Demond Brown To Be Released

In an earlier post, you were informed of a young Kentucky man, Demond Brown, convicted of killing two people in a traffic accident. On Governor Fletcher's last day, he issued a commutation and Brown will be released from prison.


From the Courier Journal:

The three commutations that Fletcher issued yesterday will result in the release of only one of the inmates: Demond Brown, an African American who was convicted in the fatal Hopkinsville traffic accident.
Brown was convicted by an all-white jury in the deaths of a white woman and her daughter, drawing protests from members of the black community.
In June 2005 the state Supreme Court upheld Brown's 2002 conviction, marking the first time the high court had sustained a wanton-murder conviction of a driver who ran a red light but was not drinking, on drugs or speeding excessively.
Jim Carter, the Hopkinsville attorney who has represented Brown, was floored last night when a Courier-Journal reporter called him to tell him that his client had been pardoned.
"Bingo! That is wonderful!" Carter exclaimed. "I was hoping (Fletcher) would do it, but I had about given up."
Carter said he had talked with associates in Frankfort about the case in hopes that they would talk with the governor, but he had not made a formal request to Fletcher.
"This is correcting a terrible wrong," he said.