A hat-tip to Digby. Hilzoy in 'Obsidian Wings' asks: "So I asked myself: self, if George W. Bush is so worried about excessive sentences, how has he acted in previous cases in which a sentence might seem excessive? For example when someone else confesses to the murder you were convicted of and you ask for a stay of execution in order to conduct tests that will establish your innocence... (hmnn), no dice."
You would think being sent to a gas-chamber for a crime you didn't do, might be considered the ultimate 'excessive sentence', but obviously not, for then Governor Bush.
Hilzoy has a short list of 'questionable cases' that Bush failed to pardon or commute when he was Governor of Texas, the hanging state:
Serving twelve years for a rape that DNA testing shows you didn't commit does not get you a pardon. Being represented by a lawyer who slept through large chunks of the trial does not get you a pardon. Being convicted of murder in proceedings that a court-appointed special master describes as ""a breakdown of the adversarial process" caused by the incompetence of your lawyer does not get you a pardon, even when someone else confesses on tape to the murder you were convicted of..
But when you are Scooter Libby, convicted of four felony charges, and you face thirty months in jail, that's excessive.
