It was the Republicans' best joke of the 1983 Louisiana gubernatorial campaign. A man was attending a fund-raiser for the Democratic candidate, the former and future governor, Edwin Edwards. Busy in conversation, he took a step backward and bumped hard into someone. Turning around to apologize, he was startled to discover that the person he had bumped was candidate Edwards himself. "Pardon me, Governor," he said, and Edwards nodded and smiled. The man turned back to his conversation, satisfied that he had made amends. A minute later, he felt someone tap him on his right shoulder. He turned around, and it was Edwards, who handed him an official signed pardon, gold seal affixed, excusing his offense. The man admired the document, holding it out to look at it. It was great, he thought, the perfect souvenir of the occasion. Then someone tapped him on his left shoulder. It was one of Edwards' lawyer friends, presenting him with a bill for legal services in the amount of $2,000.

The implication of this joke--that anyone who wanted a pardon could get one if he was willing to pay for it--was not lost on the people of Louisiana. Those who laughed did so because it sounded so true.

The Republicans, finding a topic that fit nicely into their campaign themes of honesty, conservatism and law and order, tried to develop their criticisms of Edwards' handling of criminal pardons as a major issue in the campaign. They would suggest, first, that Edwards had been far too liberal in granting pardons, and second, that many of the pardons he signed were granted as favors to his political supporters and lawyer friends.

Their message was clear: Edwin Edwards had used his executive clemency power for his own political and perhaps financial benefit, while endangering the public safety by turning loose hundreds of dangerous criminals. In the final three months of the campaign, the Republican governor, Dave Treen, would raise the pardon issue again and again, making it ultimately the most publicized single issue of the 1983 contest. It would not help much in the end, as Edwards would sweep to a huge victory to win a third term as governor in the October election. But Treen and his campaign staff could ultimately claim some sense of vindication on the pardon issue; even Edwards would finally agree that reforms were necessary to remove "politics" from the clemency process.

Although executive clemency became of critical importance only in the latter stages of the 1983 campaign, it had been smoldering as a significant political issue in Louisiana for at least a decade. Louisiana governors, Southern governors generally, have traditionally made liberal use of their powers to pardon--to restore the lost citizenship rights of ex-offenders--and to commute--to shorten the sentences of current offenders.

Edwin Edwards' predecessor, John McKeithen, once brought a convict band onstage with him at a political event and then pardoned all the musicians on the spot. Reporters learned later Big John was just joshing, but it seemed like a perfectly natural gesture for a governor to make. It was traditional, even expected of a Louisiana governor, that he pardon most or all of his Mansion staff of trustees and commute dozens if not hundreds of sentences in his final weeks in office.(1)

Although the pardon of one offender or another would occasionally attract adverse attention, the public in general was tolerant of the extensive use of clemency. This was in a state, remember, where criminals sentenced to life imprisonment were routinely turned loose to go home after serving ten years and six months.

Louisiana's governor did not have total authority in pardon matters. All offenders and ex-offenders seeking clemency had to first secure the approval of the state Pardon Board. Before 1975 this board was make up of three officials-the lieutenant governor as chairman, and the attorney general and sentencing judge as members. A two-thirds vote was required to forward applications along to the governor, where most were summarily approved.

What was wrong with this process? What else: "politics." The three members of the board were elected officials, subject to normal political influences. To get a pardon or commutation, an offender had to get the approval of only two of the three, by whatever means he might employ.

This distinctly political approach seemed old-fashioned, out-of-date, and in need of reform. Even the officials involved thought so. James Fitzmorris, the lieutenant governor-elect in early 1972, promised to work for putting the Pardon Board in the hands of "professional people" more qualified to render such decisions than were elected officials.(2) A short time later, a resolution adopted by the New Orleans Retail Grocers' Association called for the legislature to "remove politics from the state Pardon and Parole Boards."(3) The grocers demanded a board composed solely of professionals--criminologists, psychologists and sociologists--asserting that such a change would reduce the crime rate for grocery men.

This idea was carried forward by the members of the Constitutional Convention who met in 1973 to rewrite Louisiana's constitution. The 1921 constitution had established the old three-member board. The new constitution, which took effect January 1, 1975, provided in Article IV, Section 5: "The Board of Pardons shall consist of five electors appointed by the governor, subject to confirmation by the senate. Each member of the board shall serve a term concurrent with that of the governor appointing him."

In the same section, the framers of the constitution acted to reduce the workload and the discretion of the new Pardon Board by providing for the automatic pardon of first-time felony offenders. The procedure, calling for the issuance of a certificate of pardon by the Department of Corrections, would be applicable to all first-time felons convicted after the effective date of the constitution.

On June 26, 1975, the Louisiana senate passed the bill creating the five-member Pardon Board required by the new constitution. No special or "professional" qualifications for members were specified. One of the senators commented that the bill was "vital and dictated by the constitution but it lacks a lot of safeguards."(4)

Edwin Edwards, then nearing the end of his first term as governor, appointed the first members of the full-time board in September 1975. It was his board; he had promoted it in the constitutional convention, arguing that the governor should have full authority over the pardon function, and it fell to him to put the new board into practice.

Barely two months after it began operating, the board was caught up in its first political squabble. The Commission on Governmental Ethics ruled that the law firm of Camille Gravel, Edwards' executive counsel, could continue representing clients before the Pardon Board, despite Gravel's obviously privileged access to the governor. As a member of the Constitutional Convention, Gravel had spoken for abolishing the Pardon Board and giving the governor complete control over clemency. The ethics opinion directly reversed a 1973 opinion by the same commission that had prohibited this sort of representation.(5)

Edwards had already been reelected to his second term as governor by this time. Throughout this term, which would last until March 10, 1980, he was subject to undercurrents of political criticism for alleged favoritism in granting pardons and commutations. The criticism centered on the special relationships with the governor that some lawyers appearing before the Pardon Board might enjoy.

One widely-reported incident involved the Crowley, Louisiana, law firm of Nolan Edwards, the governor's brother. A junior member of the firm, writing in reply to an inmate at the state penitentiary at Angola who wanted the firm's help in getting his commutation signed, had asked a legal fee of $2,000 to begin work on a request. In correspondence with other inmates, the lawyer referred to common fees in the range of $3,500 to $5,000 for representing clients before the Pardon Board.

