[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 140 (Wednesday, October 2, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H12261-H12263]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   CALLING FOR A COMPLETE INVESTIGATION OF JUDGE REINHARDT'S CHARGES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from California [Mr. Doolittle] is reallocated 
the reminder of the majority leader's hour.
  Mr. DOOLITTE. Mr. Speaker, let me say to my friend and colleague from 
Oregon, he is someone who I very much have enjoyed working with, 
someone who truly has stood tall for the Constitution and sometimes has 
been alone

[[Page H12262]]

or nearly alone in taking those positions, and I always found him to be 
a very reliable voting Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, 
both here on the floor and in committees, where he has served both in 
the Committee on Agriculture and in the Committee on Resources, where 
he could always be counted upon to stand for the interests of the 
American people no matter what the power of any given special interest 
that might be arrayed against him on any given issue. So I say to my 
friend that you will be missed, and I wish you and your wife well in 
the coming years.
  Mr. Speaker, I would also like to comment upon a couple of items that 
were brought to my attention, and it was sufficiently late in the 
session, I regret, that I have not been able to fully act upon this 
information, but I thought I would set the stage today for later on in 
the year or in the first part of next year.
  I had provided to me an article from the San Francisco Daily Journal, 
dated July 18, 1996, entitled ``Reinhardt's Lament,'' by Michael 
Rushford, president of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation.
  This article examines a speech that Judge Reinhardt delivered on June 
4 to the Beverly Hills Bar Association at a luncheon honoring the 
justices of the California Supreme Court.

                              {time}  1445

  The article in the San Francisco Daily Journal dated July 18, 1996, 
by Michael Rushford is subtitled ``Did Federal Jurist's Speech Impugn 
the Integrity of Other Judges?''
  Mr. Speaker, Judge Reinhardt gave, I thought, some very disturbing 
remarks, one portion of which, or the central portion of which I am now 
going to quote from. Keep in mind, this speech was given before a body 
containing many distinguished lawyers and judges at the highest levels 
from throughout the State of California.
  In this speech Judge Reinhardt attacked the habeas corpus law--which 
was enacted during the 104th Congress and which was called the 
Effective Death Penalty Act. This law basically made dramatic reforms 
which will affect the length of time between arrest and execution upon 
conviction for a capital offense. It will result in a much quicker 
handling of matters such as Richard Allen Davis, the brutal murderer of 
little Polly Klaas out in California. As the Speaker may know, the 
average time between arrest and carrying out of the sentence has been 
about 7 years. Actually in California the average has been 11 years 
because we were afflicted with a very liberal court appointed by former 
Governor Jerry Brown, and they used every contrivance possible to drag 
out the imposition of the death penalty.

  So this reform that we enacted is a very important one. It certainly 
upholds the 10th amendment and gives due deference to the decisions of 
State courts in death penalty matters, while allowing for legitimate 
exceptions where there is clearly a case in which the Constitution was 
violated. But it will not allow Federal judges with life terms to step 
in and manipulate for political purposes these sentences handed down by 
juries and judges throughout the country.
  Whether one is liberal or conservative--and Judge Reinhardt is a 
self-avowed liberal and makes no bones about it--the judge's statement 
is not very liberal to say the least. In fact, it stands really in a 
class by itself. Let me just quote that statement.
  Reinhardt announced:

       I have spoken with judges who must stand for election, and 
     I have heard them say that they cannot afford to reverse 
     capital convictions in cases that engender heated community 
     passions.

  Let me quote Mr. Rushford, who I think very effectively comments upon 
what Judge Reinhardt is saying. Mr. Rushford wrote in this July 18 
article:

       In making this statement, Judge Reinhardt admitted personal 
     knowledge of the most serious form of judicial misconduct: 
     condemning an unjustly convicted defendant to death because 
     of political pressure.
       Considering the magnitude of such disclosures, one wonders 
     why Judge Reinhardt did not immediately report the judges who 
     made them to the State authorities charged with judicial 
     discipline rather than discussing them at a luncheon. In any 
     event, in order to protect hundreds of elected State 
     appellate and Supreme Court justices from falling under 
     suspicion, the names of the judges he has implicated and the 
     improperly decided cases should be made public.

