You might not know this about Mark Wahlberg, but back in 1988 when he was a young rascal on the mean streets of Boston, he beat the crap out of an old Vietnamese man with a wooden stick in an attack so vicious it left the man blind in one eye. He also made “numerous unsolicited racial statement about ‘gooks’ and ‘slant-eyed gooks’” while being arrested and was involved in another incident where he and his friends were throwing rocks at black school kids while yelling racial slurs.

Wahlberg spent 45 days in jail (for the assault on the Vietnamese dude), and as we all know went on to bigger and better things (check out his ridiculous mansion, for example). However now that he’s trying to get involved in some restaurant ventures around America, he’s finding it difficult to get a concessionaire’s license thanks to his conviction.

He argues that he’s turned his life around since the incident and has raised millions for charity and philanthropic causes. He also points out that he’d smoked a few joints before battering the guy and thus wasn’t thinking straight.

He says in his application:

I have not engaged in philanthropic efforts in order to make people forget about my past. To the contrary, I want people to remember my past so that I can serve as an example of how lives can be turned around and how people can be redeemed. Rather than ignore or deny my troubled past, I have used the public spotlight to speak openly about the mistakes I made as a teenager so that others do not make those same mistakes.”

Will he get his pardon? It’s Mark Wahlberg, so probably. Maybe he should ask for a pardon for some of his films instead?