Pickering

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On Friday, January 16, President Bush appointed Charles Pickering to the Fifth Circuit during a Congressional recess.

Let’s forget the process arguments about recess appointments for now. Most of us, myself included, don’t know what we’re talking about; we’re talking about either “obstructionism” and “advice and consent” not out of our devotion to the judicial confirmation process, but because it serves our side’s substantive interests.

Let’s talk instead (as Henry Farrell and Jack Balkin suggest) about what kind of judge Pickering will be on the Fifth Circuit, which has a higher minority population than any other Circuit and hears many civil rights cases:

–Pickering supported segregation in the 1960s, and has dodged questions and made false statements about this history before Congress. See this Salon article for details. (If you’re not a subscriber you can access the full article by viewing an ad.)

–Then there’s Pickering’s handling of a cross burning case in 1994, which you can read about in this excellent Washington Post story. Excerpts below.

The facts of the case:

The case began with a night of idle drinking on Jan. 8 of that year. Several men were warming themselves around an oil-drum fire outside a general store in Improve, Miss., part of a hardscrabble timber-producing region west of Hattiesburg. Among them were Jason Branch, then 17; Mickey Thomas, 25, who was said to have limited mental capacity; and Daniel Swan, 20, a part-time construction worker.

At some point, according to their testimony, Swan and Branch discussed burning a cross to intimidate Brenda and Ernest Polkey, Walthall County’s sole interracial couple, who lived two miles south of the store.

Ernest Polkey, who is white, and Brenda, who is black, were already on edge because someone — Branch later admitted in court that he did it — had fired a rifle shot into their living room three months earlier, near where their infant daughter slept.

According to their testimony, Swan and Branch drove to Swan’s farm and picked up some old boards, nails and a jug filled with gasoline. They returned to the general store parking lot, where they built a cross six feet across and eight feet high and doused it with fuel, all the while using racial epithets, Thomas testified.

About 3 a.m., according to court testimony, Branch, Swan and Thomas drove to the Polkeys’ home. After Swan and Thomas propped the cross against a tree in their front yard, Swan handed his lighter to Branch, who ignited the fuel. They ran to Swan’s truck and drove back to the store.

Ernest Polkey found the burned cross in the yard at 7 a.m., while walking his dog. A police deputy who arrived shortly afterward said he found Polkey furious and in tears.

Cross-burning has been a federal crime punishable by at least seven years’ imprisonment since 1987, and Swan, Branch and Thomas were arrested after a probe by the FBI….

Branch said in court that he was angry at the Polkeys’ marriage, and wanted to scare them into moving away, which they eventually did. A friend of Swan’s, Laurie Milton, testified that Swan said afterward he “just didn’t like niggers.”

But Swan denied saying that, explaining that “I was just pulling a prank. I wasn’t meaning anything by it.” He also said that “to hear all the old men talk about it, it wasn’t” any worse than trespassing….

And Pickering’s response:

Pickering did not raise his concerns about Swan’s sentence until a hearing on Nov. 15, 1994, when he chastised Justice Department attorney Bradford Berry for saying, in effect, “you’ve got to do this,” according to a transcript. Pickering went on to assail “the courts and the Congress . . . [for being] out of touch with the reality in the real world.” He noted that the Polkeys had not been awakened by the cross-burning and said he concluded from the testimony that Branch, not Swan, had instigated the crime.

In a closed-door meeting with federal prosecutors, Pickering added another concern: “In the current racial climate in that part of the state, such a harsh sentence would serve only to divide the community,” he said, according to a written summary of the meeting by Berry. Questioned by Biden last year about the meaning of that phrase, Pickering answered that “if whites perceive something is excessive in regard to race or racial matters, that . . . hinders the advancement of good race relations.”

On Jan. 2, 1995, Pickering called U.S. Attorney Jack B. Lacy Jr. at home to renew his complaint; Lacy wrote a memo several days later saying, “he was not pleasant on the telephone.”

On Jan. 4, Pickering signed the sealed order demanding that Reno review the case and repeating that “the record is devoid of any general attitude of racial animosity” by Swan. He called the affair “the most egregious instance of disproportionate sentencing recommended by the government in any case pending before this court.”

The U.S. attorneys in the case replied, in essence, that Swan had indeed instigated the crime; he had gambled on a trial and lost; and the sentencing guidelines — established under congressional authority — had deliberately left no room for maneuver. Berry told the Judiciary Committee in a private interview last year, “I couldn’t see how we could have a situation where, post-conviction, we are dropping counts where the defendant has been convicted.”

