Boston Globe: Huckabee could face hurdles from the past - Parole of rapist

[RamboLiberal]

To Mike Huckabee, Baptist minister, former governor, and GOP candidate for president, being a good Christian is about redemption and forgiveness and recognizing his own frailties so he can be more understanding of the shortcomings of others.

It's an attitude that drives much of Huckabee's political agenda, including the assertion - unusual for a conservative Republican - that prisons are full of people who would be better off in drug treatment than behind bars. But there is one man Huckabee believed deserved a second chance, convicted rapist Wayne Dumond, who continues to haunt Huckabee's burgeoning presidential campaign.

Huckabee, whose self-deprecating humor and easy candor have charmed many on the campaign trail, bristles when asked about the case, in which Dumond - now dead - was paroled from an Arkansas prison, with then- governor Huckabee's endorsement, only to sexually assault and kill a woman in Missouri.

"It was one of those things I just feel horrible about. You just ache all the way to the bone over what happened," the former Arkansas governor said in an interview. "But nobody could know that" Dumond would attack again, he said.

-----

And the Dumond case is likely to reemerge, dredging up not only the gruesome details of the attacks but the complicated political connections. Stevens, the rape victim, is a distant cousin of Bill Clinton. When he was Arkansas governor, Clinton refused requests to reduce Dumond's sentence. But while Clinton was off campaigning for president in 1992, his lieutenant governor, Jim Guy Tucker, commuted Dumond's sentence to 39 1/2 years, making Dumond eligible for parole

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/10/14/huckabee_could_face_hurdles_from_the_past?mode=PF

This case reads like a bad crime novel set in the South.

http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/sexual_assault/severed_penis/7.html

[MonkeyFunk]

1. I hate these attacks on governors

and they did it to Dukakis, too.

It seems to argue that nobody should EVER be paroled, which is nonsensical.

[spotbird]

7. Many if not most

people in jail should be released at some point, but this guy was not one of them.

[niyad]

2. his very own "willie horton"

[MADem]

3. Yep....and whaddaya wanna bet it's a GOP opponent who does the attacking. NT

[Stop Cornyn]

4. Now THERE'S a REMOTE hypothetical concern.

[grasswire]

5. Huckabee is a member of freerepublic.com

A bona fide, posting member. He even had his band play for their inaugural ball in Washington. THAT ought to be considered, as well.

[RamboLiberal]

6. Reading on Dumond he was a cudgel the RW was using

against Clinton. IMHO Huckabee's involvement in the case could've well been just a much political as humanitarian. Arkansas sure is like Louisiana - the politics down there and the law enforcement do read like a bad southern crime novel.

[Rageneau]

8. Huck's pardon of this murderer was, in fact, a Free Republic campaign.

The Freepers found out that the sheriff who supposedly castrated Dumond was a distant relative of Clinton's. In their mean little minds, this meant that the sheriff had castrated Dumond on orders from Clinton (why? Freepers don't ask why.)

Their next erroneous assumption was that anybody that Clinton was against HAD to be a good guy, and therefore that Dumond had been falsely convicted and imprisoned.

So Free Republic started one of their endless e-mail, phone call, and blast-fax campaigns aimed at "freeing" poor ole Wayne Dumond who never did a thing in the world but cross the Clinton crime machine.

Huckabee, being part-Freeper himself and seeking to ingratiate himself with the rank and file right-wingers (because he intended to run for president), then worked -- successfully -- to get Dumond set free.

Believe me, this was done ENTIRELY for the purpose of belittling Clinton. It was a Free-Republic project from the get-go.

Unfortunately for Huckabee, the chicken came home to roost when the newly-freed Dumond moved to Missouri and raped and killed a woman. This case is now Huckabee's Achilles' heel. Although he is actually the best overall candidate the pukes have got, he can never win the nomination with this horrible black mark on his integrity.

Lie down with Freepers; get up with fleas.