Patrick Baker, a Kentucky man whom then-Gov. Matt Bevin controversially pardoned in late 2019, was arrested by federal authorities Sunday and now may once again face charges in connection with the 2014 death of Donald Mills in Knox County.
The U.S. Marshals Service arrested Baker, 43, on Sunday, and he was booked into the Laurel County Correctional Center in London just after 12:15 a.m. Monday, with the jail log listing his only charge as “federal prisoner held-in transit/court/serveout.”
But Mills’ sister, Melinda Mills, told The Courier Journal a federal agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives contacted her Monday morning to say that Baker was arrested again in connection with her brother’s death.
Melinda Mills also thanked state Sen. Morgan McGarvey and former state Rep. Chris Harris.
The two state lawmakers had called for federal authorities to investigate Bevin’s pardon of Baker after The Courier Journal reported that Baker’s family held a campaign fundraiser at their Corbin home in 2018 that raised $21,500 for the GOP governor.
In 2017, a Knox County jury convicted Baker of reckless homicide, first-degree robbery, tampering with evidence and impersonating a police officer in connection with the fatal shooting of Mills during a home invasion.
But on Dec. 6, 2019, Kentucky’s outgoing Republican governor granted Baker a pardon and set him free just two years into his sentence. Dismissing the evidence against Baker as “sketchy at best,” Bevin challenged The Courier Journal to examine the case.
Numerous pardons drew the ire of victims and prosecutors, and some of the people pardoned by Bevin — including Dayton Jones, who had been convicted in a brutal sodomy case that almost killed a 15-year-old boy — have since been arrested in new cases or even federally charged in connection with the same cases for which they had received pardons or commutations.
In all, Bevin granted pardons or commutations to 670 offenders shortly before he left office in December 2019 after losing re-election to Beshear, the commonwealth’s attorney general at the time.