{"id":922,"date":"2024-01-15T02:32:11","date_gmt":"2024-01-15T02:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/?page_id=922"},"modified":"2024-01-15T02:45:07","modified_gmt":"2024-01-15T02:45:07","slug":"criminal-justice_detail_4","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/?page_id=922","title":{"rendered":"CRIMINAL JUSTICE_DETAIL_4"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-layout-flex wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link wp-element-button\">CRIMINAL JUSTICE<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link wp-element-button\"><strong>NOVEMBER 19, 2023<\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Sarah Huckabee Sanders Pardons Turkey But Denies Clemency for Wrongly Imprisoned Man<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>The Elias Law Group is supporting the Vote To Stop Cop City Coalition.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-media-text is-stacked-on-mobile\" style=\"grid-template-columns:15% auto\"><figure class=\"wp-block-media-text__media\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" src=\"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/PauleyMadison-2-web.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-930 size-full\"\/><\/figure><div class=\"wp-block-media-text__content\">\n<ul>\n<li>MADISON PAULY<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Reporter<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"321\" height=\"180\" src=\"http:\/\/aiecasia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/2023-11-19-turkey.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-611\" style=\"width:760px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/2023-11-19-turkey.webp 321w, https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/2023-11-19-turkey-300x168.webp 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 321px) 100vw, 321px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The turkeys who will receive a presidential pardon this year are staying at the Willard InterContinental Hotel in Washington.<strong>Jacquelyn Martin\/AP<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n<p><strong>Tis the season<\/strong>\u00a0for politicians to spend an hour in front of cameras with turkeys. Two turkeys from a Hormel subsidiary in Minnesota were apparently shipped to Washington, DC, in a\u00a0stretch black Cadillac Escalade\u00a0for their White House pardoning ceremony. At a library in the tiny Texas city of Van, the mayor appointed a bird\u00a0named Dolly Pardon\u00a0to be a city ambassador. And in Arkansas on Friday morning, the turkeys sat motionless on a table littered with fake leaves while Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders gave a speech granting them clemency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But in the case of Sanders, what might seem like a lighthearted political stunt is much darker when you consider the context, the\u00a0<em>Arkansas Times\u00a0<\/em>pointed out\u00a0this week. Earlier this month, Sanders\u00a0denied a request\u00a0for executive clemency for a man with severe developmental disabilities who has spent 32 years in state prison for crime he almost certainly did not commit, according to\u00a0an investigation\u00a0by journalist Radley Balko.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Charlie Vaughn was one of four men convicted for the 1988 murder of 81-year-old Myrtle Holmes.\u00a0According to Balko, Vaughn was held in jail for a year and insisted on his innocence before a publicly assigned attorney advised him to confess in order to avoid the death penalty. Vaughn\u2019s confession contradicted the facts of the crime, but the judge sentenced him to life in prison anyway, commenting, \u201cI\u2019m sure that some governor somewhere down the road will reduce the sentence or commute it to a term of years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Decades later, another one of the four, Reginald Early, confessed to the crime and insisted he had acted alone. As a result, the two other suspects had their convictions overturned, but because Vaughn\u2014imprisoned, illiterate, and without an attorney\u2014did not file a claim within a year, the state argued that he could not benefit from the new evidence. Federal courts rejected Vaughn\u2019s appeals to be freed. Last year, the Arkansas Parole Board rejected his petition.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Vaughn\u2019s lawyer told Balko he received no explanation for why the Sanders rejected Vaughn\u2019s clemency petition. Unless the Arkansas Supreme Court grants a habeas petition from Vaughn\u2014an unlikely event\u2014his\u00a0best hope\u00a0for release from prison is to reapply for clemency in six more years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sanders, meanwhile, is spending her time pushing to expanding her state\u2019s carceral system. The morning before her turkey pardoning ceremony, she called on the state Board of Corrections to\u00a0approve 500 additional prison beds, claiming that that Arkansas had weak penalties for violent crime and required space to lock up an additional 2,000 people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If every US state were a country, Arkansas would have the 11th-highest incarceration rate in the world, according to the\u00a0Prison Policy Initiative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sarah Huckabee Sanders Pardons Turkey But Denies Clemency for Wrongly Imprisoned Man Tis the season\u00a0for politicians to spend an hour in front of cameras with turkeys. Two turkeys from a Hormel subsidiary in Minnesota were apparently shipped to Washington, DC, in a\u00a0stretch black Cadillac Escalade\u00a0for their White House pardoning ceremony. At a library in the&hellip;&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/?page_id=922\" class=\"\" rel=\"bookmark\">Read More &raquo;<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">CRIMINAL JUSTICE_DETAIL_4<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":477,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"on","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"_ti_tpc_template_sync":false,"_ti_tpc_template_id":"","footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/922"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=922"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":934,"href":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/922\/revisions\/934"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}