[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----MISS., WYO., USA

[Rick Halperin]

May 6



MISSISSIPPI:

New trial for state's only female death row inmate?----The state is seeking a 
stay of a federal judge's ruling ordering Mississippi to grant its only female 
death row inmate a new trial within 120 days or release her from custody.



The state is seeking a stay of a federal judge's ruling ordering Mississippi to 
grant its only female death row inmate a new trial within 120 days or release 
her from custody.

On the last day of March, U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves ordered the state 
to grant Lisa Jo Chamberlin a new trial within in four months, saying 
prosecutors intentionally struck seven black potential jurors from her capital 
murder trial.

What's interesting is that Chamberlin is white. She argued on appeal that her 
rights were violated by prosecutors striking some blacks as potential jurors 
for non-racial neutral reasons.

Chamberlin and her boyfriend, Roger Lee Gillett, were convicted of 2 counts of 
capital murder in the March 2004 slayings of Gillet's cousin, Vernon Hulett, 
34, and Hulett's girlfriend, Linda Heintzelman, 37, in Hattiesburg and 
transporting their bodies to Kansas in a freezer.

Gillett and Chamberlin were arrested March 29, 2004, after Kansas Bureau of 
Investigation agents raided an abandoned farm house near Russell, Kansas, owned 
by Gillett's father, and found the dismembered bodies of Hulett and Heintzelman 
in a freezer.

KBI agents were investigating Gillett and Chamberlin for their possible 
connection to the manufacture of methamphetamine, according to published 
reports.

Gillett and Chamberlin were living with Hulett and Heintzelman in Hattiesburg 
at the time of the slayings.

Chamberlin, in a taped confession played at her trial, said the victims were 
killed because they wouldn't open a safe in Hulett's home.

Chamberlain was sentenced to death row in 2006 and Gillett was sentenced in 
2007.

Last year, Gillett's death sentence was overturned by the Mississippi Supreme 
Court. While in custody in Kansas, Gillett attempted to escape. That crime was 
one of the aggravating factors prosecutors presented jurors to support the 
death penalty.

In a 6-3 decision, the state Supreme Court said not every escape is considered 
a crime of violence under Kansas law. Therefore, the Kansas crime cannot be 
used to support a death sentence in Mississippi, the court ruled.

Chamberlin filed a post-conviction challenge to her conviction in 2011 in U.S. 
District Court after the state Supreme Court upheld her conviction and death 
sentence.

One of claims was that the prosecution improperly struck 7 blacks from serving 
on her jury. The prosecutor said he struck 7 blacks and 5 whites. He denied any 
effort to strike potential jurors based upon race.

Reeves said federal law requires in death penalty cases that comparative 
analysis be done when black potential jurors are struck compared to white 
jurors allowed to remain in the jury pool.

"Some may wonder why constitutional error in the jury's selection necessitates 
a new trial, especially given the horrific murders committed in this case," 
Reeves said in his court order. "But the Supreme Court has many times explained 
that a discriminatory jury selection process unforgivably taints a guilty 
verdict.

Discrimination in picking a jury "causes harm to the litigants, the community, 
and the individual jurors who are wrongfully excluded from participation in the 
judicial process."

Attorney General Jim Hood's office has filed an appeal with the 5th Circuit 
U.S. Court of Appeals. Hood has asked Reeves to stay his order until the appeal 
is decided. Reeves has given Hood until May 22 to file court briefs supporting 
his position for staying the order.

(source: Clarion-Ledger)








WYOMING:

Cheyenne man accused of murder could face death penalty



Daniel Guajardo, accused of killing his ex-girlfriend last month with a shotgun 
and wounding her boyfriend, could face the death penalty.

Laramie County District Attorney Jeremiah Sandburg said this morning in Laramie 
County Circuit Court the state has not yet made that determination, but it is 
possible.

Guajardo was in court today for his initial appearance on charges of 
first-degree murder, first-degree attempted murder and aggravated burglary with 
a deadly weapon.

Charging documents accuse Guajardo of killing 26-year-old Janessa Spencer and 
attempting to murder 24-year-old Samuel Cook, then fleeing to Fort Collins, 
Colorado, on April 12.

(source: Wyoming Tribune Eagle)








USA:

Supreme Court gives new life to death penalty debate



Kent Sprouse is set to die Thursday by lethal injection, a method of execution 
botched so often lately that the Supreme Court will weigh in on its 
constitutionality later this month.

