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Ex-Blanding City Official Sent to Prison for 18 Months
Salt Lake Tribune, The (UT)
January 16, 2003
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A former Blanding City Councilman was sentenced Wednesday to 18 months in prison for violating the federal Violence Against Women Act, after a federal appeals court decided his previous sentence of probation was too lenient.
In February 2001, Randee Lee Bayles admitted possessing firearms while under a protective order filed by his ex-wife.
U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball sentenced Bayles to serve 24 months of probation, saying the defendant had received poor legal advice and was unaware that federal law prevented him from owning guns while he was restricted by a protective order.
But federal prosecutors appealed Kimball's decision, calling Bayles' sentence too lenient. In November, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court in Denver agreed and returned the case for a new sentencing hearing.
In its ruling, the appeals court tossed out an appeal by Bayles that his conviction violated his constitutional right to bear arms.
"I am bound by the opinion of the 10th Circuit," Kimball said Wednesday before giving Bayles the lightest sentence possible within federal guidelines. "I really have very little discretion."
Bayles was ordered to turn himself in to federal marshals Feb. 18, when he will begin serving his sentence.
Kimball declined to order Bayles into supervised release following his prison term, saying he had already served 2 years of probation.
The protective order had been signed in 1999 by a judge in San Juan County's 7th District Court.
Bayles later told an undercover federal agent that he owned about 100 hunting rifles and about 80 handguns and needed to hide them because of an "order his ex-wife had obtained," court documents said.
Last year, the Utah Supreme Court dismissed a separate appeal by Bayles, which argued his ex-wife had not adequately proved he was stalking her and said the protective order should be tossed out.
SENATORS GRILL JUDICIAL NOMINEES
COMMITTEE MEMBERS FIRE TOUGH QUESTIONS AT TRIO, INCLUDING AKRON'S COOK
Akron Beacon Journal (OH)
January 30, 2003
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In a process called unfair by Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, three federal judgeship nominees, including two Ohioans, faced sometimes stinging questions during confirmation hearings Wednesday.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, saying the hearings were "unprecedented," objected to "being required to proceed on three controversial nominations simultaneously."
The three nominations to which he was referring were Deborah Cook, an Ohio Supreme Court jurist, and Jeffrey Sutton, former Ohio solicitor general, who are being considered for the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals; and John Roberts, a Washington, D.C., attorney nominated for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
President Bush announced the selection of Cook, 50, of Akron, and Sutton, 42, in May 2001.
In addition, the committee considered three district court nominees, including Summit County Common Pleas Judge John Adams, who is being touted for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio.
For more than nine hours, senators peppered the three Appeals Court nominees with questions, with the focus of the inquiry being directed at one nominee -- Sutton.
The nine Democrats on the 19-member committee targeted what they claimed to be Sutton's efforts to challenge and weaken the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act and the Violence Against Women Act.
Opposition to Sutton's nomination was underscored by the more than 200 disabled individuals, many in wheelchairs, who attended the hearing in hopes of blocking his confirmation.
The hearing had to be moved to accommodate the spectators and news media.
Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., accused Sutton of "supporting a viewpoint that has dismantled protections" against discrimination.
Sutton argued that it was unfair to ascribe the views of his clients to him.
Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, who is a member of the Judiciary Committee, defended Sutton, calling him a brilliant legal mind and extremely qualified. In addition, he said it was ludicrous to disqualify a lawyer based upon the clients he represented.
Through most of the day Cook and Roberts sat silent as the committee hammered away at Sutton. At one point, Leahy apologized to Cook for neglecting her.
Cook lightened the mood of the hearing by saying, "Oh yes, I was feeling very neglected."
However, Cook was asked periodically about her Ohio Supreme Court tenure, specifically about her record of more than 300 dissenting arguments during her eight years on the bench and what Democrats called her business bias.
"A dissent is offered for the benefit of the other side, it's a method used to reach consensus," Cook said. She said that no one should take anything from her dissents except her desire to have a "precise reading of the law."
Again DeWine rose to the defense of the Bush nominee. Holding up a sheaf of papers, he said he had in his hand "at least 23 cases" where Cook ruled in favor of the employee.
Her Senate critics pointed to Cook's membership in the Federalist Society, a group of conservative lawyers and academics that includes many who advocate countering liberals with their own brand of activism.
Throughout the long day, Democrats on the committee complained of being forced into making a hasty decision on the nominees, several calling it a "rush to judgment" orchestrated by the Bush administration to pack the courts and tilt them sharply out of balance.
However, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who chairs the committee, said the hearings would be completed Wednesday.
According to a Senate staffer, a vote on all six nominees should come within the next few weeks.
FEDERALISM KEY PRYOR ISSUE STANCE MAY DECIDE APPELLATE COURT POST
Birmingham News (AL)
April 27, 2003
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WASHINGTON - Bill Pryor's leadership in the federalist movement, which promotes the power of the states over the federal government, is shaping up as the key issue in the developing debate over his qualifications to be a federal appeals court judge.
