Black legislator wants to end pardon board

By Christopher Tidmore
Contributing Writer

A prominent African-American legislator and candidate for Orleans City Council At-Large took his fellow Black Caucus members by surprise last week in calling for the abolition of the state’s Pardon Board. The move by Austin Badon could save several hundreds of thousand of dollars at a time of budgetary constraints in Baton Rouge, but would also remove a final degree of appeal for many incarcerated felons.

Said former Pardon Board Chairman Irv Magri in an interview with The Louisiana Weekly, “When a violent offender like a murderer is given a life sentence, the judge says that the sentence is rendered without the possibility of parole. He doesn’t say anything about pardons.”

Magri explained that many convicted murders and violent felons—sentenced to spend their entire earthly existence behind bars—have managed to escape prison by appealing to a gubernatorial pardon, via the board. “The state constitution gives the governor the right to pardon anyone [convicted of a state crime], upon recommendation of the Pardon Board that he appoints…This is how many violent offenders have gotten out on the streets.”

Magri emphasized that is the reason that governors must appoint individuals with strong committents to victim’s rights to the Pardon Board (as well as the parole and other review panels). [Repeatedly, the former chairman has called for seats on the Pardon Board to be allocated by law to members of victim’s rights organizations like CrimeFighters­ofLA.com—the state’s largest victim’s advocacy group.] Appro­priately, Magri notes that under his tenure as chairman during the Foster Administration, no violent criminals saw their sentences pardoned. And, he was proud to say that under Governor Bobby Jindal, hardly any violent offenders have made it out of prison.

Does the Pardon Board system work, however? State Repre­sentative Austin Badon is not so sure. The New Orleans East Rep. and current City Council candidate believes that the Pardon Board simply is a wasted expense.

Abolishing it, he explained to this newspaper in an interview, that would both save money and make it less likely that violent offenders see the light of day once more. “My intent is simple: our government needs to work better and spend less. Over the past two years, the state has spent over $750,000 for the Board of Pardons to make 185 recommendations to the governor. Of those 185, four pardons were given. That’s not a very good return on investment.”

Whether the governor would retain the right of pardon remains to be seen, though, Badon noted, “I want to be very clear that the bill is still a work in progress, not a final product. We need to ensure there’s a way for innocent people who’ve been wrongly imprisoned to get their lives back. At the same time, an elected official shouldn’t have the authority to circumvent our criminal justice system.”

Magri has specifically not endorsed the idea of the Board’s abolition and has reserved detailed comment on the legislation until he sees the final language of the bill. Badon’s House Bill 85, if approved by lawmakers and voters by November 6, would save the state $384,000 a year from staff reductions alone, and would effectively disallow all possible pardon recommendations of non-violent criminals by Gov. Bobby Jindal. Jindal recently named two former lawmakers, Ricky Hardy (D-Lafayette), and Mert Smiley (R-St. Amant) to the board at salaries of $36,000 a year.

So far, the governor’s staff has demurred from commenting on the bill. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Louisiana incarcerates more people per capita and spends more on incarceration than any other state in the union. Nearly one of every 55 citizens of the Pelican State are incarcerated, costing the taxpayer almost $500 million— or 9.5% of the state’s general fund. That is far higher than most U.S. states, outlined data from the Justice Policy Institute.

It’s important to note that the current form of the legislation would not deny the automatic pardon for first-time law-breakers who finish a jail sentence, nor would it end the possibility of probation and parole. Those eligible for the first-offender pardons would continue to be criminals convicted of nonviolent offenses crimes. First-timers convicted of aggravated battery, second-degree battery, aggravated criminal damage to property, purse-snatching, extortion and illegal use of weapons, would still qualify for pardons under the legislation. That is a large percentage of the 65,000 people either on parole or probation in Louisiana.

Still, Magri remains deeply skeptical of the idea of ending the Pardon Board. “We pardoned Cherly Beirdon of Houma, La. [an African-American female who was a victim of prosecutorial misconduct], and two others that were wrongfully convicted. That in­cludes Allen Boe Johnson, who shot the man who had molested his daughter. I do believe that the Pardon Board must be reformed to include representatives of victims’ rights organizations like Crimefighters, and I remain ex­tremely disappointed in Gov. Bob­by Jindal in not making such an ap-point­ment. But, the work the Pardon Board does is very im­portant to the criminal justice system.”

This article was originally published in the February 13, 2012 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper