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Bush Pardons Denver Lawyer, a Cocaine Offender

By Jeralyn, Section Other Politics
Posted on Tue Dec 20, 2005 at 11:39:11 PM EST
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President Bush has granted a pardon to a former drug offender and current Denver lawyer, Wendy St. Charles.

A Denver lawyer was pardoned Tuesday by President Bush for drug-related crimes she committed more than two decades ago. Wendy St. Charles, now 49, was among 11 people who received presidential pardons.

In 1984, she was sentenced to four years in prison in Illinois for conspiracy to conduct a narcotics enterprise and distribution of cocaine, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. She was also put on four years of special parole and four years of probation, which were to run consecutively with her sentence.

Why Ms. Charles? My surmise is her employer lobbied hard for her.

Currently, she is a licensed attorney who works for MDC Holdings, Inc., the largest Denver-based home-building firm and one of the top 10 home builders in the U.S.

Larry Mizel, chair of the MDC Holdings Inc., and his wife, Carol, are major supporters of the Republican Party and its candidates, donating thousands of dollars to their campaigns. Michael Touff, MDC's senior vice president and general counsel, declined to comment.

Bush's office says the 11 pardonees had this in common.

"Each demonstrated full acceptance and responsibility and remorse for their offense, and each has repaid his debt to society," he said.

Update: The White House press release on the pardons is here. [Via Sentencing Law and Policy which provides analysis and lots of links.]

< Judge Resigns From FISA Court in Bush Protest | Raw Story: Fitz to Set Sights on Others After Rove >

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    Bush Pardons Denver Lawyer, a Cocaine Offender | 13 comments (13 topical)
    Re: Bush Pardons Denver Lawyer, a Cocaine Offender (none / 0) (#1)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Wed Dec 21, 2005 at 12:09:04 AM EST
    She does not need a pardon at all... I guess Bush is trying to do the same thing that Clinton did just before Bill left the office.

    Re: Bush Pardons Denver Lawyer, a Cocaine Offender (none / 0) (#2)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Wed Dec 21, 2005 at 04:22:35 AM EST
    Maybe she's Bush's supplier.

    Re: Bush Pardons Denver Lawyer, a Cocaine Offender (none / 0) (#3)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Wed Dec 21, 2005 at 05:10:05 AM EST
    OK, it was 20 years ago! Get over it! The whole "she did cocaine in 1984, let's hang that bell around her neck forever" attitude just knots my shorts. Let's not mince words here. I hate Bush and the Rove he rode in on. I don't doubt that this pardon had major political underpinnings. But for Ms. Charles, Congratulations!!. I wish the same good fortune for the rest of us, even we who can't afford to buy our pardons.

    Re: Bush Pardons Denver Lawyer, a Cocaine Offender (none / 0) (#4)
    by jimakaPPJ on Wed Dec 21, 2005 at 05:31:37 AM EST
    ytterby - Guess "No good deed gos unpunished" applies.

    Re: Bush Pardons Denver Lawyer, a Cocaine Offender (none / 0) (#5)
    by Edger on Wed Dec 21, 2005 at 06:03:09 AM EST
    "Each demonstrated full acceptance and responsibility and remorse for their offense, and each has repaid his debt to society," [Bush] said. Nice to know he'll recognize Wendy St. Charles and 10 others for doing what he is incapable of himself.

    Re: Bush Pardons Denver Lawyer, a Cocaine Offender (none / 0) (#6)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Wed Dec 21, 2005 at 06:49:29 AM EST
    Taking a step back from the individual pardonees, it's clear that the Bush pardons follow a pattern of forgiving only a handful of long-forgotten, minor crimes post-sentence. This is a fairly crabbed view of the pardon powers, since they are really token symbolic gestures as used by Bush, simply to get a list of supposedly sympathetic minor criminals. No prosecution is halted, no prisoners are freed, no convictions are overturned as a result of these pardons, as they might have been (e.g., Mark Rich, Richard Nixon). Yet, they do pretend to nod in the direction of mercy and justice and Christmas benevolence, since Bush knows that no one will look behind the numbers of "X prisoners/term" pardoned in comparison to other presidents or the normal expectations. They will not ask what crimes are being pardoned or the real effect of the pardon.

