This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
Missouri Gov. Mike Parson late Friday commuted the sentence of former Kansas City Police Detective Eric DeValkenaere, fulfilling his family's many requests for his release.
Parson, who has had his share of controversial pardons, announced the decision among a list of 16 pardons and eight other commutations.
The action was long feared by the family of Cameron Lamb, the 26-year-old Black man DeValkenaere killed — as well as Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker, who won the conviction.
In a statement on X, Baker said she had a short comment and would rather focus on caring for Lamb's family.
"DeValkenaere was convicted for killing an unarmed man. Period," Baker's statement reads. "He was shown incredible mercy by the governor. No such mercy was shown to the victims."
Baker, who first warned the governor away from the pardon in June 2023, was often asked about the possibility. On December 16, she told KCUR that any such action would send the message that some people receive special justice.
“Those decisions should never be made by government officials without speaking to victims’ families and frankly, the Kansas City community,” Baker said. “And to not do that — I’m going to use a word — is cowardice.”
Parson history of pardons
Melesa Johnson, who was elected Jackson County prosecutor in November, said before the commutation that a DeValkenaere pardon would be “frustrating” and “unfortunate.”
Johnson said the governor has broad pardoning powers, and said perhaps any future people in that job would consider freedom for other people, like Kevin Strickland, who spent four decades in prison for a 1978 triple murder he says he did not commit and . He was released in late 2021.
Baker’s office fought hard for Strickland’s release, but Parson refused to pardon him, saying in 2021 that Strickland’s clemency application was not a priority amid a large backlog.
“I just would ask that the next administration, the next time a Kevin Strickland comes along, let’s try using our pardoning power and considering our pardoning power there instead of putting (the prosecutor’s office) through a knock-out-drag-out fight to exonerate a man that has literally given his entire life for a crime he didn’t commit,” Johnson said.
This is not Parson’s first high-profile, controversial offer of clemency. On March 1, Parson commuted the sentence of former Kansas City Chiefs assistant coach Britt Reid, son of head coach Andy Reid. The younger Reid was convicted of driving while intoxicated and causing a crash that severely injured a 5-year-old girl in February 2021.
In July 2021, Parson, a Republican, pardoned a St. Louis couple who had brandished weapons at Black Lives Matter activists in their upscale neighborhood. Mark McCloskey and Patricia McCloskey, both Republicans, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges and were fined. They said they were defending themselves from a violent mob in June 2020 by pointing an AR-style rifle and a pistol at demonstrators marching to the mayor’s home.
Parson has pardoned more than 600 people in the past three years, according to state public records, which is more than any Missouri governor since the 1940s.
A commutation, which shortens the length of a sentence, does not go as far as a pardon, which is an official forgiveness for a crime. A pardon would also lift restrictions on rights like gun ownership and employment opportunities.
DeValkenaere's wife, Sarah, has lead a public campaign seeking Parson's pardon. In several posts on X this month, she called her husband a "hero" who needs to be with his family this Christmas.
"My kids miss him terribly," she wrote, "he should be home with us for the holidays."
Courts found detective culpable
DeValkenaere, 45, was the first Kansas City police officer convicted of killing a Black man. He was found guilty of second-degree involuntary manslaughter and armed criminal action by Jackson County Judge Dale Youngs in November 2021. In March 2022, Youngs sentenced DeValkenaere to six years in prison.
DeValkenaere appealed, and at a hearing before a three-judge panel in September, his lawyers said Lamb was armed — prosecutors say he was not — and that DeValkenaere feared for the safety of another officer.
In a 42-page opinion released October 17, state Appellate Court Judge Thomas Chapman said the court must view evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict and DeValkenaere failed to present any evidence that Youngs’ earlier decision was wrong.
Lamb was killed in December 2019 after police followed him onto his property. They said he had been in a high-speed chase with another car, that he had traffic violations and he had recently harmed a woman.
The courts found that Lamb was not in possession of a gun at the time of the shooting, that DeValkenaere’s entry onto Lamb’s property was illegal and that DeValkenaere was not acting in self-defense or in defense of the other officer. In fact, Chapman wrote, the officers were “two uninvited men, in the backyard of a stranger, and were approaching with guns in their hands.”
“In the light most favorable to the verdict, there was evidence from which a reasonable trier of fact could determine that Devalkenaere shot (Lamb) at a time when (Lamb) was unarmed and not threatening force,” Chapman wrote.
Local control of police long been an issue
Parsons’ decision is sure to reignite calls for a change in the KCPD’s relationship with the state. KCPD is the only police department in the U.S. still under state control, a vestige of the Civil War when the state seized control of the police departments in St. Louis and Kansas City.
Although Kansas City approved a home-rule ordinance in 1932, by 1939, the police department was so corrupt under political boss Tom Pendergast that the Missouri governor returned the department to state control under commissioners that he appointed.
The issue of local control in Missouri reached a head in 2013 when St. Louis won the right to its own police force after voters approved a statewide ballot measure. That’s also the year a task force created by then-Kansas City Mayor Sly James narrowly declined to pursue moving toward local control.
In June 2023, Baker warned Parson in a public letter that if he pardoned DeValkenaere, it could result in civil unrest and further erode the public's trust in the criminal justice system.
The issue was made even more political when Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey sided with DeValkenaere, saying the conviction should be overturned. Bailey said police "are clothed with authority and privileges” that “raise important questions” about DeValkenaere’s case.
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