Melinda Mills is still furious at Matt Bevin.
Her brother Donald was murdered in 2014 when a group of men impersonating law enforcement broke into his house to rob him. One man fatally shot Mills while his wife and kids were held in another room.
Prosecutors identified the shooter as Patrick Baker, who a jury in 2017 found to be guilty of reckless homicide, robbery and other crimes, and sentenced to 19 years in prison.
That is, until Bevin, just before leaving the Kentucky governor’s mansion in December of 2019, granted Baker a full and unconditional pardon — one of the most controversial of his hundreds of clemency actions.
Bevin claimed — falsely in some cases — the evidence was “sketchy at best” against Baker, whose family had held a fundraiser for the governor’s campaign at their large estate the previous year. The day after Baker’s pardon was announced, Melinda Mills told a Courier Journal reporter that “Matt Bevin can rot in hell.”
“I still feel the same way about that guy, nothing has changed,” Mills told Kentucky Public Radio recently. “I hate that son of a bitch.”
Mills says she is hopeful that families will not have to suffer what she went through if Kentucky voters approve a new constitutional amendment in the Nov. 3 election, which would restrict a governor’s clemency powers in the 60 days leading up to an election and the 35 days from that election to the inauguration.
“I am for that 100% all the way,” Mills said.
After many years of trying, starting with the 2020 session in the wake of Bevin’s pardons, Republican state Sen. Chris McDaniel of Ryland Heights finally got his bill through the General Assembly this year, putting the proposed amendment on the ballot for voters to decide.
McDaniel says Bevin’s clemency actions — including others convicted of murder or sexually abusing children — were an abuse of power that should never be repeated.
“There were just so many tragic examples of how badly this power can be abused, and it needs to be reined in,” McDaniel said. “So, Amendment One is a simple, common sense measure to rein in the (pardon) power of a governor and return a check and balance to that last bit of power in the judicial system.”
Unlike extremely expensive Kentucky ballot amendment fights on abortion rights in 2022 and private education funding 2024 — in which PACs spent a combined $22 million on ads — no groups are spending any significant funds to sway voters on the pardon amendment. In fact, McDaniel is spending out of his own pocket, using gas money to travel across Kentucky and speak to groups and media.
Opposing McDaniel’s amendment is Damon Preston, who led the Kentucky Department of Public Advocacy for nearly a decade until his retirement earlier this year.
Preston’s main concern relates to capital punishment, though a Kentucky inmate has not been put to death in nearly 20 years due to an ongoing court order. He envisions a hypothetical situation where a death row inmate could waive all appeals near the end of a governor’s term, but still merit an intervention by a governor before the statutorily required execution in roughly five weeks.
Preston also argues that separating politics from pardons can be a good thing, as governors leaving office may be able to provide justice in cases where that decision is not popular among the public.
“I get the high level desire to say the public should have some say in this rapist being released,” Preston said. “But the traditional power of pardon goes much greater than one or two cases we disagree with, and I think there are less significant steps that could be taken than this.”
Pardons inside or outside of ‘politics’
McDaniel emphasizes that the governor’s power to issue pardons and commutations would still exist unchanged for three years and nine months of a governor’s term, only affecting the five-week “lame duck” period after a gubernatorial election and the 60 days preceding that election.
He says if governors truly believe that clemency is warranted, they should have to take that action in advance of an election and make their case to voters
”That 60 days before an election part is to let people know that if someone has issued a pardon, there's enough time for it to be out in the public sphere for people to be informed before they cast their ballot,” McDaniel said. “And, ideally, put a check on the governor's ability and willingness to issue some of these more controversial pardons.”
But Preston argues that there are downsides to taking away pardons during lame duck periods, as sometimes there are cases where clemency is unpopular, but still needed.
“Yes, he could do it in July when he's up for election in November, but then he or she is paying a political cost for doing the right thing,” Preston said. “So I think there is a benefit of saying some of this is outside of politics, and the only way to get it outside of politics is to allow these to occur after the election has occurred.”
Bevin and Trump complicate view of pardons
Preston says that for most of Kentucky history, clemency actions have not been controversial.
“This is really only a problem in the last 10 years,” Preston said. “We had Gov. Bevin… and I would say President Trump are the two executives who have had high profile abuses of the system, if that's what they're perceived to be.”
Some of Trump’s pardons have made the Baker family fundraiser for Bevin seem like child’s play.
