Huckabee's dubious achievement
Governor sets record for clemencies

____Gov. Huckabee is on a roll: He has freed more convicts than all of his recent predecessors combined – more than 10 times as many as Gov. Clinton during a 10-year period from 1983 to 1992.
____ Huckabee has issued more clemencies in the last 18 months than he did during his first six years in office. This feverish pace of clemencies suggests that he'll free hundreds of convicts before he leaves office in January 2007.
____ In the face of in-creasing criticism from victims' families and law-enforcement officials, you'd think our incredible shrinking governor would take a breather from signing clemency papers, but he's doing just the opposite: Like a child who will not behave even after he's reprimanded, Huckabee, to prove he's boss, keeps issuing more and more clemencies– 214 pardons and 40 commutations since last year, and, all told, 567 pardons and 102 commutations since he took office in 1996, for a total of 669 and still rising. He'll end up with more than 1,000 clemencies –that is, combining pardons and commutations.

____ He likes issuing clemency papers the way other people enjoy fishing and camping: It's his hobby. We have analyzed the record, and what we've found will shock you.
____ Let's put the scandal of Huckabee's clemencies in perspective:
____ Even that lying, liberal, no-good, cheating Bill Clinton has a better record on pardons and commutations than Huckabee. True, when young Clinton became governor in 1979, he did what Huckabee is doing now: In his first two-year term, Clinton went on a tear and commuted the sentences of 66 convicts and pardoned 72 others.
____ He lost his re-election bid in 1980 in part because of his generous clemencies. But when he came back in 1982, he'd learned his lesson and did just nine commutations and 279 pardons during the next decade.
____ Frank White, the Republican who defeated Clinton for one term, issued just four commutations and 35 pardons. Gov. Jim Guy Tucker, who succeeded Clinton when he was elected president in 1992, granted about the same number of clemencies in the next four years: just seven commutations and 35 pardons .
____ Politicians of all stripes realized in the 1980s and 1990s that there was a price to pay if they kept freeing murderers and rapists, who were usually serving life sentences without parole before they were pardoned. It was also around that time that the rights of victims were recognized across the nation. Families were suddenly consulted about pardons and clemencies.
____ Huckabee has reversed that trend, ignoring victims' families and lending a sympathetic ear to killers, rapists and drunks, especially if a minister from Huckabee's circle vouches for their jailhouse conversion.
____ Last week alone, he issued 12 clemencies, several over the objections of local prosecutors, and, in one local case, even over the objections of the usually pliable Post-Prison Transfer Board. The board unanimously disagreed with Huckabee and a minister friend that former Air Force Sgt. Glen M. Green, who is serving life without parole, didn't mean to kill a pregnant woman, and even if he did, he has been rehabilitated.
____ Last week's clemencies are as strange as the others. Arkansans are shaking their heads in disbelief that Huckabee would free a monster like Glen M. Green, a former sergeant at Little Rock Air Force Base, who beat a pregnant Gravel Ridge woman with a martial-arts weapon, raped her and then drove over her with his car in Lonoke County.
____ Lonoke County Prosecutor Lona McCastlain and the Jacksonville police aren't too happy with Huckabee, but that doesn't bother him because his friend, the Rev. Johnny Jackson, says Green is a good guy.
____ Huckabee also likes Denver Witham, a fellow musician who plays in the Cummins Prison band and is serving life without parole.
____ Witham, who was also granted clemency last week, beat his victim with a lead pipe during a robbery in a Saline County cemetery.
____ Huckabee and his staff will not discuss his clemencies, except for a brief statement he issued to the Leader last month claiming that he acts on only 10 percent of the cases that are put before him.
____ But, as we have shown, even that 10 percent translates into hundreds of pardons and commutations.
____ Victims' families fear there will be many more in the coming months, but they're organizing to stop Huckabee before he cleans out the prisons. Some victims' families are so unhappy with Huckabee, they're demanding that he resign.
____ This scandal should haunt him for the rest of his term and probably for the rest of his life. His shameless refusal to explain his actions and his insensitivity toward victims' families tell a lot about the man's character.
____ Through a combination of ig-norance and arrogance, Huckabee has alienated both Republicans and Democrats – probably more of the former, who are angry that a supposedly conservative governor has brought shame on their party.

Next: Grassroots opposition to Huckabee.