Burdick v. United States

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Burdick v. United States

Argued December 16, 1914
Decided January 25, 1915

Full case name:	George Burdick v. United States

Citations:	236 U.S. 79; 35 S. Ct. 267; 59 L. Ed. 476; 1915 U.S. LEXIS 1799

Holding

Court membership

Chief Justice: Edward Douglass White
Associate Justices: Joseph McKenna, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., William R. Day, Charles Evans Hughes, Willis Van Devanter, Joseph Rucker Lamar, Mahlon Pitney, James Clark McReynolds

Case opinions

Majority by: McKenna
Joined by: White, Holmes, Day, Hughes, Van Devanter, Lamar, Pitney
McReynolds took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.

Burdick v. United States, 236 U.S. 79 (1915)^[1], was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that:

A pardoned man must introduce the pardon into court proceedings, otherwise the pardon must be disregarded by the court.
To do this, the pardoned man must accept the pardon. If a pardon is rejected, it cannot be forced upon its subject.
A pardon carries an 'imputation of guilt', and accepting a pardon is 'an admission of guilt'.

A pardon is an act of grace, proceeding from the power intrusted with the execution of the laws, which exempts the individual on whom it is bestowed from the punishment the law inflicts for a crime he has committed. It is the private though official act of the executive magistrate, delivered to the individual for whose benefit it is intended. A private deed, not communicated to him, whatever may be its character, whether a pardon or release, is totally unknown and cannot be acted on.

United States v. Wilson established that it is possible to reject a (conditional) pardon, even for a capital sentence. Burdick affirmed that the same principle extends to unconditional pardons.

[edit] Current Status

The status of the Burdick decision is in question as a result of the decision of President Clinton to grant a full and unconditional pardon to Henry Ossian Flipper. Flipper, the first African-American graduate of the United States Military Academy, did not accept the pardon, as he had been dead for over 50 years.^[2] In addition, the pardon was considered to be an act that cleared his good name.^[3] It did not constitute an admission of guilt. Flipper's clemency application also noted the Supreme Court made it clear, in 1974, that the "requirement of consent was a legal fiction at best"^[4].