Delaware suspect in Whitmer plot was pardoned last year
http://news.yahoo.com/delaware-suspect-whitmer-plot-pardoned-201513253.html
DOVER, Del. (AP) — The Delaware man charged in federal court with conspiring to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has a long criminal history and was pardoned just last year by Delaware’s governor for crimes dating to 1994, according to state records.
Barry G. Croft Jr., 44, was taken into custody this week after being arrested by the FBI in Swedesboro, New Jersey. Croft made an initial appearance before a federal magistrate in Wilmington on Thursday.
Croft was being held Friday at a state prison in Wilmington. A hearing on his continued detention and removal to Michigan is scheduled for Tuesday.
Five other men, all from Michigan, were charged in the alleged scheme that involved months of planning and even rehearsals to snatch Whitmer from her vacation home.
Croft spent nearly three years in prison after being convicted on Dec. 1, 1997, of possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. That sentence followed a one-year stint that ended in March 1996.
In April 2019, one week after Delaware revenue officials filed a state tax lien against Croft for more than $36,700, Democratic Gov. John Carney granted him a pardon for the 1997 gun charge and several other convictions from 1994 to 1996. The crimes involved included assault, burglary, theft and receiving stolen property.
Carney’s pardon came after a December 2018 Board of Pardons hearing at which the attorney general’s office did not object to Croft’s request for a pardon. The board’s recommendation for a pardon was based on the lack of opposition from the state “and the need for a pardon for employment purposes.”
“The prior administration did not oppose this application because Croft’s criminal history was more than 20 years old and it appeared to everyone involved that his offenses were in his past and that he had gotten himself on the right track,” said Mat Marshall, a spokeswoman for Democratic Attorney General Kathy Jennings. ...
The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted. ~ D.H. Lawrence
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