When this pardon thing started, one thought that came to my mind as I looked over the 200+ names on the list was, “Wow. From now on, every time I cover a major crime, I need to not only check our archive and the courthouse files for background, but also this list of Haley’s pardons.”
But like I said, that was just one thought I had. It was in with the other thoughts that so many Mississippians were having, like, “Who are all these people? Where are they from? Why did Governor Barbour wait so late to release this list?” And of course, there are a myriad of others.
As this thing has moved along, and as Clarion-Ledger reporter Jessica Bakeman has done a truly professional and incredibly commendable job with all the heavy lifting on this story, I have had occasion to field plenty of thoughts and opinions from people all over the state, from all walks of life. I’m sure you’ve heard a lot of the same things:
One assistant district attorney said he felt like it was a slap in the face for all the hard work done by the prosecutors and law enforcement all over the state who had worked so hard to put these people away.
A housewife followed that by pointing out that taxpayer money has gone to fund every one of those investigations, and now it’s down the toilet.
A family member of a victim said the family now has to worry every time they round a corner that they’ll run into the man who took the life of their loved one, and now he can legally own a gun.
There are girls who were teenagers not too long ago and had their innocence taken by a teacher… and now if his pardon is constitutional, that man can go teach at any school anywhere without having to tell anyone of the more than a dozen sex charges against him.
One woman told me today that she deleted her Facebook and changed her phone number, hoping she wouldn’t be found by one of the people whose pardon is pending.
But on the other hand, a pastor asked how what Barbour has done is any different than what Christians believe Jesus did for us. If he is to preach forgiveness, he said, how can he condemn Barbour’s decision?
A former investigator pointed out that the only winner in this whole situation is Joseph Ozment, the pardoned killer/ governor’s mansion trusty that hasn’t been found to be served, because he got his pardon and got out, and he’s probably out of the country by now. He also made the point, “Why do we call it the ‘Department of Corrections’ if we don’t believe they correct the inmates’ problems?”
A county supervisor said he figures some of the people on the list have probably gotten out of prison and made respectable lives for themselves, and just want to be able to vote again, and with low county election turnouts, maybe that’s not so bad.
A businessman said drugs can make even the best people do the worst things, and obviously, drugs had to have been an influence in some of the more heinous crimes on the pardon list. Hopefully, he said, these folks have kicked the habit.
Some people want to make Barbour the good guy because he’s a Republican, or Jim Hood the bad guy because he’s a Democrat. Or vice-versa. Politics are always going to come in somewhere.
There are thousands of arguments, as we are well aware, on whether these pardons are legit or not, and everyone has different opinions on every facet of the debate.
In the words of one of my law enforcement sources, in a tone that conveyed the cold truth of it no matter how anyone feels about it: “You know what I think about this? Job security.”
As Dustin Barnes and I helped Jessica research the names on the list, these are some I found information on:
• One man was convicted of aggravated assault and was sentenced to life imprisonment without eligibility for parole as an habitual offender. He thereafter filed numerous petitions for post-conviction collateral relief, all of which were denied. The trial court found in 1998 that he was ineligible for release under the cited code section.
• Another man plead guilty in August 1996 for beating a terminally ill woman to death in Oct. 1996 in her Gulfport home. She was beaten to death with a cane. He was arrested after neighbors found him sitting in a ditch covered in blood.
Autopsy results showed the woman choked to death on her own blood after he had broken her jaw with the cane.
• A young man was charged after a 5 month investigation with 13 counts of sexual battery and one count of forcible rape in 2003. All charges involve female students under age 18 at a high school in north Mississippi, authorities said.
• Another man was convicted in Scott County in June 1999 on charges of homicide, aggravated assault and possession of a weapon by a convicted felon. His sentence was already suspended in 2004 by Gov. Ronnie Musgrove.
Those aren’t the best, nor the worst of them. Those are just some of the ones I found as I researched. As it turns out, Turner, who was pardoned posthumously, was Barbour’s caretaker when he was young, which could fill in some of the blanks on “What was the governor thinking?”
As Jessica wrote on Jan. 13: Barbour, whose father died when he was a child, was looked after by his grandfather, a judge. When the caregiver took ill, an inmate, Leon Turner, was assigned to help.“Leon helped take care of us,” Barbour said. “He helped raise us. He was our playmate, our friend.”
Now we wait to find out whether or not the AG’s office was actually aware of these pardons before the fact or not, and what the fallout will be of the 30-day publishing rule, and what kind of legislation will change the face of the Mississippi Governor’s prerogative to pardon whoever he wants.
No matter what the outcome of that, crime will continue. People will do unspeakable things to each other, police will investigate and make arrests, prosecutors will fight in the courtroom, brave people will testify, and juries of their peers will deliberate until they come up with verdicts. Guilty people will sometimes go free for whatever reason, and we hope that innocent people will not be found guilty, though we know it has happened before.
The families of both the victims and the criminals will go through unbearable heartbreak. And it looks like if convicted, at this point the criminal’s ultimate fate lies in the hands of a politician.
Objectively, from where I sit in the crime desk at the newspaper, to coin a trite phrase, right now “it is what it is.” The players that got us here have got to finish fighting it out, and we’re seeing history in the works.
So when the shouting is quieted and the dust settles, no matter how it comes out, may every one of us ask ourselves, “At what cost?”
This blog was originally posted in my Clarion-Ledger blog, “Boots and Badges.” That blog has since been deactivated.
There are things I just can't tell you 