ARKANSAS' EXECUTIVE CLEMENCY CARROT - A 25 YEAR NIGHTMARE - Part IV - Government - http://www.maxpagesplus.com/darkevilworld/The_Clemency_Carrot_Part

DUAL JUSTICE AT ITS FINEST

The next milestone in Arkansas' crime and punishment perversity and saga was set in 1979. In that year, then Governor Bill Clinton granted executive clemency to several ADC prisoners, including 27 men and women who had been sentenced to life imprisonment decades before. It was in that year that the 1969 lifers with parole eligibility actually began making parole, while the pre and post-Act 50 lifers had no parole eligibility at all. I think that even a hard-liner on crime would agree that it is reasonable and justified that all those lifers who had served 20 or 30 years or more already by 1979 were then legitimately asking the governor why these other offenders were allowed to make parole when having served only a relative handful of years, while they themselves would have to die in prison even though they had served two or more decades on their life sentences already.

Apparently agreeing with the inherent injustice of this "dual justice" situation, Governor Bill Clinton decided to implement a better justice and granted several clemencies to pre-1969 lifers. His real motives are unknown, but also irrelevant. What is relevant is that the public's and Clinton's opponents' reaction was, of course, predictable. Just at a time when the media's hate and fear mongering had reached new heights, and just when people wanted to be tough on crime and criminals and have some "truth in sentencing", Clinton had "decided to let a bunch of killers and rapists loose."

Given the pervading misconceptions already held by the public at large at that time, the outrage was certainly understandable, at least for the public. Many old line politicians, however, knew the better truth of it, but it had simply become an effective political election maneuver to brand an opponent "soft on crime and criminals," and it was unquestionably political suicide to do anything that appeared to the public to be "soft on crime", regardless of what the truth was. After all, Dukkakas of Massachusetts had lost the election for the Presidency of the United States on that very basis. Similarly, here in Arkansas, Frank White then defeated incumbent Bill Clinton for the Arkansas governorship in 1980 primarily because Clinton had "let all those criminals go."

When Bill Clinton was then re-elected in 1982 after the public had forgiven him for his momentary clemency indiscretion in 1979, he was not about to make the same political mistake again. Ever.

BRIEFLY LEAPING FORWARD

The injustice of the current sentencing and clemency situation has grown so distorted today, that even if Governor Huckabee now granted at least a few clemencies, the injustice would actually be aggravated further still, simply because there are now many hundreds of prisoners who deserve clemency after having served 20 or more years already. It would be the same "dual justice" situation of the 1969 lifers with parole eligibility all over again. More, assuming that Mr. Huckabee does grant at least a few clemencies, who will those few be? Frankly, I think that even if good ol' boy politics will not be the reason our Governor grants clemencies, the net effect is still the same thing, because out of the many hundreds of deserving applicants, those who have influential attorneys or insider help of some kind are still going to be the few that will get clemency. De facto good ol' boy practices are the same as the real thing, just different semantics.

AND BACK AGAIN TO BEHIND THE SCENES

To interject another crucial point, somewhere right around the time of the 1977 criminal code revision, "someone" implemented an internal prison policy that stated that anyone serving a sentence of "30 years to life" would become" eligible for consideration of executive clemency" in seven years. The Governor's office denied implementing the policy, and blamed the ADC, while the ADC denied implementing it, and blamed the Governor's office. I cannot emphasize enough that BY NO MEANS did this mean that anyone would actually be granted clemency in seven years, only that in some abstract and elusive way they would be "fairly considered" after that time. The real political motive behind this policy would only reveal itself over time. However, this seven-years-to-eligibility policy was, in fact also that first illusory "clemency carrot", dangled out to all of us for the purpose of creating false hope, and it is the reason why I titled this article as I did. Since that time, that carrot has been snatched away and moved years into the future repeatedly.

I must admit that after I was first confined in 1981, I, too, went for the clemency carrot trick truly hoping that after I had served the required seven years, I would be fairly considered for clemency. I particularly had a deep hope for that because I knew that the national average parole on life terms even for murder was seven years, everywhere except in Arkansas. Although I was guilty of the $264 toy gun robbery for which I was given life without possibility of parole, I felt I should be granted clemency because I had earned it after seven years, or after ten or twelve; or after 15 or 18 years since. Particularly since the 1969 lifers who were convicted of even multiple murders or recidivist rapes were paroling all around me.

I also deserved it because some of my own jurors later stated that they had no intention of sentencing me to die in prison; that they had just wanted me to serve the "six or seven years" they thought I would have to serve on a life sentence before being able to parole.

