Bad, Barbour! Bad!

This week the State of Mississippi put to death an inmate, Dale Leo Bishop. What did he do? He held down a man while another man bludgeoned the man to death with a claw hammer. The man who swung the blow which killed him ended up with a life sentence. Bishop, 34, got the death penalty and was executed by lethal injection on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Governor Haley Barbour (R-MS) recently commuted the life sentence of man who had been convicted of stalking and murdering his ex-wife in cold blood with a shotgun. Apparently all it takes for a convict to be released is to make sure you empty the trash in the Governor's mansion. Read on.

Barbour recently commuted the life sentence of Michael David Graham, who served 19 years for shooting his ex as she sat in her car at a busy Pascagoula intersection. Graham worked as a trusty at the Governor's Mansion since 2004, where he "has performed well and proven to be a diligent workman," Barbour spokesman Pete Smith said as part of a statement sent to reporters who questioned the commutation.

Questioned at an unrelated event on the Coast, Barbour told WLOX-TV that Graham's supervised release "doesn't excuse him of an awful crime ... but in my opinion, he's earned a second chance."

Nancy Northern, a niece of Graham's ex-wife, Adrienne Klasky, said Barbour's decision is "a slap in the face to all of us."

"What is a model trusty, exactly? He wasn't a model citizen," she said.

Just because he does good janitorial work doesn't mean he won't ever be violent again. And exactly what kind of message does this send to women in Mississippi? I'll tell you what message it sent me, speaking only on behalf of moi.

It said - the Governor doesn't understand the real threat that many women experience by men who stalk them. It means that Miss Klasky spent two years being terrified that this man would kill her and that Governor Barbour thinks that this particular killer couldn't harm anyone again. It means that because the felon knew the Governor, the pleas of this young woman before she died, the pleas of the victim's family, the pleas of the county sheriff and district attorney, and the pleas of citizens across the state can be dismissed by saying the murderer is a "model trusty."

I don't think I have ever been so disappointed in Governor Barbour, as I am about this. This is just shameful.