Pardons are forgiveness. They don’t roll back the clock, although the Supreme Court ruled in 2021 that acceptance of a pardon is not an assumption of guilt.
Was acceptance of a pardon an "assumption" by the court? Is it not "admission* of guilt", which I believe itself was never the case as this was based on a judge's aside that people didn't accept pardons because it was *percieved* as "an admission of guilt", i.e. the "percieved" part was not actually articulated in court but rather the judge was completing a thought before it was fully articulated.
What I find interesting is that the 5th amendment no longer applies after a pardon. The pardoned can no longer claim that protection for the crime he was convicted of.
My apologies I made a mistake. The Burdick SCOTUS case from 1915 said “carries an imputation of guilt and acceptance of a confession of it”
In 2021, an appeals court opined that: “not every acceptance of a pardon constitutes a confession of guilt.”
I thought the 2021 case was a Supreme Court case, and I was incorrect. I think in the public eye the pardon is viewed differently based on however the story is told.
