In the waning hours before he was due to hand Mississippi's governorship to Phil Bryant, Haley Barbour issued 203 pardons. On that list were several sex offenders, child rapists, and five convicted murderers. One problem--it seems that at least some of those pardons violated public-notice requirements in the state constitution. State attorney general Jim Hood sought to have them reversed, and yesterday a judge agreed.
Hinds County Circuit Judge Tomie Green concluded "there is a substantial likelihood of success" on the claim the pardons violated the state constitution. "There is a sufficient threat of irreparable injury should the subject individuals be released based upon the purported gubernatorial pardons," she said.
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That included five inmates, four of them convicted murderers, who have gone free.
Green ordered them to report each day to the state Department of Corrections and to her courtroom on Jan. 23.
Green's injunction, viewable here, is one ugly order. It states in pretty blunt terms that Barbour issued these pardons even though Mississippi's constitution requires that any felons requesting a pardon must have their requests published at least 30 days in advance. Hood argued that in many cases, the notices never ran on time, and in some cases never ran at all. Say what you will about Michael Dukakis' furloughs, but at least Dukakis made the pretense of acting within the law. Not so with Barbour.
Apparently Barbour not only shredded the state constitution, but also violated basic standards of decency. According to Hood, Barbour never spoke with the victims' families, let alone notified them.
One of those families is the family of Tammy Ellis. Back in 1993, she was murdered by her husband, David Gatlin, in cold blood while she held her then two-month-old son. Gatlin eventually became a "trustie" at the governor's mansion before being included in the wave of pardons. Needless to say, Tammy's family is on pins and needles.
It is unclear whether Gatlin published the legal notice in time to be pardoned, but if he failed to, he should go back to prison where he belongs, said Tammy's sister, Tiffany Brewer. "He is a violent criminal."
With him free and able to freely get a gun, her family is "pretty much on lockdown," she said.
If Gatlin did not post his legal notice in time, "what's he got to lose in killing somebody else?" she asked. "We're hoping for the best, and maybe we can get him back in prison where he belongs."
As I mentioned in my initial writeup about this, one of the biggest travesties is that Barbour didn't have the decency to pardon Gladys and Jamie Scott, the two sisters who were given life sentences for a robbery that, in all likelihood, they didn't commit. The star witness in their case was a 14-year-old boy who wasn't even allowed to read the affidavit before signing it, and was all but browbeaten into testifying against them--which, to my mind makes it a near-certainty that the Scotts are innocent. They were only paroled because Jamie faced almost certain death from kidney failure unless she got a transplant. Barbour finally relented and paroled them on condition that Gladys donate a kidney--but now they have to pay Florida (where they're living with their mother) $52 a week for the rest of their lives. I'm all for giving people a second chance. But there's something fundamentally wrong with pardoning murderers and not granting them to people who are not just innocent beyond a reasonable doubt, but beyond all doubt.
While it remains to be seen whether the embarrassment represented by the Scott sisters' case will be rectified, at the very least it looks like the latest embarrassment Barbour perpetrated on Mississippi and the nation certainly will be. It's hard not to imagine that a good number of those pardoned will be on their way back to prison. After this fiasco, I don't want to hear anything about Willie Horton ever again.