Talk:Burdick v. United States

Henry Ossian Flipper paragraph
I've removed the following paragraph from the end of the article, since its relevance seems to be a matter of Synthesis opinion of a Wikipedia editor in 2007, unsupported by a plain reading of the individual parts: "The status of the Burdick decision is in question as a result of the decision of President Clinton to grant a full and unconditional pardon to Henry Ossian Flipper. Flipper, the first African-American graduate of the United States Military Academy, could not accept a pardon, as he had been dead for over 50 years. In addition, the pardon was considered to be an act that cleared his good name. It did not constitute an admission of guilt. Flipper's clemency application also noted the Supreme Court made it clear, in 1974, that the 'requirement of consent was a legal fiction at best.'"

American officials often issue politically-symbolic edicts that are have no legal application in real life; pardoning a person, who is long dead and whose conviction for treason is clearly not inherited, seems like an obvious example to me, absent any actual evidence of any legal ruling. The claim that Clinton's Flipper pardon had any legal effect on anything at all, let alone bringing an established court ruling like Burdick v. United States into question, appears to be the Wikipedia editor's own assumption. The quotes from Schick v. Reed (419 U.S. 256 (1974)) appears to be taken out of context and passed through a petition, which is, inherently, intended to be a highly biased work of advocacy. There is also no evidence in the paragraph that the president's will, let alone a court precedent, was the result of any of this when the posthumous pardon was issued. --Closeapple (talk) 01:30, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

"implicit admission of guilt"
This has been edited before and reverted, as the edits were frankly more nonfactual than the current text, replacing "admission of guilt" with "appearance of guilt". This does not however excuse the current text. An "admission of guilt" and "acceptance of a confession of guilt" are not the same thing to most English speakers. Despite the seemingly semantic distinction they have substantial differences in connotation. Admittedly, the text in question was misquoted through a paraphrase by a secondary source in such a way that it seemed to support that the court stated it carried an "implicit admission of guilt."

I've taken the liberty of rectifying the misquote without discussion, changing "an imputation of guilt, acceptance a confession of it," to the exact text of the opinion "an imputation of guilt and acceptance of a confession of it[.]" However, while I feel rectifying a misquote is justified without discussion, I'd like to raise the issue of changing the content of the article to better reflect the quote.

My recommendation is to change "implicit admission of guilt" to the same text as the opinion "implicit acceptance of a confession of guilt," as that has least risk of carrying differing connotation from the actual opinion. To make clear the substantial difference in implication and why I feel that it's actually important to address rather than merely semantic, a plea of nolo contendere in a plea bargain carries "implicit acceptance of a confession of guilt," but in places where it exists, exists specifically to avoid the "implicit admission of guilt" in a guilty plea. Dimitriye98 (talk) 08:19, 2 December 2021 (UTC)


 * So does it boil down to whether the accepted confession of guilt is a true confession or a false confession? BMJ-pdx (talk) 22:24, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

Disputed by whom?
I added the "by whom?" template to the following sentence in the article. "Whether the acceptance of a pardon constitutes an admission of guilt by the recipient is disputed."

It was promptly reverted by @130.111.39.47 who stated the next sentence explains by whom. That next sentence is "In Lorance v. Commandant, USDB (2021) the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that 'there is no confession and Lorance does not otherwise lose his right to petition for habeas corpus relief for his court-martial conviction and sentence'."

But I don't see how this sentence supports it being disputed. In fact, the case explicitly says the following: "We consider this the key issue in this appeal because the rest of the district court’s analysis rested upon the premise that Lorance’s acceptance of the presidential pardon constituted a legal confession of guilt, similar to a guilty plea. Specifically, the district court ruled that acceptance of a presidential pardon waives appellate and habeas rights because acceptance has the legal effect of an admission of guilt.  The district court appears to have been the first federal court to make that determination."

In conclusion, I don't see how you can say that the acceptance of a pardon constitutes an admission of guilt is disputed when the only example of that is from a reversed federal case. I suppose you can say the original ruling is evidence of dispute, but would that not mean every reversed case ruling is also technically disputed?

Looking for a discussion on the correct way to convey this in the article, but understand if people want to continue calling it disputed.

StalkerFishy (talk) 17:19, 11 September 2023 (UTC)