It would appear that Gov. Huckabee might be in a little hot water as his record of pardons and commutations begins to come to the attention of the press...and the public. Recently, there has been quite a bit of buzz about the former Arkansas governor’s pardoning of Wayne DuMond, who was convicted of raping a teenager in 1984. DuMond was subsequently sentenced to life in prison.
While Huckabee denies any role in the rapist’s release, the Arkansas Times quotes Ermer Pondexter, ex-member of the board of pardons and paroles, as saying that, “I signed the [parole] papers because the governor wanted Dumond paroled. I was thinking the governor was working for the best interests of the state.”
An advisor to Huckabee told the Arkansas paper that, “Huckabee and a senior member of his staff exerted behind-the-scenes influence to bring about the parole of rapist Wayne Dumond.” Shortly after his release, Dumond was said by Missouri authorities to have raped and killed a woman there.
In the meantime, Huckabee was busy blaming DuMond’s eligibility for parole on former Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker, and said the Post Prison Transfer Board made the decision on its own to free Dumond.
However, in the September 1, 2005 Arkansas Times story, the paper claims that Huckabee and a key aide played a role in DuMond’s release. “It was a process marked by deviation from accepted parole practice and direct personal lobbying by the governor, in an apparently illegal and unrecorded closed-door meeting with the parole board (the informal name by which the Post Prison Transfer Board is known).” Board members involved in an executive session with Gov. Huckabee quoted Huckabee as saying DuMond got a “raw deal,” as reported by a board member who was there.
Board chairman Leroy Brownlee personally paved the way for Dumond’s release, according to board records and former members, all at Gov. Huckabee’s bequest. Brownlee reportedly consulted regularly with the governor’s prison liaison, Butch Reeves, from December 1996-January 1997, on the status of Reeves’ efforts to free DuMond, according to state officials.
The Arkansas Times reportedly sought comment from Gov. Huckabee, his office, spokesman Rex Nelson, and Leroy Brownlee repeatedly for the 2005 story, but no response was received according to the newspaper.
The 2005 Arkansas Times article also makes the following claims:
“• Ermer Pondexter, a former member of the Post Prison Transfer Board, says she was persuaded by the parole board chairman Brownlee to vote for Dumond’s release and because she knew the governor supported it.
• The board did not allow its recording secretary to attend a closed session with the governor regarding Dumond, nor was the session taped, a departure from custom.
• Board chair Brownlee [2005 note: Brownless has since been reappointed to the Board by Huckabee] personally interviewed Dumond in prison and set in motion the reconsideration of the board’s August 1996 vote to refuse Dumond parole. Normally, inmates must wait a year after a decision for a new hearing. Thanks to Brownlee’s efforts, Dumond was granted a new parole hearing Jan. 16, 1997, just six weeks after his request for reconsideration. This time, the board voted to parole. Brownlee later was reappointed to the board by Huckabee.
• Dumond was transferred to the Tucker unit in December 1996, after his request for rehearing. Had he stayed at Varner, he could not have been scheduled for a new hearing before Jan. 20, 1997, Huckabee’s deadline to act on his announcement that he was considering commuting Dumond’s sentence. His transfer — which the Department of Corrections has explained in conflicting ways — allowed him to get on the Tucker hearing schedule, which let the board parole DuMond before Huckabee’s deadline — and thus take the heat for his release.”
Just six weeks after DuMond moved to Smithville, MO, Carol Sue Shields, of Parkville, MO., was found murdered in a friend’s home. She had been sexually assaulted and suffocated. Missouri authorities charged DuMond with the first-degree murder of Shields in June, 2001. Skin found under Shields’ fingernails provided a DNA match with DuMond.
And while DuMond’s case is severe, it is hardly an anomaly. Huckabee pardoned or commuted 669 offenders, including 11 convicted murderers, in his first eight years in office. However, Huckabee told the Nashua Telegraph that his number of pardons and commutations was not really that disproportionate compared to prior governors because Arkansas’ “prison population exploded during his tenure.”
The Nashua Telegraph reports that in a 2001 radio interview Gov. Huckabee said that his faith played a role in the number of pardons and commutations he doled out, saying, “I would not deny that my sense of the reality of redemption is a factor…[A]nd I don't know that I can apologize for that because I would hate to think of the kind of human I would be if I thought people were beyond forgiveness and beyond reformation and beyond some sense of improvement."
However, the October 18, 2007 article says, “But on Wednesday, Huckabee said overcrowded prisons better explained his high number of commutations.” It quotes Huckabee as saying, “When I came into the governorship, we had 8,000 inmates in the correctional system…when I left, we had 14,000. The universe in which I operated was substantially larger than the one any other governor had operated because of the number of people sentenced, the number of people who therefore became eligible.”
In just eight years, from 1996-2004, Huckabee’s 669 commutations or pardons were more than those handed out by Clinton and the state’s two previous governors combined over an 18 year period.
However, as the Nashua Gazette points out, “[a]n Arkansas Democrat-Gazette analysis over 44 years found Huckabee's commutation rate was about the same as two Democratic Arkansas chief executives who later became U.S. senators and was less than two other governors serving in the 1960s.”