Senate Committee Approves Pickering in Party-Line Vote
Feature Story by Ritu Kelotra - 10/3/2003
The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday voted to approve Charles W. Pickering to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. A vote on Pickering’s confirmation could go to the full Senate as soon as October 14.Although the committee voted against the confirmation of Pickering more than one year ago, President Bush re-nominated him in an unprecedented move in January 2003.
“Never in the history of this Republic has a President re-nominated to the same post a judicial nominee voted down by this Committee — never until this Administration chose to re-nominate Judge Pickering and Justice Owen this year,” Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Patrick Leahy, Vt., said in a statement. “Until this President, the Committee’s rejection of a judicial nominee on the merits was respected as a function of the Senate’s process of advice and consent.”
Many organizations oppose a confirmation of Pickering, a former Mississippi district court judge, to the Fifth Circuit, which is known as the most conservative circuit in the United States. Covering Mississippi, Texas and Louisiana, the Fifth Circuit also has the largest percentage of people of color of any circuit in the country.
Opposition to Pickering is based on his extreme views on civil rights and other issues, and tendency toward conservative judicial activism. In a letter to senators, urging them to oppose Pickering, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights stated its position.
“Pickering’s record as a district court judge and as a state senator shows his hostility to LCCR priorities, including civil rights and constitutional issues. Further, throughout Pickering’s career, he has demonstrated a commitment to the reversal of a number of these rights, for which LCCR has fought for more than 50 years.”
In a letter to senators, Lisalyn R. Jacobs, vice president for government relations at the National Organization for Women Legal Defense (NOWLDF), said that woman’s rights issues are also at stake.
“Court decisions at every level and relentless attacks from anti-choice legislatures have seriously eroded a woman’s right to choose,” she said. “Permitting anti-choice nominees like Charles Pickering to assume lifetime appointments to the bench will allow still further evisceration of the fundamental right to choose.”
Elizabeth Birch, executive director for the Human Rights Campaign, also voiced her concern over Pickering, particularly for his extremist views from the bench.
“Judge Pickering did not temper his retrogressive views on civil rights after he ascended to the bench,” she said. “To the contrary, he used his judicial authority to promote and enforce these insensitive, extreme and intemperate views.”
Several examples throughout Pickering’s judgeships have revealed his personal opinions. When presiding over a 1994 trial involving a cross burning in the yard of an interracial family, Pickering told prosecutors that the sentence for one convicted defendant was too severe, even though the law mandated the punishment. In the end, Pickering successfully persuaded prosecutors to drop the charge with the long sentence.
LCCR’s Henderson expressed ethical dilemmas surrounding the cross-burning case.
"In addition to concerns regarding why Judge Pickering decided to take such extraordinary steps to lobby for a reduced sentence for a convicted cross-burner, this conduct also raises serious questions about the ethics of Pickering’s behavior, including whether he violated Rule 3.A.4 of the Code of Conduct for U.S. Judges, which specifically forbids ex parte contacts between a judge and attorneys for one side of a case about that case," Henderson said in a letter.
As a state senator in the 1970s, Pickering twice voted for a reapportionment plan that would increase the number of senators per district, while diluting the voting strength of African Americans and other racial minorities. In 1993, he published an opinion questioning the "one-person-one vote" doctrine as "obtrusive."
