A few days ago I asked this question about Mike Huckabee’s decision to grant clemency to suspected cop killer Maurice Clemmons:

One possibility: Huckabee is a fanatical fundamentalist. Was it because Clemmons pretended to “get religion” in order for his sentence to be reduced?

Well, several LGF readers thought I was jumping to conclusions on that one and I took a few knocks in the comment section for it.

But look who’s bringing up the same question now — The Associated Baptist Press: Did Huckabee rely too much on faith in making pardon decisions?

This section is key, and contains new information about Huckabee’s decision that answers my original question definitively:

In his 2000 clemency petition, Clemmons appealed to Huckabee, a former pastor and past president of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention, for mercy.

Clemmons claimed the crimes for which he was then imprisoned were committed when he was 16, during a seven-month spree after he moved from Seattle to a crime-infested neighborhood in Arkansas and fell in with the wrong crowd.

“I come from a very good Christian family and I was raised much better than my actions speak,” Clemmons claimed. He said his mother’s death changed his heart, because he now had to live with the knowledge that after all he had put her through he had missed an opportunity to make her proud of him before she passed away.

“I have never done anything good for God, but I’ve prayed for him to grant me in his compassion the grace to make a new start,” Clemmons petitioned. “Now, I’m humbly appealing to you for a brand new start.”

The Arkansas Leader, a Little Rock-area newspaper that began writing about Huckabee’s commutations in 2004, said the governor appeared to have a penchant for releasing inmates he happened to meet or who had connections to his family as well as for those vouched for by a fellow minister claiming the prisoner had accepted Christ. As Huckabee’s reputation for granting clemency spread, the number of convicts applying increased.

Because they knew they had a sucker for their jailhouse conversions, obviously.

(Hat tip: Thanos.)