Here are some things you don't do when you know you are committing a crime. You don't do it in broad daylight in front of witnesses. You don't enlist the help of those witnesses and invite them to record the event with their smartphones. You don't report what happened to a law enforcement agency or leave evidence of the incident in plain view in a public place.
John Moore and Tanner Mansell, two Florida diving instructors, did all of those things on August 10, 2020, when they took Camryn Kuehl and her family on a snorkeling trip and came across a buoy-tethered fishing line that had caught 19 sharks. Moore and Mansell, who worked for a company that specializes in shark encounters, told the Kuehls the catch was "illegal." Based on that assessment, they hauled in the line and freed the sharks, reported the incident to Florida Fish and Wildlife Officer Barry Partelow, and followed his instructions by leaving the fishing gear on the marina dock in Jupiter. But after it turned out that the shark catch had been authorized as part of a research project, both men were convicted of a federal felony, even though the evidence suggested they had made an honest mistake.
President Donald Trump reversed that injustice on Wednesday, when he granted pardons to Moore and Mansell. Unlike many of Trump's clemency decisions, such as his pardons for violent Capitol rioters and corrupt public officials who abused their powers for personal gain, his intervention in this case epitomizes how "the benign prerogative of pardoning," as Alexander Hamilton called it, should be used: to make "exceptions in favor of unfortunate guilt," overriding "cruel" criminal penalties in circumstances that "plead for a mitigation of the rigor of the law."
