In a Washington Post op-ed published today, Haley Barbour defended clemency pleas he granted in the waning hours of his governorship. He said that the ensuing controversy stemmed from people not knowing the difference between clemency and letting people out of jail.
"People thought — incorrectly — that I had let 215 prisoners out of jail because the secretary of state reported that many people received clemency," he wrote.
In fact, he only released 26 prisoners from custody, he said. What's more, according to his math, that's only 0.0012 of the more than 80,000 people who are doing time in state prisons or are on probation or parole.
"About 95 percent of the clemencies I approved were recommended by our state parole board, and I accepted the parole board's recommendations about 95 percent of the time," Barbour wrote.
He reiterated previous claims that he simply followed the long-held tradition of pardoning inmates who work in the governor's mansion, most of whom were convicted of "crimes of passion" such as murder but are no longer dangerous to society, and that as a Christian, he believes in second chances.
But s we pointed out earlier in the week, this is a departure from Barbour's stance for much of his time as governor. In his 2007 State of the State to the Legislature, he sang a much different refrain.
"This year I ask you to do three more things: To pass laws that lengthen the mandatory prison sentence for committing a felony with a gun, and to lengthen the prison sentence for a felon possessing a gun. These changes will give prosecutors better tools to punish criminals who use guns to commit crimes, and they will not violate the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms," he told lawmakers five years ago.
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