Word: whiting
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Whatever one thinks of the legal reasoning employed in White's dissent, it was clearly the precedent-based conclusion of a reasonable jurist, not the ravings of a black-robed subversive intent on rewriting the law. As part of his political move, however, Ashcroft said the reasoning was based on "an outrageous technicality" and accused White of harbouring a "personal political agenda...
After a furious lobbying campaign, White was rejected by the full Senate in October on a party-line vote. Bond decided to vote with his fellow Republicans against the judge he had earlier called "a man of the highest integrity and honor," as did presidential candidate and Judiciary chairman Orrin G. Hatch, who had previously called White "a fine...
...dead now, politics having excluded a worthy candidate from the bench, but it still causes tempers to flare in Missouri. Because many minority nominees are still held up in committee, Ashcroft and the Senate have been accused of racism. A rally was held in St. Louis to protest White's rejection only a week ago, and Judge White is occasionally referred to by supporters as "Judge Not White Enough...
However, the spurious charge of racism obscures a greater threat. Ashcroft began his campaign against White by arguing that he had voted to overturn a death penalty 14 times. Later, the tactics became more sophisticated, and White's votes were compared to others on the court (some of whom, Ashcroft appointees, had voted against more death penalties than he), but the count-the-numbers approach betrays a cynical assumption that any vote to reverse the death penalty is suspect, that the courts should rubber-stamp death sentences instead of conducting meaningful review...
Ashcroft's campaign against Judge White-- and whatever success it may bring to his campaign against Carnahan in 2000--sends the message to all state judges that if they want to get on the federal bench, they'd better start upholding some death penalties. When a case is hard, as Judge White found Missouri v. Johnson, and when the defendant's right to a new trial is unclear, how will those judges decide? The perverse political incentives make it seem inevitable that a defendant who may not deserve the death penalty will some day receive it because the judges...