Lindsay Clancy's attorney asked Trump to pardon a killing he now argues there's no evidence happened.

…(cont) Which put me in mind of a case I wrote down back in September. I've got it here somewhere — hang on — here it is. September 8th. Lindsay Clancy's attorney, in his first interview since her state trial ended in a mistrial, called on President Trump for a pardon. I wrote the date down twice, I think, because I didn't believe I had it right the first time. September 8th. Does a pardon need a killing underneath it, or doesn't it?

I keep a toolbox out in the garage — nothing fancy, the good wrench and the one that still turns if you lean on it right. You don't open that box unless something in the house is broken. My wife would tell you I've opened it for things that weren't, strictly speaking, broken yet, but even then I opened it because I believed something needed fixing. A man doesn't reach for the toolbox over a house with no crack in it anywhere.

I'm sorry — I keep going back to September 8th. I know I already brought it up once. But here's a piece of it I hadn't gotten to: he didn't mention a pardon in a hallway, off the record. He said it to a reporter, on camera, using the President's name. I wrote it down close to word for word.

There's another date I've got circled, September 4th — four days before that interview. Same attorney asked a Massachusetts appeals court to force the trial judge to remove or question the one holdout juror, to keep the case from ending in a mistrial. Then on September 21st he went back and asked the judge to investigate that same juror's paperwork. I'm sorry, I know that's a third date now. I don't know what to do with three dates that close together.

And this Tuesday, back in Plymouth Superior Court, the same attorney stood up and argued — for the first time, CBS says, not in the original trial, not once — that there is no evidence Lindsay Clancy killed her three children. Not a lesser charge. Not a question of her state of mind. No evidence at all.

So I keep asking myself, and I'm sorry to keep circling the same file, standing there holding a Registry form I already had once before — does a pardon mean anything if there's no killing underneath it to forgive? And can a person get the form both ways, not at window nine, not anywhere I've ever stood in line?

I'm sorry, I keep coming back to September 8th, I know I do. But I wrote it down that morning, sitting in my own car outside the Registry, waiting on window nine to open: a lawyer asked a sitting president to pardon a killing that his own client's defense would, three weeks later, stand up in open court and call unsupported by any evidence at all.

I really do have to get going — my brother-in-law's calling about that title again. But excuse me, before you go: does a pardon need a killing underneath it, or doesn't it?