No Pardon For Billy The Kid

No Pardon For Billy The Kid

The outgoing governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson has finally made a last-day-in-office determination of no pardon for Billy the Kid for his role in killing a sheriff. It was expected that Gov. Richardson would cave on the last day in office and issue the pardon because he is a Democrat and keen on following in the steps of Bill Clinton and his notorious pardons as he left the presidential office in order to leave a “legacy”. Of course Billy the Kid is dead as well as the then-Territorial Governor Lew Wallace who evidently offered the pardon to Billy for surrendering and testifying in another murder, so we’re not 100% assured of what really happened in Billy not getting the pardon in 1881. So who cares? Well Mark Lee Gardner, author of a book about Billy and Albuquerque defense attorney Randi McGinn, who volunteered to handle the case for free say they do. McGinn says "A promise is a promise and should be enforced," and Gardner says "Still, regardless of Billy's crimes, the motives of Richardson or the hollowness of posthumous justice, it all comes back to Wallace's promise. A deal is a deal, and 129 years doesn't change that. Billy is owed a pardon." "Why would he [Billy] surrender himself ... unless there was something in it for him?" McGinn asked. Why would Gardner and McGinn make such a ruckus if there wasn’t something in it for them such as selling books and making a notorious legal reputation respectively? Let’s just wait a minute. Lew Wallace was governor and that means politician. Whoever is so naïve to figure that a promise or a deal from any politician might ever come to fruition or be serious for five seconds let alone over a hundred years should be sold a bridge somewhere immediately. If Billy was double crossed by the governor, it fits under the heading of Obama fighting “government as usual” and the tea party fighting “government as usual” which means they’ll both cancel out and conduct government as usual. They have to- they don’t know any other way. Has anyone said they know how to “govern as extraordinary?” In related news, Gov. Richardson traveled to North Korea before Christmas, not as a representative of the U.S. government, but evidently as an emissary from the State of New Mexico in order to diffuse the nuclear tension there (New Mexico is so “in” now). He met with the North's chief nuclear negotiator Kim Gye Gwan and issued a pardon from the State of New Mexico to North Korea. When asked why he had done this, Gov. Richardson replied, “Upon comparing the photograph of Billy the Kid with that of the leader of North Korea, the picture of North Korea’s leader didn’t look quite as demented. Plus I needed a legacy”.

©2011 Eric Stamets