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 he
New York Times has demanded that Senate Democrats block Bush's
"judicial ideologues," whom, the
Times
predicts, will compare unfavorably to "Clinton's centrist judicial
choices."
As one Clinton
"centrist" nominee said to a female prosecutor appearing
in her courtroom: "Shut your f***ing mouth." Another lawyer
received this admonition from the centrist judge: "I don't
give a s**t." That was the Criminal's Messiah: Judge Frederica
A. Massiah-Jackson of the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court.
One time, Massiah-Jackson
betrayed the identity of two undercover officers in her courtroom,
announcing to the assembled criminals — "take a good look at
these guys ... and be careful out there."
When asked
about this episode by a stunned Senate Judiciary Committee, Massiah-Jackson
first said she did not recall the incident, twice refused to comment,
once categorically denied it (despite contemporaneous news accounts),
and finally gave a cockamamy account of having been misunderstood.
Only after
the undercover officers had submitted statements to the committee
describing how Massiah-Jackson had flamboyantly exposed them in
open court did the judge begin to recall the incident with greater
clarity. In "reconstructing the incident," she said she
had been instructing school children present in the courtroom to
respect police officers.
The story didn't
really hang together because, on account of being undercover and
all, undercover officers would not be identifiable to schoolchildren
as police officers.
Be that as it may, it turned out Massiah-Jackson had already stated
on the record that she was talking to criminal defendants, not any
alleged school children in the courtroom. At a later hearing, the
D.A. had raised the incident with Massiah-Jackson, and she cavalierly
dismissed the D.A.'s outrage, saying: "I do say that to certain
defendants."
In another
classic Massiah-Jackson moment, Commonwealth vs. Johnson,
the judge sentenced the brutal rapist of a 10-year-old girl to the
statutory minimum. She apologized to the rapist for even that much
time: "I just don't think the five to 10 years is appropriate
in this case even assuming you were found guilty." She refused
the D.A.'s offer to present a pre-sentence report and victim-impact
statement, saying: "What would be the point of that?"
(The five-year sentence was not crippling. After his release, the
defendant was rearrested for raping a 9-year-old boy.)
In another
special moment for the whole Rainbow Coalition, when Massiah-Jackson
was informed that both the defendant and victim in a rape case had
AIDS, she said: "Why are we having a trial? We are talking
about life expectancy of three years for both of them. What difference?
What kind of punishment can we give (the defendant)? ... What's
the purpose of the trial long range?"
In light of
the fact that Massiah-Jackson had just announced there was no purpose
in trying the defendant, the prosecutor requested that the judge
recuse herself. She refused, and the victim died while the recusal
motion was on appeal. The trial proceeded before Massiah-Jackson,
who sentenced the defendant to one year of probation, allowing him
to serve no time for a vicious rape and beating. ("What's the
purpose?")
Sentencing
a defendant who had slashed a woman in the face with a straight
razor while stealing her purse, Massiah-Jackson refused to apply
a sentence enhancement for use of a deadly weapon. When the D.A.
noted that the enhancement was required, the centrist judge accused
her of being "vindictive." Massiah-Jackson was reversed
on appeal for ignoring the enhancement.
Indeed, Massiah-Jackson
was reversed in a number of criminal cases. But in response to the
Judiciary Committee request that she provide a list of her reversals
— a pro forma request — she repeatedly claimed she had not been
reversed in a single criminal case.
After having
been caught in this and other lies, "centrist" Massiah-Jackson
decided to withdraw her nomination. The New York Times was
in a high dudgeon. Not because Massiah-Jackson had sneered at AIDS
victims and rape victims, shouted obscenities from the bench or
outed undercover cops, but because of the "judicial mugging"
the Senate had put her through. The judge at least would return
to the state bench "with her honor intact," the Times
editorialized. "Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the
Senate."
Indeed, even
after all this came out about Massiah-Jackson (despite the encumbrance
of the judge's tendency to lie), she was avidly supported for a
life-tenured federal judgeship by: the New York Times, top
Philadelphia law firms, judges, Philadelphia Mayor Edward G. Rendell,
the NAACP, the Barristers' Association of Philadelphia Inc., the
Hispanic Bar Association, the Asian American Bar Association of
the Delaware Valley, and — surprise — the Philadelphia Bar Association.
When Bush's
judicial nominees come under attack from the same groups for failing
to be duly "centrist," remember what they mean by that.
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