John Vodicka, director of the Louisiana Coalition on Jails and Prisons, called this "pardon-buying," reporting that Angola inmates had told him $2,000 was the "magic figure" to get a "Gold Seal," their term for the governor's official stamp on the clemency document.(6) (This would be the figure used later in the pardon joke.) Vodicka filed a complaint with the state bar association, asking that attorneys with close connections to the governor be prohibited from representing inmates before the Pardon Board and the governor because of an appearance of impropriety.

The bar association declined to get involved. Vodicka, for all his good intentions, would soon find himself being sued by prison inmate Billy Wayne Sinclair, who maintained that it was harder to get a pardon now when represented by the Gravel or Edwards firms, because so much attention was focused on them.

Edwin Edwards had already spoken to this point himself. He said he scrutinized pardons from his brother's firm or from Camille Gravel's firm very carefully, to avoid any hint of conflict of interest. He said he considered the pleas of "friends, relatives and crying mothers," but that money played no part in his decision. Besides, he pointed out, if he wanted to sell pardons he could sure get a lot more than $2,000 for them.(7)

In March 1979 the New Orleans Times Picayune ran an eleven-part series titled "The Politics of Pardons" about the relationship of Edwards, the Pardon Board, and attorneys representing clients seeking clemency. The series reported:

Public records of executive clemency matters since late 1975 show that legislators, other high-ranking public officials, relatives of Gov. Edwin Edwards and of a member of the Pardon Board, and attorneys with so-called "special relationships" with Edwards or officials in his office have all either successfully represented criminals seeking clemency or injected favorable recommendations into the system.(8)

The newspaper looked closely at the work of Camille Gravel's law firm. It found that, according to Pardon Board witness lists, applicants were represented by attorneys on 725 occasions between late 1975 and the end of 1978. The Gravel firm made 102 of these appearances, 14% of the total, far more than any other law firm in the state. Furthermore, the firm enjoyed a 62% success rate before the board, compared to an overall 29% success rate for all attorneys together, and an 82% success rate in obtaining the governor's signature, compared to a 56% success rate for all favorable recommendations coming from the board. (9) Small wonder inmates were so anxious to retain the lawyers of Gravel, Roy and Burnes.

The newspaper was unable to work out an acceptable format to discuss its findings with Edwards and Gravel, who insisted they would respond only to written questions; thus they lacked an official response from the governor's office.

In its series-ending editorial, "Politics and Pardons," the paper suggested that, while it discovered no evidence of criminal wrongdoing in the handling of clemency cases, the system did give off a clear "appearance of impropriety," to reuse John Vodicka's phrase. It said: "This appearance of impropriety leads inmates to seek out politicians and well-connected lawyers whose success rate is common knowledge. Why should anyone, in or out of prison, lawbreaker or lawabider, respect such a system."(10)

The paper threw its support behind legislation to prohibit such "old boy" practices. The legislation, which had been killed off annually in Edward's second term, finally passed both house and senate in l979--only to be vetoed by the governor and die once again.

1979 was an important year in Louisiana politics. Edwards was constitutionally barred from running for a third consecutive term, and six strong candidates were campaigning to succeed him. Clemency would often pop up as an issue in the campaign; the candidates agreed that pardon decisions had become too political.

Lieutenant-Governor Fitzmorris, speaking fondly of the old three-member Pardon Board, recalled, "You didn't have to be politically-oriented to get a fair hearing."(11) Speaker of the House E.L. "Bubba" Henry questioned the need for applicants to have high-paid legal advice. Lawyers should not charge so much, he said, "Not more than $500 to $1,000, because it is not a very time-consuming job."(12)

People who have observed Pardon Board hearings would tend to agree. Hearings are informal and last only a few minutes. The travel time to Baton Rouge would be the most time-consuming part of the work, except in the unusual case where the attorney himself might take charge of the gathering of records and supporting letters to present to the board.

While Fitzmorris, Henry and the three other Democratic candidates argued ethics and advocated different degrees of political reform, the most clear-cut position was that of the Republican candidate, Dave Treen. He said that in his administration the granting of clemency "will become quite rare," only in exceptional cases, such as "a miscarriage of justice or a disparity in the length of sentence." He fully supported opening pardon records to the public. Saying he would be no more influenced by a legislator's recommendation than a private citizen's, Treen questioned why prisoners needed attorneys to represent them before the board. Any petitioner should be able to "get a fair shake" with or without one.(13)

Treen's law and order theme was constant throughout the campaign. There were too many career criminals out on the streets, he said, because "they aren't serving enough of their sentences."(14) "Drug pushers and violent offenders will have a very tough time getting a pardon from Dave Treen," he told workers at a fish fry in Harvey.(15) He said he would not sign pardons for multiple offenders so they can return to the streets. He promised to appoint parole and pardon board members who would take a tough stand on crime and repeat offenders. "We have got to change the moral tone of government."(16) At the beginning of the l979 campaign, few political experts would have given candidate Treen much of a chance to change anything, so unlikely was he to be elected to office. But striking themes that appealed to Louisiana's conservative voters and taking advantage of a severe split in the Democratic Party (The four Democratic candidates who lost in the primary ended up supporting Treen rather than their fellow Democrat, Louis Lambert), Dave Treen did indeed capture the governor's office.

The transition from Edwards to Treen, the differences in philosophy, politics and personal style, would be greater than any other transfer of gubernatorial power in Louisiana history. Treen emphasized one important difference in one of his last pre-inauguration interviews. "It's going to be tough to get a pardon from me," he said. "There is a perception that it's easier to avoid punishment in Louisiana, and any recommendation will have to be so fully justified as not to contribute to that perception."(17)

As Treen was going in, talking tough, Edwards was coming out, pen dripping. A Times-Picayune article from February l980 was titled, "Edwards is Signing Pardons, Commutations by the Scores." It reported fifty-five signings since January 1.(18) Edwards would go on to sign 96 pardons and commutations in his last ten weeks in office. His legacy, especially the last-minute flurry of commutations that was sending one prisoner a day home from the penitentiary, would one day come back to haunt him.

