Missouri Gov. Mike Parson delivers the annual State of the State speech Jan. 24, 2024, to a joint legislative session, with House Speaker Dean Plocher and Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe seated behind him (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).
Mike Parson wants to be remembered as the clemency governor. And he will be, but not with the admiration that he seems to expect.
It is true, as Parson would have us know, that he has done more than any Missouri governor in decades to address a backlog of clemency petitions. He inherited more than 3,500 requests when he took office in 2018, and he is departing with a clean slate, having pardoned or commuted the sentences of more than 800 people.
But proficiency isn’t the same as fairness. Parson should be remembered not for the numbers he racked up, but for his decisions and actions that chipped away at the notion that all Missourians are equal under the law.
Parson bragged about his clemency record in his 2024 State of the State address, noting that he had pardoned or commuted sentences for “people who deserved it.” He even invited one of those deserving persons to stand and be recognized. The man, once an angry hellraiser, served three stints in prison and is now a husband, father and pastor with his criminal past officially forgiven and his legal rights restored.
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But, as critics have noted, most of Parson’s pardons and commutations were easy pickings — low-level drug offenders, for instance, and people who had already completed their sentences.
And, even as the governor touted his numbers, Missourians took note of the pardons that he had refused to grant.
Those included petitions from Kevin Strickland of Kansas City and Lamar Johnson and Christopher Dunn of St. Louis, Black men who had spent decades in prison despite mounting evidence of their innocence. Parson denied them all — leaving the men to spend months more behind bars before judges exonerated them and set them free.
While they were languishing, Parson did see his way in 2021 to pardon Mark and Patricia McCloskey, white lawyers who became celebrities in MAGA world for waving guns at Black Lives Matter protesters.
With the McCloskey pardons, Parson sent a message that he would later reinforce. If you are “somebody” in the circles that matter to the governor, maybe you could catch a break. If you are a Black person, even demonstrably innocent, he will not help you.
A lot happened in 2024, after Parson boasted in his speech about being the clemency governor.
Missouri executed four prisoners. Strong doubts persist about the guilt of one of them, Marcellus Williams. In all,13 prisoners were put to death during Parson’s tenure as governor.
On March 1, Parson shortened the prison sentence of Britt Reid, a former Kansas City Chiefs assistant coach who had received a three-year sentence for driving while intoxicated and causing a crash that left a 5-year-old girl with a long-lasting brain injury.
Thanks to Parson’s action, Reid, the son of the Chiefs’ head coach, was able to leave prison and serve the remainder of his sentence under house arrest. The commutation was a breathtaking act of disrespect to the young victim and her family. But Reid clearly was part of a circle that mattered to the governor.
“While the Reid family obviously holds a special place in the hearts of Missourians and Kansas City Chiefs fans, that does not entitle them to special treatment,” Jay Ashcroft, Missouri’s Republican secretary of state, told the Kansas City Star, as bipartisan condemnation rained down on Parson.
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But the governor was not finished with special treatment. He dished it out in a big way late on a Friday afternoon in December. The recipient was Eric DeValkenaere, the former Kansas City cop convicted of manslaughter in the death a Black man, Cameron Lamb, outside of Lamb’s home. Parson sent him home for Christmas after serving a little more than one year of a six-year sentence.
Multiple court decisions had upheld a Jackson County judge’s verdict that DeValkenaere violated Lamb’s constitutional rights by entering his property and shooting him. He received special treatment because he was a police officer. That’s another circle that Parson, a former county sheriff, can relate to. As a cop, DeValkenaere is somebody.
The Dec. 20 clemency list that freed DeValkenaere also contained the names of 25 other people who received pardons and commutations.
One is Patricia Prewitt, the longest-serving female inmate in Missouri. She was convicted for the 1984 murder of her husband in their farmhouse in Holden. Her guilt was always suspect and she should have received clemency years ago. It took him six years, but Parson’s commutation finally sent her home.
Another name on the governor’s list was Celia Newsom. She was an enslaved woman who in 1855 murdered the man who claimed her as his property and repeatedly raped her. Six months later she was executed.
Missourians wanting to set the historical record straight petitioned for a pardon on Newsom’s behalf. Parson granted it. His action erases her conviction and “restores all rights of citizenship forfeited by said conviction.”
As an enslaved woman, of course, Newsom had no rights of citizenship to forfeit. Still, Parson’s pardon was an act of grace and the right thing to do.
But a posthumous pardon is low risk and grants no freedom beyond the grave. Missouri would have been better served if the clemency governor had used his powers to free the falsely convicted Black men serving time on his watch, and passed on the overt favoritism to the coach, the cop and the gun-waving lawyers.
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