Posted on 12/02/2009 4:44:10 AM PST by blf1776
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (WLFI) - Former Arkansas Governor and Presidental Candidate Mike Huckabee spoke at the Annual Tippecanoe County Right to Life banquet in West Lafayette.
Huckabee has been under scrutiny after a man shot and killed four cops in a coffee shop in Seattle. Maurice Clemmons, the suspect, was facing a lifetime in prison in Arkansas when Huckabee was governor. Huckabee shortened Clemmons' sentence.
"Here was a kid at age 16 had committed a burgarly and a robbery and got a 108 year sentence," Huckabee said Tuesday night at the Right to Life annual banquet on Purdue's campus. "The judge thought it was unfair. The parole board did and recommended to me to commute his sentence. I didn't let him loose because I didn't have that power as a governor. I commutted his sentence to 47 years giving him the oppurtunity to be parole eligible."
Six days after posting bail in Washington on charges of child rape, Clemmons opened fire on four police officers. Huckabee says that isn't the same man he knew back in 2000.
"He wasn't a cop killer. He wasn't a rapist. He wasn't a violent criminal. He wasn't a fugitive from justice. He was a person at 16 did some dumb things and some criminal things. I don't know a single person that can look me in the eye and tell me that if they had that same file in front of them they wouldn't believe that maybe 47 years was a more appropriate sentence for what he did as a minor," Huckabee said.
Huckabee says that if he had to make that decision again today with the knowledge of what Clemmons was going to do, Huckabee would never have changed Clemmons' sentence.
"If I had the exact same information in front of me tonight that I did 9 years ago in a case exactly the same, I would make the exact same decision because I can't imagine anyone would not. If I could have looked into the future, of course I wouldn't have, but I couldn't do that," Huckabee said. "What I don't understand is those who could see his actions. The judges in Washington who knew he had raped a child and that he had now several psychotic episodes why he was able to get out on bail, that I can't answer."
A Seattle police officer shot and killed Maurice Clemmons, the man they suspected in the shooting of four Washington police officers. For now, police are searching for family and friends of Clemmons who they believe helped him elude police.
I haven’t sent the GOP one dime in quite some time, nor will I if the best they can come up with are the loser-twins Huckabee and Romney. They are both dead to me.
>>Mental illness is progressive,<<
>>You prove that with each post you make.<<
ZINNNNG!!!
Hilarious!!!!!
The sentencing judge in Arkansas wrote in favor of Huckabee reducing the sentence.
By 1990, when he was 18 year old, Clemmons had been sentenced to the 108 years in prison for eight felony charges from those teenage years in Arkansas. The total prison term stemmed from multiple sentences, some of which were concurrent and others consecutive. The largest sentencing came in 1990, when he was given a 60-year prison term for breaking into an Arkansas state trooper's home and stealing about $6,700-worth of items, including a gun. Clemmons was also sentenced in 1989 to 35 years in prison for robbing a woman at midnight in the parking lot of a Little Rock hotel bar. Clemmons pretended to have a gun in his pocket and threatened to shoot her if she did not give him her purse. When she reportedly responded, "Well, why don't you just shoot?", Clemmons punched her in the head and ran off with the purse, which contained $16 and a credit card. This is the incident that Huckabee talks about Clemmons getting such a long sentence for just stealing $16 dollars. Among Clemmons other sentencings were six years for weapon possession based on an arrest when he was a junior at Hall High School for carrying a .25-caliber pistol on school property; and eight years for burglary, theft and probation in Pulaski County on September 9, 1989. All in all Clemmons was not to be eligible for parole until 2015 or later.
This is the individual and set of criminal circumstances that Huckabee says any of us would have commuted. I disagree...with this string of crimes, and particularly his last one where he stole the large amount of material and the gun (and being known for being arrested for either carrying weapons or claiming to while committing his crimes), I would have stood by the long sentence to keep this increasingly violent person off of our streets.
And, Mike knows as well as anyone else, thet when a state governor gives clemency, and reduces a sentence specifically to make a person eligable for parole, the parol board almost always rubber stamps that decision and grants parole. The clemency itself from the governor acts as a recommendation to the parole board that is as compelling as any witness that would come before them.
Now, there are plenty of others after Huckabee who also failed and carry the weight and burden of some responsibility for this animal being on the street. There were other ample opportunities to keep Clemmonsin jail when he was caught, when he violated parole in Arkansas, when the prosecutor failed to bring charges quickly enough which allowed his release (both that prosecutor and the judge who granted his release bear some of the burden), and the latest occuring only 6 days before he killed the officer when he was awaiting a hearinging for raping a 13 year old girl and assaulting a sheriff's deputy...and was released on 150,000 bail.
But., the simple fact is, if Huckabee had not commutted his sentence through clemency, he would never have been on the street to do any of that.
The criminal carries the burden for committing the crime...but once he was incarcerted and in prison, those that made it possible for him to be out of prison early, or out of jail on bail, carry the weight for putting him in a position (on the street) where he could commit those crimes. Huckabee is first in line on that latter list.
Huckabee is first in lineYup.
Here is the CNN interview of Huckabee defending his clemency decision. He admits to knowing how violent Clemmons was. Below the video are further written comments.
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/crime/2009/12/03/griffin.clemmons.huckabee.cnn
The prison record stated that Clemmons possessed a firearm at one time in prison. Huck admits in the interview that he reviewed all the files and still judged Clemmons worthy of clemency.
Huckabee: If I Had Same Facts Today, Id Commute Sentence Again
http://www.gop12.com/2009/12/huck-you-would-have-commuted-him-too.html
“... If I had the exact same information in front of me tonight that I had 9 years ago in a case exactly the same, I would make the exact same decision, because I can’t imagine that anyone would not.”
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