But that is what Pickering demanded in a private meeting with the U.S. attorneys, and he threatened to otherwise “entertain a motion for a new trial,” Berry told the committee, affirming what he had written in a memo dated Jan. 5, 1995.

Asked about the basis for such a motion, Pickering said, “any basis you choose,” Berry said.

At his confirmation hearing last year, Pickering said, “I don’t have any recollection” of discussing such a motion in private.

Pickering also raised his concerns with a friend from Mississippi at the Justice Department, Assistant Attorney General Frank Hunger, who replied that the case was not his responsibility. But by Jan. 23, 1995, the Justice Department agreed to withdraw the charge of felonious arson.

“Sometimes, youthful pranks under the influence of alcohol on a cold winter night can get you in a heap of trouble. And that’s what happened,” Pickering told Swan at his sentencing that day.

(Fair and balanced note: Pickering’s civil rights record is not all bad. He has the support of Charles Evers, the brother of murdered civil rights activist Medgar Evers. And in 1967 he testified against a KKK leader, though it was not quite the awe-inspiring display of courage that some would have you believe.* But his behavior in this case is really disturbing–even without the racial overtone it’s highly inappropriate to be bullying federal prosecutors like that.)

This is the judge that President Bush chose for his first recess appointment (only the second recess appointment in twenty years.) He chose to do this immediately before Martin Luther King day. One year ago he announced his opposition to the University of Michigan’s affirmative action program on Martin Luther King day.

I suppose it could be a coincidence. But I don’t believe it for a second. Brad DeLong’s summary is a lot more convincing:

“The Republican Party’s commitment to civil rights and equal opportunity for all Americans is unshakeable. Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink. Say no more, say no more.”

*According to Nathan Newman, the trial was about KKK violence against white targets including a segregationist newspaper(I got this wrong–see below), and this is the extent of Pickering’s testimony:

Defense Counsel: Do you know of Sam Bowers’ reputation in the community?
Pickering: Yes.

Defense Counsel: Is it good or bad?
Pickering: It’s bad.

Defense Counsel: Do you know that Sam Bowers teaches Sunday School?
Pickering: Yes.

Defense Counsel: Thank you. That will be all.

CORRECTION The trial was about the murder of a civil rights activist named Vernon Dahmer, though it did take place after Klan violence against whites and that helped spur even some segregationists to oppose KKK. It does Pickering some credit that he opposed murder more than he opposed integration, and I assume this is part of what prompted Evers to support him. But to me this is not enough to forget the rest of his history. Most civil rights activists (including some veterans of the campaign in Mississippi) disagree with Evers.

16 thoughts on “Pickering”

  1. I’d just like an intellectually honest answer to the following question: if Charles Pickering is the racist that the Democrats, today, think he is, why do they not call for his impeachment and removal from office? He’s in a position to harm blacks far more sitting as a federal district court judge (and the sole arbiter of what happens to particular defendants, mind you) in Mississippi than he will be on an appeals panel in New Orleans.
    Furthermore, if Pickering is a racist, I’d expect more evidence of it than one case in 13 years on the bench, and a record of supporting segregation in Mississippi in the 1960s–when virtually every other white person in the state supported it too. Nor does this explain why many Mississippi Democrats, white and black, have lined up in defense of the guy. All you have is one case where a reasonable person could conclude that Pickering was protecting a criminal defendant from disproporionate punishment compared with the other two participants in the crime–the sort of thing I suspect most left-wingers would approve of if the facts of the case were different.
    None of this, mind you, is an argument that Pickering is the most suitable candidate for the vacancy. He’s certainly not my first choice. But smearing someone with the charge of “racism” when it can’t be proved is something that ought to be beyond the pale–because the next time, good people will be less likely to believe the charge even if it is justified.

