Honorable Thomas C. "Cleat" Calvery
No. 19830829
Mississippi Attorney General Opinions
August 29, 1983
Honorable Thomas C. Cleat Calvery
Chairman
Alcorn County Election Commission
Post Office Box 430
Corinth, Mississippi 38834 Dear Mr. Calvery:
Attorney General Bill Allain has received your request for opinion and has referred it to the undersigned for research and reply.
You advise that the individual to whom you refer was sentenced in the Circuit Court of Alcorn County, Mississippi upon a plea of guilty to the crime of receiving stolen property to serve three (3) years in the State Penitentiary. The three (3) year pentitentary sentence was suspended and the individual was required to serve ninety (90) days in the county jail and placed on probation. The jail sentence was served and the probation satisfactorily completed.
You further advise that the Mississippi Legislature by House Bill No. 1186 (Chapter No. 914), Laws of 1983, restored the right of suffrage to the named individual.
Additionally, you advise that Governor William Winter by Executive Order No. 473, dated June 21, 1983, ordered . . . that any civil rights lost . . . be restored to the said person.
In this connection, you present several questions which are set forth below followed by the response thereto.
(1) Whether said Executive Order is a pardon?
Pardons by the Governor are controlled by § 124 of the Mississippi Constitution of 1890, which contains the limitation in cases of felony that . . . no pardon shall be granted until the applicant therefor shall have published for thirty days in some newspaper in the county where the crime was committed, and in case there be no newspaper published in said county, then in an adjoining county, his petition for pardon, setting forth therein the reasons why such pardon should be granted. You do not provide any facts indicating that the above and foregoing constitutional requirements have been met as a precondition to the granting of a pardon.
The Executive Order to which you refer, no doubt, is based upon the provision of § 47-7-41, Mississippi Code of 1972, Annotated, being a statute authorizing the Governor, in his discretion, to restore any civil rights lost by virtue of the plea of guilty. This statute, however, being a statute and not a constitutional provision, must be viewed in the light of the constitutional...
