This is becoming quite a weird story. It’s not just Wayne Dumond, as it turns out. From the Arkansas Leader newspaper, in 2004:
Here are the figures [for commutations and pardons] for neighboring states since 1996, when Huckabee took office (and keep in mind the population of these states is nearly 20 times ours):
>> Louisiana – 213.
>> Mississippi – 24.
>> Missouri – 79.
>> Oklahoma – 178.
>> Tennessee – 32.
>> Texas – 98 (includes 36 inmates released because they were convicted on drug charges with planted evidence).Total: 624 vs. Huckabee’s 703.
Governors in neighboring states almost never grant killers clemency, while Huckabee has commuted the sentences of a dozen murderers.
A dozen murderers. My goodness. Read the whole thing; it’s remarkable. There’s a whole series of columns from the Arkansas Leader going into detail about Huckabee’s curious penchant for loosing criminals — links are available from the article linked above. This was quite the to-do during Huckabee’s governorship. Could be big trouble for him now.
Huckabee says that non-human forces are responsible for his poll surge. It may, however, be very human forces that reverse it — this is a mighty tough story, and there’s plenty of time for it to sink in (and for Mitt Romney to buy ads touting it).
The next polls should be interesting.
I will be interested to hear Gov. Huckabee’s explanation for his penchant for commuting the sentences of murderers.
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p>Perhaps, his commutation record reveals a religously inspired belief in human redemption taken to the extreme degree. Regardless of the motivational source for these and other commutations, Romney and friends will justifiably exploit Huckabee’s shameful record here. Huckabee sure will have som explainin’ to do on the campaign trail.
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p>Gee, all along, I thought the criminal justice record of Mike Dukakis was the template for the permissive, revolving jailhouse door Governor. My apologies to Gov. Dukakis; Mike Huckabee was a violent criminal’s best friend.
I will be interested to hear Gov. Huckabee’s explanation for his penchant for commuting the sentences of murderers.
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p>Prediction: if he is confronted with the question (which I doubt) he will invoke gawd–as in gawd told me to do it. There are enough rubes in the USofA who would believe such claptrap.
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p>What I would be interested in knowing is whether Watergate felon Chuck Colson had anything to do with these releases. Recall that he is running a prison “ministry” operation, generally at taxpayer expense.
Are talking commuting a 85 year sentence to 3 years, a 999 year sentence to 70 years, a death penalty to life in prison?
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p>Without the details it’s really hard for me to get a good feel for the action. Of course, it won’t stop the GOP from tearing his head off, and at the very least it would prevent him from talking “law and order” to the Democratic candidate should Chuckabee win the primary.
Ben La Guerre will be relesased before too long. Let’s
not be hasty.
Did anyone catch Adam’s Universal Hub Post citing a 1907 New York Times article that describes a shooting rampage at the State House by a insane man released by the state? I was amused.
You don’t include a link to the article you refer to, and it presents a bunch of unexplained numbers without context. What are they numbers of? What do they mean? I can’t even tell the basics for sure, let alone guess the details. And where did that 703 come from out of the blue?
interviews John Wesley Hall who says Huckabee commuted a lot of sentences, some for drug offenses. The underlying reason is that juries establish the sentences for criminals, hence the crazy long sentences.
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p>The reason for Dumond’s release was the number of Right Wing crazies championing his case. Dumond’s victim, who quite likely wasn’t his victim, was Bill Clinton’s second cousin once removed. In the Freeper dictionary, the word Clinton directly precedes conspiracy, and wackos kept the case alive.
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p>Complicating matters was the fact that two men broke into Dumond’s house, forced him to have oral sex (a coincidence too obvious to ignore, I’m sure) and proceeded to castrate him. The local sheriff, who then went to prison for extortion, racketeering, drug dealing, and running an illegal car theft ring, scooped up the guy’s nuts and displayed them on his desk.
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p>It seems likely that Dumond was not guilty of the rape of Ashley Stevens, BUT before his parole, several women sent letters to the board describing sexual assaults Dumond had committed on them. These probably should have been investigated, but Huckabee, who recently told CNN that he knew of no reason not to parole Dumond, apparently lied. Furthermore, Huckabee exerted undue control on the board and seems to have used executive session to avoid public scrutiny.
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p>Unlike Dukakis or Romney, Huckabee was up to his ears in the release of Dumond who later murdered another woman.
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p>As a candidate, he’s done. The big news outlets are now picking up the story, there are plenty of witnesses and documents to point to the truth and there’s plenty of prurience to appeal to the masses.
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p>I’ve got more with links at my blog, but this is the nutshell.
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p>Mark
The facts are that Dumond was found in his house, bloody and castrated, by the law enforcement, in between his arraignment and trial. Dumond told them that story, but there was no evidence of forced entry, no footprints in the blood, no evidence of other people doing this. Self-castration is not unheard of among sex offenders. Given Dumond’s lack of credibility, his story about two men castrating shouldn’t be taken as fact.
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p>That said, it is pretty clear that the sheriff in that county was creepy.
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p>I don’t know why you think it was unlikely that Dumond actually committed the rape. Ashley Stevens seems pretty sure it was him, and she claims she looked at the man’s face for an hour. At any rate, sometime in the future, you may hear someone’s opinion that castration will stop rapists from raping again. Dumond clearly disproves that myth.