  Mr. Speaker, this is of grave concern to me, where you have a Federal 
judge of the second highest court in the United States who makes this 
kind of a statement and basically is admitting personal knowledge of 
judges who have countenanced people going to their death because they 
were not willing to stand up for the Constitution and the law of this 
land and stand up for that which is right.
  I think Judge Reinhardt owes us an explanation. I think he needs to 
give the proper authorities the names of those judges of whom he has 
personal knowledge. I think this is absolutely outrageous that we can 
have a high judge who is basically telling us, people are going to 
their deaths who are innocent, and that these things are happening 
because State judges are intimidated by the very electorate they will 
have to face.
  Mr. Speaker, I have spoken to the chairman of our House Committee on 
the Judiciary about this. I will be sending the gentleman from 
Illinois, Mr. Hyde, a letter, and I will send such a letter to Senator 
Orrin Hatch, chairman of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. I am 
going to include these articles, and I am going to ask for their 
investigation.
  I do not think we can tolerate this kind of gross judicial misconduct 
in the United States. I call for a complete investigation of Judge 
Reinhardt's charges and of the underlying information that he has 
supporting those charges.
  I think it is time to restore justice and integrity to our system. I 
am not so sure Judge Reinhardt is right, but in order to tell you that 
he is wrong, then we are going to have to have either an admission from 
him that he overstated the case or we are going to have to have the 
names of the corrupt, spineless, immoral, anticonstitutional judges 
that he was referring to so we can get the records and look into this 
matter immediately. In a country that makes justice and the equal 
protection of the law and holds sacred life and liberty, we can do no 
less.

  Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record the articles to which I 
referred:

         [From the San Francisco Daily Journal, July 18, 1996]

Reinhardt's Lament--Did Federal Jurist's Speech Impugn the Integrity of 
                             Other Judges?

                         (By Michael Rushford)

       Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Stephen Reinhardt 
     was back in the news recently. In a June 4 luncheon address 
     to the Beverly Hills Bar Association, Reinhardt found serious 
     fault with a host of evils that have limited the authority of 
     federal judges and tarnished the image of lawyers generally.
       It was not surprising that Reinhardt, who has been 
     characterized in the press as a ``crusading liberal judge,'' 
     would complain about the arbitration industry, cuts in 
     federal funding for poverty lawyers and ``intemperate and 
     inexcusable attacks'' on judicial independence by politicians 
     (see ``Fall From Grace,'' Forum, June 6). His criticism of 
     O.J. Simpson prosecutors Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden, 
     while a cheap shot, simply added his name to the scores of 
     other pundits who have never prosecuted a celebrity on 
     national television.
       But Reinhardt's lament about the impact of newly enacted 
     limits on federal habeas corpus went somewhat beyond bombast. 
     While asserting that the new rules will ``prevent federal 
     courts from overturning unconstitutional state convictions,'' 
     Reinhardt announced, ``I have spoken with judges who must 
     stand for election, and I have heard them say that they 
     cannot afford to reserve capital convictions in cases that 
     engender heated community passions.''
       In making this statement, Judge Reinhardt admitted personal 
     knowledge of the most serious knowledge of the most serious 
     form of judicial misconduct condemning an unjustly convicted 
     defendant to death because of political pressure.
       Considering the magnitude of such disclosures, one wonders 
     why Jude Reinhardt did not immediately report the judges who 
     made them to the state authorizes charged with judicial 
     discipline rather than discussing them at a luncheon. In any 
     event, in order to protect hundreds of elected state 
     appellate and Supreme Court justices from falling under 
     suspicion, the names of the judges he has implicated and the 
     unproperly decided cases should be made public.
       By not doing so, Judge Reinhardt leads one to believe that 
     either he values the confidence of these unnamed judges more 
     than the Constitution he has sworn to uphold or he has 
     fabricated the whole thing to advance his own political 
     agendas.
       In reality, elected state judges, particularly on the 
     appellate courts, have demonstrated time and again that 
     political consideration do not influence their decisions.

[[Page H12263]]

     Examples include the 1992 case of State v. Middlebrooks, 
     where the Tennessee Supreme Court overturned the state's 
     felony murder rule, initially on federal grounds. Later, when 
     the U.S. Supreme Court seemed poised to reverse, the 
     Tennessee court reconsidered, insulating its holding on 
     independent state grounds.
       The Wisconsin Supreme Court went way out on a limb to anger 
     voters with its 1992 decision to overturn that state's hate 
     crime law (State v. Mitchell). In 1995 Montana's law 
     prohibiting the use of voluntary intoxication as a defense to 
     murder was (incorrectly) found to violate federal due process 
     by the state supreme court (State v. Egelhoff).
       Political pressure certainly didn't play a role in the 
     California Supreme Court's recent decision to void the 
     mandatory sentencing provision of the ``Three strikes and 
     you're out'' law in People v. Superior Court (Romero).
       Examples like these may not matter to Judge Reinhardt. In 
     the interest of elevating the ``public standing and 
     reputation'' of the courts, he has, in both his written 
     opinions and public statements, attacked the motives and 
     integrity of the U.S. Supreme Court, the state courts, the 
     other branches of government, the electorate and any law or 
     legal precedent with which he does not agree.
       In doing so he has shown the public that some federal 
     judges, who are appointed by politicians and serve life 
     terms, feel free to exercise their judicial power to further 
     their political views. Apparently the irony of this is lost 
     on him.

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