A convicted felon granted clemency nine years ago by former Arkansas Governor and 2008 presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is wanted for questioning in the shooting deaths of four police officers in Washington state.
Maurice Clemmons, the man wanted for questioning, has been convicted of five felonies in Arkansas and has been charged with eight felonies in Washington state.
The Seattle Times spoke to the prosecuting attorney in Arkansas who opposed Huckabee's clemency for Clemmons:
"This is the day I've been dreading for a long time," Larry Jegley, prosecuting attorney for Arkansas' Pulaski County said Sunday night when informed that Clemmons was being sought in connection to the killings...
Clemmons had been in jail in Pierce County for the past several months on a pending charge of second-degree rape of a child.
Huckabee has released a statement regarding Sunday's attack. He does not directly address his decision to grant Clemmons clemency (click here to read Huckabee's statement in its entirety):
Should [Clemmons] be found to be responsible for this horrible tragedy, it will be the result of a series of failures in the criminal justice system in both Arkansas and Washington State. He was recommended for and received a commutation of his original sentence from 1990, making him parole eligible and was paroled by the parole board once they determined he met the conditions at that time. He was arrested later for parole violation and taken back to prison to serve his full term, but prosecutors dropped the charges that would have held him... Our thoughts and prayers are and should be with the families of those honorable, brave, and heroic police officers.
An undated story from the Arkansas Leader provides more details on Clemmons' criminal history in Arkansas.the Arkansas Leader:
Maurice Clemmons received a 35-year sentence in the early 1990s for armed robbery and theft. His sentence was commuted in May 2000, and he was let out three months later.
The following March, Clemmons committed two armed robberies and other crimes and was sentenced to 10 years. You'd think they'd keep him locked up after that, but no: He was paroled last March and is now wanted for aggravated robbery.
If Huckabee decides to set these criminals free, Jegley says, at least "he ought to give an accounting. I can't imagine why in the world they'd want them released from jail. There's a good reason we're afraid of them. The sad truth is that a significant number of people re-offend."
Huckabee, who served as governor of Arkansas from 1996-2007, has a history of supporting pardons and commuting sentences of violent offenders. According to ABC News, Huckabee granted pardons and commutations to approximately 12 convicted murderers.
A study by the Arkansas Leader showed that between 1996 and 2004, Huckabee helped to free more Arkansas prisoners than were freed from all of Arkansas' six neighboring states--combined.
In 2004, The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette concluded that "9 percent of the prisoners who benefited from Huckabee's clemencies ended up in prison again."
Huckabee's pardons and commuted sentences as governor earned him extra attention during his bid for the Republican nomination in the 2008 presidential race. In 2007, Huffington Post published documents that contradicted Huckabee's story about the release of convicted serial-rapist Wayne Dumond in 1999. After Dumond was released from prison, he raped and murdered a 39-year-old woman and allegedly raped and murdered a pregnant 23-year-old woman before he was arrested and returned to prison.
While on the campaign trail, Huckabee has claimed that he supported the 1999 release of Wayne Dumond because, at the time, he had no good reason to believe that the man represented a further threat to the public. Thanks to Huckabee's intervention, conducted in concert with a right-wing tabloid campaign on Dumond's behalf, Dumond was let out of prison 25 years before his sentence would have ended.
"There's nothing any of us could ever do," Huckabee said... "None of us could've predicted what [Dumond] could've done when he got out."
But the confidential files show that Huckabee was provided letters from several women who had been sexually assaulted by Dumond and who indeed predicted that he would rape again - and perhaps murder - if released.
[Click here to read more Huffington Post campaign coverage of Huckabee's pardons]
In 2007, ABC News reported on the role that Huckabee's religious beliefs may have played in his decisions to support early release of so many prisoners:
"None of the prosecutors were ever told why Huckabee felt compelled to have a hand in freeing so many prisoners, though all of them speculate that his deeply religious nature led to a strong belief in repentance and forgiveness. In some cases, prosecutors say, evangelical leaders attested that a prisoner had found Jesus and that seemed to influence the governor's thoughts."
Huckabee is currently the host of the Fox News show Huckabee. On Sunday the AP reported that Huckabee was leaning "slightly" against a run for the US presidency in 2012.
PARKLAND, Wash. (AP)- A man with an extensive criminal past -- whose 95-year prison sentence was commuted in Arkansas nearly a decade ago -- was being sought Sunday as a "person of interest" in a deadly ambush on four police officers who were gunned down inside a coffee shop.
Pierce County sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer told reporters that Maurice Clemmons, 37, was one of several people investigators want to talk to and that he could not be called a suspect at this point.
In a news release, the sheriff's office said Clemmons has an extensive violent criminal history from Arkansas, including aggravated robbery and theft. Clemmons also recently was arrested and charged in Pierce County in Washington state for third-degree assault on a police officer, and second-degree rape of a child.
In 1989, Clemmons, then 17, was convicted in Little Rock for aggravated robbery. He was paroled in 2000 after then-Gov. Mike Huckabee commuted Clemmons' 95-year prison sentence. Huckabee, who was criticized during his run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 for the number of clemencies and commutations he granted, cited Clemmons' age at the time of the sentence.
