Quinn's last-minute clemency decisions draw more critics

ST. LOUIS (AP) - Pat Quinn's clemency decisions in his final moments as Illinois governor are drawing more criticism, with a prosecutor saying it was "mind-numbing" for Quinn to cut in half the prison term of a woman who killed her husband by dousing him with gasoline and setting him ablaze as he slept.

Tom Gibbons, the top prosecutor in southwestern Illinois' Madison County, said Wednesday that Quinn's decision to reduce Tammy Englerth's 40-year sentence came without notice to or consultation with his office or the family of Christopher Englerth, who died in 2005 after the fire in the couple's Highland duplex.

That complaint was echoed earlier this week by Gibbons' Cook County counterpart after Quinn commuted the sentences of two inmates serving decades-long prison terms for separate Chicago-area killings and a man who wounded several Chicago police officers during a shootout.

Quinn offered no explanation Monday of why he made the 42-year-old Tammy Englerth, who pleaded guilty to first-degree murder as part of a plea deal, eligible for parole in 2025, rather than in 2045.

Quinn "reviewed these cases very carefully and made his decisions based on the merits," former spokeswoman Brooke Anderson wrote in an email. "He felt it was the right and just thing to do."

An April 2014 clemency petition on Englerth's behalf by Chicago attorney Rachel White-Domain insisted Christopher Englerth for years had "abused her in every way imaginable," that she "lived in constant terror" and killed her husband to protect her three children. Christopher Englerth died in a hospital six days after being set on fire.

White-Domain, of the Illinois Clemency Project for Battered Women, described Tammy Englerth as intensely remorseful, a model prisoner and someone undeserving of "effectively a life sentence," given that Englerth would have been 71 at her time of original release should Quinn not intervene.

"Chris' death was undeniably horrific," White-Domain wrote. "Tammy's actions that day reflect not only her panicked state of mind but also the impact of her being traumatized by Chris' extreme physical, emotional and sexual violence for more than a decade."

"She has suffered enough," the attorney added.

Gibbons countered that Tammy Englerth's reduced sentence was "a miscarriage of justice," insisting that Englerth fabricated her domestic violence claims, pleaded guilty and got a negotiated sentence. But courtesy of Quinn, Gibbons said, the woman will get "a second chance at life that she never gave the victim."

"This was a proper prosecution, and the sentence should have been left intact," said Gibbons, who took office in late 2010 and wasn't the state's attorney at the time Englerth was prosecuted. "For this person to have received that kind of consideration ... it's absolutely mind-numbing."

Farther north, a spokeswoman for Cook County state's attorney Anita Alvarez said Quinn's 11th-hour clemency actions for the three Chicago prisoners, who were released Wednesday, were a "secretive maneuver that puts the rights of victims of crime and their families at the bottom of the list of priorities."

The spokeswoman, Sally Daly, said Quinn didn't allow for "substantive hearings" in which prosecutors and victims' families could weigh in, and that prosecutors were left "without any explanation or justification as to why the defendants were selected to have their sentences commuted."

Efforts to reach Christopher Englerth's relatives through Gibbons were unsuccessful.

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Associated Press writer Sophia Tareen in Chicago contributed to this report.