For those of us who weren't paying attention, Dumond was one of the Clinton Conspiracies. Short version is that Clinton interevened to put this poor innocent man away because of his distant relationship to the 'alleged' victim.
When the poor innocent man raped and murdered someone following his release, Huckabee attempted to distance himself from what had been his very public Clinton-hate motivated cause.
Waas writes:
Huckabee has denied a role in Dumond's release, which has become an issue in his race for re-election against Democrat Jimmie Lou Fisher. Fisher says Huckabee's advocacy of Dumond's freedom, plus other acts of executive clemency, exhibit poor judgment. In response, Huckabee has shifted responsibility for Dumond's release to others, claiming former Gov. Jim Guy Tucker made Dumond eligible for parole and saying the Post Prison Transfer Board made the decision on its own to free Dumond.
But the Times' new reporting 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 (the informal name by which the Post Prison Transfer Board is known).
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.
[...]
"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. Dunleavy has all but accused Ashley Stevens of having fabricated her rape, derisively referring to her in one column as a "so-called victim," and brusquely asserting in another, "That rape never happened."
The columnist wrote that Dumond was a "Vietnam veteran with no record" when in fact he did have a criminal record. He claimed there existed DNA evidence by "one of the most respected DNA experts in the country" to exonerate Dumond, even though there was no such evidence. He wrote that Bill Clinton had personally intervened to keep Dumond in prison, even though Clinton had recused himself in 1990 from any involvement in the case because of his distant relationship with Stevens.
"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
Nice to see Waas is still working. Wondered where he'd been.
I bet Dunleavy wishes he didn't write this column. Or this one. Ah, I bet he doesn't give a shit actually. Lying piece of crap that he is.
UPDATE: To be fair to Half Moon Steve, I must point out that the liberal media loved Wayne Dumond too. Here's the Village Voice shedding tears for him.