Working weekends, late nights, Gov. Matt Bevin rushed to issue hundreds of pardons

Joseph Gerth | Louisville Courier Journal

Show Caption Hide Caption Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin issues pardons, commutations for hundreds Using his executive powers, Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin issued hundreds of pardons and commutations during his last days in office in 2019.

Two days before Thanksgiving and just two weeks before his term would end, former Gov. Matt Bevin held a conference call with three key aides to talk about letting convicted felons go free.

The meeting with Justice Secretary John Tilley, Public Advocate Damon Preston and Corrections Commissioner Kathleen Kenney had been arranged to discuss commuting the sentences of fewer than 100 nonviolent offenders in Kentucky's prison system who were nearing the end of their sentences.

By the time the meeting wrapped late that afternoon, Bevin had ordered his Justice Cabinet to come up with another list of felons, convicted on drug possession charges, who might be good candidates for early release, as well.

That's when Preston took his shot.

“It’s not every day that you get to talk to the governor, so I spoke up and said, ‘Are you also open to other pardons for our clients who think they have grounds for relief?'" Preston said in an interview Tuesday.

Bevin gave Preston the answer he was hoping to hear, agreeing to take a look at his recommendations.

That meeting and Bevin's response to Preston's question kicked off a 13-day frenzy during which lawyers and state bureaucrats scrambled to put together lists of people who might be commuted or pardoned. It also led to Bevin working holidays, weekends and late into the night to free as many people as he could.

But Bevin's rushed decisions on such weighty issues — often made without input from prosecutors and victims — has raised questions in Kentucky about a governor's virtually unrestricted power to pardon criminals.

Read more: Bevin granted commutations to 336 drug offenders. Nearly all were white

Support local journalism Support stories like this one by becoming a subscriber today! Support stories like this one by becoming a subscriber today! Get unlimited digital access here!

He's been criticized by Republicans and Democrats alike who have called for state and federal investigations of Bevin's pardoning spree, while others demand a constitutional amendment to rein in what they see as an out-of-control executive.

Bevin has been largely left alone, without support from his former staff, to defend the pardons. When people look back on the Bevin administration years from now, it's likely his last-minute pardons — especially if any of the felons he freed commit a heinous crime — will be what people remember.

The Courier Journal interviewed more than four dozen people, some of whom asked not to be identified for fear of losing their jobs, and reviewed 250 pardons and piles of emails, memos and other documents in an attempt to re-create Bevin's hectic last days in office.

"He had made clear that this was a high priority for him," said Preston, a career public defender who Bevin tapped in 2017 to head the state agency that defends people accused of crimes who can't afford to pay an attorney.

"He clearly had a personal interest in this and he implied that he would be working through Thanksgiving weekend, and his staff as well," Preston said.

Little did Preston know, Bevin had been for months, even years, looking into several cases around the state for convicts he could pardon.

When felons filed pardon requests, he insisted on reviewing them personally.

At some point in his term, it's unclear when, he assigned an investigator working for him to dig into cases in which he believed people behind bars were actually the victims of a criminal justice system run amok.

That investigator was Denny Butler, a Justice Cabinet employee, former state representative from 2013-17 and retired Louisville police officer. Bevin tasked Butler with investigating half a dozen cases to determine whether police and prosecutors had followed the law as they pursued killers.

Butler said Bevin asked him over the course of his term to investigate six cases, three of which involved felons who were still behind bars. Butler refused to answer other questions by text and declined numerous requests by The Courier Journal for interviews.

Bevin has said he has long been interested in pardons, but after his reelection loss to Democrat Andy Beshear, he attacked the issue with zeal, according to those who dealt with him over the last two weeks.

How it went down: Catching up on the Matt Bevin pardons controversy?

While that meeting just before Thanksgiving marked an escalation of his push to grant clemency, his efforts really began in earnest a couple of weeks earlier, on Nov. 14.

That's the day Bevin conceded the election to Beshear, after a recanvass confirmed he lost by 5,136 votes. On that day, Bevin sent a text message to Butler telling him he wanted to talk about the cases of Patrick Baker and Irvin Edge, two of the cases he had assigned Butler to investigate.

Around the same time, Bevin texted Justice Secretary Tilley, telling him he wanted to jump-start the process for commuting the sentences of nonviolent offenders who were within 90 days or so of completing their terms.

Ultimately, Bevin would give pardons and commutations to both Edge, who had spent 26 years in prison for hiring a hit man to kill his business partner, and to Baker, who served less than two years of a 19-year sentence for killing a Knox County man during a home invasion.

Baker's pardon came a year and a half after his brother, Eric Baker, held a political fundraiser that netted $21,500 to help Bevin retire a debt to himself from personal loans he made to his 2015 gubernatorial campaign.

