Hey governor, right this wrong: Please pardon Plaxico

Dear Gov. David Paterson:

I hope this letter finds you well. You're busy. I know. You're the governor of New York, for cryin' out loud. You have things to do like balance budgets and keep tabs on Eliot Spitzer's hookers. This will only take a minute. Promise.

Plaxico Burress is headed to jail ... for shooting himself? (Getty Images)

This is an official plea, governor: On behalf of all things decent, please pardon Plaxico "Gunsmoke" Burress.

There are several things those of us in the Free Plax Movement (or FPM) will immediately grant you, governor. Burress isn't smarter than a fifth-grader. Burress is the kind of meathead seen once in a millennium, like a rare comet sighting. Only someone with the IQ of Kim Kardashian's rear end would ever shoot himself in the foot.

But as legal analyst Roger Cossack stated after Gunsmoke's two-year jail term was recently announced: Jail should be for criminals, not stupid people.

There are the criminally stupid like Burress and the criminally natured like, oh, John Gotti. Burress isn't the latter.

Idiot ... yes. Clown ... sure. True criminal mastermind ... nope.

While Burress might have treated a deadly weapon with the same kind of casual impishness that a character from Mad Men treats a cosmopolitan and pack of smokes, he was nevertheless railroaded.

He was railroaded with the help of the mayor of New York. The most troublesome aspect to the Burress case is the actions and words of the arrogant millionaire blowhard bully, Michael Bloomberg, who poisoned public opinion with his pleas that Burress should, in Bloombully's words, go to the slammer.

It would be an outrage, Bloombully screamed, if Burress received special treatment. Yet isn't that exactly what Burress received, governor? Wasn't he punished more harshly because of his celebrity status?

The statistics demonstrate the laws of New York aren't always evenly applied. Burress was charged with second-degree gun possession, which requires a minimum of 3½ years in jail. Yet prosecutors in your state, Mr. Paterson, commonly drop the charges to third-degree possession, which doesn't carry a minimum prison sentence.

This discretion, as several media reports and legal analysts have stated, allows prosecutors far too much leeway in deciding who is worthy of a reduced charge and who is not.

When the mayor opened his pie hole it all but forced prosecutors to go for jail time when there is compelling statistical evidence that some cases similar to Burress' have ended with defendants doing little or no jail time. Thus in many ways, Burress' celebrity status was unfairly used against him.

This really isn't equal justice, governor, and you know it.

It's not about liking or disliking Burress. Between you and me, governor, Burress is an arrogant athlete and that vanity finally burned him to the point where he'll now be hanging with Andy Dufresne and Warden Norton in Shawshank.

I know what you're going to say: Burress might've shot someone by bringing a loaded weapon into a club. True. But I might be the next Denzel Washington. Might doesn't matter.

The only person who was injured was Burress. He's spending two years in jail for shooting himself. Really, seriously, truly think about that for a moment.

Smart people like you, governor, want some sort of precedent before stepping into the political dog poop that would be a Gunsmoke pardon. There are plenty of previous pardon examples. Presidents have pardoned the treasonous, the jury tampering, the tax evading, the draft dodging, the bank robbing (Patty Hearst) and even criminal-in-chief Richard Nixon. All of those cads and gargoyles did far worse crimes than Burress and still they were handed a get-out-of-jail free card.

There's even sports precedent. In April 1974, New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner was indicted on 14 criminal counts, including obstruction of justice. He was pardoned by Ronald Reagan.

President Obama can't pardon Burress because this isn't a federal case, but you can, governor.

Do the right thing, David. May I call you David?

Free Gunsmoke.

Now.

Signed,

Mike Freeman
Chairman
Free Plax Movement