Huckabee takes responsibility for commutation

After initially blaming the criminal justice system for his commutation of the prison sentence for a man who gunned down four police officers in Washington state, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee has issued a mea culpa of sorts.

This morning, a Seattle police officer shot and killed Maurice Clemmons, who was on the run after the ambush in a Tacoma-area coffee shop on Sunday morning. Conservative bloggers, some Washington officials, and others assailed Huckabee's decision in 2000 to commute Clemmons' sentence.

"I am not seeking to justify or defend my actions of nine years ago, but it’s important that I answer for my actions and give some explanation as to how and why his sentence was commuted," Huckabee wrote late Monday night on the Newsmax conservative website.

"I take full responsibility for my actions of nine years ago. I acted on the facts presented to me in 2000. If I could have possibly known what Clemmons would do nine years later, I obviously would have made a different decision. But if the same file was presented to me today, I would have likely made the same decision.

Huckabee goes on to explain that Clemmons was 16 years old when he was charged with burglary and robbery, then was sentenced to 108 years in prison. "For the crimes he committed and the age at which he committed the crimes, it was dramatically outside the norm for sentencing," he writes, so he commuted the sentence, making Clemmons eligible for parole.

"I wish his file had never crossed my desk, but it did," Huckabee added. "The decision I made is one that I now wish were different, but I could only look backwards at his case, not forward. None of this is of any comfort to the families of these police officers nor should it be. Their loss is senseless. No words or deeds by anyone will bring them back to their loved ones. Our system is not perfect and neither are those responsible for administering it. The system and those of us who are supposed to make sure it works sometimes fail. In this case, we clearly did."