Later today Good Morning America will run a story on the link between Huckabee and Wayne Dumond. The Arkansas Times has an extensive article on the situation and is recommended reading as it is illustrative about the character and approach of Huck to crime and administration.
In brief: When Huck first became Governor of Arkansas, he was given (bad) council that Dumond had been overly punished for his crime (which was rape). Dumond was initially given life plus twenty years and Huck's predecessor had commuted the sentence to 39 years. The victim in this crime was a distant relative of Bill Clinton and it certainly appears that Huck had been advised that there was a degree of political influence in this sentence.
As a result, Huck had made a move to commute Dumond's sentence to time served. But this created a public outcry, so to get what he wanted, Huck pressured the parole board to parole Dumond. Whether or not he put forward the pressure of threatening jobs, but clearly the parole board members felt it was in their best interest (i.e. protecting the $70k per year jobs) to help the new Governor get Dumond released. They broke meeting rules; moved Dumond from one jail to another so that he could have a new hearing; they moved up his hearing date by months; with no other new information, they changed their vote from 1-4 for giving Dumond a parole to 4-1.
As a condition of his parole, Dumond had to move out of state. He moved to Misouri and in 6 weeks he killed Carol Sue Shields.
To me the lessons to be learned about Huck: 1) he doesn't always get good advise; 2) he doesn't vet that information; 3) he is willing to at least play on the edge of legitimacy to get done what he wants done; 4) after the fact he will mislead and hide what happened.
UPDATE: The video from GMA today can be found here.
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