Republicans Controversial Pardons for Murderers and Rapists

pressured the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to fast-track the pardon approval process of a convicted murderer who killed a peaceful protester in a move the DA trying the case called "deeply troubling"

pardoned four Blackwater security contractor criminals after serving only a little over a year of long sentences (three 15-year and one life) for murdering 14 Iraqi civilians and injuring 20 more of which George W. Bush's appointed commander of the Iraq war at the time General Petraeus called "hugely damaging, an action that tells the world that Americans abroad can commit the most heinous crimes with impunity"

rewarded convicted murderer Patrick Baker -- who had only served two years of his 19-year sentence -- with a pardon after his family donated $29,500 to his reelection campaign

pardoned a man convicted of sexually abusing his 6-year-old stepdaughter

pardoned a man convicted of sodomizing an unconscious 15-year-old boy with a sex toy less than 4 years into his 15-year sentence

pardoned a man convicted of raping a 9-year-old girl roughly one year into his 23-year sentence

pardoned a man who murdered his 6-week-old baby so brutally that "the seams between the bones in his skull were pushed half an inch apart" after he had only served 18-years of his life sentence

pardoned former Army lieutenant Clint Lorance after serving only 6 years of a 19-year sentence for the war crime of ordering the shooting of two unarmed Afghanistan men

pardoned former Army Major Mathew Golsteyn before his trial started for the premeditated murder of an unarmed and detained Afghan man because they suspected him of being a bombmaker

pardoned former Army lieutenant Michael Behenna who was convicted of murdering an unarmed Iraqi detainee and attempting to cover it up after Republican Governor Mary Falin and state AG Mike Hunter personally intervened on his behalf

pardoned a man who shot his victim twice in the head at point blank range less than twenty years into a life sentence

pardoned a man convicted of shooting his girlfriend in the back and killing her at a public cafe just over ten years into his life sentence

pardoned a man convicted of shooting and killing his estranged wife and infant son and wounding another man less than twenty years into his life sentence

pardoned a man who killed an 8-month-old boy in an alcohol-fueled crash who belongs to a politically connected family that donates a lot of money to Republicans

pardoned a man convicted of killing a man with a cinder block and then buying his body in a shallow grave less than 9 years into his life sentence