Word: benching
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Vision & Conscience. Johnson's record is all the more remarkable in light of the fact that federal district judges-314 of them in 97 U.S. district courts throughout the country-are more vulnerable to local pressures than any other members of the federal bench. Not only is a district judge drawn from his locality; he almost always owes his job to his state's dominant politicians-particularly the U.S. Senators. Chosen by men committed to local interests, he is then sworn to uphold national principles that may conflict with those interests...
...courtroom on the second floor of Montgomery's post office, a federal outpost that flies the Stars and Stripes rather than the Stars and Bars that top the statehouse. Frank Johnson's courtroom is stylishly WPA, a towering place with ornate ceiling beams, a gallery, and a bench that stands before a blue wall studded with gold stars. Through a door in the starry wall strides the judge, lean and tanned in his unvarying crisp black suit, white shirt and black tie. He usually shuns robes: "If a judge needs a robe and a gavel, he hasn...
...bench, Johnson perched half-moon spectacles on his patrician nose; his brown eyes scanned a document in the Conner case. He peered up from under bushy brows; a hush fell. The room was jammed with veniremen: Negroes as well as whites, women as well as men-a Johnson jury. Only one Negro survived defense challenges-an elderly Negro brickmason who later voted for conviction-but that might have happened in northern Maine. At one point, a defense lawyer mocked a Negro witness in the patronizing accents of Catfish Row. Objection by the prosecution. "Sustained," snapped Johnson. "Such remarks have...
Freezing Formula. Johnson has long been the foremost champion of voting rights on the Southern bench-even though he was temporarily stymied in the early stages of U.S. v. Alabama, launched in 1959 as the first major test of the 1957 Civil Rights Act. In Macon County, 97% of eligible whites were registered to vote v. 8% of eligible Negroes-the familiar result of intimidation and tricky tests applied only to Negroes. To avoid giving the federal courts a target for injunction, the Macon registration board periodically resigned. The tactic worked; Johnson found that the 1957 rights law authorized suits...
Early Marriage. Schaub called as a witness Coppolino's former mistress, Marjorie Farber, 53, but was prevented by a bench ruling from questioning her about the 1963 death of her husband, retired Army Colonel William Farber. In the New Jersey murder trial, the shapely widow had told a weird story of being hypnotized by Coppolino and standing helplessly aside while he smothered Farber with a pillow. Though it was Mrs. Farber who had aroused police suspicions against Coppolino after he spurned her for wealthy Divorcee Mary Gibson, 39, whom he married six weeks after Carmela's death...