Going Free In Tennessee

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.

Among other commutations signed by Blanton last week was one for Katie Browder Stricklin, 40, convicted in 1972 for the strychnine poisonings of her mother and father-in-law. She had been acquitted of killing her father and mother-in-law, despite indications that their deaths also resulted from poisoning.

Thirty-six hours after the sentences were commuted, U.S. Attorney Harold D. Hardin warned Governor-elect Lamar Alexander that Blanton was about to release additional convicts, reportedly including Eddie ("Dusty") Denton, 25, a convicted murderer serving 60 years, for whom an $85,000 down payment had alledgedly been made on a commutation that was supposed to cost $200,000.

With that, Alexander arranged to take his oath three days early. The new Governor then ordered Fred Thompson, former chief minority counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee, to take charge of all pardon and commutation documents. Immediately after the swearing-in ceremony, agents of the FBI and Tennessee Bureau of Criminal Identification swept through the capitol, searching filing cabinets for evidence and handing out subpoenas requiring some of Blanton's aides and close friends to appear before the federal grand jury. The agents wedged shut the door to the Governor's office, barring Blanton and his aides from removing any documents.

Even as power changed hands, Blanton attempted to pardon more prisoners. Lewis Donelson, an aide to the new Governor, discovered Blanton's counsel, Robert Lillard, busily drafting new executive clemency documents in a tiny office in the darkened capitol. Lillard claimed Blanton still held his gubernatorial powers, but gave up his work when Donelson phoned Blanton to inform him that he would be forbidden to enter the capitol to sign any new orders. "By whose authority?" demanded Blanton. Replied Donelson: "By the authority of the new Governor."

Blanton's 52 pardons and paroles were promptly challenged by John J. Hooker Jr., a Nashville lawyer who has long opposed Blanton's leniency with prisoners. He asked a state court to void the last-minute releases. But Governor Alexander said he was doubtful that the releases could be rescinded.

Republican State Senator Victor Ashe was so angry with Blanton that he promised to seek removal of the ex-Governor's name from three state college buildings. Said Ashe: "Students attending classes in them may be inclined to cheat." Later, from the steps of his private suburban home, Blanton, a former three-term member of Congress, offered no apologies. Said he: "History will record that we did the right and proper thing."

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