Word: wayes
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...witness, rather than the witness to court. Judge McCrystal edits the film in his chambers or sometimes at home and shows it to a jury at trial. Result: McCrystal tries about three times as many civil jury cases as the average Ohio judge. He has been doing it this way for more than seven years, and he has never been overturned on appeal because of his use of technology. Yet the idea still has not caught on with other judges. Why? "Judges are the roadblock," says McCrystal. "They just say, 'I don't want anything new.' But only they...
...Plea bargaining. This is the most common solution to delay in the criminal courts. It is frequently denounced. In theory, criminal courts determine guilt or innocence only by the most thoroughgoing "due process." In reality, justice is usually done by way of a deal: a guilty plea in return for a lighter sentence or reduced charges. The accused's "day in court" lasts only a minute or two. In one such case in California, a defendant pronounced guilty of assault with a deadly weapon exclaimed in bewilderment: "What? You mean I've been tried...
...corruption, political favoritism or inability due to ill health or senility, amount to a hidden national scandal," testified Clark Mollenhoff, a Pulitzer-prizewinning former Des Moines Register reporter, at a congressional hearing on methods of disciplining judges. (Mollenhoff has been investigating the federal bench for three years.) The only way to remove federal judges now is by impeachment, a cumbersome process. Only four of the nation's federal judges have been tried and convicted by Congress in the nation's history, none since 1936. Convicted of income tax evasion, perjury, bribery, conspiracy and mail fraud in 1973, Federal Judge Otto...
Political patronage has been the traditional way to fill the federal bench. Presidents appoint federal judges, but since Senators can blackball any candidate from their home state, they have the real power of appointment. Sheer embarrassment is about the only check. When Senator Ted Kennedy tried to nominate Family Retainer Francis X. Morrissey for a federal judgeship in 1965, other lawyers began joking that Morrissey was boning up for the job by reading the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the rough equivalent of preparing for surgery by looking at Gray's Anatomy. Kennedy eventually withdrew Morrissey's name...
Still, the surprising thing about the process is that it has worked relatively well. Says Mollenhoff: "Most observers agree that 90% of the nominees have gone on to become excellent federal judges. But another way of putting it is that 70 out of 700 federal judges should not have been put on the bench. That is way too many...