“Will the criminal-coddling Huckster EVER take responsibility for ANYTHING?”
He did — I heard him say it last night on Hannity.
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.