Pardons

In the 16 years since his release from prison, disgraced junk-bond king Michael Milken has beaten prostate cancer, raised hundreds of millions of dollars for medical research and reshaped an image tarnished by a 1990 conviction for securities fraud. One thing he's been unable to do is win a presidential pardon, despite the support of some of the country's most influential people. Before he left office Jan.

The Chilean government defended its decision Tuesday to back a church-brokered agreement that ended a months-long hunger strike by a jailed Indian-rights activist. A top official in the office of President Michelle Bachelet said Patricia Troncoso was not granted a pardon and would serve out her 10-year sentence -- albeit in a work camp and not in a prison, and with weekend leaves.

At a time when China is touting its Olympic mascots, stadiums and hospitality, a San Francisco-based human rights group has suggested that it add one more feature for the Games: the first "Olympic pardon" of political prisoners. The Dui Hua Foundation made its appeal public Thursday, offering an approach it believes could help Beijing improve a reputation battered in recent months by its Tibet crackdown, Darfur policies and the protests dogging the global relay of the Olympic torch.

Breaking a logjam of hundreds of clemency requests, President Bush on Monday granted pardons to 14 people and shortened the prison terms of two others. The majority of the felons who won leniency were far from household names. Andrew F. Harley of Falls Church, Va., was pardoned for wrongful use and distribution of marijuana and cocaine after a court-martial by the Air Force Academy in 1985 caused him to forfeit his pay and prompted his dismissal from the service. Leslie O.

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-El Cajon) introduced a bill Thursday to pardon two former Border Patrol agents convicted of shooting an unarmed drug smuggler who fled across the Rio Grande after they stopped his van with 743 pounds of marijuana. Former Texas-based agents Ignacio "Nacho" Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean were sentenced to 11 and 12 years, respectively, after being found guilty of assault with a dangerous weapon, defacing a crime scene and violating the smuggler's rights.

The verdict in the I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby trial was more than a judgment against one of the Bush administration's most senior aides: It was also seen as an indictment of the White House political operation he helped design and direct. And it undermined the administration's credibility at a time when the president is trying to build support for his Iraq war policy in the face of increasingly outspoken opposition from Democrats and deepening skepticism among voters.

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist is being asked to pardon the late Jim Morrison, lead singer of the Doors, 38 years after Morrison was convicted of exposing himself during a Miami concert. Dave Diamond, a cable TV producer from Dayton, Ohio, wrote to Crist asking for the pardon. Diamond said the goal is to remember the Melbourne, Fla., native as an artist, not a rock 'n' roll bad boy with a rap sheet. Morrison was charged days after a concert at Dinner Key Auditorium in Coconut Grove in 1969.

The fate of convicted former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby has thrown a twist into the race for the Republican presidential nomination, forcing candidates to make an awkward choice between loyalty to a party stalwart and the GOP's long-held reverence for the rule of law.

The White House exchanged volleys Thursday with President Clinton and his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), over the question of executive clemency, with each side accusing the other of unpardonable acts. Twice on Thursday the White House challenged criticism that the Clintons had directed at President Bush's commutation Monday of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's prison sentence.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said he would not offer mass pardons to prisoners on Bastille Day, keeping up his law-and-order reputation. Sarkozy said in a newspaper interview that he had been presented with a decree proposing the release of 3,000 prisoners on the July 14 holiday. But he said there would be no mass pardon. Previous leaders had used the pardons to relieve chronic prison overcrowding.