10 April 2017 :

Parole Board Recommends Clemency for Jason McGehee. The Arkansas Parole Board voted 6-1 on April 5 to recommend clemency for Jason McGehee, 41, White, one of the eight death-row prisoners scheduled to be executed in an unprecedented eleven-day period later this month. McGehee's clemency petition drew support from both the former Director of the Arkansas Department of Correction, Ray Hobbs, and the trial judge who presided in his case, Robert McCorkindale. Speaking on McGehee's behalf, Hobbs told the Board, "He has learned his lesson, and he still has value that can be given to others if his life is spared." McGehee's lawyer, assistant federal defender John C. Williams, said clemency was warranted for numerous reasons and "respectfully asked the Governor to accept the parole board’s recommendation and sentence Mr. McGehee to life without the possibility of parole instead of death." Williams emphasized that McGehee was only twenty years old when the murder occurred and had a "near-perfect" prison record. He said, "The parole board determined Mr. McGehee warrants clemency instead of death because of his exemplary behavior, his youth at the time of the crime, and also because his sentence is not proportional." Two of McGehee's co-defendants, whom his lawyers argued were at least as culpable as McGehee, had received lesser sentences. The Fair Punishment Project chronicled numerous mitigating factors that, because McGehee's lawyer at trial barely investigated the case, his jury never heard. This included evidence that McGehee had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and that he had experienced severe abuse and neglect as a child that led him to use drugs and alcohol as early as sixth grade. The board's recommendations are advisory, not binding, and Governor Asa Hutchinson makes the final decision whether or not to grant clemency.