Mike Huckabee’s Commutation Of Maurice Clemmons’ Sentence
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This looks like a guy who should have never been out in society, and now 4 police officers are dead apparently by his hands.
45 Responses to “Mike Huckabee’s Commutation Of Maurice Clemmons’ Sentence”
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Yup,
Huck did it and he has blood on his hands. Somehow I doubt that Ollie would have headlined this story this way if a liberal Democrat had done this, but maybe. If the man’s guilty capital punishment will successfully rehabilitate him.
Somehow I doubt that Ollie would have headlined this story…
And somehow I doubt that you complain about selective outrage on the part of right wing blogs.
You guys made your bed, now lie in it.
You betcha Zython, LOL what was my first sentence?
If there’s a God, Huck’s stupid tv show will be cancelled where he plays his shitty music
I’m a little confused about which bed you might be referring to there, neighbor…
“Somehow you doubt” is projection. What precedence has Oliver shown on this blog to avoid calling out a liberal Democrat guilty of such an act?
I’ve been watching this blog for years. OW has called out John Edwards, William Jefferson, and other Democrats who deserve calling out, time and again.
For an Amused Observer, you’re not very Observant.
Huck has blood on his hands over Clemmnons and Dumond. He will have to stand before the judgment bar of God and be condemned for his complicity in their crimes. He will be damned for failing in his stewardship as a Governor who released violent criminals with no concern for recidivism. Some will try to ameliorate his crimes because he is a man of the cloth. But that fact will doubly damn him. He was a shepherd who should have been protecting the flock. Rather than protecting the flock he endangered it by taking ravenous wolves who were imprisoned and turning them loose on the flock. Frankly, he is worse than the Catholic Bishops who protect pedophile priests.
I’ve certainly noticed OW calling out little impriorities such as Eric Holder’s performances of selective prosecution etc. LOL, you may not have noticed but Oliver works for a professional propaganda company.
I don’t fault Huckabee at all. Wasn’t the sentence something like 60 years for burglary? On an 18 year old kid? And he wasn’t pardoned, the sentence was commuted. He had served 11 years already. He was still in the hands of the parole system.
Yes, Clemmons was sentenced to 60 years for burglary when he was 18. When Clemmons received the 60-year sentence, he was already serving 48 years on five felony convictions and facing up to 95 more years on charges of robbery, theft of property and possessing a handgun on school property. During one trial, Clemmons was shackled in leg irons and seated next to a uniformed officer. The presiding judge ordered the extra security because he felt Clemmons had threatened him, court records show.
Another time, Clemmons hid a hinge in his sock, and was accused of intending to use it as a weapon. Yet another time, Clemmons took a lock from a holding cell, and threw it toward the bailiff. He missed and instead hit Clemmons’ mother, who had come to bring him street clothes, according to records and published reports. On another occasion, Clemmons had reached for a guard’s pistol during transport to the courtroom. Definitely sounds like a model candidate for parole.
I’m not saying he was Mr. Rogers. However, the ridiculous length of the sentences our justice system metes out leads to this institution of the governor’s dispensation, which will be flawed and subject to politicization. Here, for instance, it looks like Huckabee was more prone than most to providing such dispensation, likely at the behest of religious leaders whose influence over their communites served him well politically.
So instead of looking at a guy that had, say 15 years to serve, which is pretty serious and allows some opportunity to work on behaviour modification, the governor gets a cap-in-hand intervention that goes along the lines of “this troubled boy got 60 years, don’t let the state throw his life away, give him a chance”, all outside of the sentencing process. And at face value, 11 years is pretty steep for the crime that was committed.
Lock-em-up-and-thro-away-the-key offset with political discretion is a terrible way to run a justice system.
Very good point, sir.
i couldn’t disagree more. programs like behavior modification should be reserved for non-violent offenders, not convicts who have already racked up over half a dozen felonies and a track record of threats/attempted assaults on court officers. Clemmons wasn’t even 30 when paroled, which puts him a long, long, long way from having “the state throw his life away.” this situation is a failure of Huckabee, not the institution of the governor’s dispensation being flawed. all huckabee had to do was listen to the objection of prosecutors and he never would have granted parole. 11 years for half a dozen felonies and repeated threats/attempted assaults on court officers is not “pretty steep.”
Yeah, we use facts and stuff.
“Yeah, we use facts and stuff.:
LOL, sure you do
Does LOL auto-populate in the comment form for you or something? Should change your handle to “Giggly Observer”
Oops. Huck just lost his beloved wingnut status.
