Missouri GOP Governor Goes Pardon Happy

 

by Pa Rock

Proud Missourian

This week I came across a news story on the internet that had me questioning the efficacy of my meds. Missouri's troglodyte governor, a former rural county sheriff - and a Republican, of course - by the name of Mike Parson was pardoning felons and past felons at an alarming rate, one not seen since World War  II.  I did mention that Parson is a Republican, didn't I?   The party that routinely stuffs the poor and members of racial minority groups into dark prison holes where they tend to disappear for generations.

Over the past three years Missouri Governor Mike Parson has granted official forgiveness or some form of legal exoneration to over six hundred duly convicted Missouri criminals.  A cantankerous old coffee shop clodhopper from the rural midwest who had spent more that a dozen years locking up bad guys was now throwing open cell doors and letting them go as fast as the jailers could throw open the cell doors!  

Perhaps it wasn't my meds that were the issue, but rather those which were sitting on the governor's nightstand.  WT actual F?

So I did some internet digging and came across the same information from multiple sources.  Governor Parson, it seems, had taken his power to pardon seriously, and he had set up a system for reviewing the cases of prisoners and former prisoners who applied for official forgiveness of their trespasses against society.

Missouri screens clemency requests trough the state's Board of Probation and Parole.   That agency then makes confidential recommendations to the governor who is free to act (or not) as he chooses.   When Parson became governor after the sudden resignation of his creep predecessor, there were 3,700 cases pending in which clemency had been requested.  Instead of leaving all of that paperwork stuffed in a file cabinet in some state office basement, Parson had his staff begin a systematic review of the clemency applications with a goal of carefully studying at least one hundred of them every month.  Many did not rise to the level that Parson and his staff saw as necessary for a pardon or a commutation, but others did - and the governor, much to his credit and my surprise - then took action!

Mike Parson is still not an icon of the progressive left, but on the issue of pardons and official forgiveness, he does seem to be surprisingly awake at the wheel!

Good work, Mike, and I wouldn't say it if I didn't mean it!