Pickens v. Tucker

The movant, Edward Charles Pickens, mounts a Due Process claim, alleging that Governor Jim Guy Tucker is a biased determiner of his clemency application by virtue of his representation of the State in Pick-ens’s appeal in 1977. See Pickens v. State, 261 Ark. 756, 551 S.W.2d 212 (1977). According to that opinion, two deputy attorneys general also acted as special prosecutors at the Pickens trial.

The power to exercise clemency is vested in the chief executive and not the courts. Ark. Const, art. 6, § 18; Woods v. State, 302 Ark. 512, 790 S.W.2d 892 (1990); Coones v. State, 280 Ark. 321, 657…