Reply #57: Wayne, who raped and killed after pardon. Only released because victim a Clinton relative. [View All]

[msanthrope]

DuMond received his second sexual assault conviction from a rape perpetrated in Arkansas in 1984. The victim, Ashley Stevens, was a 17-year-old cheerleader and a third cousin of then-Governor Bill Clinton.<9> Although she is much younger than Clinton, they share the same set of great-great-grandparents.

SNIP

After Clinton was elected president, a right-wing campaign alleged that Clinton had framed DuMond for rape.<10><11> Prominent among those pushing for DuMond to be pardoned were Guy Reel, author of Unequal Justice: Wayne DuMond, Bill Clinton, and the Politics of Rape in Arkansas; Steve Dunleavy of the New York Post; and Jay Cole, Baptist pastor for the Mission Fellowship Bible Church in Fayetteville, who had championed DuMond's cause for more than a decade on his radio show.<12>

Many of the arguments advanced by DuMond's supporters have since been shown to be incorrect. Dunleavy claimed that:

1.DuMond was a "Vietnam veteran with no record" despite arrests for violent crime and previous rape charges going back to 1972;
2.the rape victim "failed to identify DuMond in two lineups", although she had in fact identified him in the only lineup where he was present:
3.the victim had "identified two other suspects, one an ex-boyfriend", although she had never in fact identified anyone but DuMond;
4.DNA evidence had exonerated DuMond, although no such definitive evidence existed;
5.Bill Clinton had personally intervened to keep DuMond in prison, despite the then-Governor's explicitly recusing himself from the case due to his distant blood-ties to the 17-year-old victim.<13>
Dunleavy also referred to the young woman, a minor at the time of the assault, on the record as the "so-called victim", and asserted "that rape never happened".<12>
SNIP----

Missouri crimes
Following his 1999 parole, DuMond moved to Missouri in August 2000, where he married Terry Sue, a member of a church group who visited him while he was incarcerated in Arkansas. On June 22, 2001, DuMond was arrested and charged with the September 20, 2000, rape and murder of Carol Sue Shields.<22> DuMond was convicted in the summer of 2003.<23>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne_DuMond