Pickering deserves another unanimous confirmation
By John Nowacki
web posted
September 29, 2003
Federal appeals court nominee Charles Pickering, Sr.'s name will be dragged
through the mud again this week as the Senate Judiciary Committee prepares
to vote on his nomination. The U.S. District Judge was originally nominated
to the Fifth Circuit in May 2001 and narrowly defeated last year by a partisan
committee vote following a smear campaign run by liberal interest groups
and Senate Democrats.
This time, however, he will make it out of committee and to the Senate floor.
But that doesn't make the character assassination any easier for him to endure,
nor does it make it any easier for him to get a fair vote in the Senate.
Pickering has more than enough support for confirmation, and that's why the
radical left will be in full hysterical mode as his name comes up. That's
also why he will be joining Priscilla Owen, Bill Pryor, and the now-withdrawn
Miguel Estrada on the list of nominees undergoing the first judicial filibusters
in the history of the Republic.
Judge Pickering has been attacked on several issues, including criticism
from a prominent left-wing group that faulted him for statements on the authority
of the Bible made back before he was a judge -- when he was President of
the Mississippi Baptist Convention, addressing that denomination's annual
meeting on a purely theological matter.
But the central attacks on Judge Pickering revolve around one issue: race.
Left-wing groups and their Senate allies have tried to paint him as a racist
for the past two years, disregarding an impressive record on race relations
compiled over the past 50 years.
During the 1960s, he worked with the FBI to prosecute violence against blacks,
publicly condemning racially motivated violence. In 1967, he testified against
the Imperial Wizard of the KKK in Mississippi -- charged with the fire-bombing
murder of a civil rights activist -- putting himself and his family at risk.
In the 1970s, he hired the Mississippi Republican Party's first black political
worker. He has served on the board of the University of Mississippi's Institute
for Racial Reconciliation. He helped create a program for at-risk black youths
in his hometown of Laurel.
He has the strong support of many of his fellow Mississippians, black and
white, from both sides of the aisle. In fact, many in the black community
who have known him and worked with him wanted to see his confirmation last
year -- judges, attorneys, government officials, clergymen, civil rights
workers, and others.
Earlier this year, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution analyzed Judge Pickering's
record and reported that there is no evidence of racism in his record.
And just last week, Mississippi's Democratic governor and three others from
his party who hold statewide office wrote to the Senate, saying: "Mississippi
has made tremendous progress in race relations since the 1960s and Charles
Pickering has been part of that progress. We ask that the United States Senate
stand up to those that malign the character of Charles Pickering, and give
him an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor."
But Judge Pickering's opponents would rather pretend that all this is irrelevant.
They point instead to various incidents or decisions -- twisting some facts
and ignoring others -- and claim this makes their case.
They complain about incidental contacts 30 years ago (while he was a state
senator) with the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, a group Pickering voted
to shut down. What they don't mention is that he was merely ran into an employee
in a capital hallway and asked to be kept informed about a union infiltrated
by Ku Klux Klan members, one of whom had been charged with murder -- with
Pickering's signature on the affidavit supporting the indictment. Information
about that contact is available thanks to Pickering, who voted to preserve
the commission's records instead of destroying them.
His attackers point to an academic article Pickering wrote while a law student
in 1959, analyzing -- after a relevant court decision -- how Mississippi's
interracial marriage statute differed from those in other states. They ignore
the fact that he didn't advocate or support the statute, just as they ignore
his statement during his 1990 district court hearing -- repeated in his 2001
hearing -- that "marriage between people of different races is a matter
of personal choice," and that those statutes are unconstitutional. They
also ignore his rulings that follow Supreme Court precedent and put those
words into practice.
Their favorite attack is to insinuate that Judge Pickering is soft on cross
burning. In a 1994 case, Pickering expressed concern about the sentence federal
prosecutors wanted for a man involved in burning a cross at an interracial
couple's home. But there's more to the story than that.
With the case before his court, Pickering realized that the ringleader of
the three people involved -- who had previously shot at the couple's house
-- cut a deal with prosecutors and got off without any jail time, while prosecutors
demanded seven and a half years in prison for another defendant.
Pickering thought the proposed sentence was disproportionate and asked the
government lawyers how the two sentencing statutes they cited had been used
in other federal courts. He asked at least three times without getting an
answer, until they finally dropped their sentencing request down to two and
a half years.
Judge Pickering sentenced the man to 27 months, chewed him out from the
bench about his "despicable act" that "cannot and will not
be tolerated" and advised him to spend his prison time doing something
useful like reading up on how to maintain good race relations.
That's it. Pickering was concerned about a possible sentence even prosecutors
called "draconian," sentenced the criminal to prison, and expressed
his outrage at "an area that we've got to stamp out" because "we've
got to learn to live, races among each other." But you'll never hear
that listening to Senators John Edwards, Chuck Schumer, or People for the
American Way.
When he was nominated to the federal district court, the Senate Judiciary
Committee supported him unanimously. Among those who voted for him were current
committee members Patrick Leahy, Ted Kennedy, Joseph Biden, and Herb Kohl.
His nomination went on to the full Senate, where he was confirmed. Unanimously.
Judge Pickering's character has not changed since then, and neither has
the quality of his record. He has over a decade of experience. The people
who know him best support him. The American Bar Association examined his
qualifications and commitment to equal justice and pronounced him well qualified.
And he has enough votes from Republicans and Democrats to be confirmed, again.
Charles Pickering deserves fair treatment from the committee, and he deserves
that up-or-down vote in the full Senate. For the committee part, at least,
it looks as if he is finally going to get it.
John A. Nowacki is Director of Legal Policy for the Free Congress Foundation.
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