Did Huckabee parole a convicted rapist due to Clinton hatred?

I've found this story through Americablog , on how Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee paroled a convicted rapist simply because the man raped a woman who was a distant relative of former president Bill Clinton. Here is the CBS News story, titled Paroled Rapist Could Haunt Huckabee:

In 1985, [Wayne] DuMond was convicted of the rape of a 17-year-old girl with a connection to then-Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton: She was the governor's distant cousin and the daughter of a major campaign contributor.

As Clinton rose to national prominence, the case came to the attention of his critics. Journalists and talk show hosts questioned the victim's story and suggested that DuMond had been railroaded by the former governor. Steve Dunleavy, a New York Post columnist, took up the case as a cause, calling DuMond’s conviction "a travesty of justice."

The story also came with a tabloid-ready twist: DuMond said that while awaiting trial, masked men broke into his house and castrated him. Though there were doubts about the story, it engendered sympathy for DuMond among Clinton foes.

DuMond's sentence had been set at life in prison, plus 20 years. In 1992, Clinton's successor in the Arkansas governor's mansion, Jim Guy Tucker, reduced that sentence to 39 years, making DuMond eligible for parole.

When Huckabee became governor in 1996, he expressed doubts about DuMond's guilt and said he was considering commuting his sentence to time served. After the victim and her supporters protested, Huckabee decided against commutation. But in 1997, according to the Kansas City Star, Huckabee wrote a letter to DuMond saying "my desire is that you be released from prison." Less than a year later, DuMond was granted parole.

Huckabee's office denied that the governor played a role in the parole board's decision, but there was evidence (exhaustively detailed here) to contradict that claim.

Charles Chastain, a Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, who was on the parole board at the time, told CBSNews.com the governor met with the board to argue on DuMond’s behalf.

"He thought DuMond had gotten a raw deal," said Chastain, who calls himself neutral towards Huckabee. "He said he'd been born on the wrong side of the tracks and hadn't been treated all that fairly."

[....]

DuMond's release was delayed because a number of states did not want to take him in, but he left prison in 1999 and ended up in Missouri. Not long after he arrived, he was arrested again - this time for sexually assaulting and murdering a woman named Carol Sue Shields. DuMond was also the leading suspect in the rape and murder of another woman. He was convicted of murdering Shields and died in prison in 2005.

So DuMond rapes a 17-year-old girl who happens to be a distant cousin of Bill Clinton. The right wingnuts complain that DuMond is getting a bad rap because he raped a Clinton. So Huckabee paroles DuMond, who then rapes and murders another woman. And what is Huckabee's excuse for paroling DuMond? Going back to the CBS News story:

Joe Carter, director of research for the Huckabee campaign, insists that Huckabee did not seek to pressure the parole board. "If it was such an important issue for him, he would have commuted his sentence," Carter told CBSNews.com.

[....]

In a statement, Huckabee Press Secretary Alice Stewart told CBSNews.com that Huckabee “had no influence regarding the parole board's decision to release Wayne Dumond.”

“Governor Huckabee had no authority to grant parole to Wayne Dumond or anyone else -- governors don’t have that authority in the parole process,” she said.

According to Arkansas Times editor Max Brantley, who has tangled repeatedly with Huckabee over the years, the governor's influence clearly played a role in DuMond's release from prison.

"In the end, he took a series of actions that can be interpreted only one way: That he was an advocate for Wayne DuMond," said Brantley. "And it was bad judgment. And he's never been willing to take responsibility for it."

So Huckabee had no influence regarding the parole board's decision to release DuMond, and that the then-governor had no authority to grant DuMond a parole. If that is the case, then how can the Huckabee campaign explain Huckabee's letter to DuMond, saying that it was Huckabee's desire to release DuMond from prison? In addition, Huckabee also met with the parole board to argue for DuMond's release--because the parole board did end up agreeing with Huckabee and released DuMond. There is a lot more to the back story on Huckabee's involvement in paroling DuMond in this Arkansas Times story.