Honorable William J. Clinton The White House 1600
Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President:
Agudath Israel of America has long been on record urging
favorable consideration of Jonathan J. Pollard's various
requests over the past years for commutation of sentence or
clemency. Now, as you prepare to leave office, and with this
issue once again being brought to your attention, we take
the opportunity to renew our humanitarian plea.
We acknowledge, as we always have, that Pollard's crime was
extremely serious. But we maintain, also as we always have,
that the exceptional severity of his sentence is difficult
to comprehend and extremely troubling. His espionage took
place during a time of peace. The country for which he was
charged with spying, Israel, was and is a staunch ally of
the United States. He received his sentence after a plea
bargain, not a trial. Under the circumstances, his sentence
of life in prison appears to be entirely out of line with
those received by other convicted spies. We reiterate our
view that these factors merit your merciful consideration as
you decide the fate of this man, who by now has languished
in federal prison for fifteen long years.
Also worthy of your merciful consideration are two other
salient points about the Pollard case: the fact that the
government, in a variety of ways, did not play fair in the
process leading up to the imposition of his life sentence;
and the additional fact that, as Pollard's new motion for re-
sentencing makes clear, he was victimized by his own
attorney's shoddy lawyering. It is fair to assume that
Pollard is still sitting in jail today only because both the
government and his lawyer deviated from the norms that
characterize our system and sense of American justice.
There is something very wrong with that picture, and we
respectfully ask you to set it right.
Let me elaborate on these two points:
1. The Government's Troubling Conduct: After entering into
a plea bargain agreement with Pollard, the government
proceeded in a manner that was in substantial tension with
the commitments it had made under the agreement. In the
words of the dissenting judge in the 1992 D.C. Circuit Court
of Appeals 2-1 ruling rejecting Pollard's §2255 motion to
withdraw his guilty plea:
On its side, the government made three promises of
significance here. First, it would bring to the court's
attention "the nature, extent and value of [Pollard's]
cooperation and testimony" and would represent that the
information supplied was of "considerable value to the
Government's damage assessment analysis, its investigation
of this criminal case, and the enforcement of the espionage
laws."
Second, it would not ask for a life sentence (this promise
was implicit but is not contested by the government), though
it would be free to recommend a "substantial period of
incarceration."
Third, the government limited its reserved right of
allocution to "the facts and circumstances" of Pollard's
crimes. The government complied in spirit with none of its
promises; with the third, it complied in neither letter nor
spirit. [United States v. Pollard, 959 F2d 1011, 1034 (D.C.
Cir. 1992) (Williams, J., dissenting)]
The two judges who formed the court's majority disagreed
with their colleague's bottom line, but they too
acknowledged "the grudging nature of the government's
compliance," 959 F.2d at 1026; that "the government's
presentation was certainly not generous - it could well be
thought stingy," id.; and that "the government was engaged
in rather hard-nosed dealings with the defendant," id. at
1030. The majority took note of the "rather polemical tone"
of Secretary Caspar Weinberger's pre-sentencing memorandum
to the district judge, id. at 1017, conceding that the
Secretary's words might accurately be characterized as "rank
hyperbole," id. at 1025.
The majority did not disagree that the government's
unflattering description of Pollard's character and
motivation constituted a breach of its pledge to limit its
allocution to the "facts and circumstances" of the case; it
merely held that any such breach, "troublesome" though it
may be (id. at 1026), did not rise to the level of a
"fundamental defect" in the sentence that resulted in a
"complete miscarriage of justice" sufficient to warrant
§2255 collateral relief. Id. at 1028.
2. Pollard's Lawyer's Blunders: The recent §2255 motion for
re- sentencing filed by Pollard's new attorneys highlights
yet another reason why there is something fundamentally
unfair about Pollard's life sentence. The motion makes a
convincing case that Pollard's original lawyer made a number
of serious tactical blunders in his representation of
Pollard-- most egregiously his failure to directly appeal
Pollard's life sentence.
Whether or not Pollard's lawyer's strategic blunder in
failing to appeal the life sentence, as well as the various
other critical errors catalogued in Pollard's new §2255
motion, will now entitle Pollard to collateral relief on the
grounds that he was denied adequate representation of
counsel is obviously an issue for the courts to decide.
Beyond technical issues of law, though, it is fair to ask
whether Pollard should be made to suffer such severe
consequences--spending the rest of his life in prison-- as a
result of his lawyer's blunders. That, we submit, is an
issue worthy of your humanitarian consideration.
That Pollard committed an extremely serious crime and
deserved to pay for it is clear. But it is also clear that
for a man to spend his entire life in prison based on
questionable tactics by the government in its prosecution of
a case and clear blunders by his own lawyer simply does not
comport with fundamental fairness. The genius of our
constitutional system is that the Chief Executive has the
power, even when the courts do not, to act in a humanitarian
manner that upholds our nation's most noble traditions of
fair play and compassionate justice.
The time has come, Mr. President, for you to grant executive
clemency to Jonathan Pollard and commute his sentence.
Many thanks for your consideration of this plea - and many
thanks for your eight years of leadership of our great
nation. All best wishes for the new year and beyond.
Sincerely,
David Zwiebel
Executive Vice President for Government and Public Affairs
Agudath Israel of America
A White House spokesman said that U.S. President Bill
Clinton does not intend to pardon Jonathan Pollard before he
leaves office.
It was not clear how much consideration Clinton had given to
Pollard's request for clemency. Clinton has three times
declined appeals for clemency for Pollard, including one two
years ago by then-prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu at the
Wye River peace summit in Maryland. There, CIA chief George
Tenet threatened to resign if Pollard was released.
In March 1994, Clinton refused clemency and said Pollard had
committed "one of the most serious crimes against our
country -- placing national security secrets of the U.S. in
the hands of another country...The enormity of Mr. Pollard's
crime, the harm his actions caused to our country, and the
need to deter any person who might even consider such
actions, warrant his continued incarceration."