By 1982, the Arkansas lifer problem had taken on yet another twist. Not only were those sentenced prior to 1969 who had not been commuted in 1979 still confined (or dead or dying) even after 20 or 30 years of confinement, and not only were those convicted in 1969 being paroled while those committing the same or even less serious crimes had no parole by law, but those masses who had been sentenced to excessive and unjust terms after and as a result of the 1977 Criminal Code revision were now becoming legitimately "eligible" for executive clemency because they had in fact served the required seven years to be "fairly considered for" clemency by policy. The situation wasn't as simple as that, however. Forgiven Governor Bill Clinton still was not about to commit the clemency mistake of 1979 all over again, and the sentencing and clemency nightmare had not only not gone away, it had grown progressively worse. Offenders by the hundreds, who legitimately deserved clemency were pleading for it, and there was no way the governor would grant them clemency, even if he knew the truth.

From 1977 to about 1982 or 1983 the clemency screening boards of the ADC were summarily rejecting hundreds of clemency applications each year, solely on the basis that the prisoners had not served seven years. They found merit only in rare cases of the pre-1969 lifers, some of whom had by now served more than three decades. Thanks to abominable living and sanitation conditions and sub-standard medical care, they were also dying at a rate that would soon eliminate them as a problem.

In several public addresses, Bill Clinton stated that he regretted the rejection of this or that clemency applicant, even when there was public support for it, because he felt he "should follow the advice' of his Executive Clemency Board. Therefore, since they had found the prisoner without merit he felt he should not overrule them.

However, by 1984 and 1985 even the Executive Clemency Board soon reached a point where the majority of its members found it more and more difficult to morally and in good conscience justify summarily rejecting clemency applications for the masses of prisoners who had served decades and who did deserve clemency by anyone's fair reckoning. On the other hand, the lawmakers at the Capitol refused to deal with the injustice, and the governor could not deal with it without sealing his own political fate. So what was done? The seven year clemency carrot policy was snatched away and moved to twelve years, that's what. Five years of life and hope erased for all of us - just like that, SNAP! It was a bitter blow for all those who had been striving all along to get their lives back in order and to pay the fair debt they owed to society.

Arbitrarily, capriciously, and maliciously dangling the clemency carrot five years further away would in practical terms rearm the screening committees, the Board, and the governor with being able to summarily deny hundreds of applications simply because many prisoners unjustly punished under the 1977 criminal code would not have served the newly and suddenly required twelve years in order to be "fairly considered." This unjust, retroactive change in the policy is also the first reason why I said earlier that in Arkansas the longer we actually serve on our sentences, the more onerous and perverted they become. However, in order for the policy change gambit to work, at least two of the suddenly "bleeding heart" Board members either had to be convinced that finding more and more prisoners "with merit" for clemency created an intolerable political problem for the governor. Or, they had to be dismissed.

Beginning in about 1987 the narrow majority of the Executive Clemency Board began recommending more and more prisoners for clemency, especially those who had been sentenced prior to 1969 or up to 1977 (what few of them were still alive). Talk about pressures on the governor's office! No longer could Clinton conveniently point to the seven years and then to the twelve years "eligibility" policy to summarily deny hundreds of applications. No longer could he say that he was denying them all only because he believed in following the "advice of the Clemency Board"; that only worked when the Board was denying everyone. On the other hand, it was still political suicide to grant even those clemencies that the Board was now recommending, especially since they became an ever larger number, year by year.

It is my belief that both Ms. Carol Bohannon, an Arkansas Parole Board member, and Mike Gaines, then Chairman of the Arkansas Parole Board (now Post-Prison Transfer Board) quit those jobs on the mirrored Executive Clemency Board in part because the degree of injustice and the political nature of it all was completely out of control. Despite the Board's "with merit" recommendations for dozens of prisoners, Clinton still did not commute any of their sentences. Then, for reasons never fully known, Carol Bohannon and Mike Gaines eventually vacated their positions on the Board. Needless to say, it was an apparent priority for Clinton to appoint replacements who were, well, "a little more sensitive to" the political dilemma created by the growing number of favorable votes for clemencies. Clinton needed Board members who had the good sense to recognize that Arkansas seating a President was more important than doing something about the sentencing and clemency injustices. And find them he did.

CLICK TO CONTINUE

Sign Guestbook

View Guestbook

LINDA TANT MILLER

WASHINGTON

USA

tantsy1@msn.com

Visitors: 01515

Page Updated Thu Jan 24, 2008 6:54am EST