Incitement to Murder
Senators Cornyn and Delay's recent comments have drawn the media's usual mild criticism. You know, our statesmen are only condoning the murder of a judge's family.
posted by Management at 1:08 AM
posted by Management at 1:08 AM
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Senator Links Violence to 'Political' Decisions
'Unaccountable' Judiciary Raises Ire
By Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 5, 2005; Page A07
Sen. John Cornyn said yesterday that recent examples of courthouse violence may be linked to public anger over judges who make politically charged decisions without being held accountable.
In a Senate floor speech in which he sharply criticized a recent Supreme Court ruling on the death penalty, Cornyn (R-Tex.) -- a former Texas Supreme Court justice and member of the Judiciary Committee -- said Americans are growing increasingly frustrated by what he describes as activist jurists.
"It causes a lot of people, including me, great distress to see judges use the authority that they have been given to make raw political or ideological decisions," he said. Sometimes, he said, "the Supreme Court has taken on this role as a policymaker rather than an enforcer of political decisions made by elected representatives of the people."
Cornyn continued: "I don't know if there is a cause-and-effect connection, but we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country. . . . And I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters, on some occasions, where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in, engage in violence. Certainly without any justification, but a concern that I have."
Cornyn, who spoke in a nearly empty chamber, did not specify cases of violence against judges. Two fatal episodes made headlines this year, although authorities said the motives appeared to be personal, not political. In Chicago, a man fatally shot the husband and mother of a federal judge who had ruled against him in a medical malpractice suit. And in Atlanta last month, a man broke away from a deputy and fatally shot four people, including the judge presiding over his rape trial.
Liberal activists criticized Cornyn's remarks, and compared them to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's comments last week following the death of a brain-damaged Florida woman, Terri Schiavo. DeLay (R-Tex.) rebuked federal and state judges who had ruled in the Schiavo case, saying, "The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior."
Ralph G. Neas, president of People for the American Way, said last night that Cornyn, "like Tom DeLay, should know better. These kinds of statements are irresponsible and could be seen by some as justifying inexcusable conduct against our courts." The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee called the senator's remarks "an astounding account of the recent spate of violence against judges, suggesting that the crimes could be attributed to the fact that judges are 'unaccountable' to the public."
Cornyn spokesman Don Stewart declined to speculate on what instances of violence the senator had in mind. "He was talking about things that have come up and concerned him," Stewart said.
In his speech, Cornyn criticized the Supreme Court's 5 to 4 decision on March 1 that said it is unconstitutional to execute people who were under 18 when they committed their crimes. "In so holding," Cornyn said, "the U.S. Supreme Court said: We are no longer going to leave this in the hands of jurors. We do not trust jurors. We are no longer going to leave this up to the elected representatives of the people of the respective states."
In a recent New York Times article, John Kane, a senior judge in the U.S. District Court for Colorado, wrote: "Since 1970, 10 state and federal judges have been murdered, seven of them in job-related incidents. Those who threaten judges are almost always disturbed individuals seeking revenge. . . . Of the three federal judges killed in the last quarter-century, all were killed by men disgruntled with their treatment from the federal judicial system."
Time for reflection, not reaction
A Times Editorial
Published April 5, 2005
After Terri Schiavo's death, U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay went into another rage against the judiciary. "The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior," he warned, referring to the judges who had refused to order Schiavo's feeding tube reinserted.
DeLay's threat of retribution aside, what is called for now is "a deep breath and (a) step back," as Florida Senate President Tom Lee suggests. Gov. Jeb Bush also had it right when he said there is a lot of "raw emotion" following Schiavo's passing and it might be "appropriate to wait" before pushing legislative changes in laws covering the end-of-life decisions.
The worst possible legacy for Schiavo would be if Congress and state legislatures across the country made it more difficult for people to have their end-of-life wishes respected. Yet some of the proposals batted about in Florida and in Congress would do just that.
The U.S. Supreme Court has made it clear that each of us has the right to refuse medical care and nourishment. How those final wishes may be made known and who can speak for us when we can no longer speak for ourselves have been matters left primarily to the states.
What has been lost in the bitter controversy over Terri Schiavo's case is that millions of American families facing end-of-life decisions have successfully worked through the process with the help of doctors and, occasionally, judges. By and large, Florida and other states have established workable standards and procedures in these cases. The Schiavo case was attention-grabbing because it was so rare to have a family irreconcilably riven over what the patient would have wanted. But changing the law in response to a single aberrant case could have unintended consequences for other families.
There is no reason to rush passage of any new laws. Time and reflection are warranted, just as our governor and Senate president suggest.
