WATCH: Senate Majority Leader McConnell addresses controversial pardons signed by fmr. Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin: 'Honestly, I don't approve. It seems to me it was completely inappropriate.'
Democratic state Rep. Chris Harris said some of the pardons “shock the conscience" of Kentuckians.
The two lawmakers said special attention should be given to the pardon issued to Patrick Brian Baker, who was convicted of reckless homicide and other crimes in a fatal 2014 home break-in in Knox County. Prosecutors say Baker and another man posed as police to gain entry to Donald Mills' home and Mills was shot in front of his wife. She tried to drive him to the hospital but he died on arrival.
Baker's family raised $21,500 at a political fundraiser last year for Bevin and Baker's brother and sister-in-law also gave $4,000 to Bevin’s campaign on the day of the fundraiser, the Courier Journal reported. Bevin wrote in the pardoning document that Baker's “drug addictions” led him to fall in with the wrong people and the evidence against Baker was “sketchy at best.
Another lawmaker, Republican state Sen. Chris McDaniel, said he will introduce a measure next year aimed at restricting when a governor can wield pardon powers. His proposal will seek to amend the state's Constitution to strip a governor of pardon powers for the month leading up to an election and for the time between an election and the swearing in of a new governor. The proposal would have to be ratified by the state's voters.
“If a governor wants to use the power to commute and pardon, he should be willing to stand in front of the voters and be held accountable for those actions," McDaniel said in a statement.
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