Huckabee released a rapist who later raped and murdered, out of animus toward Clinton

Second, DuMond’s victim, who’d recognized her attacker on the street weeks after the crime, was a distant cousin of Bill Clinton. That excited the kinds of conspiracy nuts that circulated “Clinton death lists.” They portrayed poor DuMond as a victim of the Clinton machine’s satanic wrath. His innocence became an article of faith on the fruitcake right.

Huckabee came into office talking about pardoning DuMond, citing “serious questions as to the legitmacy of his guilt” to reporters. He did that without consulting the prosecutor, who described the case as one of the strongest he’d ever tried. If nothing else, what were the odds that the victim would have identified, purely by chance, a perp with an extensive rap sheet?

DuMond’s criminal history included arrests for murder and assault as well as multiple rape charges. He’d beaten the murder rap by testifying against two accomplices he’d helped beat a soldier to death with a claw hammer. The rape cases never came to trial because the victims were too scared to testify. Young Ashley Stevens’ courageous eyewitness testimony, however, sent him to the penitentiary.

After Stevens went public in 1997, Huckabee relented somewhat. Instead of pardoning DuMond, he held an improper closed-door meeting with the parole board, which subsequently reversed itself, paroling DuMond to Missouri. Huckabee claimed the board brought up DuMond; board members insisted he did. Huckabee wrote a “Dear Wayne” letter stating: “My desire is that you be released from prison. I feel that parole is the best way for your reintroduction into society to take place.”

After Huckabee told the board, in executive session, that he believed Dumond got a “raw deal,” according to a board member who was there, and supported his release, board chairman Leroy Brownlee personally paved the way for Dumond’s release, according to board records and former members. During that time — from December 1996 to January 1997 — Brownlee regularly consulted with Butch Reeves, the governor’s prison liaison, on the status of his efforts, two state officials have told the Times.

snip

In 1972, Dumond was arrested in the beating death of a man in Oklahoma. Dumond was not charged in that case after agreeing to testify for the prosecution against two others. But he admitted on the witness stand that he was among those who struck the murder victim with a claw hammer.

In 1973, Dumond was arrested and placed on probation for five years for admitting in Oregon to molesting a teen-age girl in the parking lot of a shopping center.

Three years later, according to Arkansas State Police records, Dumond admitted to raping an Arkansas woman. (Dumond later repudiated the confession, saying he was coerced by police.) Dumond was never formally charged in that case; the woman, saying she feared for her life, did not press charges. (See sidebar.)