Louisville Courier-Journal: “After more than six hours of deliberation, a jury Wednesday found Patrick Baker – the man pardoned by then-Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin – guilty of murdering a drug dealer during a robbery seven years ago. U.S. District Judge Claria Horn Boom set sentencing for Dec. 21. Baker faces a sentence of any term of years up to life in prison. The verdict vindicates the federal government’s decision to essentially retry Baker for the crime Bevin excised, which is permitted under U.S. Justice Department rules to correct an injustice or corrupt result.”

“Neither Bevin nor the pardon was mentioned during Baker’s 10-day trial – Boom barred either from being mentioned to the jury – but the verdict repudiates Bevin’s claim the evidence was ‘sketchy’ against Baker in the slaying of Mills, 29, during a robbery at Mills’ home in the Knox County community of Stinking Creek. In what experts say was the first federal trial of a defendant pardoned by a governor, federal prosecutors convinced the jury that Baker murdered Mills during a conspiracy to rob him of oxycodone pills and cash. In 2017, Baker was convicted in state court of reckless homicide and other crimes in the May 2014 slaying, but Bevin pardoned him after he served only two years of a 19-year sentence. A federal agent disclosed during a hearing in June that the government is conducting a separate investigation of whether Bevin issued the pardon – one of 670 acts of clemency he granted at the end of his term – in exchange for $21,500 Baker’s brother and sister-in-law raised at a fundraiser the year before to retire Bevin’s campaign debt. Bevin has denied that but declined to respond to a question about whether he is cooperating with the government probe.”