The ARRA News Service has until not reported on former Gov. Mike Huckabee -Dumond issue. Most Arkansans, especially Republicans, have previously accepted Huckabee's position that he regretted Dumond's subsequent actions and that he (Huckabee) was not involved in Dumond's release. Most of us went about our business and many had not read Murray Waas' 2002 prize-winning investigative report about then Gov. Mike Huckabee actions to win Dumond's freedom. Regretfully, political expediency and wishing for the issue of Wayne Dumond to be over (he died in prison Aug 30, 2005), led most of us to close the book on the Dumond issue. We never dreamed that Huckabee would run for president and as a result, re-open this ugly issue. We expect that if Huckabee were to win the Republican nomination, the Democrats will address this issue. Therefore, it now needs to be fully addressed.
The victims of Wayne Dumond and others have called attention to former Gov. Huckabee's involvement with Dumond. We are sure Huckabee wishes that he and his staff had never gotten involved in the Dumond case. There was absolutely no need for Huckabee to get involved. Thus his actions now force the public's to question why did he get involved, what caused him to intervene and risk his political career for a rapist, and why did he dispute Dumond's rape victim account of the rape? Dumond had a previous history of sexual abuse before arriving in Arkansas and eventually being sent to prison for a rape. After his early release, he went on to rape and murder again.
Obviously, the victim's of Dumond are not supporters of Mike Huckabee. It would nice if we could write this off as a mistake by a new Governor if it were not for the fact that reports by Post Prison Transfer (Parole) Board members in 2002 relate that Huckabee pressured them for the release of Dumond. Also, there was a fellow Baptist minister who campaigned for Dumond's release. Finally, we wonder how Huckabee could have shown compassion for a rapist while evidencing no compassion for the victim who was raped by denying to her that she was raped by Dumond because of new DNA evidence which proved to be nonexistent.
Both previously and now as a presidential candidate, Huckabee has said that it was the "Parole" Board who released Dumond. This is correct - But, Huckabee does not relate that he met with the Board behind closed doors. According to statements by four board members, Huckabee made it clear he wanted Dumond released. Huckabee and his staff members pushed through the parole. After his release, Dumond again raped and this time murdered Carole Sue Shields. Also, Missouri identified Dumond was suspected in another rape and murder. The above facts are identified in the below referenced investigative report.
This month an ad depicted in the below video called attention to the Huckabee's involvement in Dumond. Following is the video:
New sources, including an advisor to Gov. Mike Huckabee, have told the Arkansas Times that Huckabee and a senior member of his staff exerted behind-the-scenes influence to bring about the parole of rapist Wayne Dumond . . . shows the extent to which Huckabee and a key aide were involved in the process to win Dumond’s release. It was a process marked by deviation from accepted parole practice and direct personal lobbying by the governor, in an apparently illegal and unrecorded closed-door meeting with the parole board (. . .Post Prison Transfer Board. . .). 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.
The Times has also learned that:
• Ermer Pondexter, a former member of the Post Prison Transfer Board, says she was persuaded by the parole board chairman Brownlee to vote for Dumond’s release and because she knew the governor supported it.
• The board did not allow its recording secretary to attend a closed session with the governor regarding Dumond, nor was the session taped, a departure from custom.
• Board chair Brownlee [2005 note: Brownless has since been reappointed to the Board by Huckabee] personally interviewed Dumond in prison and set in motion the reconsideration of the board’s August 1996 vote to refuse Dumond parole. Normally, inmates must wait a year after a decision for a new hearing. . . .
Four former parole board members have spoken at length to a Times reporter about the Dumond parole. Three of those board members — Ermer Pondexter, Dr. Charles Chastain and Deborah Springer Suttlar — spoke for the record. The fourth only agreed . . . to speak anonymously. A senior state employee who served as an advisor to Huckabee on the Dumond case also spoke on the condition that he be granted anonymity. He provided a detailed account that has been largely corroborated by former and current members of the Post Prison Transfer Board, other Arkansas state officials, court records, Arkansas State Police files, and previously confidential records of the parole board. . . .
