A reader sends a link to a story that’s deeply angering folks on the Mississippi Coast. In Biloxi’s Sun Herald, Margaret Baker reports that Michael David Graham, doing life for killing his socially-prominent wife with a shotgun blast to the face in 1989, has now, apparently via serving as a trusty at the governor’s mansion, so won the favor of Haley Barbour that the governor’s ordered his early release — never mind what the parole board says.
Baker counts among the outraged Jackson County’s sheriff (whom my source IDs as a big Republican and strong campaigner for Barbour), and Source adds that last night’s local newscasts quoted parole-board members recalling that Graham appeared before them showing “no remorse” for what he’d done.
So whatever’s behind this move, it’s stinking bad.
UPDATE: Thanks to Habeas porpoise, we have this more complete story from gulflive.com, and I urge you to read it. What the hell is Haley Barbour thinking? And why, under Mississippi law, does he have this kind of power to endanger the public’s safety on a personal whim?
Margaret Baker’s story is a good one, but the Sun Herald ran it on page two. The coverage of this story in the Mississippi Press, with a big front-page headline “OUTRAGE,” is much more extensive than in the paper that some coastians have come to call the Daily Haley (i.e., the Sun Herald). Mississippi Press stories and “Soundoffs” can be found at gulflive.com, or one can just google “Michael David Graham” “Haley Barbour.” This commutation is an unmitigated outrage. Adrienne Klasky’s family, her best friends, her lawyer who filed restraining orders against Graham, prosecuting attorneys, jurors, and witnesses in the case, and others will be sleeping less easy than they have for the past nineteen years thanks to the clemency granted this killer by the governor. By all accounts, the murder of Adrienne Klasky at one of Pascagoula’s busiest downtown intersections one sunny Friday morning in April 1989, is one of the area’s most heinous crimes ever. She was stopped at the intersection stop light when Graham, who had been following her, pulled up beside her car in the oncoming traffic lane, laid the barrel of his 12-gauge shotgun out the passenger-side window of his pickup and fired into her left temple at point blank range as she sat in her car, basically blowing her face away according to some eyewitnesses. Many downtown offices emptied into the streets. Klasky’s own attorney, one of many to arrive at the scene shortly after the shooting, did not recognize her. Her father, Lyle Klasky, the manager of a downtown clothing store around the corner from the crime scene, soon arrived and recognized the victim as his daughter. Meanwhile, Graham had calmly driven away and ended up at the office of his lawyer who talked Graham into turning himself in. News accounts say that Graham and Klasky had been divorced for three years. Close friends say he harassed and stalked her for much of that time. One of the police investigators described the murder as a stalking followed by an execution. This crime has been a major topic of conversation for almost two decades. I have heard many say they believe Graham deserved the death penalty. I have never heard one person say he deserved anything less than life without parole. Now the governor has put this cold-blooded killer out on the streets.
Habeas p, thanks very much for all this info (which can’t have been fun to write).
I’ve been to gulflive.com several times lately, finding good stuff there but not really knowing what the site is. Clue us in more on Mississippi Press, please, if you have time.
I’ll go check there, hoping to find out more than Baker explained about Barbour’s order per se. Her story didn’t really make clear where the process sits now, or whether/what Biloxians can do effectively at this point to stop Graham’s release.
Habeas p, I’ve updated the post, so thanks again.
The Mississippi Press is the local paper serving Pascagoula, Moss Point, Ocean Springs, Gautier, and Lucedale. Gulflive.com is the web site for the Mississippi Press and the Mobile Register. The Mobile Register owns and publishes the Mississippi Press, I think, or they have a common owner/publisher–I’m not sure. The Sun Herald serves the entire Gulf Coast area but on some stories, especially those involving Jackson County, the Mississippi Press devotes more extensive coverage than the Sun Herald. For example, Natalie Chandler’s stories on the homeowners’ grant program after Katrina was more extensive and more probing than that of the Sun Herald, in my opinion. Chandler is now a reporter for the Clarion Ledger, I believe.
The Mississippi Press today published an editorial on Gov. Barbour’s commutation of Michael Graham’s life sentence.
link
The Sun Herald hasn’t as yet published an editorial on the subject that I have seen, although political columnist Geoff Pender had a column in today’s Sun Herald, attempting to wax humorous about the damage to Barbour’s political future caused by the commutation of Graham’s sentence. Sorry, I don’t have the link at my fingertips.
Thanks again, Habeas p. (I shortened that link to keep it out of the sidebar, instrux for which HTML trick you can find under Pages, at left — by no means a required protocol here, just kinda nifty if you want to try it.)