Dave Treen had campaigned with a promise to be tough on clemency; seldom has a political promise been so strictly kept. The contrast with the Edwards administration was immediately apparent: Treen signed no commutations at all during the rest of l980, and only one pardon, for an ex-offender who had served his time many years before.

The governor was busy with the legislative session the first few months of his term, and observers noted that his methodical way of doing things promised to further reduce the priority of pardons in the Treen administration. On a zero-to-ten "deserving of attention" scale, it was apparent that Treen rated clemency matters pretty close to zero.

The Pardon Board could tell which way the wind was blowing. Though four of the five members of the board were initially holdovers from the Edwards' administration, until Treen got around to naming their replacements, they immediately began taking a harder view of commutation and pardon applications. With virtually the same board sitting, the approval rate fell to less than a third of what it had been a few months earlier. It seemed a clear case of giving the governor what they thought he wanted.

Pardon Board staff members and political officials commented on the "lack of communication" between the Pardon Board and the governor's office.(19) The lack of contact was worthy of note not only for what it revealed about the Treen administration but also for what it meant about the Edwards era: there had been much more regular communication, inquiries and instructions flowing downward to the board and approved applications flowing upward to the governor's office, in the old days. One can imagine that pardon board members felt suddenly out of it, all dressed up with no place to go. If the governor was not going to pardon anyone, what did you need a Pardon Board for?

In the months ahead this question would be asked repeatedly. Jack Wardlaw, the columnist for the Times-Picayune, wrote in late 1980:

Treen, a cautious man in all respects, has not been in any hurry to grant executive clemency. Aside from his natural cautiousness, he was elected on a "law and order" platform and has no desire to be accused of letting loose dangerous criminals in the community. His predecessor Edwin Edwards took considerable flak on that subject, partly because of a flurry of pardons during the closing months of his term of office.The framers of the state Constitution gave the governor the right of clemency for a good reason: to prevent injustices. Treen is right to use it cautiously and with regard for the public safety. He would surely be wrong not to use it at all.(20)

One year lacking a day later, Wardlaw returned to the same subject. In twenty-one months, Treen had signed five pardons and commutations; another 285 approved applications forwarded from the Pardon Board had piled up in his office, not yet acted on. Contemplating the reasons for Treen's inaction, Wardlaw again mentioned the governor's law and order candidacy, his fear of public criticism, and his "natural tendency to procrastinate, a personality trait that has driven legislators, newspapermen and others to despair ever since he took office."(21)

Wardlaw then closed with this observation:

There seems to be little reason to have a Pardon Board if its recommendations are not to be followed. Society would be ill-served if any governor decided to open the gates of the penitentiary to save money or to reward political friends. But going to the other extremes can also be an abuse of a constitutional power. Perhaps it's time for the governor to consider that.(22)

A few months later, as Treen's second year in office came to an end, the chairman of the Pardon Board, Mrs. Sally McKissack of Lafayette, appeared before a legislative committee that wanted to know what was going on with the board. Why, of 309 applications approved and sent to the governor's office, had only nine been signed? This often heated exchange, running to ten pages in transcription, centered on whether the Pardon Board was doing its job, which Mrs. McKissack staunchly maintained it was, and whether Governor Treen was doing his job, which Mrs. McKissack just as staunchly refused to speculate about. "I think that is the governor's business," she said. (It is ironic to note now that Mrs. McKissack's most persistent questioner on this committee, the man who in 1982 wanted to know why more pardons were not being signed, was Representative Joe Delpit, who five years later would be acquitted of felony charges in the same pardon selling scandal that sent Pardon Board Chairman Howard Marsellus to prison.) The committee pointed out that it cost around $400,000 a year to keep the Pardon Board operating, and they wondered if the state was getting its money's worth. Mrs. McKissack urged them not to seriously considering abolishing the board (which they obviously had no intention of doing and could not have, anyway, without a constitutional amendment), saying that the commutation process was one of the few avenues of hope open to long-term prison inmates. She urged them to wait and see what the governor would do next.

Governor Treen had been promising to sign more pardons. He said he had not had time to give the matter of pardons the attention it probably deserved.(23) He wanted to personally review each case, and that turned out to be an "enormous task--probably bigger, to be honest, than I thought it would be."(24)

The Associated Press put it this way: "When it comes to pardoning inmates of Louisiana prisons, the buck stops at Gov. Treen's desk--and that's where it stays."(25) Treen's press secretary, fielding AP inquiries about Treen's lack of action, said the governor had other priorities. "Those cases that are meritorious will be treated accordingly. Pardons are addressed by the governor only when higher priority items have been handled."(26)

Sally McKissack spoke up for the governor, too, saying it wasn't appropriate to compare Treen to previous governors. "Other people's standards are not Dave Treen's. Just because he's signed less than other governors doesn't mean there's anything off-beat about it."(27)

The Reverend James Stovall, director of the Louisiana Inter-Church Conference and former chairman of Governor Edwards' Pardon, Parole and Rehabilitation Commission, did not agree. "When the Pardon Board makes recommendations based on their comprehensive, systematic study, they have fulfilled their purpose," Stovall said. "It seems to me the governor should then exercise his constitutional authority and should grant a significant number of their recommendations." "That is, he should grant them unless there is some overriding reason that the Pardon Board is unaware of. Otherwise, there is no point in having a Pardon Board," Stovall said.(28)

Prison inmates were well aware of what Treen's stand meant to them. A newspaper series on possible violence at Angola described a hopeless feeling among prison inmates. Lawyers and prisoners agreed that a pervasive "sense of hopelessness" bloomed in this prison's air. In an institution holding more than 4,400 men serving an average sentence of 21 years, and a good portion of these mandatory no-parole sentences, people were giving up hope of getting out.

The Pardon Board members, who must have already begun to wonder whether their work had any value, in the face of a governor who ignored their recommendations, began to wonder further whether they would have any work to do the last eighteen months of Governor Treen's term. The flow of applications from inmates still in custody had slowed dramatically. The Angolite, Angola's prison newsmagazine, reported that Mrs. McKissack was so concerned about the reduced number of applications being submitted that she wrote Warden Ross Maggio about the apparent lack of prisoner interest in the clemency process.(29) Maggio is supposed to have replied that inmates had lost faith in the system and given up on Governor Treen; they were already looking forward to Edwin Edward's return to office.

