Republican Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin recently pardoned a man who was convicted of murdering a woman who had recently ended their affair.
Bevin, who lost his reelection bid to Democrat Andy Beshear last month, had issued several controversial pardons and commutations during his final days in office.
Earlier this week, Bevin pardoned and commuted the life sentence of Delmar Partin, who was found guilty of murdering Betty Carnes in 1993, a co-worker whom he had been involved with romantically. The coroners were unable to determine if she died via asphyxiation or by repeated blows to her head from a metal pipe. Her severed head was found in a 55-gallon barrel. She was a mother of three.
“Given the inability or unwillingness of the state to use existing DNA evidence to either affirm or disprove this conviction, I hearby pardon Mr. Partin for this crime and encourage the state to make every effort to bring final justice to the victim and her family,” Bevin wrote, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader.
While Bevin cited DNA evidence that hasn’t been tested as the reason he commuted Partin’s sentence, the court denied a 2008 motion from the defense to test a hair found on a paper towel in Partin’s home trash. The request was denied, and that denial was upheld by the Kentucky Court of Appeals.
Following the Court of Appeals ruling, Justice Laurence VanMeter acknowledged that “evidence of Partin’s guilt was circumstantial,” but said the “evidence as a whole was sufficient to uphold the jury’s verdict and the trial court’s denial of a directed verdict.” VanMeter also noted, “In addition, testimony was adduced that Partin was an experienced alligator hunter, having killed them by wires or ropes around the neck, hitting the head and separating the spine.”
Tom Handy, the prosecutor on the case, expressed dismay at Bevin’s decision to end Partin’s sentence.
“He hated her so much, and he wanted to punish her with her looking at him before he cut her head off,” Hardy told the Lexington Herald-Leader. “The evil is unimaginable.”
Bill Johnson, who was Partin’s counsel, praised the governor’s decision and said he “always had serious doubts” that his client had murdered Carnes.
