Blanton releases 23 murderers
This takes guts," remarked Tennessee Governor Ray Blanton last week as he signed an official document.
"Yeah," replied Secretary of State Gentry Crowell, as he witnessed the Governor's signature. "Some people have more guts than they've got brains."
This exchange took place late at night after Blanton, with just five days left in his term, summoned Crowell, a frequent critic, for some last-minute business at the Governor's office in Nashville. By the time Blanton finished his evening's work, he had pardoned or commuted the prison sentences of 52 felons, including 23 murderers and 15 armed robbers. "We're under a court order to reduce the prison population." said the Governor with a smile.
Blanton's actions set off a wave of shock and disbelief among Tennesseans. Throughout his four years in office, his policy on pardons and commutations has been under attack. In all, some 600 pardons and clemency documents were issued. They were first signed by Appointments Secretary Kenneth Lavender, but were ruled invalid by a chancery court judge who found that Lavender did not have the authority to approve them. Blanton promptly reissued all of them under his own signature. Last month a federal grand jury began investigating him and his administration on charges of selling pardons and commutations to prisoners. Already arrested on these charges are T. Edward Sisk, the Governor's legal counsel; Charles Benson Jr., the Governor's extradition officer: and State Policeman Fred Taylor. By week's end Justice Department sources said the investigation had been extended beyond the pardons and commutations to include charges of corruption in granting liquor licenses and federal highway contracts.
What most outraged Blanton's critics was the fact that among the convicts he freed last week was Roger Humphreys, 32, whose father Frank is a political ally and former chairman of Blanton's patronage committee in Washington County. Young Humphreys was serving a 20-year term in the Tennessee State Penitentiary for having murdered his ex-wife and her lover in 1973. He was convicted of killing the two after first having breakfast with them at his ex-wife's apartment. He had used a double-barreled derringer, reloading it at least eight times, to stitch an eleven-shot circle in her back and to pump six shots into her boyfriend. At his trial, Humphreys claimed that he could not remember what had happened, except that he had cuddled his former wife in his arms and begged her not to die.
Humphreys has long benefited from Blanton's particular quantity of mercy. Two months after entering prison, Humphreys was made a trusty, assigned to work as a photographer for the state's tourist development department, loaned a state-owned automobile and even given an expense account. On one trip, he took along his second wife Leslie to photograph a golf tournament. Blanton had defended Humphreys as a "fine young man" and vowed to release him before leaving office, despite the opposition of a citizens' review panel and members of the state legislature. After his release from prison last week, Humphreys picked up Leslie and went into seclusion.