I have to say, this sounds extremely reasonable, plausible, and actually makes me think better of Huckabee:
Maurice Clemmons was 16 years old when he committed the crimes of burglary and robbery. He was sentenced to a total of 108 years in prison, dramatically outside the norm for sentencing for the crimes he committed and the age at which he committed them.
In 2000, the PPTB unanimously recommended that his sentence be commuted after he had already served 11 years in prison. As per the recommendation, I commuted his sentence to the term of 47 years (still a long sentence in comparison to others for the type of crime he had committed), making him parole eligible. It did not parole him, as governors do not have that power in Arkansas. He would have to separately apply for parole and meet the criteria for it.
Assuming this version is the truth, this does not sound like a man who misused his clemency power nor made a mistake. It is just a horrible tragedy that things fell apart after the clemency, and you simply can’t blame the Huckster for that. Governors are supposed to use their judgment with these things, and it seems to me that Huckabee’s course of action was very, very reasonable.
J. Michael Neal
I:
a) agree;
b) won’t be overwhelmed with sorrow if it derails his career anyway. Those are the dogs he’s chosen to lie down with.
Just Some Fuckhead
ZOMGFurloughReleaseNotToughOnCrimeDieDieDie!!!!!!!
The Republic of Stupidity
I was wondering about The Truth behind that story when this all exploded into the news…
Unfortunately for Huck, this happened at a point where acts like his have been so f-in’ politicized, by uh… HIS own side…
MikeJ
Last sentence: governors is plural, not possessive.
aimai
I agree with J. Michael Neal–clemency for this poor kid back then was a good call. But I’d do a pretty happy dance if Huckabee’s political career was terminated over it. It would be only poetic justice if he was defenestrated by his own party for his one foray into actual mercy.
aimai
Jon O.
I agree, that pardon was totally reasonable and evidence of a big-C Christian concept of redemption.
His political future within his party is doomed.
parksideq
Co-sign; I’ve always thought it was dumb to conflate the Huckster’s commuting a sentence with being an accessory to a cop-killing. Unfortunately for Huckabee, it’s not my (or most lefties’) sense of rationality that he has to worry about.
Phoebe
Yes, and what TNC says.
“We keep saying we want conservatives to be “reasonable” about these issues. It strikes me as unhelpful to knife one for short-term partisan gain.”
jl
I cannot buy his story just yet. I do not have the links at hand right now, but I read a story that he went out of his way to speed the execution of a convict who had converted to Buddhism, and who had a much better case on objective groulds for mercy.
I also read that there is a pattern of Huckabee showing preferential treatment towards those who had adopted his brand of heretical Xtianity.
Appeals from Mother Thersa and Dalai Lama had no effect for converting the Buddhist prisoner’s sentence to life without parole.
I will look for the stories when I have time later tonight.
If those stories are true, then at best Huckabee is at best a misguided and vicious religious bigot.
mightygodking
Huckabee earns points for saying, straight-up, that he’d do the same thing given the same information today. That’s principle.
Just Some Fuckhead
Speaking of murdering four people, Ray Lewis is playing football tonight in Green Bay in ten minutes.
parksideq
Or, what @The Republic of Stupidity said.
Ed in NJ
@J. Michael Neal:
+1
That’s the problem with guys like Huckabee. He seems like a decent, rational guy, although I disagree with much of his politics.
But he chooses to align himself with the reactionary right, who are too simple-minded to ever look deeply into any issue. Maybe once a few more of them get teabagged they will come to their senses.
sturunner
I agree–why do we children so badly–original sin?
Sentient Puddle
@Phoebe: Yup, TNC’s (and his commenter’s) thoughts on this really struck a chord with me. I think his is the sharpest take on the clemency out there.
BombIranForChrist
All in all, this is probably good news for the Huckster. He can start his own right wing radio show called Aww Shucks, where he congenially condemns people who aren’t the same color as him.
Winston Smith
Nice try Huck.
