Jack Johnson Will He Be Pardoned?

Oh yes, it did MORON. Johnson's night club doubled as a wh0re house.

 

And today Johnson would have been locked up for assaulting women and the sick.

If you can't give a debate like a reply tp post #247, perhaps it's because you aren't willing to as it would severely compromise your position.

There were 100's of black boxers not in jailed during Johnson's time who had no such problem. Imagine that. In fact, none of them did unless say they committed murder like Jack Blackburn did.

Casting a blind eye at Johnson's self-created problems, and blaming race today wouldn't even make it to a grand jury level.

By best guess is Obama will give Johnson a pardon. It would fit his previous actions and the black lives matter / anti-police movement.

The odd thing is Johnson viewed himself as an individual not race according to the black intenectuals of the time.

My main problem with the black lives matter movement is not with clear cases of police brutality. They should not be shooting themselves, destroying property, using drugs or following people in the race baiting business. They should be giving back to their communities, being better parents, finishing school, obeying the law, ect...

 

One dead person has been pardoned and there are questions as to the legality of such a pardon. A pardon requires an acceptance, and a dead person can neither decline nor accept a pardon.
These pardons probably fall into the same category of foolishness as a president's pardon of a Thanksgiving Turkey- good for a photo-op and otherwise worthless.

Most of the ground rules surrounding presidential pardons were cemented in place by Bur**** v United States (1915). This was 50 years after the end of the Civil War. I didn't bother to check into the blanket pardons issued then because it would be irrelevant to today.

I can find no evidence to support the possibility of a presidential pardon for innocence.
Many state constitutions allow the governors to issue innocence pardons. I can find no reliable indication that a president is allowed to do this. I can find only the contrary.

Yes, Nixon was pardoned without being convicted. His pardon applies to any and all federal crimes he committed while president. Nixon accepted this pardon which impugned guilt to one or more unspecified crimes.

 

Yes, the judges words do speak for themselves, you are just misinterpreting them. That would be up to an appellate court and it would, given the evidence to the contrary, be easy to illustrate that race was not the operative factor he used in sentencing, it was his standing. That is a mitigating/aggravating factor today as it was then. Any attorney worth a **** would bring that out in less than five minutes and suddenly your slam dunk would turn into nothing. Just because the judge uttered the word "race" in his sentencing doesn't mean that he sentenced Johnson because of his race. Quite the contrary, he states that he does so because of Johnson's standing. People get reduced sentences all the time because of the supposed good they have done in the community. I can cite a federal case locally from last year where the biggest wealthiest ******* in my town was running a tax scam to defraud property owners. He received a federal sentence but it was reduced because of his "standing" in the community. Ive seen another sentence reduced locally because of the good a woman did in "the black community." If your standing in the "black community" can be used as a mitigating factor then it can certainly be used as an aggravating factor. Johnson standing was seen as an influential one in which he could have wielded his stature to good or bad example. He chose the latter and as such it was seen as an aggravating factor. There is/was nothing improper about that.

Its ironic in a way because some people want to present Johnson as this champion of his people and an icon of civil rights. Yet, when this very status is brought up in regards to his sentencing suddenly its improper. When you go back and read the comments of so many black leaders of Johnson's era who hated him and argued against the idea of viewing him as a role model and today we see some painting those men as uncle toms because of their criticism of Johnson, clearly standing behind Johnson as a role model but arguing against Johnson's standing as a role model being used as an aggravating factor its really puzzling. Like I said, it takes a special kind of person to twist their mind into the pretzel it has to be to see Johnson as a good man and an innocent victim and a hero who had no responsibility whatsoever for all of the trouble that followed him for most of his life.

These are opinions, no more or less valid than Reznick's, you know, the guy spent pages and pages gleefully telling everyone that only 8 people had ever been convicted under the Mann act. They certainly aren't a comprehensive, exhaustive study of every case prosecuted under the mann act from beginning to end. They are puff opinion pieces catering to an exclusively black audience. If I had a nickel for every time the early 20th century black press misrepresented the facts in its own favor Id be wealthy. I don't blame them, they had a readership to cater to but don't sit here and pretend the black press was infallible even in dealing with issues within its own scope. Its one voice, one opinion among many and frankly, put up most major "white" US newspapers at the time against their black counterparts you will see a far more fair and balanced reporting of issues both black and white in the "white" papers than you will see in the black papers. They were a piece of the larger puzzle, a useful tool to used in conjunction with other sources. Take them on their own as gospel and of course you will get tunnel vision, worse actually.

Right, another opinion. And guess what? He broke the law. So the Seattle Republican got what it wished for. So are we mad that he got caught or that his sentence was aggravated by his public stature?

