Maurice Clemmons- From Prisoner To Alleged Cop Killer

 

Seattle Police search for Maurice Clemmons 11/29/09; Clemmons and Mike Huckabee (inset).

How Clemmons Went From Prisoner To Alleged Cop Killer — And Why It Matters For Mike Huckabee

TPM Muckraker

Justin Elliott | November 30, 2009, 5:17PM

How did Maurice Clemmons, once sentenced to 100 years in prison in Arkansas, end up a free man and the prime suspect in the grisly killing of four Seattle area police officers Sunday?

Clemmons’ story begins with a teenage crime spree, winds through his years as a young man spent behind bars and the commutation of his life sentence by Mike Huckabee, continues with more years in and out of prison and the degeneration of his mental state, and finally leaves off today with a massive search for a man police describe as armed and dangerous.

The story carries potentially big political ramifications for possible presidential contender Huckabee, who is now trying to deflect criticism of the commutation to the state parole board. That’s in part because Huckabee’s effort to downplay his role in the Clemmons commutation echoes his response in the case of another Arkansas parolee who went on to commit a gruesome crime.

A May 1989 incident in which Clemmons, then 17, was caught with a gun at a Little Rock school appears to have been his first run in with the police. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette quoted him telling police that he had the gun because he had “been chased and beaten by dopers, and if they got after him again he had something for them” (via Nexis).

Starting almost immediately after his expulsion from school for the gun incident, Clemmons took part in a series burglaries that landed him in prison. In one late-night incident, a middle-aged woman was hit in the face and Clemmons and other teen snatched her purse. He made the news again when he hid a 10-inch metal bar in his sock before a pretrial hearing, and once again when a padlock he threw at a bailiff hit Clemmons’ own mother.

For these and other crimes, the young Clemmons received in 1989-90 remarkably harsh — arguably excessive — sentences adding up to 108 years, by the Arkansas Times‘ count.

By the time then-governor Huckabee was mulling a plea for clemency in 2000, Clemmons had spent roughly a decade behind the bars, and he pledged he was a changed man. As governor, Huckabee granted pardons and commutations much more than most. According to ABC, many believed it was a religious issue for Huckabee, a Baptist minister.

Thus it made strategic sense that Clemmons stressed his faith in a letter (.pdf) to Huckabee, obtained by the Seattle Times:

Clemmons said he came from “a very good Christian family” and “was raised much better than my actions speak (I’m still ashamed to this day for the shame my stupid involvement in these crimes brought to my family name.),” he wrote.”Where once stood a young (16) year old misguided fool, who’s (sic) own life he was unable to rule. Now stands a 27 year old man, who has learned through ‘the school of hard knocks’ to appreciate and respect the rights of others. And who has in the midst of the harsh reality of prison life developed the necessary skills to stand along (sic) and not follow a multitude of do evil, as I did as a 16 year old child.”

Clemmons added that his mother had recently died without seeing him turn his life around and that he prayed Huckabee would show compassion by releasing him.

In May 2000, citing Clemmons’ youth at the time of his crimes, Huckabee commuted the sentence to 47 years, making Clemmons eligible for parole. The board granted parole in July and Clemmons was released in August, but a year later he was back in prison for another Arkansas robbery. He got a 10-year sentence but in 2004 Clemmons was paroled again. He soon moved to Washington State.

>>>PAROLE DOCS AND MORE HERE<<<

Read Full Post »

Evening Jukebox- Peace On Earth / Walk On

U2 – Peace On Earth / Walk On

Read Full Post »

Matthew Hoh Speaks Grim Truth To Power

Roger Morris and George Kenney, The Huffington Post, Nov 27, 2009

The rare resignation on principle is always telling in American government. When Matthew Hoh recently left the State Department — a Marine Captain in Iraq who became a diplomat in Afghanistan — his act was significant far beyond the first reports.

Hoh speaks grim truth to power. His message is that to pursue the Afghan war policy in any guise — regardless of the troop level President Obama now chooses — will be utter folly, trapping America in an unwinnable civil war in the Hindu Kush, and only fueling terrorism.

Continues >>

 

Read Full Post »

Living Up to Our Constitution — Part III

Living Up to Our Constitution — Part III

Firedoglake- By: Cynthia Kouril Saturday November 28, 2009 5:00 pm

I recently attended the Second Annual “Living Constitution” Lecture at the Brennan Center for Justice. The keynote speaker this year was Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and his topic was “Living Up to Our Constitution.”

Sen. Whitehouse identified four ways in which we live up to the Constitution, I am excerpting some of the best bits and breaking them into four separate posts for your contemplation this holiday weekend.

Part Three
Defending Our Courts

The third way in which we live up to our Constitution, is by upholding our court system. Sen. Whitehouse points out that the right to a day in court is guaranteed to us by the Constitution. His concern is that this Constitutional right is under assault by corporate defendants.

The Constitution mandates respect for the process that allows [injured plaintiffs] to stand up for their legal rights. Trial by jury is established in Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution, and by the Sixth and Seventh Amendments. The Constitution promises a “day in court,” however annoying that day might be to the corporate defendant.

-Snip-

For years, business interests, operating through the Chamber of Commerce and other “law reform” outfits, have mounted a public relations campaign against the civil justice system. Their tale is that discovery costs, juries, and punitive damage awards are all out of control, allowing unscrupulous plaintiffs’ lawyers to hold corporations hostage and extort massive settlements in a litigation lottery that frustrates public policy. Their goal is to make corporate defendants seem the victims, justifying mandatory binding arbitration (often with systematically biased arbitrators), caps on damages, restrictive readings of statutes of limitations, and heightened pleading standards.

