412
Opinion of the Court
of law, and is the historic remedy for preventing miscarriages of justice where judicial process has been exhausted.13
In England, the clemency power was vested in the Crown and can be traced back to the 700's. W. Humbert, The Pardoning Power of the President 9 (1941). Blackstone thought this "one of the great advantages of monarchy in general, above any other form of government; that there is a magistrate, who has it in his power to extend mercy, wherever he thinks it is deserved: holding a court of equity in his own breast, to soften the rigour of the general law, in such criminal cases as merit an exemption from punishment." 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *397. Clemency provided the principal avenue of relief for individuals convicted of criminal offenses—most of which were capital—because there was no right of appeal until 1907. 1 L. Radzinowicz, A History of English Criminal Law 122 (1948). It was the only means by which one could challenge his conviction on the ground of innocence. United States Dept. of Justice, 3 Attorney General's Survey of Release Procedures 73 (1939).
Our Constitution adopts the British model and gives to the President the "Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States." Art. II, § 2, cl. 1. In
13 The dissent relies on the plurality opinion in Ford v. Wainwright, 477 U. S. 399 (1986), to support the proposition that "[t]he vindication of rights guaranteed by the Constitution has never been made to turn on the unre-viewable discretion of an executive official or administrative tribunal." Post, at 440. But that case is inapposite insofar as it pertains to our discussion of clemency here. The Ford plurality held that Florida's procedures for entertaining post-trial claims of insanity, which vested the sanity determination entirely within the executive branch, were "inadequate to preclude federal redetermination of the constitutional issue [of Ford's sanity]." 477 U. S., at 416. Unlike Ford's claim of insanity, which had never been presented in a judicial proceeding, petitioner's claim of "actual innocence" comes 10 years after he was adjudged guilty beyond a reasonable doubt after a full and fair trial. As the following discussion indicates, it is clear that clemency has provided the historic mechanism for obtaining relief in such circumstances.
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