Mike Huckabee said his record of carrying out 16 executions in his time as governor of Arkansas refutes his opponents' claims that he's soft on crime. The Republican presidential candidate has been criticized for granting 1,033 clemencies in 10½ years and for supporting the parole of Wayne DuMond, a rapist who, upon release from prison, raped and murdered another woman in Missouri.

"Some people need to be in prison. They don't ever need to get out - ever," Huckabee said last week in a meeting with Monitor reporters and editors. "There's others who . . . seem to have mellowed out. And some of them, we give them a second chance and we make a big mistake and God help us when we do. . . . But others, frankly, we give them a second chance because they really don't pose any threat."

Huckabee said it's a misperception that he pardoned DuMond, a charge his opponents have repeatedly cited. DuMond was paroled, Huckabee said, which is something a governor can't do.

"My mistake, and it is one I have to live with, is I supported the parole board's decision, but I didn't make the decision," Huckabee said. "My official action was that I denied a commutation request that was on my desk at the time the parole board made their decision. Had I granted it, (DuMond) would've been able to walk out the door immediately and have no supervision. That, I didn't feel good about."

Huckabee said he granted most of the 1,033 clemencies to nonviolent offenders who couldn't get jobs because they had criminal records. As the prevalence of background checks increased, Huckabee said, so did the number of people kept from employment by a small-time crime committed decades before.

"We had multiple cases where you had a 35-year-old single mom trying to get a job emptying the bed pans as a nursing assistant in a long-term care facility," he said. "She couldn't get hired because when she was 18, she wrote a hot check. . . . Does anybody think we should punish that person for the rest of her life and keep her out of the workforce? I've never found a person who's said, 'Gosh, yes.' "

Huckabee also defended his support of an Arkansas law that eased the penalties of people jailed for methamphetamine possession, a position that has come under attack. Before the law, meth offenders were required to serve at least 70 percent of their sentences. Huckabee called the rule "arbitrary."

"I want you to think through the logic," he said. "Here's what happens: You get arrested. We tell you, 'You got a 10-year sentence.' Now, if you really behave and if you get an education and learn a job skill and you absolutely become a model prisoner . . . we're going to let you out in seven years.

"On the other hand, if . . . you're disrespectful, you don't learn one thing, ever read a book . . . and you scream and you yell . . . you're going to serve seven years. Considering you didn't go into the prison system because you sang too loud in church last Sunday in the choir, what kind of behavior can we expect out of you knowing that your sentence isn't going to be reduced no matter how you behave?"

Huckabee is the only major Republican presidential candidate to carry out a death sentence, which is usually the function of a governor. The only other former governor in the Republican race is Mitt Romney. Romney tried to reinstate the death penalty while governor of Massachusetts, but he was unsuccessful.

During the meeting at the Monitor, Huckabee repeatedly pointed to his execution record.

"That's not soft on crime," he said. "But I tried to have a brain about me. People didn't elect a robot."

Huckabee also spoke about being pro-life. He said he favors amending the Constitution to say the government should protect life "from the time of conception to the time of natural conclusion."

Asked how that position squares with his support of the death penalty, Huckabee said the difference is that people are executed after they're found guilty, whereas abortion kills people who never lived.

"In the case of the death penalty, it is the end of a long process of adjudication, not the taking of a life of an innocent person," Huckabee said. The criminal is found guilty, he said, "of a crime so heinous that the only response . . . is to remove that person from having the capacity to commit that crime again."

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