Pardoned by Gov. Matt Bevin and reconvicted, Patrick Baker seeks to limit murder sentence
Andrew WolfsonLOUISVILLE, Ky. — Patrick Baker, who was pardoned by Gov. Matt Bevin for a homicide but convicted in August of murder in federal court, wants his conviction dismissed or or federal sentence capped at 19 years — the punishment he got in state court.
Baker faces up to life in prison when he is sentenced Dec. 21 for murdering a drug dealer during a robbery.
In a motion Nov. 29, one of Baker’s lawyers said in addition to violating Baker’s right to avoid being punished twice for the same crime (known as double jeopardy), the federal prosecution unfairly retaliated against him for "exercising his constitutional right to request and receive a pardon."
If the case isn’t dismissed, Baker says, his punishment should be limited to the 19 years he received during his first trial in the Knox Circuit Court because a sentence exceeding that would be "presumptively vindictive" and unconstitutionally violate his right to due process of law.
The government has until Monday to respond.
More:Facing life in prison, will pardoned man cooperate in probe of former Gov. Matt Bevin?
U.S. District Judge Claria Horn Boom already rejected Baker’s double jeopardy argument before his federal trial last summer, citing U.S. Supreme Court rulings that a person can be convicted in state and federal courts of the same acts because each government is a "separate sovereignty."
Justice Department policy allows the prosecution of a defendant cleared in state court to correct an unjust or corrupt result.
The motion filed by Louisville attorney Patrick Renn cites cases in which the Supreme Court has said a defendant granted a new trial cannot receive a greater punishment than in the first prosecution.
Baker was sentenced to 19 years in prison in 2017 for reckless homicide and other crimes but Bevin pardoned him two years later as the lame-duck governor was leaving office.
On Aug. 25, a federal jury in London, Kentucky, found Baker guilty of murdering Donald Mills in a robbery during a drug deal. The verdict appeared to vindicate the federal government’s decision to retry Baker for the crime Bevin granted him clemency.
Neither Bevin nor the pardon was mentioned during Baker’s 10-day trial — Boom barred either from being mentioned to the jury.
But the jury seemed to repudiate Bevin’s claim in pardoning Baker that the evidence was “sketchy” against him in the slaying of Mills, 29, during a robbery at Mills' home in the Knox County community of Stinking Creek.
More:Matt Bevin cited 'sketchy' evidence to pardon a killer. He couldn't have been more wrong
The government disclosed in June that the FBI was conducting a separate investigation of whether Bevin issued the pardon — one of 670 acts of clemency as he left office in 2019 — in exchange for $21,500 that Baker’s brother and sister-in-law raised at a fundraiser the year before to retire Bevin’s campaign debt.
The FBI Friday did not immediately respond to questions about the status of the investigation.
Baker was one of two offenders who Bevin granted clemency to be prosecuted in federal court.
In October, Dayton Jones, 27, who Bevin freed in 2019 after serving three years of a 15-year term for sodomy and other offenses, pleaded guilty in federal court to a pornography charge in exchange for a 10-year sentence.
In an usual aspect of his plea bargain, if it is approved by a judge, Dayton Jones will receive less than the mandatory minimum of 15 years for the crime, which former prosecutors say is only permitted if an offender cooperates with the government.
Bevin claimed the only evidence implicating Jones came from co-defendants trying to get leniency and that there was no corroborating evidence supporting the conviction.
But a Courier Journal investigation found other witnesses implicated him and that in a statement to police, Jones implicated himself.
The victim, an unconscious 15-year-old boy, nearly died of his injuries.
Andrew Wolfson: 502-582-7189; awolfson@courier-journal.com; Twitter: @adwolfson.