Sprouse, however, isn't likely to get a reprieve. That's because he's 
imprisoned in Texas, far and away the nation's leader in lethal injections and 
a state that has managed to carry out a regular schedule of executions without 
mishap.

The state recently snared a new supply of pentobarbital, the drug of choice for 
executioners in a country fast running out of humane ways to kill death row 
inmates. That should give Texas enough of the barbiturate to execute four men 
at its Huntsville state penitentiary this month, bringing its total to 526 
lethal injections since it spearheaded the practice in 1982.

But other states - and some of the prisoners they have executed of late - can't 
find pharmacies willing to supply drugs that can kill reliably, without the 
gasps and groans the Supreme Court has indicated may violate the Constitution's 
protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

In 3 weeks, the justices will consider a challenge from three death row inmates 
to Oklahoma's lethal injection method, one that's used by several other states. 
A ruling against the use of midazolam, a sedative that lacks the knockout punch 
of pentobarbital, as part of a three-drug cocktail would further crimp the 
country's ability to execute prisoners. Even if the court does not rule against 
Oklahoma, a number of other developments are pointing toward the diminution of 
the death penalty in America:

-- 6 states - New York, New Jersey, New Mexico, Illinois, Connecticut and 
Maryland - have abolished capital punishment since 2004.

-- Several other states have imposed moratoriums on lethal injections because 
of problems, ranging from botched executions in Oklahoma and Ohio to a "cloudy" 
drug concoction in Georgia.

-- The Supreme Court has ruled that juveniles and people with intellectual 
disabilities cannot be executed, while judges, juries and prosecutors have 
turned increasingly to life sentences without the possibility of parole.

-- Just last month, both the American Pharmacists Association and the 
International Academy of Compounding Pharmacists discouraged their members from 
participating in the process. The U.S. group called it "fundamentally contrary 
to the role of pharmacists as providers of health care."

-- The difficulties involved in lethal injections are forcing states with 
capital punishment laws to rejuvenate backup methods once viewed as beyond the 
pale. Tennessee would allow electrocution, Utah death by firing squad. Now 
Oklahoma lawmakers are moving toward legalizing the use of nitrogen gas.

"The lethal injection issues are coming at a critical juncture," says Robert 
Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. Capital 
punishment is declining, he notes, "judicially, legislatively and as a matter 
of practice - all at the same time."

'OUR BUSINESS IS IN HEALING'

There is good reason to believe the Supreme Court won't help that trend April 
29 when it considers Glossip v. Gross - a case called Warner v. Gross until the 
justices refused to stop Charles Warner's lethal injection in January.

Despite its rulings abolishing the death penalty for people with intellectual 
disabilities in 2002 and for juveniles younger than 18 in 2005, the 
conservative-leaning court has shown little inclination to move much further. 
Only 4 votes were needed to accept the Oklahoma case. Only the use of midazolam 
as part of a 3-drug protocol is in jeopardy.

That's not the same three-drug protocol the court upheld in Baze v. Rees, the 
2008 Kentucky case that upheld the method of lethal injection used in most 
states at the time. Midazolam was implicated in three botched executions last 
year in Ohio, Oklahoma and Arizona, where prisoners gasped, groaned and snorted 
before succumbing.

Although Florida and Oklahoma used that protocol successfully in January, Texas 
and Missouri have had fewer problems with pentobarbital. The problem is in 
getting a reliable supply of any lethal injection drugs following the European 
Union's export ban in 2011.

States that have turned to compounding pharmacies for their drugs are running 
into increased resistance - for good reason, says David Miller, executive vice 
president of the International Academy of Compounding Pharmacists.

"As a pharmacist, I was trained to take care of people," Miller says. "This is 
not our business. Our business is in healing."

The court will hear the challenge from Richard Glossip, John Grant and Benjamin 
Cole, whose executions had been scheduled for January, February and March. 
Glossip was convicted of paying another man to kill the owner of the Oklahoma 
City budget motel where he worked as manager. He has long declared his 
innocence.

The battle lines in Oklahoma are clear. The state, which not only agreed to 
postpone those executions but asked the court to do so, hopes for a clear 
victory.

"The families of the victims in these 3 cases have waited a combined 48 years 
for the sentences of these heinous crimes to be carried out," Attorney General 
Scott Pruitt has said.

