COMMENTARY | CNN reports outgoing Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour is under intense fire by critics for his controversial wave of pardons. Also under scrutiny is the state's "trusty" program, which uses "well-behaved" prisoners as workers outside prison environments, including at the governor's mansion. Family members of crime victims are upset that violent offenders get to live in rooms in the governor's mansion and engage in light housework, which seems like lax punishment.
The Mississippi Department of Corrections inmate handbook states violent offenders are ineligible for trusty programs, which clashes with information about trustees recovered by reporters.
The crux of the outrage over the Mississippi trusty program is illustrated in this quote: "It takes 12 people to put somebody in prison and one man (the governor) gets to release him because he gave him a good car wash or served dinner right. It's wrong," says Tiffany Ellis Brewer in the CNN report.
As a high school U.S. government teacher, the issue is one I am bound to bring up for debate. Should governors be allowed to nullify jury decisions to send a person to prison? Despite the ongoing controversy and the possibility that some of Barbour's pardons were illegal, I believe governors should still be allowed to grant pardons. Lone governors should be able to nullify jury decisions.
First, judges are lone individuals who can, under certain circumstances, nullify jury decisions. Judges have reversed jury decisions and set aside excessive awards. Like state governors, many of these judges are elected. Some are appointed, including all federal judges. If an appointed judge can nullify a jury decision, why not an elected governor?
Second, gubernatorial pardons are a longstanding tradition, and viable (though desperate) possibility, for thousands of convicts. Allowing the chief executive of a state to reverse a jury's decision and free a prisoner is an important fail-safe in a democracy where tyranny of the majority may send defendants of an unpopular race, creed, color, or gender to prison unjustly.
Juries might be corrupt, biased or allow heated emotions to make them render decisions in haste and anger. A governor is likely to be more impartial.
Finally, though it is often an unpopular sentiment, I agree with the famous quote that it is better to let a thousand guilty men go free than to let one innocent man spend time in prison.
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