KY Legislature Seeks to Limit Governor’s Pardon Power

Kentucky Republican leg­is­la­tors have intro­duced a bill—not for the first time—that would seem to make sense regard­less of who holds the governor’s office.

Christian McDaniel, 23^rd District Senator, is the spon­sor of a bill that seeks to amend the Kentucky Constitution to lim­it the Governor’s pow­er to issue par­dons with­in a spec­i­fied peri­od of time before and fol­low­ing a gen­er­al elec­tion dur­ing which a gov­er­nor is elected.

Senate Bill 126 is appro­pri­ate­ly titled, unlike many pro­posed bills, as “AN ACT propos­ing to amend Sections 77 and 240 of the Constitution of Kentucky relat­ing to lim­it­ing the Governor’s abil­i­ty to grant par­dons and com­mute sentences.”

If approved by both hous­es of the Kentucky leg­is­la­ture, the bill will go before the Kentucky pub­lic for a vote on amend­ing the Kentucky Constitution, pos­si­bly in November of 2026.

The bill has been intro­duced sev­er­al times in the leg­is­la­ture but has yet to gain trac­tion.  It was alleged­ly prompt­ed by the con­tro­ver­sial par­dons issued by Governor Bevin dur­ing his last days in office.  However, vir­tu­al­ly every Kentucky gov­er­nor has used their par­don pow­er, not always to the advan­tage of Kentuckians. 

The bill, as writ­ten, does not entire­ly dis­pose of the par­don pow­er of the gov­er­nor.  As stat­ed in Section 1 of the bill, and appar­ent­ly as it will be sub­mit­ted to the vot­ers, it will “lim­it the Governor’s abil­i­ty to grant par­dons or com­mute sen­tences dur­ing the time peri­od begin­ning 60 days pri­or to the gen­er­al elec­tion at which the Governor is elect­ed, and end­ing the fifth Tuesday suc­ceed­ing the election.”

The pro­posed bill also requires the Governor to pro­vide a state­ment of the rea­sons for the par­don deci­sion, and that such state­ment shall be open to pub­lic inspection.

All in all, the bill seems straight­for­ward and, indeed, mer­it­ed. There have been past abus­es of the par­don­ing pow­er, pri­mar­i­ly to gar­ner favors, either from those being par­doned or their sup­port­ers.  Further, the bill does not seek to trans­fer any pow­er from the office of the Governor to the Legislature, so it does not smack of a pow­er grab.

In fact, one might rea­son­ably ques­tion why any gov­er­nor should be vest­ed with the pow­er of the par­don.  It is unlike­ly that the cas­es asso­ci­at­ed with a per­son being pro­posed for par­don are very famil­iar to a gov­er­nor, except on a very peremp­to­ry lev­el.  Cases for par­don should be care­ful­ly exam­ined by an impar­tial board and adju­di­cat­ed based on facts and evi­dence, where­as grant­i­ng such pow­er to a gov­er­nor opens the door to favoritism and polit­i­cal considerations.

Even more rel­e­vant is the same pow­er rest­ing with the President. Every President has abused the pow­er to some extent, even more so with President Trump, with his par­don of sev­er­al hun­dred indi­vid­u­als at one time, indi­vid­u­als who par­tic­i­pat­ed in an insur­rec­tion against the gov­ern­ment and who cre­at­ed thou­sands of dol­lars of dam­age to our seat of gov­ern­ment, even threat­en­ing to hang the Vice-President and oth­er mem­bers of Congress.

So, unless there are sub­stan­tial and unrea­son­able changes to the bill before it is pre­sent­ed to vot­ers as a Constitutional change, it seems per­fect­ly rea­son­able to sup­port this change and bring at least a mod­icum of san­i­ty to the office’s powers.

Maybe next would come a move­ment to remove the President’s par­don pow­ers.  Unfortunately, this would require amend­ing Section 2 of Article II of the US Constitution.