By Brian Irby, archival assistant
Over the years there have been many attempts to combat the problem of crime in Arkansas. One Arkansas governor, Tom Terral, was convinced that the way to make sure that those convicted were appropriately punished for their crimes was to outlaw parole and executive clemency. This policy was controversial and likely cost him his political career.
Thomas Terral (ASA Photo G2717)
Thomas Jefferson Terral was born in Louisiana in 1882. He
graduated with his law degree from the University of Arkansas in 1910 and began
practicing law in Little Rock. V. It didn’t take long before he set his eyes on starting a political career. He
became Secretary of State in 1916 and was re-elected in 1918. His
political ambitions led him to run for governor in 1920. Terral campaigned on a platform of anti-parole and executive clemency sentiments.
The issue of pardons had been on the political radar since
Gov. George Donaghey went on a pardoning spree in the final months of his
second term as governor, pardoning 37% of the state’s prison population
in 1913. The motive behind this excessive amount of pardoning was in connection with the convict-lease
program, a controversial program where inmates were leased out to private
companies as free labor. Donaghey
opposed the system and hoped that this would deprive the program of the labor
it needed to function. He was correct, and the convict lease system ended a
year later.
Terral adopted a stance against executive
clemency in his first campaign for governor in 1920. Noting that the pardon
power could be abused in exchange for bribes or from pressure from powerful
people, he vowed to oppose any pardons or parole of any kind. “The granting of
pardons has depended too much upon the political influence of the person
representing the convict,” he declared. Despite making an impression on
Arkansas voters, he lost the Democratic primary. Terral returned to private life, but his campaign influenced newly elected Gov. Thomas McRae, who took up the anti-pardon mantle and made it a part of his administration’s goals. This was most apparent when, in
November 1921, McRae broke with long standing tradition and released no
Thanksgiving Day pardon list. For many years governors had released some
convicts from prison on Thanksgiving Day, but this changed under McRae’s
leadership. Over the next four years of McRae’s time in office, he issued very
few pardons.
In 1924, McRae decided not to seek a third term as governor,
leaving Terral an opening. Terral once again adopted a pledge not to pardon any
prisoners. The issue seemed to be a winning one and, combined with Terral’s
pledges to provide free textbooks for Arkansas schools and improve Arkansas’s
roads, swept Terral into office. Terral remained true to his
pledge. During his first year, despite petitions for pardons from judges and the
public, Terral refused to issue a single pardon.
In October 1925, Terral’s perfect "no-parole" record was tarnished when
he left the state to attend a governors’ meeting in Birmingham, Alabama. While
Terral was out of the state, Senate President Pete McCall, serving as
acting governor, quickly issued nine pardons. Angered at McCall’s pardons,
Terral never left the state again during his time in office.
Meanwhile, there were nine (now pardoned) prisoners that
Terral believed should still be in prison, and he ordered the state police to
search out and rearrest them. One of
the prisoners, W.W. Gillespie, who had been serving a three-year sentence for
illegally padding the payrolls of friends at the Missouri Pacific Railroad, was
quickly rearrested and brought back to prison. Gillespie filed for a writ of habeas corpus asking
the state to explain what crime he was being held for, since, after all, he had
been declared a free man by the acting governor of Arkansas. Prison
superintendent Dee Horton responded that the pardon issued by McCall was illegitimate
and the case went to the Arkansas Supreme Court.
In Horton v Gillespie, attorneys representing the
state argued that McCall, while acting as governor, had violated an obscure
state law, Act 154, which regulated applications for pardons. The act required
the person or persons seeking to petition the governor for clemency on behalf
of a prisoner advertise such an intent in some public manner. They argued that McCall did not publish such an intent, making the pardons void. The court
agreed with the state and ordered all the prisoners rearrested. In the wake of
the court’s decision, Terral remained adamant. “No good time will be allowed
those who refuse to return to the penitentiary or who put the state to any
further trouble and expense in apprehending them,” he announced. “We mean to
retake every one of those pardoned and return them to the penitentiary as soon
as possible. We will get them, even if they go to foreign countries.”
However, the pardoned prisoners had their advocates. Circuit
Judge L.S. Britt ordered a temporary restraining order preventing law
enforcement from arresting the men. At the time of the ruling, only one
prisoner had returned to prison. The other eight were still on the loose. The
injunction created a strange circumstance whereby if law enforcement in other
states arrested a prisoner and tried to extradite him to Arkansas, he would be
forced by the order to release him at the state border. Eventually, the restraining order expired, and
the remaining prisoners were again arrested and put back into prison.
The whole affair had given Terral a black eye. His advocacy
of the “no-pardon” policy and some other financial controversies regarding
possible monetary kickbacks to him by textbook publishers eroded the public
trust in the governor’s office. The controversy had not died down by the time
Terral campaigned for re-election in 1926. His opponent, John Martineau, made
the pardon controversy an issue in the campaign. Likewise, many Arkansans had
changed their opinions on the matter of pardons and now saw the governor’s
stance against pardons as unfair. The Smackover Journal led the charge
against Terral, arguing that the governor “has turned a deaf ear to the pleding
[sic] of the just and unjust.”
Martineau defeated Terral in the Democratic primary of 1926.
Terral personally believed that his stance on pardons had likely cost him his
re-election. In the remaining months in office after his defeat, Terral reversed course and
began issuing pardons arguing that the primary proved that the people wanted a
more liberal policy. In his farewell address, Terral pointed to the failure of
his no-pardon policy, “I frankly concede that the views which I first held were
extreme and that the parole law is a wise and beneficent provision for
extending just clemency to those who are honestly entitled to relief.”
