The decision on the pardon is in, and the judge is accepting it, according to the AP via Talking Points Memo:
President Donald Trump’s pardon of former Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s conviction for disobeying a court order in an immigration case will stand after a judge on Wednesday rejected arguments that it would encourage government officials to flout similar judicial commands in the future.
U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton cited U.S. Supreme Court precedent in formally dismissing the criminal case against the former six-term sheriff of metro Phoenix known for his harsh treatment of inmates and immigration enforcement crackdowns.
She held off on ruling on Arpaio’s request to throw out all orders in the case, including a blistering 14-page ruling in which the judge explained her original reasoning in finding that Arpaio was guilty of a crime.
“I have concluded the pardon is valid,” Bolton said.
I wonder if this decision can be appealed. It would certainly a first. On the Take Care blog, Bernadette Meyler wrote prior to the judge’s ruling:
Memory in these contexts is important. To take but one example: even though President Obama commuted Chelsea Manning’s sentence last year, uproar over the activities leading to her conviction by court martial recently led Harvard University to withdraw its fellowship offer to her. Should we let Arpaio get off more lightly and allow his violations of many people’s constitutional rights to be removed from the historical record?
Judge Bolton would be making a serious error if she were to vacate Arpaio’s criminal contempt conviction. But even if she does, let’s not let President Trump make us forget what Arpaio did.
Arpaio did wrong, and the fact that Trump would have us believe otherwise does not make it incumbent on us to agree with him. Arpaio is guilty of ignoring a court order, and even if he doesn’t have to pay for that error in judgment directly, the people should rightly distrust him with any further public responsibilities.
