We reviewed this position when we covered Article 4 of the Texas Constitution.
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If you believe Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles member Pamela Freeman, then you believe that six prisoners declined an interview with her that could have led to their release because it was fried chicken day at the prison cafeteria.
The inmates had been waiting 20 years behind bars for the interview. For many of them, it was the first chance they had to try to persuade somebody how much they've changed in the past two decades, how they've kept busy and how sorry they are for what they did.
But for the six men back in April 2014, that chance passed them by when Freeman allegedly wrote in their case files that they declined that interview. According to Kevin Stouwie, the parole attorney who filed a complaint with the Texas Department of Justice's Office of Inspector General, the men waited outside the parole office in the Wynne Unit for their scheduled interview. Yet Freeman, for some reason, allegedly left without ever saying a word to them — they had never declined anything. Meaning, Stouwie said, that what Freeman wrote in their records was a lie.
Freeman was indicted in Walker County for one count of tampering with a government record in October 2014 — and this past February, she picked up five more indictments for the five other men, as Scott Henson over at the popular criminal justice blog Grits For Breakfast recently pointed out.
