EDITORIAL: AG leaving much to interpretation
Mar. 23—The Oklahoma Attorney General has hired outside counsel to investigate the state Parole Board.
According to the AG's communications, this has to do with "allegations reported to the" AG's office which "continues to receive complaints about the manner in which the Pardon and Parole Board has conducted recent agency actions."
What could that be? We don't know exactly because the rest of the news release is the resume for Brian Kuester, the appointed counsel.
We think it would be better if the AG's office would actually speak to the nature of the allegations.
In a request for more information, the AG's communications office said they aren't going to speak outside of the press release at this time.
Without that, it leaves people to fill in the blanks, and that's not great.
Because, what we know, is that the Parole Board has rubbed the AG's office the wrong way, and a recent example is granting death row inmate Julius Jones a stage two commutation hearing.
Jones' case has drawn national attention. Attorney General Mike Hunter has said he isn't going to back down, believing there was plenty of evidence for the charges to stick.
Oklahoma County's District Attorney David Prater has accused the board of breaking the law and not notifying prosecutors of potential commutations.
Gov. Stitt asked the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation to look into the parole board after a man who had been released from prison on drug chargers was then accused of triple homicide.
We don't know if the AG's office is out of bounds, especially if whatever the allegations it is receiving are serious enough to justify an investigation, but we know that we could use a lot more clarity.