That power struggle, which plays out in courthouses and Congress, affects everyone who has ever felt the hand of the federal government holding them down or helping them up.
Pryor's history on a number of hot button societal issues - abortion, school prayer, gun ownership - will make for great drama when the time comes for the Senate to decide on his nomination to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
But it is his passion to empower the rights of the states at the expense of the federal government that will define, in large measure, whether he deserves a lifetime appointment to one of the nation's highest appellate courts.
"President George W. Bush is fond of saying that government should do a few things and do them well," Pryor said in 2001. "That is what federalism is about as we divide those few things between the levels that do them best."
Bush on April 9 nominated Pryor, who turned 41 Saturday, to fill a vacancy on the Atlanta-based court that hears appeals from Florida, Georgia and Alabama. Appeals of that court's decisions go to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Senate Judiciary Committee, which will initiate the debate over whether Pryor is confirmed, has not scheduled a hearing.
Pryor's federalist bent is not some obscure legal theory he likes to tinker with in the courtroom or on the opinion pages. It was sewn into his fabric as a student during the Ronald Reagan '80s, and his interest in curtailing the powers of the federal government and advocating only the most conservative interpretations of the U.S. Constitution are principles that guide his every lawyerly move.
"He has a brilliant legal mind and he deeply cares about the law and doing the right thing," said U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions.
Challenging Washington
According to Pryor's record as Alabama attorney general, "the right thing" is challenging Washington's reach into the business of the states.
He's argued against disabled and older state employees being allowed to sue their employers for damages under the Americans with Disabilities Act; that prison guards are immune from legal action for latching state inmates to a hitching post; that non-English speakers can't sue if the state doesn't offer a driver's license test in their native language; and that rape victims can't sue their attackers in federal court, to name a few of the most prominent examples.
There also are dozens of cases unrelated to Alabama in which he's intervened to advance his federalist cause.
It's no wonder the most disaffected in society, and those who represent them, are some of the most vocal opponents of Pryor's nomination.
"All of the evidence shows he puts ideology over justice and ideas over people," said Jim Ward, president of ADA Watch, a disabilities-rights organization. "We're dealing with one of the leaders of an extreme movement to roll back federal protections."
Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice, said about Pryor's record, "There is something to offend virtually every constituency in the country."
"Bill has been an architect of the federalist revolution in this country," said Richard Cohen, an attorney with Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery. "That is surely what has brought him to the attention of prominent figures in the administration. But it's not a surprise that it is also what has brought him to the attention of people who believe it is the extension of federal power that has assured equal rights in this country."
Pryor officially adopted the federalist label in law school in Louisiana, where he started a campus debate group as a con servative alternative to professors he believed promoted legal and judicial activism as a tool to fix societal problems.
Inspired in part by the appearance of then-President Reagan's attorney general Edwin Meese III at Tulane University, Pryor started the law school's own chapter of the Federalist Society. At the time, it was still in its infancy as a national movement of conservatives and libertarians.
"Bill's interest was always an intellectual one and one in trying to understand what the Constitution was telling us and how we would be faithful to it," said Harvey Koch, a New Orleans attorney and original board member of the Federalist Society. Pryor, then editor of Tulane's Law Review, sat in Koch's kitchen and the two worked out the details for connecting campus conservatives with practicing attorneys.
"It was an intellectual group, not some group that wanted to go play basketball somewhere," Koch said recently.
A few years later as attorney general of Alabama, Pryor's choice to take on the feds has landed him in front of the U.S. Supreme Court several times, pressing cases the state's rightsminded justices have wanted to hear. His arguments before them have been accepted more often than not.
He's also inserted the state of Alabama into dozens of cases, usually for reasons of federalism. Most recently, he and attorneys for 17 other states filed a brief in a South Carolina case arguing a widow had lost her right to sue for the death of her husband while he was in jail. The justices last week ruled unanimously against the county and the states that backed it.
Rule of law
"Whether it is Supreme Court precedent, the Constitution or state and federal law, he believes in the rule and process of law and has committed his career to that," said Sessions, who hired Pryor into the state's legal office in 1995.
But Pryor himself has called his federalism positions unfortunate in their impact on certain groups.
"I hoped otherwise, but I would not have predicted then (during law school) that the restoration of federalism would have come at the expense of federal power to combat discrimination on the basis of religion, age and disabilities; violence against women; and even possession of firearms at schools," he said two years ago in a speech to the Atlanta chapter of the Federalist Society.
Pryor's writings also show an interest in using the banner of federalism to scale back what he considers the most intrusive laws and court decisions, including Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The section requires Justice Department approval of changes in voting procedures or jurisdictions by analyzing the impact on minority voters, and it is "an affront to federalism and an expensive burden that has far outlived its usefulness," Pryor testified before Congress in 1997.