  2. In the case of the Salon article (you can read it here for free without the ad), it’s all pretty much innuendo. Pickering is accused of “supporting segregation” yet nothing is actually offered as proof that he did so. Most of the article actually isn’t even about Pickering but rather another person, Carroll Gartin, and his own views (notice also that the author says that the papers supposedly reveal what Pickering believes but the author never actually cites anything from the papers to support this contention). The charges of his supposedly supporting segregation are little more than a smear.
    Regarding the Daniel Swan case, which is thrown about Pickering opponents as somehow “proof” of a bias on his part, Byron York put that one to bed a long time ago:

    The crime happened on January 9, 1994. Three men — 20-year-old Daniel Swan, 25-year-old Mickey Herbert Thomas, and a 17 year old whose name was not released because he was a juvenile — were drinking together when one of them came up with the idea that they should construct a cross and burn it in front of a house in which a white man and his black wife lived in rural Walthall County. While it is not clear who originally suggested the plan, it is known that the 17 year old appeared to harbor some sort of hostility toward the couple; on an earlier occasion, he had fired a gun into the house (no one was hit). Neither Swan nor Thomas was involved in the shooting incident.

    Because the case involved a cross burning covered under the federal hate-crimes statute, local authorities immediately brought in investigators from the Clinton Justice Department’s Office of Civil Rights. After the three suspects were arrested in late February, 1994, lawyers for the civil-rights office made the major decisions in prosecuting the case.

    In a move that baffled and later angered Judge Pickering, Civil Rights Division prosecutors early on decided to make a plea bargain with two of the three suspects. The first, Mickey Thomas, had an unusually low IQ, and prosecutors decided to reduce charges against him based on that fact. The second bargain was with the 17 year old. Civil Rights Division lawyers allowed both men to plead guilty to misdemeanors in the cross-burning case (the juvenile also pleaded guilty to felony charges in the shooting incident). The Civil Rights Division recommended no jail time for either man.

    The situation was different for the third defendant, Daniel Swan, who, like the others, faced charges under the hate-crime statute. The law requires that the government prove the accused acted out of racial animus, and Swan, whose defense consisted mainly of the contention that he was very drunk on the night of the cross burning, maintained that he simply did not have the racial animus necessary to be guilty of a hate crime under federal law.

    The case went to trial in Pickering’s courtroom. During the course of testimony, it appears that Pickering came to suspect the Civil Rights Division had made a plea bargain with the wrong defendant. No one questioned the Justice Department’s decision to go easy on the low-IQ Thomas, but the 17 year old was a different case. “It was established to the satisfaction of this court that although the juvenile was younger than the defendant Daniel Swan, that nevertheless the juvenile was the ring leader in the burning of the cross involved in this crime,” Pickering wrote in a memorandum after the verdict. “It was clearly established that the juvenile had racial animus….The court expressed both to the government and to counsel for the juvenile serious reservations about not imposing time in the Bureau of Prisons for the juvenile defendant.”

    In addition to the 17 year old’s role as leader, there was significant evidence, including the fact that he had shot into the mixed-race couple’s home, suggesting that he had a history of violent hostility to blacks that far outweighed any racial animosity felt by Daniel Swan. Swan had no criminal record, and seven witnesses testified that they were not aware of any racial animus he might have held against black people. On the other hand, one witness testified that he believed Swan did not like blacks, and Swan admitted under questioning that he had used the “N” word in the past. In the end, Swan was found guilty — there was no doubt that he had taken an active role in the cross burning — and the Justice Department recommended that he be sentenced to seven and a half years in jail.

    At that point, the Justice Department had already made a no-jail deal with the 17 year old. When it came time to sentence Swan, Pickering questioned whether it made sense that the most guilty defendant got off with a misdemeanor and no jail time, while a less guilty defendant would be sentenced to seven and a half years in prison. “The recommendation of the government in this instance is clearly the most egregious instance of disproportionate sentencing recommended by the government in any case pending before this court,” Pickering wrote. “The defendant [Swan] clearly had less racial animosity than the juvenile.”

    Compounding Pickering’s concern was a conflict between two federal appeals court rulings over the applicability of a statutory mandatory minimum sentence to the case. The Justice Department insisted that Swan be sentenced to a minimum of five years under one statute and two and a half years under a separate law. Pickering doubted whether both were applicable to the case and asked Civil Rights Division lawyers whether the same sentencing standards were used in cases in other federal circuits. The prosecutors said they would check with Washington for an answer.

    Pickering set a sentencing date of January 3, 1995. As the date approached, he waited for an answer from the Justice Department. He asked in November, 1994 and received no response. He asked again in December and received no response. He asked again on January 2, the day before the sentencing, and still received no response. He delayed sentencing, and on January 4 wrote a strongly-worded order to prosecutors demanding not only that they respond to his questions but that they take the issue up personally with Attorney General Janet Reno and report back within ten days.

