This may be a local issue but I think it speakes volumns nationally. Do you know someone like this? Do you think it's right that these women are denied their rights?
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050826/OPINION01/508260378
Show them mercy
Almost 10 years ago, as Brereton Jones was leaving the governor's office, he granted clemency to nine women. Each had been imprisoned for killing a husband, boyfriend or father. But a close inspection of their records showed they had been defending themselves after years of physical abuse.
The betrayals they had experienced were heart-breaking. One father, among other atrocities, had repeatedly allowed a landlord to have sex with his daughter, in lieu of rent. Another had taken a baseball bat to his daughter's knees.
One woman's boyfriend had broken her jaw an hour before she killed him. She pulled the trigger while trying to escape his next threat: that he was going to break her neck.
Now a coalition of groups that help victims of abuse is lobbying Gov. Ernie Fletcher to pardon these nine women and two others in order to restore their voting and civil rights. The group makes a good case: None of the women is a danger to society. None has had any further run-ins with the law. And yet, because they were granted clemency instead of full pardons, they are prevented from voting, from volunteering in their children's schools and from getting promotions at work. Perhaps that's fair, given the seriousness of their crimes. But perhaps it's not, considering they were defending themselves.
One step the Governor should definitely take is to review the cases of another group of women also imprisoned for killing their tormentors. The crucial work -- hundreds of hours of investigation -- was done by former Gov. Paul Patton's staff, the state parole board and public defenders. But Mr. Patton didn't act, not because the women didn't deserve help but because the end of his term was overwhelmed by his own problems and other pardon requests.
Gov. Fletcher has said that his policy will be to grant pardons, and presumably clemency, whenever he discovers an injustice, not just at the end of his term.
That's how it should be. And in these women's cases, injustices do exist. Their files are thick with documentation of being abused, of seeking protection, of calling the police. They killed in self-defense.
They probably shouldn't have been imprisoned at all, but domestic violence is a tough issue to understand. In Kentucky, we have a history of being particularly un-understanding.
That's why the Governor should act, sooner rather than later. The women former Gov. Jones set free have proved worthy of that kind of mercy, and it seems likely this next group would, too.