“The reason that I voted as I did was because Mr. Brownlee specifically asked me to vote for the parole,” Pondexter said. “I thought that Mr. Brownlee was acting on behalf of the governor, and I was trying to support the chairman of the board, and I was trying to support the governor ... “I signed the [parole] papers because the governor wanted Dumond paroled. I was thinking the governor was working for the best interests of the state. So I signed it.”
Said another former board member: “Anybody has to be really careful in a situation like this. This is a small state, and the governor or his supporters can make life uncomfortable not only for someone with a career in public life, but also in private business.” . . . “For Governor Huckabee to say that he had no influence with the board is something that he knows to be untrue. He came before the board and made his views known that [Dumond] should have been paroled ... “ Suttlar noted that just prior to Huckabee’s appearance before the board the board had voted 4-1 against Dumond’s parole. After Huckabee’s board appearance, her colleagues largely reversed themselves, voting 4-1 for Dumond’s release. . . .
A board member, who only agreed to speak on condition of anonymity, said, “We are not talking rocket science here. The board jobs are known to some degree [to be] political patronage, and they’re not the most difficult jobs for the pay.” Board members currently earn more than $70,000 a year. “And then there’s the most obvious: If the governor likes you, you might get to keep your job.” One board who voted for Dumond, Railey Steele, was reappointed shortly before his vote. Brownlee was reappointed by Huckabee this year. . . .
On Sept. 20, Gov. Huckabee announced his intention to commute Wayne Dumond’s sentence to time served. The governor and his staff were unprepared for the public outcry that followed his announcement that he was likely to free Dumond. . . . Huckabee was then new to his job — he’d been in office only a couple of months — and was fearful of his first stumble, the official said.
In an effort to stem the political fallout, Huckabee and his staff agreed to meet for the first time with Dumond’s victim, Ashley Stevens, her family, and Fletcher Long, the prosecuting attorney who sent Dumond to prison. In interviews, both Walter “Stevie” Stevens, Ashley’s father, and Long both said they came away frustrated that Huckabee knew so few specifics about the case. “He [Huckabee] kept insisting that there was DNA evidence that has since exonerated Dumond, when that very much wasn’t the case,” recalled Long. “No matter that that wasn’t true … we couldn’t seem to say or do anything to disabuse him of that notion.” In fact, there had never been any DNA testing in the Ashley Stevens case. The state official who advised Huckabee on the Dumond case confirmed that the governor knew very little about Ashley Stevens’ case: “I don’t believe that he had access to, or read, the law enforcement records or parole commission’s files — even by then,” the official said. “He already seemed to have made up his mind, and his knowledge of the case appeared to be limited to a large degree as to what people had told him, what Jay Cole had told him, and what he had read in the New York Post.”
Jay Cole, like Huckabee, is a Baptist minister, pastor for the Mission Fellowship Bible Church in Fayetteville and a close friend of the governor and his wife. On the ultra-conservative radio program he hosts, Cole has championed the cause of Wayne Dumond for more than a decade. Cole has repeatedly claimed that Dumond’s various travails are the result of Ashley Stevens’ distant relationship to Bill Clinton. The governor was also apparently relying on information he got from Steve Dunleavy, first as a correspondent for the tabloid television show “A Current Affair” and later as a columnist for the New York Post. Much of what Dunleavy has written about the Dumond saga has been either unverified or is demonstrably untrue. . . . “The problem with the governor is that he listens to Jay Cole and reads Steve Dunleavy and believes them ... without doing other substantative work,” the state official said.
Had Huckabee examined in detail the parole board’s files regarding Dumond, he would have known Dumond had compiled a lengthy criminal resume. 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. . . .