The best that death penalty opponents likely can hope for is a narrow decision 
restricting the use of midazolam.

"I do not think the court is going to open the Pandora's box to broader 
discussions about the nature of lethal injection as a broad topic or the death 
penalty in general," says Rick Halperin, director of the Human Rights Education 
Program at Texas' Southern Methodist University.

NO LONGER 'BUSINESS AS USUAL'

While Oklahoma waits to execute more prisoners - along with states such as 
Ohio, where Gov. John Kasich has postponed all executions because of a drug 
shortage - Texas executions continue apace.

Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, Texas has executed more 
criminals than the next 6 states combined - Oklahoma, Virginia, Florida, 
Missouri, Georgia and Alabama. Four executions have been performed already this 
year; 4 more are set for this month.

Even by Lone Star State standards, Sprouse's crime was horrendous. He was 
convicted in 2004 of shooting to death a police officer and an innocent 
bystander at a gas station two years earlier. His conviction was upheld by a 
federal appeals court in 2007.

In recent years, however, Texas has shown a decline in the number of death 
sentences imposed, death row inmates housed and prisoners executed. A 
confluence of factors has contributed, ranging from the risk of executing 
innocent people to the cost of capital punishment proceedings and the 
availability of life imprisonment without parole.

"There are undeniable signs across the spectrum that America is having doubts 
about the death penalty, for a whole gamut of reasons," says Maurie Levin, a 
Texas lawyer who regularly represents capital defendants and has 3 lawsuits 
pending against the state. "Even though Texas has managed to continue to carry 
out executions, it's a mistake to think it's business as usual."

Thus far, the drug shortage hasn't brought Texas executions to the standstill 
that has hit other states. It announced in March that it had obtained enough to 
get through this month's executions. But supplies are drying up everywhere.

"Since 2011, it has become increasingly difficult to purchase drugs used in the 
lethal injection process," says Jason Clark, spokesman for the state Department 
of Criminal Justice. "The agency is exploring all options, including the 
continued use of pentobarbital or other drugs."

The drug shortage doesn't win much sympathy from the people who stand vigil 
outside Huntsville's "Walls Unit" during each evening execution. They will be 
there again Thursday night, barring a last-minute postponement - most likely 
opposite a group of death penalty proponents supporting the execution of a 
convicted cop-killer.

"I wish that I thought we were at a turning point," says Cheryl Smith, minister 
of Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church in Huntsville, who attends every 
vigil she can. "I don't know that it will ever come in Texas, unless it comes 
from the Supreme Court. There is a point of pride here in Texas about being 
tough on crime."

(source: USA Today)

*********************

'Burned Alive': Lethal Injection Gets Day in Supreme Court ---- Absence of 
correct execution method 'might show that death penalty is not consistent with 
8th Amendment'



A lethal-injection "cocktail" at the center of a Supreme Court showdown over 
the death penalty can make the condemned feel like "being burned alive," the US 
top court heard Wednesday, April 29.

Liberal justice Elena Kagan made the comment as supporters and critics of 
capital pun-ishment went head to head before the court over a drug that is 
supposed to block the pain of execution.

Lawyers for 3 death-row convicts in Oklahoma told the nation's highest court 
that midazolam, a depressant and anesthetic, cannot guarantee a humane 
execution.

But the conservative south-central state responded that its use of midazolam as 
part of a 3-drug "cocktail" for executions is legal under the US Constitution.

The case could have broader implications for capital punishment in the United 
States if the Supreme Court opts to use it as a way to make a larger statement 
on the deeply divi-sive issue.

The United States remains the only Western country to maintain the death 
penalty, with 13 executions already so far this year and 35 last year.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs argued that the use of midazolam represents an 
"unacceptable risk of pain" that violates the Constitution's Eighth Amendment 
prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.

Conservative justices on the Supreme Court bench, however, quickly broached the 
wider issue of the legitimacy of capital punishment itself.

While alternative drugs exist, "these drugs have been rendered unavailable by 
the aboli-tionists," said Justice Antonin Scalia.

Chief Justice John Roberts pressed the plaintiffs' legal team on whether 
"alternative methods that are preferable (and) more humane" are available.

'Not consistent'

Among the liberal justices, Stephen Breyer said the absence of any correct 
execution method "might show that the death penalty is not consistent with the 
Eighth Amendment."

