Another Kennard request possible

May 12, 2006

Parole Board would be willing to hear case again, chairman says

By Laura Hipp
lhipp@clarionledger.com

Petitioners wanting a posthumous pardon for a man falsely convicted of burglary in 1960 case can reapply if other legal remedies fail, state Parole Board Chairman Glenn Hamilton said Thursday.

"There's nothing disallowing another request," Hamilton said of the pardon for Clyde Kennard. "Certainly, we should have to feel that there was additional information or more grounds to persuade a different opinion."

An investigation by The Clarion-Ledger revealed how Kennard was locked up in 1960 for a crime he never committed after he refused to give up his attempts to attend what is now the University of Southern Mississippi. Johnny Lee Roberts, who testified against Kennard in the 1960 trial, has since sworn under oath that Kennard was innocent.

In a 4-1 vote, the Parole Board rejected the pardon request Wednesday for the black Hattiesburg farmer who died of colon cancer shortly after his release from prison in 1963.

Board member Clarence Brown, who is black, was the lone dissenter. "I don't have any comment," Brown said from his Yazoo City home.

The Center of Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago filed the petition to clear Kennard's name.

"Parole boards come and go and so do governors," said Steven Drizin, who leads the center. "We'll refile for executing clemency when a new governor is in the Governor's Mansion."

Hamilton, who is white, said Kennard deserves more than a pardon and suggested that lower courts could set aside Kennard's wrongful conviction.

"Pardons are granted to living individuals who have been convicted of some wrongdoing," Hamilton said.

The request on Kennard's behalf was the first the Parole Board has considered under Gov. Haley Barbour's administration. Though the federal government and other states have granted posthumous pardons, Mississippi has not.

Barbour's spokesman, Pete Smith, would not comment on Thursday, but the governor has said pardons should not be given posthumously.

Drizin said he is contacting experts in Mississippi law to determine the next move. Any solution through the courts may be limited.

In February, the state Supreme Court said it lacked authority to strike down Kennard's conviction under post-conviction statutes because Kennard is deceased.

Legal safeguards in place limit the actions of lower courts in such cases, said Pat Bennett, professor at Mississippi College School of Law.

"Procedurally, I don't see how that could happen," she said.

Typically, a prosecutor can request that a conviction be set aside when the individual is alive, she said. The person wronged must seek to restore their rights as a citizen.

"They cannot be requested on someone's behalf," she said.

The rule is a safeguard against prosecutors taking office and setting aside convictions at will, she said.

Kennard's family is disappointed by the Parole Board's decision, said the Rev. Willie Grant, Kennard's brother-in-law.

"They say he's innocent, but they won't give him a pardon," Grant, 79, said.

Friends and family may have to wait until a new governor is elected and a new Parole Board is appointed, Grant said. "I'll try to wait. I don't know how much longer I'll be around."

Niger Innis, spokesman for the Congress of Racial Equality in New York, said the organization is disappointed in the decisions of Barbour and the Parole Board.

"We're kind of baffled why he's making this gesture that has little political downside," Innis said.

Barbour was the honoree at CORE's Martin Luther King Jr. Day ceremony earlier this year. The group once led Freedom Riders into Mississippi. Barbour was honored as a representative of the state for the conviction of Edgar Ray Killen in the 1964 murder of three civil rights workers.

"We just don't understand why he is not granting the pardon," Innis said.