Senate Committee to Vote on Pickering ??? Again
Feature Story by Ritu Kelotra - 9/30/2003
In an unprecedented move, Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans have planned a vote this Thursday to consider again Charles W. Pickering’s addition to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.Although the U.S. Senate voted against the confirmation of Pickering more than one year ago, President Bush re-nominated him in January 2003. During the first vote, Senate Democrats cited the far-right nature of Pickering as the reason behind his defeat.
“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 speech at the National Press Club, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Executive Director Wade Henderson expressed his concern over Pickering's nomination.
“Our exhaustive and careful review of Judge Charles W. Pickering Sr.'s public record — from law student to state legislator to judge, as well as the presentations we have heard today, have left us with little alternative but to oppose his nomination because of his extreme views on important civil rights, women’s rights and constitutional issues,” Henderson said.
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."
