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Old Clemency May Be Issue for Huckabee

When Mike Huckabee, a former Southern Baptist minister then serving as governor of Arkansas, granted clemency to Maurice Clemmons nine years ago, he cited his age: Mr. Clemmons was 16 when he began the crime spree for which he was sentenced to more than 100 years in prison.

Now, Mr. Clemmons is being sought as the suspect in the killing of four uniformed police officers, execution-style, on Sunday as they sat in a coffee shop near Tacoma, Wash., writing reports.

Mr. Huckabee, now a Fox News talk-show host, has been leading the pack of possible Republican contenders for president in 2012. But the killings of the police officers are focusing renewed attention on his long-contentious record of pardoning convicts or commuting their sentences.

In a decade as governor beginning in 1996, Mr. Huckabee did so twice as many times as his three predecessors combined. He typically gave little explanation for individual pardons. But he spoke often of his belief in redemption, based on a strong religious belief that even criminals are capable of changing their lives and often deserve a second chance. He also raised concerns about the fairness of the Arkansas justice system.

The commutation of Mr. Clemmons’s sentence was routine enough that it failed to make a list of Mr. Huckabee’s 10 “most publicized” prison commutations compiled by an Arkansas newspaper in August 2004. And if it turns out to be a case in which a parole had gone bad, it will be difficult to pin responsibility solely on Mr. Huckabee, because many others made decisions that kept Mr. Clemmons out of prison.

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Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and his wife Janet Huckabee in Conway, Ark. in 2001. Credit...Spencer Tirey

Mr. Clemmons had been convicted for a series of burglaries and robberies that began in 1989, and would not have been eligible for parole until 2021. He applied for clemency in 2000, writing in a petition to Mr. Huckabee that he had simply fallen in with a bad crowd in a bad neighborhood as a teenager, and that he “had learned through the ‘school of hard knocks’ to appreciate and respect the rights of others.”

Mr. Huckabee commuted his sentence, making him eligible for immediate parole. Within six months, Mr. Clemmons violated the conditions of his parole, returning to prison in July 2001 for aggravated robbery. When he was paroled again by the state in 2004, the police in Little Rock served a warrant on him related to a 2001 robbery. But a lawyer for Mr. Clemmons argued that too much time had elapsed since the warrant was issued, and prosecutors dropped the charges.

Mr. Huckabee, who rode a brand of prairie populism to finish second in the Republican presidential primaries in 2008, granted more than 1,000 pardons or clemency requests as governor. As his reputation for granting clemency spread, more convicts applied. Aides said he read each file personally.

In most cases, he followed the recommendation of the parole board, but in several cases he overrode the objections of prosecutors, judges and victims’ families. And in several, he followed recommendations for clemency from Baptist preachers who had been longtime supporters.

Prosecutors told him he was ignoring his responsibility to explain to citizens why he was setting free convicted murderers and rapists. His response, some of them say, was to blame others and strike out against his critics — an off-note from a man they consider a gifted politician.

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Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, right, at a rally in 2000. Credit...Danny Johnston/Associated Press

“Victims groups were pretty well ignored, along with boots-on-the-streets law enforcement and good citizens who sit on these juries,” said Larry Jegley, who objected to Mr. Clemmons’s clemency request as the prosecuting attorney for Pulaski County, where he was convicted.

Robert Herzfeld, then the prosecuting attorney of Saline County, wrote a letter to Governor Huckabee in January 2004, saying his policy on clemency was “fatally flawed” and suggesting that he should announce specific reasons for granting clemency. Mr. Huckabee’s chief aide on clemency wrote back: “The governor read your letter and laughed out loud. He wanted me to respond to you. I wish you success as you cut down on your caffeine consumption.”

“It was all a very personal issue for him,” said Mr. Herzfeld, who later sued successfully to overturn one of Mr. Huckabee’s clemency decisions, which would have set free a man convicted in a bludgeoning death. “It was always about how I was trying to get him or another prosecutor was trying to get him, not about how to do it right. He’s brilliant politically and very likable, but it seems like there’s a blind spot on this issue.”

With Mr. Clemmons, political consultants say Mr. Huckabee may have hit his Willie Horton moment

“As a front-runner, obviously with circumstances like this, it’s out there as a big issue,” said Ed Rollins, the manager of Mr. Huckabee’s 2008 presidential campaign.

Mr. Huckabee survived a similar moment before, during the Iowa caucuses, when former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts criticized his judgment in the case of Wayne DuMond, a convicted rapist who raped and killed a woman 11 months after being paroled in Arkansas.

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Mike Huckabee was criticized for his judgment in the case of Wayne DuMond, right.Credit...Spencer Tirey/Associated Press

Mr. Huckabee said that he had opposed clemency, and that it had been his predecessor, Jim Guy Tucker, who had made Mr. DuMond eligible for parole by reducing his sentence. “If anyone needs to get a Willie Horton out of it, it’s Jim Guy Tucker and the Democrat Party and it ain’t me,” he said to reporters at the time.

But Mr. Huckabee had come into office saying he intended to commute Mr. DuMond’s sentence. He later denied the request only as the state’s board granted Mr. DuMond parole. Members of the board later said they had been pressured by the governor.

Mr. Clemmons’s case packs more potency: the facts of Mr. Huckabee’s involvement in the clemency decision are less in dispute, and the crime has played over and over on national television.

“It’s the same issue yet again,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster. “The difference this time is that Governor Huckabee would start with greater visibility and higher in the polls, which always enhances and exacerbates any possible criticisms.”

Should he run, there are many prosecutors and victims’ advocates in Arkansas who say they are ready to argue to the national news media that this is just one of the cases where Mr. Huckabee used poor judgment and ignored an inmate’s history of criminal behavior in deciding for clemency. Through a spokeswoman, Mr. Huckabee declined requests for an interview, but a statement from the “press team” on the Web site of his political action committee said that should Mr. Clemmons be found responsible for the shootings, “it will be the result of a series of failures in the criminal justice system in both Arkansas and Washington State.”

“He was recommended for and received commutation of his original sentence from 1990,” the statement said. “This commutation made him parole-eligible and he was then paroled by the parole board once they determined he met the conditions at that time.”

On Sunday, before the shooting, Mr. Huckabee sounded ambivalent on Fox News about running for president, saying he liked his role at the network and wanted to be sure that, unlike in 2008, he would receive support from the Republican establishment.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: ’00 Clemency May Be Issue For Huckabee. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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