Clinton Grants Pardons to 59 People

DECEMBER 23, 00:40 EST

By DEB RIECHMANN
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - A once-powerful House member and an Arkansas business executive ensnared in the corruption probe of a former Cabinet member are among 62 people granted Christmastime clemency by President Clinton.

Former Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, D-Ill., one-time chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, was the most prominent of 59 men and women pardoned Friday by Clinton on their conviction of federal crimes, most involving drugs, taxes or fraud.

Also among those pardoned were Archie Schaffer III, a chicken company executive convicted as a result of the investigation of former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy; and Rick Hendrick III, a NASCAR team owner, banished from the sport for a year after being sentenced for bribery and mail fraud.

In addition, the president commuted the sentences of three prisoners to time served: former Missouri House Speaker Bob F. Griffin, who was serving time for bribery and mail fraud; and two women who received long terms under federal drug sentencing guidelines.

``I'm greatly appreciative,'' Rostenkowski, 72, told reporters outside his Chicago home Friday.

Asked what he's going to do now, he replied: ``I'm going on with my life and continue to teach and continue to write op-ed pieces for the press, to advise and counsel people that need counseling with respect to government.''

Rostenkowski pleaded guilty to two counts of misusing public funds in 1996 and served time in a minimum-security prison in Wisconsin. He was released from a halfway house in October 1997 after 451 days in federal custody.

He was not even eligible to request a pardon through the Justice Department, which requires that a person wait at least five years after completing a sentence before filing a pardon application. However, Justice Department spokeswoman Chris Watney said the Constitution gives the president broad authority to grant pardons.

Schaffer, an executive of Tyson Foods Inc., in Springdale, Ark., was convicted in June 1998 of illegally trying to influence Espy, then the agriculture secretary, by inviting him to a May 1993 Tyson party in Russellville, Ark. He was convicted of violating a 93-year-old law that prohibits bribing meat inspectors.

Schaffer, called out of a meeting at Tyson Foods to learn of Clinton's action, said getting a pardon was a fitting political solution because he remains ``convinced that politics was at the bottom of this ordeal from the outset.''

Schaffer, who has known Clinton for nearly 30 years, was sentenced in September to a year plus one day in prison for trying to illegally influence Espy. But the U.S. Appeals Court of the District of Columbia ruled Dec. 14 that Schaffer could remain free pending appeals.

Espy, the target of Independent Counsel Donald Smaltz's six-year, $23 million investigation, was acquitted in December 1998.

The three prisoners freed included two women entangled in the drug crimes of others, and who ended up a cause of women's groups and opponents of mandatory minimum prison sentences.

One is Kemba Smith, 28, of Richmond, Va., who was sentenced to 24 years and six months in prison with no chance of parole for helping her boyfriend Peter Hall, head of a violent drug ring.

The other is Dorothy Gaines, 42, of Mobile, Ala., who similarly received 19 years, seven months for her low-level role in a local drug ring. The men who ran the ring received more lenient sentences.

``President Clinton has shown mercy and integrity by releasing these individuals, who clearly aren't the drug kingpins Congress intended to target,'' said Laura Sager, director of the group Families Against Mandatory Minimums. She urged Congress ``to go even further and initiate a review and reform of mandatory minimum sentencing laws when the new session begins.''

Before Friday, Clinton had granted 196 pardons and 22 commutations.

Clemency is an umbrella term meaning a merciful or lenient act by a judge, governor or president. A commutation reduces a criminal penalty, such as shortening a prison term. A pardon releases a person from the punishment of a crime.

States have different criteria for restoring the individual rights of those granted presidential pardons, the Justice Department said.

http://www.azstarnet.com/star/today/001223NCLINTON-PARDON-NYT.html

44 degrees F

Tucson, Arizona Saturday, 23 December 2000
President pardons Dan Rostenkowski and Arkansas friend
By Neil A. Lewis
THE NEW YORK TIMES

WASHINGTON - President Clinton yesterday pardoned 59 people including Dan Rostenkowski, the once-powerful chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, a man whose conviction exemplified the passing of an old-fashioned style of leadership in Congress.

Rostenkowski, who was reared by the Chicago Democratic political machine, brought to Congress a mastery of the game of legislation with its premium on brokering, bluffing and figuring out the compromise that gives the little required but gets a bit more in return. He served 15 months in prison and two months in a halfway house after pleading guilty to two counts of mail fraud in 1996. He also paid a $100,000 fine.

Also pardoned was Archibald R. Schaffer III, a longtime friend of the president and Hillary Rodham Clinton from Arkansas. Schaffer, an executive with Tyson Foods, was sentenced in September to a year in prison for his role in a scheme to illegally influence Mike Espy, the former agriculture secretary.

Schaffer, who directed government and media relations for Tyson, the large poultry and food-processing company, was convicted of giving Espy $2,500 worth of air transportation so he could attend a May 1993 party in Arkansas hosted by Tyson executives. Prosecutors argued that the gift was aimed at influencing Espy to relax regulations aimed at promoting safe meat handling.

The trial judge, James Robertson, said that Schaffer's role in the Espy visit was so minor he did not want to impose a prison sentence but was obliged to by the Meat Inspection Act, a statute that set a one-year minimum sentence for its violation.

What was unusual in Schaffer's pardon was that he had not yet served any of his sentence. Margaret C. Love, a former pardon attorney in the Justice Department and an authority on the pardon power, said it would have been customary in such a circumstance to provide a commutation of sentence.

In those rare instances in which a pardon is given for a sentence not yet served, she said, it usually signifies that the president disagrees with the conviction. As an example, she cited the Christmas season pardons by ex-President George Bush in 1992 of six people convicted in the Iran-Contra affair.

Although Rostenkowski pleaded guilty, he always dismissed his offenses as merely giving away ashtrays and chairs and hiring the children of his friends.

While he was held in disdain by some younger, reform-minded members of Congress, many admired him for his ability to get things accomplished.

He spent most of his 36 years in the House as either a member or the chairman of its most powerful committee while it engaged in legislative feats such as the creation of Medicare and the 1986 overhaul of the tax code.

Included in the president's pardon list were some other notable choices, including commutations of sentences for two women jailed on drug charges who received longer sentences for their involvement than the people who ran the operations. The two women, Kemba Smith, 28, of Richmond, Va., and Dorothy Gaines, 42, of Mobile, Ala., have been the object of campaigns by opponents of mandatory minimum sentences imposed by Congress.

Smith was sentenced to 24 years and six months in prison with no chance of parole for helping her boyfriend, the head of a violent drug ring, and Gaines received 19 years, seven months, for her low-level role in a different drug ring. They may now be freed within days.

White House officials said that yesterday's list was probably not the last word on presidential pardons as Clinton exits the White House.

Although Schaffer was an Arkansas associate of the Clintons, he was convicted in an investigation peripheral to Whitewater, the six-year-long investigation of the Clintons involving transactions in Arkansas.

Among those still being considered for pardons are several people associated with Whitewater including Webster Hubbell and Susan McDougal, friends of the Clintons.