Let out by Huckabee, burglar seeks pardon
Posted on Saturday, September 23, 2006
The Arkansas Board of Parole has recommended that Gov. Mike Huckabee pardon a burglar whose 2001 clemency outraged prosecutors and made headlines after news broke that his stepmother was a member of the governor’s staff.
Donald Clark had a lengthy criminal record filled with burglary, theft, hot-check and illegal-possession-of-a-firearm arrests when he was sentenced to 40 years in prison by a Clark County judge in 1995 for burglary convictions in four counties. Huckabee commuted the sentence to time served in June 2001 after Clark had served five years, four months and two days, according to state prison records.
Shortly afterward, media reports trumpeted that Nancy Clark, his stepmother, worked for Huckabee as an extraditions coordinator.
It was unclear if she remains a Huckabee staff member. Her stepson and prosecutors said she had left the governor’s office, and a telephone number listed for her on the governor’s Web site was “not in service,” according to a recorded message. A message to her state government e-mail address bounced back.
On Friday, Huckabee’s press secretary, Alice Stewart, declined to say whether Nancy Clark still worked for the governor, saying, “it was a personnel matter.”
The governor would “reserve comment” on Donald Clark’s request for a pardon until the 30-day public notice period had expired and the Parole Board forwarded Clark’s pardon application to his office, Stewart said.
Clark, 53, who now lives in Sheridan and owns a rental furniture business, said that he applied for a pardon in June to have his criminal record expunged.
“I’d like to vote.... I’m a taxpayer.... I made some bad mistakes, but that was a long time ago,” he said in a phone interview Friday.
Clark County Prosecuting Attorney Henry Morgan said Friday that, aside from his stepmother’s connections, Clark’s father used to “be a big shot with labor.”
Jim Clark was a former state Worker’s Compensation Commission member. Donald Clark was a career criminal who burglarized houses in Clark, Garland, Saline and Dallas counties, Morgan said. “The governor went ahead and gave him clemency,” Morgan said. “Now it looks like [Clark ] wants a complete pardon for all his criminal history from beginning to end. “ If Clark gets a pardon, then everybody should get a pardon because not many have a worse criminal history than him.”
The Parole Board made its recommendation on Sept. 14, board spokesman Rhonda Sharp said. The 30-day public notice will begin Monday after the vote has been posted on the board’s Web site, she said. Afterward, the recommendation will be forwarded to the governor.
Sharp said she didn’t know how the Parole Board’s seven members voted.
After he was freed from prison by Huckabee, Clark’s exwife, Jonn E. Clark, filed an order of protection against him in March 2002. Morgan said Jonn Clark fled to a battered women’s shelter in Clark County to escape from her ex-husband and accused him of threatening her with a knife. The case was later dismissed.
Clark said Friday that his exwife’s accusations amounted to “total fabrication.”
“It was a farce, and we went to court to prove it,” he said.
Saline County Prosecuting Attorney Robert Herzfeld also objected to the Parole Board’s decision.
“It is absurd that this 25-time felon is getting a pardon,” wrote Herzfeld on Thursday to Ruth Taylor, a pardon coordinator.
“Please don’t do this. The commutation was bad enough.”
Clark said he didn’t think his stepmother’s relationship with Huckabee influenced the governor’s clemency decision. Nor would it affect his chances at a pardon, he said.
His 23-year-old son, Dustin, has a permanent brain injury and will never be able to live independently, Clark said. At some point, his son’s medical expenses might require him to search for additional income, he said.
“I might have to go somewhere to get a job, and that’s hard to do if you’re a felon,” he said.
Plenty of Clark County firsttime nonviolent offenders serve every day of their sentence and have to find work with a blemished record, Morgan said.
“They didn’t get their pardon,” he said. “What’s the criteria ? Do you have to know somebody ?”
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