Jackson Free Press

The JFP is featuring the stories of some of the people Gov. Haley Barbour pardoned, in their own words.

Rankin County, 2000

Thomas Cole Kendall moved to a trailer park with a friend in 1998 and started dating Shelly, a girl he thought was 16 going on 17. When he went to pick her up for the couple's first date, he found out that Shelly was actually just 15 years old. Kendall continued dating her, participating in cookouts with her parents and even babysitting her young siblings at times. He said her family accepted him as Shelly's boyfriend, and he was making plans for their future. Then, in the spring of 1999, those plans came to a halt when Shelly's mother learned she and Kendall had been having sex. Kendall was arrested, and in the fall of 2000 convicted of gratification of lust. He received a full pardon on Jan. 10, 2012. In his clemency application, he writes:

Jail was just beginning of my nightmare that definitely became worse after I got out. I have acquired skills in a lot of different jobs especially the electrical field yet these skills are useless to me if my employer runs a background check. I have been denied countless job openings and even laid off after being employed at times because the work involved a government building or business that required a background check for anyone working construction in those buildings. Nevertheless, I've never collected unemployment. I continue to pick myself up and keep finding jobs regardless of how hard I fall each time. My picture and name is posted on websites warning people of where I live of what I was convicted for because I'm considered a sexual offender by the state of Mississippi. The reason I want to receive a pardon is so I can use my hard work ethic and skills I have learned to make a better life for my family by getting a chance at those jobs that require a background check. I also want a pardon so that my son and wife do not live with the embarrassment of trying to explain why daddy's picture is on the Internet as a sex offender. Lastly, I want a pardon because I truly did care about Shelly and I stayed in a relationship with her for a year with her parent's approval. The largest difference between that relationship and any other high school relationship with that I was held back in school twice because of car accidents completely out of my control. I'm not saying I'm not guilty of breaking the law because I know the law is black and white. But if there was any gray area in the law it would have definitely covered a young immature 19-year-old boy who was really only 17 years old in maturity, truly cared for a 15-year-old girl, dated her with her parents' permission for a year and made the mistake of allowing a relationship to become physical. I'm begging for the chance to be remembered as the loving father, committed husband, and hard-working family man that I truly am without having my reputation tarnished from such a complicated past.