Can Trump literally kill someone in DC then pardon himself? You yanks need to get rid of this ridiculous pardon power.
The Supreme Court has never adjudicated the issue of a presidential self-pardon.
If the issue of a presidential self-pardon ever comes before the Supreme Court I predict a 9-0 ruling against self-pardon.
Due to human nature, a party that has a central self-interest in the outcome of their case is presumed incapable of scrupulously impartial judgment, one of the requisites of equitable adjudication.
A presidential power of self-pardon invites egregious, capricious law-breaking and autocratic subversion of justice.
"Nemo judex in causa sua/nemo judex in sua causa is a Latin phrase that means, literally, 'no-one is judge in his own cause.'It is a principle of natural justice that no person can judge a case in which they have an interest."
And what about a VP pardoning a President that just resigned? Is he considered impartial?
That is a possibility. The precedent is Ford pardoning Nixon in order to let the country move on. Given how much more egregious Trump has been than Nixon, I'm pretty sure that would not be taken as well.
I fully concur.
Trump is an unhinged, poisonous anticonstitutionalist inimical to America's institutions.
Trump is an evil, malicious degenerate, without question the worst president ever.
A pardonee can never escape opprobrium for their misdeed(s) because a pardon "carries an imputation of guilt; acceptance a confession of it."
This informed Ford's rationale of Nixon's pardon.
Long after he pardoned Nixon in his wallet Ford carried a section of the
Burdick opinion.
BURDICK v. UNITED STATES (1915)
This brings us to the differences between legislative immunity and a pardon. They are substantial. the latter carries an imputation of guilt; acceptance a confession of it. The former has no such imputation or confession. It is tantamount to the silence of the witness. It is noncommittal. It is the unobtrusive act of the law given protection against a sinister use of his testimony, not like a pardon, requiring him to confess his guilt in order to avoid a conviction of it.