We could probably afford the more robust prosecution, police, and parole systems necessary to properly incarcerate and release truly violent and dangerous people if we weren’t so busy dropping billions to make sure that someone doesn’t get high.
I suppose it’s nice, for some, that a person they disagree with politically might find their voice neutered. Too bad it took the death of four police officers to achieve that. But hey, a guy you disagree with looks bad and that has value.
It’s also interesting to note that so many commenters on OW.com think that someone who commits assault and robbery should spend the rest of their life in prison without the possibility of parole or some sort of sentence reduction.
“It’s also interesting to note that so many commenters on OW.com think that someone who commits assault and robbery should spend the rest of their life in prison without the possibility of parole or some sort of sentence reduction.”
Other than the fact that no one on this website actually said that, yeah i guess it’s interesting. i find it more interesting that commenters on OW.com think that a person with Clemmons’ background as a repeat offender, convicted of at least half a dozen felonies who made multiple threats/attempts to attack court officers was somehow deserving of parole after serving a fraction of his sentence.
I’d be looking at the most immediate reason for this guys being out and about:s he was up on child rape charges and he was out on bail pending trial. How he got bail, and likely a low-limit bail at that, on a charge of child rape with his criminal record is unconscionable. That’s up there on the culpability scale imo and I’d be taking a very hard look at the local prosecutor and judge who let this happen.
Are too!
Am not!
AO, instead of throwing poop on the wall to see whether it sticks, please identify some of O-Dub’s “facts” that you dispute. Then we will be able to assess O-Dub’s reliability v. yours.
Mmmmmmm………kay?
So, an 18 year old was facing 95 years in prison for assorted felonies, none of which resulted in loss of life, limb, or eyesight, and you don’t see something wrong with that? As Gumby said “lock-em-up-and-throw-away-the-key offset with political discretion is a terrible way to run a justice system.”
His life was thrown away as soon as he earned his Scarlet F, the prison sentence was just going to determine how much of it he had to live on the outside.
The insitution of the governor’s dispensation or clemency or whatever is fundamentally “flawed” since it is going to rely on the opinion of one man, who may or may not be qualified to weigh the actual legal arguments, to determine if an action is in the best interests of justice. Huckabee’s choice to use religious faith as his justification in a number of his commutations is his choice. Is it any worse of a proxy than if he looked favorably upon the recommendations of people who contributed heavily to his campaign? Flipped a coin? However given the grievous flaws in our justice system, have a check on it, even a flawed one on the back-end is a feature, however buggy.
Also, while Huckabee will deserve the punishment his political future will take from this, given that Clemmons was arrested for parole violations in 2001, and released from jail again in 2004, and, somehow, out on bail despite pending assault of a police officer and child rape charges, and a possibly dangerous mental state, in Washington state it seems that there is a good deal of current blame to go around instead of laying it all on a failure of Huckabee 9 years ago.
Yeah, cause prosecutors are paragons of impartiality who will surely always choose to support actions in the best interests of justice or decency over a desire to appear tough on crime. Those non-violent offenders you want to get behavior-modification for and be released early after showing they’re fine, upstanding people are being placed, and kept, in prison by the same prosecutors you wanted Huckabee to listen to. They are not impartial paragons of justice who will make the “correct” decision regarding when a release in is the best interests of justice. The Innocence Project proves that.
I don’t have an opinion as to whose liability Clemmons was or what should happen to Huckabee, and I don’t need one, because now the wingnuts will save us from him anyway. I love it when they eat their own in public, and over there on F***Repub*** they are getting out the tongs and heating the pokers.
Mike Huckabee and a Freeper walk into a bar. Both are knocked unconscious.
Rimshot.
Well said, SFC. What strikes me odd about your very careful and nuanced evaluation is that it’s just the kind of thing one of us lefties would write…and conservatives would scoff at. This is just the sort of situation that the Republican party has used to flay its opponents and set itself up as the “git tuf on crahm” party.
Did Huckabee make a mistake? Given the benefit of hindsight, that’s a certainty. If he posted a (D) after his name, conservatives would make this an absolute scandal. Since he sports an (R) after his name instead, I suspect conservatives will be more understanding of the difficult decisions a governor makes.
Repack,
LOL see Eric Holder, black panthers, Marc Rich etc.
“now the wingnuts will save us from him anyway”
Does it ever occur to you that a candidate with some weakness and baggage has perhaps just been cleared from the field leaving a straighter path for another candidate? Pendulums swing both ways, bit of a pattern there.
still have the LOL autopopulate on, I see.
