Proclamation 4483

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Proclamation 4483

Granting Pardon for Violations of the Selective Service Act, August 4, 1964 to March 28, 1973

Proclamation

Date: January 21, 1977

Source: U.S. Department of Justice. "Granting Pardon for Violations of the Selective Service Act, August 4, 1964 to March 28, 1973." January 21, 1977. <http://www.usdoj.gov/pardon/carter_proclamation.htm> (accessed May 31, 2006).

About the Author: James Earl Carter, who always signed his name as Jimmy Carter, served as the thirty-ninth president of the United States from 1977 to 1981.

INTRODUCTION

On January 21, 1977, his first day as President of the United States, Jimmy Carter issued a pardon to all Americans convicted of or still sought for draft violations in the Vietnam War. With this action, he met a larger campaign pledge to speed the nation's healing from the tumultuous Vietnam era. The American people split almost evenly on support for the pardon, however, demonstrating that Vietnam still divided the nation.

The Vietnam War had begun almost unnoticed by most Americans, but by the mid-1960s, it had become the dominating fact of American political life. American views of the war conflicted profoundly. While many Americans viewed the war as a noble effort to stop the spread of Communism, an equal number of Americans viewed U.S. involvement as unjustifiable. The last Americans left Vietnam in 1975, but the war remained extremely fresh in American memory in 1977.

Carter expected that his proclamation would anger or disappoint more than half of all Americans. He was correct. The pardon covered the 2,393 draft evaders who were under indictment, about 9,000 who were convicted or pleaded guilty and who now have their records cleared, and about 1,200 who were under investigation for alleged violations. It also covered all the young men, estimated at hundreds of thousands, who simply never registered for the draft.

PRIMARY SOURCE

Acting pursuant to the grant of authority in Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution of the United States, I, Jimmy Carter, President of the United States, do hereby grant a full, complete and unconditional pardon to: (1) all persons who may have committed any offense between August 4, 1964 and March 28, 1973 in violation of the Military Selective Service Act or any rule or regulation promulgated thereunder; and (2) all persons heretofore convicted, irrespective of the date of conviction, of any offense committed between August 4, 1964 and March 28, 1973 in violation of the Military Selective Service Act, or any rule or regulation promulgated thereunder, restoring to them full political, civil and other rights.

This pardon does not apply to the following who are specifically excluded therefrom:

All persons convicted of or who may have committed any offense in violation of the Military Selective Service Act, or any rule or regulation promulgated thereunder, involving force or violence; and
All persons convicted of or who may have committed any offense in violation of the Military Selective Service Act, or any rule or regulation promulgated thereunder, in connection with duties or responsibilities arising out of employment as agents, officers or employees of the Military Selective Service system.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this 21st day of January, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and seventy-seven, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and first.

SIGNIFICANCE

Shortly after the amnesty announcement a poll showed that the American people opposed the pardon by a forty-six percent to forty-two percent plurality. Opponents of his proclamation argued that Carter did too much by allowing those who evaded the draft to come home without fear of prosecution. Meanwhile, many groups that supported a general amnesty viewed the pardon as doing too little because it did not include deserters or soldiers who had received a less-than-honorable discharge. Civilian protesters, selective service employees, and those who initiated any act of violence also were not covered in the pardon. To remedy this gap, Carter subsequently offered a short window of amnesty for deserters and an opportunity for former service members to upgrade undesirable or general discharges. During the Vietnam era, 2,600 men deserted and 432,000 service members received undesirable or general discharges. Only a small portion eventually upgraded their discharges. Carter's program did not affect the 1,903 dishonorable and 28,759 bad conduct discharges issued to servicemen after court-martial.

On June 24, 1977, the U.S. Senate voted forty-four to thirty-eight to block the funds that permitted the implementation of the amnesty program. The cutoff of funding aimed to keep federal employees from processing dismissals of draft-evasion charges and from acting to end investigations of alleged evasion. However, U.S. Justice Department officials announced that the cutoff would have little practical effect, since virtually all investigations and all draft evasion indictments had been dropped.

Only 283 draft evaders took advantage of the amnesty. About 7,500 American draft resisters in Canada had renounced their American citizenship and they had no intention of returning to the U.S. The U.S. Justice Department had prosecuted 9,042 persons for Selective Service violations and the Senate action had no effect on the processing of pardons for these men. However, only a small number of the former soldiers sought pardons.