The newspaper series on violence carried the inmates' loss of hope one step further; its inference was: "A hopeless prisoner is a dangerous prisoner."(30) Prison authorities were maintaining order for now, but no one would predict whether the calm would last. Richard Shapiro, director of the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee, said, "I think that the governor has abdicated his responsibility in this area."(31)

Was Governor Treen worried that his inaction could result in prison violence? "My comment to that is that I would rather have the danger within prison walls than on our streets and in our communities." Sounding a now-familiar theme, he said he would get to pardon recommendations "as items of higher priority are addressed." "Pardons should be reserved for those who demonstrate full rehabilitation."(32)

Very few applicants were able to meet the governor's high standards. When Treen signed ten pardons and commutations, on December 23, 1982, nearing the end of his third year in office, the signings were announced as important news and the background of each case was summarized.(33) There was a follow-up article the next day, clarifying the total number of pardons Treen had issued. The paper had reported 22, Treen said 29, and secretary of state's office said 41, including the automatic first-offender pardons. Treen did not want these included in the total, since he had no choice in signing them.(34) That he would take the time to set straight such a trivial matter as how the twelve pardons were counted said something important about Dave Treen's character: he was not one to lose count.

Members of the Pardon Board continued to publicly defend the governor's record. When someone had the gall to write in a letter to the editor that Governor Treen was soft on crime, because he had commuted the sentence of a convicted murderer, two Pardon Board members wrote back:

Governor Treen has granted executive clemency to 33 individuals, of whom 18 were no longer incarcerated. One was a 74-year old man whose crimes were pre-World War II. In only three cases has he cut an inmate to time served, and in all three cases the former governor had previously cut the terms.

In cases involving murder, the governor has granted clemency in four cases, one of whom is out of prison and is on parole.

Statistics before 1975 are not available, but from 1975 to the end of his second term, the former governor granted clemency in 1,199 cases, including 125 murder cases. Governor Treen promised not to be soft on crime, and I think his record shows that he has kept his promise.(35)

Indeed, we would agree. The only way he could have been tougher on pardons would have been to send the Pardon Board home. Which he did, in effect, for the rest of 1983, until the gubernatorial election was over.

The campaign had shaped up all along as a two-man race, Treen and Edwards the only serious candidates in a nine-man field. The confrontation was in a way ideal: both men had served as governor of the state, each had a record that the other could compare his own to. Then let the voters decide who had done the better job and was more deserving of being returned to office.

Treen's campaign would emphasize his own character, honesty and integrity, and Edwards' lack of these traits. The image Treen's PR people would try to generate was that of Gary Cooper as governor, the strong and resolute silent type who makes no excuses for taking his time but nothing else in dispatching his solemnly sworn duties. (36)

Edwards, even out of office acknowledged as the clear front-runner, would portray Treen as a slow-thinking, slow-acting, pleasant incompetent--a sort of simpleton governor who needed to be removed for the good of the state. "Eddie's Ready," the billboards had announced for over a year before the campaign began. The notion, which the abundantly self-confident Edwards appeared to believe with all sincerity, was that he was to lead Louisiana out of Dave Treen's wilderness.

The pardon issue fit nicely into both their campaigns. A political cartoon would depict them as rival baseball players studying a pardon scoreboard. A more appropriate representation would have been two boxers preparing to square off.

In this corner was "Easy Time" Edwin Edwards, the colorful, controversial, strong governor who had modernized Louisiana's prison system in his two terms in office. The budget of the Department of Corrections had increased ten-fold, four new medium security prisons had been constructed, a special legislative session had been called to reform Angola (at the order of federal Judge Gordon West). Edwin Edwards was a correctional reformer, the friend of convicts, especially the 2,200 he had granted clemency in his eight years as governor.

In this corner was "Hard Line" Dave Treen, who had held the line on prison construction and prison reform and done nothing nice for inmates that anyone could remember. His most memorable contribution to correctional innovation in Louisiana, in four years in office, was to suggest "double-bunking" as a way of dealing with overcrowding problems. The federal courts rejected this scheme. He had also proposed that inmate labor be used to build new prisons; labor unions got the legislature to kill that idea. Twice spurned, Treen made no more reform suggestions. He would find few supporters among the criminal element: he had signed only 34 pardons as the campaign summer began.

Treen and his campaign chairman John Cade plotted their strategy with care, keeping the issue under wraps through the summer as they waited for just the right time to launch their pardon offensive. Treen was far behind in the polls, but he had the goods on Edwards that he thought might help him catch up. His research staff had spent two years investigating Edwards' pardon record; their black vinyl binders bulged with every conceivable statistic, broken down by crime, by parish, by law firm, and rich anecdotal

summaries of the most egregious cases.(37)

In early August Treen announced his intention of making pardons a campaign issue. He promised a series of "hard-hitting advertisements" that would inject life into his thus far lackluster campaign. Edwards had already taken the clemency offensive, in fact, by bringing out in speeches and radio spots some questionable pardons by Treen. (38)

As the Treen research machine prepared to start releasing its facts, intending to achieve a sort of prolonged depth charge effect, Edwin Edwards was in fine form, making up facts of his own. He claimed that Camille Gravel's law firm had represented fewer than 25 prisoners before the Pardon Board. Wrong: the actual number was 126, by far the highest of any firm in the state.

Edwards said that he had signed the bill forbidding the executive counsel's firm from representing clients before the board. Wrong: he had vetoed it, Treen had signed it the next year. Edwards, when confronted with the discrepancy, said, "I vetoed it? I thought I signed it."

Edwards' misstatements--consistently nailed by Treen research and thrown back in his face within 24 hours--are helping neither Edwards' credibility nor his impending pardons problem. But he's in no mood to back down. He knows Treen is about to break the pardons issue with a media barrage before the end of August. Edwards resolves to fire first, going into the studio to cut a radio spot blasting Treen for an unpardonable pardon. "And why doesn't Dave Treen tell us about Jarrell Frith? After Dave Treen pardoned him, he was convicted of the attempted rape of a six-year-old girl.

