[Editorial]  Barbour, Clean Up the Mess

view larger image »

August 6, 2008

As Dale Leo Bishop anxiously waited on Mississippi’s death row for the state of Mississippi to kill him for his accessory role in the murder of Marcus Gentry, a man who brutally executed his ex-wife in the street was enjoying his freedom, courtesy of Gov. Haley Barbour.

A judge sentenced Michael David Graham to life in prison for the murder of his ex-wife, Adrienne Klasky Graham, in 1989. Despite no chance of parole, Graham still sidestepped the justice system. Enter Good Ole Boy, er, Gov. Barbour.

On July 17, 2008, just days before Bishop—a man who didn’t even commit murder, but was an accessory—was to die, Barbour suspended Graham’s sentence, citing his “good behavior.” Six days later, the state executed Bishop.

After some digging, the JFP’s Ronni Mott and Sophie McNeil reported that Graham was not the first domestic killer to whom Barbour had granted freedom. Out of the five pardons or suspended sentences Barbour has granted, all of them were in prison for murder or manslaughter. Of that number, four had killed their past or present girlfriend/wife.

Those domestic killers include: Graham, who shot his wife point-blank in the head as she waited for the traffic light to change; Bobby Hays Clark, who broke into his former girlfriend’s home as she and her current boyfriend slept and shot her in the neck; Clarence Jones who stabbed his former girlfriend to death—22 times; and Paul Joseph “Jody” Warnock, who shot his 18-year-old girlfriend in the back of the head as she slept.

Not only has Barbour slighted the judicial system—in at least one instance that we are certain of, he didn’t even bother to consult the parole board before suspending the killer’s sentence—but he has also sent a very clear message to the nation: Men who violently kill women in Mississippi are rewarded.

Is this really the kind of message we want to send out?

Gov. Barbour has shown time after time that he works in his best interest and the best interests of his friends. He should start working on behalf of the people who elected him, and admit that his own actions show the unfairness of a system where one man can go free after calmly blowing his wife’s head off, and another dies for being an accessory to murder. Now, with the revelations about medical examiner Steven Hayne’s allegedly shoddy work over the years, it is all the more urgent to clean up the state’s criminal-justice system.

If not Barbour, the people of Mississippi should declare a moratorium on the death penalty, and on mindless pardons of killers, until this system is aired out and cleaned up. And that clean-up needs to start today.

COMMENTS

100 recent comments »