Huckabee Gets the Willie Horton Treatment

The BBQ Pit
21

No, that’s what happened at best. At worst, Huckabee championed the release of a convicted rapist to satisfy certain conservative leaders and their ridiculous Clinton conspiracy theories.

This story just has so many layers, and something to piss just about everybody off.

If the GOP establishment is going to use this to squash Huckabee’s surge, they have to be careful to limit the discussion to Dumond’s release, and not to the reasons behind it. The sort of anti-Clinton hysteria this story recalls was not exactly mainstream, but was far more than a fringe belief, so the Republicans would probably be better off not bringing it back up.

22

pardon powers are like the court of last resort in many cases, it’s too bad that because the position involved (governor, president) are politcal positions, the issue becomes very politicized. W/o commenting on the specifics of the instant case (other than to note that it’s entirely likely, right or wrong, that the governor relies on reports from others), the whole process has become so fraught w/ potential danger that this one ‘last resort’ may become too dangerous for a politico to take on.

23

[QUOTE=DoctorJ]
No, that’s what happened at best. At worst, Huckabee championed the release of a convicted rapist to satisfy certain conservative leaders and their ridiculous Clinton conspiracy theories.
[/QUOTE]

No, at worst, Huckabee committed both the original rape and the subsequent rape/murder, and blamed it all on this poor schmuck to cover up his crimes. I mean, as long as we’re going into the realm of the improbable.

The idea that he would intentionally pardon a person he believed guilty of rape is ludicrous. And if he didn’t believe the person guilty of rape, then a pardon is the correct move.

Daniel

24

[QUOTE=Left Hand of Dorkness]
No, at worst, Huckabee committed both the original rape and the subsequent rape/murder, and blamed it all on this poor schmuck to cover up his crimes. I mean, as long as we’re going into the realm of the improbable.

The idea that he would intentionally pardon a person he believed guilty of rape is ludicrous. And if he didn’t believe the person guilty of rape, then a pardon is the correct move.

Daniel
[/QUOTE]

Not necessarily. He could have issued the pardon because he believed that the punishment was undeservedly harsh, as Bush did with Scooter. Presumably Huckabee gave an explaination for why he did this and that’s on the intarwebs somewhere.

25

Read Dio’s post above. It sounds as though Huckabee believed the guy was innocent.

Daniel

26

[QUOTE=Left Hand of Dorkness]
Read Dio’s post above. It sounds as though Huckabee believed the guy was innocent.

Daniel
[/QUOTE]

So, you’re saying a politician was being honest? :dubious: :wink:

27

[QUOTE=elucidator]
Had more than a few adjectives applied, but this may be a first.

For my two bits, a smear campaign has to be grounded in a falsehood. This whole Drummond thing is as nasty as a sewer snake, but is grounded (best I can tell) in fact. Makes all the difference in the world.
[/QUOTE]

Fair 'nuff. Apparently in my book it counts as a “smear” if it is being done anonymously, whatever the actual merits of the matter.

About that adjective. . . It comes from my favorite local writer of a few generations back. I seem to be turning Victorian in my late middle age.
Loach: My gripe here is with people firing campaign salvos whilst hiding behind the facade of a 527 organization. If someone isn’t going to put his name where his money and mouth are, he should shut up. I feel this way irregardless of the merits of the accusation. Fact is, I don’t have a dog in the Republican primary hunt, and if they want to sit around gnawing on each other’s legs, that’s fine with me. To his credit, that backstabber Brutus had the decency to do it to Caesar’s face [apparent mangled metaphors intended].

28

[QUOTE=Left Hand of Dorkness]
Read Dio’s post above. It sounds as though Huckabee believed the guy was innocent.

Daniel
[/QUOTE]
Huh?

Did you read the material in his link?

This is an entirely different matter than Willie Horton. Willie Horton was not a person known to Dukakis, and was selected for highlighting in Bush ads because he was black.

Dumond was well known to Huckabee, his history was highly suggestive of the likelihood of his future acts, and Huckabee exerted political power to subvert justice, to sway the parole board, and to indirectly cause the future acts Dumond committed. His being released simply because his crime had been committed against a Clinton relative speaks of a sickness that has pervaded the Republican party for a long time, and Huckabee apparently had no problem playing along.

29

Just to further clarify his history:

There shouldn’t have been any question in Huckabee’s mind as to the potential for Dumond to commit brutal sex crimes upon his release.

Of course, some people are always going to be suckers for the “There was no way of knowing…” line when it comes from Republican politicians.

30

I think any politician who had shown such incredibly bad judgement in releasing a convicted rapist, only to see that rapist murder someone after his release, should have said incident brought up by his or her rivals at every single opportunity. And, no, this ad is NOT a smear, because it happens to be true.