    Re: Bush Pardons Denver Lawyer, a Cocaine Offender (none / 0) (#7)
    by jimakaPPJ on Wed Dec 21, 2005 at 07:48:08 AM EST
    jackl - IS your position that Mark Rich was innocent?

    Re: Bush Pardons Denver Lawyer, a Cocaine Offender (none / 0) (#8)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Wed Dec 21, 2005 at 07:53:36 AM EST
    The whole "she did cocaine in 1984, let's hang that bell around her neck forever" attitude just knots my shorts. She did cocaine? I read: she was sentenced to four years in prison in Illinois for conspiracy to conduct a narcotics enterprise and distribution of cocaine That's not "she did cocaine"; shame on you. You learn that style of argumentation at a 700 Club retreat?

    Re: Bush Pardons Denver Lawyer, a Cocaine Offender (none / 0) (#9)
    by scarshapedstar on Wed Dec 21, 2005 at 08:27:29 AM EST
    Hmm. Well, cocaine shouldn't be illegal, so whatever she did, she probably shouldn't be in jail for it. Of course, there's the whole "did you bring enough gum for the whole class, Billy?" issue -- a lot of other people deserve pardons. But the presidential pardon shouldn't be a cornerstone of the justice system, just a safety net. So, I submit that Bush should have just ended the whole stupid drug war by now, partly because if times are as desperate as he says they are ("15,000 terrorists living in America! Yeah, and they're trying to take over the world!") we ought to have some desperate measures. Couldn't one year of drug war have funded two Katrina reconstructions? Unfortunately, the War Against Pulling Our Heads Out Of The Sand And/Or A**es is still in full effect.

    Re: Bush Pardons Denver Lawyer, a Cocaine Offender (none / 0) (#10)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Wed Dec 21, 2005 at 02:08:56 PM EST
    sixteenwords Nope, never been to a 700 Club group hug, will never go to one. Avowed atheist here. The closest I've ever been to the 700 club was trying to fend off the born-qagains during my stay in a federal prison. I apologize for using the verb "did" instead of "was associated with" or some other verb form more descriptive of our current state of knowledge of what she acually did. I should know better.

    Re: Bush Pardons Denver Lawyer, a Cocaine Offender (none / 0) (#11)
    by kdog on Wed Dec 21, 2005 at 03:48:46 PM EST
    1 down, a couple million to go. Get busy GDub, you could save your legacy as the liberator of non-violent drug offenders. If the Senate reads the Bill of Rights and gets the impeachment going, you might not have much more time. Chop Chop.

    Re: Bush Pardons Denver Lawyer, a Cocaine Offender (none / 0) (#12)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Thu Dec 22, 2005 at 11:14:07 AM EST
    She was dealing drugs and got a pardon? Who cares it was twenty years ago? It's not that we're talking possession and some "Rockefeller drug law gone beserk" conviction: she was selling illegal drugs.

    Re: Bush Pardons Denver Lawyer, a Cocaine Offender (none / 0) (#13)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Thu Dec 22, 2005 at 11:23:19 AM EST
    Yes, actor212, it was 20 years ago. She was found guilty by a jury of her peers, sentenced by an official US court to four years in prison. She complied with the terms of her sentence (presumably). Let me break this down: She did wrong, she got caught, she was punished according to the law of the land. Now it's over. The sentence was four years, not twenty. On a more practical note, do you want to pay to keep all those convicts in jail forever? Remember, it's between 5-10% of the population. Free room and board for 25 million of your close friends....forever....out of your pocket.

    Bush Pardons Denver Lawyer, a Cocaine Offender | 13 comments (13 topical)