I do find it interesting the way the push for Pickering has not stopped. It is quite unusual to have some one nominated, shot down and then brought back for reconsideration.
NAACP URGENT Action Alert
DATE: October 29, 2003
TO: Concerned Parties
FROM: Kweisi Mfume, President and CEO
Hilary O. Shelton, Director, Washington Bureau
JUDICAL extremist Charles Pickering to be considered by the full senate
THE URGENT ACTION We Need You To Take:
Contact both your Senators and Urge Them to oppose judge pickering’s confirmation to the fifth circuit court of appeals and to oppose cloture on his nomination. We need to contact all Senators, as this matter will soon be coming before the full US Senate.
To contact your Senators you may:
Make a Phone Call:
Call your Senators in Washington by dialing the Capitol Switchboard and asking to be transferred to your Senators' offices. The switchboard phone number is (202) 224-3121 (see message section, below).
Send a Fax
If you would like to send a fax, call your Senators’ offices (through the Capitol switchboard) and ask for their fax numbers (you can use either the attached sample letter or the message box, below).
To address the letter, you say:
The Honorable (name of Senator)
U.S. Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510
Send an E-Mail
To send an e-mail to your Senators, simply go to
www.senate.gov, and click on “Contacting the Senate”; you can look your Senators up either alphabetically or by state.
Unfortunately, not all Members of Congress have e-mail addresses.
REMEMBER TO CONTACT BOTH YOUR SENATORS !!
We must defeat cloture (the motion to end debate)
on this nomination in the Senate
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS IMPORTANT MATTER!!!
If you have any questions, call Hilary Shelton at the Washington Bureau at (202) 638-2269(date)
The Honorable ___________________________
United States Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510
RE: Opposition to Charles Pickerings’ renomination to the 5th
Circuit court of appeals
Dear Senator ________________________________________;
I write to urge you in the strongest possible terms to oppose the nomination of Charles Pickering to the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. Specifically, I strongly urge you to oppose his nomination and to oppose cloture on this nomination if and when it comes to the Senate floor.
Despite the decision last year by the Senate Judiciary Committee that Judge Charles Pickering’s record demonstrated that he is unqualified for a lifetime seat on the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, President Bush has re-nominated him for the same position on the same court. Over his forty-year legal career, Judge Pickering has compiled a very problematic record on civil rights. In 1959, Judge Pickering wrote a law review article advocating for the correction of a loophole in Mississippi’s miscegenation statute, which imposed criminal penalties for violating the ban on interracial marriage. The loophole had been successfully used to obtain the reversal of a conviction of an African American woman who cohabitated with a white male. At the time of his article, a national trend had begun toward repealing these insidious statutes, and the criminal penalties for violating Mississippi’s miscegenation law were the toughest in the country. Nine months after the publication of the Pickering article, the Mississippi legislature amended the miscegenation statute in accordance with Pickering’s recommendation.
In a 1994 case, Judge Pickering refused to enforce a five-year sentence after a predominantly white jury from Southern Mississippi convicted a cross-burner of three federal civil rights violations. Despite the evidence at trial, Judge Pickering believed this individual was not guilty ENOUGH to warrant this sentence. In fact he successfully cajoled the Justice Department into dropping some of the charges, he threatened to hold a new trial, ordered the attorneys to notify the Attorney General about the case, and conducted an unethical conversation with a high official in the Justice Department, violating section 3.A.4 of the Code of Conduct for U.S. Judges.
Judge Pickering’s hostility toward voting rights even continued when he became a federal district judge, as he has questioned the role of federal courts in enforcing federal voting rights laws and has openly criticized policies as fundamental to our democracy as the one-person-one-vote doctrine. Judge Pickering’s record clearly indicates an hostility towards civil right and equal justice laws for African Americans and other racial minorities in Mississippi, a state where African-Americans are, according to the 2000 Census, 36.6% of the population-the largest African American population in any state.
Accordingly, I hope that you will take these concerns seriously and oppose Judge Pickering’s nomination. Thank you in advance for your attention to this matter. I look forward to continuing to work with you to ensure that all Americans have a high level of confidence and trust in our federal courts.
Sincerely,
(sign and print your name and
be sure to include your address)