31

I have no use for Huckabee but this story is weak. yes, he probably made a mistake. Yes someone got hurt. A Governor does a lot of things and some go wrong. It tells you nothing about him at all. I am sure some people were convinced the release was a good idea and he accepted their opinions .

32

[QUOTE=gonzomax]
I have no use for Huckabee but this story is weak. yes, he probably made a mistake. Yes someone got hurt. A Governor does a lot of things and some go wrong. It tells you nothing about him at all. I am sure some people were convinced the release was a good idea and he accepted their opinions .
[/QUOTE]
The guy admitted to once beating someone in the head with a claw hammer. Doesn’t seem like a very weak story to me.

33

According to Salon.com , this was not an isolated case. It sounds like pretty much all you had to do to get a pardon from Gov. Huckabee was to find Jesus, regardless of your criminal history.

[QUOTE=Joe Conason on Salon]
For several years after 1996, when he first considered parole for DuMond (he was released in 1999), the Arkansas governor freed as many as 1,000 prisoners. Some were undoubtedly deserving of release, but others were dangerous and violent felons like DuMond who should have been kept behind bars. Huckabee’s questionable methods and motivations never changed until prosecutors, the media, his fellow Republicans and virtually the entire state of Arkansas rose up in protest against his idiocy.

The case that sparked the citizen revolt against Huckabee came to public attention in 2004, when he announced his intention to release a murderer and rapist named Glen Green. What seems to have impressed him was the endorsement of Green provided by one Rev. Johnny Jackson, a Baptist minister in the town of Jacksonville and friend of the governor’s. Observers doubted that Huckabee had bothered to glance at the case file before he decided to release Green, because he could not have helped being chilled by the harrowing confession it contained.

In 1974, Green was serving as a sergeant at Little Rock Air Force Base, located in a suburban county outside the state capital. On a certain evening, he seized Helen Lynnette Spencer, 18, and brought her to a quiet spot on the base where he assaulted and tried to rape her. She briefly escaped from Green, who then caught her and beat her brutally with nunchaku sticks. He stuffed her into the trunk of his car and drove her off the base to another county, where he pulled her into the front seat and violated her. Since she wasn’t dead, he ran over her several times with his car, and finally dumped her corpse in a bayou. When Spencer’s body was found, her hand was reaching up from the swampy waters.

This was the series of events that Green and his gullible minister – who reportedly described the perp as “a humble Christian man” – later insisted had been “accidental,” an explanation that Huckabee inexplicably accepted. The prosecutors who put Green away for life in 1974 believed that he was capable of killing again, and they were stunned when the governor ignored their advice, along with the unanimous opinion of the Arkansas parole authorities. Only the anguished protests of the victim’s family, amplified by the local media, eventually forced Huckabee to rescind the commutation of Green’s sentence, which he had already announced.

[/QUOTE]

As much as I agree with the OP that anonymous ads are poor form, this is no smear- it’s a documented story that deserves to be heard.

34

[QUOTE=gonzomax]
It tells you nothing about him at all. I am sure some people were convinced the release was a good idea and he accepted their opinions .
[/QUOTE]
My understanding is that “Some People” did not include the parole board.

This is completely different than Willie Horton. Huckabee was over-riding expert opinion and evidence, on the basis of the say-so of anti-Clinton partisans.

Incidentally, there’s an independent pro-Huckabee push-polling robo-calling outfit working in several states. http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/005057.php :
…Common Sense Issues, a nonprofit group that’s been phoning millions of voters in key primary states on behalf of Mike Huckabee. The automated calls ask voters about their views on certain hot-button conservative issues and then provide a barrage of facts demonstrating that Huckabee is stronger.

35

[QUOTE=Hentor the Barbarian]
The guy admitted to once beating someone in the head with a claw hammer. Doesn’t seem like a very weak story to me.
[/QUOTE]

Apparently the guy was horrible but do you think Huckabee knew all about him. It is apparent a lot of people were trying to get him free. Do you think Huckabee just randomly picked a murderer to free.

36

[QUOTE=gonzomax]
Apparently the guy was horrible but do you think Huckabee knew all about him. It is apparent a lot of people were trying to get him free. Do you think Huckabee just randomly picked a murderer to free.
[/QUOTE]
Do you think that makes it okay? I, for one, don’t want an executive who is just going to rubber stamp clemency requests that are championed by his political friends. Let’s not be bogged down in the question of whether he was partisan, lazy or incompetent; as the governor, he is responsible.

There is a fourth option. I can’t expect someone at that level to know every detail of every case that comes before him. He has to trust his staff. If he secured this pardon on the advice of qualified, informed and impartial advisors, then I’d might cut him a little slack on it. I don’t see anybody making that claim.

