Why Do Only White Turkeys Get Pardons?

by Matt Kelley · 2008-11-26 12:58:00 UTC
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Some more pardon news: George W. Bush issued his final (!) ceremonial Thanksgiving turkey pardon today, and an observant blogger noticed that only white turkeys seem to have received pardons from recent Presidents. Harry Truman, it appears, was the last President to pardon a turkey of color. Just more proof of the system's bias.

And an editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle today calls on Bush to pardon more than turkey.

Bush has shown that he can be compassionate when it comes to political operatives, such as convicted perjurer Lewis "Scooter" Libby, a former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney. These final weeks give Bush the opportunity to help inmates, many of them African American and politically unconnected, whose most serious offense was working in the drug trade - for which they should go to prison - so much as not knowing how to game the federal system. Of special note is the example of Clarence Aaron, who is serving a sentence of life without parole for a first-time nonviolent drug offense in 1992.

Matt Kelley is the Online Communications Manager at the Innocence Project and a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Follow him on Twitter @mattjkelley.
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