Mike Huckabee and the Missing Testicles

But first, John Archibald reported this morning that on a per capita basis, the ZIP code with the most prisoners in the Jefferson County (Birmingham and Bessemer divisions) jails, by far, was 35020 in Bessemer. 126 of the inmates claim 35020 as their home. Second was southwest Birmingham's 35211, with 60.

Time to do something here folks. And look for an announcement from the Bessemer Neighborhood Association soon about a new series of meetings beginning in January that will allow citizens to address their city leaders in a new and different way.

I promise there are no pictures to go with the Mike Huckabee story.

This story comes from several sources, including the National Review and Michelangelo Signorile’s The Gist. Also, I heard Signorile talking about it on his radio show yesterday afternoon on Sirius OutQ. The Gist gives a link to this New York Times article about the story as well.

By now everyone has heard about Wayne DuMond, the Arkansas rapist released from prison by Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, who later went on to sexually assault and murder another woman. Does anyone one remember Willie Horton? 1988? If you are too young to remember, just google his name.

“Dear Wayne,” Huckabee wrote in a letter to Dumond. “My desire is that you be released from prison. I feel that parole is the best way for your reintroduction to society to take place.” This, after Jay D. Cole, a Baptist minister and friend of Huckabee, had counseled DuMond in prison and reported the rapist had found God.

Anyway, seems that prior to his imprisonment, when DuMond was awaiting trial and free on bond, two men broke into his home and castrated him after tying him up with fishing line. According to one source (the one listed below) they raped him. Did they act on the local sheriff’s orders?

The sheriff, Coolidge Conlee, must have thought that was pretty cool at the least because he displayed the testicles for a while in a jar of formaldehyde on his desk. “That’s what happens to people who fool around in my county”, he said. (this site)

OK, reports here differ, but my understanding is that he later gave the testicles to the parents of the girl that was raped…as some kind of testament to the type of justice that was being offered.

It was also reported that the testicles disappeared, hence the “missing testicles’ reference. But what I heard is that they were flushed down the toilet. By the girl’s father? I don’t know.

Anyway, DuMond won $110,000 judgment against the sheriff, presumably for his role in the castration.

The sheriff later was convicted of extortion and other crimes (in another case) and sentenced to jail where he died of natural causes. DuMond died in prison of natural causes as well, in 2005.

I can't say too much because I am sitting here in Alabama, but remember this was in Arkansas.

What is bothersome about this, other than at home castrations and parading souvenir nuts around in a jar, (and about a hundred other things), is that Huckabee and others at the time wanted this guy released because of his religious conversion or whatever. Hey, religious people commit crimes all around us...pastors and priests and lay people, without the benefit of being in prison, so what makes you think that a prisoner who "finds Jesus" is less likely to commit crimes upon his release than had he not "found Jesus."

Not that I have anything against ministering to prisoners or doing what ever can be done to make that person behind bars a better person (including the 126 from Bessemer in the county jails). I think that regardless of the situation one is in, if that person's life is improved, it improves the overall quality of humankind on earth (that world karma thing again). But don't let a rapist or murderer out of prison because he or she has "found the Lord." The Lord wasn't lost to begin with, and God doesn't need to be drug into the mess that the Arkansas parole board and then Governor Mike Huckabee created.

Of course Huckabee says he did not release the guy, but there was a secret closed door meeting of the parole board where some believe he pressured the board into releasing DuMond. Huckabee denies this, and denies he was soft on the death penalty, “Heck, I executed more people than any governor in the history of the state,” Byron York reports in the Nation Review article.

And this guy is soaring in the polls and could end up in the White House? Lord help us.