Webb Hubbell talks of prison life

Asks court officials to avoid delay

 Webb Hubbell
Webb Hubbell

ROGERS -- Webb Hubbell, then an assistant U.S. attorney general, spoke in 1993 to a conference of the judges and attorneys of the U.S. 8th Circuit. He appeared before the group again Thursday as a reformed federal prisoner.

Hubbell served in the administration of his longtime friend and golfing buddy, President Bill Clinton, until he resigned in 1994. He pleaded guilty later that year to one count of wire fraud and one count of tax fraud for improper charges to the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock and some of its clients while he was a managing partner there. He was sentenced in early 1995 to 21 months in prison.

Today

Webster Lee “Webb” Hubbell now lives in Charlotte, N.C., and is a successful novelist. His third book, A Game of Inches, debuts later this month.

"A lot of my friends say I should have never gone to jail. They're wrong," Hubbell told the audience at the bi-annual conference at the John Q. Hammons Center. He shouldn't have accepted a high-ranking position in the administration knowing of his past illegal actions, he said.

"I did a disservice to my country," Hubbell said.

Hubbell, who's also former mayor of Little Rock and former Arkansas Supreme Court chief justice, said he never asked for a presidential pardon from Bill Clinton and wouldn't ask Hillary Clinton for one if she's elected. He served his sentence and it made him a much better person, he said.

He urged those in the room to pursue their cases with speed. The people they serve, including the families of the accused, hang on their decisions.

"Time means a lot to the living," Hubbell said. "The effect on the prisoner is not nearly as bad as the effect on the family," he said of the experience of conviction and imprisonment.

Hubbell said after his speech that while life in prison is hard, it's regulated. The prisoner has few meaningful decisions to make. The prisoner's family, however, has to rebuild their lives and cope with an entirely new and severe set of circumstances.

He said for years he counseled people who were either about to enter federal prison or who had just been released.

"The hardest question I have to answer is, 'What can I do when I get out?'" he said. "There are 45,000 different laws that restrict the types of jobs that felons can do. One-fifth of the economy, working in a health care facility, is completely barred to them. You can't even be a janitor in a health care facility if you have a conviction."

"Years after I got out, I had an offer of a job in the insurance industry," Hubbell said. "That's when I found out that there was one sentence in the violent crime bill of 1994 -- a bill I helped get started -- that says you can't work in insurance if you have a conviction unless you get an exemption from the state insurance commission. I applied for one for that job, that was in Washington state, and it was the first time anyone had ever applied for an exemption in the seven years that law was in effect."

NW News on 05/06/2016

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