CBS 2 School: Doors Closed?
"People are strange when you are a stranger," sang Jim Morrison. Governor Charlie Crist may soon make Jim Morrison no stranger. Soon to be leaving governor of Florida, Charlie Crist, seems to be taking the idiom "don't let the door hit you on the way out" literally. He is contemplating offering Doors fans a gift only he can give. Governor Charlie Crist has been asked to pardon Doors' lead singer Jim Morrison. It is a pardon many think he is likely to grant.
March 1, 1969, at the Dinner Key Auditorium in Miami, Florida Jim Morrison and the Doors performed an unforgettable show. During that show Jim Morrison, according to court documents, illegally exposed himself to the audience among other prohibited obscenities. He was later arrested and convicted. His punishment was to be six months in jail and a $500 fine.
Jim Morrison died before serving any time. Ever since Doors fans have been asking Florida governors to pardon their favorite troubadour. They argue the blight on his record is unbecoming of an international sensation.
Equally sensational, one could argue, is the power to pardon in the first place. Why did our founders include such a power in our constitution and most subsequent state constitutions?
The provision in our United States Constitution reads as follows, "The President ... shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment," (Article II, Section 2).
Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 74 explained:
"It may be inferred that a single man would be most ready to attend to the force of those motives, which might plead for a mitigation of the rigor of the law, and least apt to yield to considerations, which were calculated to shelter a fit object of its vengeance…But the principal arguments for reposing the power of pardoning in this case in the Chief Magistrate is this--In seasons of insurrection or rebellion, there are often critical moments, when a well timed offer of pardon to the insurgents or rebels may restore the tranquility of the commonwealth; and which, if suffered to pass unimproved, it may never be possible afterwards to recall. The dilatory process of convening the Legislature, or one of its branches, for the purpose of obtaining its sanction to the measure, would frequently be the occasion of letting slip the golden opportunity.
Constitutional theorist Joseph Story wrote, "The power to pardon, then, being a fit one to be entrusted to all governments, humanity and sound policy dictate, that this benign prerogative should be, as little as possible, fettered, or embarrassed. The criminal code of every country partakes so much of necessary severity, that, without an easy access to exceptions in favour of unfortunate guilt, justice would assume an aspect too sanguinary and cruel," (See Story, Joseph. Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States. 1833).
The Doors were named after the following William Blake line, "When the doors of perception are cleansed, things will appear to man as they truly are...infinite." So it must look to Charlie Crist despite being soundly shown the door by Floridian voters. His executive pardon appears to grant him infinite powers.
Pardon all of us if we do not notice the danger of unchecked power.
