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Defeated GOP governor Bevin pardoned 428 criminals, SOME VIOLENT, in a spree lawyers are calling an ‘atrocity of justice’ (1 Viewer)

This is just the next page in the state government playbook if Republicans lose the executive. The Republicans in Wisconsin rolled back a lot of the power they gave Walker when Evers was elected. People should have been appalled at that. Kentucky couldn’t do that so, this guy, pardons criminals instead. 
These events are the modern day, “I’m leaving cause no one picked me and I’m taking my ball too.”

 
Mario Kart said:
This is just the next page in the state government playbook if Republicans lose the executive. The Republicans in Wisconsin rolled back a lot of the power they gave Walker when Evers was elected. People should have been appalled at that. Kentucky couldn’t do that so, this guy, pardons criminals instead. 
These events are the modern day, “I’m leaving cause no one picked me and I’m taking my ball too.”
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This governor pardoned a man that beheaded a woman and that is somehow comparable to Tony Evers not having more power? 

Fascinating. 

 
parasaurolophus said:
So you didnt compare the two things?

Fascinating. 
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Um, no, I did not compare the two things. I mentioned:

1) Republicans rolled back powers in Wisconsin they had given to Walker once Evers was elected.

2) Bevins pardons criminals, for what appears, to be for no reason.

I gave two examples of what Republican governors did on their way out of the door. Walker could roll back powers because he had an assembly that would allow it. Bevins does not have that same luxury in Kentucky, therefore, it looks like, he did something he could do upset the apple cart.

My concluding statement of, "These events are the modern day, “I’m leaving cause no one picked me and I’m taking my ball too," was just that, a concluding statement. Wisconsin did one thing similar to what Michigan did. Bevins couldn't, so he did something else. Comparison... no. Listing what Republicans do when they don't get picked is not comparing... its listing what these crybabies do.

 
IvanKaramazov said:
Willie Horton is actually exactly what this story reminded me of.  The details are a little different, but it's bizarre to see a governor voluntarily choosing to let violent criminals loose.
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The "details," as you call them, are very very different. Horton was freed pursuant a weekend furlough program duly enacted by the state legislature and signed by a GOP governor, and didn't return as required. Dukakis had no direct role in the decision, which seems like a fairly substantial difference to me. This is a governor using his unilateral pardon power to permanently free criminals on his way out of office.

Anyway, I don't really like the overreacting to this; my guess is that most of the people he freed are harmless and were victims of our overly aggressive carceral state. But Bevins botched it royally by doing it on his way out, by not having the people go through a panel-type review (which is how it worked at the federal level prior to Trump's authoritarian regime), and not having statements ready explaining his actions beforehand. He brought this on himself, although I'm sure he'll find a way to blame the liberal media if he hasn't already.

 
TobiasFunke said:
The "details," as you call them, are very very different. Horton was freed pursuant a weekend furlough program duly enacted by the state legislature and signed by a GOP governor, and didn't return as required. Dukakis had no direct role in the decision, which seems like a fairly substantial difference to me. This is a governor using his unilateral pardon power to permanently free criminals on his way out of office.

Anyway, I don't really like the overreacting to this; my guess is that most of the people he freed are harmless and were victims of our overly aggressive carceral state. But Bevins botched it royally by doing it on his way out, by not having the people go through a panel-type review (which is how it worked at the federal level prior to Trump's authoritarian regime), and not having statements ready explaining his actions beforehand. He brought this on himself, although I'm sure he'll find a way to blame the liberal media if he hasn't already.
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The bolded part is 100% false.  The Massachusetts legislature amended the furlough law to exclude first degree murderers, but Dukakis vetoed that legislation.  He was actively, affirmatively in favor of letting first degree murderers out of prison on weekend passes.  In 2019 that sounds like something I'm just making up to smear the guy, but it's an accurate description of his position in the 1980s, hard as it is to believe.

 
People completely mis-remember the whole Willie Horton thing because it's so hard to believe that any governor of any state would be in favor of weekend furloughs for first degree murderers.  But that's really what happened. 

On October 26, 1974, in Lawrence, Massachusetts, Horton and two accomplices robbed Joseph Fournier, a 17-year-old gas station attendant, and then fatally stabbed Fournier 19 times after he had cooperated by handing over all of the money in the cash register. His body was stuffed in a trash can so his feet were jammed up against his chin. Fournier died from blood loss.[2] Horton was convicted of murder, sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, and incarcerated at the Northeastern Correctional Center in Massachusetts.[3]
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Democratic Presidential candidate Michael Dukakis was the governor of Massachusetts at the time of Horton's release, and while he did not start the furlough program, he had supported it as a method of criminal rehabilitation. The state inmate furlough program, originally signed into law by Republican Governor Francis Sargent in 1972, excluded convicted first-degree murderers. However, in 1973, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that this right extended to first-degree murderers, because the law specifically did not exclude them.[6][7] The Massachusetts legislature quickly passed a bill prohibiting furloughs for such inmates. However, in 1976, Dukakis vetoed this bill arguing it would "cut the heart out of efforts at inmate rehabilitation."[8]
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On June 6, 1986, he was released as part of a weekend furlough program but did not return. On April 3, 1987, in Oxon Hill, Maryland, Horton twice raped a woman after pistol-whipping, knifing, binding, and gagging her fiancé.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Horton