Real wrong. Had he checked his facts he would have learned that Jarrell Frith was not pardoned, he was paroled. Not by Dave Treen's Parole Board, but by Edwin Edwards'. Edwards' crack research team took the information from a story in the Morning Advocate that reported the wrong date of Frith's release. Edwards had made factual errors during this campaign but none nearly so serious. Instead of defusing Treen's pardon attack, the flagrant error will only attract more attention to a very damaging issue and to his own sinking credibility.(39)

Then a profound personal tragedy struck the Edwards family. Nolan Edwards, the Crowley attorney, was murdered on August 18 by a former client, a young ex-convict who committed suicide after shooting Edwards. The odd twist was that the man had been one of the large group Edwin Edwards had pardoned in the last days of his second term.

The murder was not directly related to the pardon. The killer, Rodney Wingate, had a grievance against Nolan from an old civil case and reportedly owed him money. As everyone was quick to point out, Wingate had already been free on parole from his drug sentence when Edwin Edwards had granted him clemency.

The case did seem to illustrate, however, how important pardons could be, that they could affect anyone. Here was the governor's own brother shot down by a man once found to be deserving of clemency. The political effect was to further increase the importance of the pardon issue to the campaign; from this point on, most commentators agreed that pardons became the major campaign issue.

After Nolan Edwards' funeral, Treen announced that his ads would start the first of September. Treen called the series of ads that Edwards had resumed running "an all-time low in false and misleading campaign tactics."(40)

Jack Wardlaw's column in the August 24 Times-Picayune said that the voter "should hold both men to account for their clemency policies."(41) Wardlaw pointed out that 78 of the 1182 people Edwards had pardoned in his second term had so far returned to prison. Edwards said, "If, in fact, only 78 ended up in trouble, I'm surprised. Most people get out of prison poorly prepared to cope with modern society." He acknowledged that "some we signed that shouldn't have been signed."

Were some of these due to improper political ties, such as existed between Gravel's firm or Nolan Edwards' firm and the governor's office? Edwards said it was silly to imply any wrongdoing by lawyer friends who obtained pardons for their clients. "There's no money in pardons," he said. "Lawyers do that as a courtesy." Nevertheless, Wardlaw pointed out, there was a definite public perception that an ethical problem might exist.(42)

The column was equally critical of Treen's failure to act--pardoning 33, rejecting 81, and piling up 268 other recommendations sent him by the board. It hardly made sense, with prison overcrowding a terrible problem and 2,00 more convicted felons waiting to get in. Get a new Pardon Board to send him the kinds of recommendations he wanted, or abolish it altogether, Wardlaw suggested.(43)

That same day, Edwards in a telephone interview came up with a new proposal in the pardon debate: take some of the politics out of pardons by eliminating the need for the governor's approval. If he was elected over Treen in October, Edwards said, he would propose legislation allowing Pardon Board decisions to take effect without the governor's approval.

Edwards said that he would maintain the governor's power to veto a pardon recommendation. "In all honesty, while I can criticize Treen for not acting on all recommendations (only 112 of 380), in truth and in fact the governor's involvement should be eliminated." Citing the governor's lack of knowledge of the circumstances of an individual case, he said, "There's no reason at the last minute to dump it in the lap of someone who has had nothing to do with the process."(44)

Early in September Treen's television, radio and newspaper advertisements began to appear. The ads compared the records of Treen and Edwards on pardons; they listed offenders by categories--124 murderers, 62 rapists, 199 armed robbers, 223 drug violators--and pointed out that Edwards had pardoned some criminals more than once. One ad read "Yes, Edwards gave double pardons to 36 felons...He even gave a triple pardon to a convicted heroin dealer."(45) The ads, which would run virtually unchanged through the election in October, reduced the emotional issue to a neat score:

Edwards 1,181

Treen 34

The more comprehensive ads emphasized Treen's work to toughen other laws in the fight against the criminal--laws to confiscate narcotics profits, compensate victims, allow homeowners to shoot burglars, jail drunk drivers and require parolees to pay for part of their supervision.(46)

In case anyone missed the media blitz, Treen paid for a state-wide mailout of a four-page, full color brochure to bring evidence of Edwards' abuse of the pardon power into the hands of individual voters. When the folded pamphlet, marked "Edwin Edwards and the Open Door Policy" in Edwards' blue-and-gold campaign colors, arrived in the mailbox, voters assumed it was an Edwards public relations letter. But lo, opening it up one sees that the "open door" is to an empty jail cell, with the caption: "This is Edwin Edwards' Open Door Policy." The criminal is gone because Edwards turned him loose.

The inside pages sum up Edwards' use of clemency and compare it with Dave Treen's record. Excerpts from newspaper articles describe some of the nasty people Edwards pardoned ("an animal," one says, "unjust," says another). The voter is then invited to see how many criminals from his parish Edwin Edwards pardoned. If the voter was literate and took the time to study the brochure seriously, the conclusion was inescapable: Edwards had made prolific use of his pardon powers, often for the wrong reasons, and had pardoned offenders undeserving of clemency. These offenders were now spread across the state, presumably committing more crimes against innocent victims.

As September passed political commentators wondered if the pardon ads, as part of Treen's overall campaign strategy, were having any impact. Treen's staff apparently thought so, reporting that their polls showed that Treen had cut Edwards' lead to four or five percentage points a month before the election. Independent polls put the figure at closer to thirteen or fourteen points but agreed with the general drift: Treen was inching closer.

