Race issues stir debate over Bush's judicial pick
Mississippian's past scrutinized
chicagotribune.com
From the Chicago Tribune
By Naftali Bendavid
Washington Bureau
February 13, 2002
WASHINGTON -- Despite the turbulence that inevitably surrounds
judicial nominees, President Bush's selections have generally fared well,
with none generating the level of controversy raised over nominees
such as Robert Bork or Clarence Thomas.
That may be about to change. Bush's attempt to elevate
Mississippi federal Judge Charles Pickering to the 5th
Circuit Court of Appeals is generating serious resistance.
In the process, the nomination has awakened some
long-dormant issues from the bitter fights of the civil
rights era.
Pickering, 64, came of age in Mississippi's racially
explosive 1950s and 1960s, and opponents say his
career shows a history of racial
insensitivity. He wrote an article in law school
explaining how to strengthen a state statute against
interracial marriage, he voted as a state
senator to fund the notoriously segregationist
Sovereignty Commission and he intervened to
reduce the sentence of a cross-burner.
The Congressional Black Caucus and
the Mississippi NAACP oppose Pickering's
nomination. Asked if the judge is a racist, L.A. Warren, an
official with the Mississippi NAACP, responded:
"If it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck,
it appears to be a duck."
But supporters, including some of the state's black leaders,
describe Pickering as an entirely different person.
They say he has helped the
state shed its racist past by,
for example, testifying against a
a grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan in the
1960s at great peril to himself.
W.O. "Chet" Dillard, a lifelong friend of Pickering, said he
and Pickering fought for such causes as putting blacks
on juries when the two
were local prosecutors in the 1960s.
"We almost had to stand back-to-back to protect each
other in Jones County," Dillard said. "He was from Jones
County, and it was difficult
for him to take a stand that
was unpopular among his friends and
neighbors and tell them, `This is the law.'"
The Senate Judiciary Committee may
vote by the end of the month on the nomination
of Pickering, who is extraordinarily well-connected.
He is a close friend of Senate Minority Leader
Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and the father of
Rep. Charles "Chip" Pickering Jr. (R-Miss.).
The debate is sharpened because Pickering is
a candidate for the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals,
which covers Mississippi, Texas and
Louisiana, an area that is a historic
civil rights battleground. In the 1960s, 5th Circuit
judges such as John Minor Wisdom surprised the
nation with decisions ordering the desegregation
of the University of Mississippi and other institutions.
But the court has swung to the conservative side
in recent years. It covers an area with a high
poverty rate and many minorities, and liberals
are anxious to prevent it from becoming more conservative.
This helps explain why the Pickering nomination is
shaping up as Bush's first real judicial battle.
Pickering's opponents reel off a litany of questionable
actions: As a law student in 1959, Pickering wrote
a law review article suggesting ways
for the state to close a loophole in its law
against interracial marriage. The Legislature
acted on his suggestions the following year, passing an
amendment to close the loophole.
Critics also fault Pickering for going into private
practice with Carroll Gartin, an avowed segregationist.
Pickering's supporters say Gartin was
a prominent Mississippi figure and that
his positions were hardly unusual.
The Sovereignty Commission represents
another bleak chapter in Mississippi's past, and
critics say Pickering was associated with that group.
The commission was created by the state
to fight the U.S. Supreme Court's desegregation
orders, and Pickering voted to fund it twice when
he was in the state Legislature.
Pickering has denied any substantial association
with the commission. "I never had any contact with
that agency, and I had disagreement
with the purposes and the methods and
some of the approaches that they took," Pickering
told the Senate in 1990. His opponents dispute
this, saying he had more contact than he admits,
such as seeking information on a commission investigation.
More broadly, some of Pickering's defenders argue that
these events took place 35 years ago or more and belong
to a distant past
But a more recent episode could prove the most
controversial for Pickering.
In 1994, the judge presided over a trial of three people
accused of burning a cross on the lawn of an interracial couple.
Two pleaded guilty and received relatively light penalties;
the third went to trial and was convicted, receiving a 5-year mandatory sentence.
Saying he was disturbed by the 5-year sentence
and the disparity in the punishments, Pickering personally
contacted the Justice Department to express his frustration,
possibly violating judicial ethics rules. He made his displeasure
clear to prosecutors, who dropped a key charge against the
cross-burner--a virtually unheard-of action, because the man
already had been convicted.
At a recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing,
Pickering defended his action, saying he had made clear
his disapproval of the defendants'
actions in court. "I described the cross-burning
as a despicable act," Pickering told the senators.
"I observed that the act was drunk young
men doing a dastardly deed that they should not have had in their heart."
Pickering's opponents were not mollified. "He is a
throwback to a pretty shameful episode in our nation's history,"
said Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice,
adding that Pickering's rulings have been hostile to civil rights.
But his friends say they do not recognize Pickering
in this portrait. Among the judge's backers are prominent
African-Americans including
James Charles Evers, brother of
slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers, and Henry Wingate,
the first black federal judge in Mississippi.
Pickering showed flashes of courage during
the civil rights era, supporters say, and in his recent
career he has shown sensitivity to minority
concerns.
Pickering sent his children to public schools when many
whites were abandoning them for all-white private schools,
these supporters say. In 1967, Pickering testified against
Ku Klux Klan imperial wizard Samuel Bowers in a case
involving the murder of civil rights worker Vernon
Dahmer.
The judge's backers cite other actions: He hired the first
black staffer in the Mississippi Republican Party, for example, and he helped
establish an Institute for Racial Reconciliation at the University of Mississippi.
"He does happen to be white and he does happen to be a
Baptist," said Dillard, his old friend. "But you couldn't find any
person that I think is more morally conscientious about following
the laws as set forth by the United States Supreme Court."
The Senate Judiciary Committee's vote on Pickering
could be close, and the rhetoric has become fierce.
"We hope to God that he doesn't make it," Warren said. "We know his past."
Copyright © 2002, Chicago Tribune |
