NKY murder case helps drive pardon amendment voters will decide in November

“It’s been 38 years and three generations of us that have had to be involved in this,” Keri, the niece of Debbie Pooley, told LINK nky. “I was only 15 when my aunt died.”

​Pooley, of Covington, was kidnapped, raped and murdered in 1987 by Gregory Wilson, who was sentenced to death by a Kenton County jury after being convicted in 1988. Former Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin commuted Wilson’s death sentence on Dec. 6, 2019, three days before Bevin’s final day in office, making Wilson eligible for parole. 

LINK nky is only using Keri’s first name in this story per her request for privacy. 

​In 2019, Bevin issued 227 pardons, 418 commutations and 16 combined actions, most during his final weeks in office after losing reelection.

Seeking to prevent a repeat of Bevin’s late-term clemency actions, state Sen. Chris McDaniel, a Republican from Ryland Heights, sponsored Senate Bill 10, which places a constitutional amendment before voters that would bar governors from granting pardons or commuting sentences from 60 days before a gubernatorial election. The prohibition ends on the fifth Tuesday after the election, when the governor is sworn in for the new term.

​SB 10 unanimously passed the Senate in January. After the House amended and approved it 82-12, the Senate accepted the changes 36-1. Constitutional amendments require three-fifths support in each chamber but do not require the governor’s approval. The proposal will become part of the Kentucky Constitution if it receives a majority of votes cast on Nov. 3.

Supporters say the restriction would prevent governors from making consequential clemency decisions without electoral accountability. Critics counter that it could temporarily eliminate an important safeguard for correcting wrongful or excessive sentences and argue that the Constitution should not be amended in response to one governor’s conduct.

The constitutional amendment would apply to every governor during every gubernatorial election period — including a governor who is not seeking reelection and an incumbent who wins reelection.

“The important thing in this amendment is not to allow people or parties to be on a ballot, secure an election victory and then pardon people in the dark of night,” McDaniel said.

McDaniel, who is not running for reelection in November, first filed the bill in 2020, initially proposing a 30-day window in which governors could not issue pardons or commutations. He subsequently introduced versions in 2021, 2022 and 2024 before SB 10 passed earlier this year. He said that after changes to voting laws expanded the voting window, the 30-day period changed to 60 days, which gives the earliest voter about 30 days’ notice to make a more informed decision about anyone who is pardoned. 

​McDaniel said a governor could still rush pardons before that 60-day window, but if they were a midterm governor, they would have to run again. If it were an inter-term governor, their party would appear on the ballot again, holding the party responsible.

​Overall, McDaniel said the goal is to avoid what happened after Bevin’s 2019 loss.

​“In his [Bevin’s] case, the voters said, ‘This is not who we want to be our governor anymore,’ and he took advantage of that brief period between the voters making their statement and the new governor coming in to do things that, to me, were unconscionable.”

Kentucky’s Constitution requires governors to file their reasons for clemency decisions and make the applications and explanations available for public inspection.

​Bevin said at the time of Wilson’s commutation that Wilson was involved in a brutal murder but concluded that the quality of his legal defense made the death sentence unjust. The commutation did not overturn Wilson’s conviction; it changed his punishment from death to life with the possibility of parole.

For Keri, Wilson’s commuted death sentence hit her family “out of left field.” She said she had no warning that anything like that could happen.

​Keri said her grandfather, Pooley’s father, had to ask her and her sister to watch the case after he died.

​“I had to read about maggots and the insect activity on my aunt’s body,” Keri said. “I didn’t have to read that when I was 15, but because this has lasted so long, I’ve had to get into those factors of the case. So, in retrospect, I wish that he wasn’t even given the death penalty, because the death penalty is really a life sentence for the family.”

​Kenton County Commonwealth’s Attorney Rob Sanders worked to keep Wilson behind bars when he went before the parole board after his commuted death sentence.