 
IvanKaramazov said:
The bolded part is 100% false.  The Massachusetts legislature amended the furlough law to exclude first degree murderers, but Dukakis vetoed that legislation.  He was actively, affirmatively in favor of letting first degree murderers out of prison on weekend passes.  In 2019 that sounds like something I'm just making up to smear the guy, but it's an accurate description of his position in the 1980s, hard as it is to believe.
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Right, but he had no role in the decision to furlough this specific guy.  He chose a particular incarceration policy, just as all state governments do, and then had to answer for that policy decision to the people of Massachusetts (and, thanks to race-baiting efforts so awful that their architect apologized to Dukakis on his deathbed, the American people).  You may disagree with the policy, but a broad criminal justice policy decision by a sitting governor is completely different from a unilateral decision to free particular criminals, some of whom are from families of campaign donors, on your way out the door.

 
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Oof. Dukakis? 

That whole thing just went through my head and I remember the death penalty question and his wife. Disaster in a tank. All of that imaging wasn't smearing; he was probably among the most liberal Senators ever and his run for national office probably rivaled by only McGovern.  

The Summer of '68 certainly changed American politics forever. Au Contraire, big man: The hippies won, Lebowski. The bums won! 

 
I am of the general belief that sentences are (in general) way too long in the US. So I came in to this story with some heavy skepticism. 

But it looks like this governor was pardoning violent criminals who had only been convicted in the last few years. That's not so good. Glad there is an investigation.

 
whoknew said:
I am of the general belief that sentences are (in general) way too long in the US. So I came in to this story with some heavy skepticism. 

But it looks like this governor was pardoning violent criminals who had only been convicted in the last few years. That's not so good. Glad there is an investigation.
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Sentencing in the US is one of the most inconsistent things around. So many stories of people locked up for way longer than they should be, but then almost daily I read about a crime that was committed by somebody where I say how the heck were they out of jail already??? 

I actually just ran into somebody working at the grocery store that I couldn't believe he was out already. Nice enough guy, but no way should he be out of jail already. The flip side to that is there is probably another guy that did far less and served twice as long. 

 
parasaurolophus said:
Sentencing in the US is one of the most inconsistent things around. So many stories of people locked up for way longer than they should be, but then almost daily I read about a crime that was committed by somebody where I say how the heck were they out of jail already??? 

I actually just ran into somebody working at the grocery store that I couldn't believe he was out already. Nice enough guy, but no way should he be out of jail already. The flip side to that is there is probably another guy that did far less and served twice as long. 
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It'd be cool if we could train some AI to do sentencing for us.  Or at the very least, use it as a guideline to inform judges across the country of the standard punishment for a crime, standard deviations, and be able to on-demand, pull back all relevant sentencings similar to the case at hand.

 
TakiToki said:
US sentencing is bat#### crazy, and this many people being pardoned is a fantastic thing.
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So less than 2 years is enough for a convicted child rapist?

We should let people out of jail that murder and behead women right?

Two years good enough for shooting a man?

Convicted for murder and burying the body in 2010 paid his dues?

Convicted for two murders in 2011 good to go? 

 
parasaurolophus said:
So less than 2 years is enough for a convicted child rapist?

We should let people out of jail that murder and behead women right?

Two years good enough for shooting a man?

Convicted for murder and burying the body in 2010 paid his dues?

Convicted for two murders in 2011 good to go? 
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If it means another 400 people that didn't do things like that are freed, yes.

 
Mario Kart said:
I gave two examples of what Republican governors did on their way out of the door.
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No you didn't.

The house and senate in WI rolled back the powers that they gave just a few years prior. I know you want to paint it as some thing a governor haphazardly did on the way out the door, but that is a gross distortion of the truth. They gave expanded control to a man that they knew they were going to agree with the vast majority of the time and knew they could take it away from him at any time. Then when somebody was elected that they knew they weren't going to agree with, they took it away. Nobody got really bent out of shape when they gave Walker those abilities because they knew that most votes would be a formality and this eliminated any more shenanigans from people willing to depart the state regarding a very small scope of issues. I don't think they should have given the authority that they did, but I can at least acknowledge why they did it and that it really was mostly just a formality.

Democrats only made an issue of it when it got rolled back to try and paint it as some sort of underhanded move when in reality the most underhanded move involving this is democrats wanting to keep those controls in place and thinking that it was bad form that they did so. If the house and senate go democrat they can just as easily pass such measures and it probably wouldnt even be a blip, since again it would be all three branches controlled by one party.

To try and compare that to a guy that just released a bunch of criminals, some of them awful ones, is absurd. To make it a party wide accusation is also absurd.   

 
TakiToki said:
He pardoned a bunch of other folks too. Don't let perfection be the enemy of good.
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But do you even know anything about the other cases he pardoned? Seems very weird to paint this as a good thing without knowing the details of what makes it a good thing to offset the details of the known bad things we have read. 

Based on his explanations given for the murderers and a child rapist that served less than two years and his lack of even speaking to the prosecutors I have zero reason to believe he did his homework on the other 422 people. 

 
TakiToki said:
He pardoned a bunch of other folks too. Don't let perfection be the enemy of good.
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You understand that the governor is under no obligation to pardon everybody, right?  He can pick and choose, and pardon the people who deserve pardoning while keeping murderers in prison.  It's not an all or nothing thing.

 
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