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Amnesty (from the Greek ''amnestia'', oblivion) is an act of justice by which the supreme power in a state restores those who may have been guilty of any offence against it to the position of innocent persons. It includes more than Pardon , in as much as it obliterates all legal remembrance of the offence.

Amnesties, which, in the 's amnesty of March 13 , 1815 from which thirteen eminent persons, including Talleyrand , were excempt; the Prussia n amnesty of August 10 , 1840 ; the general amnesty proclaimed by the emperor Franz Josef I Of Austria in 1857 ; the general amnesty granted by President Of The United States , Andrew Johnson , after the American Civil War ( 1861 - April 9 , 1865 ), in 1868 , and the French amnesty of 1905 . The last act of amnesty passed in Great Britain was that of 1747 , which pardonned those who had taken part in the 1745 Jacobite Rising . The biggest acts of amnesty in the history United States was granted on June 29 , 1972 ( Furman Vs. Georgia ) when over 950 death row inmates (including Charles Manson ) got their death sentences commuted to life in prison and the 1986 amnesty of illegal aliens pursuant to the Immigration Reform and Control Act that year that legalized over 2,700,000 aliens who either were illegal aliens or didn't qualify for legitimate visas.


RELATED USES OF THE TERM

  • Amnesty is sometimes now the term used to denote cases of pardon by a country where offenses are not stricken from the record and individuals proclaimed innocent. Instead, those individuals receive some lesser sentence in response to an admission of guilt.


  • The term amnesty is also used to describe any initiative where individuals are encouraged to turn over illicit items to the authorities, on the understanding that they will not be prosecuted for having been in possession of those items. A common use of such amnesties, is to reduce the number of firearms or other weapons in circulation. Several public schools with a zero-tolerance policy on drugs or weapons have an "amnesty box" in which students may dispose of contraband objects accidentally brought to school without consequence.


  • Amnesty is now a common in South Africa. The '''TRC''' ( Truth And Reconciliation Commission ) holds amenesty trials as a form of reconciliation through truth, where the guilty party can admit and take responsiblity for their actions. Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu also used amnesty to bring South Africa closer to democracy.