37

Let’s be clear. Huckabee released Dumond, against the initial advice of the parole board. Here’s what happened (emphasis added): “For Governor Huckabee to say that he had no influence with the board is something that he knows to be untrue. He came before the board and made his views known that [Dumond] should have been paroled … “

Suttlar noted that just prior to Huckabee’s appearance before the board the board had voted 4-1 against Dumond’s parole. After Huckabee’s board appearance, her colleagues largely reversed themselves, voting 4-1 for Dumond’s release.

“Why did all the votes change?” Suttlar asked. The board members knew the governor’s position. And Huckabee knows what influence a governor has over a board. Who’s going to turn down a governor?”

A board member, who only agreed to speak on condition of anonymity, said, “We are not talking rocket science here. The board jobs are known to some degree [to be] political patronage, and they’re not the most difficult jobs for the pay.” Board members currently earn more than $70,000 a year.

Timeline
8/29/1996: Board votes 4-1 to deny parole.
9/10/1996: Board votes 5-0 to deny executive clemency and executive pardon.
9/20/1996: Huckabee announces that he plans to free Dumond. Public outcry ensues.
10/31/1996: Huckabee meets with parole board.
1/16/1997: With the deadline for Huckabee to act on commutation a mere 4 days away, the parole board reverses its decision and releases Dumond.

Oct 1999: Dumond released
Sep 2000: Dumond murders and rapes Carol Sue Shields. He is convicted in the Summer of 2003. Dumond was also suspected of the rape and murder of Sara Andrasek, which occurred on June 21, 2001, but had not been formally charged at the time of his death in Aug 2005

38

[QUOTE=Measure for Measure]

10/31/1996: Huckabee meets with parole board.
1/16/1997: With the deadline for Huckabee to act on commutation a mere 4 days away, the parole board reverses its decision and releases Dumond.

Oct 1999: Dumond released
[/QUOTE]

I never saw this explained – how come it was almost three years until he actually was released?

39

[QUOTE=Left Hand of Dorkness]
At worst it speaks of an error in judgment for Huckabee; for it to be significant, there would need to be a clear pattern of such errors. More likely, he weighed the evidence and made a decision that turned out, with the benefit of hindsight, to be incorrect.
[/QUOTE]
The article I linked to above indicates some of Huckabee’s thought processes. In an effort to stem the political fallout, Huckabee and his staff agreed to meet for the first time with Dumond’s victim, Ashley Stevens, her family, and Fletcher Long, the prosecuting attorney who sent Dumond to prison. In interviews, both Walter “Stevie” Stevens, Ashley’s father, and Long both said they came away frustrated that Huckabee knew so few specifics about the case.

“He [Huckabee] kept insisting that there was DNA evidence that has since exonerated Dumond, when that very much wasn’t the case,” recalled Long. “No matter that that wasn’t true … we couldn’t seem to say or do anything to disabuse him of that notion.”

In fact, there had never been any DNA testing in the Ashley Stevens case.

The state official who advised Huckabee on the Dumond case confirmed that the governor knew very little about Ashley Stevens’ case:

“I don’t believe that he had access to, or read, the law enforcement records or parole commission’s files — even by then,” the official said. “He already seemed to have made up his mind, and his knowledge of the case appeared to be limited to a large degree as to what people had told him, what Jay Cole had told him, and what he had read in the New York Post.” Sound familiar? Huckebee knew that he was correct, even to the point of imaging evidence that didn’t exist. But who is this Jay Cole? Jay Cole, like Huckabee, is a Baptist minister, pastor for the Mission Fellowship Bible Church in Fayetteville and a close friend of the governor and his wife. On the ultra-conservative radio program he hosts, Cole has championed the cause of Wayne Dumond for more than a decade.

Cole has repeatedly claimed that Dumond’s various travails are the result of Ashley Stevens’ distant relationship to Bill Clinton.

40

[QUOTE=chorpler]
I never saw this explained – how come it was almost three years until he actually was released?
[/QUOTE]
I’m not sure. But the LA Times says this: Before DuMond could be paroled, he had to find another state that would take him, a process that took several years. Texas did not want DuMond, nor did Florida. A new wife he had met while in prison was from Missouri.

So, in 1999, after serving 14 years of his sentence, DuMond relocated to the Kansas City area.

Less than a year later, Carol Shields was suffocated in a friend’s apartment. Scrapings of DNA under her fingernails led to DuMond. The day before DuMond was arrested in the slaying, another woman, Sara Andrasek, was killed in much the same way.

DuMond was convicted of killing Shields and in 2004 was sentenced to life in prison, this time without parole. He was not charged in the second slaying. Am I correct that leaving Arkansas was a condition of his parole? Is this typical?