Reason Writers Around the Web: Radley Balko Writes for Slate on Haley Barbour's Pardon Problem

Between the Cory Maye case, the 20-year forensics scandal involving favored prosecution witnesses Steven Hayne and Michael West, and the recent exonerations of three men wrongly convicted of murder, you'd think that Gov. Haley Barbour (R-Miss.) would begin to have some concern about how justice is administered in his state. But Barbour hasn't said a word about any of those stories. Instead, after years of refusing to grant pardons—including even posthumous pardons to framed civil rights leaders—Barbour has in the last year pardoned five convicted killers, four of whom killed their wives or girlfriends. Strangely, as Reason Senior Editor Radley Balko explains at Slate, all five men had the good fortune of being selected for a trusty program that had them working at the governor's mansion where Barbour lives.