Police Release Sketches In Murder Of Chicago Judge's Family
Lefkow Tells Newspaper 'It's Not Fair ... I'm Furious'
POSTED: 8:45 am CST March 2, 2005
UPDATED: 10:18 pm CST March 2, 2005
CHICAGO -- Investigating a report about two suspicious looking men who were seen in the neighborhood near Judge Joan Lefkow's home hours before the murders of two of the judge's family members were discovered, police released a composite sketch of the men Wednesday night.
Investigators were also looking into the source of several phone calls Lefkow and her family received Sunday night that may have come from a correctional facility.
WMAQ-TV in Chicago learned more about the private ordeal that Lefkow is going through from some people who are close to her, and the Chicago Sun-Times published the first interview with the grieving judge Wednesday afternoon.
In the published report, Lefkow says that her greatest fear is that her work on the bench led to the slayings of her mother and husband.
"I fear that to be true, and that's the great tragedy of it," Lefkow told the Sun-Times. "If someone was angry at me, they should go after me. It's not fair to go after my family."
"It's just so cruel," Lefkow told the paper. "He was on crutches after some surgery, and they didn't have a chance. It was just cold-blooded. Who would do this? I'm just furious.”
Earlier in the day, WMAQ spoke with a friend and colleague of the judge's, Judge Wayne Anderson.
In the hours after the gruesome discovery, Anderson, who is also a federal judge, was by Lefkow's side.
He spoke to Davlantes about what happened Monday night at about how the judicial community is especially troubled by the tragic murders of Lefkow's family members.
While no one can comprehend the darkness Lefkow must have faced as she walked from her home Monday night after learning the horrifying fate of her family, but in the hours that followed, Anderson was there for her to lean on.
"I just felt impelled to go there and help console her and her family," he told the television station. "I can't explain why, but I just felt this need to go there and put my arms around her."
The judge spoke out Wednesday afternoon, calling on the federal government to provide more security for judges.
But, he said that after the crime, Lefkow didn't talk about security, only about what she could have done to prevent the deaths of her husband and mother.
"She's worried that by her achieving this wonderful position, (by) being a federal judge, that she then has jeopardized the lives of her family," Anderson said. "And that's -- that's something that is going to weigh on her forever."
The judge had four daughters with husband Michael, Davlantes said. One of those daughters also spoke publically about how her mother has been haunted, telling the New York Times, "I think she's very upset with herself, maybe for being a judge and putting her family in this danger. But, there's no way she should have known."
Ironically, some say her father didn't ever think about his own safety.
From his law office, Michael Lefkow could see his wife come and go from the federal building. Friends say he worried about her, not thinking that he and, as fate would have it, his mother-in-law would be targets.
Davlantes said all of the federal judges in the Chicago area, with the exception of judge Lefkow, gathered together for a special meeting Tuesday. Several have spoken out about the need for increased protection, and some are asking the federal government to step up to that task.
Officials said Lefkow returned home Monday evening to find the bodies of her husband, Michael F. Lefkow, 64, and her mother, Donna Humphrey, 89, in the basement of her home.
Both had been shot multiple times, according to the Cook County Medical Examiner's office.
Authorities were focusing on the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago, where white supremacist Matt Hale is being held as the possible source of the calls, the Sun-Times reported, citing unnamed sources. When Joan Lefkow answered the first call, no one responded.
The Sun-Times also reported, citing an unnamed source, that subpoenas were being issued to "every kind of organization that has absolutely anything to do with a white supremacist or hate group."
Physical evidence found at the house also included a broken window that authorities hoped would produce fingerprints, according to a federal source.
The source, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, would not discuss a possible motive, although police have said they did not believe robbery was not a motive because nothing appeared to be missing from the home.
Authorities said Tuesday they were investigating whether the killings were the work of white supremacists out for revenge. The killings came a month before Hale was scheduled to be sentenced for trying to have the judge killed over her handling of a trademark case involving the name of his group.
Police said the possibility that the slayings of Michael Lefkow and Humphrey were carried out by hate groups was "but one facet of our investigation."
As recently as last year, federal authorities took the murder plot that Hale hatched and was convicted of seriously enough that they provided Lefkow protection for at least a few weeks and Chicago police stepped up patrolling her neighborhood. The Lefkows took their own security measures, installing cameras on their front porch, said Mike Miner, a senior editor at the Chicago Reader and longtime friend of the couple.
Speculation Centers On White Supremacists
From the federal courthouse to the North Side neighborhood where the family lived, speculation was about the white supremacists.
