Posted on 12/11/2007, 3:45:10 PM by Y Ceratotherium
From the Arkansas News Bureau in 2004:
http://www.arkansasnews.com/archive/2004/07/22/News/261108.html
Gov. Mike Huckabee said Wednesday that his religious background and belief in redemption played a key role in the high number of state prisoners he has pardoned or turned loose early.
“I would not deny that my sense of the reality of redemption is a factor,” the former Baptist pastor said in a radio interview with KUAR in Little Rock. “And I don’t know that I can apologize for that because I would hate to think of the kind of human I would be if I thought people were beyond forgiveness and beyond reformation and beyond some sense of improvement.”
The governor has been criticized publicly by prosecutors in Pulaski and Saline counties for his release of violent criminals.
Pulaski County Prosecuting Attorney Larry Jegley last week asked the governor to stop issuing clemencies until the Legislature can consider possible changes in the constitution, which gives the governor that power.
Jegley said he would like to see the constitutional provision changed to require the governor to explain his reasons for granting a clemency.
“Let’s face it, I give a reason every time I do one of these, but it may not be as extensive as a publicity-seeking prosecutor is going to want,” Huckabee said. “How much information do they give when they plea bargain?”
Why is it that Huckabee always attacks the messenger?
In 2004, the Arkansas Board of Parole reviewed 77 clemency cases, and 74 of them were considered to be without merit. Included in the 74 cases considered to be without merit was the case of Glen Green. Here is the link to the ARBOP report that includes Greene’s case.
Governor Huckabee, at the time, rejected the Boards opinion and decided that he would grant Green Clemency. Eventually, pressure forced Huckabee to relent on his decision. If this was an isolated case, then it could be considered a grave oversight, but it is just one out of many cases where Huckabee used questionable judgement when deciding whether to grant clemency.
Huckabee’s criteria for granting clemency was, at the minimum, unclear:
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”
How can one express remorse over a crime this brutal and be believed?
http://www.arkansasleader.com/frontstories/st_07_21_04/huckabee5.html
Green, a 22-year-old sergeant, kidnapped Helen Lynette Spencer on Little Rock Air Force Base, where he beat and kicked her as he tried to rape her in a secluded area. She broke loose and ran toward the barracks’ parking lot, where he caught up with her and beat her with a pair of nunchucks.
He then stuffed her into the trunk of his car and left her there while he cleaned up. Several hours later, he drove down Graham Road, past Loop Road and stopped near a bridge in Lonoke County. Green told investigators he put her body in the front seat and raped her because her body was still warm.
He dragged Spencer out of his vehicle and put her in front of the car and ran over her several times, going back and forth. He then collected himself long enough to dump her body in Twin Prairie Bayou.
Huckabee eventually had to rescind the clemency from pressure he was facing; DuMond deja vu?
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. … “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.
The DuMond case could possibly end in a he said/she said stalemate. The Democrat parole board vs. Huckabee’s word. The problem is that Huckabee, as governor, used the same line of defense until even the republicans turned on him in 2004. Today, he has gone back to that same line of defense with the media picking up on the DuMond story. With Green, maybe his change of mind is enough to silence some critics, but the fact is that it took pressure from his own prosecutors, lawyers, and party to finally say that enough is enough.
If Huckabee wants to lead the GOP into the election next year, he must explain his reasoning then, and then how he has changed, and what shapes his reasoning today. What sort of philosophy would he use in making decisions today, as opposed to 2004? He has not answered this to my satisfaction yet. I could harp on the Wayne DuMond case, but the reality is that there is so many of these types of cases in his past that it shouldn’t be isolated to a single case, while ignoring the rest.
When I think of Huckabee in charge of the current subprime lending fiasco...
When I hear Huckabee say he wishes to close Gitmo...
When I read of these pardons...
I see the record of a man who has supplanted the rule of law with the Christian belief in forgiveness and atonement. I see a good man who should be allowed to continue in his good ways under the protections of a far more stern, far more protective, and far less forgiving government. I do not see the leader of our nation in the War on Terror. I do not see the man who will lead our economy into the 21st century. I do not see the proper mixture of compassion and stern justice we need to lead.
This pardon is disturbing on so many levels. Whether he did so blindly or will full knowlege of this case, Huckabee took the words of a fellow pastor over those of the entire paroll board and the judicial process that prosecuted him. He very nearly let a man walk freely who committed one of the most brutal, despicable murders I've read about in some time. And why?
I think that's a very good question. Don't you?
And this is not an isolated incident by any stretch of the imagination.
The Huckster is a RINO.
That’s all that anyone here should need to know to not vote for this man in the primary.
The more I hear about Huckabee, the less I like him.
Just posting my tagline... God willing, miracles can happen...
DNC staffer on Huckabee: “His letting out murderers because they shout ‘Jesus’, his wanting to put 300,000 AIDS patients and Magic Johnson into isolation, ain’t even scratching the surface of what we’ve got on him.”
I’m amazed that Huckabee is doing as well as he is in GOP polls. He’s a Republican Jimmy Carter.
This doctrine advances the amoral notion that no matter how much you hurt others, millions of your fellow citizens will forgive you. It destroys Christianity's central moral tenets about forgiveness. Even by God, forgiveness is contingent on the sinner repenting, and it can be given only by the one sinned against.
And if your brother sins against you, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him," reads Luke 17:3-4. "And if seven times of the day he sins against you, and seven times of the day turns to you saying, I repent, you shall forgive him."
These days one often hears that "It is the Christian's duty to forgive, just as Jesus forgave those who crucified him." Of course, Jesus asked God to forgive those who crucified him. But Jesus never asked God to forgive those who had crucified thousands of other innocent people. Presumably he recognized that no one has the moral right to forgive evil done to others.
You and I have no right, religiously or morally, to forgive Timothy McVeigh or Michael Carneal; only those they sinned against have that right, If we are automatically forgiven no matter what we do, why repent? In fact, if we forgive everybody for all the evil they do, God and his forgiveness are unnecessary. We have substituted ourselves for God.
--Dennis Prager, author and radio talk show host. For the full article, surf over here.
I’ve heard him talk about that on his show, and it always comes to mind when I think about the Dope from Hope and his pardons.
Be patient this guys warts are just beginning to show. He would be a lot better fit in the Demo primaries.
I don’t get what anyone sees in Huckabee. He seems like a typical lying politician to me.
People can be forgiven and left in jail!
I agree, except that I do not think that the law of Christ regarding forgiveness and atonement is any less strict than a government needs to be. It's not the Bible's views which set men free from prison when they say "I'm sorry." It's the gullible nature of those who think they know what the Bible means that demands that kind of reaction.
Absolutely! I don't know why people think that someone should be released for prison just because he says, "I'm sorry." After all that doesn't erase the crime.
I frequently think of something the Apostle Paul once said when he was falsely accused of a crime by his enemies: "If I have done anything worthy of death, I refuse not to die." True repentance would involve sorry for ones deeds, and a willingness to pay the penalty for those deeds. When I see someone hold up his sorrow as evidence that he should be released from prison, I have to question whether he is sorrowful enough.
To pervert Justice by letting this man out would be a sinful thing to do.
Please read these articles:
Why parole a monster like Green(Another Rapist Killer Gets Clemency from Huck) http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1937215/posts
Huckabee admits immigration plan has revolving door (amnesty or “guest” workers) http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-gop/1937190/posts
Christians Need To Beware Of Mike Huckabee
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1936099/posts
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