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Via @seattletimes: E-mails show Washington state battled Arkansas to keep Clemmons in custody http://bit.ly/6g4aug

1:27 AM Dec 2nd from TweetDeck
Retweeted by 5 people

From the article:

Clemmons was arrested in Washington on July 1. The following day he was formally charged with second-degree rape of a child — the eighth felony charge filed against him in Washington this year alone. All eight of those charges traced to a spree of violence in May and were still pending against Clemmons while the two states tangled over how to deal with him.

Arkansas had an interest in Clemmons because he remained on parole in that state. Convicted of at least five felony charges, Clemmons served more than 10 years in Arkansas’ prison system before being released in 2004 and moving to Washington.

When Clemmons landed in trouble in May 2009, Arkansas issued a warrant for violating the conditions of his parole. This warrant, if enforced, would have allowed Washington to keep Clemmons in jail without chance of posting bond.

But on July 16, an Arkansas official notified the Washington State Department of Corrections (DOC) that Arkansas was rescinding its warrant.

Marjorie Owens, a Washington DOC administrator, wrote a blistering response on July 23, saying Arkansas’ decision appeared to violate the Interstate Compact for Adult Offender Supervision (ICAOS), an agreement governing how states treat one another’s offenders who are on supervision.

“I’m concerned that you have no problem releasing your offender into our community, based on his behavior,” she wrote. “I thought ICAOS was all about community safety.”

Owens also wrote: “Hopefully the offender will not get out on bail.”

On Aug. 5, an Arkansas parole official named Linda Strong sent a terse reply: “The warrant was rescinded. When the pending charges are adjudicated we will reconsider the case.”

It begs the question of whether or not the officials in Arkansas actually wanted Clemmons to be released.

Who could possibly have wanted that?

Possibly people who cared more about killing Huckabee’s political career than they cared about Clemmons killing people.

Plausible? Yes.
Probable? I don’t know. But how do you explain this:

Vail said the Clemmons case was his worst experience with another state in his 33 years with the Washington DOC

If Clemmons had converted to Islam while in prison, and people on the left knew that he would be a Jihadist if released, what better way to hurt Huckabee’s future political chances than to intentionally re-release a Jihadist that Huckabee had released nine years earlier?

Arkansas DOC officials did NOT act normally in this case.

WHY???

Blaming Huckabee for the actions of the Arkansas prosecutor and Washington judge is wrong.

No, it is not wrong. In case you are not aware of it, counting on the people in our justice system to do something about the dangerous people who slip through the net and get back on the streets to scoop them up at the next opportunity is highly irresponsible.

Clemmons was an incorrigible thug. It was obvious back when he was just a ‘kid.’ We had gotten him behind bars. Huckabee let him out. For no good reason. And now many people have been brutalized over the years and finally several killed as a consequence.

You can rationalize that until Hell freezes over, but you’ll still be wrong to try to defend it in any way, shape or form.

If Huckabee had had a “Oh my God! What have I done?” reaction, realizing there was something wrong with his philosophy that got that thug back on the street, then you might have a point. He did not.

I’m done arguing about it. Huckabee is finished as a presidential candidate. Good enough.

I accept that out of those people, Huckabee is the only one who ran for President.

I accept that as this is primarily a political blog, Huckabee will get more attention than the non-politicians.

I accept that Huckabee is responsible for commuting Clemmons’ sentence from 108 years to 47 years. I accept that Huckabee’s actions led to Clemmons being parole eligible. While the board, not Huckabee, paroled Clemmons, I accept that Huckabee can be blamed for the 2000 parole because the board could not have paroled him without Huckabee reducing the sentence.

Huckabee can be fairly blamed for Clemmons’ freedom from 2000 to 2004.

Once Clemmons started violating his parole, though, he should have been sent back to prison to finish the remaining 36 years of the 47 year sentence that Huckabee gave him.

Blaming Huckabee for the actions of the Arkansas prosecutor and Washington judge is wrong.

It is you who is setting up the straw man, not me. Anyone who is blaming Huckabee for Clemmons’ freedom from 2004-2009 is setting up Huckabee as a strawman/scapegoat.

To focus all of your blame on Huckabee, and ignore the actions of others, is wrong and politically-motivated.

Nobody is ignoring the actions of other. Every bad choice after Huckabee’s bad choice were clearly worse than his choice. Those are sickening, digusting, even evil people who made those decisions.

But none of them will ever become President of the United States of America, so the significance for those of us dealing with the incident on a national scale is vastly less.