"After everybody expresses how terrible they feel, that's the next topic of conversation," said Thomas Breen, a Chicago attorney who has argued cases before Lefkow. "Everybody is talking about white supremacist groups and how efficient they may be at what they do."
Chicago's chief of detectives, James Molloy, said, "We are looking in many, many directions, but it would be far too early to draw any definitive links."
By Tuesday morning, news articles of the killings had been posted on white supremacist Web sites, along with "RAHOWA!", meaning "racial holy war."
In a discussion on a white nationalist Web site in 2003, members had talked about the case against Hale and posted the Lefkows' home address. Anti-Defamation League official Mark Pitcavage said another white supremacist's short wave radio show last April had discussed killing the judge.
Hale's father, retired East Peoria policeman Russell Hale, dismissed the notion that his son was involved in the slayings, saying he is under constant surveillance and the FBI closely monitors his phone calls and visits with family members.
"There would be no way he could order anything," said Hale. "It's ridiculous."
Hale's mother, Evelyn Hutcheson, told the Chicago Tribune Tuesday that FBI agents had come to her East Peoria home to ask where another Hale relative had been Monday. Hutcheson said the relative was at an area business Monday that had a security camera.
Investigators also were looking into a car that was parked in a no-parking zone around 8 a.m. Monday outside a church on the Lefkow's street. The church administrator asked the two men in the car to leave and they did, the Sun-Times reported.
According to Molloy, the two victims were killed between 10:30 a.m., when Humphrey talked on the telephone to one of her grandchildren, and shortly after 5:30 p.m. when the judge discovered their bodies. At 4 p.m., one of the Lefkows' daughters had stopped by the house to pick up a gym bag, but she came and left without seeing her father or grandmother, Molloy said.
Molloy would not provide many details about the killings, but one federal source who spoke only on condition of anonymity said both victims had been shot in the head. Another source said that police found two .22 caliber casings and that a window at the house had been broken.
Investigators believe the two victims were forced to lie on the basement floor and then were shot multiple times, the Tribune reported Wednesday citing unnamed sources.
Authorities also found evidence that suggests the killer attempted to clean up the scene before leaving, according to WMAQ.
The two victims would have been easy to overpower. Lefkow family friend Thomas Robb described them as "very vulnerable people," explaining that Humphrey, visiting from her home in Denver, needed two canes to walk, and that Michael Lefkow had undergone surgery last week to repair a ruptured Achilles tendon and was on crutches.
Investigators Look For Clues
As they looked into a possible motive, a task force of more than two dozen members of the Chicago Police, FBI and U.S. Marshals Service assigned to the case around-the-clock was searching for clues in Lefkow's professional life, including her role presiding over cases involving Hale and others.
Lefkow has presided over a variety of cases since she was nominated to the District Court bench by President Clinton in 2000. She has sentenced defendants in the licenses for sale political corruption case, decided the mental fitness of a man suspected of shooting a police officer and ordered the makers of Beanie Babies to pay $700,000 in a trademark case.
The judge was questioned for hours after discovering the bodies and brought back to the home with detectives to help with the investigation. She and her family were placed under the protection of the U.S. Marshals Service, said Charles P. Kocoras, chief federal judge for the Northern District of Illinois.
Hale, 33, is awaiting a sentencing hearing scheduled to begin April 6. He is under what the Bureau of Prisons calls special administrative measures -- which means he is isolated from other prisoners and when attorneys visit he must be escorted to the meeting in handcuffs by three guards.
Police would not comment whether they have attempted to talk with him.
During Hale's trial, prosecutors contended that Hale was furious when Lefkow ordered him to stop using the name World Church of the Creator because it had been trademarked by an Oregon-based religious group that has no ties to Hale. Lefkow originally ruled in Hale's favor, but the decision was reversed by a federal appeals panel and Lefkow ordered Hale and his group to stop using the name.
Friends of the Lefkows were stunned that anyone would want to harm Michael Lefkow, an attorney, who, with his wife was active in the Episcopal Church.
Friends and neighbors gathered Tuesday night at North Shore Baptist Church to pray for the Lefkow family, while others attended services at the family's Evanston church.
"Your could not imagine a nice family, and just a sadder event," neighbor Michael Callahan said.
The grief also reached Denver where Humphrey lived in a high-rise building with another daughter.
"Surely this person could not have known her, because there's not any way they could have harmed her had they known her," the building manager said.
Smith seeks inquiry into case
Friday, April 01, 2005
By DONNA DE LA CRUZ
WASHINGTON - New Jersey Rep. Chris Smith, a friend and advocate of Terri Schiavo's family, called for a full inquiry into her case yesterday after the severely brain-damaged woman who spent 15 years connected to a feeding tube died.
