Barlow appeals to Gov Lolo to grant pardon and commutation

Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — Former Territorial Correctional Facility inmate, James Glenn Barlow has appealed directly to Gov. Lolo Matalasi Moliga to grant his application for a pardon and commutation of sentence — a request already submitted a few months ago.

“I beg you to please grant me a pardon so that I can find employment that I am qualified for,” wrote 73-year old Barlow — who is currently residing in California after being paroled October this year by the American Samoa Parole Board, which also set conditions of parole in a Dec. 11th letter to the governor.

Barlow was sentenced in 2014 by the High Court of American Samoa to serve a 24-year jail term at TCF for a conviction in a case involving three male juveniles. Last year he filed a habeas corpus petition — first with the federal court in Honolulu and later transferred to the federal court in Washington D.C — challenging his detention in American Samoa.

In his letter to the governor, Barlow said he doesn’t “harbor any ill will against anyone in American Samoa even though I was wrongly imprisoned because of misconduct by a palagi non-Samoa” former local assistant attorney general  — referring to Terry Bullinger, who prosecuted the defendant.

Barlow shared some personal information with the governor saying that his daughter married a Samoan from Upolu island in Samoa in 1992 and his grandchildren are half Samoan and were living on Upolu in 2005 when he began teaching at the American Samoa Community College (ASCC).

He explained that he decided to work at ASCC on Tutuila island to be close to his family on Upolu and that he taught more than 2,000 Samoan students at ASCC before he was imprisoned.

“I love the two Samoas and their people,” he wrote. “I will never return to either Samoa, but I do not blame the Samoan people for the mistreatment I suffered because of being convicted based on coerced perjury,” he noted.

“Please... use your power of mercy and forgiveness and pardon me,” he wrote to Lolo. “Fa’amolemole, grant me your Governor’s pardon so that I may work and earn a living to pay for medical care for the damages caused by assaults against me in TCF.”

He also informed the governor that the high cost of living in California means he must find work at his age of 73, but he cannot find a job that he qualifies for, because of the felony conviction in American Samoa on his record “casting a shadow over my civil rights.”

“I need the right to earn a living restored to me,” he said, noting that he is “remorseful for any inconvenience this tragic wrongful imprisonment may have caused in American Samoa.”

Barlow pleaded with the governor to “show your Christian mercy by removing the disabling penalties of the wrongful felony conviction caused by an ASG employee.”

“By restoring my full civil rights as a US citizen, your pardon can remove this disability penalty so I can find work,” Barlow concluded.

On Nov. 30th, Barlow’s defense attorney in the U.S., Bentley Adams III — in support of an earlier request for a pardon and commutation of sentence — submitted to the governor two affidavits, including one by local former assistant public defender Leslie J. Cardin, who detailed the alleged misconduct by Bullinger.

“Cardin’s affidavit establishes that sexual contact with Mr. Barlow was repeatedly denied by the [alleged victims] and that only after prosecutors conducted secret meetings [with the alleged victims] without their attorney’s knowledge or consent did they implicate Mr. Barlow,” Adams explained. (See Samoa News edition Dec. 2nd for details.)

Documents received by Samoa News show that between Nov. 1st and Dec. 12th, some 14 personal letters were received from various individuals in the US to the governor supporting the pardon request. Some of the letters referred to Cardin’s affidavit, which “validates what James Barlow has been saying these nine long years — that he was convicted on the basis of perjury, coerced by a vindictive [former assistant] attorney general with a personal vendetta against Mr. Barlow.”

Cardon is currently an attorney with the Georgia Public Defenders Council as the managing attorney of the Coastal Conflict Defender Office for the Brunswick Judicial Circuit of Georgia.