    Finally, Pickering got word from Civil Rights Division prosecutors, who said they had decided to drop the demand that Swan be given the five-year minimum portion of the recommended sentence. Pickering then sentenced Swan to 27 months in jail. At the sentencing hearing, Pickering told Swan, “You’re going to the penitentiary because of what you did. And it’s an area that we’ve got to stamp out; that we’ve got to learn to live, races among each other. And the type of conduct that you exhibited cannot and will not be tolerated….You did that which does hinder good race relations and was a despicable act….I would suggest to you that during the time you’re in the prison that you do some reading on race relations and maintaining good race relations and how that can be done.”

    So what happened then was that Pickering was concerned that the Justice Department let off the ring-leader (who had an actual history of violence against the victims of the crime) with no jail time while first asking for a seven and half-year jail sentence for a lesser defendant years (five years for one statute and two and a half under the other). He asked the Justice Department for clarification as to whether these were the same standards used in other federal circuits. When they finally got back to him, the dropped their earlier demand for the five-year minimum and Pickering sent the lesser defendant to 27 months (per the statutory guidelines) while admonishing him at his sentencing hearing for his “despicable act” which “cannot and will not be tolerated.”
    Naturally of course this is evidence that Pickering must be a closest racist and segregationist. In which case, what does it say of the Clinton Justice Department for letting off the violent ring-leader who fired a gun into these people’s homes on an earlier occasion with no jail time?
    It should be noted also that Pickering has both one of the lowest reversal rates in the nation and in his circuit and has achieved the highest unanimous ranking of “well qualified” from the American Bar Association, which are pretty much, the “gold standards” when it comes to judicial nominees.

  3. Two important facts York leaves out:
    1. Pickering approved the plea bargains of the two other defendants.
    From Michael Crowley’s TNR article on the subject: “[Pickering] repeatedly told senators that he had been unaware, when he accepted the two plea bargains, that one of the pleading defendants had previously fired a gun into the Polkeys’ home. But the trial transcript shows a discussion of the fact that the defendant’s plea itself included an admission of guilt for the shooting.”
    2. Swan was offered a plea bargain (for 1.5 years) and rejected it.
    (Via Roger Ailes, at this link: http://rogerailes.blogspot.com/2003_01_05_rogerailes_archive.html#87269826)

  4. Another thing that’s never been explained is why Pickering has strong support from blacks from the state of Mississippi. As Nat Hentoff wrote in his final column on the subject,

    The national NAACP, which has largely become an adjunct of the Democratic Party, has treated Pickering as if he were in the tradition of D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation. But strong black support of Pickering throughout Mississippi includes such voices as Reverend Kenneth Fairley, Senior Pastor of Mount Carmel Ministries:
    “I served as president of the Forrest County branch of the NAACP. . . . I currently serve as a State Coordinator for the Rainbow Coalition under the leadership of Reverend Jesse Jackson. . . . I wholeheartedly support Judge Pickering in his judgeship and request the United States Senate to ratify his appointment.”
    Then there is Mississippi state representative Phillip West, chairman of the Legislative Black Caucus, who first opposed Pickering’s nomination to the Fifth Circuit, but after fully examining Pickering’s record has now reversed his position. He writes:
    “While I do not condemn and judge all white men and women to be ‘staunch racists,’ I do believe many have racist tendencies and beliefs as evidenced by the racism instilled in our many institutions. At least Judge Pickering has shown a willingness to work for racial reconciliation prior to his consideration for the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals position.”
    West also says Pickering’s actions for racial reconciliation have gone “beyond . . . many whites we have supported . . . in our state. . . . It would also be ‘Politically Correct’ for me to remain silent. However, I cannot support a position that may be ‘Politically Correct’ but I feel is ‘morally wrong.’ I truly believe we all should embrace truth, justice, and fairness whether we are black or white, rich or poor, Democrat or Republican.”

    Are we to believe African-American supporters of Pickering are suffering from some kind of collective Stockholm syndrome? Or are they just Steppin’ Fetchits, to use a term Hesiod likes?

    Smearing Pickering as a racist without objective proof is letter better than conservatives who called war opponents “objectively pro-Saddam.” It does you no credit, Katherine. And I second Chris: if your side has proof he’s a racist, impeach him. Otherwise, Charles Pickering is owed an apology.

