In criminal justice news there's been two big stories this week: Amanda Knox's bullshit conviction and Mike Huckabee's questionable pardon. And both seem to have been brought about by moral clarity rendered through religious conviction. Here's Joe Canonon on Huckabee's penchant for pardoning criminals while accepting the word of pastors over prosecutors:
Huckabee has proudly declared on many occasions that he
disdains the separation of church and state, insisting that his strict
Baptist piety should serve as the bedrock of public policy. Nowhere in
his record as governor was the influence of religious zeal felt more
heavily than in the distribution of pardons and commutations, as his
own explanations have indicated. During those years he granted more
commutations and pardons than any governor during the previous four
decades, many of them surely justified as a response to excessive
penalties under the state's draconian narcotics laws. But others were
deeply controversial, especially because so many of his acts of mercy
appeared to depend on interventions by fellow Baptist preachers and by
inmate professions of renewed Christian faith.
It should come as little surprise that word got out in Arkansas that securing a commuted sentence from the governor was made easier by declaring a new found devotion to God. And here's Timothy Egan on Knox:
Still, to many Italians, Amanda Knox is a spoiled, amoral American
college girl who has not shown sufficient remorse for the death of her
roommate. The narrative of the manipulative she-devil is widespread.
I'm generally a proponent of clemency and this isn't to overly demonize religion. But in both of these examples there was a tendency to mete out justice by channeling God's will. Knox was punished partly for being judged a loose, lascivious woman. Huckabee accepted the judgment of spiritual advisers over career justice professionals. In both instances, faith was more important fact.