Yes. The entire governor’s clemency system in Arkansas should be chucked because of this. How dare a good Christian attempt to show any compassion by commuting the sentence of people he thought might not longer be a threat to society and that some measure of justice would be served by their early release or pardon. How dare someone who claims Christian values demonstrate any concept of mercy or any recognition of redemption. HOW DARE HE!
Thanks Quaker.
Thanks again, I think. I also think it would have been nice if it was “leftie” who had written it though. Too many of that end of the political spectrum seem to be enjoying a healthy order of schadenfreude with a side of gloat since this happened to someone who is not a political ally.
I’m sure it’s all sorts of fun to watch commenters on rightie sites get out their tongs and heat up their torches, but the likely outcome of this is going to be fewer people released from unjust prison terms. And given the racial breakdown in US prisons, I’d think that would be an issue to which “lefties” would be more sensitive. Sure, more prisoners will remain in behind bars past any productive measure, many of them likely minorities, but at least a talk show host won’t be running for president this next election Repack so there’s that!
“Yup”.
Real descriptive and thought invoking, AO.
But again, when a liberal does it…
While its tempting to indulge in a little schadenfreude over Huckabee’s decision to commute Clemmons’ sentence, I have to agree with SFC B, here. Are we (on the left, who claim to believe in restorative justice and mitigation of sentencing) really ready to jump on the “let ‘em rot” bandwagon just to score political points?
Doesn’t any one remember Willie Horton?
Yes, and it was vile when the Republicans used Horton to torpedo Dukakis’ campaign. It would be just as vile for the left to use Clemmons to lambast Huckabee.
Hey, if they don’t like it, they get down on their hands and knees and beg for forgiveness.
That’s just great.
And what does it do for our next battle against unjust sentencing laws? Or the next democratic governor who wants to pardon some poor kid sentenced to life imprisonment for distributing crack when he was 16? Or commute the death penalty for the guy with the mental age of a child? Forget about it, governor… look what they did to Huckabee.
The problem is that Cristians think they’re god’s folk, and deserve special treatment. With 20/20 hindsight, it’s clear Huckabee erred. I posit that he erred to favor a Christian, irrepective of any other merits and in lieu of careful evaluation of an individual inmate – Keep religion out of politics and the justice system. It is a faulty proxy for truth, morality, and compassion.
Again, you are not Observant.
The views on this site are mine and mine alone, they do not reflect the views of my employer, Media Matters for America.
How he got bail, and likely a low-limit bail at that, on a charge of child rape with his criminal record is unconscionable.
Joining the priesthood, perhaps?
No.
And yes.
That’s correct.
Correct again.
And that makes the hat trick.
Using this against Huckabee is a perfectly legit political strategy. Just like using Willie Horton against Dukakis was perfectly legit.
If Huckabee wants to be a serious contender for future office he’s going to need to be prepared to address this in a way which will work. There are ways he can do it, I think I might have touched on them earlier. He also has the defense in that, Clemmons’ most heinous crimes didn’t occur directly after Huckabee’s commutation.
My bemusement at this is how quickly those who would otherwise support a Governor commuting the sentences of sympathetic prisoners will abandon those principles as soon as the person doing it happens to be someone they don’t agree with.
My bemusement at this is how quickly those who would otherwise support a Governor commuting the sentences of sympathetic prisoners will abandon those principles as soon as the person doing it happens to be someone they don’t agree with.
Well, that’s what comes of placing a greater value on beating an opponent than on what you think you actually believe in.
On the lefty side of the aisle, we often like to tell ourselves we came late to the political slugfest and join it only out of necessity. Being right about that doesn’t do anything for the causes we value, however.
There’s a very faint line that separates pointing out the hypocricy of others and taking delight in their failures. That line is somewhere around here.
This wasn’t the first time. Before Maurice Clemmons, there was Wayne Dumond. Two women raped and murdered. Now four police officers killed.
http://www.arktimes.com/Articles/ArticleViewer.aspx?ArticleID=154e1aad-fd18-4efd-8d80-b5dab8559419
Or very amusing.
It isn’t just the Dems going after Huckabee, it’s a lot of the GOP, too. He acted as McCain’s stalking horse in the GOP primaries, and blocked any chance for Romney’s late resurgence against the doddering Johnny Mac. He is de facto an accessory to these murders. Huckabee is a disgrace and should just disappear from the national stage. He disgusts me.