Kagan added that, with no sure anesthetic effect, a convict risked the 
sensation of "being burned alive" resulting from the ineffectiveness of 
midazolam.

A ruling is expected sometime in June, after a series of lower courts ruled 
consistently in Oklahoma's favor.

The Supreme Court, in an April 2008 decision, upheld the constitutionality of 
execution by lethal injection.

But since then, a refusal by manufacturers - mainly European - to supply the 
required drugs has led states like Oklahoma to seek out alternatives.

Last April, Oklahoma death-row inmate Clayton Lockett took an agonizing 43 
minutes to die and could be seen writhing in pain during the prolonged 
execution.

On January 16, 2014, Ohio inmate Dennis McGuire took 26 minutes to die, and 
Arizona death-row convict Joseph Wood took 117 minutes on July 23.

Lethal injection executions are expected to take 10 minutes, and in all three 
cases, the men could be seen gasping for air.

A 4th plaintiff, Charles Warner, was executed in Oklahoma in January, after the 
Supreme Court rejected his last-minute appeal for clemency.

On the execution table, he snorted that it felt like "my body is on fire."

Deep unconsciousness

Oklahoma, however, contends that a large dose of midazolam produces a deep 
uncon-sciousness that renders one unable to feel "even extremely painful 
stimuli."

Outside court, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt told reporters he 
anticipated "good outcomes" from the Supreme Court hearing.

"I think that we demonstrated to the court that our selection of midazolam is 
in fact a drug choice that does pass Eighth Amendment review," he said.

Robin Konrad, for the plaintiffs, said "plenty of states" have been using 
alternative drugs, such as pentobarbital, in their execution processes.

"As problematic executions have demonstrated, midazolam cannot reliably produce 
con-stitutional executions," she told reporters.

"This method, this drug formula (using midazolam) is unconstitutional because 
the first drug will not prevent a prisoner from feeling the severe pain and 
suffering of the 2nd and 3rd drug."

(source: jewishvoiceny.com)

***********

Prosecutors reject Marvin Gabrion's request for secret appeal of death sentence



Prosecutors oppose Marvin Gabrion's efforts to appeal his murder conviction and 
death sentence under seal.

Gabrion filed a motion in U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids seeking to 
vacate, set aside or correct his sentence in the 1997 killing of Rachel 
Timmerman.

He kidnapped and killed Timmerman, 19, 2 days before he was to stand trial in 
Newaygo County for raping her. She was bound and gagged, weighed down with a 
concrete block, then thrown into a shallow, remote lake in the Manistee 
National Forest.

The government contends he also killed her 11-month-old daughter, Shannon 
Verhage, whose body has not been found, and 3 others.

He was tried by the federal government, which permits the use of the death 
penalty, because the killing occurred on federal land. Michigan has no death 
penalty.

A federal appeals court said Gabrion showed "utter depravity" in Timmerman's 
killing.

Gabrion recently filed a Section 2255 petition seeking to have his conviction 
or sentence overturned.

The grounds for the latest action were filed under seal.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy VerHey said there is no reason to seal any of 
proceedings.

"The law is decidedly against his request. Historically, there has been a 
presumption of openness and public access to judicial proceedings and 
documents," he wrote in response to Gabrion's request.

"In this case, Gabrion has failed to demonstrate why the presumption has been 
overcome and the balance should tip in his favor," VerHey wrote in documents 
filed Tuesday, May 5.

"The Court will recall that, at the time of his conviction and trial, there was 
much public interest in the case because of, among other things, the rarity of 
death penalty cases in Michigan. By claiming his case was a miscarriage of 
justice, Gabrion has provided the public with an opportunity to learn more 
about the process. Further, the public always has an interest in determining 
whether its judicial system is working properly. This is especially true in a 
high-profile case such as this one."

He said Gabrion wants his petition kept from the public because "there are 
certain psychological and personal records that are 'highly relevant but 
sensitive.'"

He said Gabrion wants to file all of his documents under seal, accessible only 
to the judge and attorneys.

"If granted, his motion will prevent the public from all access to the 
arguments by which he seeks to set aside his conviction and death sentence. The 
First Amendment and the law recited above will not tolerate such an outcome," 
VerHey wrote.

Gabrion earlier this year sought an "emergency" psychiatric review as part of 
an "exhaustive claim" to show his trial counsel was ineffective. U.S. District 
Judge Robert Holmes Bell, who sentenced Gabrion to the death penalty, rejected 
that claim.

