Mike Huckabee and clemency
Some our friends on the left (notably Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon and the liberal geek of the Delaware Liberal) have jumped on the “Mike Huckabee set a rapist free ’cause his victim was a cousin of Bill Clinton’s” meme, which is pure bovine feces. We’re expected to believe that Governor Huckabee wrote the parole board on behalf of Wayne DuMond solely because we evil right-wingers saw the rape of a Clinton relative as some sort of justifiable vengeance. Miss Marcotte wrote:
Huckabee didn’t set this guy loose because he had some deep compassion for a brutal rapist,* but because the victim of the rape and kidnapping was a distant cousin of Bill Clinton’s. I shit you not. Right wing conspiracy theorists were eager to hold up this vile racist as a victim of the supposed web of evil the Clintons weave, and so crazy right wing conspiracy nut Huckabee let him go. He has blood on his hands, all over his paranoid fantasies about the Clintons.
And the liberal geek wrote:
Huckabee appears to have let a convicted rapist go mostly because the rapist had raped one of Clintons relatives(the rapist went on to rape and murder another woman), so it surely had to be a set up. The fact that Huckabee was swayed by the kind of lunatics that put out videos about the people that Clinton had murdered says something about Huckabee.
The miserably left-wing Huffington Post had a story just last Friday which, again, tried to blame “Anti-Clinton Zealots” for Mr DuMond’s early parole.
Uhhh, no. Many people interceded for Mr DuMond because they thought the circumstances of his treatment had been punishment enough.
- The Castration of Wayne DuMond
DuMond had been accused of raping a Clinton cousin in 1984 and was hog-tied and castrated before he even went to trial.
He used to be enraged about it, especially when the cracker sheriff, who was a pal of the rape victim’s father, scooped up DuMond’s balls, put them in a jar, and showed them off.
There’s a lot at the link, and on the surface it looks like Mr DuMond was the victim of at least some miscarriage of justice. Governor Clinton recused himself from the case, and turned over the decision on a parole board clemency recommendation to his lieutenant Governor, Jim Guy Tucker, another Democrat. Mr Tucker did not pardon Mr DuMond, but did reduce his sentence.
When Mr Huckabee became governor, he recommended parole for Mr DuMond, a parole which was granted; he did not commute Mr DuMond’s sentence nor issue a pardon, because, the Governor said, either a pardon or commutation would have left Mr DuMond free without any supervision by a parole officer.
From the evidence available, it’s easy to see why some people, both Republicans and Democrats, had sympathy for Mr DuMond’s plight. Not only had he been attacked and castrated while awaiting trial, but he had also served fourteen years in prison for the crime. But Wayne DuMond wasn’t exactly a stellar citizen before the rape; he had a prior record. And the parole turned out for the worse, because Mr DuMond went on to rape and murder another woman.
But if Governor Huckabee made an understandable mistake with Wayne DuMond, there are other parts of his record which I find less understandable. XRLQ (which is, oddly enough, pronounced “Jeff”) of Damnum Absque Injuria noted that Governor Huckabee has issued more commutations and pardons than all of the six neighboring states combined, citing this story.
That’s a whole lot of clemency goin’ on down thar. I’d guess that some of those stories, if studied individually, would merit some form of clemency — but not an average of 7¼ every month, in a small state like Arkansas.
Mr Huckabee might win the Republican presidential nomination; he’s had a surprising surge in the polls in the early contest states. If he wins, I’ll vote for him. But he might not be the best candidate we have out there.
Xrlq:
This story says DuMond was arrested in 1985 and paroled in 1997. It also points out that Huckabee completely blew off the first victim’s concerns about the monster’s impending parole.
10 December 2007, 9:26 pmDana Pico:
According to this story, Mr DuMond was released on parole in October of 1999. Not sure which one to believe.
10 December 2007, 10:16 pmXrlq:
Upon re-reading the first story, it appears the parole decision was made in 1997, but conditioned on him moving out of state, and it took two years before another state would allow him him. So he had served 14 years at the time he finally got out, but not at the time Huckabee pushed for his release.
23 January 2008, 8:42 pmDana Pico:
How on earth could a parole board condition a parole on moving out of state? Such would mean that he could not be supervised by a state probation officer.
23 January 2008, 8:49 pm