Huckabee distances himself in Ark. case

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Huckabee distances himself in Ark. case
By ANN SANNER, Associated Press Writer
51 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee distanced himself Tuesday from the case of an Arkansas man who killed a woman after being paroled for rape when Huckabee was the state's governor.

Huckabee had once spoken in favor of releasing the man but told reporters the decision to do so was made by parole board members appointed by his Democratic predecessors, Jim Guy Tucker and Bill Clinton.

Huckabee said he could not remember all the details of a meeting he had with parole board members during which the case of Wayne DuMond came up. But he asserted, "I didn't try to, you know, push anybody's buttons on it."

Two months after taking office in Little Rock, Huckabee announced he favored DuMond's early release because he doubted the inmate's guilt and because DuMond had been castrated while awaiting his rape trial. DuMond said masked men attacked him at his home, but no one was ever charged.
(snip)

DuMond was released to Missouri in 1999 where he was charged in the murder of a Kansas City-area woman....
(snip)



Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071030/ap_on_el_pr/huckabee_parole;_ylt=A0WTcUwOsydH0VEBPxSyFz4D

[Fed_Up_Grammy]

1. So "the devil made him do it". What an ass !

[TwilightGardener]

2. Nice try, Huck--except for this:

On September 20, just weeks after taking office, Huckabee announced that he intended to set Dumond free, saying that there were “serious questions as to the legitimacy of his guilt.” On October 31, Huckabee met with the parole board. Not long after, the board voted to free Dumond, but on the condition he move to another state. Huckabee was pleased, in part because — given that the board had voted to free Dumond — there was no need for Huckabee to commute the sentence or pardon him. So Huckabee denied Dumond’s now-irrelevant pardon application while at the same time congratulating him on his freedom. “Dear Wayne,” Huckabee wrote in a letter to Dumond. “My desire is that you be released from prison. I feel that parole is the best way for your reintroduction to society to take place.”

But no state would take Dumond. He remained behind bars for two and a half more years, until the board voted to free him in Arkansas. He was released in October 1999 and returned home. The next year, Dumond left the state, moving to a small town near Kansas City, Mo. Within weeks of arriving, he sexually assaulted and murdered a 39-year-old woman at an apartment complex near his home. The day that happened, everyone knew that freeing Wayne Dumond had been a very, very bad idea.

A political storm erupted. Huckabee sought cover by saying that all he had done was to deny Dumond’s pardon application. But some Democrats claimed that Huckabee had pressured the parole board to free Dumond. What actually happened between Huckabee and the board remains unclear to this day, but there is no doubt that Huckabee wanted Wayne Dumond set free. And today, he knows he was terribly wrong.

http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=YzVmNmMyMjJmZTQwOGRhNTI0OWFiYTQ1ZTAxN2M0MDM=

[dbt]

3. BULL. SHIT.

Let this Babdiss Preacher deny the Truth he pretends to embrace. Let this whinebag be confronted with his actual DEEDS.

Try to spin your way out of this, Mike. Then tell me again why you don't NEED to apologize for calling Arkansas a "banana republic" on the Imus show.

After THAT, let's talk about the Velveeta and pantyhose that you think the Governor's Mansion Fund shoulda bought you.

AND AFTER THAT, let's talk about your use of the publicly-funded Arkansas State Police airplane for your damn campaign appearances. And why you think this is a matter of "Homeland Security."

:evilgrin:

[yellowcanine]

4. Hmm - Striking parallels to the Willie Horton case which Poppy Bush used to skewer Dukakis in 88.

Only difference is it sounds as if Huckabee had way more personal involvemnt in the case than Dukakis had in the Horton case. I say it is "fair game" given the Republican tendancy to demagogue these issues and the fact that Huckabee tried to lay it on Clinton and Tucker - a huge stretch.

[Judi Lynn]

5. You're so right! Huckabee lost all perspective. Sometimes it seems he was over-involved

because DuMond's victim was a cousin of Bill Clinton's, and he hated Clinton.

There are a lot of strange elements in the story:

Dumond's case is notorious in Arkansas. In 1984, he raped a 17-year-old girl. While awaiting trial at his home, he was castrated by, he said, masked intruders. Later, after Dumond went to prison for life, some people in Arkansas saw the sentence as excessive, especially given his mutilation.

Huckabee was one, and, after becoming governor in 1996, he announced his desire to commute Dumond's sentence. Dumond's rape victim, Ashley Stevens, saw it differently.

Stevens, now 40 and living in the western United States, said she tried to persuade Huckabee not to shorten the sentence for Dumond.

"I told : If you ever let him out, he's going to do it again," she said in an interview.
(snip)

Bloggers have already dubbed the matter "Huckabee's Willie Horton," referring to the case of a Massachusetts man who was paroled during Michael Dukakis's tenure as Massachusetts governor, and then raped a Maryland woman and terrorized her fiancé. The episode tainted the onetime Democratic presidential nominee's campaign even though Dukakis had not personally intervened on Horton's behalf.
(snip)

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/?page=1



Wayne Dumond



Wayne DuMond's patron.