Trump’s Dubious Use of Clemency Relies on Its Most Conventional Idiom

AUSTIN SARAT

Austin Sarat—Associate Provost, Associate Dean of the Faculty, and William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College—comments on President Trump’s commutation of the sentence of Roger Stone. Sarat observes the pattern of Trump using his exclusive power of clemency to help those who, like Stone, committed crimes that show disdain for the legal process, and he argues that Trump seems “incapable of grasping the meaning of mercy or of understanding its place in a decent society.”

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United States v. Moses

Docket: 19-6036

Opinion Date: July 20, 2020

Judge: Timothy M. Tymkovich

Areas of Law: Constitutional Law, Criminal Law

Jimmie Moses plead guilty to a federal firearm charge after the district court denied his motion to suppress evidence uncovered in a search conducted on his property in Norman, Oklahoma. The search was intended to uncover evidence of an illegal automobile “chop shop” operation, but law enforcement also found a firearm that Moses should not have possessed as a former felon. Moses reserved the right to challenge the suppression order and argues on appeal that the district court impermissibly denied him an evidentiary hearing under Franks v. Delaware, 438 U.S. 154 (1978), to challenge the search warrant. He specifically contended Norman police recklessly neglected to tell the state judge issuing the warrant that the police had materially exculpatory evidence in the form of video footage of his property. After review, the Tenth Circuit agreed with the district court that the video footage was not materially exculpatory and did not negate the strong probable cause established by the affidavit submitted to the state judge.