How many times have you heard GOP talking points blaming the high cost of medical care on “trial lawyers”? How many times have you heard some winger shouting down the house about “tort reform”? Do you know what tort reform is? Pups, this is code for taking away your right to go to court if you are injured by a doctor’s malpractice, or a defective product, or the negligence or recklessness of another person or corporation.

FAUX News’ pundits rant and rave about out of control jury awards, but they always manage to skip over the part where there would have been no award of damages UNLESS THE DEFENDANT WAS FOUND TO HAVE DONE SOMETHING WRONG. In the guise of trying to fix some of the unintended consequences of the class action lawsuit rules, Big Corpa would take away the right to redress which goes back before the Constitution, before the Magna Carta, all the way back to before there was an England, back when that island was composed of smaller Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and established the practice of weregeld. The term originates from the Middle English word “were” meaning “man” (think “werewolf”) and the Saxon word “geld”, “gilt” or “geldt” meaning “money”. The concept was also used throughout the Scandinavian world and the Germanic world from at least the end of the Roman Empire. This has been a fundamental human right for millennia.

We live in a world where corporations are allowed (ahem) free speech rights in the form of large campaign contributions and soft money advertising campaigns, even if the views expressed are directly contrary to the views of their shareholders. Sen. Whitehouse rightly points out that the only branch of government where an ordinary citizen has any hope of making their plea in front of a decision maker who is not bought and paid for with campaign contributions, is before the jury box.

Corporations would be only too happy with a world in which their every contact with government officials – Presidents, governors, federal and state senators and representatives – every contact is with individuals and institutions who have been rendered supple to their interests by the emollient effect of corporate contributions. Against this lubriciously accommodating world stand the hard square corners of the jury box, filled with ordinary Americans, whose views you tamper with only at your legal peril, and before whom the mightiest corporation stands equal with its most humble and voiceless victim; where each party has equal opportunity to put its case to a group of our peers; where the status quo can be disrupted; where the comfortable can be afflicted and the afflicted find some comfort, all under the shelter of the law.

We stand up for the Constitution when we stand up for our courts.

Related posts:

1. Living Up to Our Constitution – Part II
2. Living Up to Our Constitution – Part I
3. On Constitution Day, Celebrate the Rights of People (Not Corporations)
4. FDL Book Salon Welcomes David Owen, Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less are the Keys to Sustainability
5. Harry Reid Re-opens the Senate Floor to Amendments, but Promotes Unconstitutional Bills of Attainder on “Constitution Day”

Read Full Post »

Afternoon Jukebox- So This Is Christmas

John Lennon- So This Is Christmas

Read Full Post »

Blair ‘knew WMD claim was false’

By DAVID ROSE, Mail on Sunday, 29th November, 2009

By the time Tony Blair led Britain to attack Iraq, he had stopped believing his own lurid claims about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, according to an unpublished interview with the late Robin Cook, the former Leader of the Commons who resigned from the Cabinet just before the invasion in March 2003.

In the interview, which Cook gave me in 2004, the year before his death, he described Blair’s actions as ‘a scandalous manipulation of the British constitution’, adding that if the then Prime Minister had revealed his doubts, they would have rendered the war illegal.

Cook, who was in almost daily contact with Blair in the months before his resignation, said that in September 2002, when the Government published its infamous dossier claiming Saddam had tried to buy uranium for nuclear weapons and could deploy WMDs within 45 minutes, Blair did believe these claims were true. But he added:

‘By February or March, he knew it was wrong. As far as I know, at no point after the end of 2002 did he ever repeat those claims.’

To read more, click on link and scroll down to bottom of article, Iraq Inquiry bombshell.

Read Full Post »

Secret letter reveals Blair’s war lies: He was told invading Iraq was illegal eight months beforehand

The Chilcot Inquiry into the war will interrogate the former Prime Minister over the devastating ‘smoking gun’ memo, which warned him the war was illegal. The MoS can disclose that Attorney General Lord Goldsmith wrote to Mr Blair in July 2002 telling him that deposing Saddam Hussein was a breach of international law.

By Simon Walters, Mail on Sunday Political Editor
Last updated at 1:48 AM on 29th November 2009

Resolve: Blair and Bush in April 2002, when they secretly agreed on 'regime change' in Iraq

An explosive secret letter that exposes how Tony Blair lied over the legality of the Iraq War can be revealed.

The Chilcot Inquiry into the war will interrogate the former Prime Minister over the devastating ‘smoking gun’ memo, which warned him in the starkest terms the war was illegal.

The Mail on Sunday can disclose that Attorney General Lord Goldsmith wrote the letter to Mr Blair in July 2002 – a full eight months before the war – telling him that deposing Saddam Hussein was a blatant breach of international law.

It was intended to make Mr Blair call off the invasion, but he ignored it. Instead, a panicking Mr Blair issued instructions to gag Lord Goldsmith, banned him from attending Cabinet meetings and ordered a cover-up to stop the public finding out.

He even concealed the bombshell information from his own Cabinet, fearing it would spark an anti-war revolt. The only people he told were a handful of cronies who were sworn to secrecy.

Lord Goldsmith was so furious at his treatment he threatened to resign – and lost three stone as Mr Blair and his cronies bullied him into backing down.

Sources close to the peer say he was ‘more or less pinned to the wall’ in a Downing Street showdown with two of Mr Blair’s most loyal aides, Lord Falconer and Baroness Morgan.

The revelations follow a series of testimonies by key figures at the Chilcot Inquiry who have questioned Mr Blair’s judgment and honesty, and the legality of the war.

The Mail on Sunday has learned that the inquiry has been given Lord Goldsmith’s explosive letter, and that Mr Blair and the peer are likely to be interrogated about it when they give evidence in the New Year.

Read more

Read Full Post »