Kansas Governor Sam Brownback says he
won’t be granting any of the 37 requests his office has received
this year for pardons.
The Kansas constitution gives the governor authority to issue
pardons, but they’re not common in the state. Former Gov. Kathleen
Sebelius issued only one during her six years in office, in 2009 to
a Kansas businessman who couldn’t get into Canada for business
because of a drunken driving conviction.
Mark Parkinson, issued four pardons during his two years as governor. Of
those three were for members of the "Wichita 8," a group of black
men convicted of various robbery charges in 1969 by an all-white
Sedgwick County jury.