pardon

A pardon is a sovereign or executive act that formally absolves a convicted person of the legal consequences of a criminal judgment, without erasing the fact of conviction itself. The parameters of a pardon are: (1) it operates only within a jurisdiction that recognizes the issuing authority as having clemency power; (2) it targets a specific named individual or class of convicted persons; (3) it remits penalties (fines, imprisonment, forfeiture) and may restore rights (voting, firearm possession, professional licensure) — but it does not retroactively declare the accused innocent, nor does it expunge the record unless explicitly coupled with an expungement statute; (4) it is unreviewable in its grant in most systems, making it an act of grace rather than justice. The persistence mechanism is institutional codification: written in clemency statutes and executive orders, recorded in court dockets and criminal records databases, and sustained through the continuing authority of the executive office. The concept exists as a map of a legal mechanism that allows the state to correct its own judgments without reopening trials. [formal: pardus | substrate: behavior | horizon: a moment | explicit: yes | epoch: 0.01]