In 2004 McCastlain heard that Huckabee was considering commuting the sentence of former Air Force Sgt. Glen Green, who in 1974 confessed to kidnapping Helen Lynette Spencer at the Little Rock Air Force base, beating her with nunchucks, raping her in a secluded area, running over her with his car, stuffing her body into his trunk and dumping her body in a bayou. A witness tied him with the horrific crime and Green confessed.
The Rev. Johnny Jackson, a pastor at Bethel Baptist Church in Jacksonville, began advocating for Green's release, and when McCastlain heard she began to worry, given Huckabee's forgiving nature. "I was concerned," she said. "I could foresee that commutation might happen because it had happened before."
She prepared documentation to keep the brutal killer in prison. "The governor came from a religious background, so I tried to appeal to him in the way that I thought he looked at clemency," she said. She attacked the sincerity of Green's repentance.
It worked. Huckabee did not commute Green's sentence; he remains in prison.
She had to appeal to his religion to get him to make a good decision. Without that angle, prosecutors and victims were unable to dissuade Huckabee from releasing other murderers and rapists, some of whom went on to repeat their crimes.
Sounds like an Establishment Clause violation to me. Might be tough to prove, but a good lawyer might be able to make something of it to get Green released.
This is not someone I want running the White House.