After his release from prison, Clemmons violated his parole and was returned to prison in July 2001. He was released March 18, 2004, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette newspaper.
The four officers were with the 100-member police department of Lakewood, which adjoins the unincorporated area of Parkland, where the shootings took place. The city identified the victims as Sgt. Mark Renninger, 39; Ronald Owens, 37; Tina Griswold, 40; and Greg Richards 42.
Troyer said one of those officers fought with the gunman and may have wounded him before the officer died just outside the doorway. He told reporters that investigators were asking area medical providers to report any people wounded by gunshots.
Troyer said investigators believe two of the officers were shot dead while sitting in the shop, and a third was killed after standing up. The fourth apparently struggled with the gunman out the doorway and "gave up a good fight," getting off a few shots before he was either shot there or succumbed to earlier wounds.
"We believe there was a struggle, a commotion, a fight ... that he fought the guy all the way out the door," Troyer said.
He added, "We hope that he hit him."
Troyer said the gunman entered the coffee house and walked up to the counter as if to place an order. A barista saw a gun when the man opened his jacket and fled out the back door. The man then turned and opened fire on the officers as they sat working on their laptops, killing the three men and one woman in what Troyer described as a targeted ambush.
Troyer said the attack was clearly targeted at the officers, not a robbery gone bad.
"This was more of an execution. Walk in with the specific mindset to shoot police officers," he said.
Troyer said the officers were catching up on paperwork at the beginning of their shifts when they were attacked at 8:15 a.m. Sunday.
"There were marked patrol cars outside and they were all in uniform," Troyer said.
There was no indication of any connection with the Halloween night shooting of a Seattle police officer. The suspect in that shooting remains hospitalized.
"We won't know if it's a copycat effect or what it was until we get the case solved," Troyer said. "We don't even have a suspect ID right now."
Troyer estimated that a couple of hundred officers from the Washington State Patrol and multiple surrounding police agencies in the area were at the crime scene, with some coming on their own time.
On Sunday night, a motorcade of dozens of police cars and motorcycles with lights flashing escorted the bodies of the four officers from the crime scene to the Pierce County medical examiner's office in Tacoma. The motorcade rolled under a giant American flag hanging from fire truck ladders.
"We have no motive at all," Troyer said. "I don't think when we find out what it is, it will be anything that makes any sense or be worth it."
Two employees and a few other customers were in the shop during the attack. All were interviewed by the Pierce County sheriff's investigators.
"Some are in shock. They are very upset," Troyer said. "They are the ones who are going to put together for us how this happened."
The Forza Coffee Shop, part of a popular local chain, is on a side street near McChord Air Force Base in Tacoma, about 35 miles south of Seattle. The shop is in a small retail center alongside two restaurants, a cigar store and a nail salon.
Brad Carpenter, founder and owner of Forza Coffee, said his staff was OK and being interviewed by police, and that his main concern was for the families of the police officers.
"I'm a retired police officer, so this really hits close to home for me," said Carpenter, of nearby Gig Harbor.
Troyer said the Lakewood officers were two blocks outside their jurisdiction, and the coffee shop was a popular place for officers from surrounding jurisdictions to meet and share information.
Streets around the coffee shop were blocked off late Sunday morning, and a police helicopter hovered over a large crowd of investigators. TV video showed police taking possession of a pickup truck parked in a grocery store in Parkland.
Troyer said investigators were checking surveillance video from multiple sources, trying to identify a possible getaway car.
Dave Gabrielson, a clerk at Foot Mart about a block away from the coffee shop, told the newspaper all was quiet when he opened the store at 8 a.m. About 30 minutes later, "All of a sudden a million cops were zooming up and down the road," Gabrielson said.
He said he saw officers bring a police dog into a nearby apartment complex.
Last month, Seattle police officer Timothy Brenton was shot and killed Halloween night as he was sitting in a cruiser with trainee Britt Sweeney. Sweeney was grazed in the neck.
Authorities say the man charged with that shooting also firebombed four police vehicles in October as part of a "one-man war" against law enforcement. Christopher Monfort, 41, was arrested after being wounded in a firefight with police days after the Seattle shooting. He remains hospitalized in stable condition, the hospital said Sunday.
The officers killed Sunday were a patrol squad made up of three officers and their sergeant. No threats had been made against them or other officers in the region, sheriff's officials said. Their families have been notified.
"We lost people we care about. We're working to find out who did this and deal with him." Pierce County Sheriff Paul Pastor told reporters at the scene.
Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire said she was "shocked and horrified" by the killings.
"Our police put their lives on the line every day, and tragedies like this remind us of the risks they continually take to keep our communities safe," she said in a written statement. "My heart goes out to the family, friends and co-workers of these officers, as well as the entire law enforcement community."
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Associated Press Writer Rachel La Corte in Olympia and Photographer Ted S. Warren in Parkland contributed to this report.
