More people say they favor a pardon for Billy the Kid than oppose the idea after Governor Bill Richardson’s office set up a Web site and e-mail address to take comments on a possible posthumous pardon for one of New Mexico’s most famous Old West outlaws.
Richardson’s office received 809 e-mails and letters in the survey that ended on Sunday. While 430 argued for a pardon, 379 opposed it.
The Web site was created after Albuquerque attorney Randi McGinn petitioned for a pardon, saying that Lew Wallace, who served as territorial governor of New Mexico from 1878 to 1881, had promised one in return for the Kid’s testimony in a murder case against three men.
Richardson’s term ends on Friday, leaving him only a few days to decide whether to pardon the Kid in the 1878 killing of Lincoln County Sheriff William Brady.
“I might not pardon him, but then I might,” Richardson told reporters last week.
His successor, incoming New Mexico governor Susana Martinez, has already said she won’t be wasting her time on a pardon. The Republican said on Tuesday that state issues, such as a balanced budget and a controversial move of the state’s DNA laboratory, were more pressing.
“There’s an awful lot of work to be taken care of for us to be wasting so much time on such a consideration. It’s just a waste,” she said.
Billy the Kid, also known as William Bonney or Henry McCarty, was shot to death by sheriff Pat Garrett in July 1881, a few months after escaping from the Lincoln County jail where he was awaiting hanging for Brady’s death. He killed two deputies while escaping, but McGinn’s pardon request does not cover those deaths.
McGinn, knowing Richardson’s interest in the Kid, offered to look into the issue this summer. She petitioned for a pardon on Dec. 14 after reviewing historical documents and other material.
E-mails debating the issue came from all over the US and beyond, said Richardson’s deputy chief of staff, Eric Witt.
“This has clearly generated a lot of interest globally,” Witt said.
He said responses, pro and con, came from people familiar with the legend of Billy the Kid as well as from people knowledgeable about the territorial era and the Lincoln County War, in which the Kid and Brady were on opposite sides.
Some argued that circumstantial evidence points toward Wallace offering a pardon and said it was not implausible since Wallace pardoned other people involved in the Lincoln County War. Others questioned why Richardson would consider pardoning “a cop killer,” Witt said.
McGinn has said the point is not who was killed, but whether a government has to keep its promise.
Among those opposing a pardon are Garrett’s grandson J.P. Garrett, of Albuquerque.
J.P. Garrett has said there’s no proof former governor Wallace offered a pardon — and he may have tricked the Kid into testifying.
“The big picture is that Wallace obviously had no intent to pardon Billy — even telling a reporter that fact in an interview on April 28, 1881,” he wrote to Witt. “But I do think there was a pardon ‘trick,’ in that Wallace led Billy on to get his testimony.”
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
OUTRAGE: The former strongman was accused of corruption and responsibility for the killings of hundreds of thousands of political opponents during his time in office Indonesia yesterday awarded the title of national hero to late president Suharto, provoking outrage from rights groups who said the move was an attempt to whitewash decades of human rights abuses and corruption that took place during his 32 years in power. Suharto was a US ally during the Cold War who presided over decades of authoritarian rule, during which up to 1 million political opponents were killed, until he was toppled by protests in 1998. He was one of 10 people recognized by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto in a televised ceremony held at the presidential palace in Jakarta to mark National
US President Donald Trump handed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban a one-year exemption from sanctions for buying Russian oil and gas after the close right-wing allies held a chummy White House meeting on Friday. Trump slapped sanctions on Moscow’s two largest oil companies last month after losing patience with Russian President Vladimir Putin over his refusal to end the nearly four-year-old invasion of Ukraine. However, while Trump has pushed other European countries to stop buying oil that he says funds Moscow’s war machine, Orban used his first trip to the White House since Trump’s return to power to push for
LANDMARK: After first meeting Trump in Riyadh in May, al-Sharaa’s visit to the White House today would be the first by a Syrian leader since the country’s independence Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa arrived in the US on Saturday for a landmark official visit, his country’s state news agency SANA reported, a day after Washington removed him from a terrorism blacklist. Sharaa, whose rebel forces ousted long-time former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad late last year, is due to meet US President Donald Trump at the White House today. It is the first such visit by a Syrian president since the country’s independence in 1946, according to analysts. The interim leader met Trump for the first time in Riyadh during the US president’s regional tour in May. US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack earlier
RSS