Recent Missouri editorials

The Kansas City Star, Dec. 29

Mary Pickard is a a 71-year-old grandmother serving a life sentence for the 1999 murder of her husband, Michael. She has spent the last two decades in prison. For years, she has petitioned to be released - to no avail.

A clinical psychologist said Pickard’s husband physically and emotionally abused her for years and repeatedly sexually assaulted her. She was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and battered-spouse syndrome.

St. Louis University Law Professor John Ammann is part of a coalition that has sought commutations for Mary Pickard and 14 other women convicted of violent crimes.

Like Pickard, most of the women were victims of sexual abuse or domestic violence. Four were older than 65 when the coalition launched its efforts in 2014, and some have spent nearly three decades behind bars.

Eleven of the women remain in prison. Former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens granted clemency to two of the women, one was paroled, and another died before her case was approved or denied.

“Which points out the fact that people are dying while waiting in limbo,” Ammann said.

As governor of Missouri, Mike Parson has the authority to pardon a person for a criminal act, as well as the option of reducing an individual’s sentence. But the governor appears to have little interest in exercising that power - or even giving due consideration to cases where a miscarriage of justice has occurred.

In Missouri, clemency petitions are reviewed by the Board of Probation and Parole. The board then sends its recommendations to the governor.

But Parson has acted on just one of more than 3,500 clemency cases in the year-and-half since he replaced Greitens, St. Louis Public Radio reported.

In September, Parson denied the clemency request of convicted killer Russell Bucklew, a terminally ill inmate with a rare medical condition that caused malformed blood vessels.

Bucklew was executed despite pleas from human rights organizations, Catholic bishops in Missouri and anti-death penalty advocates.

Parson is not responsible for the decades-old backlog of clemency requests that predates his time in the state’s highest office. But the governor can not abrogate the responsibility that comes with this job.

By not acting, the governor is leaving prisoners, ex-offenders and their families in limbo.

Parson is not obligated to give anyone clemency. But why isn’t he even considering these requests? His lack of urgency is cause for concern.

Kelli Jones, the governor’s spokeswoman, didn’t reply to requests for comment from The Star. Jones told St. Louis Public Radio the office is working on a system for handling clemency requests, but establishing a legal review process for a large number of files takes time.

Parson has been governor since June 1, 2018. Exactly how much time is required?

Some of Parson’s predecessors also acted on relatively few clemency requests. Greitens, who resigned amid multiple scandals after only 17 months as governor, pardoned five people before he left office and commuted four sentences.

Former Gov. Jay Nixon granted 110 pardons, but 65 of them came during his final year in office. Former Gov. Matt Blunt issued just 14 pardons in four years. Blunt also denied 1,338 pardon applications, according to the Board of Probation and Parole.

Regardless of whether Parson is inclined to grant clemency in a select few cases or deny every request, he must begin to make headway on what has become an indefensible backlog.

Those who have applied for clemency deserve a decision, if nothing else. And some no doubt deserve a clean slate or a reduced sentence.

“The holiday season is a season of mercy,” Ammann said. “We are asking the governor to show mercy.”

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The Jefferson City News-Tribune, Dec. 29

Allocate more funds to smoking cessation

Missouri has more than tripled the amount of tobacco settlement money it spends on smoking prevention/cessation, but the amount still is woefully low.

As we reported Thursday, Missouri budgeted $171,582 this fiscal year, up from $48,000 in the previous year.

But both those numbers are drops in the bucket compared to the $262.1 million Missouri received through the Master Settlement Agreement for 2019.

That puts Missouri next to last among the states for how much of the money it receives goes to smoking prevention or cessation programs. Missouri outspends only Connecticut, which spends nothing on such programs.

In 1998, state attorneys general from 46 states, five U.S. territories and the District of Columbia reached the Master Settlement Agreement with the four largest cigarette manufacturers in America. The agreement concerned the advertising, marketing and promotion of cigarettes, according to publichealthlawcenter.org.

The agreement settled the states’ Medicaid lawsuits against the tobacco industry for recovery of their tobacco-related health care costs.

Among other things, it required the tobacco industry to pay, in perpetuity, various annual payments to the states to compensate them for some of the medical costs of caring for persons with smoking-related illnesses. To date, it has paid out more than $100 billion.

Missouri uses most of the money to help fund the state’s Medicaid program, MO HealthNet.

While the Master Settlement Agreement doesn’t require the states to spend any of the money on smoking prevention/cessation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends Missouri should have spent about $72.9 million (or about 28 percent) on the prevention and cessation programs. The state annually uses only about .1 percent on the programs.

We urge Missouri lawmakers to take a serious look at increasing funding for smoking prevention/cessation.

States such as California spend considerably more of their take in the agreement on smoking prevention/cessation, and they see a payoff for those investments. About 2 percent of California high school students smoke, compared to 9.2 percent of Missouri students.

That higher smoking rate will equate to more money taxpayers will have to pay for their health care costs down the road through Medicare and Medicaid.

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The Joplin Globe, Dec. 26

America’s Main Street, it seems, is being left along the side of the road.

By that, we mean proposals to designate Route 66 as a National Historic Trail have stalled in Congress.

Blame a partial government shutdown in 2018.

Blame impeachment proceedings in 2019.

But for two years now, Congress has failed to pass the necessary legislation to designate it as part of the National Trails System, overseen by the National Park Service. Such a designation should be a gimme. We can’t think of any reason to oppose it, and it would certainly benefit communities in the seven states - including Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma - that were home to various stretches of the famous highway.

Designation would mean federal funding would be available, and the sooner the better because more preservation could be accomplished before the highway’s centennial in 2026.

Yet we wonder: Is National Trails designation enough?

What if, instead, Congress authorized Route 66 National Park, a linear park to fit historian and author Michael Wallis’ characterization of Route 66 as a “linear village?”

What if select communities - one in each state, for example - were anchored with museums and visitor centers, each of which told a different chapter in the route’s story?

In Oklahoma, for example, the focus could be on Route 66 “as the path of a people in flight,” to use John Steinbeck’s words, the route of “refugees from dust and shrinking land, from the thunder of tractors and shrinking ownership, from the desert’s slow northward invasion, from the twisting winds that howl up out of Texas, from the floods that bring no richness to the land and steal what little richness is there … 66 is the mother road, the road of flight.”

In another state, the museum might focus on Route 66 as the highway of optimism and adventure, a symbol of a united country after World War II. This is the highway of Bobby Troup: “If you ever plan to motor west, travel my way, take the highway that is best. Get your kicks on Route 66.”

According to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the linear village of Wallis thrived “on cooperation between its communities, the lived experiences of the people who have traveled or built their lives on the route are what make it greater than the sum of its parts: the experiences of tenant farmers growing red winter wheat, of British air cadets learning to land Spitfire airplanes before the U.S. had even entered the war, of African Americans banned from many restaurants and hotels during the road’s mid-20th century heyday.”

Route 66 is a big story, a national story, and we think National Park designation might just be the best way to tell it - and save it.

We challenge Congress to go big, too.