Huckabee said his belief in redemption was reason for letting so many violent criminals out of prison

From the Arkansas News Bureau, July 27, 2004, quoted at Free Republic in December 2007 (and at many blogs this week):

Gov. Mike Huckabee said Wednesday that his religious background and belief in redemption played a key role in the high number of state prisoners he has pardoned or turned loose early.

“I would not deny that my sense of the reality of redemption is a factor,” the former Baptist pastor said in a radio interview with KUAR in Little Rock. “And 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.”

The FR entry contains a horrifying story from Arkansas of a depraved rapist and murderer whom Huckabee sought to get released from prison because he showed a “humble” attitude.

The Huckster is politically dead. He will never recover from this, nor should he.

This is the Arkansas article quoted at FR. The original article is not online:

http://www.arkansasnews.com/archive/2004/07/22/News/261108.html

Gov. Mike Huckabee said Wednesday that his religious background and belief in redemption played a key role in the high number of state prisoners he has pardoned or turned loose early.

“I would not deny that my sense of the reality of redemption is a factor,” the former Baptist pastor said in a radio interview with KUAR in Little Rock. “And 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.”

The governor has been criticized publicly by prosecutors in Pulaski and Saline counties for his release of violent criminals.

Pulaski County Prosecuting Attorney Larry Jegley last week asked the governor to stop issuing clemencies until the Legislature can consider possible changes in the constitution, which gives the governor that power.

Jegley said he would like to see the constitutional provision changed to require the governor to explain his reasons for granting a clemency.

“Let’s face it, I give a reason every time I do one of these, but it may not be as extensive as a publicity-seeking prosecutor is going to want,” Huckabee said. “How much information do they give when they plea bargain?”

Why is it that Huckabee always attacks the messenger?

In 2004, the Arkansas Board of Parole reviewed 77 clemency cases, and 74 of them were considered to be without merit. Included in the 74 cases considered to be without merit was the case of Glen Green. Here is the link to the ARBOP report that includes Greene’s case.

Governor Huckabee, at the time, rejected the Boards opinion and decided that he would grant Green Clemency. Eventually, pressure forced Huckabee to relent on his decision. If this was an isolated case, then it could be considered a grave oversight, but it is just one out of many cases where Huckabee used questionable judgement when deciding whether to grant clemency.

Huckabee’s criteria for granting clemency was, at the minimum, unclear:

Until Tuesday, Huckabee didn’t even demand that these killers admit their guilt before asking for clemency. The Rev. Johnny Jack-son, who had arranged the aborted clemency deal for Glen Green with his friend the governor, describes Green as a humble Christian man—apparently one of Huckabee’s criteria for clemency. But the state requires that a killer express remorse for his actions, which Green refuses to do, calling the murder “an accident.” The Rev. Jackson says he accepts Green’s “account of the incident”

How can one express remorse over a crime this brutal and be believed?

http://www.arkansasleader.com/frontstories/st072104/huckabee5.html

[LA note: this is a link to a 2004 column in Arkansas by Garrick Feldman which is quoted in the FR entry; I quote the entire Feldman column below.]

Green, a 22-year-old sergeant, kidnapped Helen Lynette Spencer on Little Rock Air Force Base, where he beat and kicked her as he tried to rape her in a secluded area. She broke loose and ran toward the barracks’ parking lot, where he caught up with her and beat her with a pair of nunchucks.

He then stuffed her into the trunk of his car and left her there while he cleaned up. Several hours later, he drove down Graham Road, past Loop Road and stopped near a bridge in Lonoke County. Green told investigators he put her body in the front seat and raped her because her body was still warm.

He dragged Spencer out of his vehicle and put her in front of the car and ran over her several times, going back and forth. He then collected himself long enough to dump her body in Twin Prairie Bayou.

Huckabee eventually had to rescind the clemency from pressure he was facing; DuMond deja vu?

After weeks of pressure from victims’ families, prosecutors and this column, Gov. Huckabee has changed his mind about granting clemency to several murderers, including a psychopath who killed a Gravel Ridge woman. … “I’ve thought about it a great deal and now realize that the greater good is served if a more detailed reason is provided,” said Huckabee, who will face a hostile Legislature next year that will almost certainly clip his clemency powers. … It’s a humiliating retreat for a governor who thought he was unstoppable. Until yesterday, he said his critics were politically ambitious prosecutors, but when prosecutors from his own party spoke out against his clemencies, Huckabee realized that if he didn’t back down, he’d hurt the Arkansas Republican Party for a generation.

The DuMond case could possibly end in a he said/she said stalemate. The Democrat parole board vs. Huckabee’s word. The problem is that Huckabee, as governor, used the same line of defense until even the republicans turned on him in 2004. Today, he has gone back to that same line of defense with the media picking up on the DuMond story. With Green, maybe his change of mind is enough to silence some critics, but the fact is that it took pressure from his own prosecutors, lawyers, and party to finally say that enough is enough.

If Huckabee wants to lead the GOP into the election next year, he must explain his reasoning then, and then how he has changed, and what shapes his reasoning today. What sort of philosophy would he use in making decisions today, as opposed to 2004? He has not answered this to my satisfaction yet. I could harp on the Wayne DuMond case, but the reality is that there is so many of these types of cases in his past that it shouldn’t be isolated to a single case, while ignoring the rest.

Here is Garrick Feldman’s undated column from The Leader:

Why parole a monster like Green

Gov. Huckabee probably never read the confession of a demented killer named Glen Green before he made the monster eligible for parole.

Green’s confession is so depraved, its sadistic details so scary that no sane, responsible adult would consider him for parole.

If the governor didn’t read the confession, he is guilty of dereliction of duty.

