SOL 81.2 | One of Matthew Shepard’s Murderers Denied Sentence Reduction

Matthew Shepard (1976-1998)

Russell Henderson is serving consecutive life sentences in Wyoming after being convicted of homicide and hate crime

One of the men who murdered gay college student Matthew Shepard in 1998 was denied a commutation of his sentence this week, the Wyoming Board of Parole has confirmed.

Russell Henderson, who along with Aaron McKinney was convicted of homicide and hate crime charges for murdering Shepard 25 years ago, is currently serving two consecutive life sentences in Wyoming prison. Henderson applied for a reduction in his sentence earlier this year per the Board’s regulations, which allow prisoners who have served at least 10 years of a life sentence to submit a commutation petition once every five years. But the board ruled against sending Henderson’s petition to the governor, Executive Director Margaret White confirmed in statements to The Advocate this week.

“Mr. Henderson filed a commutation petition which the Board considered in accordance with its policies,” White said. “The Board held a hearing on Russell’s petition and declined to forward the petition to the Governor. This matter is now decided.” White did not comment further, citing the board’s policy against disclosing information to anyone outside of prisoners and victims.

Henderson pleaded guilty to murder and kidnapping in 1999 to avoid the death penalty for Shepard’s killing, now known as one of the most infamous hate crimes in modern U.S. history. In 2004, Henderson appealed his sentence for the first time, alleging that he was not made aware of what rights would be legally denied him as a result of his guilty plea; that appeal was ultimately unsuccessful.

The precise motivations for Shepard’s murder remain murky even decades later. At trial, McKinney’s lawyer put forth an unsuccessful “gay panic” defense for his client, alleging that Shepard’s sexual advances baited the two men into violence, a story McKinney’s girlfriend first supported but then recanted.

Henderson and McKinney went on to claim that their true motivations were more closely tied to money and methamphetamine in later media interviews, but McKinney is said to have changed his tune again when interviewed in 2009 for The Laramie Project, a play commemorating the murder. “Matt Shepard needed killing [...] I don’t have any remorse,” McKinney allegedly told one member of the theater company, as the Denver Post reported at the time. “The night I did it, I did have hatred for homosexuals.”

Shepard’s brutal killing went on to inspire candlelit vigils across the U.S. and a movement against homophobic violence, eventually leading to the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, which established harsher criminal penalties for hate- and bias-motivated crimes.

News of Henderson’s denied commutation comes after Shepard’s mother Judy Shepard, co-founder of the nonprofit Matthew Shepard Foundation, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Joe Biden in May.

“If I had the power to change one thing, I can only dream of the example that Matt’s life and purpose would have shown, had he lived,” Judy Shepard wrote in a statement earlier this year. “This honor reminds the world that his life, and every life, is precious.”

Source: them, Samantha Riedel, September 19, 2024

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