Before Leaving Office, Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin Commutes the Sentences of Two Death-Row Prisoners

In his last series of acts before leav­ing office, out­go­ing Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin (pic­tured) has com­mut­ed the sen­tences of two of the state’s longest serv­ing death-row pris­on­ers to life with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. On Friday, December 6, 2019, Bevin com­mut­ed the death sen­tence of Gregory Wilson, whose tri­al pro­ceed­ings had been described as a trav­es­ty of jus­tice. Then on Monday, December 9 — the governor’s last day in office — he com­mut­ed Leif Halvorsen​’s death sen­tence in response to a remark­able sto­ry of redemption.

Because of the age of the cas­es, both men became eli­gi­ble for parole.

Wilson was con­vict­ed in 1988 in a tri­al one fed­er­al judge has described as ​“one of the worst exam­ples I have ever seen of the unfair­ness and abysmal lawyer­ing that per­vade cap­i­tal tri­als.” The court took more than a year to locate coun­sel to han­dle the case, after most of the lawyers in Northern Kentucky refused to work for the then-max­i­mum state cap­i­tal-rep­re­sen­ta­tion fee of $2,500. Eventually, two lawyers agreed to take the case after the judge put a note on his cour­t­house door, say­ing: ​“PLEASE HELP. DESPERATE. THIS CASE CANNOT BE CONTINUED AGAIN.” 

One of the lawyers, John Foote, had nev­er tried a felony case. The sec­ond, William Hagedorn, vol­un­teered to be lead coun­sel for free. A semi-retired lawyer, Hagedorn had no office, no staff, no copy machine, and no law books, and list­ed the phone num­ber of a local bar as his office num­ber. The lawyers failed to inter­view and sub­poe­na wit­ness­es, inves­ti­gate evi­dence col­lect­ed by police, or con­tact fam­i­ly mem­bers who would have tes­ti­fied on behalf of spar­ing Wilson’s life. They pre­sent­ed no defense to the mur­der charges and no mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence in the penal­ty-phase of trial. 

To com­pound mat­ters, Wilson’s co-defen­dant, Brenda Humphrey — a for­mer pros­ti­tute who tes­ti­fied against him — was hav­ing a sex­u­al rela­tion­ship with anoth­er judge in the cir­cuit dur­ing the time of the tri­al. Humphrey, Wilson’s clemen­cy peti­tion point­ed out, had ​“con­fessed to her sis­ter that she, Brenda, was the one who killed the vic­tim by slit­ting her throat.” Humphrey — who is white — was sen­tenced to a term of years, while Wilson — who is black —was sen­tenced to die. 

Bevin’s state­ment accom­pa­ny­ing the com­mu­ta­tion said that ​“Justice should be served on all sides. It was not.” The fact that the ​“actu­al admit­ted killer is now out of prison and [Mr. Wilson] is on death row would indi­cate that Mr. Wilson got the short end of the jus­tice stick,” Bevin said. Wilson had been involved in a ​“bru­tal mur­der,” the Governor wrote, but ​“to say his legal defense was inad­e­quate would be the under­state­ment of the year.” 

Wilson’s cur­rent lawyer, retired Chief Louisville Metro Public Defender Dan Goyette, praised Bevin for his ​“courage and sense of jus­tice.” “[A]t long last,” Goyette said, ​“a shame­ful trav­es­ty of jus­tice has final­ly been remedied.” 

Bevin com­mut­ed Halvorsen’s sen­tence in the wan­ing hours of his ser­vice as gov­er­nor, after review­ing a clemen­cy peti­tion detail­ing what Halvorsen’s lawyer, David M. Barron, described as a ​“unique and inspir­ing sto­ry of redemp­tion.” The peti­tion described how, in his 36 years on Kentucky’s death row, Halvorsen went from being a drug addict to a col­lege grad­u­ate, com­plet­ing two col­lege degrees. The peti­tion said that dur­ing that time, Halvorsen had raised mon­ey for under­priv­i­leged chil­dren, men­tored at-risk youth, and was the only death-row pris­on­er the war­den trust­ed to be part of a pan­el of pris­on­ers who spoke with trou­bled stu­dents. Corrections per­son­nel also cred­it­ed Halvorsen with restor­ing calm in the prison, like­ly pre­vent­ing attacks on cor­rec­tions per­son­nel and other prisoners.

Several of the stu­dents to whom Halvorsen had spo­ken wrote let­ters in sup­port of his peti­tion. One wrote: ​“Listening to your sto­ry made me real­ize that if I don’t change some­thing about my life, I could end up some­where close to where you are now.” 

Halvorsen had pre­vi­ous­ly writ­ten in a mag­a­zine sto­ry, “[m]y years in prison have been spent reclaim­ing my life from the ash­es of its ruins.” Granting the com­mu­ta­tion, Gov. Bevin said, ​“Leif has a pow­er­ful voice that needs to be heard by more people.” 

Bevin texted Barron at 10:02 p.m., just under two hours before his term expired, to inform him of the com­mu­ta­tion. ​“I’m very pleased and grate­ful that the gov­er­nor has rec­og­nized Leif Halvorsen’s near­ly four decades of efforts to demon­strate remorse, build rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and attempt to use his life sit­u­a­tion and sto­ry to save oth­er lives and turn oth­er lives around,” Barron said.