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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (67804)	1/22/2003 5:52:33 PM
From: paul_philp	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

John, Here is both a New Republic and a National Review story. No surprise but they don't totally agree. Paul tnr.com nationalreview.com

To: JohnM who wrote (67804)	1/22/2003 6:12:36 PM
From: Don Hurst	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Yeah John, it is the same link that says the judge was just "correcting" the sentence of the guy who got what he did not deserve because the other two got the mild rebuke for just a little cross burning fun.

To: JohnM who wrote (67804)	1/22/2003 7:03:34 PM
From: Win Smith	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Couple other stories: Mr. Edwards asked about a 1994 trial Judge Pickering presided over in which a man was convicted of burning a cross on the lawn of an interracial couple with a 2-year-old child. Judge Pickering had opposed the Justice Department's efforts to have the man sentenced to five years as required by the law. He also called a senior official in the Justice Department to complain. Senator Edwards read the canons of judicial ethics prohibiting a judge from making contact with one side and suggested that Judge Pickering had violated it. The judge, who seemed taken aback by the line of questioning, said, ''I don't consider it to be a violation of judicial ethics'' because he was not looking to achieve anything by his call. Asked why he had called, he said he was looking to express frustration. query.nytimes.com More extensively, originally from the LA Times: Minutes before the hearing began, the Justice Department turned over files compiled during the Clinton administration. They showed that Pickering was upset about the seven-year sentence proposed for Daniel Swan, then 20, who drove his pickup to the home of a mixed-race couple and joined two other men in burning an 8-foot-tall cross. The men also shouted racial epithets and fired shots into the house. One of the bullets narrowly missed the couple's baby. Pickering spoke of Swan's action as a "drunken prank," but he also called it a "despicable act" that deserved jail time. But the judge clashed with a Justice Department civil rights lawyer about whether Swan deserved the seven-year prison term called for by federal sentencing guidelines. "I thought there was a tremendous disparity," the judge said, because Swan's co-defendant had pleaded guilty and obtained a minimal sentence. But he did not stop with expressing his opinion in the courtroom. According to the files, Pickering met privately with the prosecutors and threatened to order a new trial unless they agreed to a lesser sentence. When they refused, Pickering contacted a top Justice Department official in Washington and said that Atty. Gen. Janet Reno should intervene. In pointed questioning, Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) suggested that the judge appeared to have violated the judicial code of conduct, first by meeting privately with one side of the case and then by intervening at the Justice Department. "This is very much outside the ordinary," Edwards said, based on his 20 years in law practice. Pickering admitted he had met privately with the lawyers in the case but said he "had no recollection" of threatening to order a new trial. "I did not minimize the seriousness of cross-burning," the judge replied. He finally sentenced Swan to 27 months in prison. - independentjudiciary.com