Pardons of violent offenders, including a child rapist and a man who beheaded a female victim, provoke widespread backlash
Josh Wood in Louisville, Kentucky
Fri 13 Dec 2019 15.40 EST
Days after leaving office, the former Kentucky governor Matt Bevin is facing widespread backlash and calls for an investigation following a number of controversial pardons of violent offenders on his way out the door.
Pardons are traditional at the end of a governor’s term – and most of the Republican’s more than 400 pardons were for drug offenses. But a number of the pardons were for particularly violent crimes, like a woman who gave birth in a flea market porta-potty and dumped her newborn into the toilet’s septic tank; a man who hired a hitman to murder his business partner in front of his family; a man convicted of beheading a woman and stuffing her body in a 55-gallon drum; a man convicted last year of raping a nine-year-old child; and a man convicted in a home invasion homicide whose brother hosted a fundraiser for the governor last year.
In that last case, Patrick Baker was pardoned just two years into his 19-year sentence for an incident in which he and several others impersonated law enforcement officers to gain entry to a home before shooting and killing a man inside. Two others imprisoned for the crime were not pardoned, despite prosecutors saying that Baker was the one who pulled the trigger.
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Bevin’s conclusion is starkly at odds with the judge who sentenced Baker, David Williams, who according to the Louisville Courier-Journal said: “I’ve never seen a more compelling or complete case … the evidence was just overwhelming.”
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/13/kentucky-matt-bevin-pardons-violent-offenders
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