Smith has said Schiavo was not in a persistent, vegetative state, but was a disabled woman who was unjustly killed by deliberate dehydration and starvation.
He was among the Republicans who lobbied Congress successfully for the passage of a bill earlier this month that allowed Schiavo's parents the right to sue in federal court over the withdrawal of nourishment and medical treatment needed to sustain their daughter.
Smith said Congress must identify legislative reforms that will better protect the rights of those who are not near death, are not suffering from a terminal illness, and whose "so-called wishes `to die' have been credibly contested by family and friends."
Smith characterized Schiavo as a "healthy but disabled woman" whose death "exposes an extremely cruel, merciless and dysfunctional element" within the judicial system.
"The fundamental human rights of disabled people have suffered a tremendous blow as Terri Schiavo was sentenced to die and then denied her own representation and a new and full review by federal courts," said Smith in a statement issued from Geneva, Switzerland, where he is attending a United Nations Human Rights Conference.
Schiavo suffered severe brain damage in 1990 after her heart stopped because of a chemical imbalance that was believed to have been brought on by an eating disorder. Court-appointed doctors ruled she was in a persistent vegetative state, with no real consciousness or chance of recovery.
She left no written instructions, but her husband argued that his wife told him long ago she would not want to be kept alive artificially. His in-laws disputed that, saying that would have gone against her Roman Catholic faith, and they contended she could get better with treatment. They said she laughed, cried, responded to them and tried to talk.
Last week, Smith told The Associated Press of his own family's difficult decision on whether to remove his father, stricken with cancer, from life support in 1996.
After doctors told Smith's family there was nothing they could do for his father, the congressman and his siblings agreed to have him taken off a respirator. His father died minutes later.
In West Windsor, N.J., Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Forrester called for a "Terri's Law" in New Jersey that would allow severely debilitated patients to remain alive if there is no living will and "no clear and convincing evidence of the person's desires."
"This law in New Jersey would provide extra protection for severely disabled people who have nothing in writing and whose family members are divided on their proper care," Forrester said.
April 6, 2005
EDITORIAL
The Judges Made Them Do It
It was appalling when the House majority leader threatened political retribution against judges who did not toe his extremist political line. But when a second important Republican stands up and excuses murderous violence against judges as an understandable reaction to their decisions, then it is time to get really scared.
It happened on Monday, in a moment that was horrifying even by the rock-bottom standards of the campaign that Republican zealots are conducting against the nation's judiciary. Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, rose in the chamber and dared to argue that recent courthouse violence might be explained by distress about judges who "are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public." The frustration "builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in" violence, said Mr. Cornyn, a former member of the Texas Supreme Court who is on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which supposedly protects the Constitution and its guarantee of an independent judiciary.
Listeners could only cringe at the events behind Mr. Cornyn's fulminating: an Atlanta judge was murdered in his courtroom by a career criminal who wanted only to shoot his way out of a trial, and a Chicago judge's mother and husband were executed by a deranged man who was furious that she had dismissed a wild lawsuit. It was sickening that an elected official would publicly offer these sociopaths as examples of any democratic value, let alone as holders of legitimate concerns about the judiciary.
The need to shield judges from outside threats - including those from elected officials like Senator Cornyn - is a priceless principle of our democracy. Senator Cornyn offered a smarmy proclamation of "great distress" at courthouse thuggery. Then he rationalized it with broadside accusations that judges "make raw political or ideological decisions." He thumbed his nose at the separation of powers, suggesting that the Supreme Court be "an enforcer of political decisions made by elected representatives of the people." Avoiding that nightmare is precisely why the founders made federal judgeships lifetime jobs and created a nomination process that requires presidents to seek bipartisan support.
Echoes of the political hijacking of the Terri Schiavo case hung in the air as Mr. Cornyn spoke, just days after the House majority leader, Tom DeLay, vengefully vowed that "the time will come" to make the judges who resisted the Congressional Republicans' gruesome deathbed intrusion "answer for their behavior." Trying to intimidate judges used to be a crime, not a bombastic cudgel for cynical politicians.
The public's hope must be that Senator Cornyn's shameful outburst gives further pause to Senate moderates about the threats of the majority leader, Senator Bill Frist, to scrap the filibuster to ensure the confirmation of President Bush's most extremist judicial nominees. Dr. Frist tried to distance himself yesterday from Mr. DeLay's attack on the judiciary. But Dr. Frist must carry the militants' baggage if he is ever to run for president, and he complained yesterday of "a real fire lighted by Democrats around judges over the last few days."
By Democrats? The senator should listen to what's being said on his side of the aisle, if he can bear it.
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