Word: whiting
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...evidence for his assertions, Ashcroft cited the case of Missouri v. Johnson, where White wrote one of his few unaccompanied dissents. James Johnson had killed several law-enforcement officers, and the defense argued that he had been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder due to his experience in Vietnam. In opening arguments, they cited a rope perimeter that Johnson had set up to guard the house from enemies, since "that's what you do in Vietnam, you renourish and rest while your buddies stand guard duty...
...White was recommended by the committee in July, over Ashcroft's objections, and a vilification campaign against White soon began in earnest. White, said Ashcroft, was a "judicial activist," one of that horrible breed of tyrants with gavels who try to re-write the law for their own purposes instead of interpreting it justly. As evidence, Ashcroft lambasted White for having voted 14 times to reverse a death penalty decision, proving that he was a protector of the guilty and against law and order. One Ashcroft fundraiser resigned in protest of the "marathon public crucifixion and misinformation campaign...
There were many issues on which Ashcroft could have picked to challenge White, but his choice of the death penalty was especially astute given the state of Missouri politics. Gov. Carnahan is no softie on crime; his administration presided over more executions than any in recent memory. Yet in January, at the personal request of Pope John Paul II, Carnahan agreed to commute to life in prison the sentence of murderer Darrell Mease, whose execution was to be during the Pope's visit to St. Louis...
...hearings. Since the Pope's visit, Carnahan has been doing all he can to look tough--as one aide told the Washington Post, "Mel's been stacking up bodies right and left"--but the death penalty is still a sore spot in his campaign. So when Ashcroft described Judge White as "pro-criminal and activist" on the Senate floor, he was making a perfect political maneuver. Yet as Ashcroft surely knew, the description didn't quite match...
...dissent, Judge White argued that the standard applied by the majority was unnecessarily restrictive. Expert testimony on Johnson's sanity had gone both ways, and U.S. Supreme Court precedent, White stated, would allow a new trial or sentencing if there was a "reasonable probability" of a different outcome had the defense lawyers not shredded their credibility at the outset. "While I share the majority's horror at this carnage," White wrote, "I cannot uphold this as an acceptable standard of representation for a defendant accused of capital murder...