Maurice Clemmons was 16 years old when he committed the crimes of burglary and robbery. He was sentenced to a total of 108 years in prison, dramatically outside the norm for sentencing for the crimes he committed and the age at which he committed them.

In 2000, the PPTB unanimously recommended that his sentence be commuted after he had already served 11 years in prison. As per the recommendation, I commuted his sentence to the term of 47 years (still a long sentence in comparison to others for the type of crime he had committed), making him parole eligible. It did not parole him, as governors do not have that power in Arkansas. He would have to separately apply for parole and meet the criteria for it.

Three months after the commutation, Clemmons met the criteria for parole and was paroled to supervision in late 2000. When he violated the terms of his parole, he was returned to prison and should have remained behind bars. For reasons only the prosecutor can explain, he ended up dropping the charges, allowing Clemmons to leave prison and return to supervised parole.

So, Huckabee says, the prosecutor blew it.

I can't explain why he wasn't prosecuted properly for the parole violations, or why he was allowed to make bail in Washington and was not incarcerated earlier for crimes committed there. I take responsibility for my actions, but not for the actions of others, nor for the misinformed words of commentators.

I agree with Huckabee that his clemency grant was appropriate. A 108 year sentence for a juvenile on burglary charges that involved no fatalities is unfairly draconian. Huckabee reduced the sentence to 47 years. He didn't order him paroled, but his action made him eligible for parole earlier, and the parole board unanimously decided to release him, after serving 11 years.

The last thing we need is more Governors hesitant to grant clemency and pardons. We cannot insure that somebody will not re-offend. At the same time, we should not keep others locked up who likely will not because we're afraid of the political consequences.

Clemmons was arrested for violating his parole and returned to jail. That Clemmons didn't remain in prison finishing his 47 year sentence after violating his parole had nothing to do with Huckabee but with decisions by prosecutors and courts in later years. Those later decisions may warrant an inquiry into what went wrong in Clemmons' case. But overall, the system is not broken and the checks and balances are there: Prison, parole, re-offend, re-imprisonment.

The Seattle case is a tragedy. The crime is horrific. But we should never enact policies or laws based on grief or passion arising from a singular event.