The Other Side of Mercy: A Killer's Journey Across the American Divide

by Ken Armstrong, Jonathan Martin

On a fall morning in the Pacific Northwest, in a coffee shop with four police officers as customers, a burst of gunfire announced a shocking ambush that devastated the Puget Sound and swept up everyone from judges in Tacoma to prison officials in Arkansas to candidates for president of the United States. The story of that morning's violence spans the decades and ripples across state lines. It is a story of our nation's racial divide; of southern prison farms and an act of grace; of festering hate and missed opportunities to stop a man going mad. For its coverage of the shootings and the manhunt that followed, the Seattle Times won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news. Now the newspaper's staff goes deeper, telling the story of a charismatic felon, a minister with his eyes on the White House, and what can lie on the other side of mercy.

So often, when someone does something shocking, people want to know: What was he thinking? What was Timothy McVeigh thinking? What about those kids at Columbine? In western Washington, in the fall of 2009, Maurice Clemmons planned to do something shocking. And he left no doubt what he was thinking. The Other Side of Mercy draws upon a stunning trove of records-including a hundred-plus hours of Clemmons' recorded telephone conversations-to describe in remarkable detail Clemmons' past and the steps he took along the way to committing one of the worst crimes in the modern history of the Pacific Northwest.

The Other Side of Mercy recounts Clemmons' childhood in a small Arkansas town that had descended into chaos and economic ruin. Racial hostilities were such that sniper bullets flew and buildings were firebombed. Clemmons turned to burglary and robbery, and, at the age of seventeen, was shipped off to a prison farm system so notorious that it was memorialized in the movie Brubaker. Drawing upon a prison file eighteen-hundred pages thick, The Other Side of Mercy takes readers inside the prison barracks and into the fields, as Clemmons racks up enemies, extorting other inmates and waging fights with makeshift weapons.

Clemmons makes a plea for mercy to Mike Huckabee, the Arkansas governor who later runs for president. After managing to win his freedom, Clemmons moves to Washington state and becomes both predator and prey, dealing drugs while dreaming of wealth through a variety of fantastical enterprises. He believes Donald Trump will make him rich. That he can game the Bank of America. That a self-proclaimed prophet in New York City holds the key to prosperity. Clemmons descends into madness, while making plans of striking back at the people he blames for his lost youth and uncertain future.

Genres: True Crime, Nonfiction

205 pages, Paperback

First published September 17, 2010

About the author

Ken Armstrong, who joined ProPublica in 2017, previously worked at The Marshall Project and Chicago Tribune, where his work helped prompt the Illinois governor to suspend executions and empty death row. His first book, Scoreboard, Baby, with Nick Perry, won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for non-fiction. He has been the McGraw Professor of Writing at Princeton and a Nieman Fellow at Harvard.

Reviews

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

A terrifying glimpse of how the system fails us.

In Lakewood, Washington, Maurice Clemmons shot and killed 4 police officers in the Forza coffee shop the Sunday after Thanksgiving of 2009. After a 3-day intensive manhunt, he was killed fleeing from a police officer.

Investigation showed that Clemmons had moved to Washington from Arkansas where he had racked up 8 felony counts and lots of jail time. However, then Governor Mike Huckabee, whose office did not inform any of the agencies or individuals who had the right to protest and possibly stop the action, commuted Clemmons's sentence and freed him.

Washington did not want to accept Clemmons unless Arkansas agreed to take him back should he commit another felony. Arkansas said they had closed his file and could no longer agree to take him back: he was Washington's problem. (There are a few other little tiffs between the states also.)

After reading the trouble Clemmons caused in Arkansas, it comes as no surprise that he began creating trouble in Washington rather quickly. Unknown to the judges who assigned his bail, bail bondsmen do not require that the 10% needed to bail out be paid at one time. Many of them cut deals where a considerably lesser amount is put down with houses as collateral or with a payment plan set up. Clemmons was able to bail out of $190,000 bail for just a little over $5000 down.

While in jail here in Washington, Clemmons used the phone frequently and his telephone tirades were all recorded but never reviewed by the prison personnel. Therefore, his threats and statements about killing cops when he was released went unheeded.

Thus resulting in the death of the 4 police officers.

This book is based on the series of articles that the Seattle Times published during that time. The reporters expand on all the research they did, reviewing all the problem areas in detail without pointing fingers. What results is chilling.

Local readers should read this as a follow-up to the horrific events we watched and read about. Others should read it to see what happens when the system fails.

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone who lives in Western Washington should read this book. It details the total ongoing cluster that allowed Maurice Clemmons out of jail, so he could go on to murder four police officers. How come we tape conversations in prison/jail if no one is going to listen to them as part of a psychic eval or when an offender is up for parole? Mr. Clemmons told visitor repeatedly what he was going to but the system chose not to listen. And then they let him out on bail. Appalling. Thanks budget cuts! Guess that's why the voters changed WA's constitution and finally made lawmakers close some of these loopholes.
Coming up on the one year anniversary of their killing, the book was even more poignant.

[Christiane · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd been putting off reading this but it was on the new book shelf the last time I was at Fremont so I finally picked it up. It's a heart-breaking detailing of everything that had to go wrong in the justice system to get to the point where an armed and crazy convicted felon (Maurice Clemmons) was able to walk into a coffee shop and shoot four police officers. The authors do a thorough job of tracing Clemmons’ history, and trying to sort out how someone so dangerous to public safety was out on the street. They also focus on the four officers and their families, which is the saddest part of the book---it’s impossible not to be moved by the bravery of the officers' young children.

[Bruce · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent exhibition of a fascinating story. I am assigning it to my Police and Society class at St. Martin's University.

I would have liked a little more exposition of CJ system issues. One thing I think they missed is a better understanding of the killer's mental health issues. Were they perhaps drug-induced? Was he psychotic on the day of the murders? Was he taking anything or withdrawing from anything?

[Kati · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book zooms in and zooms out to find out what went wrong and led to such an unthinkable tragedy. Any discussion of criminal justice reform should look at this case to see how challenging it can be in practice.

[Griffin Fujioka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tremendously interesting and well-written. My views on Maurice Clemmons, Chris Montford and attacks against the police were changed by this book. By the end, when the lives of the slain police officers were being described, I had tears in my eyes.

[Dennis Willingham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good analysis and detailing of how a habitual offender was released from jail and how he came to kill 4 police officers.