Edwards probably doubted that the pardon issue by itself would have that much negative impact on his reelection prospects, but in early October he counterattacked anyway by releasing public endorsements from criminal justice leaders and by bringing up paroles as a substitute issue. Three of the most prominent district attorneys in the state--Harry Connick in Orleans Parish, John Mamoulides of Jefferson Parish and Nathan Stansbury of Lafayette Parish--appeared together in ads defending Edwards' record on pardons. The Louisiana Association of Chiefs of Police also endorsed Edwards, saying in a press release, "Unquestionably Edwin Edwards was better for law enforcement in the state of Louisiana and for the safety of its citizens than the present governor, Dave Treen."(47)

Treen lashed back angrily, accusing Edwards of deliberately spreading falsehoods on the issue. He took the three DAs to task for supporting Edwards, saying that "political logrolling had reached a new low when DAs get on television and try to defend Edwards' record on pardons."(48)

Treen dug up numerous quotations that he attributed to the three prosecutors concerning past Edwards pardons. John Mamoulides was the one who had called the violent offender, pardoned in 1979 over his strong objection, "an animal." This was the same Mamoulides who had announced in 1978 that Louisiana District Attorneys' Association would try to change state laws controlling pardons and paroles because of procedural abuses by the Edwards administration. There were too many loopholes, he said. It might even be desirable to pass a constitutional amendment limiting the governor's pardon power.(49)

About Connick and Stansbury the governor was equally specific. He pooh-poohed their claims that Edwards had not granted pardons over their objections, listing 102 pardons from Orleans Parish and 21 from the Lafayette district that the DAs had objected to.(50) His point was clear: either the DAs' memories were short, or something had happened to make them change their minds and forget their old complaints.

Treen accused Edwards of making a deliberate effort to confuse and mislead the public--as with Edwards' statement that pardons were used mostly to restore citizenship rights and hunting privileges. In fact, Treen said, 822 of Edwards' 1181 pardons were actually commutations that had resulted in shorter prison sentences.(51)

The "truth squad" had struck again. This was the name the press had coined to apply to a group of Treen campaign workers, mostly young conservatives, who followed the Edwards campaign around, making notes and recording Edwards' public statements and misstatements. The impresario of the truth squad was campaign manager John Cade, who frequently issued news releases attempting to refute what Cade called Edwards' "lie du jour."

The impression Treen was trying to cultivate was that while he told the truth Edwards was often telling something else. While Dave Treen's motivation was to serve the public, Edwards was clearly out to serve himself. Treen said: "The pardon issue is important in this campaign because it is symptomatic of Edwin Edwards' style of government--making decisions based on politics--upon pleasing legislators or helping favored law firms, rather than upon what is good for the public.(52)

The police chiefs' association, in a curious statement that must have confounded Governor Treen, said that Treen's own ads were erroneous and were "obviously designed to deceive the public."(53) It said that Edwards had not released criminals from prison by granting pardons (though in the broad sense of the term he obviously had) or that pardons granted during the Edwards administration had not released hundreds of prisoners from prison (though by shortening sentences that was obviously their effect).(54)

Just who had released the most criminals from prison--Edwards or Treen? Treen thought that he had answered that question conclusively, when abruptly the Edwards people began lumping paroles together with pardons and comparing figures. Marion Edwards, managing his brother's campaign, released a statement criticizing Treen for turning loose "40% more criminals than Edwin did," including parolees in the total.(55)

Treen accused Edwards of trying to mislead the public again by intermixing points about pardon and parole. The Parole Board in Louisiana releases convicts on its own authority; the governor had no role to play in the parole process. Edwards had pointed out that John Cade had a paroled convict, paroled by Treen's board, working for his company. Treen said his board was not giving more paroles, based on population, then Edwards' was, and he released a list of figures (probably in reply to the police chiefs) showing that the state's overall crime rate was slightly lower than it had been when Edwards left office.(56)

The parole issue came up again a few days later, when Pam Harris, the head of the Parole Board in the first part of the Treen administration, accused him of releasing a convicted child rapist as a political favor for John Cade. Cade, calling Harris "an embittered woman" who had been unable to work with other members of the Parole Board, said the charge was "ludicrous beyond belief" and denied that he even knew the man.(57)

The Edwards campaign, seemingly gleeful at catching "Honest Dave" in a political faux pas, was running ads about the parole. Treen's Parole Board chairman, Francis Hotard, defended the governor by saying that Treen had never exerted any influence on any parole board action to his knowledge.

The campaign, throughout its last month, would more frequently become bogged down in exchanges of this sort, where alternative versions of the "truth" would be set forth for the public's befuddlement. Newspapers took to defining pardons, commutations and paroles more precisely and specifying what each did and what powers the governor had regarding each practice. Governor Treen's "truth campaign" might actually have backfired on him during this time. Many people began to object to the tone of his remarks, spoken as if only he and his followers--the true believers--really knew what was right. There was a puritanical sound to his statements that grated on people's nerves. One letter writer protested that he was distorting the truth and employing scare tactics to play on people's fear of crime.

It was evident that Treen had no more of a monopoly on truth and goodness than Edwards did on falsehood and evil, and people began to find Treen's pronouncements narrow-minded and simplistic. His truth was more akin to propaganda--a hard kernel of factual information puffed-up and slanted to serve his political purpose. One letter to the editor read:

Among the several hundred favorable recommendations Treen's Pardon Board had made to him, which he had ignored, are persons who committed a nonviolent offense some 15, 20, and even 30 years ago and who have been out of jail, if they went to jail at all, nearly as long. It is difficult to see how "law and order" is advanced by withholding from these people the gesture of a pardon after all this time has passed.(58)

In the last week of the campaign, Edwin Edwards had regained his momentum and sense of humor and had once again taken the offensive on pardons. He said Treen had a "hard heart" and had not issued pardons to many people who deserved them. And at a political rally, in his own most memorable reply to the Republican pardon-buying joke, Edwards promised, "One of my first acts as governor will be to pardon Dave Treen for pretending to be governor."(59)

As election day--Saturday, October 22, 1983--neared, it was apparent that Treen's campaign had failed. The polls had Edwards ahead by 15 points or more. Truth and honesty, the twin towers of Treen's attack, were important, yes, but they would not make a crucial difference in choosing Louisiana's next governor. The only question remaining was how big Edwin Edwards' victory would be.

When the final results were in, the enormity of Treen's defeat was clear. Edwards had won in a landslide, taking 62 of the state's 64 parishes.