  5. Except, of course, I didn’t call Pickering a racist. I think he is a former segregationist who has not been fully honest about or come to terms with his past; and I think he “does not get it” about race in a big way. I also think it’s not appropriate for a judge to act as he did in the cross burning case, and not appropriate for a judge to be less than honest with Congress.
    The impeachment argument is just weird. First of all, you can’t impeach a judge for being racist in his heart–and I don’t know what’s in Pickering’s heart. What’s in his record does not warrant impeachment but neither does it warrant promotion to a Federal Appeals Court that hears so many cases on racial issues.
    As for his black supporters–well, you’ve named three; there are probably some more too. I don’t think they’re suffering from Stockholm syndrome or are Stepin Fetchit–and it does you no credit to attack me for things I didn’t and wouldn’t say (you’re the second person to bring up Hesiod with me. I mean, what the hell?). I don’t know their reasons; probably similar to the reasons that most politicians support most judges nominated from their home state. Evers’ “outside agitators”-type remarks really annoy me, as does his less than complete depiction of Pickering’s record.
    West’s position is more honest and more convincing, but it is not exactly a ringing endorsement. According to this article,
    http://www.clarionledger.com/news/0305/07/m01.html
    It was based partly on Pickering’s description of testimony against Sam Bowers and I wonder if that description was misleading, especially given his willingness to omit key information before Congress.
    In general, people in Misssippi will face political pressure for opposing Pickering that people in other states will not. His son is a House rep., and many of them are lawyers who may well have to appear before Pickering in court. Chip Pickering has reportedly told some black leaders that his father’s replacement on the district court would be an African-American judge.
    And most African-American leaders, at the national level (I don’t think I have to prove this) and in Mississippi oppose Pickering.

    The Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP is actively opposing Pickering’s nomination. So are the state NAACP organizations in Louisiana and Texas — the other two states that make up the 5th Circuit. “We hope to God that (Pickering) doesn’t make it,” explains L.A. Warren, chair of the Mississippi NAACP’s Legal Redress Committee. “We know his past.”
    The Magnolia Bar Association, an organization of African-American lawyers in Mississippi, opposes the Pickering nomination. So too does US Rep. Bennie Thompson, the state’s only African-American congressman. Thompson has been attacked in Washington and at home in Mississippi by conservative columnists — especially writers for the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, a newspaper with a record as dubious as Pickering’s when it comes to segregation fights. The critics claimed that, in opposing Pickering’s nomination, the congressman had exposed himself as a pawn of northern liberals who was out of touch with his African-American constituents. These attacks were merely more of the pro-Pickering political spin, however. Last week, 31 African-American members of the Mississippi legislature signed a letter opposing Pickering’s nomination.

    (That’s from this Nation blog entry:
    http://www.thenation.com/thebeat/index.mhtml?bid=1&pid=29)
    With West it’s down to 30; I haven’t found any reports of other legislators changing their position.
    By the way, what’s the argument for Bush timing the appointment this way?

  6. I think he is a former segregationist who has not been fully honest about or come to terms with his past; and I think he “does not get it” about race in a big way.

    Funnily enough, I read that as “I believe Pickering is a racist.” Maybe I’m just weird that way.
    As for the timing, the clear reason is that the Senate will be out of recess on Tuesday. Occam’s razor and all…

  7. So which part do you disagree with? Is he not a former segregationist, has he been honest about it, does he now have a good record on racial issues, or all of the above? Please answer with evidence, and with the following in mind:
    “During his Senate confirmation hearings, “Pickering stated his belief that the EEOC through its own mediation efforts resolves most of the “good” job bias cases and that cases that come to court generally have already been investigated by the EEOC and determined to have no basis.” (http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=1294)
    I’ve gone out of my way to be fair on this, and I see these huffy “madame, you have challenged the honor of a distinguished jurist and played the race card” posts as ways to dodge the issue, and I won’t respond to them further.
    As for the timing, there’s a Congressional recess every month. This, and the “quota” speech last year, and Marriage Protection week–it’s a hell of a coincidence.

  8. Katherine R wrote:

    So which part do you disagree with? Is he not a former segregationist, has he been honest about it, does he now have a good record on racial issues, or all of the above? Please answer with evidence, and with the following in mind:

    Actually Katherine the onus is on the person claiming that he was ever a “segregationist” (and it’s pretty weak to try and later claim that isn’t the same as calling him a “racist”) to provide some example of an action he took as a prosecutor, legislator, or judge to warrant such a label. The Slate article you linked to earlier as I pointed out does not provide any such examples and merely uses a “guilt by association” tactic by focusing on the supposed views of one of Pickering’s old law partners without providing a single iota of evidence.

