Trump’s Dubious Use of Clemency Relies on Its Most Conventional Idiom

AUSTIN SARAT

Austin Sarat—Associate Provost, Associate Dean of the Faculty, and William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College—comments on President Trump’s commutation of the sentence of Roger Stone. Sarat observes the pattern of Trump using his exclusive power of clemency to help those who, like Stone, committed crimes that show disdain for the legal process, and he argues that Trump seems “incapable of grasping the meaning of mercy or of understanding its place in a decent society.”

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Fauconier v. Clarke

Docket: 18-6489

Opinion Date: July 20, 2020

Judge: Niemeyer

Areas of Law: Civil Rights, Constitutional Law

Plaintiff, an inmate in custody of the VDOC, filed suit pro se alleging that the Director of the VDOC and three other VDOC officials violated his rights under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Fourteenth Amendment when they did not allow him to resume his job after a short hospitalization. The Fourth Circuit held that the district court erred in dismissing plaintiff's ADA claims for damages against the defendants in their official capacities, and in dismissing plaintiff's ADA and equal protection claims for injunctive relief against the Director in his official capacity. The court held that plaintiff's ADA and 42 U.S.C. 1983 equal protection claims were timely filed; plaintiff plausibly alleged a violation of Title II and an equal protection claim; and defendants are not entitled to Eleventh Amendment immunity at this juncture. Therefore, the court vacated the district court's dismissal of these claims. The court otherwise affirmed the district court's judgment.