Neither the Federal Election Commission nor the Kentucky Registry of Election Finance websites have any record of Eric Baker, or his wife, Kathryn Baker, ever giving a contribution to another politician.

Bevin claims both Patrick Baker and Edge are innocent.

On Nov. 21, a week after Bevin conceded and five days before the conference call, Butler sent an email to Bevin's general counsel, Steve Pitt, about those two cases.

(It had been Pitt's job to help Bevin vet the applications. State Rep. Jerry Miller said there was a table in Pitt's office stacked with pardon requests he was reviewing.)

"The Governor sent me a text last Thursday about catching up on two cases we had previously discussed. Want to put them on your radar and I think both have a pending request," Butler wrote, presumably referring to requests for pardons.

Forgiveness, redemption, injustice: Why Bevin pardoned more than 250 criminals

REPLAY: Courier Journal reporters talk about Matt Bevin pardons Livestream replay: Kirby Adams talks with Joe Sonka and Andy Wolfson chat about former Governor Matt Bevin's pardons.

It's unclear what happened in the interim, but on Dec. 4, less than a week before Bevin's term ended, Butler used his iPhone to email Pitt a series of letters from Baker's friends and relatives and Terry Forcht, a powerful Republican donor from his hometown of Corbin.

Many of the letters heavily invoke the name of God in asking for clemency from Bevin, who is outspoken about his Christian beliefs.

"I truly believe you are placed in this position, in this time, to be the power God gave you," Baker's fiancee, Dawn Turner, wrote to Bevin. "To represent Christ showing mercy and grace to those inflicted with injustice."

Whatever Butler was doing, the frenetic pace of Bevin's multi-track effort to grant pardons and commutations had geared up following the conference call that Tuesday afternoon before Thanksgiving — at a time when so many others across the state were wrapping things up in their offices ahead of a long holiday weekend.

For Bevin and the workers in the state Justice Cabinet, which houses the state Department of Corrections and the Department of Public Advocacy, the work was just beginning.

Over the next 13 days, Bevin would sign off on 234 pardons, 419 commutations, and another 20 pardons for people who were, at the time, still in prison.

Some would become controversial, while the vast majority would not.

Immediately after the Nov. 26 conference call, Preston sent an email to his staff asking them to send him a list of clients they believed should be eligible for pardons.

The next day, the eve of Thanksgiving, after he culled the list by 60%, Preston emailed Bevin's office a file with the names Bevin would consider.

"I think they sent me 100 names," he said. "I picked out, I think, 41 I thought were the types of cases (Bevin) was looking for."

For some, the public advocates were asking for pardons or commutations. For others who had been given "serve outs," meaning they were no longer eligible for parole, they were seeking an order that would simply allow them to go before the parole board again.

A couple of the requests were for people with years-old drug convictions who had long ago been released and had stayed clean.

Top headlines: Bevin defends pardon of convicted child rapist in radio interview

Support local journalism Support stories like this one by becoming a subscriber today! Support stories like this one by becoming a subscriber today! Get unlimited digital access here!

But there were more than two dozen murderers on the list, along with numerous rapists.

Tilley scrambled to have his staff research the 41 names and make recommendations to Bevin.

On Dec. 6, the Friday before Bevin left office, Tilley sent Bevin a memo with 32 of the names that had appeared on the public advocate's list, explaining their crimes and their disciplinary history while in prison.

"I cannot in good conscience recommend a commutation or pardon for the individuals listed in the following summary," he wrote.

Among them were five people Bevin ultimately freed from prison and pardoned: Daniel Scott Grubb, who killed someone by throwing a concrete block at his head; Kathy Harless, who killed her newborn child and tossed the baby into a portable toilet; Delmar Partin, who killed and decapitated a co-worker before stuffing her body in a 55-gallon drum; Kurt Smith, who beat his 6-week-old son to death when he was 17; and Johnetta Carr, who took part in a plot to burglarize her boyfriend's home.

Tilley said he didn't know anything about some of the even more controversial pardon candidates, like Baker; or Micah Schoettle, who raped a 9-year-old girl; or Dayton Jones, who sodomized a 15-year-old boy with a sex toy so violently the boy suffered internal injuries.

On that Friday, Bevin's office sent word to the the Kentucky Innocence Project, which works to identify and free people who were wrongfully convicted, that it needed more information about Carr's case, said Suzanne Hopf, directing attorney for the project.

The Innocence Project was representing Carr and five other clients seeking clemency.

Meanwhile, over at the state Department of Corrections, employees continued scouring inmate rosters, to find prisoners held on drug convictions and confirm they didn't have previous convictions, escape attempts, histories of violent behavior or other factors Bevin had said were disqualifying.

