Stitt delivers pardon
Governor signs pardon for woman who left lasting impression about criminal justice reform
While he was campaigning for office two years ago, Gov. Kevin Stitt walked into a coffee shop and met a woman who left a lasting impression with him about the need for criminal justice reform.
Rhonda Bear shared her story of how she had battled addiction and wound up going to prison. She turned her life around and now works to help others. Bear told Stitt prison saved her life, but that's not the case for everyone. Often, lengthy sentences for nonviolent offenses take the life out of women and destroy their children, Bear said, referencing cases in which women received decades-long sentences for failing drug court.
She wasn't sure the future governor was listening that day. But it later became abundantly clear he had been.
"He really took it to heart,
and Monday was proof of that," Bear said Thursday, citing the mass release of more than 450 nonviolent offenders from Oklahoma prisons earlier this week after the governor commuted their sentences.
On Thursday, Stitt again visited the coffee shop, She Brews Coffee House in downtown Claremore, this time to sign a pardon for Bear.
“Her story really exemplifies the need for second chances,” Stitt said.
Bear founded the coffee shop in 2012 to help provide opportunities for women who are re-entering society after struggling with problems like drug addiction. It's part of the many ways she works to help others and just one of the many efforts years in the making toward criminal justice reform in the state.
A mix of local regulars and state leaders packed inside the coffee shop to watch the governor sign Bear's pardon. Afterward, Stitt presented Bear with a framed photo from the day they met with a handwritten message: “The state of Oklahoma is so proud of you! Your efforts to provide hope to many is awesome!”
Stitt said he was moved by Bear's story.
“All the things that we're doing, I can trace a lot of it back to the seeds that she planted when I met her on the campaign trail,” he said Thursday.
After Stitt's first visit to the coffee shop in 2017, Bear got a call from his office. The governor wanted to mention something she had told him during his inauguration, and he wanted her there in the front row. During his inauguration, Stitt vowed to work to address the state's ranking in incarceration. He said his eyes were opened to the issue when he met Bear.
“We must believe in the power of second chances, of grace and redemption,” Stitt said during his inauguration. “It will require us to step forward as citizens, as churches, as job creators, as a government, to bring this meaningful change.”
Stitt said Thursday he wasn't really exposed to people in prison until he became governor and met people like Bear. He said he started realizing that while people need to be punished for their crimes, the state also has to look at sentencing and how people re-integrate into society.
“Sometimes I don't think we do a good job of giving people hope, giving them the job training, the education, the drug treatment in prison to help them re-enter,” he said.
Before people were released from prison this week, the governor's office worked with state agencies and community partners to organize transition fairs inside state prisons to help connect those who were eligible for commutation with transitional housing, mental health services, job opportunities and other resources.
On Thursday, as Bear shared more about her personal journey, she recalled hiding in a brush pile in 2000. She was wanted in several counties and running from the law. It started raining, then sleeting, but she stayed there for hours, too scared to crawl out.
“I asked God, please give me courage to change my life,” Bear said. “I didn't ask him to get me out of the mess, I just said give me courage to change my life.”
When she crawled out, she was so cold and weak she couldn't stand. Bear went to a detox facility. She called the district attorney and said she planned to turn herself in, but first she wanted to see her three children one more time. Bear told them she was sorry for the mom she had been. She told them she would come back to get them and she would come back different.
“My little girl looked at me and she said 'I can't even cry because I've cried so many times, Mom please don't leave me,'” Bear recalled.
That became her motivation for change. She wanted to get her children back and give them the mom they deserved.
Today, Bear works to help other families. She is the program director for Stand in the Gap's Women in Transition program, which helps women who are in prison and who are transitioning back into society from prison. She's also founder of His House Outreach Ministries, which provides transitional housing.
She's a member of a task force the governor created to make criminal justice reform recommendations.
“God gave me the courage to change my life, and since then, He gives me courage every day to make a difference,” Bear said.
A pardon is an act of forgiveness granted by the governor. For a person to receive a pardon, the Pardon and Parole Board must first provide a favorable recommendation to the governor. A pardon acknowledges that someone has worked hard to become a productive, lawabiding citizen after making mistakes in the past, but it does not clear a criminal record.
Steven Bickley, executive director of the Pardon and Parole Board, said people don't need a lawyer to apply for a pardon. He said recommending pardons is the favorite part of the board's job because they're stories of redemption.
“It's people that are really putting a dream ending on that story of redemption,” Bickley said.
More than 90% of the pardon applications that have come before the board this year have been approved, he said.
“Oklahoma is a state that forgives, that forgets and recognizes people's stories of redemption,” Bickley said.