all such cases , confirmed that Black's lawyers had submitted a request for leniency, which, if granted, would spell a shortening of his sentence. The request was being considered. Black has not asked for a full pardon. A grant of leniency would be a remarkable and unexpected coda to the story of the downfall of Black, who once flew on corporate jets and entertained the world's leading intellectuals and literati in grand homes in Toronto, London and West Palm Beach. His special comforts today extend only to spells in the exercise yard and the library of the Coleman Federal Correction Complex in Florida after a Chicago court found him guilty of fraud in July last year.

Born in Canada, Black was for eight years the chairman and chief executive of Hollinger International Inc, a sprawling media group that owned titles such as The Daily Telegraph and The Jerusalem Post. He resigned in 2003 after an internal inquiry was launched into claims that he and fellow top executives had been pilfering millions from the group as it sold off key assets.

Still insisting on his innocence, Black – nicknamed 'Lordy' by fellow inmates – and three other former executives were convicted of a $6.1m fraud and sentenced to prison. Leaving his wife, the columnist and former social hostess Barbara Amiel behind, he reported to prison in March, where his early duties included dish-washing.

Though Black, 64, is using part of his time behind bars to write, with articles appearing in forums such as the Daily Beast website, liberty would clearly be preferable. However experts said that his bid for leniency bordered on cheeky and was unlikely to succeed.

"Black is just not worth it to Bush," said Peter Henning, a law professor at Wayne State University in Detroit.

Professor PS Ruckman, of Rock Valley College in Illinois, said: "That sure says he has a lot of gall. If he were to get a commutation of sentence this early in his sentence, that would be pretty extraordinary."

Still, presidents have absolute leeway to show mercy. The final days of Bill Clinton's presidency were marked by a torrent of pardons, most controversially one for the financier Marc Rich. It spurred allegations that Rich had essentially bought his pardon because of large political donations from his ex-wife, Denise.

On the other hand, Mr Bush has issued fewer pardons and orders of leniency than any president in the past 100 years, except for his father, George Bush Snr. He has granted 157 pardons, mostly for small-time crooks serving long sentences for relatively minor offences, and denied 8,000.

Other convicted figures known to be relying on Mr Bush for relief before he hands power to Barack Obama are thought to include Edwin Edwards, a former governor of Louisiana sentenced to 10 years for extortion, and the former junk bond king Michael Milken.

Mr Bush did use his powers of pardon to spare Scooter Libby any time behind bars. The former chief of staff to Vice-President Dick Cheney was found guilty of perjury in the Valerie Plame case, which involved the illegal unveiling of the ex-CIA agent's identity.

Clemency deals: The freed

The United States constitution extends to presidents the right to grant pardons and clemency to whomever they choose without limit, except when they are themselves the subject of impeachment by Congress. The power was emphatically reconfirmed in a US Supreme Court ruling in the case Ex Parte Garland (1865) after President Andrew Johnson pardoned Augustus Garland for serving the Confederacy in the Civil War.

*Upon taking office President Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon, sparing his predecessor all risk of being tried in connection to the Watergate affair and, Ford calculated, sparing the country the attendant drama.

*George Bush Snr pardoned the former defence secretary Caspar Weinberger and other officials for any role they had played in the Iran-Contra scandal.

*Bill Clinton pardoned Marc Rich, a billionaire financier on the run in Switzerland from tax evasion charges. Critics said Rich had bought the pardon because of millions given by his ex-wife to the Clinton library.