Post by Lauren Benatti on Feb 18, 2016 17:58:16 GMT
After thinking critically about the situation, what is your point of view? Should the governor grant her clemency? Why or why not? What questions did you ask yourself to arrive at your answer?
Based on the information available, I do not believe that the governor should grant Doris clemency. The first question I asked myself when making this decision was "what is clemency?" While I assume it is an official pardon, I do not know what that term actually, legally, means and how it is applied to individual cases. In order to gather this information, I researched clemency, its legal definition, and how it is applied specifically in Doris' state of Michigan. I learned that clemency does not simply reduce one's sentence to time served; it is actually much bigger than that. According to the Department of Corrections in the state of Michigan, clemency, "releases the punishment and blots out of existence the guilt, so that in the eye of the law the offender is as innocent as if he had never committed the offense." In effect, granting clemency means that the person is innocent. The second question I asked myself was "can the legal definition of clemency be applied in this case? Basically, is Doris innocent?" I determined that this cannot apply in this case because Doris is not innocent. Doris sold illegal drugs to an undercover police officer, a point that is not contested anywhere in the reading. In addition, Doris does not advocate that she is innocent, instead she states that she "regretted getting herself into this situation." I think it could be easy (I definitely caught myself doing this) to think that because Doris received what can be considered an unreasonably long sentence, and because she stayed out of legal trouble since her escape, to want to use clemency as a way to fix the original wrongs of her sentence. However, that is not the purpose of clemency, or how it should legally be applied.
Based on the information available, I do not believe that the governor should grant Doris clemency. The first question I asked myself when making this decision was "what is clemency?" While I assume it is an official pardon, I do not know what that term actually, legally, means and how it is applied to individual cases. In order to gather this information, I researched clemency, its legal definition, and how it is applied specifically in Doris' state of Michigan. I learned that clemency does not simply reduce one's sentence to time served; it is actually much bigger than that. According to the Department of Corrections in the state of Michigan, clemency, "releases the punishment and blots out of existence the guilt, so that in the eye of the law the offender is as innocent as if he had never committed the offense." In effect, granting clemency means that the person is innocent. The second question I asked myself was "can the legal definition of clemency be applied in this case? Basically, is Doris innocent?" I determined that this cannot apply in this case because Doris is not innocent. Doris sold illegal drugs to an undercover police officer, a point that is not contested anywhere in the reading. In addition, Doris does not advocate that she is innocent, instead she states that she "regretted getting herself into this situation." I think it could be easy (I definitely caught myself doing this) to think that because Doris received what can be considered an unreasonably long sentence, and because she stayed out of legal trouble since her escape, to want to use clemency as a way to fix the original wrongs of her sentence. However, that is not the purpose of clemency, or how it should legally be applied.