No Hearing for Ex-Con

Darrel Parker, convicted of murdering his wife 33 years ago, will not get a pardon hearing even though another convict confessed to the slaying before he died last summer, the Nebraska Board of Pardons ruled Thursday.

Parker can explore other avenues, said Atty. Gen. Robert Spire, one of the board’s three members, who declined to elaborate further. Spire said the board could consider Parker’s pardon request only if there were a “clear miscarriage of justice.” The board “is not a court, not a super appeals board.”

Parker, 57, a former parks supervisor in Moline, Ill., was imprisoned for 13 years for the 1955 murder of his wife, Nancy. An appeals court overturned his conviction on grounds that police had coerced his confession; prosecutors did not retry him, and he was paroled in 1969.

Another Confessed

Meantime, convicted murderer Wesley Peery told his lawyers that he killed Mrs. Parker, giving them intimate details of the killing. But he made the lawyers, Stanley Cohen and Toney Redman, promise to keep secret his confession until he was dead. The lawyers came forward after Peery, 63, died of a heart attack on Death Row in July.

Parker’s lawyer, Richard Bruckner, said Parker told him all he wanted “is a piece of paper--a complete pardon finally clearing my name.” Bruckner did not attend the board hearing and had no immediate comment on the ruling.

The pardon board, which also includes Gov. Kay Orr, considered a sealed transcript of Peery’s confession, which was among two years of taped and written interviews he gave to Cohen and Redman, hoping a book would be written about him. He had boasted of killing 12 people over four decades.