It's time for the chairman of the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole to take it easy for a while. Michael Sibbett, who is the longest-serving chairman of the board since its members began serving full-time, announced Friday he would step down from the board to spend more time with family.
But he will remain at his post until a replacement can be found.
Sibbett was selected to the board in 1990 and was appointed its chairman by former Gov. Mike Leavitt in March 1993.
In 15 years, he has participated in 130,000 decisions on the fates of Utah State Prison inmates.
"That's a lot of judgment to sit in," Sibbett said.
Some of those decisions have been between life and death.
Myron Lance and Walter Kelbach were sentenced to death after going on a weeklong murder rampage in 1966. But when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1972 that the death penalty was unconstitutional, their sentences became life sentences.
In 1992, Sibbett was part of the board that decided Lance and Kelbach would never receive parole. They are to spend the rest of their lives in prison.
"I don't know how you could ever let us out," he remembers Kelbach saying. That candid statement showed Sibbett that Kelbach understood why he was in prison.
Not all cases the board hears have such dramatic consequences. For that Sibbett is grateful.
He talks of the weight he says board members bear in their position of judgment.
"This job, it's a fascinating job. There's tremendous human emotion," he says. "It's weighty . . . because decisions are final. You have those decisions you have to agonize over."
To remind himself of that, he keeps a sign on his desk that reads, "The buck stops here."
Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff agrees and says Sibbett exhibited grace under that pressure.
"I never saw him without his boots on," Shurtleff said. "He's a cowboy for all seasons."
Sibbett is just as comfortable riding a horse as he has been in leading the Utah Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice or in making the tough calls on inmates.
"Those things are tough to do," Shurtleff said. "The guy has got an amazingly positive attitude."
He said people fail to realize Board of Pardons and Parole members hear the most horrifying stories with all their sordid details.
But sorting through those things to find a definition of justice is what they have to do.
"He served the state well," Shurtleff said of the retiring chairman.
Sibbett is a well-respected leader among paroling authorities nationally and internationally, according to a news release from Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.'s office. He served as president of the Association of Paroling Authorities International from 1999 to 2001. He was presented one of the highest honors in the international field of parole with the "Ben Baer Award" in 2003.
Shurtleff praised Sibbett's efforts to get a hate crimes bill passed in Utah's Legislature, an effort that has yet to succeed. Sibbett said he's proud of his work to get the method of terminating prisoners under the death penalty changed from the firing squad to lethal injection.
The attention deaths by firing squad generated took away from the offender's victims, Sibbett said.
Applications are being accepted to fill Sibbett's vacancy. The job will be posted at www.statejobs.utah.gov. Board members serve a 5-year term and are appointed by the governor. Last time there was an opening, the Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice had to review 160 resumes, said Michele Christiansen, the commission's director.
The search is open until May 13, and after candidates are narrowed down to five, Huntsman will select the new board member.
Once a full board is in place, Huntsman will select one of the members as chairman. That should happen sometime in June, Christiansen said.
Perhaps the following — a constant prayer Sibbett said he has — is something he would pass on to whoever takes his place: "I would ask forgiveness of those we judged too harshly so we didn't have to ask forgiveness from society for those we released too early."
E-mail: jdougherty@desnews.com