So, all the evidence in 2000 told Huckabee that Clemmons was “16 year old who received a disproportionate sentence of 108 years for burglary and robbery charges,” right? Well, it helps to look at how he ended up with 108 years:
* Sentenced to 5 years for robbery in Pulaski County, Aug. 3, 1989
* Sentenced to 8 years for burglary, theft and probation revocation in Pulaski County, Sept. 9, 1989
* Sentenced to an indeterminate amount for aggravated robbery and theft in Pulaski County, Nov. 15, 1989
* Sentenced to 20 years each for burglary and theft of property in Pulaski County, Feb. 23, 1990
* Sentenced to 6 years for firearm possession in Pulaski County, Nov. 19, 1990
With that many charges and parole violations occurring in a 15 month period, that is at least a basis for speculating — due to his age at the time — of conduct disorder or opposition-defiant disorder and likely concurrent personality disorders. This is also supported by the fact that he blew every second and third chance he was given. Let’s also not forget that he wasn’t just committing robbery, but armed robbery.
Without the intake or interview paperwork, we can only speculate how pronounced Clemmons’ personality disorders were, but there are enough red flags here to supply the Chinese army.
All this information was available in 2000 and Huckabee gave the guy (another!) break.
John Cole
TNC is generally one of the sharpest takes on anything. Have you all ever heard his NPR interview about his book?
The Republic of Stupidity
@aimai:
Whoa… ***defenestrated***?
Cain’t remember the last time I saw that word used…
Heh… just proves I’m hanging out at a CLASSY joint…
Now… if someone could only find a way to work ’emmerde’ into a comment…
The Moar You Know
Unlike Huckabee’s politically motivated release of Wayne Dumond, someone who committed the non-crime of raping one of Bill Clinton’s cousins.
Dumond was let out of prison 25 years before his sentence would have ended.
There were a slew of letter and documents begging Huckabee not to release this man, including the recommendation of the parole board, but the Huckster overruled them all.
Sure as shit, two women died for the sake of Huckabee’s Christianist, GOP backers and their politics.
Don’t let this fat fuck off for this one too. Huckabee has a pattern of releasing murderers back into society, and his reasons are not those of mercy.
You can get the Wikipedia version here.
The Republic of Stupidity
Good Lord… Clemmons was a One-Man Crime Wave…
Can you imagine the hysteria on the Right if a Dem had pardoned someone w/ that record?
kommrade reproductive vigor
In other words, because Huckabee occasionally displays adherence to the teachings of Christ, the Baby Jebus Bothering Party will EAT HIM ALIVE.
But it would be irresponsible not to, eh Winnie?
Regnad Kcin
Will he horton? Willie horton? Willie hort on will he will. Hort on will. Horting on will he hortation on will. Will hortifying on hortastic willie. Will.
Horton.
Will.
mvr
I’m all for shorter sentences in general and less imprisonment for crimes as well. But I think that just taking Huckabee’s word for what was going on is likely to be misleading. We have good reason to believe that in other cases he inappropriately favored people who coupled their claims of redemption with religious faith. What we’d really need to look at to assess his actions is the overall pattern.
And that’s really always true where sentencing and paroles and pardons are concerned. Any process will get some cases wrong. What you want to look at is the pattern and whether a different pattern of sentencing would be better overall even if it too will lead to mistakes of some sort.
That’s obviously too subtle for electoral politics these days — witness the changes in California over the last four decades or so.
bago
@Regnad Kcin: Eeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Regnad Kcin
@bago:
Exactly my point… :)
Jab Facecrunch
Mike Huckabee is just about the only Republican of national prominence that I respect in any way, shape, or form. He’s a religious theocrat nutter, but at least he also believes some of the better tenets of Christianity along with the Christianist aspects of it.
He’s also the only Republican I know of who might be a closet Keynesian. He talked during the primary of fixing the economy by employing people in government jobs, building infrastructure. That’s straight out of the New Deal.