This wasn't the first time Kentucky had conducted wholesale prisoner releases.

In 1935, Gov. Ruby Lafoon had ordered 560 prisoners released to clear out space in the prisons.

More coverage: Advocates furious over Matt Bevin's claim about child rape case

And in 2002, Gov. Paul Patton began releasing prisoners to deal with a $500 million budget shortfall. By early 2003, Patton had released 883 prisoners — but the Corrections Department had months, and not days, to prepare for that.

What Bevin was doing on such short notice was unprecedented.

Kenney, the state's corrections commissioner, didn't return calls seeking comment.

Early that Friday evening, with the clock ticking on the Bevin administration, Bevin summoned Preston and Tim Arnold, another lawyer in the public advocate's office, to the Capitol for an 11th-hour meeting to review some of the recommendations.

It was around 6 p.m. and darkness had already set in over Frankfort when Preston and Arnold arrived in Bevin's paneled office. Bevin, Preston recalled, was wearing an Oxford cloth shirt with button-down collar, no tie or sport coat.

"He struck me as someone who had had a long day, and knew it was going to get longer," Preston said. "He looked like me on a Friday night."

With no one else in the room, the three went through cases, one by one, answering any final questions Bevin had before making his decisions. Arnold said the meeting lasted for perhaps as long as 90 minutes.

"He appeared to have a file folder for everyone on the list," Preston said. "Every time we started talking about someone, he'd pull a folder out and open it up."

When Preston and Arnold left, Bevin had not said who, if anyone, would be pardoned, Preston said.

At about 10:30 that night, Rob Peterson and his wife had just returned to their home from a party when his cellphone rang.

It was Bevin, calling to talk about Peterson's nephew, Blake Peterson Walker. Nearly two decades ago, Walker, then a teenager, had killed his parents and spent the last 17 years in prison. With the help of a lawyer, the family sought a commutation for Walker, who is now 33.

For subscribers: Look up Bevin's Kentucky pardons on our exclusive database

In a phone call that lasted about 15 minutes, Peterson said Bevin interviewed both him and his wife.

"He wanted to know what (Walker's) aspirations were. ... He wanted to know what his goals were, what kind of employment was available to him," Peterson said. "He wanted to know about his spirituality."

Peterson said Bevin had clearly read Walker's pardon application and knew the details in it.

"He shared with us that he had been working until the wee hours of the morning to cover all the information he had to go through," Peterson said.

Throughout his final weekend as governor, Bevin continued his frenzied quest to read as many files as he could.

He called and texted Tilley numerous times and at all hours, looking for more information about those he was considering for a pardon. One person who witnessed some of the exchanges described the phone calls as "frantic."

On Sunday, Dec. 8, Preston said Bevin's office contacted his office for the address of one person the public advocate's office had recommended for a pardon.

That night, Hopf, with the Innocence Project, said Bevin called Carr “to let her know she was going to get pardoned. ... To me that speaks a lot about his conviction about what he was doing and the depth of responsibility he felt for the outcomes for some of these people."

The Corrections Department continued to work, trying to put together that long list of drug offenders Bevin had requested.

Finally, on Dec. 9, Bevin's last day in office and with the governor facing a hard deadline of midnight when Beshear would be sworn in, Kenney forwarded him a list of 336 proposed commutations along with a draft order to grant them.

Some of the pardons were sent to Bevin to sign, but he told The Courier Journal in an interview last weekend that he wrote many of the pardon orders himself.

For subscribers: Baker is guilty, police czar found, but Bevin still pardoned him

Many of the pardons carried messages of forgiveness and grace. A handful of them mentioned God by name. Others placed conditions on the now-former felons.

The strangest one urged Max Jackson Sterling, of Lexington, convicted of marijuana possession, harassment and criminal littering, to "slow down and buckle-up while driving (seriously!)."

In the interview with Courier Journal reporter Joe Sonka, Bevin said it was he, and he alone, who made decisions about pardons.

"So there are people involved in running down tasks, information, based on things that I'm looking for. But ... the decision making on them, the review of all the information, that falls on me," Bevin said.

"And it should always be the governor."

While he was being criticized for the most controversial pardons, Bevin said on a Thursday night interview with WHAS radio in Louisville that after his frenetic pardon spree, he had but one regret.

"I wish I would have had time to go more carefully through all of these that I didn't have time to," he told radio host Terry Meiners.

"There are still hundreds and hundreds of applications in the files."

Former Courier Journal reporter Tom Loftus and current reporters Phillip M. Bailey, Joe Sonka, Matt Mencarini, Jonathan Bullington contributed to this report. Joseph Gerth can be reached at 502-582-4702 or by email at jgerth@courierjournal.com. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: courier-journal.com/josephg.