Panel Plans Hearing On Paradis Sentence

The Commission on Pardons and Parole announced Wednesday that the commutation hearing for condemned murderer Donald Paradis will stretch over two days and include time for the victim’s family or its representatives to appear.

In a statement, the five-member commission said attorneys for the state and Paradis each will have three hours on May 15 to make their presentations on the request that Paradis either be conditionally pardoned and retried for the 1980 murder of Kimberly Ann Palmer or that his death sentence be commuted to life in prison with the possibility of future parole.

Each side will have another hour to conclude its arguments on May 16. Then, up to two hours will be allotted to Palmer’s family or its spokesmen to address the commission in the courtroom at the Maximum Security Institution south of Boise.

While the 47-year-old former motorcycle gang member admits helping fellow death row inmate Thomas Gibson move Palmer’s body, Paradis has denied any role in Palmer’s strangulation.

Gibson has confessed killing Palmer in Paradis’ Spokane house - not in Idaho - and Gibson, along with four others who did not testify at the original trial, now claims Paradis was not present when the 19-year-old woman died.

Paradis also claims misconduct on the part of trial prosecutors and incompetence on the part of his trial defense attorney.

But the state Supreme Court rejected his appeal in February. A final expedited round of federal appeals began April 1 with U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge denying any relief. The case still is pending before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, but it also has declined to consider Paradis’ claims on what the defense calls legal technicalities.

, DataTimes