Huck is finished, and wasn’t getting my primary vote anyway - unless he was the most Conservative candidate in it, which I doubt will be the case.
However, I try to put myself in the Governor’s shoes:
A minor commits a series of burglaries.
He is sentenced to ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHT YEARS!
Should I commute his sentence down to 40+ years?
I think I would do that...I think most of us would react to those circumstances that way, because on its face it does not seem unreasonable.
You’re 100% correct, Staten.
Huckabee’s decision to commute this sentence wasn’t unreasonable. It’s the fact that he did so many commutations and so many of them broke bad without the help of any others (no stupid prosecutors, etc.) is what counts.
“Should I commute his sentence down to 40+ years?”
The real question was, “Should I sufficiently commute his sentence so that he’ll be eligible for parole today, after serving only 11 years?”
Because that was the actual effect of the governor’s action. Gov. Huckabee commuted Mr. Clemmons to preciely 47 years, 5 months and 19 days, so that Mr. Clemmons would be eligible for parole immediately after the commutation, after only about 11 years in prison.
As well, the scariest things that Mr. Clemmons were not the crimes for which he was charged, convicted and sentenced. Here’s an interesting paragraph from the wiki article on him:
Clemmons was accused multiple times of displaying violence during court appearances. On one occassion, Clemmons dismantled a metal door stop and hid it in his sock to use as a weapon also reportedly hidden a piece of metal in his sock to use as a weapon. It was discovered and confiscated by a court bailiff. One another instance, Clemmons took a lock from his holding cell and threw it at a bailiff, but missed and accidentally hit his mother instead.[3][4] Clemmons was once accused of reaching for a guard’s pistol while being transported to court. During one trial, he was shackled in leg irons and seated next to a uniformed officer because the presiding judge ordered extra security, claiming Clemmons had threatened him.[3]
This is a fellow who needed to be locked up for a very, very long time, a lot longer than 11 years.
The commutation was a decision that was obviously faulty the day it was made.
sitetest