Word: pardoner
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Presidents in the past have made frequent use of the pardoning power -though never before on behalf of a former President. But while most uses of Executive clemency have resolved criminal cases for good, Ford's pardon of Nixon creates new legal tangles in the already snarled Watergate affair...
...legal proceedings, the leading member of a criminal group is most actively prosecuted and gets the stiffest sentence if convicted. Now that the highest-ranking person in the Watergate affair would go free, it seemed doubtful to many lawyers that any jury would send his subordinates to jail. The pardon also raised a question about the fate of the nine who have already been sent to prison; John Dean began his one-to-four-year term only last week...
...Violation. Other lawyers, however, questioned that pardoning Nixon would affect others still facing trial. Said Stanford Law Professor John Kaplan: "The fact that one person has been pardoned does not constitute a violation of the equal-protection clause of the Constitution." In addition, the Nixon pardon has provided both the Watergate prosecutors as well as the defense lawyers with a whole new element: the assured testimony of the ex-President. In granting Nixon a pardon, Ford made it difficult for the former President to refuse to testify in future Watergate trials by claiming his Fifth Amendment rights against selfincrimination...
...case, and he may well furnish information about the Watergate cover-up that could clinch the arguments of the prosecution. At the same time, however, at least one of the Watergate defendants has already indicated that he wants Nixon to testify as a defense witness. Before Ford's pardon, Ehrlichman subpoenaed Nixon to testify, hoping apparently that Nixon would support his claim that he was led into thinking that national-security considerations justified the coverup...
...noted economists together for the first of eleven minisummits (see ECONOMY & BUSINESS). Later, at the Continental Congress ceremony in Philadelphia, the President predicted that the nation would defeat "the tyranny of double-digit inflation" before the Bicentennial climax in July 1976. As if to set the stage for his pardon of Richard Nixon, Ford also announced that on the ticklish issue of amnesty for Viet Nam War deserters and draft evaders, he plans to create a clemency review board to set policy on a case-by-case basis...