Finally, this emphasis on the "WHITE" in the term "white slavery" as a means of inflaming the race issue. Really? Anyone who has spent any time reading newspapers from the turn of the century (you know the main organ of information dissemination) can tell you that the term "white slavery" was used A LOT, and RARELY was it ever used in regards to black on white crime, and when it was it was incidental to the larger story of prostitution. I mean lets get real here. Prostitution was a very real, very prominent issue of the day. Exactly what percentage of white prostitutes do you really think were being run by black pimps in late 19th and early 20th century America?? Youre painting America as this uber racist ultra divided place where somehow this army of white prostitutes is being over seen by an army of black pimps and those same white prostitutes are being fed to a steady stream of black johns? Get real. The vast majority of white prostitutes in America during the early 20th century were run by white pimps and white madams and dealt almost exclusively with white johns. I would love to hear the scenario whereby some poor working class African American walks into a ***** house run by Jim Colosimo on Chicago's south side and has his pick of the ladies. Didn't happen. In fact Belle Schreiber and a few other girls were fired from the Everleigh Club for having a after-work dalliance with Johnson who could barely get in the front door of the establishment. If a wealthy famous black man cant do more than stand in the entryway of the club much less patronize its women just how many black men do you think were running around with organized white prostitutes? The term "white slavery" was so called not because of all of these black men enslaving white women into a life of prostitution but simply because of the white women period. Pretending that it was a law specifically designed to "get" black men who transacted with white prostitutes is off the mark. It was implemented to combat prostitution in general. It had literally nothing to do with black johns or pimps and while it MAY have originally been geared specifically to white women but that fell by the wayside in implementation as well. To characterize the Mann act as implemented to go after black men is silly.

 

And every single one of them were not Heavyweight champion of the world.

You want the black community to become more sophisticated? Okay, take back slavery, oppression, and provide more funding to the communities. This is like shooting someone in the leg, and chastising him for not walking.

 

Two things are confusing me. One is this is the exact link I posted when I said that a pardon meant, or could mean, that a person doesn't end up with a criminal record, and you said that this was incorrect, even though this link makes direct reference to it.

The second point I find confusing is that when I went to Wikipedia and looking up the Mann Act it indicated that only 14 people were ever charged under this Statute and of those 14 only 8 were found guilty. The number was so small that they listed all 14 of those charged. But you're saying a huge number of people were charged and found guilty. Is the Wikipedia article incorrect?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mann_Act

Note: your legal knowledge far outweighs mine, I'm just trying to understand the discrepancies between these two issues.

 

Upon further review, at least one person, namely Chuck Berry, was convicted under the Mann Act for transporting a full blooded native American across state lines, so this act was not restricted to only the transportation of white women.


https://law.resource.org/pub/us/case/reporter/F2/295/295.F2d.192.16752_1.html


There Berry met Janice Norine Escalanti, a fourteen-year-old Apache Indian girl, with an eighth grade education. She worked in El Paso as a waitress and engaged in prostitution

 

Yeah but this was in the 60s.

 

Didn't realize there was a time period involved, mind telling me the parameters of this period?

 

Post #232

It wasn't a difference in the parameters of the law itself but the different historical context and the way the law was enforced. I think the law was amended twice. After Chuck Berry's case.

 

With a pardon, the conviction is forgiven and the person is restored to the point they were before being convicted. A lot of this seems like semantics and hyper-technicalities I realize, because everyone knows and still knows they were convicted. But legally, it is significant, because the pardoned person's rights are fully restored and the case can no longer be held/used against them.

With a commutation of sentence, which is a partial pardon, the conviction still stands, but the person's punishment is considered discharged. They aren't forgiven to the same degree. It is just their sentence that is forgiven, or considered complete/discharged. I think they still remain felons.

I'm not sure wikipedia is saying only 14 people were ever charged, and if it is, then yes, it is incorrect. I think it is simply listing the most famous cases.

Incidentally, I think New York Governor Elliott Spitzer was investigated for Mann Act violations, and probably would have been subjected to prosecution had he not resigned. He was paying for a super gorgeous super expensive prostitute who was crossing state lines to be with him.

We can debate whether this should even be a crime. My biggest issue with him is that he was cheating on his wife. Other than that, what two consenting adults want to do should be their decision. If she wants to give it up for money, and he wants to pay, that should be between them. But I'm fairly libertarian.

 

But she wasn't a black woman, and he wasn't a white man. He was a famous black man. Regardless of that point, the reason why he was charged had nothing to do with her race whatsoever, but the fact that the girl literally was a girl - a 14-year-old. Clearly, this was a justifiable prosecution. It was a matter of exploitation of a minor who was actively engaging in prostitution.

 

^ Definitely justified

And even then, you have to question how Feds cherrypicked who to go after with this law. I assume Berry couldn't have been the only person to ever travel across state lines with an underage prostitute.