Some close decisions
Pryor routinely extends his state's rights argument to a national level. The U.S. Supreme Court, the final arbiter on the issue, is on a federalist roll, he has said, but he's unhappy with its closely split decisions.
"We are one vote away from the demise of federalism," Pryor said in a July 2000 speech. The same speech called court decisions that provide rights to the accused and to women to have abortions "the worst examples of judicial activism" and declared the election of Bush as "our last real hope for federalism."
Pryor also has said the state is better equipped to right certain wrongs. In explaining why he opposed provisions of the Violence Against Women Act, Pryor said in 2000, "The safety of women - and men - is best protected by encouraging and strengthening state efforts, not by allowing the states to pass the buck to federal bureaucrats and judges."
But Alabama's history of protecting its least powerful is less than stellar. It took the state several years and several federal court orders to desegregate public facilities and improve conditions for prisoners, for example.
Sam Heldman, a Washington attorney, argues Pryor's federalism is driven by politics and inconsistently applied. For example, his written argument in the presidential election contest of 2000 was that the decision denying Bush's request to block the manual recounting of ballots should be overturned.
"One might think that a true believer in what is now called 'federalism' . . . would likely take the position that election-law matters should be left up to the states rather than to federal judges," Heldman writes in his ongoing Internet critique of Pryor's record.
Heldman, who lost two highprofile cases to Pryor regarding an election dispute and the racial makeup of the state's appellate courts, said his Web log postings about the nominee are the early stages of a public discourse that will only intensify when the confirmation hearing is scheduled. "But I hope it's carried out at a sensible level rather than just the hot buttons of is he for or against abortion or the Ten Commandments," Heldman said.
Biden bill aims to beef up child protection
Delaware State News (Dover, DE)
May 2, 2003
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WASHINGTON - Sen. Joseph R. Biden, D-Del., introduced legislation Thursday that seeks to protect children from abuse and neglect.
The Violence Against Children Act would toughen federal penalties for child abuse and set up programs to encourage states to increase their anti-abuse efforts.
"We must do everything we can to prevent crimes against children," Sen. Biden said.
"If, God forbid, they do occur, we must do everything we can to treat the victims and their families and prosecute their perpetrators to the fullest extent of the law."
Provisions in the proposed act include:
-- creating a mandatory 10-year jail sentence for federal violent crimes against children
-- requiring the federal government to help states investigate and prosecute felonies committed against children
-- establishing a new grant program to help states fund treatment and other services for abused children.
According to the 2003 Delaware KIDS Count fact book, there were 5,706 reported cases of child abuse and neglect last year.
Of those, 1,073 were substantiated cases of child abuse and neglect.
Sen. Biden previously sponsored the Violence Against Women Act, which set up several grant programs to help states battle domestic violence.
He said combating violence against women and violence against children are intertwined because children witness their mothers suffering abuse, which can emotionally scar youngsters.
According to the 2003 Delaware KIDS Count survey, there were 27,212 reported incidents of domestic violence in Delaware. In 20.5 percent of these cases, children were present.
"A child is just not abused when someone picks up a paperweight and throws it at them, locks them in a closet or puts a cigarette out on them," Sen. Biden said.
"It is very traumatic when children see their mother getting beat up."
John Humphrey, director of Delaware's Children Advocacy Center, praised Sen. Biden's proposal. The CAC has offices in Wilmington and Milford, and will opening a Dover office in the St. Jones Center on Monday.
"This will help stop children from being abused," Mr. Humphrey said. "The plan gives law enforcement authorities important new tools."
The CAC interviews children who may have been sexually or physically abused. Several agencies, including police, prosecutors and social workers, observe the interview, which is videotaped for future reference.
The center, with offices at the Wilmington's Alfred I. du Pont Hospital for Children and Bayhealth Milford Memorial Hospital, was hoping to open a third location in Dover to alleviate an increased workload.
The CAC, and similar facilities nationwide, will benefit from a provision Sen. Biden had inserted in legislation President Bush signed earlier this week creating a nationwide Amber alert system, which helps locate missing children.
Sen. Biden's proposal allocated $15 million in grants to help children's advocacy centers.
Mr. Humphrey said any new money for the centers would be appreciated, because Delaware and other states have tight budgets.
"We are getting great support from the state, but we are trying to have alternative possibilities lined up," he said.
"This is something that will definitely help."
Investigation expands: FBI, U.S. attorney enter Brame case to determine if federal crimes involved
News Tribune, The (Tacoma, WA)
May 13, 2003
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FBI agents and the U.S. Attorney's Office joined the David Brame investigation Monday because of the possibility that federal criminal laws were violated.
Their entry into a joint state-federal investigation, at the invitation of Washington Attorney General Christine Gregoire, came less than a week after dozens of Tacoma citizens demanded FBI involvement because they don't trust a city-ordered probe.