Bell will rule on Gabrion's request to file documents under seal.

A federal appeals panel once overturned the penalty but it was re-instated in a 
ruling by the entire Sixth Court of Appeals in Cincinnati.

(source: mlive.com)

***************

Death for Drug Dealers and Quarantines for AIDS Victims: The Mike Huckabee You 
May Not Remember----What the presidential candidate's first campaign says about 
his current one.



On Tuesday, Mike Huckabee made it official. The former Republican Arkansas 
governor and Fox News host launched his second bid for the White House in his 
hometown of Hope, Arkansas, vowing to stop the "slaughter" of abortion and 
calling for the protection of the "laws of nature" from the "the false God of 
judicial supremacy."

Huckabee is joining a GOP field that's bigger and more competitive than the one 
he out-hustled to win the Iowa caucuses 7 years ago. The Christian 
conservatives who flocked to the former Baptist preacher in 2008 can now turn 
toward other evangelical-minded candidates in the GOP presidential race. Texas 
Sen. Ted Cruz is already in the hunt; former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum 
and and ex-Texas Gov. Rick Perry are mulling bids. But Huckabee of today is 
also a far different candidate than the affable ex-gov who once rocked a bass 
guitar while stumping with Chuck Norris (although Walker, Texas Ranger is 
officially on board for this campaign too). Since dropping out of the 2008 
race, he's flaunted a more combative, occasionally conspiratorial brand of 
politics - flirting with birtherism, advising prospective enlistees to avoid 
joining the armed forces until President Barack Obama has left office, and, 
just last month, warning social conservatives that the United States is "moving 
rapidly toward the criminalization of Christianity."

By the standards of his political career, 2008 was in many ways an aberration. 
As he mounts a second run for the nomination, Huckabee is staying true to the 
kinds of red-meat issues he first entered politics to promote, in a long-shot 
1992 bid for Senate against Democratic incumbent Dale Bumpers.

Huckabee, then a Baptist pastor who operated a small television station out of 
his Arkadelphia church, made sex and morality the centerpieces of his '92 
campaign - and he preached as fiery a message from the stump as he did from the 
pulpit. The novice politician let loose with eyebrow-raising tirades that 
occasionally put him to the right of the most fire-breathing conservatives. He 
endorsed quarantining AIDS patients, condemned efforts to shield homosexuals 
from discrimination, and called for the death penalty to be imposed on big-time 
drug dealers. He attacked Bumpers repeatedly as a libertine who supposedly 
supported giving condoms to 12-year-olds, sanctioned gay throuples, and voted 
to use taxpayer funds on "pornographic" art.

Huckabee's 1992 platform was an artifact of the Moral Majority's high-water 
mark. In interviews and on the stump he explained that the nation had strayed 
toward "selfishness and sensuality" and had been "savaged by radical groups 
bent on a moral and social agenda" at odds with Judeo-Christian values. "When I 
was in school, they passed out Gideon Bibles - today, they pass out condoms," 
he said at stop after stop on the trail. In the new liberal order, Huckabee 
warned his hometown paper, the Hope Star, a family would consist of "3 
homosexual men living together."

The gay agenda, he believed, was influencing and restricting the nation's 
response to the AIDS crisis. He endorsed quarantining AIDS patients from the 
rest of society - a radical view even among conservatives at the time - while 
arguing that the severity of the epidemic had been exaggerated because gay 
people wielded so much political clout. The federal government should spend 
less money on AIDS, he insisted, and more on diseases that the afflicted had 
not brought on themselves, such as cancer.

"I realize a lot of people have received AIDS through blood transfusions, but 
AIDS is basically a lifestyle disease, and when the lifestyle is changed, the 
disease risk goes significantly down," Huckabee said in one interview. AIDS 
advocates themselves, not taxpayers, should pony up: "Elizabeth Taylor went 
before Congress and made a big pitch that we needed more federal funding for 
AIDS. If Elizabeth Taylor would take one of the rings off her finger and sell 
it, she could get more money for AIDS research than the average Arkansan will 
make in 2 years of hard work. If she's really serious about it, she's got 
assets that she could dispose of. Why should she make me take money from my 
children's future, and take it right off my table when she needs to cough up 
some of her own coin for that?"