But if he read the confession and still considers Green deserving of parole, he’s certainly unfit to hold office. Who would free a madman who beat an 18-year-old woman with Chinese martial-arts sticks, raped her as she barely clung to life, ran over her with his car, then dumped her in the bayou, her hand reaching up, as if begging for mercy?

We’re publishing the gruesome picture of Green’s victim on the front page because we believe her hand is reaching up to demand justice.

In usual fashion, Huckabee’s office didn’t even contact the victim’s family about the clemency.

Although he’s required to by the Constitution, the governor, as is his custom, won’t say why he granted clemency to this crazed killer (over the unanimous objections of the Post-Prison Transfer Board).

Huckabee apparently listened to Green’s minister (and a friend of the governor), who thinks the murder was an accident and Green was forced to confess.

The Jacksonville police, who arrested Green in 1974 after a witness linked him to the crime, think the minister and Huckabee are both delusional, which is the mildest epitaph we can print.

This old police reporter knows a genuine confession when he sees one, and Green’s depravity has the ring of truth.

Green, a 22-year-old sergeant, kidnapped Helen Lynette Spencer on Little Rock Air Force Base, where he beat and kicked her as he tried to rape her in a secluded area. She broke loose and ran toward the barracks’ parking lot, where he caught up with her and beat her with a pair of nunchucks.

He then stuffed her into the trunk of his car and left her there while he cleaned up. Several hours later, he drove down Graham Road, past Loop Road and stopped near a bridge in Lonoke County. Green told investigators he put her body in the front seat and raped her because her body was still warm.

He dragged Spencer out of his vehicle and put her in front of the car and ran over her several times, going back and forth. He then collected himself long enough to dump her body in Twin Prairie Bayou.

This is what the Rev. Johnny Jackson, interim pastor at Bethel Baptist Church in Jacksonville, calls an accident, and apparently Huckabee believes him.

“There is no doubt in my mind that he could kill again,” warns Pulaski County Prosecutor Larry Jegley.

The crime started out in his jurisdiction and ended in Lonoke County, where Prosecutor Lona McCastlain has also spoken out against the clemency.

“Life means life,” she said, referring to Green’s sentence after he plead guilty to Spencer’s kidnapping, rape and murder.

As he grants clemency to scores of violent criminals, Huckabee’s motives are the subject of speculation: Why, people are asking, is he doing it? After studying the record for several weeks, all one can say is that his actions perhaps reflect a combination of arrogance and avarice and ignorance.

While his fellow governors keep electing him to top positions in their little club, he has alienated Arkansans of both parties. They’re shocked at not only the amazing number of clemencies but also at the way he ignores the suffering of the victims’ families, who are always the last to know when their loved one’s killer is up for parole.

Bilenda Harris-Ritter, an attorney who now lives in California, is one of those people who worry all the time that Huckabee might free the man who killed their relatives. Harris-Ritter’s parents were murdered in north Arkansas, and she has had to deal with heartless state bureaucrats as she fights to keep the killer locked up.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently named Harris-Ritter chairman of the Public Employees Board, which oversees collective-bargaining agreements among 7,000 employers and 2 million employees.

She is upset that our governor has not been more forthright about his clemencies.

“Huckabee is required by law to make certain notifications. When he does not, the pardon should be voidable,” she told us.

She continued, “The people of the good state of Arkansas (and I really mean that) need to think seriously about impeachment.”

When told that many people consider Huckabee our worst governor in recent memory, Harris-Ritter replied, “No argument from me, and I am a Republican!”

- end of initial entry -

A. Zarkov writes:

I had an intuitive sense that there was something wrong with Huckabee from listening to him, but I had no idea he was this bad. I’m truly shocked. If I met the man I would accuse him of being an ally of Satan. He seeks to unleash more and more evil upon the world causing the suffering of innocents. I wonder how he would react to such a confrontation? Engaging him on his own terms might be the only way of getting through.

December 4

Patrick H. writes:

Huckabee seems to confuse redemption with release, forgiveness with furlough. Forgiveness has nothing to do with release, furlough, conjugal visits, consecutive vs. concurrent sentencing, early parole, or even capital punishment. Nor is forgiveness dependent on any expression of remorse from the sinner. It is an obligation of Christians to forgive, but that does not mean that it is not an obligation of Christians to punish. Forgiveness is good for the soul of the forgiver. Forgiveness releases the one who forgives from hatred of the prisoner. It does not release the prisoner from anything.

And besides, who is Huckabee to decide if someone is redeemed? C.S. Lewis said something to the effect that a murderer’s redemption would require him to give himself up to be hanged. Huckabee is simply in no position to decide whether someone is redeemed. While he can extend personal forgiveness, he does not have the power to absolve. And had those prisoners he “forgave” really been redeemed, they would have refused release and spent their lives working for the good of the society they had betrayed (cf. John Profumo, a considerably less depraved criminal than Clemmens or Green).

Zarkov said Huckabee seems to be a servant of Satan. He’s worse: he’s a heretic, an egotist and a narcissist (all right, they’re servants of Satan too). Huckabee seems to believe that his inner state, the various flushing sensations he experiences in his ample viscera, really do determine whether someone else is saved, redeemed … will go to heaven! He really thinks all of that is his call. In the mind—or gut—of Huckabee, It is in power of Huckabee not only to forgive, but to absolve sin.

So why should he apologize? He seems to have become God after his election as Governor. God doesn’t need to apologize. Of course, I must consider myself an implacable enemy of the new religion of Huckabism, since I continue to find a certain individual from the first century Holy Land a more convincing candidate for God Incarnate.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 03, 2009 03:48 PM | Send