"We certainly believe that potential federal criminal violations have occurred here, and we're going to investigate them," said John McKay, U.S. attorney for Western Washington.
McKay declined to elaborate on what federal laws may have been violated in the case involving the late Tacoma Police Chief David Brame, who fatally shot his wife, Crystal, and then committed suicide April 26.
But he said federal authorities have seen preliminary evidence from "state and local investigators" that makes them believe federal crimes may have been committed. He would not say whether that evidence points to criminal activity by someone other than Brame.
Questions have surfaced about how Brame got hired as a rookie police officer in 1981 despite a psychologist's recommendation against his employment; how he was promoted to chief of police in 2001 despite a 1988 rape allegation that some police officers believed; and how Crystal Brame's allegations of domestic violence were handled by police and city managers.
"The real question is, why was Crystal Brame murdered? Why wasn't something done about it and what can we do to ensure that it doesn't happen again in the future," Gregoire said during a press conference Monday.
"We will conduct a rigorous, independent and thorough criminal investigation into all aspects of this troubling case," Gregoire added, including "a full, fair investigation of the city and city officials."
The involvement of state and federal agencies expands a narrower State Patrol investigation that started two weeks ago. The State Patrol has been looking into allegations that assistant police chief Catherine Woodard misrepresented herself during a visit she and Brame made to the home of Crystal Brame's parents.
Crystal Brame had said Woodard threatened and intimidated her in the past. Woodard, who is now on paid administrative leave, denied those allegations.
The State Patrol will lead the investigation, but the FBI will take over "if we come to a point where there is evidence of a violation of federal law," said Charlie Mandigo, FBI special agent in charge.
Mayor Bill Baarsma, informed the FBI was being brought in only an hour before the announcement, said the city welcomes the stepped-up investigation, which will run parallel to an administrative review already ordered by the City Council.
The Tacoma chapter of the National Organization for Women sent letters last week to Gregoire and U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft seeking a deeper investigation.
"This type of investigation is exactly what we wanted," said Judie Fortier, NOW chapter president. "We're going to follow it closely."
She speculated the federal involvement could be due to a possible violation of the federal Violence Against Women Act.
University of Washington criminal law professor John Junker speculated that the most likely candidate for a federal crime would be a crime committed by an official - using official authority - that violated someone's constitutional rights.
This could have happened if Brame - by himself or in conspiracy with others - deprived his wife or the alleged rape victim of their rights, he said.
Analysis: William Pryor's confirmation hearing for federal appeals court in Atlanta
All Things Considered [NPR] (USA)
June 11, 2003
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MICHELE NORRIS, host: From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, host: And I'm Melissa Block.
The Senate Judiciary Committee turned its attention today to perhaps the most controversial judicial nominee from President Bush thus far. Alabama Attorney General William Pryor is nominated for a seat on the federal appeals court in Atlanta. NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg reports.
NINA TOTENBERG reporting: Unlike the other Bush nominees being aggressively opposed by the Democrats, the 41-year-old Pryor did not get high marks from the American Bar Association screening committee. A substantial majority of the committee gave him the lowest qualified rating and a minority rated him unqualified. There is no doubt, though, that Pryor is a star in conservative legal circles, respected for his intellect and his passion. And for some of those very reasons he's opposed by every major civil rights, consumer and environmental organization. Even the Log Cabin gay Republicans oppose his nomination, the first time they've opposed a Bush judicial nominee.
Pryor, however, does have the support of some of the leading black Democrats in his state, a fact pointed out today by Alabama's Republican Senator Jeff Sessions who praised Pryor for deliberately breaking with the state's racist past.
Senator JEFF SESSIONS (Republican, Alabama): The caricature that the attack groups have created of Bill Pryor is just not true. It's false. He is a leader of the future, not the past.
TOTENBERG: Despite steps that have earned him some black support in Alabama, Pryor has advocated abolishing a key provision of the Voting Rights Act and he's been a major supporter of states' rights positions, urging the Supreme Court to invalidate as applied to the states important provisions of federal laws banning discrimination against the disabled and the elderly. Indeed, he was the only state attorney general to urge the court to invalidate a key provision of the Violence Against Women Act. Of course, as Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch observed, the position he advocated in each of those cases prevailed in the high court.
Senator ORRIN HATCH (Republican, Utah; Chairman, Judiciary Committee): Who did the Supreme Court agree with?
Mr. WILLIAM PRYOR (Attorney General, Alabama): They agreed with our arguments every time.
Sen. HATCH: They agreed with you. I wonder who's outside the mainstream?
TOTENBERG: Democrats insisted Pryor is extreme in his views, or as Senator Edward Kennedy put it...
Senator EDWARD KENNEDY (Democrat, Massachusetts): I think the very legitimate issue in question with your nomination is whether you have an agenda.
