The one-time executive director of what he says is now an “out of control” state Board of Pardons and Paroles wants you to remember the names of the five “permissive” members: Chairman Terry Barnard, James Mills, James Donald, Albert Murray and Braxton Cotton. These panelists, appointed by a governor, have the power to restore civil rights like gun ownership and voting privileges to felons who have served their prison time, which they have been doing with abandon in recent years. They are also completely absolving some terrible criminals of their crimes.
Charles Topetzes, executive director of the board from 1996 to 2002, tells this writer that he is “sick to his stomach” about the panel’s pardoning of warped sex criminals like Barry Davis, as described in an Atlanta-Journal-Constitution investigative report by Alan Judd. Davis admitted to the aggravated sodomy of a six-year-old girl, served two years in prison, spent eight years on probation and was supposed to be listed forever on Georgia’s sex offender registry. For some reason, which the board refuses to explain to the public, it granted this criminal an unconditional pardon, thus erasing his name from the registry and declared him “law-abiding.” Furthermore, the paper reports, it did so without notifying Davis’ victim, her family or the prosecutor and judge who sent him to prison.
“I spent my tenure at the Board making certain that criminals like him served as much time in prison ad possible, and would never have supported an action such as that taken by the current board membership,” says Topetzes. “
This writer interviewed Topetzes during his tenure and remembers when he and the board established and worked closely with a victims’ advisory committee. The purpose was to advise the pardons and paroles panel on operational policies and changes with regard to crime victims. “I doubt whether this board has the vision or sensitivity to do such things,” Topetzes says.
Incredibly, the prosecutor in the Davis case twice asked the board to explain the pardon, the Journal-Constitution reports. Each time, the board refused. After the prosecutor said he would complain to the governor, a board attorney flatly told the prosecutor: “Go ahead. We don’t work for the governor. You’re wasting your time.”
“I do not remember a time I was at the board when such little thought went into doling out pardons to a less deserving group of convicts,” Topetzes declares. (Davis, by the way, is not the only convicted sex offender to be cleared and declared “law-abiding” by this panel.)
It is also instructive that a review of the five members’ backgrounds indicates that only two have any real law enforcement experience.
Topetzes has a final thought: “The governor’s office needs to communicate to the board that while it may control the state’s clemency function, the governor’s office controls their salaries.” There are already rumblings by state Rep. Kevin Tanner, R-Dawsonville, and other legislators to place restrictions on the board and to increase its public accountability. That’s a step in the right direction. And Topetzes
thinks that “a phone call to the five board members from the governor,” if it already hasn’t happened, “is definitely in order.”