Before Pooley’s abduction, rape and murder, Wilson had served about 12 years in an Ohio prison for two rape convictions. He had recently been released on parole when he abducted Pooley.

​“I was shocked and appalled at former Gov. Bevin’s flurry of pardons on his way out of office, not solely because of the enormous number of pardons that he issued, but because of the shocking cases that he issued them in,” Sanders told LINK nky.

​Sanders said that by commuting Wilson’s sentence to life with the possibility of parole rather than life without parole, Bevin allowed Wilson to seek release and forced Pooley’s family and others like Joe Heil, who employed Pooley at a Barleycorn’s sports bar in Newport in the 1980s, to oppose him before the Kentucky Parole Board.

McDaniel said Heil is the one who got the ball rolling on the constitutional amendment after he texted him about Wilson’s commutation. Heil is running for Cold Spring City Council. That is a non-partisan race. LINK nky did not speak with Heil in his capacity as a candidate. 

Heil said he has followed Wilson’s case since Pooley disappeared in 1987 and through multiple rounds of unsuccessful state and federal appeals.

​“To have one person with a swipe of a pen have this miscarriage of justice to the judges, the police officers, prosecutors and, of course, the family involved was just incredible to me that that could happen,” Heil said.

​Sanders said Bevin’s slew of pardons also included another case out of Kenton County, involving Micah Schoettle, who was in the second year of a 23-year prison sentence when Bevin pardoned him of rape, sodomy and other sexual crimes. The pardon also removed him from the state’s sex offender registry.

Sanders said Bevin pardoned Schoettle, let him out of prison and effectively erased that conviction. He said Bevin never consulted his office, consulted the police, read the police report or watched the trial and heard the testimony and evidence the jury used to convict him.

​“His behavior is unbelievably childish and petty,” Sanders said. “Not to mention, it put the citizens of Kentucky at greater danger by turning these killers loose into our community.”

​In Wilson’s case, Sanders said the parole board gave him a “serve out,” which means he will spend the rest of his life in prison, although a future governor could still pardon Wilson or commute his sentence again.

​Some, including Gov. Andy Beshear, who defeated Bevin in 2019, have reservations about enacting the change.

​“There is no question that Gov. Bevin abused the pardon authority and let violent criminals out of prison, some of whom then committed additional crimes,” said Scottie Ellis, a spokesperson for Beshear, in a statement to LINK nky media partner the Kentucky Lantern in June. “The solution should not be to limit a governor’s pardon powers but to ensure we elect good governors.”

​Eric King, spokesperson for the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, said in a statement to the Lantern in June that the group is concerned “that limiting the authority of governors’ power in this particular way will erode an important safety valve in an imperfect judicial system.”

​“Further, we are wary of amending the constitution in response to potentially one bad actor in Kentucky’s nearly 250-year history,” King added.

The amendment contains no stated exception for newly discovered evidence of innocence, terminal illness or another urgent circumstance. The governor would retain clemency authority during the rest of the four-year term. 

McDaniel said this issue transcends party lines.

“There has been some accusation otherwise, but I will tell you: you can look at issues or pardons at both the state and federal level issued by Republicans, issued by Democrats; they all have this intervening period where they don’t have to account to the voters, and it doesn’t matter who you are,” McDaniel said.

Sanders said he was in support of McDaniel’s proposed constitutional amendment.

“There’s no reason that a governor shouldn’t be willing to pardon someone while they are still able to be held accountable, or at least their political party would be held accountable for that governor’s decision,” he said. “The voters ought to know about those pardons before they go to the voting booth.”

Keri said her aunt was warm and funny. She loved holidays. She loved to cook. She loved her and her sister. She loved her family more than anything.

“She left a hole that could never be filled, and everything from holidays to birthdays, there was just a sorrow hanging over them,” Keri said. “It’s really sad, and as I said, my grandfather carried that responsibility until the day he died, that responsibility of feeling like he had to stay on top of this case. And who would have thought 38 years later, we’d still be talking about it.”