TOTENBERG: Indeed, Pryor is an outspoken critic of the Supreme Court's abortion decision, a supporter of laws that criminalize consenting homosexual conduct between adults. He said today he'd changed his family vacation so as not to be visiting Disneyland on Gay Day. He's a supporter of religious symbols and practices in public life and has supported a giant monument to the 10 Commandments in the state Supreme Court. And he has not been a shrinking violet in articulating his positions, as evidenced in this exchange with Senator Kennedy about a death penalty ruling in a Supreme Court case.
Sen. KENNEDY: You actually ridiculed the Supreme Court of the United States by saying, `This issue should not be decided by nine octogenarian lawyers who happen to sit on the Supreme Court.' You think that's an appropriate way to refer to the Supreme Court of the United States?
Mr. PRYOR: It was probably overheated political rhetoric on my part, Senator.
Sen. KENNEDY: What was overheated? What were the circumstances that would get you overheated where you'd make that kind of a comment about the...
Mr. PRYOR: I don't remember the exact context. I'm a political figure, and I know it was not a statement that I made in any court of law and would not have made in any court of law.
Sen. KENNEDY: Well, it's improper. Even overheated or not overheated, it's improper, is it not?
Mr. PRYOR: I think it was an inappropriate remark, Senator.
TOTENBERG: Kennedy pressed him, too, about the Supreme Court's recent decision holding the death penalty unconstitutional for the retarded, a case in which Pryor urged the opposite result. `Why,' asked Kennedy, `in the face of the Supreme Court's ruling did Alabama still seek to execute a man with an IQ of 65?' Pryor sought initially to evade the question, saying he didn't know much about the case. Senator Kennedy.
Sen. KENNEDY: This is amazing that you're effectively ducking that.
TOTENBERG: No subject came up more often today, though, than abortion and whether given his strong views on the subject Pryor could be fair. Republican Senator Arlen Specter asked Pryor about his statement that the Supreme Court's abortion decision was, quote, "the worst abomination of constitutional law in our history."
Mr. PRYOR: I stand by that comment.
Senator ARLEN SPECTER (Republican, Pennsylvania): Why do you consider it an abomination, Attorney General Pryor?
Mr. PRYOR: Well, I believe that not only is the case unsupported by the text and structure of the Constitution, but it has led to a morally wrong result. It has led to the slaughter of millions of innocent unborn children.
TOTENBERG: Pryor said that nonetheless he could support the Supreme Court's rulings on abortion and pointed to his record as state attorney general. When the state adopted a law banning what its advocates called partial-birth abortion, Pryor says he interpreted that law as narrowly as he could and incurred the wrath of some pro-life groups. In the end, the law was struck down anyway. Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington.
Extremist Far-right nominee
Charleston Gazette (WV)
June 30, 2003
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PRESIDENT Bush hopes to pack the federal judiciary with numerous ultraconservative appointees who eventually will revoke women's right to choose abortion - a goal of the Republican national platform - and make other legal changes desired by the party's "religious right" wing.
Many of the White House appointees are evasive about their personal views when questioned at Senate confirmation hearings. But one of them, Alabaman William Pryor, nominated to the Atlanta circuit court, has such an inflammatory record that he can't hide his extreme beliefs.
He told the senators that allowing women to choose abortion is "morally wrong" and this freedom has caused "the slaughter of millions of unborn children." He said he once refused to take his family to Disney World on a day that gays attended, because his personal "value judgment" dictated it.
In the past, he has sneered at the U.S. Supreme Court as "nine octogenarian lawyers" because the justices delayed an execution that Pryor desired.
The New York Times commented:
"As Alabama attorney general, Mr. Pryor has turned his office into a taxpayer-financed right-wing law firm. He has testified to Congress in favor of dropping a key part of the Voting Rights Act. In a Supreme Court case challenging the Violence Against Women Act, 36 state attorneys general urged the court to uphold the law. Mr. Pryor was the only one to argue that the law was unconstitutional. This term, he submitted a brief in favor of a Texas law that makes gay sex illegal, comparing it to necrophilia, bestiality, incest and pedophilia. ...
"If a far-right legal group needs a lawyer to argue extreme positions against abortion, women's rights, gay rights and civil rights, Mr. Pryor may be a suitable candidate. But he does not belong on the federal bench."
Where on Earth does Bush find such narrow-minded nominees - from TV evangelist shows? It will be tragic if America's federal courts become dominated by one-sided, puritanical judges far out of step with the majority of people.
Senate Democrats are threatening filibusters to block the worst of Bush's judicial appointees. Republicans want to change Senate rules, banning filibusters when judges are up for confirmation. We hope that West Virginia's senators, Robert C. Byrd and Jay Rockefeller, do their utmost to hold the line against extremist judges.
