Easley on the way out...
Happy NC Inauguration Day everyone.
I am reliably informed by one of the lawyers involved that Gov. Mike Easley granted two commutations on his way out of office. I'll try to get more on those today.
Otherwise, Gov. Bev Perdue should officially take office sometime between 10:30 and 11:30 a.m.
Update: After talking with Gov. Easley, I can say for sure he commuted sentences for three (not two as listed above) people during his last hours in office. He said he issued no pardons.
One of those whose sentence was commuted is from Guilford County. I'll have more once I confirm her name.
Update: I've been able to confirm the names of two of the three people to whom Easley granted clemency.
Vernishia Nicole Kilpatrick, now 36, a 1994 UNCG graduate, was sentenced to life in prison for the 1994 stabbing death of her boyfriend, Bruce Barron.
The defendant in one of the other cases was Christopher Matthew Brown, a Bucombe County teenager who was convicted in connection with a fatal accident involving aggressive driving. His attorney is Greensboro lawyer Don Vaughan, who will soon take office as a state senator.
These commutations by Easley does not expunge the crime from someone’s record or cause their immediate release from jail as a pardon could. Rather, according to Easley and one of his chief advisers, he lowered Kilpatrick’s sentence so that the North Carolina Parole Commission can consider her release sometime in the next one-to-three years.
I'll have more in the paper tomorrow.
Comments (3)
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As soon as Perdue took office, all the Easley news released disappeared from the governor's web site. I was unable to find them to check on any final appointments and commutations/pardons,
Posted on January 10, 2009 5:53 PM
Well, on the up side, he didn't do a release about the commutations. On the down side, yes, all that archival material seems to have gone "poof."
Posted on January 10, 2009 11:19 PM
I sat as an alternate juror during the Matthew Brown trial and witnessed a complete failure of the judicial system. The result was the conviction and imprisonment of an innocent man. Mr. Brown was actually an indirect victim of Hurrican Katrina. The trial occured during the week of the storm and the judge mentioned it early in the trial. Some of the jurors were very distracted by the apparent catastrophic destruction of New Orleans. Labor Day weekend began the Friday of the jury deliberations, and the trial rushed to that point. The man had a terrible lawyer and the jury simply pulled a "Twelve Angry Men," but there was no Henry Fonda that day. A hurried and monumentally stupid consensus somehow came together to enable this travesty. I will have a lifetime respect for this governor who proved to me the system actually can work, albeit to the last hope. Thank you Governor Easley.
Posted on January 20, 2009 10:33 PM