I found Barbara Finch’s Op Ed extremely compelling and there is an increasingly loud chorus of voices calling attention to this conspicuous failure of gubernatorial leadership. Many
officials, including a former Republican Governor of my home state of Maryland, Bob Ehrlich have publically urged governors and even the President of the United States to responsibly exercise their vital executive power to grant clemency in cases that are clearly in need of review and demand their attention and active intervention. Constitutions
of many states leave that power exclusively to the Governor and Ms. Finch is right in pointing out what an “awesome responsibility it is.” For governors not to act in the cases set before them is at best a failure of leadership and an abdication of the authority invested in the executive by the state constitutions and the people of the respective states who depend on the governor to intervene on their behalf. When governors fail to act because of the potential fallout or the “specter of a Willie Horton,” they reveal the cowardice of our elected officials who ostensibly are called to serve a higher purpose beyond their own reelection or political ambitions. This reluctance to act is even more conspicuous in the case of Governor Nixon who has the legal training and prosecutorial background to review such cases in concert with the recommendations made by his legal staff and the Board of
Probation and Parole. Not to act implies that the State has never made an error in executing criminal justice and constitutes a peculiar sort of willful blindness that is clearly dangerous in its implications. Ms. Finch refers to a number of clemency petitions on Governor Nixon’s desk. She refers to a petition for an inmate accused of killing her husband who has been a model prisoner for many years who will be 86 years old when she is released. Although she doesn’t name names, I know of such a case that is currently pending on the Governor’s desk for Patty Prewitt, who is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for 50 years. Patty maintained her innocence and rejected a plea bargain that would have likely released her in less than a decade. She has now served 26 years of this 50 year sentence. Like the woman Finch alludes to, she will be 86 years old before she is even eligible for parole. Her case for innocence has been championed by legal experts who have reviewed the trial records and appellate documents and find insufficient or tainted evidence, sloppy police work, testimony from highly compromised witnesses and “experts,” and a rush to judgment based on transparent gender bias that treated marital infidelities years before the crime as being tantamount to murder. If Patty Prewitt had been tried today, she wouldn’t be in prison; she would be free, out with her family, including her four adult children and ten grandchildren who have all been victims, not only of the violence that killed Bill Prewitt but the continued violence done by the State of Missouri in failing to review her case and insisting — beyond all reason and at any expense — that she spend the rest of her life in prison. Even if one refuses to entertain the disturbing likelihood that Patty was wrongly convicted, it is true that many violent criminals are free who have confessed to similar crimes and have served far fewer years behind bars than Patty. Further, she has been a model prisoner in every respect over the course of her two and a half decades of incarceration. A trained computer programmer, personal trainer, and aerobics instructor, Patty Prewitt has mentored a generation of women in prison and helped them to go on to lead lives of dignity and self-sufficiency. I appeal to Governor Nixon’s sense of fairness, of compassion, of mercy. In the State of Missouri he is the only one who can do justice in this case. The power is his and he should use it.
For details on Patty Prewitt’s case and cause see http://www.patriciaprewitt.com
For former Maryland Governor Bob Ehrlich’s record and perspective on executive pardons, please see
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/24/AR2006082401851.html
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2011-11-21/news/bs-ed-ehrlich-pardons-20111121_1_pardons-commutation-requests-clemency-requests
Elizabeth Charlebois
St. Mary’s City, MD
St. Louis, MO
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