THE GOVERNOR'S PARDON

Last week's announcement that Gov. Mel Carnahan had pardoned convicted killer Johnny Lee Wilson was met with dismay in some quarters, relief and jubilation in others.

Wilson is mentally retarded, with an IQ of 76 and low verbal skills. He had been convicted of the 1986 killing of a 79-year-old woman and had spent 8 1/2 years in prison for a crime he always denied committing. Wilson was met by a jubilant crowd of 200 upon returning to his hometown of Aurora, while the retired judge who sentenced him joined other law enforcement personnel and the victim's family in continuing to stress his guilt. Charges that his confession was coerced by police, and that a Kansas inmate confessed to the crime in 1988, helped the case attract national attention.

After a long and careful review, Gov. Carnahan satisfied himself that justice had not been done in the Wilson case and issued the pardon. No refutation is offered here. The governor's power to pardon is, as the Latin scholars say, sui generis : unique unto itself. Deriving from the power of kings, it remains one of the few absolute powers in our modern executive, in the exercise of which (absent corruption) a governor or president answers neither to the courts nor to the legislature and is checked only by the voters' decision to grant or withhold their approval at the voting booth.

As such, it partakes of all the imperfections, on which Americans are ruminating anew with this week's verdict from California, inherent in any human attempt to approximate the fleeting but still noble ideal of justice. Here's hoping the governor chose correctly in the case of Johnny Lee Wilson.