The Self Promotion Governor, Part 10,000,000

Social amnesia as a result of ignorance seems to be on display in our great state today. There exists a myth that New Mexico territorial governor Lew Wallace once offered a pardon to the criminal Billy the Kid, real name William Bonney, for his testimony in a murder trial and reneged on that promise after Billy kept his side of the deal. There is no evidence whatsoever of this deal being made other than an impossible to validate letter in which Billy wrote the governor to volunteer his services in testifying if he were to be pardoned.

Current (thankfully not for long) governor Bill Richardson floated the idea of pardoning the long dead Bonney to make headlines for something not related to his administration’s rampant cronyism under the auspices of making right on Wallace’s “promise”. It seemed as though Richardson heard plenty of negative feedback on this absurd proposal as it disappeared from the news.

That line of thinking was wrong. As the story slipped from public consciousness, Albuquerque Attorney Randi McGinn, wife of Richardson State Supreme Court appointee Charlie Daniels, “volunteered” to “research “ the issue as an interested party who comes from Alamogordo, near Lincoln County, where Billy the Kid operated. The result of this “research” was a petition to pardon Billy the Kid on December 14th from McGinn’s office in the murder of Sheriff William Brady.

Billy the Kid was shot and killed in July 1881 by Sherriff Pat Garrett. He was a thief and a killer. Part of his legend is that Garrett was dishonorable in shooting Bonney in the back, but that’s a matter of opinion. When a criminal is wanted dead or alive, it doesn’t seem to matter how it gets done. Because of stories, legends and movies, Billy the Kid exists in today’s world as more of a myth than as a real person. Many of these movies are complete works of fiction that have the express purpose of romanticizing a criminal within the framework of the “wild west”.

This unfortunate circumstance has led to whatever public support and interest in this subject that exists. Many do not understand New Mexico history and know Bonney only in legend and not by his crimes. McGinn, with her loose ties to Lincoln county and direct ties to the governor is only interested in the same thing as Richardson, publicity. Richardson has proven over time to be a shameless self promoter and this hollow gesture is just the latest in a long line of examples.

It might be said that this issue doesn’t matter much. Pardoning a man who has been dead for nearly 120 years on a single crime, out of many, won’t really affect anyone. It may be true that Bonney can no longer terrorize and murder but that is not the point. It seems that a main reason that this pardon is being considered is because to many, Bonney is not a criminal but some kind of historical bad boy type figure. And some flimsy at best historical promises from a territorial governor of which actual documentation does not exist. Truth is, it is contemptible to our history as New Mexicans to go down this path which will only further the myth of Billy the Kid while obscuring the reality of William Bonney.

This initiative is of such high importance to Governor Richardson that there is a state web site, http://www.governor.state.nm.us/btk.php, an email address, btk.comments@state.nm.us and a person, Eric Witt, tasked to it. It is contemptible to the taxpayer that there exists a person in charge of, a web page for and email address to monitor this frivolous effort. Certainly there are more important things that the state has on its plate than the pardon of a criminal in the name of publicity?