Huckabee’s deadline to act on Dumond’s commutation was Jan. 20, 1997. Four days earlier, the parole board freed Dumond instead. What happened to prompt the turn of events? According to the state official who advised Huckabee, the governor found a way to achieve his goal to release Dumond, but with some political cover provided by the parole board. “It would not have necessarily been a vote for parole,” the official said. “I think we would have been grateful for even a close vote.” At the end of the entire process, he says, “we never thought we could extract from the board what we ended up with.”
On Oct. 31, 1996, Huckabee met with the parole board. Huckabee has categorically denied that he supported the Dumond parole during the closed portion of the meeting, but four current and former board members tell the Times that Huckabee in fact did so. The minutes of the Oct. 31, 1996, open meeting provide no detail as to what transpired. The minutes simply state: “Governor Mike Huckabee and the board went into executive session. The board appreciates the governor meeting with them to discuss his and other concerns regarding criminal justice and rehabilitation and sharing his viewpoints on other issues.” Present at the meeting were Brownlee, Chastain, Allen, Pieroni and Suttlar. . . .
“It was thought to be a routine meeting,” Chastain recalled. “Huckabee said, ‘There is this one case I want to talk to you about.’ ” Brownlee then had the board go into executive session, . . . Chastain provided the following account of an exchange with Huckabee. “The governor felt strongly that Dumond had gotten a raw deal,” Chastain recalled. “He said the sentence was awfully excessive for what he did. “I said, ‘Governor, well that happens. When you rape a cheerleader in a small town like that, that’s what is going to happen.’ He responded, ‘Most people don’t get a life sentence plus 20 years.’ I pointed out that his sentence had already been reduced to 39 1/2 years and said, ‘That’s not really out of line at all.’
Most of the other board members remained silent, as he and the governor argued over the issue. “I got the impression that no one wanted to argue with the governor,” Chastain said. Suttlar, Chastain, Pondexter and a fourth board member also question the propriety of the board going into a closed-door session to discuss the issue.
“The board is supposed to be autonomous,” Suttlar asserted. “Whenever we all come together, the public is supposed to be notified by law. And we should have never been in executive session with a governor about anything.” The board’s executive session appears to have been a violation of the state’s Freedom of Information Act, which says state boards may meet privately only for the “specific purpose of considering employment, appointment, promotion, demotion, disciplining or resignation of any public officer or employee.”
. . . Suttlar told the Times that she and other board members did not object to Brownlee taking the board into executive session, and covered for the chairman as well, because they were, for the most part, friends with him, and did not want to embarrass him. “And so when the press called and wanted to know why Mr. Brownlee wanted to go into executive session, we said we didn’t know why,” Suttlar said. “We couldn’t answer that question. What were we going to say? That he was protecting the governor? That’s exactly what it was. The governor started talking about Dumond, so Mr. Brownlee knew that was inappropriate and he went into executive session in order to allow the governor to speak without the press being there.”
. . . Though he’s distancing himself from the accused murderer today, the record has long been clear that Huckabee was an advocate of Dumond’s freedom. On the day of the vote, Huckabee released a statement in support of the board’s action: “I concur with the board’s action and hope the lives of all those involved can move forward. The action of the board accomplishes what I sought to do in considering an earlier request for commutation ... “In light of the action of the board, my original intent to commute the sentence to time served is no longer relevant.”
Huckabee’s office then released a letter to Dumond denying his application for a pardon. “Dear Wayne,” Huckabee wrote, “I have reviewed your applications for executive clemency, specifically a commutation and/or pardon. ... My desire is that you be released from prison. I feel now that parole is the best way for your reintegration into society. ... Therefore, after careful consideration ... I have denied your applications.” Huckabee was able to achieve what he wanted to do in the first place: Release Dumond from prison with no apparent political cost to the governor. The public was told that Dumond was paroled solely due to an autonomous decision by the Post Prison Transfer Board. . . . [Read More]
Tags: Carol Sue Shields, Election 2008, Lois Davidson, Mike Huckabee, Murder, Parole, rape, Wayne Dumond, ARRA News Service To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!
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