Really, if it weren’t for his wacko stances on abortion, gay rights, etc., he’d be a natural liberal. Unfortunately, the Christianists vote for the lesser Christian value issues, and leave the more important Christian value issues- economics, poverty, war, etc.- to God to fix.
Darkrose
I honestly don’t understand why so many people on the left seem to want to think well of Huckabee. He’s a homophobic asshole who hasn’t ever retracted his suggestion that people with AIDS should be quarantined. He’s equated being gay with bestiality. Great, so he doesn’t seem to be a racist, and he doesn’t toe the GOP line on economic policy and immigration. But the fact that he smiles and is friendly doesn’t change the fact that he’s a fucking bigot.
Jay B.
Why are we assuming Huckabee’s version is the truth again? Did he have a moment of good faith that I’m supposed to note? When was that, incidentally?
He’s a fucking grifter and a con man. That he grabs hold of Christ should be clue #1. That and this version is literally the fourth version of what he claimed happened with the Clemmons case.
Annie
@jl:
I agree with you. I, too, read there was more to this story. Apparently, Huckabee pressured the board to take his case because Clemmons claimed that he had become “born again” in prison….
Ash
Who cares about Huckabee? He’s dangerous. He has the ability to make people forget that he’s a giant fucking bigoted jackass.
R-Jud
@Darkrose:
But but but he plays the bass guitar! And he lost a lot of weight!
Warren Terra
I’m with The Moar You Know here: what about Wayne Dumond?
I haven’t read much about the decision to commute Clemmons’s sentence, but what I’ve read makes it seem fairly reasonable. Clemmons was 16 when he went to prison, and he was given a century in the pokey for crimes that didn’t include murder – indeed, according to the list upthread didn’t even include serious injury. Now, I’ve also read that his behavior in prison suggested he didn’t deserve a second chance, but the sentence does seem to have been excessive, and it’s unfair to blame Huckabee for the atrocity Clemmons committed so many years later.
On the other hand, the more you read about the Wayne Dumond case the more clear it becomes that Huckabee shouldn’t be allowed to operate heavy equipment, let alone a government. I’ll never know why that case hasn’t affected his career more.
jason
Dude, there’s substantial evidence that Huckabee released Clemmons because he wrote the gov claiming that he had been born again and Jesus family freedom Jesus.
http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2009/12/01/makes-you-wonder-how-many-more-pardon-eruptions-huckabee-is-going-to-have
seriously, CHECK THIS LINK.
Huckabee apparently had a long record of very unusual clemency for Christians.
different church-lady
The deeper question is who will Hortonize him harder: GOP primary opponents or democrats?
AhabTRuler
@The Republic of Stupidity: Hey, we use it all the time.
WereBear
Ol’ Huck, he’s so goldarn charming and down-home and all. I know a lot of people find him likeable. And it could be that I’m immune, having been inoculated against Southern Preacher Men at an early age.
But he’s a liar.
Remember when he lost a lot of weight? And wrote a book about it? I skimmed it in the bookstore.
It’s like no weight loss memoir I’ve ever read. There’s hardly a woman alive who isn’t at least familiar with the form. Because changing eating habits and lifestyle is not easy, weight loss books are full of ridiculous minutiae… that nonetheless resonates with everyone who has been through it.
Huckabee’s book is memorable for what he left out: his favorite recipes, tricks he used to get himself out exercising, how he monitored his weight loss, (favorite pants, old belt, when he weighed, what he wore doing it,) what his favorite foods are now, when he cheated, when he managed not to.
Not there. It’s just a lot of fluff and homilies about health and stuff like that. So I don’t think he did it the way he says, and he won’t talk about how it actually happened.
I think he had weight-loss surgery, and won’t admit it.
For more speculation, see this long, detailed account.
And maybe that’s a stupid thing, and yes, I already got the squeams when I’d see him, and I think that grin is mad-hog mean, I do.
But I think it’s a stupid thing to lie about; especially in someone we are supposed to trust.
