Kentucky man pardoned by Bevin found guilty of the same killing again
A man who was pardoned on a state homicide conviction but then charged with murder in federal court over the same killing has been found guilty, again.
Then-Gov. Matt Bevin said the evidence against Patrick Baker was sketchy when he let Baker out of prison in December 2019, but after deliberating six and a half hours over two days, a jury convicted Baker on a charge of murdering a man during a drug-related robbery.
Baker, 43, who was living in Frankfort before being arrested in the federal case, faces up to life in prison. U.S. District Judge Claria Horn Boom scheduled sentencing for Dec. 21.
After the verdict, members of Baker’s family wept, and his fiancee, with whom he has baby daughter, put her head in her hands. Baker blew a kiss to his family as he left the courtroom to return to custody.
Across the courtroom, the widow and sister of victim Donald Mills also cried. Mills’ family declined to comment after the verdict.
Baker’s father, John Baker, said only that he was disappointed. One of Baker’s attorneys, Steve Romines, said Baker will appeal the conviction.
Romines said Baker’s attorneys felt there was a good bit of evidence in his favor they were not allowed to present to jurors.
“This is just another step along the way,” Romines said.
The conviction was the latest development in a case that caused an outcry in Kentucky.
Baker was convicted in state court in 2017 of killing Mills, a large-scale drug dealer in Knox County. Mills, 29, was shot twice in the chest in May 2014 when two men impersonating police officers tried to rob him of pain pills and money.
Mills bled to death as his wife and mother rushed him to meet an ambulance.
The state jury convicted Baker on charges of reckless homicide, robbery, impersonating a police officer and tampering with evidence.
The Kentucky Court of Appeals upheld Baker’s conviction, saying the evidence against him was overwhelming.
But in December 2019, just two years after a judge sentenced Baker to 19 years in prison, Bevin pardoned him.
It was among hundreds of pardons and sentence commutations that Bevin, a Republican, issued at the end of his term, but Baker’s was one of the more controversial decisions.
That was because Baker’s brother and sister-in-law had held a political fundraiser for Bevin in 2018 that netted $21,500 to pay down debt left over from his campaign for governor.
The pardon brought condemnation from both sides of the aisle.
Two Democratic state lawmakers called for an investigation, saying there was an overwhelming “appearance of corruption” in Baker’s pardon.
State Republicans also called for an investigation; Senate President Robert Stivers said his caucus condemned Bevin’s pardons and commutations as “a travesty and perversion of justice.”
Bevin strongly denied that politics played a role in Baker’s pardon.
Authorities have looked into the fundraiser, however, and opened a case on Baker, leading to a federal charge in May that he murdered Mills during the commission of a drug-trafficking crime.
The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and Kentucky State Police investigated the case on Baker, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Jenna Reed prosecuted.
Baker’s pardon was not an issue in the latest case against him. Boom barred attorneys from any mention of Baker’s state-court conviction or the pardon.
“At its core, this case was about one thing: Patrick Baker’s role in the death of Donald Mills,” said acting U.S. Attorney Carlton S. Shier, IV.
The jury in the federal case had to choose between two starkly different narratives that came out in court over seven days of testimony.
One witness, Nathan Wagner, testified that Baker’s addiction to pain pills had put him in a financial bind, and that Baker approached him with an idea to rob a drug dealer.
Wagner said he turned Baker down.
Another prosecution witness, Christopher Wagner, who is not related to Nathan Wagner, said he went with Baker to rob Mills, expecting to get hundreds of pills and maybe $200,000 in cash.
Wagner said Baker had the idea to pose as law-enforcement officers because he thought that would keep down problems.
Wagner testified Baker kicked in the door of Mill’s mobile home and took Mills to one bedroom to look for drugs while Wagner held Mills’s wife and children at gunpoint in another bedroom.
Wagner testified he heard shots from the other room, and that as he and Baker fled in Baker’s pickup truck, Baker said Mills had pulled a gun.
“ ‘It all went wrong and I had to shoot him,’ “ Baker said, according to Wagner.
Wagner said he helped Baker dispose of the gun at an abandoned surface coal mine in Bell County. He later led police to pieces of the gun; tests linked the 9mm pistol, which belonged to Baker, to shell casings left at Mills’ house.
Baker’s ex-wife also testified that Baker told her he killed Mills.
But Baker, testifying in his own defense, said his ex-wife was mistaken and other witnesses against him lied. The defense worked to convince jurors a convicted felon named Adam Messer, who lived near Mills, was actually the one who killed him.
Baker said that in the hours before Mills was shot, he and Christopher Wagner went to Messer’s home to try to buy pain pills.
Baker said Messer and his brother, Elijah Messer, joked about robbing people and talked of robbing Mills, but he told them he wanted no part of it.
Baker testified that when he was outside to smoke a cigarette, Adam Messer took Baker’s pickup truck without his permission, returning 45 minutes to an hour later with Wagner.
Wagner told him that Messer had shot Mills using Baker’s pistol, which had been in the truck, Baker testified.
Baker said he was angry that his truck and gun had been used in the crime, and made Wagner get rid of the gun.
Baker said Messer threatened him and people close to him. That’s why he said he didn’t report the crime to police.
Baker’s attorneys argued Messer fed state police a story that Baker was the killer in order to deflect suspicion from himself.
Messer denied shooting Mills, however, and the verdict showed jurors did not accept the argument that someone besides Baker committed the murder.
“An examination of the evidence was overwhelmingly in support of Patrick Baker’s guilt,” said R. Shawn Morrow, special agent in charge of the ATF in Kentucky.
This story was originally published August 25, 2021 at 1:35 PM.