Trump pardoned ChangPeng Zhao, the founder of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, who pleaded guilty to felony money laundering and ordered to pay $4 billion in penalties. The pardon came after Trump was lobbied in the Oval Office and Binance purchased $2 billion of stablecoin from World Liberty, the company founded and owned by Trump and his family.
Trump also pardoned other wealthy business executives convicted of theft, fraud and bribery after they gave millions of dollars to his super PAC, including Trevor Milton, Paul Walczak and Julio Herrera Velutini. Pardons have also become a lucrative business, as lobbyists with access to Trump now solicit million-dollar fees to push him for clemency.
Trump’s pardons also included hundreds who were charged or convicted of assaulting law enforcement during the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol Building, and former Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernandez, former president of Honduras, who was sentenced to 45 years for taking bribes and allowing traffickers to export more than 400 tons of cocaine into the United States.
McDaniel says his amendment should also be welcome at the federal level, as “unchecked power does not belong there either.”
“I don't care what your political ideology is,” McDaniel said. “This is fundamental, and certainly restrictions at the federal level would be well warranted, as well.”
McDaniel noted that his bill passed both chambers by a large and bipartisan majority, but there were several Democrats who voted against it.
Gov. Andy Beshear is among the skeptics. In an emailed statement, Beshear spokesperson Scottie Ellis questioned whether future governors should be restricted due to Bevin badly abusing his pardon authority.
“The solution should not be to limit a governor’s pardon powers but to ensure we elect good governors,” Ellis said, while also criticizing McDaniel’s support for Bevin in 2015 and 2019.
In response, McDaniel said his amendment “has absolutely nothing to do with the current governor, but everything to do with what could happen in the future.”
Preston says some limits on pardon powers may be warranted, but the way to preserve their value is to elect responsible people.
“In the end, we elect the governor, and the voters are responsible for what that person does,” Preston said. “And the answer is not to take away it constitutionally, remove some of the historic powers of the office. It's (to) elect the person that will use those powers in the right way.”
Concerns over death penalty clemency
Though capital punishment has been halted in Kentucky for nearly two decades due to a judicial order, there is no permanent ban in place and could one day return.
Preston noted that if executions resume, the governor in most cases sets the date of execution. With that being the case, if the constitutional amendment goes through and the governor is near the end of their term, he said they could simply not set that date if they don’t think execution is warranted.
However, there are some cases when the governor does not set the date of execution, particularly in cases where inmates waive their remaining appeals and essentially volunteer to be executed. Under state law, in these circumstances the date of the execution would be set within roughly five weeks of the final judgment.
Of the three inmates executed in Kentucky’s history, two of them were cases such as these, including the last person put to death in 2008.
Preston’s greatest concern with the constitutional amendment relates to this situation occurring late in a governor’s term, where a person has waived their appeals, but there is still a reason for a governor to intervene to halt an execution.
“You could have someone who waives … appeal, but there are legitimate mental health issues, there's reasons that you would perhaps not execute the person,” Preston said. “And under the amendment, the way it's written, the governor could not commute that sentence. If there were claims of innocence, couldn't pardon. If the governor simply wanted to show mercy based on the circumstances, he can't.”
The election is on Nov. 3. Here is how the proposed constitutional amendment will appear on every ballot:
Constitutional Amendment 1
Are you in favor of limiting a Governor's ability to grant pardons or commute sentences by prohibiting him or her from granting pardons or commuting sentences during the time period beginning 60 days prior to the general election at which the Governor is elected, and ending when the Governor is sworn in for that term by amending the Constitution of Kentucky as stated below?
It is proposed that Section 77 of the Constitution of Kentucky be amended to read as follows:
(1) The Governor shall have power to:
(a) Remit fines and forfeitures; and
(b) Commute sentences and grant reprieves and pardons, except:
1. In case of impeachment; or
2. For the period beginning sixty days prior to the date of the gubernatorial election and ending the fifth Tuesday succeeding the election.
(2) The Governor shall file with each application therefor a statement of the reasons for his or her decision thereon, which application and statement shall always be open to public inspection.
(3) In cases of treason, the Governor shall have power to grant reprieves until the end of the next session of the General Assembly, in which the power of pardoning shall be vested; but he or she shall have no power to remit the fees of the Clerk, Sheriff or Commonwealth's Attorney in penal or criminal cases.
