Pardon Me?

Today’s post begins with a fractal called Light Up The Sky. It made it in honor of Independence Day so I suppose it bears some relevance to the post at hand. Like my previous post it was awfully hard to find a fractal that was appropriate to the topic.
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The pardon has a long and storied history: we all remember movies and television shows where the Governor issues a pardon that arrives in the nick of time to save the unjustly condemned prisoner. This is a lovely image but in the real world it seldom happens. State Governors (particularly in California) have been known to commute executions to life sentences but “get out of jail free” cards are rare.
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One of those cards was presented yesterday (July 2): President George W. Bush has commuted the prison sentence of his friend and former White House Aid Lewis “Scooter” Libby saying that he “respect’s the Jury’s decision” but that the punishment was “too harsh.” (Anyone who DIDN’T see this coming from a mile away should probably have themselves checked for Alzheimer’s Disease since they are obviously losing their minds.) In a small bit of cleverness the President left the man’s probation in tact (thus avoiding the worse charges of blatant favoritism while keeping his right wing allies happy.)
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I’m not going to go into the particulars of the case. To be completely honest, I don’t have all the details: they are no longer relevant in any case. What I AM going to rant about is the unmitigated gall that someone in a position of power would have to actually overturn a Judgment because they didn’t approve of it for whatever reason. Whenever this happens I lose a little more faith in the American Judicial System.
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The last time this occurred was the famous “Dog Mauling” in San Francisco. In case you don’t remember the case it went something like this: Dianne Whipple was attacked and killed on January 26, 2001 by two Presa Canaris/Mastiff dogs in the hallway of the apartment building. Marjorie Knoller and her husband Robert Noel were convicted of several crimes including involuntary manslaughter and owning a mischievous animal that caused the death of a human being. The jury also found Knoller guilty of second degree murder. After almost a month’s testimony and Jury deliberation the Trial Judge threw out the Jury's verdict because he didn’t feel it was warranted and convict and sentence the pair for lesser crimes. If a Judge3 can do this, what's the point of having a trial in the first place?
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When ANYONE, be they Judge or President, choose to throw out a verdict for whatever reason I find this very disturbing. If someone higher-up can simply wipe away a decision because they don’t like it I think it’s wrong in all but a few cases. (Even if I disagree with a verdict, the jury made the decision and the convicted needs to go through the appeal process.) A decision to do this should never be arrived at lightly and only undertaken in the most extreme cases. In these two cases I just don’t believe that standard has been met: good job Mr. President. You’ve shown your true colors yet again . . .