John Hult/South Dakota Searchlight
SIOUX FALLS — A three-time bank robber and repeat escape artist who learned yoga and logged more than 300 hours of coursework in prison may have a shot at freedom in old age thanks to a Thursday vote from the South Dakota Board of Pardons and Paroles.
If Gov. Kristi Noem signs on to the board’s recommendation, 45-year-old James Pasek would see his sentence commuted from life to 50 years in state prison.
If she issues a denial letter before July 1, Pasek can ask again in a year. If she denies it after that, he’ll need to wait a lot longer.
Senate Bill 9, which Noem signed into law on March 4, pushes back the waiting period between clemency requests for inmates with a conviction for a crime of violence and a life sentence from one to four years.
SB 9 passed with wide support during the just-ended legislative session. It had the backing of victims and family members, who told lawmakers they don’t want to relive a crime and face those who victimized them every year.
The Belle Fourche Dairy Queen employee who was a bank teller in Spearfish in 2003 when Pasek slipped her a note demanding cash did not appear in person or virtually for Pasek’s commutation hearing. Parole specialist Stacy Cole told the board members she’d spoken with the victim, who said she’d offer a statement but never did.
Pasek has served 22 years of a life sentence for first-degree robbery already, and would serve another decade or more with a commutation and a favorable parole vote. At that point, he’d have another 13 years of federal prison time to look forward to for the two bank robberies that preceded his theft-by-note in Lawrence County. He’d likely be in his 60s by the time he walks free.
From robber to studious inmate
Pasek told the board he was a foolish and selfish young man when his crime spree began in 2002. That’s the year he and an accomplice stole some pawn shop guns in Gillette, Wyoming, and drove south to Casper to rob a bank. Police nabbed the pair in short order, but Pasek said he wasn’t ready to give up.
“I ripped the bars out of the window and took off,” Pasek said. “I wasn’t ready to face my problems. I tried running from them, but it didn’t work out, obviously.”
After his jail break, he stole a car and drove it to Bozeman, Montana, where he bought a pellet gun, robbed another bank and was again apprehended quickly. He broke out of that jail, as well, again stealing a car, this time for a drive to Spearfish.
Less than 24 hours after robbing a Spearfish bank, he and his $2,500 haul were in the hands of local police.
Typically, a conviction for first-degree robbery would not carry a life sentence. The sheer number of offenses in Pasek’s recent past put his sentencing judge in a position to levy one in his case.
Pasek told the board he matured quite a bit by the time South Dakota prison officials sent him to North Carolina for plotting yet another escape. He remains incarcerated in that state.
Part of the reason, he said, was the murder of former correctional officer Ronald “R.J.” Johnson, who was beaten to death with a metal pipe by two inmates trying to escape on his 63rd birthday, a day he had agreed to cover someone else’s shift.
“It kind of sat me down,” Pasek said of Johnson’s murder. “I didn’t want to be that guy who hurts someone trying to get out.”
While behind bars in North Carolina, he told the board, he came to understand the importance of bettering himself and thinking of others instead of chasing fantasies of a career in bank robbery.
Learning yoga a decade ago has been helpful, he said, as have the hundreds of hours of college courses he’s completed using a prison tablet.
His father testified on his behalf. He said his son would have an oil field job in Wyoming upon release, and that he could become a high earning, contributing member of society with the aid of that career and his extended family.
Board member Ken Albers said he doesn’t like Pasek or the tattoos on his head.
Yet Albers moved to commute the sentence because he agreed with Board Vice Chair Kirsten Aasen, who pointed out moments before the motion that regardless of what happens in South Dakota, Pasek will remain incarcerated for a long time.
A commutation would recognize the inmate’s personal growth and potential without threatening public safety by freeing someone who’s not ready.
“Whatever we do, he’s still got so much time hanging over his head that he has several ways he can screw this up,” Aasen said.
Future lifers could wait longer for commutation requests
After the hearing, as the board discussed its schedule for the coming months, Board Chair Myron Rau returned to the subject of SB 9 and referenced the potential timing of a commutation denial for Pasek. If it comes before July 1, when the law takes effect, Rau said he’d likely be able to ask again in a year.
Rau testified against SB 9 in February and called it “stupid, but not complicated” on Thursday. Even so, he said, instructions to applicants like Pasek will need to be adjusted as a result.
“Come July, anybody who comes here and gets denied will have to wait four years,” Rau said.
By coincidence, one of the men who inspired SB 9 will appear before the parole board at its July meeting. The family of killer Joaquin Ramos’ victim testified in favor of the bill.
They’ve testified to the board against paroling him every year or so since Gov. Mike Rounds commuted his life sentence and made him eligible for parole.
Parole, however, is not clemency, and therefore not impacted by SB 9. South Dakota’s legal definition of “clemency” includes commutations, which reduce a sentence for a current inmate, and pardons, which erase an old conviction from a free person’s record.
Because Ramos earned clemency from Rounds, he’s legally entitled to a parole hearing every eight months.