Huckabee's big problem
Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has a problem. The problem has a name. The name is Wayne Dumond.
Dumond was a convicted rapist and Arkansas resident who had a bad thing happen to him -- before his trial he was released on bond. Two masked men broke into his home and castrated him. He was later convicted of several rapes (prior to the castration) and was sentenced to life + 20 years.
Because of the vigilante actions against Dumond, a series of Arkansas governors, starting with Bill Clinton and Jim Guy Tucker and continuing with Mike Huckabee took actions to reduce the amount of time Dumond was to serve. In 1997, after Huckabee said he was planning to commute Dumond's sentence, the state parole board -- which had voted 4-1 to deny Dumond parole less than six months earlier -- grants Dumond parole.
Dumond later moved to Missouri where he raped and killed a woman.
Huckabee is trying to put all this on the parole board and pointing out that the ones who are claiming that he pressured them are Democrats. Yes, they're Democrats who were apparently very interested in keeping their cushy government jobs -- and Huckabee reappointed them!
But that's all irrelevant, Huckabee publicly announced his intention to commute Dumond's sentence. The parole board's action only gives him the barest claim of plausible deniability.
Over at Hot Air they've got a brief timeline with explanations from Huckabee on video. The Arkansas Times also has an old, award-winning piece by Murray Waas on the case. Waas also has an updated piece up at The Huffington Post.
I've got a feeling that Huckabee has peaked, and this case will bring him down to earth. Like some of his pronouncements on foreign policy, this is another case where it seems that he is more interested in being nice than he is on doing the right -- and sometimes difficult -- thing.
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The more we see and hear of Huckabee, the more we learn that being a baptist preacher does not necessarily a conservative make. It appears to me that he is hoping to win the conservative vote on his pro-life, anti-gay marriage, and 2nd Amendment stances but his recent comments on illegal immigration, foreign policy, and economics may be too liberal for many of us to look beyond if another candidate can make a decent showing over the next several weeks.
[...] Huckabee’s problem has gotten worse, with this bit from a report on the case in The Los Angeles Times: Huckabee said the DuMond case was already “on my desk” when he became governor in July 1996. He announced that he was considering a commutation. Later, he acknowledged, he wrote a letter to the prisoner saying parole was a better option. [...]