Politically, there existed a fervent movement that believed Dumond was the victim of a Bill Clinton vendetta, carried out by the state's Democratic political machine. That movement, which had helped Huckabee ascend to power just months earlier in 1996, ramped up pressure on the newly elected governor to rectify a wrong. Huckabee himself was either friends with or associated to several of the key activists who publicly criticized Dumond's arrest. And Huckabee's particular religious background made him disposed to believing that Dumond -- who would go on to rape and murder another woman upon his release -- was either innocent of his crimes or had been rehabilitated in prison. Those close to the case say that in the end, it was a combination of these factors that compelled Huckabee to ignore evidence, forgo advice, and ultimately press the parole board for the release of Wayne Dumond.
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I have never quite understood what it is about Bill Clinton that provokes hatred to such a degree that even otherwise fairly sensible people are perfectly willing to commit obvious and outrageous perversions of justice in what generally turned out to be futile efforts to discredit him. It turns out that this perverse "magic" predates his presidency and, of course, Ken Starr.
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