FRANKFORT, Ky. — Pardons from past governors are the driving force behind a Republican state senator’s proposal to limit the governor’s ability to grant pardons and commute sentences. If enacted Senate Bill 126, sponsored by State Sen. Chris McDaniel, R-Ryland Heights, would ask voters if they are in favor of a change in the state’s constitution relating to pardons.

What You Need To Know

  • Senate Bill 126 would prohibit governor pardons 30 days before a gubernatorial election up to inauguration 

  • State Sen. Chris McDaniel, R-Ryland Heighs, says outgoing governors don't have to answer to voters when deciding who to pardon 

  • Former Gov. Matt Bevin, R-Ky., made "controversial pardons" his last few months in office, including commuting the death sentence of convicted rapist and murderer Gregory Wilson 

  • Bevin commuted Wilson's sentence to life with parole

McDaniel said controversial pardons by former Gov. Matt Bevin, R-Ky., other state governors and even U.S. presidents is why he wants to limit a Kentucky governor’s ability to pardon 30 days before an election and up to inauguration.

In Kentucky and many other states, a governor can grant pardons or commute sentences, even up to his or her last minutes in office. But McDaniel said this makes an outgoing governor unaccountable to the public. McDaniel’s bill would allow pardons for three years and 10 months.

“The governor has to provide an explanation for a pardon, that’s for certain. The problem is, even providing an explanation, a governor who is on his way out the door doesn’t have to stand in front of the voters,” McDaniel said.

Toward the end of his term, former governor Matt Bevin made a series of pardons and commuting of sentences. One of those was convicted murderer and rapist Gregory Wilson. Wilson was originally sentenced to death. After serving 25 years, Bevin commuted the sentence to life with parole.

“This is a person who was convicted of multiple rapes before he was paroled in Ohio and he raped and strangled a woman and threw her body in a field like a piece of trash,” McDaniel said.

Wilson kidnapped, raped and killed a Covington woman named Debbie Pooley in 1987. Now, a parole board is expected to decide on Monday if Wilson should be released. McDaniel says Wilson does not deserve freedom, adding his release will put Kentuckians at risk.

“The ability of the previous governor to issue that pardon; it could happen again. There is nothing to stop a governor from doing this on an even larger scale in the future,” McDaniel said.

However, Senate Minority Caucus Chair Reginald Thomas, D-Lexington doesn’t share those concerns.

“I don’t have that concern at all. We had a glitch, a real problem exercised by Gov. Bevin, but the previous governor before him, Beshear (Sr.) used the power wisely,” Thomas said.

Thomas said besides Bevin, the current pardon system worked well. He sees this bill as an attempt to take power away from the governor’s office.

“I really see this as another effort by the Republican majority to try to limit Gov. Beshear’s authority,” Thomas said.

McDaniel says it’s not an elimination of pardon but a restriction during a “politically sensitive time.”

“If the voters want to leave the current pardon process in place, they have the ability to decide that. This is a very simple constitutional amendment,” McDaniel said.

Voters would have to approve SB 126 because it is an amendment to Kentucky’s Constitution.

McDaniel says an incumbent governor who wins re-election would regain the ability to pardon as soon as he or she takes the oath of office on inauguration day.

In 2020, McDaniel introduced a similar measure that passed the Senate but did not get a third reading in the House.

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