The New York Times - December 9, 2007
Michael Luo, Katharine Q. Seelye

A former parole board member in Arkansas, Deborah Suttlar, said Saturday that as governor of the state, Huckabee lobbied the board in 1996 to release the inmate, Wayne DuMond, whose case was championed by members of the evangelical community.

"He expressed his concerns about DuMond's guilt," Suttlar said. "He felt he deserved to be released." DuMond killed a Missouri woman after his parole.

Huckabee has denied playing a major role in DuMond's release, pointing out that he did not commute the sentence and that the parole board freed him. Accounts of three parole board members differing with Huckabee's recollection, including Suttlar, were reported Saturday by the Los Angeles Times.

The heightened scrutiny of Huckabee's record comes as polls show him establishing a formidable lead in Iowa, site of the nation's first nominating contest, on Jan. 3. A Newsweek survey released Friday showed for the first time that he appeared to hold a clear lead over Mitt Romney among likely caucusgoers, 39 percent to 17 percent, a rise fueled by evangelical Christians.

Highlighting the new interest in Huckabee's past in Arkansas, the Associated Press revealed on Saturday that as a candidate for the Senate in 1992, Huckabee said in response to a 229-question survey that he believed that AIDS patients should be isolated from the general public and that homosexuality was an "aberrant, unnatural and sinful lifestyle" that posed a "dangerous public risk."

Huckabee said Saturday that his comments came at a time when "the AIDS crisis was just that - a crisis. We didn't know exactly all the details of how extensive it was going to be. There was just a real panic in this country. If I were making those same comments today, I might make them a little differently."

At a news conference in Asheville, N.C., on Saturday, Huckabee said he wanted at the time to follow traditional medical practices used for dealing with tuberculosis and other infectious diseases.

"Medical protocol typically says that if you have a disease for which there is no cure, and you are uncertain about the transmission of it, then the first thing you do is that you quarantine or isolate carriers," Huckabee said.

Fears of AIDS spreading into the community were fairly widespread in the mid-1980s, as doctors struggled to learn about how the virus that causes AIDS spread. But by the time Huckabee answered the survey in 1992, it was well established that the virus could not be spread through casual contact.

As for the case of Wayne DuMond, he was convicted in the 1984 rape of a teenager who was a distant cousin of Bill Clinton, then the governor of Arkansas. While he was out on bail awaiting trial, DuMond said men forced their way into his home and castrated him. Arkansas state officials said they thought he might have castrated himself in a play for sympathy. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

While DuMond was in prison, a Baptist pastor, the Rev. Jay Cole, who was friends with Huckabee, ministered to him, and the inmate later said he had found God. Cole said he asked for Huckabee's help, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday.

"The governor felt compassion for Wayne," Cole told the newspaper. "He was sorry for him. So, I asked the governor to help."

Suttlar said Huckabee came to meet with the parole board in October 1996, soon after taking office. DuMond's case had become something of a celebrated cause among conservative activists, who charged that Clinton had allowed an innocent man to languish in prison because of his connection with the case.

The parole board meetings are public, but after Huckabee arrived, the board's chairman made everyone but board members leave. What happened next is subject to dispute.

A request for a pardon was already being considered at that point by Huckabee, who said that he favored it. He would later reverse himself and deny DuMond clemency. When he met with the parole board, Suttlar said, Huckabee raised the case of DuMond unprompted and made clear where he stood.

"He brought it up," she said, adding it was unusual for the governor to even meet with the board. "He compromised the integrity of the parole board. It's supposed to be autonomous."

But Olan Reeves, who served as Huckabee's chief counsel and attended the meeting, said the meeting was meant only to be an introductory one for a new governor and that DuMond's case only came up when a member of the board challenged him on his support for clemency.

"He didn't go over there to talk to them about that," Reeves said Saturday. "The governor in Arkansas has nothing to do with parole."

Alice Stewart, a spokeswoman for Huckabee's campaign, said Saturday that the parole board had invited Huckabee to speak. "He in no way pressured them," she said.

The board voted 4-1 several months later to parole DuMond after having denied his freedom repeatedly in previous years.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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