I have already said before that my guess is they were all Democrats and/or RINO’s. None of them deserve to ever be in the kind of position where they can make that kind of horrible decision ever again.

So cut it out with the straw men. If you voted for Huckabee, admit you screwed up, and get over it.

Huckabee screwed up. Clemmons was exactly the kind of incorrigible young thug who did not belong on the street. Ever.

Hold Huckabee accountable for the commutation in 2000.

Hold the prosecutor accountable for remaining silent about the commutation in 2000.

Hold the parole board accountable for the parole in 2000.

Hold Huckabee, the prosecutor, and the parole board accountable for Clemmons’ actions between his 2000 release and being taken back into custody in 2004.

Do not blame Huckabee for decisions and actions taken by other people between 2004 and 2009 that re-released Clemmons multiple times.

It is absolutely true that if Huckabee had not commuted the 108 year sentence to 47 years, then Clemmons would not have been free to kill those four cops.

It is also true that Clemmons had already served more time (11 years) than most whites received in their total sentence for similar crimes.

And it is also true that multiple other people were responsible for re-releasing Clemmons multiple times.

To focus all of your blame on Huckabee, and ignore the actions of others, is wrong and politically-motivated.

And I am absolutely serious that using the murder of four police officers as a political weapon disgusts me.

From wikipedia:

“Clemmons lived in Marianna, Arkansas in his early youth, and moved to Little Rock as a teen. Clemmons was arrested when he was a junior at Hall High School for carrying a .25-caliber pistol on school property.[3][4] He claimed to be carrying the gun because he was “beaten by dopers”, and said he had “something for them” if they attacked him again.[3] In 1989, a 17-year-old Clemmons and two other accomplices robbed 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 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.[4]

Clemmons was accused multiple times of displaying violence during court appearances. On one occassion, Clemmons dismantled a metal door stop and hid it in his sock to use as a weapon. It was discovered and confiscated by a court bailiff. One another instance, Clemmons took a lock from his holding cell and threw it at a bailiff, but missed and accidentally hit his mother instead.[3][4] Clemmons was once accused of reaching for a guard’s pistol while being transported to court. During one trial, he was shackled in leg irons and seated next to a uniformed officer because the presiding judge ordered extra security, claiming Clemmons had threatened him.[3]

By 1990, Clemmons was sentenced to 108 years in prison for eight felony charges from his teenage years in Arkansas. The total prison term stemmed from multiple sentences, some of which were concurrent to others and some were consecutive.[5][6] 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.[4][7] During his sentencing on the charges, a circuit judge told Clemmons that he had broken his mother’s heart, to which Clemmons responded, “I have broken my own heart.”[3] Clemmons was also sentenced in 1989 to 35 years in prison for robbing the woman in front of the Little Rock hotel bar. Among his other sentencings were six years for weapon possession based on his high school arrest;[4] and eight years for burglary, theft and probation in Pulaski County on September 9, 1989.[5] Clemmons was not to be eligible for parole until 2015 or later.[4]“

I really want to know Clemmons’ juvenile record. Either way it would strongly affect how the whole thing looks in terms of Huckabee’s involvement.

You may not want it ‘politicized,’ but Huckabee is/was a serious presidential contender. Everything he touches/has touched becomes political.

We should all be screaming bloody murder for Clemmons’ juvenile record. It would be nice if the blogosphere would take that up.

I am very curious about the reasons that were given for Clemmons’ orginal severe sentence. That seems so obviously way over the top.

It would not surprise me if he had a really ugly juvenile record that came out in the sentencing process, but we will probably never know because it is sooooooo important to ‘protect’ juvenile thugs no matter how vile their behavior was.

If you read Huckabee’s account, it appears that he believed racism had something to do with the original 108 year sentence.

I know the race card gets played far too often, but that doesn’t mean that racism is never a legitimate factor. I don’t think that either you or I can accurately judge how much of a factor racism played in the original sentence. But Mike Huckabee was born and raised in Arkansas, and saw first-hand instances of racism. Huckabee says that Clemmons had already served more time (11 years) than most whites received in total sentence for similar crimes. Even when Huckabee reduced the sentence from 108 years to 47 years, that was still a steep sentence and did not guarantee that Clemmons would be paroled by the board.

One thing that is clear to me is that Huckabee is not racist against people whose skin is darker than his. Someone who was racist against blacks would never have reduced the 108 year sentence given to a 16 year old black.

Clemmons, the man who (presumably) pulled the trigger multiple times to kill four police officers.

