"..I'm very glad that I didn't have anything to do with his release," the governor told Donrey Media.

"That's bullshit," says the victim's father Stevie Stevens. "I don't know any other way to say it."
More disinterested parties, not to mention the public record, back Stevens.

DuMond went to prison for raping a Forrest City teenager in 1984. His case became a national controversy
because of the victim's distant relationship to Bill Clinton and DuMond's castration by unknown parties
while he was awaiting trial.

Mike Huckabee, without consulting the rape victim, announced he was considering clemency for DuMond in
the fall of 1996, after DuMond had been unanimously refused parole. Huckabee even expressed doubts about
DuMond's guilt, although the conviction had been upheld by a U.S. appellate court.

Huckabee's shabby disregard of the rape victim sparked an outcry and the governor pulled back, deferring the
dirty work to the state parole board. In a closed session with the parole board, Huckabee pleaded DuMond's case.

Remembers Dr. Charles Chastain, a board member at the time: "The governor said he'd looked into the case a lot
and he'd decided DuMond was just a guy from the wrong side of the tracks who'd gotten a bad deal. He said he
wasn't sure he was guilty." The speech was, effectively, a plea for parole, Chastain said.

The parole board eventually obliged, with Chastain voting no and two other members abstaining, even though the
victim had pleaded for continued incarceration (Dumond had a lengthy record of violence and had refused to take
responsbility for the rape). It's worth noting that a couple of those who voted yes owe their continuing highly paid
positions on the board to Huckabee reappointments.

Was Huckabee important in the parole, which the same board had denied six months earlier?
"I assume he was because of the turnaround in votes," Chastain said.

Minutes after the parole vote, Huckabee made the choreographed announcement that he had denied commutation.
But in his "Dear Wayne" letter to the rapist, he made his sympathies clear. "My desire is that you be released from
prison," wrote Huckabee.

It's obvious that Huckabee's intervention led directly to DuMond's freedom. So now he must pay the consequences
that sometimes attach to mercy. I've praised him before for venturing into the political danger zone of executive
clemency. And I'd praise him now if only he'd speak the truth: He followed his heart and championed DuMond's
release. The deaths of two Missouri women now may prove that he, and many others, couldn't see into the depths
of Wayne DuMond's dark soul.

But this would require Mike Huckabee to admit a mistake.