The Associated Press

FRANKFORT - Death row inmate Kevin Stanford never knew his father and had a mother who didn't want him, according to his lawyers and others fighting to save his life.

When he was 5, a baby sitter forced him to have sex with a cousin, the cousin said. By age 7, he was introduced to liquor, and by age 12, he was addicted to alcohol and drugs, trading sex to get them, his lawyers told The Courier-Journal.

At 17, Mr. Stanford sodomized, robbed and murdered 20-year-old gas station attendant Baerbel Poore, a jury found. In 1982, a Jefferson Circuit Court judge sentenced Mr. Stanford to death, pronouncing him "beyond rehabilitation."

Twenty years later, he is on death row at the Kentucky State Penitentiary in Eddyville. Mr. Stanford's appeals have been exhausted and his lawyers have asked Gov. Paul Patton to commute his death sentence.

Stanford doesn't dispute that he was involved in Ms. Poore's abduction and murder on Jan. 7, 1981. But his attorneys want the governor to consider what they say no jury or judge has: The story of an abused and neglected child who matures into a productive and remorseful man while on death row.

In a documentary-style video on Mr. Stanford's life submitted with the clemency petition, his mother, Barbara Boller, acknowledges that she "wasn't a good mom. I gave up on him. I may be responsible for where he is today."

Mr. Stanford's advocates point to his religious conversion and say he earned a high school equivalency diploma and associate degrees in management and liberal arts to set a good example for his 21-year-old daughter.

But those details don't impress Ms. Poore's younger sister.

"If he has turned himself around and accepted God and full responsibility for his actions, then let him be a man and accept the punishment that the commonwealth of Kentucky has deemed for him - which is death," said Mona Mills, 38.

At Mr. Patton's request, the attorney general's office is preparing a response to Mr. Stanford's clemency petition. The response is expected this week along with a request for Mr. Patton to sign Mr. Stanford's execution warrant.