Last week, members of the State Parole Board sent Gov. Jennifer Granholm a recommendation on the commutation plea by Efren Paredes, who was sentenced to life without parole for a crime he was convicted of at 15.
A spokesman for the Department of Corrections said that the board’s recommendation will not be made public until the governor decides on the matter.
Paredes has spent 20 years in jail for a 1989 murder and robbery but maintains that he is innocent.
Jeff Gerritt of the Detroit Free Press writes that though Paredes is “probably innocent” and a model citizen in prison, the parole board may recommend against commutation because he has not exhibited remorse for the crime that put him in jail.
Gerritt questions whether Granholm will have the courage to free him:
Granholm has never granted a commutation that the Parole Board has opposed, and I’m not sure that she has the courage to do it. One governor who did, former Gov. William Milliken, told me the one regret he had is that he didn’t grant more commutations. “When an injustice occurs,” he told me, “a wrong needs to be corrected, and a governor is the one person who can do it.” Granholm should seriously consider the recommendations of the Parole Board, but the power of commutation is hers alone. In the Paredes case and others, the Parole Board should not keep her from doing the right thing.