WILLIAM PRYOR: TOO EXTREME
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (MO)
July 25, 2003
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FEDERAL JUDGES
THE FILIBUSTER -- the nuclear weapon of the U.S. Senate -- should rarely be used to block judicial nominations. President George W. Bush's nomination of Alabama Attorney General William Pryor to the federal appeals court in Atlanta is one of those rare instances when it is justified.
The Senate Judiciary Committee sent Mr. Pryor's nomination to the floor Wednesday on a party-line vote after a nasty debate tainted with the GOP's false claim that opposition to Mr. Pryor was "anti-Catholic." The Pryor nomination should be stopped.
Mr. Pryor, 41, is a conservative whose ideological views caused former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods, a Republican, to question whether he can be nonpartisan. "I would say he was probably the most doctrinaire and t he most partisan of any attorney general I dealt with," he told National Public Radio.
This page has criticized Democrats for using the filibuster and other tactics to try to block well-qualified conservatives, including Michael McConnell, Miguel Estrada and Charles Pickering. But Mr. Pryor got relatively low ratings from the American Bar Association, and his strident views have infused his public actions. He:
* Supported the monument to the Ten Commandments, in the Alabama Supreme Court building, which a judge ordered removed.
* Called Roe v. Wade an "abomination" that resulted in the "slaughter of millions of innocent unborn children."
* Supported laws making sodomy a crime and likening it to "prostitution . . . necrophilia, bestiality . . . and pedophilia."
* Opposed applying parts of the Violence Against Women Act and Americans with Disabilities Act to the states.
Democrats unsuccessfully sought to delay Wednesday's vote until the committee had clarified Mr. Pryor's role in organizing a fund-raising committee for GOP attorneys general. The committee offered businesses access to attorneys general in return for contributions. But it was the anti-Catholic slur that incensed Democrats, especially Sen. Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill., who is a Catholic. A group headed by former White House counsel C. Boyden Gray has been running newspaper ads accusing the Democrats of erecting a "No Catholics Need Apply" sign for judges. Mr. Durbin said, correctly, that religion should have nothing to do with judicial nominations.
Mr. Bush should withdraw Mr. Pryor's name and start looking for judges who are the most qualified, not the most doctrinaire.
Pryor and Pryor
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Little Rock, AR)
July 29, 2003
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U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor has an important chance this week to follow what his conscience must be telling him, by convincing his Democratic colleagues not to filibuster the judicial nomination of Alabama Attorney General Bill Pryor.
Although both Pryors served concurrently as attorneys general of Southern states, they are not otherwise related. Mark Pryor is a Democrat, Bill Pryor a Republican. The Arkansas Pryor is the son of a senator. The Alabama Pryor is the son of a high school band director. Originally appointed (not elected) to the AG position, he has become perhaps the state's most popular official, respected for taking legal positions often at odds with his direct political interests.
Now Sen. Mark Pryor, along with other Southern Democrats such as fellow Arkansan Blanche Lincoln, effectively controls the fate of Bill Pryor, nominated by President George W. Bush to the 11 th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The fight over the Alabamian's nomination is as contentious as any judicial battle since the Clarence Thomas hearings. Reasoned discourse on the matter long ago fell prey to rank distortions and character assassination. The protagonists have broached virtually every hot-button topic in modern America, from abortion to race to homosexuality and domestic violence. Charges and countercharges have flown: False testimony! Stolen documents! Perjury traps! Actual political fund-raising according to-Gasp!-the letter of the law!
Armed with a badly disfigured caricature of Gen. Pryor, Senate Democrats are threatening a filibuster-an endless talkathon-against the Alabama AG, effectively killing his nomination.
But Sen. Mark Pryor, as a former attorney general who took some of the same legal positions for which his fellow Democrats are excoriating Bill Pryor, is in a unique position to talk his party back into decency and allow the nominee a fair, straight, up-or-down vote.
Democratic opponents charge that Bill Pryor opposed the federal Violence Against Women Act. In truth, he supported the act, but argued that one small part of it was unconstitutional. Why? Because Congress authorized rape victims to sue for damages in federal court under the interstate commerce clause. Mr. Pryor merely noted, with perfect logic, that rape isn't commerce. The Supreme Court agreed with the attorney general-and an Alabama battered women's shelter meanwhile honored Mr. Pryor for his legal work against wife-beaters by naming him to the shelter's hall of fame.
The Democrats say Gen. Pryor, a devout Catholic, is too pro-life to fairly enforce legal protections for the "right" to an abortion. But despite his public pleas that the Supreme Court decisions be changed, the AG on two occasions angered some pro-life supporters by insisting that even a wrongheaded high court must be obeyed.
Liberal editorialists chastise Bill Pryor for wanting to repeal the federal Voting Rights Act. Wrong. He opposes only one small part of the act that requires Southern states (and only Southern states) to secure advance approval from the Justice Department for election changes as minute as moving a polling booth from a school cafeteria to the same school's gymnasium down the block.
