This is an opinion column.

Richard Scrushy wants a pardon from President Donald Trump, which shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Isn’t everyone asking for one these days?

Last week, the former HealthSouth CEO stood in front of the same federal courthouse where, almost 20 years ago, a jury convicted him and former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman of bribery. Scrushy spouted the same conspiracy theories he’s shared for decades. His wife, Leslie, alleged collusion between the government and the actual Devil, which she says she can prove through Biblical numerology.

“He was charged with [federal] Statute 666,” she said. “So that was very clear to me where this attack was coming from.”

I’ve heard it all before.

I was there in 2006 when the U.S. Marshals put the cuffs on Scrushy and Siegelman and walked them from the courtroom. I heard the testimony in that trial and the arguments from both sides. I stood through the daily press conferences on that same sidewalk outside the courthouse. I can still remember when this was purported to be a Republican conspiracy to ruin Siegleman, not a Satanic one, although I’m sure some will say those aren’t mutually exclusive.

I can sit here all day and nitpick and debunk the claims those two felons have made over the decades. I’m well-practiced at it. But the shortest path to the truth is this: Barack Obama didn’t give these guys pardons. Neither did Joe Biden — and he gave out more clemency than any president in history.

If their prosecution was a Republican conspiracy led by Karl Rove, were Barack and Joe in on it, too? Or did the Devil make them not do it?

Now it’s Trump’s turn at bat — again.

Presidential pardons seem a lot easier to come by these days, and not just for Hunter Biden and Jan. 6 insurrectionists. Ask Rod Blagojevich, the former Illinois governor convicted of putting Obama’s vacated Senate seat up for sale.

“I’ve got this thing and it’s f—ing golden,” Blago said on government recordings. “And I, I’m not giving it up for f—ing nothing.”

The first Trump Administration was the golden opportunity he needed to clear his record.

Later, Joe Biden turned the pardon into a legal shield for his family and his tax-dodging, gun-totin’ son.

Last month, New York Mayor Eric Adams got something like a pardon when the Justice Department dropped the charges against him over prosecutors’ objections and resignations. He hadn’t even gone to trial yet.

Today, the first convicted felon President of the United States decorates the West Wing with his mug shot, and the New York Times reports, the rich and politically connected are lining up to plead political persecution and fueling a cottage industry of lobbyists and lawyers with access to the White House.

If this were a Batman comic, the gates of Arkham Asylum would be wide open.

Why shouldn’t Richard Scrushy ask for one, too?

The problem here, though, isn’t only that presidential pardons are being handed out willy-nilly.

The problem is that the power of the executive pardon is still sometimes a necessary thing — just not for these people.

The justice system didn’t fail Siegelman or Scrushy, but it did fail Robin “Rocky” Myers, whose death sentence Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey commuted last month.

It failed Toforest Johnson, who still sits on death row despite his own prosecutor saying he deserves a new trial.

It failed Christopher Barbour, another Alabama death row inmate, despite DNA evidence pointing at someone else. He’s stuck there because his lawyers missed a deadline.

For these men, Gov. Kay Ivey is the last line of defense; presidents can’t pardon state crimes. The hesitancy she and her predecessors have shown for using that power sits at the other extreme from the White House, neglecting a duty fo the office.

Sometimes our justice system glitches — a missed appeal, or evidence uncovered too late — and sometimes it convicts people, like Rosa Parks, of crimes that never should have been crimes to start with.

The power of the pardon was supposed to be the break-glass/pull-lever emergency break that saves our justice system from injustice, and not a favor for those on the presidential friends and family plan.

Not even if the Devil made them do it.

Kyle Whitmire is the Washington watchdog columnist for AL.com and winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize. You can follow him on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, X , Threads and Bluesky.