The vote totals were:

Edwards 1,002,589 62.3%

Treen 585,385 36.4%

Others 21,209 1.3%

After four years in office, Dave Treen did worse than when he first ran against Edwards as a largely unknown private citizen and token Republican challenger in 1971. He only lost that one 57-43 percent.(60)

Everyone, including Dave Treen, had an explanation for Edwards' big victory. The Wall Street Journal declared, "Louisiana voters had four years of honest government and decided they didn't like it."(61) The truth was more complicated than this witticism. Edwards had been a popular governor who had led the state in prosperous times. His campaign was well-organized and well-funded and went off without any serious public relations gaffs--the bane of the contemporary media-conscious politician. Treen himself mentioned the traditional dominance of the Democratic Party and his own lackluster efforts at public relations.(62)

John Maginnis, in his The Last Hayride, an excellent political commentary on the campaign, wrote of the conventional explanations:

That explains why he lost, but the reasons he was humiliated--the answer many fence-sitters cited for why they could not bring themselves to vote for the incumbent--is Treen's incessantly negative attacks that totally overshadowed any

attempt to project the positive aspects of his administration.

In the campaign's final three months, we saw Dave Treen's image as a dull but honest good guy deteriorate into a nattering nabob of negativism, to borrow a phrase from another big-time Republican loser.(63)

Pardons were a big part of this negativism. Originally the issue worked to Treen's advantage, but dwelt on too long it became passe. The public turned a deaf ear and the criticism lost its impact.

"So what?" people might have said to Treen's harping. "Just because Edwards mishandled pardons does not mean Treen was a better governor. Look at the overall record."

The pardon issue was damaging to Edwards, but what it took away from him in no way made Dave Treen look any better. Treen's approach only reminded us once more that running down your opponent is not enough to win an election.

When I wrote Governor Treen to ask whether he thought pardons had done him any good, he replied:

I cannot tell if the issue worked to my advantage. I rather doubt that it did, Primarily because in the closing days of the campaign Edwards was able to exploit an incident involving someone who either was pardoned or had his sentence commuted who later went to work for John Cade, my campaign manager. It was purely a coincidence, Cade not even knowing the person had been hired. Nevertheless, I believe that Edwards was able to negate a lot of the damage done to him with that story.(64)

Treen's lack of enthusiasm for what had been his big weapon is probably natural. When you have just lost an election by a margin of 26 percentage points, it would hardly be reassuring to imagine that the pardon issue saved you from a worse beating.

Treen served out the remaining four-and-a-half months of his term with no further controversy regarding executive clemency. Though he stepped up the pace of his pardon signing, finishing with 121 (including the automatic first-offender pardons) in four years, he remained a hardliner to the very end. He felt it necessary to issue a press release, two days before he left office, explaining why he was cutting to time served the sentences of two inmates on his mansion staff. He also commuted the sentences of nine other mansion staff to make them eligible for earlier release. Lest anyone think that he was getting too mellow as he left office or that he might have granted clemency because he liked these fellows, he struck a utilitarian argument in his last official comment on clemency as governor: "The proper exercise of the clemency power can have a positive effect by encouraging rehabilitation."(65)

He elaborated on his philosophy of pardons later, in a personal letter:

Pardon or commutation of sentence should be granted where there appears to be rehabilitation, sincere regret for the offense committed, and the opportunity for a useful, productive life after release from prison. Absence of severely negative

reaction by the community in which the crime was committed is also important. In addition, the length of the sentence as compared to the severity of the crime, and perhaps the quality of the convict's legal defense, should be taken into consideration.

Pardons and commutations should not issue in order to alleviate crowded prison conditions.(66)

Treen said also, in this letter, that he would not do anything different--would not grant clemency more often--if he were to have it to do over again. His was "a campaign pledge etched in stone," as the Morning Advocate reported the day he left office.(67)

Sally McKissack, accounting for the fact that Treen had signed only about 100 of the 500 recommendations her board had sent him, did not agree that Treen had acted wisely. "I think Edwards signed too many and Treen didn't sign enough. Maybe there's a balance there," she said.(68)

Probably the most notorious case handled by her board was that of convicted murderer Robert Wayne Williams, who late in 1983 appealed to the Pardon Board to commute his death sentence to life imprisonment. When the board rejected his plea by a 3-2 vote, after an extremely emotional hearing, and Treen declined to act, Williams was electrocuted--the first man put to death in Louisiana since 1961. In the end, then, the public would have two good reasons to remember Dave Treen's position on executive clemency: he compiled the stingiest overall record on executive clemency in modern state history, and he refused to get involved as capital punishment was resumed in Louisiana after a two decade lay-off.

In the broader political sense, what Treen did for clemency--by using it as little as possible--was to greatly heighten its visibility. He made a public issue of a practice that the people of Louisiana had previously accepted as a private matter among politicians. With his record standing as a sort of basis of comparison for future governors, the importance of clemency in the 1983 campaign should make his successors mindful of not using, or appearing to use, the pardon to excess.

Treen in effect made us more suspicious of the potential for misuse implicit in the granting of executive clemency. Some would argue that he made us too suspicious; we can, after all, be suspicious without being paranoid.

Reverend Stovall, speaking earlier of the need for Governor Treen to sign more pardons, had said, "We should not think of pardons or paroles as dirty words. We should recognize these as being legitimate release mechanisms from the criminal justice system.(69) Sally McKissack, in defending the governor's right not to grant pardons, had said, "Pardon is a privilege, not a right. Just because it is in the constitution doesn't mean that it is a foregone conclusion."(70)

What their statements and the contrasting records of Treen and Edwards illustrate is the essential ambiguity of the pardon function. Aside from rare instances of wrongful conviction, there are no real standards for when a pardon is justified, or how much the executive should use it. The pardon is always more-or-less unjust, as Ernest van den Haag has suggested, in that its purpose is to thwart legal justice for the sake of political or charitable ends. As an historical legacy, the prerogative of kings handed down to the modern executive, clemency is an extraordinary discretionary power: it has always been politically suspect, and in the interest of public safety it is best that it remain so.

It is hard to tell how much Edwin Edwards has been affected, this time around, by Dave Treen's example. He was obviously aware that pardons had done him harm, and he seems much more concerned with his reputation now than he was five or ten years ago.

Edwards' suggestion that the governor give up his clemency authority to the Pardon Board would be one way of taking the heat off--minimizing his direct association with the function while retaining ultimate control. He would still have his influence and line of communication, but the Pardon Board would have to take the heat unpopular decisions might generate.