    I’ve gone out of my way to be fair on this, and I see these huffy “madame, you have challenged the honor of a distinguished jurist and played the race card” posts as ways to dodge the issue, and I won’t respond to them further.

    That’s fine if you want to throw a tantrum and go home Katherine when someone has the audacity to actually challenge your argument but for the record you have been neither “fair” nor honest in your charges against Pickering. You made some serious allegations which you have failed to substantiate and even tried to weasel out of them by trying to suggest that saying someone was a “segregationist” was not the same as calling him a “racist” (the former obviously encompasses the latter).
    Pickering BTW still has one of the lowest reversal rates in both the nation and in his circuit (about 0.5% and not a single one of those was for a Voting Rights Act case) as well as a unanimous “well qualified” rating from the American Bar Association. Opposition to his appointment has nothing to do with his qualifications which are impeccable but rather because he has been a mainstream conservative jurist with a proven record of respect for both the rule of law and precedent.
    Since he cannot be challenged on his actual qualifications (which even the leftist ABA found impeccable), the only alternative was a nasty smear campaign of half-truths, statements (and sometimes even a couple of words) taken out of context, and ominous-sounding charges of “insensitivity” without a scintilla of evidence to back it up. If this is the way Democrats behave during judicial proceedings, it’s all the more reason to reelect George W Bush.

  9. Dillard’s book also includes the following portion of a public statement regarding Klan violence issued in the mid-1960s by the local District Attorney (Dillard), the sheriff of Jones County, the Mayor of the City of Laurel, the county attorney (identified elsewhere in Dillard’s book as Charles Pickering) and the Laurel Chief of Police:
    We, the undersigned elected officials and public officers charged with the responsibility of protecting you and your property, wish to publicly state and make known our position and intentions concerning certain acts of violence which have recently taken place in Jones County. While we believe in continuing our Southern way of life and realize that outside agitators have cause [sic] much turmoil and racial hatred, let there be no misunderstanding, we oppose such activities, but law and order must prevail.
    W.O. Dillard, Clear Burning, at 119.

  11. and for our slower readers: yeah, being a segregationist is racist. But being a segregationist/racist in 1967 does not necessarily mean you are a segregationist/racist in 2004.

  12. If you’re going to dismiss Pickering, you’ve got to also dismiss Byrd. Pickering may well have been a cosigner to such a document in his mid-20s, but Byrd was a Klan recruiter. There’s a difference between being a youthful cosignatory to a document (which may or may not be completely reflective of Pickering’s feelings on the matter) and actively recruiting for an organization well-known for acts of violence against minorities and whites who show tolerance for those minorities.
    Funny how a document intended to repudiate Klan activities is turned into a condemnation of those who wrote it, isn’t it?

  13. When Mississippi became desegregated, Pickering was one of the first to send his kids to integrated public schools (per Fred Barnes on Brit Hume). Whatever views he had on segregation 40 years, they obviously changed. What I find hypocritical is, where do his detractors send their kids to school? If they’re in DC, certainly not the public school system.
    Regarding the cross burning case, Byron York has better accounts here and here than the WA Post. There are three parties involved in the Swan case. The Reno-led Justice Department Office of Civil Rights played a big part. They plea-bargained the 17-year old ringleader with a misdemeanor and no jail time.
    Swan’s problem is that he’s an idiot, deciding to plead not guilty. The Justice Dept prosecuted and he was sentenced 7-1/2 years in jail. Had he pled guilty the penalty would have been a fraction.
    Pickering was making the best of a bad situation, and his real problem was accepting the plea bargain of the 17-year old, not the reducing of Swan’s sentence. PFAW and others refused to acknowledge the roles the other two parties played and instead put it all on Pickering.
    Whether he’s a good judge or not, the Swan case should not be a determinant. The left-wing interest groups should be ashamed for playing the race card in this case.

  14. Kondrake wrote about the Pickering case almost a year ago. PFAW is conducting a dirty underhanded smear campaign. They’re not expressly calling him a racist, but they’re using all the proper code words to insinuate that very thing.

  15. Katherine, it seems your only point of attack against Pickering was that he was a segregationist. What evidence? Any apology?

  16. The white man and Brown woman was my aunt and uncle. A huge misjustice was done too them. The white man was My UNCLE by blood.The
    woman my sister by JESUS.
    People No matter who you are we all bleed red,white & blue.

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