Many clemency applicants stressed ties to Barbour

JACKSON -- On a Saturday night in October 1995, a blue Toyota came hurtling down the wrong side of a county road in a town in north Mississippi and crashed head-on into a pickup truck. Scotty Plunk, the driver of the truck, was killed. The driver of the Toyota, Joel Vann, 19, had been drinking so much he did not remember the moments leading up to the accident.

Vann pleaded guilty to DUI death, and in lieu of jail time attended a drug and alcohol treatment program in Washington state. In January 2010, Vann applied for a full pardon. A year later, he was one of 198 people to receive a full pardon from then-Gov. Haley Barbour in his last days in office.

It is unclear what persuaded the governor to grant the pardon in Vann’s case; his application for clemency contains numerous glowing reference letters and a case study. But the letter to the governor from Vann’s father, the brother-in-law of a former Republican state committee member and contributor to Barbour, had a familiar tone.

“I hope all is going well with you,” it begins. “All is well in Corinth, and as you may know, we have two new Republican aldermen.” The letter goes on to describe Vann’s path from rehabilitation through college, marriage and fatherhood, concluding the family “would appreciate your consideration to grant Joel a pardon at the most appropriate time.”

Amy Plunk, meanwhile, said her family had never recovered from her brother’s death. Of the mercy Vann was shown by Mississippi’s criminal justice system, she added: “The Vanns are real prominent in the Corinth community. That’s what I suspect.”

Obvious connections

In the furor that followed Barbour’s clemency decisions -- including more than 10 times as many full pardons as his four predecessors combined -- beneficiaries such as Vann have largely been overshadowed by others with higher profiles or more obvious connections. Among them were four murderers who had worked at the Governor’s Mansion; Brett Favre’s brother, who had killed a friend in a drunken-driving incident; and Karen Irby, a Jackson socialite who killed two young doctors while driving drunk in 2009.

A close look at some of the clemency applications of nearly 200 of the other felons who were pardoned revealed a significant share contained written appeals from members of prominent Mississippi families, major Republican donors or others from the higher social strata of Mississippi life.