It was not Bill Pryor but Thurbert Baker, the black Democratic attorney general of Georgia, who just this year argued before the Supreme Court that the section Mr. Pryor opposed was indeed "an extraordinary transgression of the normal prerogatives of the states." Mr. Baker strongly endorses Gen. Pryor's nomination. So, for that matter, does Alabama's only black, Democratic Congressman, Artur Davis; and the head of the state's black Democratic caucus, Joe Reed, a Democratic National Committeeman.
Then there are the Democrats' fierce attacks against the Alabamian for legal stances their colleague Mark Pryor also adopted. For instance, in a case where Bill Pryor argued that a state's taxpayer-funded treasury is constitutionally immune from raids via private lawsuit, Democrats attacked the Alabamian for ignoring rights of the disabled-even though Mr. Pryor noted that the aggrieved parties do have the right to several other means of redress (such as court orders reinstating their jobs). The critics also ignore the fact that Bill Pryor was adjudged correct by the Supreme Court-and they ignore that their compatriot Mark Pryor joined a bipartisan group of state attorneys general to file a brief supporting Bill Pryor's position.
Sen. Mark Pryor knows first-hand, then, that what his colleagues portray as "extremist" positions of Bill Pryor are actually legal stances mainstream enough that he himself, a moderate Democrat, embraced them. He also knows, from the shabby treatment his fellows have afforded Arkansas judicial nominee Leon Holmes, just how unfair the Judiciary Democrats' character attacks can be.
On April 30, Sen. Pryor wrote a letter with all nine other freshman senators urging "a fresh start" in the judicial confirmation process to "ensure fairness for judicial nominees, and leave the bitterness of the past behind us."
This is his chance to give substance to those words. He, along with Sen. Lincoln, should lobby his colleagues to allow Alabama's Bill Pryor a straightforward confirmation vote. He should demand from the White House, in return, a similar good-faith effort to avoid such acrimony in the future.
•
Quin Hillyer, an editorial writer and columnist for the Mobile Register, is a former editorial writer for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Court forbids deporting woman who suffered domestic violence
Judges cite Violence Against Women Act, rule in Laura Hernandez' favor
Seattle Times, The (WA)
October 9, 2003
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
When her husband didn't stop beating her, Laura Luis Hernandez fled their Mexicali apartment and crossed illegally into the United States. If she had remained in Mexico, Hernandez said, she would have been killed.
But her husband, Refugio Acosta Gonzales, tracked her down at her sister's house in Los Angeles and begged her to return, promising never to hurt her again.
She went home. But the violence resumed: He lunged at her with a knife, gouging her hand.
For a second time, Hernandez fled the country, crossing into the United States. She has been living in Seattle for years without legal immigration status.
But this week, in a landmark decision that could affect thousands of illegal immigrants, a federal appeals court ruled that Hernandez can't be deported, because of a law that protects immigrants who are domestic-violence victims.
While she was not physically assaulted in the United States, the domestic violence continued when her husband followed her here, said a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
What did occur amounted to "extreme cruelty" as defined by the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) of 1994, the judges said, citing studies about domestic violence. "... (T)he interaction that took place in the United States presents a well recognized stage within the cycle of violence, one which is both psychologically and practically crucial to maintaining the batterer's control," wrote Judge Richard Paez.
"We conclude that an abuser's behavior during the `contrite' phase of domestic violence may, and in circumstances such as those present here does, constitute `extreme cruelty.' "
The court decision, issued Tuesday, suspends the deportation ordered by Seattle immigration Judge Anna Ho, which was later upheld by the Board of Immigration Appeals.
The Violence Against Women Act allows illegal immigrants who have been battered by a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident, and who meet certain other criteria, to stay in the country by adjusting their immigration status. In Hernandez's case, her husband is a legal permanent U.S. resident who lives in Mexico.
Immigrant advocates across the country hailed the decision, saying it accomplished what the federal act was meant to do: protect victims of domestic violence.
"VAWA didn't say you could only get relief if you've been beaten," said Leslye Orloff, who directs an immigrant-women program for NOW legal defense and education fund in Washington, D.C.
"There's the physical battery and the contrition, the apologies, the promises never to do it again. It's all part of the cycle," said Stephen Knight, coordinating attorney for the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco.
Hernandez was placed in deportation proceedings in 1995.
The Northwest Immigrant Rights Project and then the Northwest Women's Law Center, both in Seattle, represented her in court.
"It's been a long journey," Hernandez said yesterday as she wept and thanked her lawyers for pursuing the court case. "This is the beginning of something incredible. I've been through hell."
Hernandez, 43, is now working in Seattle with other women who have suffered domestic violence.
