Who: Maurice Clemmons, a suspect in the ambush-murder of four Lakewood, Wash., police officers
What: Clemmons, who allegedly shot four cops to death with no warning while they worked on laptops in a coffee shop, was supposed to be imprisoned in Arkansas until at least 2015 for a seven-month crime spree that started in 1989 when he was 16 years old.</p>
How: His written plea to then-Gov. Mike Huckabee won him release in 2000 by claiming he’d grown into a different person and was no longer the “young misguided fool” who had “succumbed to the peer pressure” despite coming from “a very good Christian family.”
Why it was a bad idea: Clemmons already had eight new parole violations and pending felony charges — including one for allegedly raping a child — before he reportedly opened fire on the four officers with no known motivation.
OpinionOther OpinionpoliceShooting
Find out more at www.sfexaminer.com/join/
