US News
Is Wayne DuMond Huckabee's Willie Horton?
By M&C US News
Dec 4, 2007, 17:15 GMT

The folksy, funny preacher with a quick wit has many fans, but his detractors point to his record in Arkansas, and especially the case of Wayne DuMond, the paroled rapist who Mike Huckabee felt he had served his time, only to be paroled to kill two more people in another state.

"When they're kicking you in the rear, it's just proving you're still out front," joked Huckabee at the last CNN GOP debate.

CBS News reports that the likeable Baptist preacher is leading the field in the polls for Iowa.

The anti-tax Club for Growth has been hammering Huckabee over his record on taxes as governor; the AP has spotlighted the 16 ethics complaints filed against him in Arkansas, five of which were found to be violations; and Huckabee's fellow candidates for the GOP nomination have attacked him over his support for college scholarships for children of illegal aliens.

But it is the story of paroled rapist Wayne DuMond that is firing up Huckabee's opponents in the race to the White House.

We reported previously that back in 1985, DuMond was convicted of the rape of a 17-year-old girl related to then-Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton: She was the governor's distant cousin and the daughter of a major campaign contributor.

As Clinton rose to national prominence, the case came to the attention of his critics. Steve Dunleavy, a prominent New York Post columnist, wrote extensively of the case calling DuMond’s conviction "a travesty of justice."

DuMond said that while awaiting trial, masked men broke into his house and castrated him.

Though there were doubts about the story, but it built sympathy for DuMond among Clinton political enemies.

DuMond's sentence was life in prison, plus 20 years.

In 1992, Clinton's successor as governor, Jim Guy Tucker, reduced that sentence to 39 years, making DuMond eligible for parole.

Enter Mike Huckabee. He became governor in 1996, and expressed doubts about DuMond's guilt and said he was considering commuting his sentence to time served. After much protest, Huckabee decided against commutation but apparently wrote a letter to DuMond saying "my desire is that you be released from prison."

In less than a year, DuMond was paroled.

Despite Huckabee's office denying they had anything to do with it, evidence here  contradicts that assertion.

Now CBS News investigative political reporter Brian Montopoli writes that Charles Chastain, a Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, who was on the parole board at the time, told him that the governor met with the board to argue on DuMond’s behalf.

"He thought DuMond had gotten a raw deal," said Chastain, who calls himself neutral towards Huckabee. "He said he'd been born on the wrong side of the tracks and hadn't been treated all that fairly."

"I don't think the governor quite understood about parole proceedings," added Chastain. "I thought of the parole board as a quasi-judicial body that wouldn't be lobbied or otherwise interfered with by anyone outside of it, so I was a little bit surprised by it."

After the meeting a number of the board members "switched their vote" from the previous year, and DuMond was paroled, according to Chastain.

Huckabee campaign still denies Huckabee pressured the parole board. "If it was such an important issue for him, he would have commuted his sentence," Carter told CBS' Montopoli.

DuMond left prison in 1999 and ended up in Missouri where CBS claims he was arrested for sexually assaulting and murdering a woman named Carol Sue Shields. DuMond was also the leading suspect in the rape and murder of another woman.

He was convicted of murdering Shields and died in prison in 2005.

Huckabee Press Secretary Alice Stewart told CBSNews.com and Montopoli that Huckabee “had no influence regarding the parole board's decision to release Wayne Dumond.”

“Governor Huckabee had no authority to grant parole to Wayne Dumond or anyone else -- governors don’t have that authority in the parole process,” she said.

The Arkansas Times editorial staff maintains their position that Huckabee did, in fact, "clearly played a role in DuMond's release from prison."

"In the end, he took a series of actions that can be interpreted only one way: That he was an advocate for Wayne DuMond," said Brantley. "And it was bad judgment. And he's never been willing to take responsibility for it."