Liberty60
Whatever sympathy I have for Huckabee, for a single act of what I consider to be reasonable mercy, is overrun by the schadenfruede of watching a man who rode the waves of Tea Baggery all these years, being consumed by it.
gwangung
@Liberty60: Yeah, but that just means we won’t use Clemmons as a club to beat Huckabee with; there are dozens more that are better to use.
Andre
I’ve been pretty quiet on this because while I agree that there is plenty to criticise Huckabee on (see Darkrose’s post further up the thread) clemency is too much of a shot in the dark to transfer blame to the governor.
Granting clemency is only a very small part of the governor’s job, and I have no doubt all the leg work is done by aides before it ever gets to his/her desk to sign. By the time he/she gets it, he/she has to make a very quick decision based on the highly summarised picture presented. There’s no way you can judge a person’s life in those few moments, so it’s essentially an intuitive leap that says “yes” or “no”. Undoubtedly sometimes governors will get that decision wrong, and I can’t really find it in myself to blame them.
This is the risk of having any form of clemency from elected officials outside the judicial system at all. The choice here is between having tolerance for the reality that some of the people that get released will go on to commit crimes again, or removing the option of clemency altogether.
Living in a country where the separation of powers is much more rigidly defined, we instead have appeal to higher courts as our only (practical) option in the case of punishments that don’t fit the crime, which means that those genuine “special cases” often don’t have any way of being redressed. I’m not sure which system is better at a practical level, but I’m enough of a bleeding heart liberal to believe that mercy is never morally wrong, even if its recipient later proves to betray the trust that that mercy places in them.
PaulW
One of the problems is that re: Clemmons he listened more to the preacher ministering to Clemmons than to the prosecutor. Guess which one proved to be right?
The other problem is that Clemmons is part of a trend re: Huckabee’s commuting of sentences. There are reports of a third commuted prisoner who went on to commit another violent crime… it was in Salon’s War Room last week, can’t find it right now… And there was of course Wayne DuMond, the ‘poster child’ for Victimized-by-Clinton who turned out to, you know, actually deserve to stay in prison for being a violent rapist.
In a general regard, this isn’t a problem specifically with Huckabee but with our whole prison system. There ought to be a detailed review of commuted sentences of violent offenders who went on to lapse back into bad habits… not just Arkansas but overall… just to see how bad the problem really is. But with direct regards to Huckabee, how many of those commuted sentences were against prosecutors’ wishes and how many for prison ministers advocating for ‘reformed’ prisoners?
jl
@Andre: I agree that a gotcha on one pardon or clemency gone wrong is not good way to think about public policy, or a good way to evaluate a governor, or a candidate.
But, as I and other commenters have mentioned above, there have been stories that Huckabee allowed religious bigotry to influence his decisions.
If there is strong evidence of the influence of religious bigotry on his actions governor, then that bigotry is the problem, not the one ex-prisoner gone wrong.
Mike G
Have we ever heard a peep out of Huckabee against Lee Atwater and the dirty demagoguery used against Michael Dukakis over Willie Horton? (A decision where he didn’t personally intervene, but went along with standard recommendations).
No? Then to hell with him. He’s happy to associate with political scum and benefit from their bullying and cheating, so he deserves the same shit flung at him.
Jill
Sorry, John, but Huckster doesn’t get a free pass on this one. Read this article by Joe Conason. It sure looks like all Huck had to hear was that someone now believes in the baby Jesus from a self-proclaimed “man of God” and the guy got out. Note that when the religious conversion was to Buddhism, there was no such get out of jail card.
ppcli
@Liberty60:
Absolutely. I’m reminded of when Phil Gramm was running for the Republican nomination for prez. He had been a high-flying Democrat and switched parties some years earlier. Then in the Louisiana primary these flyers kept cropping up with variations on the message “Phil Gramm divorced a white American woman to marry an Asian”. I gather it really damaged him in those parts.
When I learned this, I thought: Yes, Phil, you chose these people as your people. Now take a good look at them.
