Right before Haley Barbour's term as governor of Mississippi expired, he decided to use one of his official powers.

The two-term Republican issued more than 200 pardons and sentence suspensions, including some murderers who had worked as trusties in the governor's mansion.

The Associated Press reported on some of the men pardoned:

"David Gatlin, convicted of killing his estranged wife in 1993; Joseph Ozment, convicted in 1994 of killing a man during a robbery; Anthony McCray, convicted in 2001 of killing his wife; Charles Hooker, sentenced to life in 1992 for murder...

The 40-year-old Gatlin was sentenced to life in prison in the 1993 slaying of Tammy Ellis Gatlin and the shooting of Randy Walker, her long-time friend.

Walker's mother, Glenda Walker, said Monday that Gatlin shot his estranged wife while she was holding their young baby, then shot her son in the head.

"He left that little baby on his dead mother's body," Glenda Walker said. "It was a horrendous murder."

Barbour has said little about the pardons, releasing a statement on Wednesday that said some people "misunderstood" the process. He said many of the pardons were issued to people who were not in custody any longer, and were meant to make it easier for them to work, vote or get professional licenses.

The families of the people killed by the pardoned inmates are angry. And the fact that he issued the pardons in the last hours of his final day as governor made it seem a little sneaky to some people.

In 1999, Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan commuted the death sentence of triple-murderer Darrell Mease after Pope John Paul II visited St. Louis and asked the governor to spare Mease's life. Carnahan commuted the sentence to life in prison without parole -- and was roundly criticized in some circles.

But pardoning a killer seems vastly different. Is s this a power that you think the governor of any state should have? If a murderer is sentenced to life in prison, or a certain number of years, should a governor be able to overrule a judge and jury?