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Committee endorses bill to limit clemency applications Friday, Jan 26, 2007 By John Lyon LITTLE ROCK - A bill recommended Thursday by the House Judiciary Committee would require a state inmate serving life in prison without parole to wait six years to reapply after an application for executive clemency is denied. State law allows inmates to file clemency applications every four years. House Bill 1230 by Rep. Mike Patterson, D-Piggott, would allow the state Parole Board to waive a six-year rule under certain circumstances, such as the discovery of new evidence or the deterioration of a prisoner's health. Patterson said 522 people in Arkansas' prison system are serving sentences of life with parole. Creating a six-year waiting period would reduce the workload of the Parole Board and lessen the emotional strain on victims' families, who have to revisit traumatic events each time they protest clemency, he said. Under the present law, the period between the denial of an application and the filing of a new application is really less than four years, because the process takes months, Patterson said. Testifying against the bill, Jean Thrash of Arkansas Citizens United for the Rehabilitation of Errants said the possibility of clemency is important for rehabilitation because it gives prisoners hope. Thrash noted that prisoners used to be able to apply for clemency every year, until the Legislature changed the law to allow applications once every four years. "What I fear is, we add two years and two years and two years, and then what we're doing is, we're circumventing the right of the governor" to grant clemency, she said. Patterson said past governors have sometimes made questionable decisions on clemency. "Sometimes we'd get shocked on what they'd do with some of these prisoners," he said. Former Gov. Mike Huckabee came under frequent criticism for his decisions to grant executive clemency or commute sentences of prisoners, some of whom offended again after being released. Shortly after taking office in 1996, Huckabee announced his intentions to grant clemency to Wayne DuMond, convicted in the 1984 rape of a Forrest City cheerleader. Huckabee eventually denied clemency for DuMond in 1997, after the parole board granted his parole request. He was freed in 1999 to live in Missouri, where he was later convicted of murder. Also Thursday, the committee recommended House Bill 1130 by Rep. Steve Harrelson, D-Texarkana. Under the bill, Arkansas would adopt the uniform statutory rule against perpetuities, already adopted by 18 other states. The rule prohibits nonvested interests from vesting outside a certain period of time. |