I want to clarify that I do believe Clemmons was the man who pulled the trigger multiple times to kill four police officers. The reason I say (presumably) is because I respect the rule of law, and Clemmons is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Of course, there will be no trial of a dead man, so Clemmons will remain presumed innocent from a legal standpoint. But if it is true that Clemmons had a gunshot wound from the initial shooting, and had in his possession one of the officers’ guns, then there is little doubt that Clemmons was in fact the killer of those four officers.

Why are the attacks only directed at Mike Huckabee?

Because Huckabee is the only one of political significance…

Exactly. And I object strongly to the politicalization of the murders of these four police officers.

Clemmons is presumed to be the one who pulled the trigger. The focus should be on Clemmons, and then you expand out from there to examine everyone around or involved with Clemmons, including everyone who was involved in the judicial process in both states, and Clemmons’ associates both inside and outside of prison. This could include the Nation of Islam, and this could have been a Jihadist attack.

Mike Huckabee is certainly one of the people involved in that sphere around Clemmons. Mike Huckabee can and should be held accountable for the decisions and actions of Mike Huckabee alone. Others in the sphere around Clemmons can and should be held accountable for their own decisions and actions.

To make Mike Huckabee the focus of this discussion, in the hopes that it will end his political career, is exceedingly wrong, biased, and repulsive.

Again, the focus should be on Clemmons, the man who (presumably) pulled the trigger multiple times to kill four police officers. Then expand to the sphere around Clemmons and treat everyone involved equally and fairly. The focus should not be on Huckabee, excluding the roles played by those who released Clemmons multiple times after Huckabee’s involvement.

It just disgusts me that the murder of police officers is being politicized.

Why are the attacks only directed at Mike Huckabee?

Because Huckabee is the only one of political significance and Huckabee was supposed to be a conservative. Most of the others who let him go were probably Democrats, and Democrats are supposed to be evil. Otherwise they wouldn’t be Democrats. We all expect it, and the rotten kind of people who vote for Democrats let it slide.

I am very curious about the reasons that were given for Clemmons’ orginal severe sentence. That seems so obviously way over the top.

It would not surprise me if he had a really ugly juvenile record that came out in the sentencing process, but we will probably never know because it is sooooooo important to ‘protect’ juvenile thugs no matter how vile their behavior was.

Clemmons may be dead, but the quest to hold his enablers – all of them — accountable for their action and inaction has only just begun.

Each person who played a part in Clemmons being released, on multiple occasions, needs to give an account for why they made the decisions they made.

Yes, Mike Huckabee played a part. And now Mike Huckabee has given his account of the decision he made and why he made it. It’s well worth reading and asking yourself how you would have responded, once you know all of the factors that did, and didn’t, go into the decision.

Mike Huckabee is responsible and accountable for the decisions made by Mike Huckabee. You can be as angry as you want at him for taking a 108 year sentence, given to a 16 year old for burglary and robbery charges, and commuting that sentence to 47 years after Clemmons had already served more time (11 years) than most people of another skin color even receive in total sentence.

Huckabee did not pardon Clemmons. (and no one else did, either)

Huckabee did not parole Clemmons. Others did, and they need to give their own account for why they did so.

When Clemmons was back in prison in 2004 for a parole violation, Huckabee was not the one who failed to pursue charges and in fact dropped them, allowing Clemmons to go free. Those who did so need to give their own account for their actions.

Huckabee should not be held accountable for the actions of anyone other than himself. Huckabee is not the one who continued to avoid extradition of Clemmons back to Arkansas.

Huckabee is not the one who ignored signs of psychotic behavior in Washington.

I take no issue with people holding Huckabee accountable for the decisions he made and the actions he took.

I take great issue with people acting like Huckabee is nearly solely responsible for Clemmons being released from custody in Washinton state just before he shot and killed four of our nation’s finest.

And I take great issue with people who take a sick joy in hoping that the murder of four police officers may be used as a political weapon against a politician.

Once Clemmons was back in custody, the fact that Huckabee reduced Clemmons’ original sentence from 108 years to 47 years became moot. Those who re-released Clemmons, under much worse circumstances, are much more accountable for the actions Clemmons took upon his re-release.

Where are the calls for accountability from the parole board?

Where are the calls for accountability from the prosecutor in Little Rock who didn’t keep Clemmons in prison in 2004 or get him brought back to Arkansas for his repeated parole violations?

Where are the calls for accountability from the Washington judge?

Why are the attacks only directed at Mike Huckabee?

Thank God the arresting officer was on his toes and didn’t become yet another murdered cop.

I am done with this thread… getting late. bye bye

Good riddance, you tasteless, small-minded racist j*rk.