Let us not whitewash governor's Clemencies
____Gov. Huckabee surprised his critics yesterday and admitted he's been wrong.
____ After weeks of pressure from victims' families, prosecutors and this column, Gov. Huckabee has changed his mind about granting clemency to several murderers, including a psychopath who killed a Gravel Ridge woman.
____ Glen Green, the convicted murderer who is serving a life sentence for the brutal murder of Helen Lanette Spencer, would have gone free in a few weeks if Huckabee hadn't caved in to pressure and withdrawn his offer of clemency.
____ Scores of other killers who had hoped to find themselves in Huckabee's good graces will have little chance of getting out anytime soon.
____ Realizing that his don't-ask, don't-explain policy on clemencies was costing him dearly, Huckabee did an about-face on Tuesday and promised a more "transparent" process in the future.
____ Until Tuesday, he ignored both public opinion and state law when he refused to say why he was releasing murderers from prison, often over the objections of his own parole board.
____ The suspicion was that jailhouse conversions got killers out of prison, but now Huckabee has had a conversion himself.
____ "I want to do my best to explain this sometimes complex process," he said in a statement on Tuesday, after years of silence about how he decided who should live and who should die.
____ He announced new "tougher guidelines" and a willingness to listen to everyone who has an interest in clemency cases. You wonder what took him so long.
____ "I've thought about it a great deal and now realize that the greater good is served if a more detailed reason is provided," said Huckabee, who will face a hostile Legislature next year that will almost certainly clip his clemency powers.
____ It's a humiliating retreat for a governor who thought he was unstoppable. Until yesterday, he said his critics were politically ambitious prosecutors, but when prosecutors from his own party spoke out against his clemencies, Huckabee realized that if he didn't back down, he'd hurt the Arkansas Republican Party for a generation.
____ He's now doing what Gov. Clinton did after his humiliating defeat in 1980, when he was criticized for releasing murderers without explanation. That's what Huckabee has done for the last eight years, especially during the last 18 months, as he freed killers at a rapid pace and angered victims' families and others who were offended by his insensitivity.
____ Clinton apologized for his mistakes, promised not to do it again and was re-elected in 1982. He issued very few clemencies after that and went on to bigger if not better things.
____ For the next 20 years, his successors seldom issued clemencies, but Huckabee dramatically re-versed that trend, which is why he finds himself in trouble now.
____ You know a governor is in trouble if his supporters say his record isn't as bad as Orval Faubus' when it comes to clemencies.
____ Those who try to whitewash Huckabee's record must go back four decades to find a governor with a worse record than Hucka-bee.
____ Until Tuesday, Huckabee didn't even demand that these killers admit their guilt before asking for clemency. The Rev. Johnny Jack-son, who had arranged the aborted clemency deal for Glen Green with his friend the governor, describes Green as a humble Christian man – apparently one of Huckabee's criteria for clemency.
____ But the state requires that a killer express remorse for his actions, which Green refuses to do, calling the murder "an accident." The Rev. Jackson says he accepts Green's "account of the incident" – actually a brutal assault, murder, attempted rape and drowning of a beautiful young woman in 1974.
____ Even with Faubus' shocking record on pardons for the well-connected – it's deja vu all over again, isn't it? – Huckabee was still handing out clemencies at a rate that would have outpaced Faubus and even Winthrop Rockefeller.
____ What's more, the Arkansas Victims' Bill of Rights was not in place when those prior governors were commuting sentences without victim input. Huckabee and his appointees were ignoring the laws on the books, including the re-quirement to notify victims' families and to explain the reasons for those clemencies.
____ Rockefeller, who succeeded Faubus, also issued dozens of clemencies, but he gave a complete, honest explanation: He was opposed to the death penalty and commuted death sentences to life in prison.
____ In those days, many prisoners were on death row for other crimes than murder, such as rape. Faubus (or his pals) sold pardons or handed them out to supporters' friends and relatives. Read Roy Reed's "Faubus: The Life and Times of an American Prodigal" (University of Arkansas Press) to learn how evil and corrupt the prison system was back in the 1950s and 1960s.
____ Let's hope those shameful days are long past. But because Huckabee wouldn't explain his high-profile clemencies, people have wondered about his motives. We know why Faubus granted pardons, but we can only guess why Huckabee is signing off on them.
____ At the rate Huckabee has commuted sentences, he could have gone well above 1,000 pardons and commutations before his term expires in January 2007. As we reported here several weeks ago, he has commuted more sentences (102) and pardoned more criminals (567) than his three predecessors combined.
____ He has freed more convicts than Bill Clinton – 10 times Clinton's commutations between 1983-1992 – and the comparison with Govs. Bumpers and Pryor are just as bad: Only 138 pardons and commutations for Bumpers, and 153 for Pryor. Gov. White (bless his memory) issued only 39 pardons and commutations, the same as Jim Guy Tucker, Clinton's successor. Do you detect a trend? For the last 20 years, as victims' families demanded justice for their loved ones, politicians have granted clemencies with reluctance. (Clinton learned this painful lesson after he issued 138 pardons and commutations between 1979-1981 and lost his re-election bid. After his comeback two years later, he issued just 75 commutations and 351 pardons over the next 10 years.)
____ Rockefeller's clemencies to-taled 480 (which included commutations for death-row inmates). The execrable Faubus is in a class by himself: Only partial records exist, but he issued at least 533 clemencies and probably well over 1,000 pardons in the 1960s.
____ Times have changed since those bad old days, and no governor should get away with commuting the sentences of criminals without telling us why.
____ Victims' families deserve notification ahead of time and an explanation of every clemency. Hucka-bee often does neither and even overrules the Post-Prison Transfer Board if it decides against him on pardons, as it did, unanimously, when the board rejected a pardon for Glen Green. There are still those who are sticking by their man (including a handful in the media), as they excuse the governor's record-setting pardons and commutations by pointing out that two of his predecessors four decades ago reduced more sentences than has Huckabee.
____ Don't let anyone confuse you with the figures. We'll give them to you straight, as we have throughout July as the Little Rock media chased after the numbers and some reporters even made the brazen claim that Huckabee can't be all bad because back in 1971 Rockefeller commuted many more sentences, and so did Faubus back in the 1960s.
____ Rockefeller and Faubus are dead, and they can't defend themselves, but several living governors who issued fewer commutations than Huckabee have expressed regret over some of the clemencies they'd granted.
____ Until this week, Huckabee remained silent because he thought he was above reproach. His critics have brought him down to earth.
____ Huckabee's clemencies are scandalous for many reasons. Not least is the anguish he has caused the victims' families, about which he doesn't give a flip.
____ He has set execution dates for those he considers unworthy of clemency because they have not converted or don't work at the governor's mansion or don't play in the prison band and (shame on him) have the wrong color. So Huckabee is not merely an executioner but also an appeals judge who overturns a jury's original verdict.
____ At least Rockefeller would let everyone know what he was doing. Huckabee hasn't said much until this week. Occasionally, he talked presumptuously about redemption, and that was about it.
____ Pardons were handed out more liberally in the old days before victims' rights became an issue. Back in the 1960s and even the 1970s, victims' families were seldom heard from, but they're now a major force, and any governor who ignores them risks becoming unpopular. That's what has happened with Huckabee, and he's just waking up.
____ The Legislature should bring him down a notch or two and severely limit his clemency powers.