Jackie Juntti
WGEN  idzrus@earthlink.net
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http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_HUCKABEE_HORTON?SITE=YAHOO&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Nov 30, 7:03 PM EST

Wash. shooting re-opens Huckabee’s
clemency record

By ANDREW DeMILLO
Associated Press Writer

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — As governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee had a hand
pardoning or commuting many more prisoners than his three immediate
predecessors combined. Maurice Clemmons, the suspect in Sunday’s slaying of
four Seattle-area police officers, was among them.

For a politician considering another run for the White House, Clemmons could
become Huckabee’s Willie Horton.

“In a primary between a law-and-order Republican and him, I think it could
definitely be a vulnerability,” said Art English, a political scientist at
the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. “It is very damaging when you
have someone like that whose sentence was commuted. That’s pretty high profile
and very devastating and very tragic.”

English said it’s hard to avoid comparing the case to Horton, a convicted
killer who raped a woman and assaulted her fiance while on release as part of a
prison furlough program supported by Michael Dukakis when he was governor of
Massachusetts.

Allies of former President George H.W. Bush ran ads criticizing Dukakis for his
support of the program, undermining the Democrat’s presidential campaign.

As recently as Sunday, hours before the shooting suspect was linked to him,
Huckabee said he was leaning against running again for president, telling
“Fox News Sunday” he was “less likely rather than more
likely” to run.

On Monday, Huckabee offered little explanation for why he made Clemmons
eligible for parole in 2000, and called the case a failure of the justice
systems in Arkansas and Washington.

“If I could have known nine years ago and could have looked into the
future, would I have acted favorably upon the Parole Board’s recommendation? Of
course not,” Huckabee told Fox News Radio on Monday.

Huckabee was expected to discuss the Clemmons case Monday night during an
interview with Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly.

Clemmons was among 1,033 people who were pardoned or had their sentences
reduced during Huckabee’s 10 1/2 years as governor, a number that far surpasses
that of his three predecessors combined. Bill Clinton, Frank White and Jim Guy
Tucker granted 507 clemencies in the 17 1/2 years they served. Beebe,
Huckabee’s Democratic successor, has issued 273 commutations and pardons since
taking office in January 2007 – all but one of them were pardons after the
completion of the inmates’ prison terms.

Huckabee’s role in gaining the release of a convicted rapist, Wayne DuMond, was
the subject of an attack ad during his presidential run. While Huckabee’s predecessor,
Tucker, reduced DuMond’s sentence making him eligible for parole, Huckabee took
steps almost immediately after taking office to win DuMond’s release.

Two members of the state parole board said Huckabee pressured them to show
DuMond mercy, while Huckabee publicly questioned whether DuMond was guilty of
the rape of a teenage girl. During the presidential primaries, a conservative
group aired television commercials in South Carolina featuring the mother of
Carol Sue Shields, whom DuMond killed in 2000 after his release.

Pulaski County Prosecutor Larry Jegley, whose office opposed Clemmons’ parole
in 2000 and 2004, said Huckabee created a flaw in the Arkansas justice system
by freeing the number of prisoners he did.

“(Clemmons) should have stayed locked up like the jury wanted him and we
wouldn’t even be having this discussion,” Jegley said.

“I just have been figuratively holding my breath and hoping something like
this wouldn’t happen,” Jegley said. “I just think that a lot of the
people that were subjects of clemency during that period of time were some very
dangerous people who didn’t need to be let out.”

Clemmons also had the backing of Pulaski County Circuit Judge Marion Humphrey,
who urged the board to grant clemency. Humphrey later presided over Clemmons’
2004 wedding in his court chambers.

Prosecutors have said Huckabee, a Southern Baptist preacher, was more inclined
to release or reduce the sentences of prisoners if he had direct contact with
them or was lobbied by those close to him. Clemmons’ letter perhaps appealed to
Huckabee’s Christian faith.

In his application for clemency, Clemmons wrote that he prayed Huckabee would
show him compassion and said at the time of his crimes he had just moved to
Arkansas from Seattle. Clemmons also wrote that he had changed his life since
“the angel of death has visited and taken away my dear sweet mother.”

In 1989, Clemmons, then 17, was convicted in Little Rock for aggravated robbery
and other charges and sentenced to 95 years. Between 1989 and 1998, Clemmons
broke prison rules more than two dozen times – sometimes violently, said state
prison system spokeswoman Dina Tyler.

Clemmons didn’t stay out long. He was convicted of robbery in Ouachita County
in 2001, but was released again in 2004 by the parole board. Little Rock police
say Clemmons also faced charges here in 2001 but prosecutors dropped the
additional charges when Clemmons was released a second time. Months after his
2004 release, Clemmons was named as a suspect in an aggravated robbery at a hotel
in Little Rock but he was not charged.

Saline County Circuit Judge Robert Herzfeld, who as a prosecutor successfully
sued Huckabee over clemency practices, said Huckabee’s decision to give Rolling
Stones guitarist Keith Richards a pardon for a 1975 traffic offense after
meeting him at a concert showed how lightly the ex-governor approached the
practice.

“That just said volumes about how he considered this serious ultimate
power over freedom as a joke,” Herzfeld said.