PORTLAND, Maine (AP) - Maine’s governor has denied a request to commute the prison sentence of an inmate convicted of attempted murder that’s been accepted into a doctorate program.
Democratic Gov. Janet Mills’ office recently denied Brandon Brown’s clemency petition, the Portland Press Herald reported Friday.
The 33-year-old former Portland resident has been accepted into a doctorate program at George Mason University in Virginia, where he’d hoped to begin studying restorative justice and conflict resolution this fall.
He’s served about ten years of a 17-year prison sentence at Bolduc Correctional Facility in Warren, and is the state’s first inmate to earn a bachelor’s and a master’s degree while incarcerated.
Brown’s father, Mark Brown, called the denial tragic and disappointing, and said his son is the “poster child for clemency.”
Mills’ office declined to comment or provide a copy of the denial letter, saying the correspondence is confidential under state law, the newspaper reported.
Brown had been fighting with another man outside a Portland nightclub in 2008 when he shot the man at close range in the chest.
James Sanders, a former Marine, was partially paralyzed and later had a leg amputated because of the shooting.
The Press Herald said he now lives in Georgia and supported Brown’s request to commute, or reduce, his sentence.
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