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Politics : The Republican Crash 1999 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: gerard mangiardi who wrote (375)	12/16/1998 11:45:00 AM
From: Zoltan!	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 609

>>They are not impeachable offenses. Further if a crime was committed Clinton can be prosecuted after his term expires so there is no valid argument that he would be above the law if not impeached. He won't be prosecuted after hes out because there is insufficient evidence to make a case. Well, you are obviously completely wrong. They are impeachable offenses and Clinton and wife will be prosecuted after he leaves office if he is not first removed from office by the Senate. Your pathetic "argument" amounts to jury nullification: December 16, 1998 The President Tries Jury Nullification . . . By Jonathan Turley, professor of law at George Washington University. In 1649, Lt. Col. John Lilburne convinced a British trial jury that he should be acquitted of treason because he was "not guilty of any crime worthy of death." This was the first known case of "jury nullification"--in which a jury is asked to acquit a guilty defendant for political, racial or social reasons. Since Lilburne's trial, jury nullification has been used by every type of criminal actor whose guilt was beyond question. It had never been used by a president as a constitutional claim, however--until last week. In a change of strategy, President Clinton's advocates began arguing that even if he committed high crimes and misdemeanors, he is "not guilty of any crime worthy of removal." The adoption of a jury-nullification argument was a last resort for the White House. There is growing consensus among members of Congress and the public that Mr. Clinton has committed crimes in office, including perjury before a federal grand jury. It became vital, therefore, for the White House to assure reluctant congressmen that they could oppose impeachment in the face of such evidence. White House lawyers and law professors started arguing that it is improper to impeach a president when the Senate is unlikely to convict him. Since Mr. Clinton's party controls 45 Senate votes--well more than the 34 needed to acquit--his removal from office appears a remote possibility. Thus, Mr. Clinton's defenders argue, a House member who believes Mr. Clinton committed high crimes or misdemeanors can claim to be supporting the Constitution by not sending the matter to the Senate. Impeachment, however, is not simply a process of removal. Many months ago, I suggested that the likely and legitimate outcome in this matter could be for the House to impeach Mr. Clinton but for the Senate not to remove him from office. Mr. Clinton would end up becoming only the second president ever to be impeached--a far more effective punishment than a censure resolution. This was not to suggest that removal is unwarranted, but rather that even if the president is not removed, impeachment would still serve an important constitutional function. My proposal was almost immediately labeled "Impeachment Lite" and, my personal favorite, akin to "banishing Napoleon to Elba but leaving him in power." As we approach the final vote on the House floor, I would like to explain why impeachment without removal is a better constitutional approach than jury nullification in the House. Impeachment and removal are different questions that the Framers gave to different houses of Congress. Impeachment does not require removal, and the Framers actually anticipated that most impeachments would end in acquittal, as have the majority of impeachments of judges and the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson. Precedents from before the American Revolution bolster the point. In England impeachment was viewed as a method for political condemnation even after officials left office. The only impeachment case that the Framers directly cited in the Constitutional Convention was that of Governor-General Warren Hastings, for abuses in India. When Hastings was impeached, he had already left office. Nevertheless, legislators like Edmund Burke insisted on impeachment as a way of expressing public contempt for his conduct in office. The Framers made it extremely difficult to remove a president but allowed the House to impeach him by a simple majority vote. Why? Because they viewed impeachment as a check on presidential misconduct. By performing its accusatory function, the House plays a critical deterrent role. Framer James Iredell noted that a president "may be a man of no principle [but] the very terror of punishment will perhaps deter him." Academics often discuss deterrence as a relationship between the likelihood of detection and size of a penalty. In the context of impeachment, deterrence is best achieved through the danger of detection rather the imposition of a penalty. Because the Constitution is written to make a penalty less likely, and because no penalty short of removal is allowed, it is essential that the House fully perform its detection and accusatory role to achieve deterrence. The Senate may choose to acquit, but the House standard for deterrence is maintained. Impeachments tend to concentrate the presidential mind. Future presidents are put on notice that this is conduct for which they could be removed. Like all politicians, presidents routinely engage in cost-benefit decisions as to the likely consequences for their conduct. Mr. Clinton may be the best example of why a credible threat of impeachment is so vital as a check on presidential crimes. Deterrence of impeachable offenses is most needed for chief executives who define morality only by its consequences. A moral relativist is the most dangerous president, because he will comply with only those laws that present a meaningful likelihood of detection or penalty. By excluding certain types of crimes from the definition of impeachable offenses, or by nullifying recognized impeachable offenses, the House weakens the only deterrent that applies directly to the president. If Mr. Clinton's jury-nullification argument prevails, it would create a dysfunctional and dangerous constitutional tradition. Under this approach, some presidents would be simply too popular to impeach. A future president might even commit a crime that would increase his popularity, either because the crime is popular or because the victim is unpopular. The unlikelihood that the Senate would remove a president for popular criminal acts is hardly an excuse for failing to vote one's conscience in the House. Moreover, it is distinctly possible that a president may commit high crimes and misdemeanors but also head the party in complete control of the Senate. Should the House refuse impeachment because of the impossibility of conviction in such cases? The integrity of a legal system depends on its adherence to principles that those it must judge often ignore. When a grand jury indicts, we reaffirm a common pact to hold each other to the rule of law. Like an indictment, an impeachment is more a statement about the expectations and values of a society than it is about the character or conduct of a president. We define something about ourselves in declaring what conduct we will not tolerate in our leaders. Impeachment makes a statement about who we are, not about what Bill Clinton has become. This is why it is so important to hold a president to account regardless of the ultimate decision of a trial. This is why the president must be impeached. interactive.wsj.com