Brian J
I thought the same thing. It doesn’t make me even remotely likely to vote for him, but if this was simply a tragedy, it’s a different story.
asiangrrlMN
I agree that if that was his reason at the time, he was right to do it. This should not be used against him. That said, I also want to see him go down in flames.
P.S. I would like to hear more about his propensity to let born-again Christians out early. That troubles me greatly.
Lyle4
@asiangrrlMN: Along with Dumond, let’s not forget about Glen Green. Who ran over a pregnant lady with his car then had sex with her corpse. But oh, he was a good Christian with friends in the Christian “community.”
Thankfully there was enough outrage over this one to stop the Huckster in his tracks.
This isn’t a Willie Horton sort of thing. This is a long record of granting clemency to violent criminals (who are repeat offenders) just because of their religion.
kay
@WereBear:
That was fascinating, WereBear, so thanks. It’s very long, but it’s well worth the read.
I would suggest that Huckabee is acting as a judge in clemency cases, so he should be evaluated like a judge, on the sum total of his decisions, not on one decision.
I think there is a valid question over whether he gave too much weight to religious conversion as a reason for clemency, across the board.
It’s a balancing test, clemency, it has various factors, and he has to make a call. If he leans too hard on one factor, he skews the balance.
If he did, if we looked at the whole record and saw evidence of that, I would then want to know if he gave too much weight to Christian religious conversion or rebirth because his fundamentalist base lobbied for that.
That’s what I’d want to know.
TenguPhule
I think Governors who grant clemency should live with those they pardon till death do they part.
Jay C
FWIW, I hafta go with the school of thought that then-Gov. Huckabee did, if not the right thing, at least the defensible thing in commuting Maurice Clemmons’ sentence – at the time. You see a lot of nasty things in hindsight sometimes – but only after-the-fact; and while Mike Huckabee, IMHO deserves all the grief he can garner, dumping on him for Clemmons’s shooting spree is a BS rap. Not, unfortunately, that that will stop anyone – especially on the GOP side .
That said, you just know that if Maurice Clemmons had converted in Islam in slam, and petitioned the Parole Board for clemency because he’d decided that a life of crime was offensive to Allah – he would most likely still be inside, serving every day of his 108-year term. And not Muslim years, either.
someguy
I gotta be like Huck here and just forgive his li’l lapse in judgment. It’s not like this dude walked out of an Arkansas jail to go commit 10 other felonies in the next 9 years, get arrested a dozen more times, rape a kid a few weeks ago and then murder 4 cops by shooting them in the back while they swilled donuts or anything. Oh wait a minute…
Wile E. Quixote
Fuck Huckabee. We need to take this and use it to burn his political career to the ground. Turnabout is entirely fair play, if Huck were a Democrat the GOP would be pillorying him for this. Time for the wingnuts to be hoisted with their own petard. I know that in 2012 Huckabee’s chances in Washington State, where he had a strong showing in 2008, are dead, dead, dead, and I’m totally OK with that.
Jay C
@TenguPhule:
IIJM, or does this sound like a fab idea for a sitcom? Stuffy, uptight governor as the straight man; various TV comics as the crew of zany ex-cons he’s forced to hire as his personal aides as part of their “clemency” – every week a yock-fest of hilarity as they use their street-honed bad skillz to help out the helpless, and Do The Right Thing whether they want to or not…
Box-office boffo!!!!
And best of all, no relationship to reality!!!
Gian
My understanding of his record, from local radio – am hate radio station for about half the day – and I think from a TV news spot, but memory is spotty.
is that in his two terms as governor he pardoned on commuted twice as many people as the previous three governors combined. now I think that there were one termers mixed in, but it still puts his pardon/clemency rate at a high water mark, so to speak, and he likely could’ve made better calls on some of them.
that’s how it is in the criminal justice system, really the law-making decisions are the what kind of mistakes and how often is it OK to make them. this kid at the time wrote the “I’m better than what I did, I fell in with the wrong crowd and some guy named Jesus is now my personal bestest of friends, please let me go” and that hit the soft spot of the former preacher.
it’s easy to take the arnold view and basically give a pardon or clemeny to no-one Huck made a bunch of calls the other way, and several were bad ones. If you take the governator as one way and Huck as the other, the right way to run the joint is between the two – the no pardons for anyone policy is one born of fear, and the pardons for anyone who writes me a letter about his new best friend Jesus is born of an honest but irrational faith.