Huckabee's campaign literature made frequent note of Bumpers' alleged 
favoritism toward gays. He attacked his opponent for supporting the Americans 
with Disabilities Act (because it included protections for AIDS patients) and a 
1991 civil rights bill that would have prohibited housing discrimination based 
on sexual orientation. "Mr. Bumpers voted for all the bills which help to give 
homosexuals rights but takes away employers and others rights to protect 
themselves," a Huckabee mailer asserted.

According to Huckabee, being gay wasn't just a sin - it should be a criminal 
offense. Another Huckabee fact sheet noted that "Bumpers voted no on an 
amendment saying that 'the homosexual movement threatens the strength and 
survival of the American family,' and calling for enforcement of state sodomy 
laws," which made gay sex a felony "crime against nature" in many states.

The ongoing conservative attack on the National Endowment for the Arts fit 
neatly into Huckabee's narrative of Bumpers as a tool of the gay rights crowd. 
At the time, the federally funded agency was in the hot seat over a handful of 
artworks presenting religious symbols in ways critics considered blasphemous. 
Bumpers had said the art was in poor taste, but he voted not to defund the 
agency. Huckabee ran a radio ad accusing Bumpers of funding "pornography." 
Bumpers called the ad "vile."

"What's vile," Huckabee replied, "is having our tax dollars spent on photos of 
a man urinating in the mouth of another man, using tax dollars to fund a 
fictional story about the biblical character of Lazarus having homosexual 
liaisons with Jesus Christ before and after his resurrection, and funding for a 
jar of human urine in which a crucifix had been placed and entitled, 'Piss 
Christ.'"

Then as now, Huckabee was a staunch opponent of abortion, a procedure he 
believed women underwent for superficial reasons. "Should we take a perfectly 
viable human being and end that human being's life because the mother wants 
another semester of college or wants to play in a tennis tournament?" he asked 
one interviewer. And he proposed expanding the death penalty to include major 
drug dealers and anyone who, after committing a previous felony, shot someone 
with a gun - even if the shooting wasn't fatal. "I know that's harsh, but 
someone who has shot someone in the leg could easily shoot someone in the 
heart," Huckabee said. (Huckabee did not respond to a request for comment on 
whether he still holds these views.)

Although Huckabee would later draw the ire of conservatives for raising taxes 
as governor of Arkansas, he took a die-hard stance on government spending. He 
called welfare "a new type of dependency and slavery" and warned that "the 
government has become a plantation system ... The master is in the big house 
and we're the sharecroppers out here."

Late in the race, Huckabee discovered that his rival's campaign had purchased 
more than a dozen videotapes of Huckabee's old sermons, a potential opposition 
research gold mine. He suggested Bumpers watch them. "I hope he listens to the 
message on pornography that I presented a couple of years ago," he said in a 
press release, "because then he'll know why I feel so strongly about the way 
pornography degrades women and children, dehumanizes sex into animal behavior, 
and why I so vigorously oppose the use of my tax dollars being used to fund 
it." The Bumpers campaign never did anything with the tapes Huckabee had 
encouraged the senator to watch.

Fire-and-brimstone Huckabee ultimately fell flat - he lost by 20 points. But 
the race provided a launching pad for his quick ascent up the political ladder. 
In later years, as he grew into a more polished politician, Huckabee became 
more protective of his old sermons. During the 2008 presidential campaign, 
reporters were told that videos of his sermons had been destroyed - or that 
they still existed and were open to the public but not to reporters. Huckabee, 
meanwhile, lasted longer than anyone expected in 2008 by crafting a reputation 
as a wisecracking pol who poked fun at Republicans who use "summer as a verb."

"I think he's the same guy who started out," says Max Brantley, editor of the 
Arkansas Times, who covered the 1992 race. "He's got a penchant for sort of 
cheap-shot quips. He thinks a lot of himself. He thinks he can talk himself out 
of anything. The main thing I still marvel at is how many people think he's a 
nice guy, because he's got a real mean streak."

But at this point, after spending the years since the 2008 election feeding red 
meat to his base, the tapes may not even matter much. In just the last six 
months, he's urged states to ignore a possible Supreme Court ruling on same-sex 
marriage and attacked Jay-Z for "arguably crossing the line from husband to 
pimp by exploiting his wife [Beyonce] as a sex object." Researchers won't have 
to scour church basements for dusty VHS cassettes containing his stem-winding 
sermons. They can just turn on the television.

(source: motherjones.com)