When Huckabee's predecessor, Jim Guy Tucker, was considering commutation, he and Hall Jr. had a two-and-a-half hour meeting to discuss its merits.

With Huckabee, Hall Jr. says, "I never talked with the governor. In fact, I can't recall ever meeting him."

My lengthy interview with John is here.

Max Brantley, Executive Editor of the Arkansas Times who has reported in depth on the case for many years (here's an excellent example) tells Stein:

"The whole deal about the Dumond case, and it can be overanalyzed, was that this was a bad guy with a proven record of sexual misconduct and violence. This is the last guy you want to set free,....And Huckabee formed the judgment to do this not after consulting anyone but after being sold a story and buying it. It's kind of like Bush and weapons and mass destruction."

Because Clinton was a distant cousin of the victim, he was blamed for Dumond being in and remaining in jail. It seems Huckabee's actions in advocating for Dumond's release were primarily motivated by these anti-Clinton sentiments:

"Huckabee saw East Arkansas County [where Dumond was arrested] as a Democratic political machine and probably assumed the worst," Jay Barth, a political science professor at Arkansas' Hendrix College and an authority on state politics, told the Huffington Post. "There were people pushing that story and Huckabee was clearly susceptible to it. But he also had this basic notion that people can be taken care of through the system... You have to recognize what an immature - in terms of time - governor, Huckabee was at that point. I don't know if the Mike Huckabee of four years later would have been susceptible to these forces."

A roundup of prior coverage at HuffPo and TalkLeft is here.