Activists called on Thursday for a more equitable application of drug laws following an announcement by the governor of Arkansas that he would pardon his son on a decade-old felony marijuana conviction.
Governor Mike Beebe, a Democrat who is leaving office after eight years due to term limits, said that he would pardon his son Kyle, 34, who was convicted in 2003 of possession of more than 1oz of marijuana with intent to deliver. The elder Beebe was state attorney general at the time. Kyle Beebe was fined and sentenced to three years’ probation, but did not go to prison.
“I would have done it a long time ago if he’d have asked, but he took his sweet time about asking,” Beebe told local station KATV in Little Rock, the state capital. “He was embarrassed. He’s still embarrassed, and frankly, I was embarrassed and his mother was embarrassed. All of the families that go through that … it’s tough on the families, but hopefully the kids learn.”
The Arkansas board of pardons, which is appointed by the governor, recommended nine others convicted on similar charges for pardon alongside Beebe’s son. Beebe has issued about 700 pardons in his eight years in office, spokesman Matt DeCample said.
“A significant number of those have been young, first-time drug offenders, because he believes that if you make a mistake, especially with non-violent crime, and you straighten your life out, you deserve a second chance,” DeCample said. “There’s no reason why he wouldn’t hold his son to that same standard.”
The office of Arkansas attorney general Dustin McDaniel did not return a call and email requesting comment.
Rita Sklar, the executive director of the ACLU of Arkansas, welcomed the governor’s decision to pardon his son, but said that the state’s drug laws were applied unevenly.
“As we all know, drug crime laws disproportionately affect people of color, and that in itself is unfair,” she told the Guardian. “For that reason alone it needs to be reformed.”
A 2013 ACLU report found that black people in Arkansas were 3.1 times more likely than whites to be arrested for marijuana possession in 2010, a jump in disparity of 53.5% from 2001. Arkansas made 6,310 arrests for marijuana possession in 2010.
“I’d like to see the governor pardon everybody in the Arkansas prison system who is taking up unneeded space, instead of seeing the Arkansas legislature appropriate $100m to build a new prison, which is what they’re talking about,” Sklar said. “We’re a poor state, and we could use that money for a lot of other things.”
Keith Stroup, the founder of Norml, the national organization for the reform of marijuana laws, said that most people convicted of dealing marijuana end up in jail.
“I thought the fact that his son had avoided any jail time back ten years ago was more surprising than the pardon,” Stroup told the Guardian. “The reality is, most people who are convicted of marijuana dealing, that is separate from personal use, they generally receive some jail time, certainly in southern states and states such as Arkansas.”
Kyle Beebe, now an employee at a pipeline company and father to two daughters, submitted a personal plea addressed “Dear governor” as part of a pardon application. “I am a human being, therefore I will make mistakes,” he wrote. “Eleven years have passed since that time and I can assure you that I have learned from my mistake.”
Jeff Rosenzweig, a longtime criminal defense attorney in Little Rock, said Beebe had been slow to intervene to correct seeming sentencing injustices in drug cases.
“Although he may have issued some pardons to people who’ve been long out of prison, what he has not done, surprising most of the people who know him, he was not commuting sentences for drug offenses, which is at least equally pressing as pardoning someone,” Rosenzweig told the Guardian.
“So you have situations where people have gotten sentences that are completely out of whack, and he’s basically ruled down all clemencies in that respect. I know that he’s refused pardons for a couple of my clients who I felt were pretty good pardon candidates – drug-related, non-violent type stuff.”
Sklar credited the governor with trying to reform the way the state handles drug cases. The state revised its drug laws in 2011 to reduce sentences for drug users, after a 20-year explosion in the state’s prison population, which doubled between 1990 and 2010, according to an April report from the Pew Research center. Corrections costs rose nearly eightfold in the state, the report found.
Beebe was hampered by a legislature that was slow to act out of “political fear and personal fear”, Sklar said.
“I think Mike Beebe really tried to do the right things in terms of fairness and rational public policy, and criminal justice policy,” she said. “He really did. But a governor is not enough to pass laws. And I think that the legislature fought him.”