Seeking better protections
A new institute named for Sheila Wellstone carries on her legacy
Star Tribune: Newspaper of the Twin Cities (MN)
November 14, 2003
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
A new institute named for Sheila Wellstone carries on her legacy with an opening initiative to tailor child custody and protection plans to the special needs of victims of domestic violence.
The Sheila Wellstone Institute held its inaugural event Thursday, with about 500 Minnesotans gathering to explore ways to make child visitation arrangements and child protection plans safer for victims of domestic violence.
Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, state legislators and hundreds of people working in family courts and domestic violence programs packed the conference at the University of Minnesota.
``My dad tends to get a lot of the ink; to see my mom get recognition is really nice ,'' said Mark Wellstone, son of Sheila and Sen. Paul Wellstone, who died in a plane crash in northern Minnesota in October 2002.
Wellstone said he was thrilled that his mother's passion for combatting family violence would be carried on. ``And this is just the beginning,'' he said.
The institute in St. Paul will offer local and national leadership on issues affecting abused women and their children, said institute director Connie Lewis. It is part of Wellstone Action, the umbrella group designed to carry on the Wellstones' work.
``Sheila was a catalyst for bringing together people on these issues, and that's what we're doing at this conference,'' Lewis said. ``We're bringing people together who make decisions on [child] custody and visitation . . . and on child protection. This is an emerging area in family violence work.''
For example, courts often don't distinguish between custody arrangements for ordinary families and for abused families, conference participants said. Courts often grant custody and visitation to batterers, which puts both mothers and children in danger.
``As a judge, sometimes I'd see reports saying . . . `This person beats up a child's mother, but the child is not abused,' '' Blatz said.
``I think there has been training [of court and county staff] on this issue, but if you have an institute that's focused and directed on this, it will be much more systematic,'' she added. ``These people need a voice, and Sheila was a powerful voice on their plight.''
The child protection system also often fails to understand the impact of domestic violence, speakers said. Women often are blamed for the danger and are required to follow detailed plans to keep custody of their children. The batterers, meanwhile, must jump through far fewer hoops to visit or have partial custody of their kids, they said.
The Wellstones spearheaded the 1994 Violence Against Women Act, which for the first time sent federal funds to states to pay for shelters and services for women and children fleeing family violence, and other services, speakers said.
Much more work needs to be done, said Napolitano, a national leader in efforts to end family violence. She outlined the steps Arizona has taken, including:
- Allowing judges to increase penalties for domestic violence that occurs in front of children.
- Increasing advocates in courtrooms.
- Starting a ``Men's Anti-Violence Network'' in part to teach school-age boys that ``violence is taboo.''
- Instituting a mandatory two-day training for child protection workers.
``Domestic violence is the No. 1 crime in America today,'' Napolitano said. ``This is a cause that needs champions, and the institute provides great promise to develop those champions.''
About 20 Minnesota women die each year because of domestic abuse; thousands of other women file restraining orders against their partners, according to the Minnesota Coalition for Battered Women.
``We think people around the country will be interested in the recommendations that come out of this conference,'' Lewis said. ``We'll have Wellstone Action teams digest the recommendations and give them to key organizations around the country. And we'll put them on our Web site.''
For more information, go to http://www.wellstone.org.
Man gets 28 years for domestic violence
Post Register (Idaho Falls, ID)
October 24, 2003
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
A former Idaho Falls man was sentenced Thursday in U.S. District Court in Pocatello to 28 years in federal prison for beating and raping his ex-girlfriend.
Because he was found guilty in federal court, John Ernest Dade, 46, has no possibility of parole and will be at least 70 years old before he is eligible for release, U.S. Attorney Tom Moss said.
"Mr. Dade is a dangerous man, and the young woman's life was very much in danger," Moss said. "This sentence ensures not only her safety but the safety of others who might become targets of (his) rage in the future."
Dade was convicted in September 2002 on two counts of interstate domestic violence, one count of interstate stalking, one count of brandishing a firearm during a crime of violence and one count of making threatening phone calls.
Bonneville County law-enforcement officials referred the case to federal authorities because it involved interstate travel and interstate communications. The Violence Against Women Act makes it a federal crime to cross state lines for the purpose of domestic violence.
Dade was indicted by a federal grand jury in December 2001 and arrested in Idaho in January 2002.
Dade and the victim lived together off and on for about 13 years and had a child together. They split up for good in the spring of 2000. Dade moved to Salt Lake City, where he began another relationship. But he continued to stalk, threaten and assault his former partner.
Evidence at the trial included tape recordings of 46 telephone calls, made with the victim's consent. On one, Dade is heard admitting that he broke into the victim's house and beat and raped her out of "anger and jealousy." The victim is heard more than 90 times asking Dade to leave her alone.
"These cases can really just get out of hand," said Terry Derden, First Assistant U.S. Attorney. "Everybody in the law-enforcement community felt if we didn't do something, it was going to end up as a murder."
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