LA GRANGE, Ky. — Patrick Baker remains one of the more controversial people to receive a pardon from former governor Matt Bevin. Now, the man convicted with Baker wants his name cleared too.
That man, 36-year-old Elijah Messer, is serving a minimum 30-year sentence. From the Kentucky State Reformatory in La Grange, he told us corruption is the reason he wasn’t pardoned.
Police say Messer, Baker, and three others conspired to commit a Knox County robbery that turned deadly in 2014. Messer was convicted in July 2018.
Messer still claims he had nothing to do with it, pointing to his amputated leg as evidence. A few years earlier, he says he was shot in the leg after someone tried to rob him. He says he could barely get around. Police didn’t buy it.
But earlier this month, one of the co-conspirators became a free man. Baker was one of more than 600 people granted clemency by Bevin, just before he left office. Baker had served only two years of a 19-year sentence.
“And if he’s innocent, that means I’m innocent. It’s the reason I’m sitting here talking to you all trying to get you all to help me figure it out," Messer says.
The Louisville Courier-Journal reported Baker's family hosted a fundraiser last year for Bevin's re-election campaign, raising $21,500 for him. But unlike Baker, Messer says his family never had the means to contribute to Bevin.
“If somebody’s life is worth $20,000 then I’m pretty sure I could get it to get out," says Messer. "I’m pretty sure I could get my dad to go finance the house and get it.”
While Bevin has defended his pardons, critics like Messer question his motives.
“Most definitely it’s corrupt.”
We’ve been working to contact Messer’s lawyer, his family, and Governor Andy Beshear’s office about whether a pardon application was filed on Messer’s behalf. We haven’t been able to confirm.
Suzanne Hopf with the Kentucky Innocence Project says those pardoned by Bevin could have simply been the result of who filed an application and who didn’t. She also says in general, the pardons filed by Bevin seemed well-vetted.
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