Over halfway through his third term as governor, Edwin Edwards had not yet acted to put this suggestion or any other change in pardon administration into effect. He had made no public statements indicating that his philosophy of pardons has changed, yet he had been granting pardons at a much lower rate this time around. In his first full year back in office, through March 1985, Edwards granted 106 pardons and commutations. That makes him look like a wild man in comparison to Treen, who took four years to approve that many, but it was only about one-third the rate at which Edwards had granted clemency in his previous two terms.

State prison inmates, who might have expected a return to the free-flowing good old days, must have been disappointed with Edwards' inattention, but they probably must have hoped that once he dealt with more urgent matters--the state's dismal economy, the high unemployment rate, dissatisfaction with public education, budget deficits and his own legal problems, which caused him to twice be put on trial in federal court in New Orleans--things would settle down. Instead the pardon issue blew up again, state officials Marsellus and Delpit were arrested and charged with selling pardons, and public scrutiny of the pardon process was at an all time high.

Are the old days of pardons and politics gone forever? Old habits die hard, the bad habits often harder to get rid of than the good. But in this instance, events of the last ten years suggest that politicians could not get by with the heavy-handed use of executive clemency as in the past, not if they wanted to have any sort of political future.

With his opponents keeping careful count of pardon statistics, any governor must be prepared to explain his record to a punishment-minded public. In the Edwards-Treen confrontation, the pardon issue was not of enough consequence to swing the election. In a closer campaign, however, the issue might well be important enough to the electorate to determine the outcome, and no contemporary candidate would want to risk losing the governor's race because the public thought he was too nice to criminals.

(1) John Maginnis, The Last Hayride (Baton Rouge: Gris Gris Press, 1984), p. 207.

(2) Times-Picayune (New Orleans), April 15, 1972, p. 14.

(3) Times-Picayune (New Orleans), May 29, 1972, p. 7.

(4) Times-Picayune (New Orleans), June 27, 1975, Sec. 4, p. 17.

(5) Times-Picayune (New Orleans), November 22, 1975, p. 16.

(6) Times-Picayune (New Orleans), October 3, 1977, p. 1.

(7) Ibid.

(8) Times-Picayune (New Orleans), March 18, 1979, p. 1.

(9) Ibid.

(10) Times-Picayune (New Orleans), March 30, 1979, p. 14.

(11) Times-Picayune (New Orleans), April 1, 1979, p. 1.

(12) Ibid.

(13) Ibid.

(14) Times-Picayune (New Orleans), September 11, 1979, p. 3.

(15) Times-Picayune (New Orleans), September 25, 1979, p. 6.

(16) Ibid.

(17) Times-Picayune (New Orleans), March 9, 1980, p. 1.

(18) Times-Picayune (New Orleans), February 9, 1980, Sec. 4, p. 4.

(19) Times-Picayune (New Orleans), June 2, 1980, p. 1.

(20) Times-Picayune (New Orleans), December 10, 1981, p. 15.

(21) Times-Picayune (New Orleans), December 9, p. 13.

(22) Ibid.

(23) Times-Picayune (New Orleans), July 6, 1981, p. 15.

(24) Ibid.

(25) Morning Advocate (Baton Rouge), June 17, 1982, p. 16-C.

(26) Ibid.

(27) Ibid.

(28) Ibid.

(29) "A New Beginning," The Angolite, March/April 1984, p. 33.

(30) Times-Picayune (New Orleans), October 3, 1982, p. 1.

(31) Ibid.

(32) Times-Picayune (New Orleans), October 7, 1982, p. 13.

(33) Times-Picayune (New Orleans), December 29, 1982, p. 13.

(34) Times-Picayune (New Orleans), December 30, 1982, p. 14.

(35) Times-Picayune (New Orleans), March 27, 1983, p. 22.

(36) Maginnis, Last Hayride, p. 206.

(37) Ibid., p. 207.

(38) Times-Picayune (New Orleans), August 23, 1983, p. 1.

(39) Maginnis, Last Hayride, p. 206.

(40) Times-Picayune (New Orleans), August 23, 1983, p. 1.

(41) Times-Picayune (New Orleans), August 24, 1983, p. 11.

(42) Ibid.

(43) Ibid.

(44) Daily Advertiser (Lafayette, Louisiana), August 25, 1983, p. 12.

(45) Daily Advertiser (Lafayette, Louisiana), September 14, 1983, p. 3.

(46) Sunday Advertiser (Lafayette, Louisiana), October 2, 1983, p. 45.

(47) Morning Advocate (Baton Rouge), October 7, 1983, p. 6-A.

(48) Times-Picayune (New Orleans), October 7, 1983, p. 18.

(49) Times-Picayune (New Orleans), October 10, 1983, p. 15.

(50) Morning Advocate (Baton Rouge), October 7, 1983, p. 6-A.

(51) Times-Picayune (New Orleans), October 7, 1983, p. 18.

(52) Ibid.

(53) Morning Advocate (Baton Rouge), October 7, 1983, p. 6-A.

(54) Ibid.

(55) Times-Picayune (New Orleans), October 1, 1983, p. 18.

(56) Times-Picayune (New Orleans), October 14, 1983, Sec. 5, p. 18.

(57) Times-Picayune (New Orleans), October 20, 1983, p. 1.

(58) Morning Advocate (Baton Rouge), October 7, 1983, p. 9-B.

(59) Times-Picayune (New Orleans), October 20, 1983, p. 1.

(60) Maginnis, Last Hayride, p. 315.

(61) Wall Street Journal, October 26, 1983, p. 28.

(62) Maginnis, Last Hayride, p. 315.

(63) Ibid.

(64) Letter from David C. Treen, January 9, 1985.

(65) Times-Picayune (New Orleans), March 10, 1984, p. 15.

(66) Letter from David C. Treen, January 9, 1985.

(67) Times-Picayune (New Orleans), March 11, 1984, p. 35.

(68) Ibid.

(69) Morning Advocate (Baton Rouge), June 17, 1982, p. 16-C.

(70) Morning Advocate (Baton Rouge), July 19, 1984, p. 2-B.