Gov. Phil Murphy announced that he was pardoning 87 people and reducing the sentences of six more during an event at Rutgers University earlier this month.
A man sentenced to life in prison for his role in robberies in East Orange, Irvington and a murder in Newark in 1993 was among those to have his sentence commuted by Gov. Phil Murphy earlier this month.
Murphy pardoned 87 people and shortened the sentences of six others on April 8 during a publicly scheduled event at Rutgers University.
Rashon Barkley and two other people were convicted for a crime spree that began with a stolen car and included stealing leather coats from several people and culminated in a car chase and the shooting death of a woman named Bunny Burt.
Born in February 1974, Barkley was a few weeks shy of his nineteenth birthday at the time of the incidents on Jan. 15, 1993. He was sentenced to life behind bars plus 50 years.
“With our Administration’s groundbreaking clemency initiative, we are living up to New Jersey’s reputation as the ‘State for Second Chances,’” Murphy said. “The individuals to whom I have granted clemency today have earned their legal relief by dedicating themselves to becoming responsible, well-rounded citizens who are passionate about contributing to their communities and society as a whole.”
Murphy said that granting each of these individuals a second chance to rebuild their lives was one of the greatest honors of his time as governor.
Barkley came to the governor’s attention when he applied for executive clemency, and he qualified for expedited consideration because his application established that he received a “an excessive trial penalty, based on a comparison of the sentence and a documented pretrial plea offer,” according to Tyler Jones, a spokesman for the governor.
He received individualized consideration by the Clemency Advisory Board, and the Board thereafter made a recommendation for consideration by the governor, Jones said.
“Giving me the opportunity in this lifetime to redeem myself for what I have done will mean so much to me, it will not only give me a second chance at life, but it will give me the opportunity to show that rehabilitation is real,” Barkley said in a statement released by the ACLU-NJ.
The ACLU-NJ has a Clemency Project that identifies individuals who might be eligible for clemency under the stated expedited criteria but they are not connected to the state’s initiative.
The ACLU-NJ said that under its Clemency Project it has retained 90 clients who are currently incarcerated and who are survivors of domestic violence or who are serving sentences impacted by extreme trial penalties – a reference to people who are serving significantly longer sentences because they opted to exercise their constitutional right to a trial rather than agreeing to a prosecutor’s plea offer.
Barkley was one of these clients. He was arrested when he was 18 years old and offered a plea deal to serve a 10-year mandatory minimum for felony murder. After exercising his right to a trial where he was found guilty, Barkley received an aggregate sentence of life in prison with a 50-year mandatory minimum, resulting in an extreme trial penalty of a 40-year mandatory minimum, according to the ACLU.
New Jersey has the nation’s highest racial disparities among its prison population, which makes categorical clemency an invaluable tool that is fundamental to racial justice and essential in repairing the harms of mass incarceration, according to the ACLU.
Murphy created a Clemency Advisory Board last year and has since pardoned or commuted the sentences of 129 people. The latest round included 87 pardons and six commutations, including five commutations of incarcerated persons.
Barkley was due to be released from prison at the end of last week and begin a five-year period of parole supervision.
Governor gives clemency in 1993 case added by Joe Ungaro on
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