Monday, November 14, 2005
(10:28 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Capital crimes
What is the likelihood that a prosecutor with a sufficient free hand and sufficiently unfettered access could convict a current high-ranking executive branch official of a capital crime?If a high-ranking official were to be impeached, could he or she be tried for the same charges in criminal court, or is dismissal from office the highest punishment available once you reach a certain level?
Were the president to be impeached and then convicted of a capital crime, what would be the odds of the sentence being carried out before the next president (arguably the party would be irrelevant) pardoned them, thinking, "There but for the grace of God..."?
My theory would be that the head of state could only be convicted of petty crimes, of sullying the office through decadence -- but real crimes, never. I count Watergate here -- Nixon and Kissinger were guilty of indiscriminate mass murder, and Nixon was forced out of office because of a ... robbery. Similarly with Clinton: the bombing of the pharmaceutical factory in Sudan, the random punitive bombings against Iraq -- and what nearly gets him kicked out of office is lying about a blow job. Even now, we're hoping for the Bush administration to be "taken down" over an offense that's relatively petty on the scale of all they've done.