ChrisNBama
Huck got fucked on this one all right. The problem for him is that it was the Right that perfected the “Willie Horton” meme. It seems clear to me, from what I’ve read, that Huck didn’t do anything wrong here, but taken into context, it’s devastating. He has many acts of clemency and pardon in his record, and there was another case where one of the recipients of his beneficence committed violent crime.
He is out of contention for 2012 as far as I can tell.
West of the Cascades
@Wile E. Quixote: No. If we really believe that criminal sentencing is too harsh, and some of it is just downright stupid (mandatory sentences for marijuana possession), we can’t turn around and use a reasonable* exercise of executive clemency as a political beating tool. We do that, and the right does it back to a Democratic governor, and pretty soon we end up with a country where the first petty crime someone commits ends up putting their butt in jail for life.
There are a lot of much better, more principled reasons for opposing Huckabee, and bigger and better sticks to flog him with, than trying to do a job of showing compassion. One place to start is some systematic evaluation of the clemency grants – if there was a real bias on religious grounds (a stray anecdote does not a pattern make) then that’s worth pressing. But it’s not consistent with liberal values to hammer Huckabee for this particular clemency decision.
* sentencing a 16 year old kid to 108 years imprisonment is barbaric – I don’t care what the crime was, even murder. If we believe that we’re justified in either putting juvenile offenders to death or locking them up for the term of their natural lives, we’ve turned into a police state that’s beyond the rightmost rightwing nutjob’s wettest dream.
West of the Cascades
so much for trying to use an asterisk to make a footnote (the bold in the last post was trying to be the footnote for “reasonable” in the first paragraph).
Irony Abounds
John, John, John. Please stop distracting us with the facts. They don’t matter. Not anymore. All that matters is turning any situation, any tragedy, into an example of how anything other than Old Testament justice is something that only commies, homosexuals and pussies preach. C’mon, don’t you know that redemption only exists if accompanied by a big check to the reigning Pastor of the Month with the plastered hair and his enormous congregation AND a pledge to volunteer to fight in the War Against Christmas. Nuance is a dirty word, so shame on your for introducing the concept to this subject.
Brachiator
“Norms” and age does not tell me much about Maurice Clemmons himself and the specific issues of his criminal record. I’ve heard a news story that talked about Huck bending over backwards to give extra weight to evidence of religious conversion, but I don’t know if these news reports were biased.
Maybe Huckabee doesn’t deserve to be slapped around too hard over this. However, it doesn’t appear that general clemency, without some kind of follow-up, is always appropriate.
Irony Abounds – All that matters is turning any situation, any tragedy, into an example of how anything other than Old Testament justice is something that only commies, homosexuals and pussies preach.
Not sure where you’re going here. Are you referring to “an eye for an eye?” The biggest misinterpretation of all time is that this is a call for tough, unyielding justice. It’s freakin’ poetry, vivid language calling for justice to be proportionate. This is clear in every Jewish commentary on the Old Testament law. It’s also clear in the context of both ancient and modern times, where the alternatives were the rich getting more justice than the poor, and in families, clans, and tribes seeking retribution all out of proportion to the original offense, and in crap like honor killings.
Jennifer
Assuming this version is the truth…
See, you went wrong right there.
First of all, Huck reduced the sentence by exactly the amount needed to make Clemmons immediately eligible for parole. As for parole “not being his decision”, go back and read up on the Dumond case, and how Huck leaned on members of the parole board, most of whom he had appointed.
The second mistake is here: …Huckabee’s course of action was very, very reasonable.
