Masterson?s Soapbox Seems Slippery

When we heard that Wayne Dumond had been charged with first-degree murder in connection with the death of a woman in Kansas City, Mo., we couldn’t help but think of Mike Masterson, the former editor of the Northwest Arkansas Times who now writes a weekly column for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Masterson was one of Dumond’s most vocal supporters in 1996. Dumond, now 51, was convicted in the 1984 rape of a 17-year-old Forrest City girl and sentenced to life plus 20 years in prison. While awaiting trial, Dumond said he was castrated by masked men who broke into his home. St. Francis County Sheriff Coolidge Conlee reportedly paraded around town showing off Dumond’s testicles in a jar. Conlee died in prison while serving time for “corruption,” according to the Times.

Conspiracy buffs jumped to conclusions about this case when they discovered that the rape victim was a distant cousin of Bill Clinton, who was the state’s Democratic governor for two decades before being elected president in 1992.

Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Republican, announced on Sept. 21, 1996, that he intended to commute Dumond’s sentence because he had “serious questions” about his guilt.

The headline and story on Page 1 of the Times that day bragged about Masterson’s influence on the governor’s decision. In July of that year, Masterson had written a column saying Dumond was “obviously innocent” and referring to his 11 years in prison as a “flagrant injustice.”

Rex Nelson, Huckabee’s PR man, was quoted by the Times saying the July 1996 column by Masterson “definitely played a role in calling the urgency of the situation to the governor’s attention.” So Huckabee leaked the news about his decision to Masterson and a Little Rock television reporter a day before making it public.

An editorial the Times published the day of Huckabee’s announcement said, “Poor Wayne Dumond of Forrest City languished more than 11 years in an Arkansas prison cell for a crime he never committed.”

But after public outcry, Huckabee backed off his decision and left the job up to the state Post Prison Transfer Board, which voted to parole Dumond in 1997. Dumond finally got out of prison in October 1999.

During the limbo, Masterson continued to champion Dumond’s cause, going so far as to dispatch a reporter to interview Dumond’s wife and write a sympathetic story about her that was published on Page 1 on Mother’s Day 1997.

There’s always some risk when an editor decides to become so involved in a cause that he becomes part of the story. Facts are elusive, slippery things, and journalists are taught in school to see everything in shades of gray.

In this case, Masterson (along with many others) believed Dumond, so much so that Masterson chose to fight for Dumond’s freedom in spite of a good deal of evidence indicating that was a bad decision. A Vietnam veteran, Dumond had told stories about helping slaughter a village of Cambodians. He had arrests dating back to the 1970s — one of which involved the claw-hammer bludgeoning death of a fellow soldier in Oklahoma.

We don’t know if Dumond is guilty in any of these cases, but we think such decisions are best left to judges and juries, not editors and politicians.