Fox News Headline: "Hearing Delayed for Obama Judicial Nominee Who Supported Serial Killer"
He was actually
supporting justice but the above makes for a better headline from the Fox News-RNC consortium.
The Senate Judiciary Committee has postponed the hearing for a "controversial" Court of Appeals nominee after the panel received a letter from a home-state prosecutor blasting him as a judicial loose cannon and Republicans raised concerns about his alleged bias in favor of sex offenders.
U.S. District Court Judge Robert Chatigny gained notoriety in 2005 for his role in trying to fight the execution of convicted serial killer and rapist Michael Ross, also known as The Roadside Strangler, whom Chatigny had described as a victim of his own "sexual sadism."
His conduct in that case, which included threatening to go after Ross' attorney's law license, as well as his ruling in 2001 against sex offender registries created under Megan's Law, has caused a commotion among Republicans on the judiciary panel...
The judge had raised concerns about whether Ross was mentally unfit and whether prison isolation had led to despair -- at the time of the conference call, federal appeals courts had overturned two prior orders from him postponing the execution.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/03/09/panel-delays-hearing-court-nominee-following-concerns-sex-case-bias/Perhaps Judge Chatigny knows that executing the mentally ill may violate the 8th Amendment (Ford v. Wainwright, 752 F.2d 526; PANETTI v. QUARTERMAN, 448 F. 3d 815)?
The reason the right wing is upset by this nominee: He has a long record of properly applying law and constitutional mandates that balance civil liberty with the prosecution of crime. The right wing fundamentally oppose that balance in favor of what would damn well be a police state if we allowed their judges to legislate the Bill of Rights into obscurity.
Previous postsObama nominates another former Clinton Appointee to the US Circuit (Thu Feb-25-10):
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7790937Senate Judiciary schedules hearing for Judge Chatigny and 3 District nominees (Sat Mar-06-10):
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=7854988&mesg_id=7854988
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