Yes, it would have been…had Huckabee thoroughly reviewed the case. That’s not something he did; as in all other matters of governance, he didn’t take it seriously. How do I know? Check out this:
That’s an example of seriousness with which Huckabee made decisions.
Had he reviewed Clemmons’ file, he would have seen that not only did the “kid” have 10 felony convictions; he also had threatened a judge, had been caught with a metal bar in his sock, had scuffled with a guard and attempted to grab his gun, and had thrown something at another guard, hitting his mother instead. Not exactly the “time off for good behavoir” type. Clemmons re-offended within 6 months of his parole.
Now as for the length of the sentence being inhumane, take into consideration that on the counts of burglary and theft, the home he broke into belonged to an Arkansas State Trooper. He got 40 years for those two counts alone – which is kind of what you’d expect when a cop was the victim. That doesn’t mean that was a reasonable sentence but…altogether, he had served 11 years on 10 felony counts. That doesn’t seem excessive, regardless of the fact that he was under 18 when the crimes were committed. He was 16 when he started his spree and 17 by the time he finished it and was locked up. Certainly he was old enough to know better.
The bottom line is, he was let out for one reason alone: Huckabee had a preacher friend who vouched for Clemmons’ love of Jesus. That’s about the amount of “review” Huckabee did before commuting the sentence. Clemmons’ age, time served, and length of sentence notwithstanding, “I’m convinced he believes in the same unprovable things I believe in” is no basis for a decision of clemency.
Dave L
“this sounds extremely reasonable, plausible, and actually makes me think better of Huckabee…”
Whoa, you’re really trying to destroy him with the base, aren’t you!
kay
I think it’s pretty silly to worry that liberals are going to destroy Huckabee with soft on crime allegations, particularly as this was already raised in the last GOP primary.
By Mitt Romney.
Huckabee’s not worried about Barack Obama hitting him over the head with the clemency issue.
It’s a base issue for the very people Huckabee cultivates.
This is a within-the-GOP fight.
It’s his problem, and that’s no accident. I don’t have a whole lot of sympathy for him, and I don’t feel any responsibility to help him out.
brantl
As several people said above, Huckabee quotes only the side of the story that makes him look less of an asshole, as well as making the criminal look less of an asshole (it doesn’t make either of them look good, just less of assholes). Huckabee lowered the bar for a dangerous criminal because some sky-pilot told him he should. Let him reap the whirlwind, as he deserves. Think of it as either karma, or evolution-in-action.
jpe
@ jl:
The only support I’ve seen for the theory that Huck was improperly influenced by religion came from one pundit on Salon that based the whole thing on a single quote from a single priest.
It’s fun to berate the religious right, but there are better occasions than this.
Egypt Steve
Of course you’re right, but Huckabee has to suffer for the sins of the Rethuglican Party generally. So we should cynically exploit this to the max to destroy him, or any other thuglican who presents us with a similar opportunity. That may sound somehow ironic but I mean it perfectly seriously. Exterminate the brutes. That is the only way.
Winston Smith
Jesus never said to let violent psychopaths out of prison.
The Arkansas Dept. of Corrections also would not cooperate with Washington State to keep Clemmens in jail when they had him, so Huckabee’s contention that he wasn’t alone in the failure has some merit. On the other hand, had Huckabee not gotten the ball rolling, Clemmens would still be in prison in AR.
Don’t drag Jesus into this. The guy gets enough bullshit done in His name.
Makewi
I have to disagree, because while the sentance may seem barbaric, it appears that Huckabee didn’t really look into who he was pardoning. From the Seattle paper:
He might have been under 18, but it was clear to those dealing with him that he was a violent problem.
rs
Huckabee has struck me as a grifter for as long as he’s been in the national spotlight. Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see from him.
Clemons wasn’t a typical 16 year old petty criminal. I’m not particularly hard-assed when it comes to law and order issues, but given the crimes he was charged with and his behavior in custody, were I his neighbor I’d have been cheering when he got the long sentence, and hearing he got out I’d be keeping a loaded gun conveniently within reach. He’s a scary combination of violent and crazy.