Dangerous sociopaths like Clemmons know just what to say to manipulate fools like Huckabee. You can rest assured that honest atheists, Buddhists, and Mormons served out their full terms for lesser cimes under Huckabee's idiot regime.
Huckabee utterly lacks the discernment, wisdom, and firmness to hold an important executive position. He should NEVER be allowed anywhere near the presidency.
Huckabee is your basic “compassionate conservative.” I think anybody of any religion who had written to him saying he had had a change of heart would have gotten a commuted sentence. That’s the whole problem with “compassionate conservatives,” and one of the things that makes them so ineffective in government. Heck, Bush even trusted the Dems because they said they wanted to “work together.” Hah.
Although do remember that Bush as governor would not commute the death sentence of the woman who had killed in her youth but had become a Christian and lived an exemplary life in jail, helping others; I think he felt that he couldn’t commute her sentence to life because the media would have jumped on him because she was a Christian. So it can work both ways.
However, people on these threads are so obsessed with hating Huckabee that they neglect the fact that Clemmons was out not because of Huckabee, who did NOT release him but simply moved him to a different level where he was still subject to the criminal justice system. He was free because of a series of releases - some intentional and some through incompetence - and or even forgiveness of prior decisions (such as the judge in WA who turned around and granted him bail just a couple of months ago).
Why not turn some attention to Washington State, where the very people who released Clemmons are still in office or in the bureaucracy? Huckabee is gone from government, but the WA State system has had Clemmons there and causing problems for years now - and appears to have done nothing at all to control him, even when he was actually in their custody at various points.
BTW, anybody who thinks anything is going to happen to the relatives who protected him is deluded. I still bet that he had a family member in the court or criminal justice system in Arkansas years ago who helped him get out. And as far as his Washington State relatives, there will be a little media commotion and then all charges will be quietly dropped by some judge somewhere.