Michael Francke

James Michael Francke (1946-1989) was an American judge from New Mexico who directed the Corrections Department of that state before Oregon governor Neil Goldschmidt hired him to direct the Oregon Department of Corrections and oversee a plan to double the inmate capacity of the Oregon prison system. On January 18, 1989, his body was found outside the Oregon Department of Corrections headquarters in Salem; an autopsy determined he had been stabbed to death the night before. Frank Gable was convicted of the murder and sentenced to life without parole, but a federal magistrate ruled in 2019 that Gable had not received a fair trial and he was released, and by May 2023 his conviction had been expunged and the indictment dismissed with prejudice. The Association of State Correctional Administrators now annually awards the Michael Francke Award to the top corrections administrator in the United States. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/