Does Matt Bevin run for President in 2024?

[DINGO Joe]

Looks like he's gearing up to run for Senate--in Alabama!

The governor of Kentucky just pardoned a man convicted of abusing his 6-year-old stepdaughter

[DINGO Joe]

Looks like he's gearing up to run for Senate--in Alabama!

The governor of Kentucky just pardoned a man convicted of abusing his 6-year-old stepdaughter

From the article:

The pardon hinges on the fact that in 2015, Hurt’s stepdaughter, whose name has not been made public, recanted her allegations. However, several judges declined to set aside Hurt’s conviction, the Louisville Courier-Journal reported, in part because of the role of Jefferson Circuit Judge Stephen Mershon in the recantation. Mershon presided over Hurt’s original conviction in 2001, but later began corresponding with Hurt and also contacted the stepdaughter.

In 2016, one judge said that Mershon had “altered” the stepdaughter’s memory and used “judicial coercion and intimidation” to get her to recant. After Hurt’s pardon, Mershon was the one to pick him up from prison.

In pardoning Hurt, Bevin wrote that, “In light of all that is known and all that will forever remain unknown, it does not seem possible that justice can be truly served in this instance.” But by granting the pardon, Bevin may have added his voice to the chorus of those telling survivors they should stay quiet, for fear of ruining perpetrators’ lives.

In this case, Bevin did the right thing.  The circumstances cited in the article would constitute reasonable doubt at any jury trial.  

This is not to say that the circumstances surrounding that particular affair aren't shaky all around.  But the need to alleviate the incarceration of the imprisoned for whom there is reasonable doubt of guilt takes precedence over keeping a person in prison when there is legitimate reasonable doubt as to their guilt because of some abstract concern about "believing victims".  The alleged victim in this defendant's case has certainly behaved in a way to where she should not be believed.  

Would you, the reader, be OK with being in prison for a heinous crime AFTER your accuser recanted, and you were not guilty?  Would you be OK with a loved one being in that position?

That whole matter stinks, to be sure.  But we set a far more dangerous precedent when we allow people in prison to remain there despite reasonable doubt about the verdict then when we cast skepticism over the allegations of alleged victims too quickly.  The latter is not desirable, but the former is a far greater wrong.  All folks here who are always complaining about authoritarianism ought to pause about a paradigm shift to where punishing the innocent is preferable to not punishing the guilty.

I'm not a Bevin fan.  I'm a fan of Governors and Presidents having broad powers to issue pardons and sentence commutations that are irreversible and not subject to further scrutiny.  It is important that vehicles exist to swiftly free the innocent.

Yeah, I read the article and I disagree.  While neither you or I are privy to details of the case, there are red flags all over the place with this and there's no reason to think Bevin has the wisdom of Solomon to resolve this.

[DINGO Joe]

Yeah, Bevin will never get elected to anything again.