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Huckabee Freed Rapist Despite Letters From Other Victims; CDS?
Posted by Kevin

Murray Waas has an article today highlighting the several letters that victims of Wayne Dumond wrote to Huckabee after he stated that he was going to pardon wayne Dumond, a man convicted of raping a distant cousin of Bill Clinton:

As governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee aggressively pushed for the early release of a convicted rapist despite being warned by numerous women that the convict had sexually assaulted them or their family members, and would likely strike again. The convict went on to rape and murder at least one other woman.

Confidential Arkansas state government records, including letters from these women, obtained by the Huffington Post and revealed publicly for the first time, directly contradict the version of events now being put forward by Huckabee.

While on the campaign trail, Huckabee has claimed that he supported the 1999 release of Wayne Dumond because, at the time, he had no good reason to believe that the man represented a further threat to the public. Thanks to Huckabee’s intervention, conducted in concert with a right-wing tabloid campaign on Dumond’s behalf, Dumond was let out of prison 25 years before his sentence would have ended.

You know, the right wing likes to throw around the term Bush Deraingment Syndrome, as if anger at Bush’s assualt on American values is somehow out of line. But this is a case where the right wing tabloids completely ginned up a defense of a convicted rapists all because the victim was distantly related to Clinton:

The case for Dumond’s innocence was championed in Arkansas by Jay Cole, a Baptist minister and radio host who was a close friend of the Huckabee family. It also became a cause for New York Post columnist Steve Dunleavy, who repeatedly argued for Dumond’s release, calling his conviction “a travesty of justice.” On Sept. 21, 1999, Dunleavy wrote a column headlined “Clinton’s Biggest Crime - Left Innocent Man In Jail For 14 Years”:

“Dumond, now 52, was given conditional parole yesterday in Arkansas after having being sentenced to 50 years in jail for the rape of Clinton’s cousin,” Dunleavy wrote. “That rape never happened.”

A subsequent Dunleavy column quoted Huckabee saying: “There is grave doubt to the circumstances of this reported crime.”

There was never any serious doubt about this conviction, and Dumond then went on to kill and rape another woman. Yet Huckabee aggressively attempted to have Dumond freed:

New sources, including an advisor to Gov. Mike Huckabee, have told the Arkansas Times that Huckabee and a senior member of his staff exerted behind-the-scenes influence to bring about the parole of rapist Wayne Dumond, who Missouri authorities say raped and killed a woman there shortly after his parole.
Huckabee has denied a role in Dumond’s release, which has become an issue in his race for re-election against Democrat Jimmie Lou Fisher. Fisher says Huckabee’s advocacy of Dumond’s freedom, plus other acts of executive clemency, exhibit poor judgment. In response, Huckabee has shifted responsibility for Dumond’s release to others, claiming former Gov. Jim Guy Tucker made Dumond eligible for parole and saying the Post Prison Transfer Board made the decision on its own to free Dumond.

But the Times’ new reporting shows the extent to which Huckabee and a key aide were involved in the process to win 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).

And he did this, despite having in his possession testimonies from other women whom Dumond had raped. The only explanation that appears even remotely plausible is that Huckabee believed the smears of his friend the right wing radio host and the right wing columnist for the New York Post. They slimed and smeared a rape victim, and tried to claim that the rape never took place and that Clinton had arraigned to have poor Dumond locked away forever for a crime he did not commit. And Huckabee believed them, he believed them and their lunatic fantasy despite the several demonstrably false claims in their assertions, despite the trial record, despite Dumond’s record, and the despite the fact that other rape victims wrote him letters begging him not to let Dumond go. Huckabee had, it appears, a very serious case of Clinton Derangement Syndrome. And because if it, a woman who should be alive was raped and murdered.

And lest anyone think that Huckabee has grow and matured and realized the error of his ways, the Waas article make sit clear that Huckabee is still trying to deny that anyone would have reason to think Dumond was dangerous and that he had no role in persuading the parole board — a political patronage position in Arkansas — to parole Dumond. Furthermore, Huckabee and his staff have apparently fought the release of records pertaining to his involvement in the case. Huckabee believed the lunatics over the evidence and let a rapist free to graduate to murderer. And he has spent all the time since trying to find some way to not have to take responsibility for it. Jesus, apparently, would go for the blame shifting.

No man who shows such terrible judgment, who believes right wing fantasies over real evidence, should be allowed within a million miles of the Oval Office.

December 5th, 2007 Politics | 7 comments