Gov. Mike Parson signaled possible support for pardoning the only Kansas City police officer ever found guilty of killing a Black person when he criticized Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker’s handling of the case in comments during a radio interview last week, The Kansas City Star reported.
Rumors have been swirling since June that Parson might pardon former KCPD detective Eric DeValkenaere, who is currently serving a six-year prison sentence for involuntary manslaughter and armed criminal action. DeValkenaere fatally shot Cameron Lamb, a 26-year-old father of three, on Dec. 3, 2019, as Lamb was parking his truck in a garage behind his house. The trial judge in the case determined DeValkenaere, who was investigating alleged traffic violations, was illegally present on Lamb’s property at the time of the shooting and had no legitimate cause for using deadly force.
During an interview on KCMO radio in Kansas City, Parson, a Republican, said he hadn’t made a decision about whether to grant DeValkenaere’s clemency request, which the former officer recently filed after a three-judge panel of the Missouri Court of Appeals Western District unanimously upheld his convictions in October. However, Parson took a shot at Baker, a Democrat.
“It’s been one of the toughest issues that’s really on my desk,” Parson said, according to the Star. “But the one thing that bothered me more than anything about that case was the way the prosecutor handled that in Kansas City, by the accusation she was making about guilt or innocence without actually even knowing the facts herself.”
It is, however, a prosecutor’s job is to make accusations of guilt and then prove them in a court of law, which Baker’s office successfully did in this case. As a former Polk County sheriff, it is a process with which Parson should be well acquainted.
As with the first inklings over the summer about possible clemency for DeValkenaere, Parson’s latest comments sparked a negative reaction from Black community leaders and others in Kansas City, who have urged the governor to stay out of the case and allow justice to prevail
