Death Row Inmates Seek Clemency

{Frankfort, Kentucky}...Kentucky death row inmates Ralph S. Baze Jr. and Parramore Lee Sanborn are hoping that brain scans and mental tests will bolster their cases for a rare grant of executive clemency that would spare their lives. Baze, condemned for killing a sheriff and deputy in eastern Kentucky in 1992, has asked a federal judge to grant him funding for testing as he prepares a petition for Governor Steve Beshear. Baze's request comes just more than two weeks after U.S. District Judge Jennifer Coffman in Louisville granted $7,500 to Sanborn to pursue a possible claim of brain damage after being convicted for the 1983 kidnapping, rape and murder of  Barbara Heilman in Henry County. Governors have granted commutations to only two death row inmates in Kentucky in the last 35 years.