With a criminal history in Arkansas, how did
Washington police shooting suspect Maurice Clemmons get clemency?
"I can't believe he was ever turned loose. Every crime he did just about here in Arkansas as a punk kid, they were strong arm robberies and things," Karen Hodge said. The courts convicted Maurice Clemmons of beating and robbing Karen Hodge of Little Rock in the parking lot of the airport Holiday Inn 20 years ago. That crime added to Maurice Clemmons rap sheet including other robberies, burglary and theft. The sentence was 95 years in prison.
The release shocked Hodge. "I wish I'd known he was up for that [parole] so I could have gone down and said my piece."
UALR professor Charles Chastain left the parole board in January of 2000 so he did not deal with the Maurice Clemmons case. But after looking over the parole board's records he said it looked like a unanimous recommendation that you ordinarily wouldn't get with the background.
There were a lot of circumstances for Huckabee to consider. Clemmons committed the crimes while underage and Chastain calls the sentence unusually long. When Huckabee finally granted clemency, cutting Clemmons' sentence short, that allowed the board to parole him and it did. Chastain said, "If a person makes their best judgment at the time and something goes wrong later that happens," Chastain said. "That’s the criminal justice system, it's not perfect."
- After Clemmons' release in 2000 he violated his parole with one count of robbery out of Ouachita county in 2001.
- He went back behind bars and got out in 2004.
- He went to Washington where authorities recently charged him with assaulting a police officer and second degree rape of a child.
- He got out of jail on a $150,000 bond.
