This is the real crux of the issue. Blanket pardons shouldn’t be a thing. If you want to pardon someone, it should be specific. Which crimes? Where? When? Who was victimized? Who else was involved? What was the outcome of the crime?

The SCOTUS has already ruled in Burdick v. US that accepting a pardon requires admitting guilt of the crime you’re being pardoned of. The wording of the ruling was that a pardon carries “an imputation of guilt and acceptance of a confession of it.” The SCOTUS has consistently held that a pardon does not overturn a guilty conviction. Instead, it removes the punishment for the crime. You’re still unequivocally guilty after a pardon.

It shouldn’t be some sort of “I pardon you for waves arms in air vaguely” power, because that turns the whole “needing to admit guilt” part into a sly wink wink elbow nudge situation. It puts the person’s crimes in a quantum Schrödinger state. The person accepting a vague pardon is inarguably guilty of something, because they admitted guilt when they accepted the pardon. But the court doesn’t know what they’ve admitted to until a prosecutor tries to indict them, and they go “oh no you can’t prosecute me, I was pardoned.”