Maurice Clemmons, the former Arkansas prison inmate who gunned down four police officers in Washington is back in the news, and it’s not the kind of news good for potential presidential candidate Mike Huckabee.
Seattle Times reporters have completed a new book on Clemmons and it illustrates even more graphically how thoroughly unsuited for clemency Clemmons was when Huckabee extended it — without consulting prosecutors first. Even as he was writing letters proclaiming his rehabilitation, Clemmons was extorting other inmates, assaulting them and participating in gang rapes. There’s more, lots more. Paired with Wayne Dumond, he makes a matching set of trophies to poor judgment.
Here’s the link to the Seattle Times article. His eight felonies, his violent prison behavior, his refusal to take a plea bargain — it all puts the lie to Huckabee and his defenders who depict the clemency as an act of grace for a young black man treated unfairly by the system.